The Last Hieroglyph
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The Last Hieroglyph
"The Last Hieroglyph " is a short story by American author Clark Ashton Smith as part of his Zothique cycle, and first published in the April 1935 issue of '' Weird Tales''. Plot Nushain the astrologer in Xylac charts a new horoscope which he copies down in a book. The horoscope foretells of a journey involving three guides to the house of Vergama, a god. A mummy appears in his written horoscope. Soon he is visited by a mummy who leads Nushain from his abode to the underworld. Nushain is accompanied by his black servant Mouzda and his dog Ansarath. Initially, he is overwhelmed by the underworld and flees back the way he came but ends up getting lost. The mummy finds him and leads Nushain to the shore of an unknown ocean. There they are visited by a merman and an uncrewed ship. The ship follows the merman as it sends them over a boiling ocean. The ship brings them to a wall of fire. A salamander beckons them to follow it through the wall and they do so. The salamander sends them to ...
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Weird Tales
''Weird Tales'' is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, printed early work by H. P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, and Clark Ashton Smith, all of whom went on to be popular writers, but within a year, the magazine was in financial trouble. Henneberger sold his interest in the publisher, Rural Publishing Corporation, to Lansinger, and refinanced ''Weird Tales'', with Farnsworth Wright as the new editor. The first issue under Wright's control was dated November 1924. The magazine was more successful under Wright, and despite occasional financial setbacks, it prospered over the next 15 years. Under Wright's control, the magazine lived up to its subtitle, "The Unique Magazine", and published a wide range of unusual fiction. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos stories first appeared in ''Weird Tales'', starti ...
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Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith (January 13, 1893 – August 14, 1961) was an American writer and artist. He achieved early local recognition, largely through the enthusiasm of George Sterling, for traditional verse in the vein of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Swinburne. As a poet, Smith is grouped with the West Coast Romantics alongside Joaquin Miller, Sterling, and Nora May French and remembered as "The Last of the Great Romantics" and "The Bard of Auburn". Smith's work was praised by his contemporaries. H. P. Lovecraft stated that "in sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Clark Ashton Smith is perhaps unexcelled", and Ray Bradbury said that Smith "filled my mind with incredible worlds, impossibly beautiful cities, and still more fantastic creatures". Smith was one of "the big three of ''Weird Tales'', with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft", but some readers objected to his morbidness and violation of pulp traditions. The fantasy critic L. Sprague de Camp said of him th ...
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Zothique
''Zothique'' is a collection of fantasy short stories by Clark Ashton Smith, edited by Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the sixteenth volume of its Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in June 1970. It was the first themed collection of Smith's works assembled by Carter for the series. The stories were originally published in various fantasy magazines in the 1930s, notably ''Weird Tales''. Background The book collects one poem and all sixteen tales of the author's Zothique cycle, set on the Earth's last continent in a far distant future, with an introduction, map, and epilogue by Carter. They were originally written and published between 1932 and 1951. Most were written in a tar paper and wood cabin in Auburn, California. All were first published in the magazine ''Weird Tales'' with the exception of "The Voyage of King Euvoran" which first appeared in the 1933 book ''The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies'' and later republished under the title "The ...
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Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and drama. From the twentieth century, it has expanded further into various media, including film, television, graphic novels, manga, animations and video games. Fantasy is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror fiction, horror by the respective absence of scientific or macabre themes, although these genres overlap. In popular culture, the fantasy genre predominantly features settings that emulate Earth, but with a sense of otherness. In its broadest sense, however, fantasy consists of works by many writers, artists, filmmakers, and musicians from ancient mythology, myths and legends to many recent and popular works. Traits Most fantasy uses magic (paranormal), magic or other supernatural elements as a ma ...
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Pulp Magazine
Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazines printed on higher-quality paper were called "glossies" or "slicks". The typical pulp magazine had 128 pages; it was wide by high, and thick, with ragged, untrimmed edges. The pulps gave rise to the term pulp fiction in reference to run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature. Pulps were the successors to the penny dreadfuls, dime novels, and short-fiction magazines of the 19th century. Although many respected writers wrote for pulps, the magazines were best known for their lurid, exploitative, and sensational subject matter, even though this was but a small part of what existed in the pulps. Successors of pulps include paperback books, digest magazines, and men's adventure magazines. Modern superhero comic books are sometimes considere ...
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1935 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1935. Events *January – The first published portions of Yasunari Kawabata's novel '' Snow Country'' (雪国, ''Yukiguni'') appear as standalone stories in Japanese literature. *March 20 – The London publisher Boriswood pleads guilty and is fined in Manchester's Assize Court for publishing an "obscene" book, a 1934 cheap edition of James Hanley's 1931 novel '' Boy''. * May 13 – T. E. Lawrence, having left the British Royal Air Force in March, has an accident with his Brough Superior motorcycle while returning to his cottage at Clouds Hill, England, after posting books to a friend, A. E. "Jock" Chambers, and sending a telegram inviting the novelist Henry Williamson to lunch. He dies six days later. On July 29 his '' Seven Pillars of Wisdom'' is first published in an edition for general circulation. * June 15 ** W. H. Auden concludes a marriage of convenience with Erika Mann. ** T. S. Eliot' ...
