I found this image yesterday (on the PulpFest website) and it felt strange to find so many of my teenage heroes gathered in a single place.
Otto Binder, Manly Wade Wellman, Julius Schwartz,(front row, crouching).
Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, Dr. John Clark, Frank Belknap Long, Mort Weisinger, Edmond Hamilton, and Otis Adelbert Kline (back row, standing).
Because there was a time when giants walked this land.
Back when I was a kid, Christmas meant a night at the movies, or a night at the circus.
Now circuses are out of fashion, but movies are still all-right.
The only problem is, here where I live, there’s only two cinemas, and they are showing the latest Hollywood blockbuster (you know, the new Star Wars movie) and one of the stupid stupid stupid comedies that are the only thing that gets produced in Italy for the festive season.
But thank goodness there’s the web.
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I think I already told you this, but one of the fun bits of writing pulp stories, to me, is the pleasure of doing research on weird subjects.
For instance – right now I’m working on a story tentatively called The Mark of Cortazàr, that I hope I’ll have out by the end of January/early February 2016.
Not only I had the fun of going back to my old Victor Von Hagen books, but I had the added bonus of doing some research on the subject of shrunken heads.
Now, isn’t this awesome?
How did I spend my winter holidays?
Looking up headhunters and shrunken heads. Continue reading
So, the good news is there is a new version of Scrivener for Linux – version 1.9.1 – and it is an unlimited edition, meaning it will never expire.
The bad news is, this is the last Scrivener for Linux that we are going to get – and that’s the reason why this is an unlimited software.
In the future, should Linux users decide to update their Scrivener, they will have to purchase a Windows version, and run it on WINE or some other emulator.
Considering that the Scrivener for Linux has been so far run for free and as an act of kindness to the community, we have been very lucky so far.
Running the next Scrivener in WINE, paying the forty bucks for the license, will not be a great sacrifice.
As of now, the Linux 1.9.1 version of the software can be downloaded from this link, in various formats and for both 32 and 64 bits systems. It works like a wonder.
Archaeologis and Chinese art expert David Armour disappeared in 1941, in Peking.
He resurfaces in a mission hospital in a rural Chinese province in 1947, with no memory of the previous six years.
He can’t remember anything and nobody seems to know what happened.
There’s stories, though – some say he collaborated with the Japanese occupation forces, others claim he became a guerrilla leader fighting the Japanese.
Back in Shanghai, David will have to patch together the events of his missing years – meeting his estranged wife Adrian, feeling the pressure of a number of parties that want to use him, or take control of his life.
Then there’s the story about the four missing T’ang bronzes whose whereabouts he might know – and have forgotten.
And his other wife – the one he doesn’t remember.
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Great biographical portrait of Elspeth Beard, via Motor Cyclist
Karavansara 