Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Earle Bergey

23490709-LlyrdisJust a gallery of wonderful covers from old pulps.
I always liked the covers of Startling stories, and one of them in particular, that you see here on the right, is the image that flashes in my mind when I think about pulp covers.
All these covers were created by a guy called Earle Bergey, and this post and this gallery dedicated to him.
He was specialised in something that was called “Bim, BEM, Bum!” – a beautiful woman menaced by a monster of some sort, with a hero ready to act heroic.

Enjoy!

ÿày


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Monks, dirt and wine

In the 13th century, monks in Burgundy were in the habit of taking a spoonful of vineyard dirt and taste it to assess the quality of the vineyard.
Or so they tell me.
Me, I am a geologist, and I’ve seen colleagues taste oil to assess its maturation, so I’m not surprised at anything anyway.

Monk_tasting_wine_from_a_barrelThe interesting fact is this: in Medieval times, French monks had lots of land at their disposal, and in Burgundy they had set up vineyards as far as the eye could see. The climate was favorable, and the monks liked their wine anyway.
But a monk back then had a lot of spare time to observe nature, and so the good Benedictines and Cistercians started noticing trends. Vineyards that were more productive, vineyards in which a certain kind of vine thrived while another suffered, and so on.
They started calling these different parcels of land terroir – and started experimenting to define what made one parcel different from the next. Hence, the idea of sampling and tasting the dirt. Continue reading →


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Two games for 50th birthday

Like most history and gaming buffs, I have been a long-time fan of Osprey Books, and was quite surprised – and delighted – when they started publishing games too a few years back.
My friend Andrea Sfiligoi of Ganesha Games is one of their authors, which is to me a sort of quality guarantee – if they work with Andrea they are my kind of gaming company.

And right now I’ve found out that this year, barring disasters, I’ll be splurging on a few titles from Osprey Games, because they have quite obviously been designed specifically for me… and one will be out in time for my birthday.

And now it’s true, I don’t honestly know where I’ll be on my next birthday, because there’s still ten weeks to go, and if I’ll be able to afford to buy me games, or if I’ll be living in a shelter for the poor, but what the hell, as Blondie used to sing, Dreaming is free.

And just look at these beauties… Continue reading →


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India’s Illuminati: The Nine Unknown Men

Strange – or not so strange – connections.
I was going through the Talbot Mundy catalog and, leaving Yasmini behind for a moment, I checked out The Nine Unknown, one of Mundy’s most Theosophical novels, originally published in 1923 in Adventure magazine.

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And I mentioned it with my brother, who is the serious Orientalist in our home, and thus I found out that the Nine Unknown Men are not something the Theosophists or Mundy cooked up, but are actually part of the real history of India. Continue reading →


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80 years with and without Lovecraft

Today is the 80th anniversary of H.P. Lovecraft’s death.
I think I read all of the Gentleman’s stories, multiple times, and I liked them quite a bit.
I discovered HPL in high school, when I was reading all the fantasy and SF and horror (but not much horror) I could lay my hands on. Then I re-read it while in university, back when all of a sudden HPL was starting to make the news, to be critically appreciated. And I still read some of his better stories now and then, for nostalgia’s sake.
Now, according to a sort of scientific study I did with my old friend Fabrizio, the Lovecraftian reader’s evolution goes through three phases: Continue reading →


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Mapping India

As I think I mentioned I’m working on the last parts of the Hope & Glory handbook, and I’m checking out my resources and trying to turn two boxes of loose sheets, post-it notes and scrawled ideas into 45.000 words of highly playable gaming material.

Now, geography is important – and as the first Hope & Glory book will focus on the Anglo-Indian Raj, a good solid overview of the Indian sub-continent might be appreciated by the players.
And here’s the rub.

Selection_570Because Gordon Johnson’s Cultural Atlas of India is a wonderful read, but when it comes to the breakdown of the Indian sub continent into smaller chunks, of course uses the current political division – and it’s not just a matter of calling Uttar Pradesh what once was the United Provinces.
There’s lots of information in here, but it’s information about today’s India.
And what I need is India in 1850.
The best book I was able to find is the John Murray 1859 edition of A Handbook of India: being an account of the Three Presidencies and of the Overland Route; intended as a guide for Travelers, Officers and Civilians that is as lightweight, as amusing and as easily accessible as the title suggests. Continue reading →


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PC problems

Like some guys say, when it rains, it pours – last night my PC caused me a bad panic attack, as it simply went dead dead dead on me.

I was able to backup all the essential data using an old laptop and a wonderful thingie, a cable that allows me to access a HD as if it were a USB drive, and after much cursing and a few hours spent copying data… my PC started up again.

But it’s not a good sign.
So, should I disappear all of a sudden for a few days, you’ll know it’s because the PC died, and I don’t have the money to buy a new one or have the old one fixed.

In the meantime, I’ll haver to write faster.
More work done, more money paid, maybe a second-hand coal-powered PC on the shopping list in case of emergency.