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1981 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1981. Events *May 31 – The burning of Jaffna Public Library in Sri Lanka is begun by a mob of police and government-sponsored paramilitaries. They destroy over 97,000 volumes in one of the worst examples of ethnic book burning in the modern era. *August – Sefer ve Sefel opens as an English used bookstore in Jerusalem. *''unknown dates'' ** John Gardner successfully revives the James Bond novel series originated by Ian Fleming with '' Licence Renewed'' (not counting a faux biography of Bond and a pair of film novelizations, the first original Bond novel since 1968's ''Colonel Sun''). The revived Bond book series will run uninterrupted until 2002. **Colin MacCabe is denied tenure at the University of Cambridge, apparently because of a dispute within the English Faculty about the teaching of structuralism. **The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction is given for the first time. New books Fiction *Kingsl ...
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Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers
''Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers'' is a book by Curtis C. Smith published in October 1981 on science fiction authors in the 20th century. It is the third in the St. Martin's Press's ''Twentieth-Century Writers of the English Language'' series with the others being ''Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers'' and ''Twentieth-Century Children's Writers''. Background Curtis C. Smith (Associate Professor of Humanities at University of Houston–Clear Lake in Clear Lake City) worked on the book for more than three years assisted by 20 advisers and 146 contributors. All living authors were sent a questionnaire for biographical information and that information was cross-checked. Content In the first edition, there are 540 entries for Anglo-American writers, 35 additional foreign language writers, and five "major fantasy writers." Anglo-American writer entries contain a biographical sketch besides including the address of the author or sometimes their literary agent. The ...
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Will Murray
William Murray (born 1953) is an American novelist, journalist, short story, and comic book writer. Much of his fiction has been published under pseudonyms. With artist Steve Ditko, he co-created the superhero Squirrel Girl. Biography Early life and career Will Murray grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated North Quincy High school in June 1971, subsequently graduating summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. After becoming a fan of the pulp magazine, pulp fiction hero Doc Savage, he began collecting pulp magazines and wrote two psychological profiles of the character in ''The Doc Savage Reader''. He went on to write for fanzines and edit the fanzines ''Duende'' and ''Skullduggery'' before joining the pulp-reprint publisher Odyssey Publications. He also co-authored the study, ''The Duende History of The Shadow Magazine.'' Circa 1978, "I discovered the outline to [Doc Savage creator] Lester Dent's unwritten ''Python Isle'' and decided to take a sh ...
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1977 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1977. Events *February 20 – An episode of '' Doctor on the Go'', co-written by Douglas Adams and Graham Chapman, marks the beginning of Adams' career as a writer for BBC radio. *March 4 – Andrés Caicedo commits suicide by overdose, aged 25, about a month after the publication of his novel '' ¡Que viva la música!'' ("Let Music Live!", translated as ''Liveforever'') is published in his hometown of Cali, Colombia. * April 27 – Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Argentine comic book writer born 1919), is kidnapped by the military authorities; he is believed to have died in detention a few months later. *July 11 – The English magazine ''Gay News'' is found guilty of blasphemous libel for publishing a homoerotic poem, "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name" by James Kirkup, in a case (''Whitehouse v Lemon'') at the Old Bailey in London, on behalf of Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Ass ...
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Robert Weinberg (author)
Robert Edward Weinberg (August 29, 1946 – September 25, 2016) was an American author, editor, publisher, and collector of science fiction. His work spans several genres including non-fiction, science fiction, horror, and comic books. Biography Born in New Jersey in 1946, Weinberg sold his first story in 1967. Most of his writing career was conducted part-time while also owning a bookstore; he became a full-time writer after 1997. Weinberg was also an editor, and edited books in the fields of horror, science fiction and western. Weinberg graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology. From 1970 to 1981, Weinberg edited and published ''Pulp'', a fanzine devoted to pulp magazines; ''Pulp'' became noted for its interviews with pulp writers such as Walter B. Gibson and Frederick C. Davis. Pulp ran for 14 issues. He also published the ''Pulp Classics'', ''Lost Fantasy'', ''Weird Menace'', and ''Incredible Adventures'' series of pulp reprints at the same time. In comics, Weinbe ...
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Wildside Press
Wildside Press is an independent publishing company in Cabin John, Maryland, United States. It was founded in 1989 by John Betancourt and Kim Betancourt. While the press was originally conceived as a publisher of speculative fiction in both trade and limited editions, its focus has broadened since then, both in content and format. Its website notes publication of works of mystery, romance, science fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction, as well as downloadable audiobooks and CDs, eBooks, magazines, and physical books. Wildside Press has published approximately 10,000 books through print on demand and traditional means. Writers The company has published work by a number of contemporary writers, including Lloyd Biggle Jr., Alan Dean Foster, Paul Di Filippo, Esther Friesner, S. T. Joshi, Ionuț Caragea, Paul Levinson, David Langford, Nick Mamatas, Brian McNaughton, Vera Nazarian, Paul Park, Tim Pratt, Stephen Mark Rainey, Alan Rodgers, Darrell Schweitzer, Lawrence Watt-Evans, and Ch ...
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