It's the game as it was before its first expansion: hardcore fantasy with sword-and-sorcery combat.
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She also discarded the genre's florid dialogue and sword-and-sorcery themes for terser language and more complex character development.
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Series have starred the internet sensation Grumpy Cat, the government spy James Bond and the sword and sorcery heroine Red Sonja.
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The kind of realism that tends to predominate in literary fiction is "as fantastical as sword and sorcery," James told me.
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Everett The sword and sorcery movies of the 1980s may look cheesy by today's standards, but they're fondly remembered by many fans.
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My genres were sword and sorcery or Forgotten Realms licensed fiction about brave adventurers exploring lands without the protection of states or cities.
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That's already a huge departure from the sword-and-sorcery setting of absolutely every other Zelda game where technology takes a backseat to magic.
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Having been given a Super Nintendo in her childhood, Waneella skews old school, her pictorial compositions influenced by the classic sword and sorcery genre.
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The channel has scored some big "must-see" series including sword-and-sorcery blockbuster "Game of Thrones," which is produced by U.S. cable network HBO.
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For its first few years, the book was nothing but a series of disconnected stories parodying the sword-and-sorcery genre, particularly Conan the Barbarian.
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Capy, the game developer behind beloved indie gems Super Time Force and Superbrothers: Sword and Sorcery EP, is finally ready to release its next big title.
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"Smash," a hate-watch about the making of a fictional Broadway musical, and "Galavant," a sword-and-sorcery comedy fantasia, were each canceled after two seasons.
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His writing combines space opera with neo-slave narrative, memoir, sword-and-sorcery fantasy and an elegy for the sexual freedoms of pre-Giuliani Times Square.
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His writing combines space opera with neo-slave narrative, memoir, sword-and-sorcery fantasy and an elegy for the sexual freedoms of pre-Giuliani Times Square.
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I didn't read much of anything till I was 15, except Alistair MacLean and Michael Moorcock — the sword and sorcery novels —when I was about 13 or 14.
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Games and medievalism have a strange and intersecting history, as many video games' embrace of "sword and sorcery" aesthetics places them naturally in conversation with a mythical ancient Europe.
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At a festival that generally shies away from anything too stereotypically game-y, Dragonflight is like a sword-and-sorcery novel that somehow snuck onto a bookstore's literary fiction shelf.
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" But you'd also just be telling the truth, because if anything, the show — a new medievalish sword-and-sorcery fantasy on Netflix — is going to make people remember "Game of Thrones.
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There haven't been enough of these—compared to the tabletop role-playing games—so there's plenty of room just for standard fantasy, sword and sorcery, dwarves with beards and Scottish accents, the works.
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Conan's free spirit, sharp intellect, and undying battle lust, along with the grand Hyperborian landscape in which he traveled, gave writers scaffolding on which to build the whole genre of sword and sorcery literature.
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The best entry point to Pierce's sword-and-sorcery world, Tortall — where about half of her 29 books are set — is her four-part series Protector of the Small (First Test, Page, Squire, and Lady Knight).
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Partly a parody of sword-and-sorcery clichés, and partly an embrace of what makes the likes of "Game of Thrones" and "The Lord of the Rings" great, "Disenchantment" differs from the other Groening shows in that it tells one long story, broken up into shorter adventures.
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In early previews, the game's developers showed off a sword-and-sorcery hero's journey with some slightly unusual artistic flourishes, but that's only one flavor in a blend of post-apocalyptic survivalism, fantasy, alternate history, and — in by far its weirdest turn — totally non-cyberpunk virtual reality sci-fi.
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Since the Northern English metal trio Conan began writing music in 2006, their mission has been refreshing, if not genius: to gather themes from Conan The Barbarian, Hyperborean-age mythology, and various sword-and-sorcery B-movies, tweak them a bit, and turn them into gargantuan, lumbering, doom-metal battle marches fit for Mad Max with Arnold Schwarzenegger at the helm.
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There's a Tolkien-themed "Gashlycrumb Hobbits" T-shirt, with the wizard Gandalf playing Death's part; a Game of Thrones takeoff that transposes Gorey's parade of little deaths into the gore-soaked sword-and-sorcery world of the hit TV series; a Dr. Who version, The Gallifreycrumb Tinies, that gives the Gorey treatment to 26 memorable deaths from the sci-fi show ("Gallifrey" being the good doctor's alien home world); a splattery tribute, by the horror novelist Clive Barker (in collaboration with the artist Paulo Andreas Lorca), that ups the gross-out quotient by a factor of 10 ("C is for Claus who was born with no bowels"); a Harry Potter spoof, The Hogwarts Tinies or, After the Rowling; a Game Over Tinies that reimagines the fates of Gorey's mites as videogame deaths, with a cast composed of Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Brothers, and other classic characters; and, in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential race, The Ghastlytrump Tinies, a gut-clenching vision of the horrors in store for America under a Donald Trump administration.
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The Barbarian Swordsmen is an anthology of sword and sorcery stories edited by Peter Haining under the pseudonym of Sean Richards, cover-billed as "the original sword and sorcery adventures." It was first published in paperback by Star Books in 1981. The book collects eight novelettes and short stories by various early authors of sword and sorcery or pre-sword and sorcery, together with an introduction by the editor and a concluding letter from Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft of June 1934, recast as an essay.
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The book collects seven sword and sorcery tales by various authors, with an overall introduction by de Camp.
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The following is a list of sword and sorcery films. These tend to focus on single heroes, romance, and magic.
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Xcalibur is a French Canadian CGI sword-and-sorcery children's television series that originally aired on YTV in 2001 and 2002.
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When the Idols Walked is a fantasy novel by American writer John Jakes, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Brak the Barbarian.
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The same might not be said of Leiber's sword and sorcery novels The Sword and the Eye and The Sword and the Tower.
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Witch of the Four Winds is a fantasy novel by American writer John Jakes, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Brak the Barbarian.
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The Mark of the Demons is a fantasy novel by American writer John Jakes, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Brak the Barbarian.
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The book collects nine novelettes and short stories by various early authors of sword and sorcery, together with an introduction by the editor.
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The term "sword and sorcery" was coined in 1961 by the celebrated American author Fritz Leiber in response to a letter from British author Michael Moorcock in the fanzine Amra, demanding a name for the sort of fantasy-adventure story written by Robert E. Howard. Moorcock had initially proposed the term "epic fantasy". Leiber replied in the journal Ancalagon (6 April 1961), suggesting "sword-and-sorcery as a good popular catchphrase for the field". He expanded on this in the July 1961 issue of Amra, commenting: Since its inception, many attempts have been made to provide a precise definition of "sword and sorcery".
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" Shade was later revived, without Ditko's involvement, in DC's mature-audience imprint Vertigo. With writer Paul Levitz, he co-created the four-issue sword and sorcery series Stalker (1975–1976).Stalker at the Grand Comics DatabaseMcAvennie "1970s" in Dolan, p. 164 "This sword and sorcery title by scripter Paul Levitz and artist Steve Ditko epitomized the credo 'Be careful what you wish for'.
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Los Angeles Times 9 Nov 1982: g5. Corman went on to make a series of sword and sorcery films including Deathstalker and Deathstalker 2.
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Brak the Barbarian is a fix-up fantasy novel by American writer John Jakes, featuring his sword and sorcery hero of the same name.
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The Sword and Sorceress series is a series of fantasy anthologies originally edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and originally published by DAW Books. As she explained in the foreword to the first volume, she created the anthology to redress the lack of strong female protagonists in the subgenre of sword and sorcery. At the time, most female characters in sword and sorcery were little more than stock damsels in distress, or pawns who were distributed at the conclusion of the story as "bad-conduct prizes" (Bradley's term) for the male protagonists. Many of the early sword-and-sorcery works featured attitudes toward women that Bradley considered appalling.
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It was first sword and sorcery anthology ever assembled, and was followed by three additional such anthologies edited by de Camp. It has also been translated into German.
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Many of these characters have noble titles, or a sworn duty to their kingdom. The rootless travelers of sword and sorcery novels are rarely found in romantic fantasy.
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Herendeen is the author of a series of "sword-and-sorcery" fantasy novels. The first novel in the series, Recognition, was self-published as an ebook in 2011.
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After the boom of the early 1980s, sword and sorcery once again dropped out of favor, with epic fantasy largely taking its place in the fantasy genre. However, there was another resurgence in sword and sorcery at the end of the 20th century. Sometimes called the "new" or "literary" sword and sorcery, this development places emphasis on literary technique, and draws from epic fantasy and other genres to broaden the typical scope of S&S.; Stories may feature the wide-ranging struggles national or world-spanning concerns common to high fantasy, but told from the point of view of characters more common to S&S;, and with the sense of adventure common to the latter.
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The Mighty Warriors is an anthology of fantasy short stories in the sword and sorcery subgenre, edited by Robert M. Price. It was first published in trade paperback and ebook by Ulthar Press in May 2018, and was a homage to the similar early sword and sorcery anthologies The Mighty Barbarians (1969) and The Mighty Swordsmen (1970) edited by Hans Stefan Santesson.Price, Robert M., ed. The Mighty Warriors, Warren, RI, Ulthar Press, 2018. p. 4.
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The Mighty Barbarians: Great Sword and Sorcery Heroes is a 1969 anthology of fantasy short stories in the sword and sorcery subgenre, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson. It was first published in paperback by Lancer Books in 1969, and was later followed up by the subsequent Lancer anthology The Mighty Swordsmen. It has been translated into Dutch. Robert M. Price edited a later-day homage to both anthologies called The Mighty Warriors (2018).
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Although many have debated the finer points, the consensus characterizes it by a strong bias toward fast-paced, action-rich tales set within a quasi-mythical or fantastical framework. Unlike high fantasy, the stakes in sword and sorcery tend to be personal, the danger confined to the moment of telling. Settings are typically exotic, and protagonists often morally compromised. Many sword and sorcery tales have been turned into a lengthy series of adventures.
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Twentieth-century existential novels have also been linked to Dark Romanticism,R. Kopley, Poe's Pym (1992) p. 141 as too have the sword and sorcery novels of Robert E. Howard.
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Reviewer Don D'Ammassa calls the book "a quite complex sword and sorcery adventure" and "quite enjoyable."D'Ammassa, Don. "Conan and the Grim Grey God" (review on Critical Mass). Oct. 9, 2017.
