Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Other People’s Pulp


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Meet Miss Sherlock

I am on a Sherlock Holmes roll – and it really looks like these next few months will be Sherlockian apocrypha and folk horror, considering the books that are piling up (virtually) on my ereader.

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Now, there was a time, before Facebook, when I was one of the Hounds of the Internet, and I was a lot more into Sherlock Holmes and related matters than I am now. I started out as a Sherlock Holmes fan in middle school, and read the stories and watched the movies etcetera.
But like Steely Dan used to sing

Those days are gone forever
Over a long time ago.

Or so I thought. Continue reading →


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Hope & Glory – meet the Thuggee

This is sort of a triple package of a post – we’ll get a bit of history, some literature, and then a movie.
Nice way to spend a Sunday, right?

This week we have been talking a lot about Hope & Glory, but I hope I kept it varied enough you were not bored out of your socks.

Now, when we put together Hope & Glory I knew we’d have to put the Thuggee in. The Deceivers are such a big trope in Indian adventure that leaving them out would be unthinkable – and in general, whatever is fine in an Indiana Jones movie is also fine at my gaming table.

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This leads us to a gentleman by the name of Sir William Henry Sleeman, KCB. Continue reading →


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The Joseph Cotten Blogathon: Journey Into Fear (1943)

It’s the Joseph Cotten Blogathon, and I am terribly late – we have been talking so much about Hope & Glory that I totally forgot about Joseph Cotten.
And isn’t that what happened to a lot of us?
Cotten was a fine actor, one of Orson Welles’ troupe in the Mercury Theater, and he had a blazing career with many great movies, and fundamental roles – but we don’t remember him anymore.

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So thanks to In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood for bringing him back with this blogathon – please point your browser in that direction and check out the many fine articles about Cotten’s extraordinary career.
Then get back here.
We are terribly late, and this is likely to be the late show in the blogathon – and we are going to check out Journey into Fear. Continue reading →


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Reading fantasy – future plans

My friend Mauro (who also happens to be a fine game designer and an equally fine writer) just turned forty and he made a long list of fantasy novels he intends to read or re-read in the next five years.
I suggested a few additions to his list, and was absolutely impressed by his commitment and his ability to plan ahead.
Or by his cheek.
But let’s say he’s much more committed than I am,and much better at planning and sticking at it.

Could I do something similar? Continue reading →


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The Lady Vanishes, 1938

My admiration for Margaret Lockwood is on record – a beautiful woman, an excellent actress, protagonist of at least three indispensable films.
One of these happens to be a film by Alfred Hitchcock, whose anniversary was a few days back. The movie is called The Lady Vanishes, and was shot in 1938, based on a novel by Ethel Lina White, called The Wheel Spins, and published in 1936.

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Orson Welles watched it, he said, eleven times, and Truffaut pointed it out as his favorite movie in Hitchcock’s opus.

11217And for some strange coincidence I have been browsing White’s novel these days – having acquired a few of her titles. White was beloved by screenwriters, and another of her thrillers was adapted into the classic The Spiral Staircase. Another, was the seminal “haunted wax museum” story. Today she is largely forgotten, but in the 30s she was considered on a par with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers as a thriller writer.
I’ve half a mind of doing a post on her books, because they intersect a number of interests of mine.

But for the moment, there’s a lot of good reasons for a post on the 1938 novie: Hitch’s anniversary, my love of Margaret Lockwood, my recent discovery of Ethel Lina White.
Let’s see…

Continue reading →


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On Lovecraft’s birthday

1188_128486729706So, it’s H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday.
Back when I started reading HPL this was not the minefield it’s become in recent years.
So now I sit here and I wonder, how would a post in celebration of H.P. Lovecraft’s birthday be perceived?
How would it reflect on me?
Which is simply silly.
So, let’s get this thing going. Continue reading →