Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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More Sketches of China

246017After yesterday’s cover reveal, it’s time to write a little about Sketches of China, my fifth novelette in the Hope & Glory series that acts as an introduction/prequel for the game, that will be out very soon.

The plan for the novelettes was to try and show a different corner of the Hope & Glory world with each story.
So we’ve been through the Anglo-Indian Ray (Glass Houses), North Africa (Number the Brave), the Imperial court of Russia (Part of the Machine), on a flying ship belonging to the Republic of Iezo (Above the Clouds) and now, China.

Also, each novelette tackles a different genre, showcasing the different themes and gaming approaches the players will be able to adopt in the game.
So we’ve seen a spy story (Glass Houses), a war story (Number the Brave), a noir (Part of the Machine), a “big dumb object” SF story (Above the Clouds) and now… Continue reading


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A visit to Goblin Tower

Goblin_towerThe Goblin Tower is a 1968 novel by Lyon Sprague de Camp, first in the series known as the Reluctant King.
The novel follows the adventures of the reluctant King Jorian, in fact an engineer and watchmaker, that by chance finds himself in the shoes of the king of Xylar. But tradition has it that the career of the king of Xylar has an expiration date – expiration being the proper word, as it ends on the hangman’s stock.
The frantic activity of our hero to abandon the title, the throne, and the country, before his position becomes too compromising sets the pace of the story. It is not that abroad things are any better, since all the nations of the continent are prey to a political and social eccentricity that slips into the grotesque.
And in the utterly lethal. Continue reading


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At the feet of a giant

41T7fyFa80L._SX350_BO1,204,203,200_I discovered Harold Lamb pretty late in my life, about ten years ago.
I had retrieved, as a kid, a pair of biographies written by Lamb, I had found in my grandmother’s attic. They were from my mother’s collection of young girl’s reads. I think one was Tamburlane, and the other might have been Theodora.
I don’t know what happened to those books – I guess my mother gave them away. I was not overly interested in historical biographies, at the time I liked dinosaurs.
Only much, much later I found the collections published by Bison Books and edited by Howard Andrew Jones, and it was a delight.
“Who,” my friend Claire asked, “Lamb the one of the Cossack?”

I knew, through my readings, that Harold Lamb was a great author of historical adventure, “always the scholar first, the good fictionist second” as one of his editors said, and I associated his names with Adventure magazine, that to me was possibly more iconic than Weird Tales or Astounding.

Continue reading


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Zombies from the Pulps

51fBesVApgL (1)Jeffrey Shanks’ Zombie from the Pulps is exactly what it says on the tin – a collection of twenty stories from the old pulps dealing with the walking dead.
Not, mind you, the shambling hordes of post-Romerian cinema, but the subtler, more personal and vaguely more anthropologically correct zombies of old fiction.

The selection includes at least two well-known pieces, H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West and Robert E. Howard’s Pigeons from Hell – most readers are likely to have read these before, and probably own multiple copies of both stories. I know I do.
The same goes, probably, for H.S. Whitehead’s Jumbee, another true classic, and for C.A. Smith’s Empire of the Necromancers, a true wonder of macabre humor and baroque imagination.
But it’s the rest of the collection that is a treasure-trove of surprises.
We find that often forgotten gem, Henry Kuttner’s The Graveyard Rats, and then a number of little-known stories of Haitian magic and walking corpses, by the likes of August Derleth, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry Kuttner, E. Hoffmann Price and Seabury Quinn.
But there’s also a nice little number by our old friend H. De Vere Stacpoole, and a fine story by Garnett Weston, who penned the original story for White Zombie, and here hides under the alias of G.W. Hutter.
And more.

A nice little anthology, highly recommended to seekers of the macabre.


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The Keyword is Survival on the New Frontier

A brief post to point out the latest offering from Humble Bundle, the aptly named Survive Anything bundle, featuring books by Skyhorse Publishing.
For a very small price you’ll be able to download a full library of survival-oriented handbooks – the lowest rung, that will cost you a buck, includes a general survival handbook, a first aid handbook, and five other interesting titles.
The complete package will set you back fifteen bucks, but will land you 23 books, including guides to homesteading, and survival guides from both the Army and the Navy.

books

Now I’m not the survivalist type – but I like hiking and stuff, and therefore the first aid book is something I’m likely to keep on my smartphone. Ditto the guide about getting lost and getting found again.
Also, I am a writer, and a writer of adventure – and the skills in these books are the sort of skills my characters have or need to learn fast to survive what I put them through. So, research!

You might have different interests, but give the bundle a look – as an added bonus, your money will help the International Rescue Committee.
And I have to admit that helping International Rescue sends a shiver through my old Thunderbirds fan bones.