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Tales of Sword and Sorcery Featuring Dagar the Invincible is a comic book series created by writer Donald F. Glut and artist Jesse Santos for Western Publishing's Gold Key Comics line.
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Illustration of a scene in Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Red Nails" Sword and sorcery (S&S;) is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus mainly on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters. Sword and sorcery commonly overlaps with heroic fantasy.
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Arion is a fictional sword and sorcery superhero published by American company DC Comics. He debuted in Warlord (vol. 1) #55 (March 1982), and was created by Paul Kupperberg and Jan Duursema.
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The Nightmaster is a fictional character, a sword and sorcery hero published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Showcase #82 (May 1969), and was created by Denny O'Neil and Jerry Grandenetti.
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Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell, also known as Deathstalker III: The Warriors from Hell, is a 1988 sword and sorcery fantasy film. It is the third film in the Deathstalker tetralogy.
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The Shadow of Yesterday (or TSoY) is a narrativist sword and sorcery (with optional elements of heroic fantasy) indie role-playing game, designed by Clinton R. Nixon and published by CRN Games.
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Merlin and the Sword is a 1985 American made-for-television fantasy adventure sword and sorcery film based on the Arthurian legend. It was released in some regions as Arthur the King.
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1978), and the sword-and-sorcery title Warlord #64 (Dec. 1982), his last known original comics work. His only major-publisher penciling was a story in DC's Weird Mystery Tales #4 (Feb. 1973).
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"The City of Skulls" is a short story by American writers Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian created by Robert E. Howard.
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The Dragon Lord is a historical fantasy or sword and sorcery novel by American writer David Drake. First published in 1979 and revised in 1982, the novel is set in sixth century Arthurian Britain.
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Starless Night debuted on The New York Times bestseller list at number 12. "Starless Night is good sword- and-sorcery fare and keeps a lively pace throughout."—Adam Paul Hunt of the Library Journal.
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Carl Sherrell (May 10, 1929 – February 7, 1990) was an American artist, illustrator and author of pulp fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. He is most famous for the sword and sorcery trilogy started with Raum.
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The book collects six sword and sorcery tales of authors and protagonists prominent in the genre, featuring Robert E. Howard's Conan, Lin Carter's Thongor, Michael Moorcock's Elric, John Brunner's Traveller in Black, and Roger Zelazny's Dilvish.
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While the novel is an example of science fiction, it is most closely related to the planetary romance genre.Westfahl, p. 38. The genre is similar to sword and sorcery, but includes scientific aspects.Harris-Fain, p. 147.
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In a review, critic Don D'Ammassa wrote that "This is pure sword and sorcery, not the kind of high court intrigue that dominates most other fantasy publishers."D'Ammassa, Don (July 2003). "Condemnation", Chronicle 25 (6): 36.
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The 1930s also saw the advent of the sword and sorcery subgenre of pulp tales, which brought overt sexualisation to the representation of women in fantasy. Although physically more capable, female characters frequently continued to act as helpers to the male leads, but were now depicted as extremely attractive and very briefly clothed. The first female lead character of a sword and sorcery story was Jirel of Joiry, created by C. L. Moore and first appearing in "Black God's Kiss" (Weird Tales, volume 24, number 4, October 1934).
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Bradley encouraged female writers and protagonists. The stories feature skillful swordswomen and powerful sorceresses, working from a variety of motives. Jessica Amanda Salmonson similarly sought to broaden the range of roles for female characters in sword and sorcery through both her own stories and in editing the World Fantasy Award-winning Amazons (1979) and Amazons II (1982) anthologies; both drew on real and folkloric female warriors, often from areas outside of Europe. Early sword and sorcery writer Robert E. Howard had feminist views, which he espoused in both personal and professional life.
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Conan the Barbarian was a comics title starring the sword-and-sorcery character created by Robert E. Howard, published by the American company Marvel Comics. It debuted with a first issue cover-dated October 1970 and ran for 275 issues until 1993. A significant commercial success, the title launched a sword-and-sorcery vogue in American 1970s comics. Marvel Comics reacquired the publishing rights in 2018, and started a new run of Conan the Barbarian in January 2019 with the creative team of writer Jason Aaron and artist Mahmud A. Asrar.
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On its first-page blurb, it was described as "a book of sword-and-sorcery that anyone can read with delight and pleasure". But the readers of the book would extend way beyond sword and sorcery fans.The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy SeriesThe Book of Swords By the end of 1968, The Lord of the Rings had sold over 3 million copies in America. Its unexpected success caused American publishers to swiftly reissue a large number of older, often obscure, fantasy novels, catapulting them to belated success.
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Conan, Lord of the Black River is a fantasy novel by American writer Leonard Carpenter, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in April 1996.
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The novel can be classed as a planetary romance, also known as "Sword and planet".Westfahl, p. 37. This genre is a subset of science fiction, similar to sword and sorcery, but including scientific elements.Harris-Fain, p. 147.
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Conan and the Shaman's Curse is a fantasy novel by American writer Sean A. Moore, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in January 1996.
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The Thief of Forthe and Other Stories is a collection of sword and sorcery and other fantasy short stories by American writer Clifford Ball. It was first published in paperback and ebook by DMR Books in March 2018.
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Conan, Scourge of the Bloody Coast is a fantasy novel by American writer Leonard Carpenter featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in April 1994.
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Dark Knight or (Fantasy Quest), is a 2000 TV series, based on Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe. This joint New Zealand/England production attempted to capitalize on the same sword and sorcery market successfully mined by Xena: Warrior Princess.
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Conan and the Death Lord of Thanza is a fantasy novel by American writer Roland Green, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in January 1997.
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The book collects ten sword and sorcery tales by various authors, with an overall introduction by de Camp. As with the previous volume in the anthology series, The Fantastic Swordsmen, most of the stories are accompanied by maps illustrating their settings.
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Conan of the Red Brotherhood is a fantasy novel by American writer Leonard Carpenter featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in February 1993, and reprinted in 1998.
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The book consists of thirteen pieces on fantasy writer Robert E. Howard and his seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, Howard's sources and literary successors, and other fantasy authors such as Fletcher Pratt, Leslie Barringer, and L. Ron Hubbard.
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Conan the Relentless is a fantasy novel by American writer Roland Green featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in April 1992, and was reprinted in April 1998.
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The book collects five sword and sorcery tales of authors and protagonists prominent in the genre, featuring Robert E. Howard's Conan, Henry Kuttner's Elak, Lin Carter's Thongor, L. Sprague de Camp's Suar Peial, and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
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Conan the Outcast is a fantasy novel written by Leonard Carpenter featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in April 1991, and was reprinted in February 1998.
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Alex Bledsoe (born 3 February 1963) is an American author best known for his novels of the sword and sorcery and urban fantasy genre. To date, Bledsoe's work is typically characterized by hard-boiled protagonists and strong classical noir themes.
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The Fortunes of Brak is a collection of fantasy short stories by American writer John Jakes featuring his sword and sorcery hero Brak the Barbarian. It includes all Brak stories not previously gathered into the earlier books in the series.
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Conan the Bold is a fantasy novel by American writer John Maddox Roberts, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in April 1989 and reprinted in June 1997.
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Conan the Warlord is a fantasy novel by American writer Leonard Carpenter, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in March 1988, and was reprinted in April 1997.
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John C. Broderick (October 22, 1942 in San Francisco, California - June 17, 2001 in Santa Monica, California) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and entertainer. He is mostly known for the sword and sorcery film The Warrior and the Sorceress.
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Another notable sword and sorcery anthology series that ran from 1977 through 1979 was called "Swords Against Darkness" (Zebra Books), edited by Andrew J. Offutt. This series ran to five volumes and featured stories by such authors as Poul Anderson, David Drake, Ramsey Campbell, Andre Norton, and Manly Wade Wellman. Despite such authors' best efforts, some critics have used sword and sorcery as a dismissive or pejorative term. During the 1980s, influenced by the success of the 1982 feature film Conan the Barbarian, many cheaply made fantasy films were released in a subgenera that would be called "Sword & Sorcery".
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By 1950, sword and sorcery had begun to find a wide audience, with the success of Howard's Conan the Barbarian, and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Howard's works, especially Conan, were to have a noteworthy, even defining, influence on the sword and sorcery subgenre.Diana Waggoner, The Hills of Faraway: A Guide to Fantasy, p 47-8, 0-689-10846-X They were tales of vivid, larger-than-life action and adventure,Lin Carter, ed. Realms of Wizardry p 146 Doubleday and Company Garden City, NY, 1976 and after the work of Tolkien, the most widely read works of fantasy.
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Tom Shone: Blockbuster: How Hollywood Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Summer (2004). London, Simon & Schuster UK. . Chapter 2. Star Wars was significantly influenced by samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, Spaghetti Westerns, as well as classic sword and sorcery fantasy stories.
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In the 2007 Spider-Man/Red Sonja mini-series, the Hobgoblin was one of several supervillains who was transformed into a sword-and-sorcery version of themselves due to the spell cast by Kulan Gath. It was never specified which Hobgoblin it was.
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The series is attributed to the so-called LitRPG genre which is short for "Literary works based on Role Playing Games" and may be best described as "a mixture of Sci-Fi, Sword and Sorcery and MMORPG elements within the books" (Goodreads).
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Retrieved on December 10, 2007 However Kirkus Reviews commented that "Yep's vivid--and occasionally bizarre--characters and images are powerfully imaginative, a welcome respite from sword-and-sorcery stereotypes...Not for every reader, but destined to be a special favorite for a few".
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Conan the Guardian is a fantasy novel by American writer Roland Green, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in January 1991, and reprinted in October 1997 and August 2000.
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Quest of the Delta Knights is a 1993 fantasy/adventure sword and sorcery film that was featured in a September 1998 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is one of only a few movies shown on MST3K that was made in the 1990s.
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Conan the Destroyer is a fantasy novel written by Robert Jordan featuring Robert E. Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, a novelization of the feature film of the same name. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in 1984.
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The Gamearth Trilogy is a series of sword and sorcery fantasy novels by Kevin J. Anderson, comprising Gamearth (1989), Gameplay (1989), and Game's End (1990). They are set in the world of Gamearth, which is a role-playing game campaign setting invented by four teenagers.
