High Fantasy Serial Fiction

Malodorous Charms — Echoes & Orisons Part Two

Threehill was, as Harkital said, a quaint fart of a town.  They passed fields of grain that took up hundreds of acres, then homesteads and gardens of unimpressive design. Off in the distance, there stood the belltower of the Temple of the Heart—not quite grand, not quite proud, stretching just above the eastern quarter of the approaching settlement. Harkital noted that most Biluranian towns were built around temples of that clumsy faith, “like piss pooling ‘round a giggling baby.”  Strange wooden signs rose on either side of the road as they approached, displaying an odd collection of carved symbols: a…

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A Reader’s Guide to Modern Sword and Sorcery Magazines

Back in the days of yore, some 100 years ago at this point, pulp fiction magazines were everywhere. Publications like Weird Tales and Unknown Worlds were the places to be for short-fiction writers hoping to make a living. Throughout the twentieth century, publications like these introduced the world to the likes of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and countless others. Without such authors, fantasy as we know it would not exist. While all sorts of genre fiction were represented among the pulps, I’ve always been most interested in Sword & Sorcery and…

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How ‘A Knight’s Tale’ Helped Me See My Own Journey

Some stories stay with you not because they are historically accurate or perfectly crafted, but because they remind you of something you believe about yourself. For me, Brian Helgeland’s 2001 film, A Knight’s Tale, is one of those stories. Beneath its mixture of medieval jousting in the subtle English countryside surrounded by castles, and rock-and-roll anachronisms (and everybody loves a bit of Queen, don’t they?) lies a narrative about identity, ambition, and the people who shape us along the way, not necessarily family but those close groups of friends that you wish were family. When I rewatch the film (oh,…