Dark Worlds Magazine was an effort to recapture the excitement of the old days of the pulp magazines. Magazines like Amazing Stories and Astounding Science Fiction and Weird Tales. It was also an experiement in producing a magazine in the new print-on-demand marketplace. Ultimately it was an experiment that failed. Myself and former Amazing Stories blogger G. Read More
Jack Mackenzie’s collection of Dark Fantasy stories is now available from Rage Machine Books. From the book’s introduction: If you ever feel that you are doing well as a writer, I would recommend re-reading all of your old short stories. That will put a pin in any inflated sense of Read More
If you read anything by Jack Sullivan or Mike Ashley you will see that today J. Sheridan Le Fanu has fans. Horror fans. He has been acknowledged as the first man to make a living writing horror stories. He was the linchpin between the clunky old Gothics of Radcliffe and Read More
“The Tree-Men of M’Bwa” by Donald Wandrei is one of those wonderful Weird Tales gems that I love to happen upon. The story was published in February 1932. It has only been reprinted in Wandrei collections, which surprises me. The story is so good, so weird in the true Lovecraftian Read More
Howard purists may hate every word I am about to say. While I will always agree that Robert E. Howard’s stories were the best of the Conan canon (he wrote some potboilers too), I do have some favs amongst the Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp pastiches. One such Read More
Hollywood changes everything. A series of successful films and the commonly-held view of things changes. ‘Vampires turning to ash in sunlight’ is a good example. In Dracula, the Count can walk in the daylight but he hasn’t the power to turn into animals or smoke. This literary rigor mortis also Read More
In “The Supernatural Horror in Literature” H. P. Lovecraft selects three novels as the offspring of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: “…Dracula evoked many similar novels of supernatural horror, among which the best are perhaps The Beetle, by Richard Marsh, Brood of the Witch-Queen, by “Sax Rohmer” (Arthur Sarsfield Ward), and The Read More
I love vampires. I hate Anne Rice. Not the person Anne Rice. I don’t know her. But the institution of Anne Rice. To be perfectly accurate: I hate Anne Rice vampires. I’ve always been of the Weird Tales/Kolchak the Nightstalker vampire variety. They’re bad. You stake’em, holy water’em, burn’em with Read More
The Jules De Grandin stories by Seabury Quinn were not innovative so much as reactionary. Anyone familiar with the Horror and Mystery of the previous generation can easily glean where the author found inspiration. Quinn’s magic lies not in creating a Cthulhu Mythos, but in taking a fully modern approach Read More
Flaxman Low was one of the first “periodical” occult detectives. By that, I mean, a psychic investigator who was featured in a magazine as a recurring character. Low wasn’t the first. That honor belongs to Sherlock Holmes, who though he didn’t always chase the unknown, did on occasion face such Read More
Ghosts, as a monster of interest to horror fans, have fallen on hard times. Films, cartoons and comic books like Casper the Friendly Ghost and Ghostbusters play up the comedic angles of ethereal spirits. The Ring (2003) was a huge success as a horror film because its creator remembered something Read More
M. R. James, undoubtedly the finest ghost story writer in the English language, disparaged the occult detective story. This is very odd for James was inspired by, promoted the works of, and virtually single-handedly resurrected the fame of J. Sheridan Le Fanu, the man who invented the occult detective (even Read More