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The book consists of thirty-one pieces, mostly essays on fantasy writer Robert E. Howard and his seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, Howard's sources and literary successors, and other fantasy authors such as Eric Rücker Eddison, A. Merritt and Talbot Mundy.
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The Conan Chronicles is a collection of fantasy novels by American writers Robert Jordan, featuring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. The book was published in 1995 by Tor Books and collects three novels previously published by Tor.
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Conan and the Manhunters is a fantasy novel by American writer John Maddox Roberts, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in October 1994 and reprinted in April and June 1999.
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Conan and the Gods of the Mountain is a fantasy novel by American writer Roland Green, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in May 1993 and reprinted in November 1998.
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Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Unknown and Weird Tales. Three were first published in this book. The last two stories showcase Leiber's Sword and Sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Later editions added additional material under the same title.
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These stories were among the progenitors of many of the tropes of the sword and sorcery genre. They are also notable among sword and sorcery stories in that, over the course of the stories, his two heroes mature, take on more responsibilities, and eventually settle down into marriage. Some Fafhrd and Mouser stories were recognized by annual genre awards: "Scylla's Daughter" (1961) was "Short Story" Hugo finalist and "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970) won the "Best Novella" Hugo and Nebula Awards. Leiber's last major work, The Knight and Knave of Swords (1991), brought the series to a close while leaving room for possible sequels.
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During the early 1970s, Fletcher began developing a comic strip about an Australian soldier-of- fortune, titled Nathan Cole, until he was introduced to the world of sword and sorcery by science-fiction writer Fritz Leiber that had a profound impact on his future. In particular, the pair of characters called Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser influenced Fletcher greatly. Fletcher put Nathan Cole aside and set about creating a sword and sorcery strip, titled Orn the Eagle Warrior, in 1974. Riding a giant eagle, sporting a beard and bristling with weapons, Orn's adventures took place on a strange world with a dying sun and two moons.
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However, these historical "swashbucklers" lack the truly supernatural element (even though Dumas' fiction contained many fantasy tropes) that defines the genre. Another influence was early fantasy fiction such as Lord Dunsany's The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth (1910) and A. Merritt's The Ship of Ishtar (1924). All of these authors influenced sword and sorcery for the plots, characters, and landscapes used. In addition, many early sword and sorcery writers, such as Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, were heavily influenced by the Middle Eastern tales of the Arabian Nights, whose stories of magical monsters and evil sorcerers were a major influence on the genre-to-be.
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Everett F. Bleiler (New York, Scribner, 1985), vol. 2, p. 929. De Camp also created three noteworthy sword and sorcery sequences. The Pusadian series (from 1951), composed of the novel The Tritonian Ring and several short stories, is set in an antediluvian era similar to Howard's.
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The Conan Chronicles II is a collection of fantasy novels written by Robert Jordan featuring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, created by Robert E. Howard. The book was published in 1997 by Legend Books and collects three novels originally published by Tor Books.
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Two guitarists, Mike Hickey and Jim Clare, were hired to replace Dunn. Their fifth album, 1987's Calm Before the Storm, moved away from Satanic themes in favour of "sword and sorcery" material.[ "Calm Before the Storm: Review by Steve Huey"]. AllMusic. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
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John C. Hocking (born 1960) is an American fantasy writer, the author of a Conan novel published by Tor Books and a number of short stories. One of his stories, "The Face in the Sea", won the 2009 Harper's Pen Award for Sword and Sorcery fiction.
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Michael Rogers in Library Journal wrote "[t]he plot is typical," but "[d]espite the corny story, de Camp and Carter's solid rep in the sword and sorcery world will guarantee fun for fans of the series."Rogers, Michael. "Book Reviews: Classic Returns." Library Journal, v.
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" He rewrote it again in August and submitted it to Weird Tales in September. This story was an experiment with the entire concept of the "weird tale" horror fiction as defined by practitioners such as Edgar Allan Poe, A. Merritt, and H. P. Lovecraft; mixing elements of fantasy, horror and mythology with historical romance, action and swordplay into thematic vehicles never before seen, a new style of tale which ultimately became known as "sword and sorcery".: "Critical consensus, however, unfailingly places the birth of sword-and-sorcery with the publication of 'The Shadow Kingdom' (August 1929), in which Howard introduced the brooding figure of King Kull, ruling over the fading land of Valusia in a Pre-Cataclysmic Age when Atlantis is but newly risen from the waves.": "The term 'sword and sorcery' was coined by Fritz Leiber but the genre was pioneered by Robert E. Howard, a Texas pulp writer who combined fantasy, history, horror, and the Gothic to create the Hyborian Age and such characters as Conan the Conqueror and Kull.
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The book collects eight sword and sorcery tales by various authors, with an overall introduction by de Camp. The piece by Poul Anderson introduced his Cappen Varra character, later one of the foundational characters of the Thieves' World shared world anthologies edited by Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey.
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After appearing in Ross' music video, Birmingham began to pursue acting as his primary career. He studied acting with Larry Moss and Charles Conrad. He portrayed the character of Conan the Barbarian in Universal Studios Hollywood's theme park attraction The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular.
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Moorcock eventually engaged in a "wonderful correspondence" with White, and later recalled that White gave him "some very good advice on how to write".Klaw, Rick. "Michael Moorcock serves up sword and sorcery with a new Elric adventure", Sci Fi Weekly, 2 April 2001. Retrieved on 2008-02-10.
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Tales of an Ancient Empire is a 2010 American fantasy-sword and sorcery film directed by Albert Pyun and starring Kevin Sorbo, Michael Paré, Whitney Able, Melissa Ordway, Ralf Moeller, Lee Horsley and Victoria Maurette. It is a sequel to Pyun's directorial debut, The Sword and the Sorcerer.
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These settings are typical of epic fantasy and, to a lesser extent, of sword and sorcery — which contains more urban settings — than of fantasy in general; the preponderance of epic fantasy in the genre has made them fantasy commonplaces. They are less typical of contemporary fantasy, especially urban fantasy.
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Conan at the Demon's Gate is a fantasy novel by American writer Roland Green, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in November 1994; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in August 1996.
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Conan the Gladiator is a fantasy novel by American writer Leonard Carpenter, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in January 1995 and was reprinted in August 1999. Carpenter dedicated the book to L. Sprague de Camp.
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Jackie Cassada in Library Journal writes "[t]hough Kellory himself has a certain grim appeal, there is little in this unsubtle Conan-type adventure to recommend it to anyone other than hard-core sword-and-sorcery fans."Cassada, Jackie. Review in Library Journal, v. 109, issue 5, March 1984, p. 599.
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Sword and Sorcery Studios (S&SS;) was an imprint of White Wolf, Inc., used to publish its d20 System & Open Gaming License material in from 2000 to 2008. The imprint also acted as publisher for other small press game developers, such as Monte Cook's company, Malhavoc Press, and Necromancer Games.
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"The Curse of the Monolith" is a short story by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan of Cimmeria created by Robert E. Howard. It was first published in the magazine Worlds of Fantasy in 1968 as "Conan and the Cenotaph".
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The character of Conan had a wide and enduring influence among other Weird Tales writers, including C. L. Moore and Fritz Leiber, and over the ensuing decades the genre of sword and sorcery grew up around Howard's masterwork, with dozens of practitioners evoking Howard's creation to one degree or another.
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Arkon is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. He is the warlord and ruler of the extra-dimensional world of Polemachus. The conceit of the character is that he is a hero from the sword- and-sorcery genre, in a world of modern superheroes.
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The Sword of the Barbarians (/ Sangraal, the Sword of Fire) is a 1982 sword and sorcery film written and directed by Michele Massimo Tarantini and starring Peter McCoy and Sabrina Siani.Anonimo. "Sangraal, la spada di fuoco" (review). Segnalazioni Cinematografiche, vol. XCIV. 1983. The film is also known as Barbarian Master.
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Keef the Thief: A Boy and His Lockpick is a video game designed by Naughty Dog and published by Electronic Arts. It was released in 1989 for the Apple IIGS and then later ported to the Amiga and MS-DOS. Keef the Thief is a comedic sword and sorcery role-playing game.
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Thorne entry, Who's Who of American Comic Books, 1928–1999. Accessed Dec. 4, 2017. Originally drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith for Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja was transposed from a minor Robert E. Howard 16th-century gunslinger character ("Red Sonya") to a mainstay of the sword and sorcery Conan canon by Roy Thomas.
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Conan and the Grim Grey God is a fantasy novel written by American writer Sean A. Moore, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in November 1996; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in November 1997.
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The Warlord is a sword and sorcery character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer-artist Mike Grell, he debuted in 1st Issue Special #8 (Nov. 1975). The titular character, Travis Morgan, obtains the name "Warlord" as he fights for the freedom of the people of Skartaris.
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Heroic characters are a mainstay of fantasy, particularly high fantasy and sword and sorcery. Such characters are capable of more than ordinary behavior, physically, morally, or both. Sometimes they might have to grow into the role ordained for them. This may take the form of maturation, which is often through Coming of Age.
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David Pringle, St. James Press, 1996, , pp 558-61. Although Tolkien's works had been successful in Britain, it was not until the late 1960s that they finally became popular in America thanks to its burgeoning counterculture.Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century pp xx-xxi, In the early 60s there was a renewed interest in sword and sorcery, and publishers mined the pulps for older stories to reprint along with the limited amount of new material. In demand for more, Ace Books science fiction editor Donald A. Wollheim felt Tolkien's three part novel had enough elements in common with sword and sorcery that it would appeal to the readers of the latter, after which he published an unauthorized paperback edition.
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Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire is a British-American comedic sword and sorcery series created by Peter A. Knight, co-produced by Hat Trick Productions and Media Rights Capital for Comedy Central and BBC Two, which premiered on April 9, 2009 in the US and on June 11 in the UK.
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The book consists of twenty- nine pieces, mostly essays on fantasy writer Robert E. Howard and his seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, Howard's sources and literary successors, and other fantasy authors such as Talbot Mundy, Eric Rücker Eddison, Edgar Rice Burroughs and A. Merritt. Some original material by Howard is also included.
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Conan the Savage is a fantasy novel by American writer Leonard Carpenter featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in November 1992; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in August 1993, and was reprinted in March 1999.
