Action! Excitement! Horror! Romance! Thrills and Chills! Swords and Sorcery! Rockets and Rayguns! Hosts Adam Prosser and Philip Rice take a journey through the history of SF, Fantasy, horror, and pulp fiction. Every 2 weeks one of us, alternating back and forth, selects a book or book series from the late 18th century up to the present to look back on, discuss, and examine. Some of them have left an indelible mark on pop culture; some of them are forgotten echoes of what might have been...all of…
Subscribe:.rss.atom.json.md.m3u.pls
Live Last read · last published · next check
Saves to your Listen queue, to pick up on another day or another device.
Philip's retrospective through the works of Anne Rice continues, and at this point even Anne Rice herself seems to be getting a little tired of things, as she snarks at the audience via Lestat and starts to twist the formula out of shape. Apparently things get REALLY weird in the last few books, but we'll get there, we'll get there... Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early!…
Superheroes have their origins in a dozen different places and eras, some well known, some less so (at least here in North America). Pre-WWI French pulp has actually been a surprisingly fertile ground for early proto-superheroes--or what some might call full-blown superheroes, long before the era they're usually associated with. L'Oiselle (The Bird), an early pulp story about a female daredevil…
There's a world going on underground, but the nature of its inhabitants has been hotly debated since humans started telling stories around the campfire. One of the first modern writers to portray the world of goblins as we know them today is George MacDonald, author of The Princess and the Goblin, which we look at with this latest episode. Beware of long-limbed cats... [Adams Patreon](…
In this episode, Philip looks at the Dr. Satan stories by Paul Ernst, which in many ways typify pulp of its era by hitting as many of the tropes as possible (including the idea of a villain taking center stage) while still being imaginative and fun. I never cared for that Doctor Satan... Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! [Adams Patreon]( https://patreon.com/phantasmictales…
We return once more to the dark and soulful world of Anne Rice with a look at another grouping of her novels including The Vampire Armand, which seems to be the last stretch of her classical vampire "continuity" before things get REALLY weird. Stay tuned, creatures of the night! Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! [Adams Patreon]( https://patreon.com/phantasmictales ) [Phils…
Roll for initiative, listeners, because you're about to have an encounter with adventure! Yes, it's time to talk about the intersection of role-playing games, specifically the classic model Dungeons and Dragons, and literature, in the form of TSR's first big experiment in prose publishing, the Dragonlance trilogy. We're joined by guest Filbi Pott to talk about these surprisingly pivotal anchors of…
The Cthulhu Mythos, a concept that outlived (and was born after) the death of HP Lovecraft, is the subject of our latest episode--specifically Strange Eons, a loving tribute to Lovecraft's work by Robert Bloch, author of psycho and actual personal friend of Lovecraft's in his youth. Bloch's love for Lovecraft's work is beyond dispute, but at what point does playing in a deceased author's sandbox…
As a wise man once said, we are all concerned about the future, because that is where we are going to spend the rest of our lives. Kim Stanley Robinson certainly is, and his magnum opus The Ministry For The Future tackles the biggest threat to the future: looming climate change, and the things that prevent us from tackling it (spoiler: it's capitalism). This near-future hard SF book takes a look…
When times are dark and evil stalks the land, it means it's time for a knight in shining armour to ride to the rescue! What what happens when it's the 20th century and knights in armour are hard to come by? You build one, of course! The 1970s kid's adventure Sir MacHinery has a robot taking on the role of gallant saviour on a noble quest against the forces of darkness through a wacky…
In which we bring our look at the works of Terry Pratchett to a close... *you see because Terry Pratchett famously utilizes footnotes for both jokes and to expand upon the lore. Support us on Patreon and listen to the show a week early! [Adams Patreon]( https://patreon.com/phantasmictales ) [Phils Patreon]( https://www.patreon.com/Spearhafoc ) [What Mad Universe?!? on…