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Conan the Formidable is a fantasy novel by American writer Steve Perry, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in November 1990; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in August 1991, and was reprinted in June 1998.
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Conan the Rogue is a fantasy novel written by John Maddox Roberts featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in November 1991; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in August 1992, and was reprinted in January 1999.
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Conan the Marauder is a fantasy novel by American writer John Maddox Roberts, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in January 1988, and reprinted in 1992. The first British edition was published in paperback by Orbit Books in February 1991.
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Despite its visual concept, .hack//Sign is not a sword and sorcery story, but an exposition-driven character study. It proposes "a trip inside the psychology and soul of an emotionally bruised, but slowly healing person." Themes range from psychological to sociological and are dealt with using classical dialogue as well as image-only introspection.
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Black Colossus is a 1979 collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1979 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as volume IX of their deluxe Conan set. The stories originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.
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Specific echelons of pop culture draw from a variety of epic narrative tropes this may preclude to genres such as Heroic Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Space Opera, Fantasy adventure, high fantasy and Political fantasy. Some even draw influence from each other, just as ancient sources. For example Frank Herbert's Dune Saga inspired the Star Wars trilogy and the Jodoverse.
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Galtar and the Golden Lance is a 30-minute animated sword and sorcery television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, which aired in syndication in 1985–86 as part of The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera. The show ran for 21 episodes and is thought to have been created due to the rising popularity of the He-Man franchise.
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The novel In Viriconium (1982) (US title: The Floating Gods) was nominated for the Guardian Fiction Prize during 1982. Savoy Books catalogs referred to it as "Pre-raphaelite sword and sorcery". It is a moody portrait of Viriconium beset by a mysterious plague. As artist Audsley King slowly dies from the plague, her friend Ashlyme tries to save her.
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Later sets blur the distinction and have animals and humans together. Hancock's universe has an ambiguous technological setting. Sometimes, the world he creates is like that of Tolkien, a primitive sword-and-sorcery world. At other times, it becomes modern with warfare resembling the state of technology in World War One (or, perhaps, the American Civil War).
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EverQuest Role-Playing Game is a role-playing game based on the EverQuest fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). The game was published by White Wolf under its Sword and Sorcery Studios imprint. EverQuest Role-Playing Game shares many things with the MMORPG, such as setting, available races and classes, monsters, spells, and items.
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He is also amoral and a born killer. The Kane stories are often classified as tales of sword and sorcery (although Wagner disliked the term), which some critics have compared favourably to those of Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock. In his story "The Gothic Touch", Kane actually encounters Moorcock's albino anti-hero Elric.Kramer, Edward and Richard Gilliam (ed).
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Conan the Champion is a fantasy novel by American writer John Maddox Roberts, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in April 1987 and reprinted in January 1989. The first British edition was published in paperback by Sphere Books, also in January 1989.
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Other work includes a new ongoing series of The Warlord launched to coincide with the 35th anniversary.Cowsill, Alan "2000s" in Dolan, p. 338 "Mike Grell was back at the helm for the return of DC's greatest sword-and- sorcery hero – Travis Morgan, the Warlord." Grell brought the lead character's story to an end and drew some issues.
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Savage Heroes is an anthology of sword and sorcery stories edited by Michel Parry under the pseudonym of Eric Pendragon. It was first published in paperback by Star Books in February 1977. The first U.S. edition was issued in hardcover and trade paperback by Taplinger in March 1980. The editor's pseudonym was dropped for the Taplinger edition.
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Jewels of Gwahlur is a 1979 collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1979 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as volume VIII of their deluxe Conan set. The title story originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.
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Queen of the Black Coast is a 1978 collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1978 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as volume VII of their deluxe Conan set. The title story originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.
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The Devil in Iron is a 1976 collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1976 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as volume V of their deluxe Conan set. The stories both originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.
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Rogues in the House is a 1976 collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1976 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as volume VI of their deluxe Conan set. The title story originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.
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He also had a textbook published called Writing in Psychology: A Guidebook. This book is a collaboration with two of Gramlich's colleagues, Dr. Y. Du Bois Irvin and Dr. Elliott Hammer. It was also published by The Borgo Press. In 2010, Borgo Press published a collection of Gramlich's sword and sorcery short stories under the title Bitter Steel.
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The Tower of the Elephant is a 1975 collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1975 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as the third volume of their deluxe Conan set. The title story originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.
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The Pool of the Black One is a collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1986 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as volume X of their deluxe Conan set. The title story originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales.
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Ronan the Barbarian is a comic fantasy novel by James Bibby, first published in 1995 by Millennium. It is the first book in a trilogy, followed by Ronan's Rescue and Ronan's Revenge. It is also the first work set in Bibby's Midworld, a fictional universe constructed to parody common high fantasy and sword and sorcery genre tropes.
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Wizardborn is an epic fantasy novel set in a land where men can bestow to each other a number of endowments, granting the recipient of the endowment attributes such as increased strength, a more acute sense of hearing, or better eyesight. The novel combines traditional sword and sorcery elements of fantasy with its own unique magic system of endowments.
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Jack killing the giant - The Chronicle of the Valiant Feats of Jack the Giant Killer (1845), facing 20 - BL Frequently, the protagonist is reluctant to be a champion, and/or is of low or humble origin, and may have royal ancestors or parents but does not know it. Though events are usually beyond their control, they are thrust into positions of great responsibility where their mettle is tested in a number of spiritual and physical challenges. Although it shares many of the basic themes of sword and sorcery, the term "Heroic fantasy" is often used to avoid the garish overtones of the former.John Grant and John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, "Heroic fantasy", p 464 > "Heroic fantasy" is the name I have given to a subgenre of fiction, > otherwise called the "sword-and-sorcery" story.
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For the combination table-top and role-playing game by SPI, see Swords & Sorcery (SPI). For the video game, see Swords and Sorcery (video game). Swords and Sorcery is an anthology of fantasy short stories in the sword and sorcery subgenre, edited by L. Sprague de Camp and illustrated by Virgil Finlay. It was first published in paperback by Pyramid Books in 1963.
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The Spell of Seven is an anthology of fantasy short stories in the sword and sorcery subgenre, edited by L. Sprague de Camp and illustrated by Virgil Finlay. It was first published in paperback by Pyramid Books in June 1965, and reprinted in December 1969. It was the second such anthology assembled by de Camp, following his Swords and Sorcery (1963).
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The sword and sorcery elements in the series, prominent up to that point, were minimized as Sim concentrated more on politics and religion. Cerebus was published through Sim's company, Aardvark-Vanaheim, which was run by his wife, Deni Loubert. The two met in 1976, married in 1979, and divorced after nearly five years of marriage."Cerebus Biweekly" #6, Feb 1989, inside front cover.
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Corman was looking to produce low-budget sword-and-sorcery films to capitalize on the success of Conan the Barbarian (1982), while Olivera sought to fund more personal film projects via the profits from his deal with Corman.Falicov, Tamara L. "U.S.-Argentine Co-productions, 1982-1990: Roger Corman, Aries Productions, 'Schlockbuster' Movies, and the International Market" Film & History 2004 Vol.34, Iss.
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Chaosbound is an epic fantasy novel set in a land where men can bestow to each other a number of endowments, granting the recipient of the endowment some attributes such as increased strength, a more acute sense of hearing, or better eyesight. The novel combines traditional sword and sorcery elements of fantasy with its own unique magic system of endowments.
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A subgenre is a subordinate within a genre. Two stories being the same genre can still sometimes differ in subgenre. For example, if a fantasy story has darker and more frightening elements of fantasy, it would belong in the subgenre of dark fantasy; whereas another fantasy story that features magic swords and wizards would belong to the subgenre of sword and sorcery.
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Sons of the Oak is an epic fantasy novel set in a land where men can bestow to each other a number of endowments, granting the recipient of the endowment attributes such as increased strength, a more acute sense of hearing, or better eyesight. The novel combines traditional sword and sorcery elements of fantasy with its own unique magic system of endowments.
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The Road of Kings is a fantasy novel by Karl Edward Wagner, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Bantam Books in October 1979. Later paperback editions were issued by Ace Books (1987) and Tor Books 2001. The first trade paperback edition was published by Warner Books in 1989.
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The Further Chronicles of Conan is a collection of fantasy novels written by Robert Jordan featuring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, created by Robert E. Howard. The book was first published in hardcover in October 1999 by Tor Books, with a trade paperback edition following in September 2004 from the same publisher. It collects three novels previously published by Tor.
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Brunner and novelist Michael Moorcock collaborated on a comics adaptation of Moorcock's sword-and-sorcery hero Elric in Heavy Metal magazine. It was reprinted in publisher Mike Friedrich's Star Reach Greatest Hits. Brunner briefly returned to comics in the early-1980s as artist on the First Comics title Warp!, based on the science fiction play that ran briefly on Broadway in the 1970s.
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Ironwood follows the adventures of Dave Dragavon, a juvenile dragon existing only in human form (not yet having matured enough to take full dragon form) who is hired by the beautiful Pandora Breedlswight to find the wizard Gnaric in order to free her from a curse. The comics are a mixture of sword and sorcery, sexual situations and adult humor.
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Johan and Peewit () is a Belgian comics series created by Peyo. Since its initial appearance in 1947 it has been published in 13 albums that appeared before the death of Peyo in 1992. Thereafter, a team of comic book creators from Studio Peyo continued to publish the stories. The series is set in Medieval Europe and includes elements of sword-and-sorcery.
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The Barbarians is a 1987 sword and sorcery film directed by Ruggero Deodato and starring the Barbarian Brothers (Peter and David Paul), Richard Lynch and Eva La Rue. The film is an Italian and American co-production shot in Rome and the Abruzzo Mountains. Peter and David Paul were nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award as Worst New Stars for this film.
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Comics & Comix operated as a comics publisher from 1974–1978. The company ventured into publishing with Jack Katz's underground/sword and sorcery hybrid The First Kingdom. The company published 6 issues of that title until 1977, at which point it was continued under various publishing names by Plant until 1986. Comics & Comix also published comics by Jim Pinkoski, Dan O'Neill, and Alfredo Alcala.
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The Wyrmling Horde is an epic fantasy novel set in a land where men can bestow to each other a number of endowments, granting the recipient of the endowment attributes such as increased strength, a more acute sense of hearing, or better eyesight. The novel combines traditional sword and sorcery elements of fantasy with its own unique magic system of endowments.
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Barbarian, also known as Kane the Barbarian, is an American sword and sorcery action direct-to-video film released in 2003. It can almost be considered a remake from the 1983 film Deathstalker. It stars the American bodybuilder, wrestler and actor Michael O'Hearn and Martin Kove, and also R&B; singer Cassie Ventura had a bit part in the film.
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Thongor is a character in a series of sword-and-sorcery novels and stories written by Lin Carter, stylized after Conan the Barbarian and set in ancient Lemuria. The character was picked up by Marvel Comics in the 1970s for its series Creatures on the Loose which saw some of Carter's stories adapted, as well as the author himself contributing to later issues.
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The Lair of Bones is an epic fantasy novel set in a land where men can bestow to each other a number of endowments, granting the recipient of the endowment attributes such as increased strength, a more acute sense of hearing, or better eyesight. The novel combines traditional sword and sorcery elements of fantasy with its own unique magic system of endowments.
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"The Thing in the Crypt" is a short story by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian created by Robert E. Howard. It was based on a draft of a story by Carter, featuring his character Thongor as the protagonist. It was originally published in the 1967 collection Conan.
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"Bazaar of the Bizarre" is a sword and sorcery novelette by American writer Fritz Leiber, part of the canon of stories chronicling his adventurous duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. First published in 1963 in Fantastic, it has been reprinted several times, including as a standalone edition. It also appears in the anthology The Spell of Seven, edited by L. Sprague de Camp.
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The invention of "sword and sorcery" is generally credited to Robert E. Howard, a pulp writer from Cross Plains, Texas, who committed suicide at age thirty. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories and his King Kull tales fixed the major tropes of the genre from 1925 on, when the first Conan story, "Spear and Fang", appeared. Delany twists and plays with these conventions in his Nevèrÿon stories, to create his critical effects. Fritz Leiber, who coined the term "sword and sorcery" and whose Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales appeared from the 1930s through the 1980s, introduced the possibilities of self-satire and humor into Howard's vision of blood, guts, and primitive glory. Joanna Russ’s Alyx series—certainly the greatest direct influence on Delany—and G. Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form (specifically “Chapter 8”) have already been mentioned as important sources.
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The Fantastic Swordsmen is a 1967 anthology of fantasy short stories in the sword and sorcery subgenre, edited by American writer L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in paperback by Pyramid Books. It was the third such anthology assembled by de Camp, following his earlier Swords and Sorcery (1963) and The Spell of Seven (1965). It has also been translated into German.
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Conan the Avenger is a 1968 collection of two fantasy works written by Björn Nyberg, Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Lancer Books, and has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers. It has also been translated into Japanese, German and Spanish.
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A group of high-school role-players decide to spice up their sword and sorcery games with two things: breaking into the local school to use its maze of hallways, and utilizing "spells" from a magic book. What the role-players do not realize is that the spells are real. When read, they summon a powerful demon that begins hunting the players down, one by one.
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The premise of the novel is that parallel universes do exist. Some have intelligent non-human life, while others are populated by English- speaking humans. Prior to the events of the novel, one such reality is overrun by a malevolent force known as Shadow. The World of Shadow is a typical high fantasy realm where magic exists and men fight with sword and sorcery.
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The book consists of thirty-seven pieces, mostly essays on fantasy writer Robert E. Howard and his seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, Howard's sources and literary successors, and other fantasy authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Eric Rücker Eddison, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber and Talbot Mundy. Some original material by Howard, a number of fantasy poems and a few fictional pieces are also included.
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Anthony said he wanted to make a sword and sorcery film as follow up Seeing is Believing. "I've got to be very careful about my decisions from here on in", he said. "If I make a mistake, it could take me 10 years to get back to this point." However Quintano wanted to make a Topkapi type film about people stealing an item on an island.
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WotC began the open gaming license, allowing third party companies to publish Dungeons & Dragons products, under the D20 system. In 3rd and 3.5 editions of D&D;, Ravenloft Campaign setting was continued by Sword and Sorcery Studios (S&SS;) was an imprint of White Wolf, Inc., used to publish its d20 System & Open Gaming License D&D; material. Wizards of the Coast was purchased by Hasbro, Inc.
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The Mighty Swordsmen is a 1970 anthology of fantasy short stories in the sword and sorcery subgenre, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson. It was first published in paperback by Lancer Books in December 1970, and was a follow-up to the earlier Lancer anthology The Mighty Barbarians. Robert M. Price edited a later-day homage to both anthologies called The Mighty Warriors (2018).Price, Robert M., ed.
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From the Adult Swim website: : Korgoth of Barbaria followed the exploits of the eponymous Korgoth (voiced by actor Diedrich Bader), and parodied Conan the Barbarian, as well as the sword and sorcery subgenre in general. The show was set in a post-apocalyptic world where sorcery and the remnants of technology exist simultaneously. The heavy metal/thrash metal musical theme was composed by Lee Holdridge.
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A precursor of the series was Swords Against Tomorrow, edited by Robert Hoskins (Signet Books, 1970), an anthology which included pieces by four of the eight SAGA members of that time. Before editing Flashing Swords! #6 Robert M. Price edited a similar Sword and Sorcery anthology, The Mighty Warriors (Ulthar Press, 2018), showcasing some of the same authors whose works appeared in the Flashing Swords! volume.
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They stated that their inspirations included 1970s' Rush, Hawkwind, and Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné novels (the first novel in the series being 1961's The Dreaming City); it will be a concept album themed around sword and sorcery, but in a "more Tongue-in- cheek [way than] people manage to understand sometimes." The album will be set in the same universe as The Inconsolable Secret.
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The Avataars: Covenant of the Shield miniseries, set in a sword and sorcery version of the Marvel Universe, features Dreadlord, an alternate version of Zemo, as its main villain. Dreadlord was previously Zymo of Z'axis, a general who fought in the Worldwar. When Z'axis lost the war, Zymo adopted a new identity - and swore that he would not remove his hood until Z'axis triumphed once again.
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Its largest international weekend was August 13–15, during which it grossed $14,091,169 in 42 countries. It occupies the fourth place on the all-time chart of Sword and Sorcery films in the U.S. and Canada, and the third place on the same chart worldwide. In July 2010, Parade magazine listed the film #1 on its list of "Biggest Box Office Flops of 2010 (So Far)".
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Bloodstar is a post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery tale of the life of a mythical hero and his heritage. It is illustrated in black and white in mixed media in startlingly three-dimensional looking images rendered in airbrush, markers and colored pencils Richardson, John Adkins (1977). The Complete Book of Cartooning. Prentice-Hall, Inc.. . Page 11-4 and features some ground breaking narrative sequences.
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Brian M. Stableford calls "The Fallible Fiend ... more offbeat than de Camp's other ventures in the genre," and Zdim "perhaps the only sword-and-sorcery hero who regularly devours people. Still, he remains likable as he provides a suitably ironic commentary on human affairs from the demonic standpoint."Stableford, Brian M. "L. Sprague de Camp 1907- / Fletcher Pratt 1897-1956," in Bleiler, Everett F., ed.
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Conan the Great is a fantasy novel by American writer Leonard Carpenter, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in April 1990 (the 1989 date appearing on the title page verso is erroneous).ISFDb entry for the initial printing of Conan the Great. It was reprinted by Tor in August 1997.
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Worldbinder is the sixth novel in David Farland's epic fantasy series The Runelords. It is set in a land where men can bestow on each other a number of endowments, granting the recipient attributes such as increased strength, a more acute sense of hearing, or better eyesight. The novel combines traditional sword and sorcery elements of fantasy with its own unique magic system of endowments.
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The Sword and the Sorcerer is a 1982 American sword and sorcery fantasy film directed by Albert Pyun and starring Lee Horsley, Simon McCorkindale, Richard Lynch, and Richard Moll. The screenplay concerns a mercenary with a three- bladed sword who rediscovers his royal heritage when he is recruited to help a princess foil the designs of a brutal tyrant, and a powerful sorcerer, in conquering the land.
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Arion, a sword and sorcery title by writer Paul Kupperberg and artist Jan Duursema, began as a six–page backup feature in The Warlord #55 (March 1982). Another backup feature was "The Barren Earth" by writer Gary Cohn and artist Ron Randall, which was concluded in a four–issue limited series. A Bonus Book in issue #131 (Sept. 1988) featured artist Rob Liefeld's first work for DC.
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Masters of the Universe (commonly abbreviated MOTU and sometimes referred to as the He-Man or She-Ra series, after its lead heroes) is a sword and sorcery- themed media franchise created by Mattel. The main premise revolves around the conflict between He-Man (the alter ego of Prince Adam) against Skeletor on the planet Eternia, with a vast lineup of supporting characters in a hybrid setting of medieval sword and sorcery and sci-fi technology. A follow-up series, She-Ra: Princess of Power revolves around He-Man's sister She-Ra and her rebellion against The Horde on the planet Etheria. Since its initial launch, the franchise has spawned a variety of products, including multiple lines of action figures, five animated television series, several comic series, video games, books and magazines, a daily newspaper comic strip, and two feature films (one animated, one live action).
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Because of poor distribution, Fantastic was never able to benefit from the increasing popularity of the fantasy genre, though White was able to publish several stories by well-known writers in the field, including a sword and sorcery novella by Dean R. Koontz, which appeared in the October 1970 issue, and an Elric story by Michael Moorcock in February 1972. A revival of Robert E. Howard's character Conan, in stories by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, was successful at increasing sales; the first of these stories appeared in August 1972, and White reported that sales of that issue were higher than for any other issue of Amazing or Fantastic that year. Each Conan story, according to White, increased sales of that issue by 10,000 copies. White also published several of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, and added "Sword and Sorcery" to the cover in 1975.
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Sadamoto's character designs follow the fantasy theme, drawing influence from the sword and sorcery subgenre in particular. Character designs also draw on Celtic imagery: Director Mashimo acknowledged similarities between Bear's design and William Wallace from Braveheart, an example of a Celtic warrior. All the characters are given distinctive patterns resembling tattoos, the visual representation of a fictional gameplay aspect called Wave. Seiichiro Hosokawa was the lead artist for the .hack//G.
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The film was re-released in the 2000s by Shout Factory as "Roger Corman's Cult Classics: Sword and Sorcery Collection". The collection features Deathstalker, Deathstalker II, Barbarian Queen and The Warrior and the Sorceress. The release of Deathstalker II on this collection is quite different from past VHS and DVD releases. It features a new Anamorphic Widescreen Transfer (1.78:1) and an Approved Director's Cut of the film.
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" Black Gate said of The Sacred Band: "This is not sword and sorcery, this is not elves and dwarves and high-concept fantasy… The Sacred Band has the sharp edge of reality, the harshness, the bitterness and the danger of the real world. Love, loyalty, honor — these are the ideals by which these characters live and die. This novel is epic in scope. It is mythic by heritage.
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It is a desperate, misconceived enterprise which draws Ashlyme into unwilling alliance with the sinister dwarf The Grand Cairo, and which goes bizarrely wrong. Yet out of the shambles comes the clue to lifting the plague, which symbolises a paralysis of will. Where the previous books in the series held some sword and sorcery elements, In Viriconium goes beyond black humour into a coma of despair. The novel parodies Arthurian motifs.
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Augie De Blieck from Comic Book Resources appreciated the "dark, twisted, and hilarious" series for its fast pacing, Wiebe's witty (and foul-mouthed) writing, and the humanity and personality with which Upchurch infused his drawings. Writing for IGN, Benjamin Bailey described the "mix of D20 adventures and modern angst" as perfecting the formula of injecting humor and wit into sword and sorcery tropes, and praised Upchurch's "expressive and unique" character designs.
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In addition to Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, the plot of Krull has also been compared to the legends of King Arthur. Combining elements of sword and sorcery and the space opera genre, Krull has a plot compared by critics to the works in the series of Star Wars,Schager, Nick (16 November 2015). "Krull is equal parts George Lucas and J. R. R. Tolken". The A.V. Club.
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Lester del Rey described the satire as "good-natured and sometimes amusing," but felt the idea of writing a humorous sword-and-sorcery novel was misconceived."Reading Room", If, June 1973, pp.171-72. According to L. Sprague de Camp the book is "[h]ilarious but suffers from the weakness of a book-length burlesque: the difficulty of keeping up the standard of the beginning."De Camp, L. Sprague.
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"Book Reviews", Astounding Science Fiction, June 1951, p.131 Everett F. Bleiler found "The Elder Gods" to be "contrived, derivative, and dull".E. F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction, Kent State University Press, 1983, p.102 Lester del Rey, however, found "The Elder Gods" to be "a fine sword-and-sorcery novel, having some of the magic of A. Merritt but a lot more logic in its development".
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For their first title, inspired by sword-and-sorcery themes and the holographic chess-like game featured in Star Wars, they set to work on Archon. Originally developed as a two-player only game, EA requested a one-player mode as well. Though it only had a passing resemblance to chess, Archon featured innovative gameplay and theme. Freeman and Reiche developed the game design and Westfall focused on the programming.
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The Conan Chronicles is a 1989 omnibus collection of three fantasy collections by American writers Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, published by Sphere Books. The component collections had originally been published by Lancer Books in 1967, 1968 and 1969, and later reissued by Ace Books. The omnibus collection was followed by The Conan Chronicles 2.
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Conan the Defender is a fantasy novel by American writer Robert Jordan, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in December 1982, followed by a regular paperback edition in December 1983. The book was reprinted by Tor in February 1991 and September 2009. The first British edition was published by Legend in September 1996.
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Frazetta also produced paintings for paperback editions of adventure books. His interpretation of Conan visually redefined the genre of sword and sorcery, and had an enormous influence on succeeding generations of artists. From this point on, Frazetta's work was in great demand. His covers were used for other paperback editions of classic Edgar Rice Burroughs books, such as those from the Tarzan and Barsoom (John Carter of Mars) series.
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Conan and the Sorcerer is a fantasy novel written by Andrew J. Offutt and illustrated by Esteban Maroto. Featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, it is the first in a trilogy continuing with Conan the Mercenary and concluding with The Sword of Skelos. It was first published in paperback by Ace Books in October 1978, and reprinted in May 1979, 1982, and March 1984.
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Conan the Rebel is a fantasy novel by American writer Poul Anderson, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Bantam Books in July 1980. It was reprinted once by Bantam (1981) and twice by Ace Books (1988, 1991). The first hardcover edition was published by Tor Books in 2001; a trade paperback followed from the same publisher in 2003.
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"Thrilla in the Villa" is the sixth episode and series finale of the comedic sword and sorcery series Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on May 7, 2009. The episode was written by Peter A. Knight and series co-developer Brad Johnson, and was directed by Alex Hardcastle. The episode title is a spin on Thrilla in Manila.
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The Conan the Barbarian saga has appeared in a variety of forms in the gaming community from simple boardgames to high tech multiplayer online games. The intention of all these games is to immerse the player in the sword and sorcery world of Hyboria. Robert E. Howard created the original Conan story but he had no hand in creating various games other than they were based on his works.
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Boris Vallejo (born January 8, 1941) is a Peruvian painter. Vallejo works almost exclusively in the fantasy and erotica genres. His hyper- representational paintings have appeared on the covers of numerous science fiction and fantasy paperbacks and are featured in a series of best-selling glossy calendars. Subjects of his paintings are typically sword and sorcery gods, monsters, and well-muscled male and female barbarians engaged in battle.
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Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906June 11, 1936) was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre. Howard was born and raised in Texas. He spent most of his life in the town of Cross Plains, with some time spent in nearby Brownwood.
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Star Gate is a science fantasy novel by American writer Andre Norton, published by Harcourt, Brace & Company in 1958. The story is a blend of science fiction with sword and sorcery, continuing the premise that Norton introduced in The Crossroads of Time, mingling technologically advanced aliens (from Earth) with the natives of the far-off world Gorth and a native culture that has achieved the development level of Medieval Europe.
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Dagar was a sword and sorcery series, set in a mythical past of warriors and wizards. There were a few secondary characters (Durak in #7, 12, 13; Torgus in #9, 10, 13). Durak originally appeared as "Duroc" in Mystery Comics Digest #7, 14 and 15, then was renamed for his debut in Dagar the Invincible. Don Glut also tied in his other Gold Key characters such as Tragg and Doctor Spektor.
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Bellamy used a monochromatic sepia colour palette to reflect the sun and desert locale, with occasional bursts of bright colour. It was a challenging and unusual approach and Fraser of Africa became the Eagle's most popular strip. Bellamy insisted on proper research and even had a reader living in East Africa supplying reference material. Heros the Spartan, a sword and sorcery adventure set in Roman times was another artistic triumph.
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Kadathanadan Ambadi is a 1990 Indian Malayalam-language sword and sorcery film directed by Priyadarshan and written by Cochin Haneefa. It is a sequel to the 1964 film Thacholi Othenan and the 1970 film Othenente Makan. The film star Mohanlal in the title role, along with Prem Nazir, Swapna, and Raadhu. Kadathanadan Ambadi was in production since 1985 and was stalled due to financial crisis faced by the producer Sajan Vargeese.
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Often, they feature a hero of humble origins and a clear distinction between good and evil set against each other in an epic struggle. Many scholars cite J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings novel as the prototypical modern example of High Fantasy in literature, and the recent Peter Jackson film adaptation of the books is a good example of the High Fantasy subgenre on the silver screen. Sword and Sorcery movies tend to be more plot-driven than high fantasy and focus heavily on action sequences, often pitting a physically powerful but unsophisticated warrior against an evil wizard or other supernaturally endowed enemy. Although Sword and Sorcery films sometimes describe an epic battle between good and evil similar to those found in many High Fantasy movies, they may alternately present the hero as having more immediate motivations, such as the need to protect a vulnerable maiden or village, or even being driven by the desire for vengeance.
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The comic began as a parody of sword and sorcery comics, primarily Marvel's version of Conan the Barbarian. However, it evolved to explore a variety of other topics, including politics, religion, and gender issues. At a total of 6,000 pages, it progressively became more serious and ambitious than its parodic roots—what has come to be dubbed "Cerebus Syndrome". Sim announced early on that the series would end with the death of the title character.
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The stories grew into a very popular sword and sorcery series, but none of them ever appeared in Weird Tales. Leiber did eventually sell several stories to Weird Tales, beginning with "The Automatic Pistol", which appeared in May 1940.Jaffery & Cook (1985), p. 104. Weird Tales included a letters column, titled "The Eyrie", for most of its existence, and during Wright's time as editor it was usually filled with long and detailed letters.
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Conan of Cimmeria is a collection of eight fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories were originally published in various fantasy magazines. The book was first published in paperback by Lancer Books in 1969, and reprinted in 1970, 1972 and 1973. After the bankruptcy of Lancer, publication was taken over by Ace Books.
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The book consists of thirty-seven pieces, mostly essays on fantasy writer Robert E. Howard and his seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, Howard's sources and literary successors, and other fantasy authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Eric Rücker Eddison, Lord Dunsany, Jack Vance, Fletcher Pratt, Leslie Barringer, Fritz Leiber, Sax Rohmer and Talbot Mundy. Some original material by Howard, a number of fantasy poems and a few fictional pieces are also included.
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The stories center around a singular family, the Crossovers, all four members of whom are involved in different genres of sci-fi/fantasy. Carter, the father, is a typical superhero named Archetype, with strength and flight. Calista, the mother, fights vampires and other supernatural menaces. Cris, the daughter, through a portal in the basement, visits a sword and sorcery land to become the warrior princess Eradika and lead her forces into and out of battles.
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The 2nd Annual Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards was held on April 18, 1988, from the Conan Sword and Sorcery Spectacular Arena at Universal Studios Hollywood. This was the first event held under this title, and first to feature a live audience, as well as celebrity hosts and attendees, while the first KCA occurred the previous year in 1987 as The Big Ballot, and only featured taped segments linked together by its studio hosts.
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Conan the Usurper is a 1967 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers, and has also been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Dutch.
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The Conan Chronicles 2 is a 1990 omnibus collection of two previous fantasy collections and one fantasy novel by American writers Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, published by Orbit Books. The component books had originally been published by Lancer Books in 1966, 1968 and 1971, and later reissued by Ace Books. The omnibus collection was preceded by The Conan Chronicles.
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Fred Olen Ray says the film has its genesis with sets left over from Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death. The sets were going to be torn down so Ray decided to use them for a film. A script was written, actors hired (including Russ Tamblyn) and Ray shot two days of a sword and sorcery film, Wizards of the Demon Sword. He then planned filming the rest of the film.
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Sword of Sorcery was an American sword-and-sorcery comics anthology featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, heroes and rogues created by Fritz Leiber. Published bi-monthly by DC Comics, it ran for five issues in 1973, with a cover price of 20¢. The title was written by Denny O'Neil and featured art by Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson, and Jim Starlin. The book was cancelled after five issues due to bad sales.
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Ken W. Kelly (born May 19, 1946, New London, Connecticut, United States) is an American fantasy artist. Over his 30-year career, he has focused in particular on paintings in the sword and sorcery and heroic fantasy subgenres. Kelly is the nephew of Frank Frazetta's wife Eleanor “Ellie” Frazetta (1935-2009), whose maiden name was Kelly. Early in his career he was able to study the paintings of Frank Frazetta in the latter's studio.
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Each unit can be given different attributes such as unit type, weapon type and firepower, movement and strength points. Users are able to create scenarios from many periods of military history, ranging from spears and catapults to missiles and tanks. Users can create various genres of wargames including sword-and-sorcery fantasies or science-fiction battles. The game comes with eight pre-made ready-to-play scenarios which can be modified or played as-is.
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The Essential Conan is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1998 by the Science Fiction Book Club. It collects the editions of the Conan books, edited by Karl Edward Wagner and published by Berkley Books in 1977. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Weird Tales, The Phantagraph and The Howard Collector.
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"Golden Powers" is the second episode of the first season of the comedic sword and sorcery series Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on April 9, 2009. The episode was written by series creator Peter Knight and directed by Alex Hardcastle. In "Golden Powers", Kröd learns he is "The Golden One" who is destined to overthrow the evil Makonian Empire.
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Swords Against the Shadowland is a fantasy novel by American writer Robin Wayne Bailey, featuring Fritz Leiber's sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It was first published as a trade paperback in August 1998 by White Wolf. A later trade paperback edition was issued by Dark Horse in April 2009. It was projected to be the first in a series of authorized continuations of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser saga by Bailey.
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Conan the Barbarian is a 2011 American sword and sorcery film based on the character of the same name created by Robert E. Howard. The film is a new interpretation of the Conan myth, and is not related to the films featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. It stars Jason Momoa in the title role, alongside Rachel Nichols, Rose McGowan, Stephen Lang, Ron Perlman, and Bob Sapp with Marcus Nispel directing. Morgan Freeman narrates the film.
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The majority of popular MMORPGs are based on traditional fantasy themes, often occurring in an in-game universe comparable to that of Dungeons & Dragons. Some employ hybrid themes that either merge or replace fantasy elements with those of science fiction, sword and sorcery, or crime fiction. Others draw thematic material from American comic books, the occult, and other genres. These elements are often developed using similar tasks and scenarios involving quests, monsters, and loot.
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Blood of the Dragon is the seventh album by Nox Arcana, incorporating an interactive puzzle. The music is mainly instrumental, with a classical, symphonic, and at times tribal Celtic sound. The music is interspersed with brief narrations and sound effects that relate a tale of high fantasy. The overall theme is laden with elements popularized in sword and sorcery stories and games, such as wizards, warriors, dragons, elves, witches, dwarves and trolls.
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Elric of Melniboné is a fictional character created by Michael Moorcock and the protagonist of a series of sword and sorcery stories taking place on an alternative Earth. The proper name and title of the character is Elric VIII, 428th Emperor of Melniboné. Later stories by Moorcock marked Elric as a facet of the Eternal Champion. Elric first appeared in print in Moorcock's novella The Dreaming City (Science Fantasy No. 47, June 1961).
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Meridian 59 is a typical sword and sorcery setting where adventurers go out and fight monsters. In the game, there are few NPCs, with most of them static and unchanging. Most of the focus is on the activities of the players as they fight against the monsters in the land. The game is set in the 59th provincial colony of an ancient empire which explored the universe through portals in a magical nexus.
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In the game, players explore a fantasy sword and sorcery world revolving around six city-states and their respective Houses. As in most role-playing games, players can fight monsters for experience points and treasure, perform quests for non-player characters and interact with other players. One of the major forms of interaction is player vs. player combat, where the dynamic conflict, especially the conflict between Good and Evil plays a dominant role in Achaea.
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Fred Olen Ray says the film has its genesis with sets left over from Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death. The sets were going to be torn down so Ray decided to use them for a film. A script was written, actors hired (including Russ Tamblyn) and Ray shot two days of a sword and sorcery film, Wizards of the Demon Sword. He then planned filming the rest of the film.
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DC announced in July 2008 that The Warlord would return in an ongoing series written by Mike Grell in time for the original series' 35th anniversary. The series started in April 2009,Cowsill, Alan "2000s" in Dolan, p. 338 "Mike Grell was back at the helm for the return of DC's greatest sword-and-sorcery hero - Travis Morgan, the Warlord." featuring art by Joe Prado and Chad Hardin. It ran for 16 issues.
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In 1971, he began to write full-time. During this time, he was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s and led by Lin Carter. The eight original members were self-selected by fantasy credentials alone. They sought to promote the popularity and respectability of the "Sword and Sorcery" sub genre (such as Brak the Barbarian stories by Jakes).
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We Are All Legends is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Darrell Schweitzer featuring his sword and sorcery hero Sir Julian. The book was edited by Hank Stine and illustrated by Stephen Fabian, and features an introduction by L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published as a trade paperback by The Donning Company in 1981. It was reprinted by Starmount House in 1988, Borgo Press in 1989 and Wildside Press in 1999.
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The sword and sorcery story is set in Albion, Sub-Roman Britain, circa 420. The player assumes the role of Gawain, a young apprentice knight about to be ordained by King Arthur and struggling to uphold virtues of his peaceful and prosperous kingdom. Gawain is ordered by Merlin to seek out and vanquish Queen Morgana, Arthur's half-sister and evil sorceress, before she can destroy Arthur and seize the throne of Albion.
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Avalon Hill, to assert their trademark to the RuneQuest name, instead hired new designers on the project to start over with a fresh approach. Slated for a 1998 release, RuneQuest: Slayers, did not resemble previous editions in regards to rules and focused on a low-magic setting inspired by pulp sword and sorcery fiction. RuneQuest: Slayers was literally at the printers when Hasbro acquired Avalon Hill and canceled the project. RuneQuest: Slayers was never formally released.
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The Devil's Sword (Indonesian: Golok Setan) is a 1984 Indonesian sword and sorcery film directed by Ratno Timoer. The film stars Indonesian action star Barry Prima who appears in such films as Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters and The Warrior. The Devil's Sword crosses over into many different genres of film. The film features martial arts, and also elements of fantasy, horror, sci-fi, and also some mild sexual content due to the portrayal of the Crocodile Queen.
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Several sub-categories of fantasy films can be identified, although the delineations between these subgenres, much as in fantasy literature, are somewhat fluid. The most common fantasy subgenres depicted in movies are High Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery. Both categories typically employ quasi-medieval settings, wizards, magical creatures and other elements commonly associated with fantasy stories. High Fantasy films tend to feature a more richly developed fantasy world, and may also be more character-oriented or thematically complex.
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The Conan Chronicles: Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 2001 by Gollancz as sixteenth volume of their Fantasy Masterworks series. The book, edited by Stephen Jones, presents the stories in their internal chronological order. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines Weird Tales, Fantasy Magazine and The Howard Collector.
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Deathstalker II, also known as Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans, is a 1987 Argentine-American fantasy adventure film and sequel to 1983's Deathstalker. The film was directed by Jim Wynorski, written by Neil Ruttenberg, and starring John Terlesky and Monique Gabrielle. Terlesky replaced Rick Hill, the protagonist from the previous film, in the starring role of Deathstalker. This is the last sword and sorcery movie that Roger Corman produced in Argentina during the 80s.
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The Return of Conan is a 1957 fantasy novel written by Björn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in hardcover by Gnome Press and in paperback by Lancer Books as part of the collection Conan the Avenger in 1968; in this form it has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers. It has also been translated into Japanese, German and Spanish.
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Prince Valiant is a 1997 Irish-British independent sword and sorcery film directed by Anthony Hickox, written by Michael Frost Beckner, and starring Stephen Moyer, Katherine Heigl, Thomas Kretschmann, Joanna Lumley, Ron Perlman, and Edward Fox. It is a loose adaptation of the long-running Prince Valiant comic strip of Hal Foster, some panels of which were used in the movie. In it, Valiant must battle the Vikings and a scheming sorceress to save the kingdom.
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Conan the Warrior is a 1967 collection of three fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The collection is introduced and edited by L. Sprague de Camp. The stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers, and has also been translated into Japanese, German, French, Polish, Spanish, Swedish and Italian.
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Douglas Hulick is an American fantasy writer. Born in Fargo, North Dakota, he obtained a B.A. in history and English at the University of Illinois, and a master's degree in medieval history at New Mexico State University. He subsequently worked odd jobs and turned to writing fantasy fiction after chancing on a dictionary of historical criminal jargon. His sword and sorcery novel, Among Thieves, was a finalist for the 2011 Kitschies Golden Tentacle award for best debut novel.
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Parnell is called by a friend, Steve Blakiston, who is a psychiatrist using experimental equipment. A patient called Marsham Craswell, a famous writer of "sword and sorcery" fantasy novels, has retreated into a state where he is living a dream in the fantasy world he created. Pete is asked to enter that dream using the new device and bring Craswell back to reality. Doing this requires somebody who is totally immune, and indeed hostile, to the fantasy.
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Yoddha: The Warrior, or simply Yodha () is a 1992 Indian Malayalam-language sword and sorcery film directed by Sangeeth Sivan and written by Sasidharan Arattuvazhi by Sivan's envision of The Golden Child. Mohanlal plays Thaiparambil Ashokan, the saviour destined to rescue the Rimpoche of a Nepalese Buddhist monastery from sorcerers practicing black magic. The ensemble supporting cast include Madhoo, Siddharth Lama, Jagathy Sreekumar, Puneet Issar, and Urvashi. The original songs and background score were composed by A. R. Rahman.
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Id The Greatest Fusion Fantasy (이드 pronounced Ee day) is a manhwa (comic) written by Kim Daewoo (김대우), with art by A. T. Kenny. Released between 2002 and 2009, the manhwa version is adapted from the novel of the same name by the same author. The plot is set in a fantasy universe where traditional sword and sorcery elements (mana, elemental magic system, dragons, elves, dwarves etc.) and Chinese wuxia plot elements (qi, taoist ideas, references to jianghu) coexist.
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Cirith Ungol is an American heavy metal band formed in late 1971 in Ventura, California. The group is known for lyrics based on fantasy (particularly sword and sorcery) and is an early doom and power metal band. Throughout the 1970s, the band generally played a style of heavy metal heavily rooted in hard and progressive rock. The band's first studio album, Frost and Fire (1981), featured a heavier sound, generally regarded as an early example of American power metal.
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Kane is a literary character created by Karl Edward Wagner in a series of sword and sorcery novels and short stories first published between 1970 and 1985. The stories are set in a grim, pre-medieval world which is nonetheless ancient and rich in history. In some of Wagner's later stories Kane appears in the present day -- for example, as a drug dealer in "Lacunae" and as a somewhat suspect publishing magnate in "At First Just Ghostly".
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"Black Tears" is a short story by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. It was first published by Lancer Books in the paperback collection Conan the Wanderer (1968), which was reprinted several times, first by Lancer and later by Ace Books through 1982. It has since been published by Orbit Books in the omnibus paperback collection The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990).
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Arthur Joseph Curry is the second DC Comics superhero to be known as Aquaman. Created by Kurt Busiek and Jackson Guice, he first appeared in Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #40 (May 2006). As part of DC Comics's One Year Later event, Aquaman's series was renamed Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis with issue #40 (May 2006). The new developments included a new lead character, a new supporting cast, and the inclusion of sword and sorcery–type fantasy elements in the series.
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He-Man is a fictional superhero and the flagship character of the sword and sorcery-themed Masters of the Universe franchise, which includes a toy line, several animated television series, comic books and a feature film. He-Man is characterized by his superhuman strength. In most variations, he is the alter ego of Prince Adam. He-Man and his friends attempt to defend the realm of Eternia and the secrets of Castle Grayskull from the evil forces of Skeletor.
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"Jewels of Gwahlur" is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard. Set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age, it concerns several parties, including Conan, fighting over and hunting for the eponymous treasure in Hyborian Africa. The tale was first published in the March, 1935 issue of Weird Tales. Howard's original title for the story was "The Servants of Bit-Yakin".
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Leiber's only solo Grey Mouser tale, "The Unholy Grail", was the cover story for the October 1962 issue of Fantastic The Unholy Grail is a sword and sorcery novella by Fritz Leiber, recounting the earliest adventure of the Gray Mouser. First published in 1962, it is the nature of a prequel, as Leiber had by that time been chronicling the pair's adventures for thirty years. The story forms part three of the collection Swords and Deviltry.
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Roger Ebert rated the film 3 out of 4 stars and wrote that Conan the Destroyer is "sillier, funnier, and more entertaining" than the first film. In praising the film's use of character actors, Ebert singled out Jones, who he said brings rock star charisma to her role. Variety called it "the ideal sword and sorcery picture" and also praised Jones. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that Schwarzenegger struggles with the film's more comedic tone.
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In the 1970s, he collaborated with his sister, artist Marie Severin, on Marvel's sword and sorcery series, King Kull.Sanderson, Peter "1970s" in Gilbert (2008), p. 150 During this time he was by far the most prolific contributor to the satiric Cracked magazine, drawing television and movie parodies along with other features, including most of the magazine's covers. For Warren Publishing in the 1960s, he drew for the black-and-white comics magazines Blazing Combat and Creepy.
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"Our Bounties Ourselves" is the third episode of the first season of the comedic sword and sorcery series Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on April 16, 2009. The episode was written by series co-developer Brad Johnson and directed by Alex Hardcastle. In "Our Bounties Ourselves", Kröd and Aneka drink a magic potion to feign death and avoid capture at the hands of Chancellor Dongalor.
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Bullock had his first prose piece, White Knight, starring The Phantom published in Moonstone Books' Phantom Chronicles volume I in 2007. He followed that with several more Phantom prose pieces including the critically acclaimed Final Roar in the Phantom Generations series. Bullock has also written prose shorts starring Zorro, Black Bat and Death Angel. At Pulp Ark 2011, Bullock's first full-length novel series was announced from Airship 27, starring Bullock's own sword and sorcery character The Runemaster.
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In The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, John Clute and John Grant cite The Sword is Forged as an example of the use of the Amazon in sword and sorcery as "an icon of female autonomy". They go on to explain that novel uses Theseus to present "a patriarchal challenge to the Amazon in terms which allow some inspired debate". Kirkus Reviews suggests that the takeaway theme of the novel is that "love 'must always mean bondage' for women".
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Sean A. Moore (April 20, 1964 – February 23, 1998)Social Security Death Index was an American fantasy and science fiction writer, and computer programmer. His primary significance as a writer is for his three pastiche novels featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan and for his work on the screenplay of the movie Kull the Conqueror, and novelization of the same film.Obituaries in the Performing Arts, 1998, Harris M. Lentz, III, McFarland & Co., 1999, page 159.
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Dossouye herself is a woman warrior inspired by the real-life female warriors of the West African Kingdom of Dahomey. Her first stories appeared in Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Amazons! and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress,Looking Back on the first Sword and Sorceress two anthologies designed to increase the number and recognition of female heroes in sword and sorcery fiction. "Agbewe's Sword" was adapted by Saunders himself in the screenplay of the film Amazons (1986).
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Yor, the Hunter from the Future is an adaptation of the Argentinian comic book Yor, created in 1974 by writer Eugenio Juan Zappietro and artist Juan Zanotto. The comic appeared in the Italian magazine Lanciostory in 1975. Director Antonio Margheriti later told an interviewer that the comic was fascinating to him. The film was part of a wave of sword- and-sorcery themed films that appeared after the success of John Milius's 1982 film version of Conan the Barbarian.
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His style is easily recognisable, especially his lavishly elegant and sensual, pouting females. He has been mainly involved in the science fiction and fantasy genre, often with a decidedly erotic slant. His fantasy stories range from sword and sorcery to the 1001 Arabian Nights type. He also raises the issue of conflict between peoples, such as in science fiction stories where the inhabitants of soon-to-be colonised planets are massacred so that humans from Earth can move in.
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After Alienator (1989) he was reunited with Deezen for Mob Boss (1990), another comedy. He entered sword and sorcery movies with Wizards of the Demon Sword (1991) and made the more popular Bad Girls from Mars (1991). During this time he published a book he had written, The New Poverty Row: Independent Filmmakers as Distributors (1991).2007 Audio Interview at Your Video Store Shelf Ray co-directed Scream Queen Hot Tub Party (1991) with Jim Wynorski, shot in one day.
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The Thousand Orcs debuted on the New York Times bestseller list at number 11. Reviews were generally positive. Publishers Weekly described it as a "rousing tale of derring-do and harrowing escapes", although in doing so they acknowledged that it was a "light-hearted sword and sorcery novel" which gained some depth through Drizzt's philosophical ponderings about human frailties. Similarly, Paul Brink, writing for the School Library Journal, acknowledged the author's use of Drizzt to "reflect on issues of racial prejudice".
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For the fantasy anthology published by Mayflower see Warlocks and Warriors (Mayflower) Warlocks and Warriors is an anthology of fantasy short stories in the sword and sorcery subgenre, edited by American writer L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in hardcover by Putnam in 1970, and in paperback by Berkley Books in 1971. It was the fourth such anthology assembled by de Camp, following his earlier Swords and Sorcery (1963), The Spell of Seven (1965), and The Fantastic Swordsmen (1967).
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Future Leiber's short novel "You're All Alone" was the cover story in the July 1950 issue of Fantastic Adventures Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. (December 24, 1910 – September 5, 1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theater and films, playwright and chess expert. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of sword and sorcery fantasy, having coined the term.
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Moorcock is a fervent supporter of the works of Mervyn Peake. He cites Fritz Leiber, an important sword and sorcery pioneer, as an author who writes fantasy that is not escapist and contains meaningful themes. These views can be found in his study of epic fantasy, Wizardry and Wild Romance (Gollancz, 1987) which was revised and reissued by MonkeyBrain Books in 2004—its first U.S. edition catalogued by ISFDB. Moorcock is somewhat dismissive of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien.
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The Thousand Orcs debuted on The New York Times bestseller list at number 11. Reviews were generally positive. Publishers Weekly described it as a "rousing tale of derring-do and harrowing escapes", although in doing so they acknowledged that it was a "light-hearted sword and sorcery novel", which gained some depth through Drizzt's philosophical ponderings about human frailties. Similarly, Paul Brink, writing for the School Library Journal, acknowledged the author's use of Drizzt to "reflect on issues of racial prejudice".
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The book collects eleven sword and sorcery tales of protagonists and settings prominent in the genre, featuring Henry Kuttner's Elak of Atlantis, Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique, Lin Carter's Thongor, David C. Smith's Oron, Charles R. Saunders's Imaro, Richard L. Tierney's Simon of Gitta (based on the legendary Simon Magus), Milton J. Davis's Changa, Charles R. Rutledge's Karrn, and Ken Asamatu's Ikkyū, among others. Some are by the authors associated with the original works and others are pastisches by later writers.
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Conan is a 1967 collection of seven fantasy short stories and associated pieces written by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories were originally published in various pulp magazines. The book was first published in paperback by Lancer Books in 1967, and was reprinted in 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 (twice) and 1973. After the bankruptcy of Lancer, publication was taken over by Ace Books.
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Philippe Buchet (born 7 May 1962 in Juniville, Ardennes, France) is a French comic book artist. First working as a freelance illustrator in Paris and Reims, he finally entered comic book terrain with Nomad, on which he worked with Jean-David Morvan. He also worked for the magazine Dragon, and created Wake together with Morvan. While working for Dragon he collaborated with Morvan on a sword and sorcery series La Quête des réponses, which came out as a single album in 1998.
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Paolini stated he enjoyed the film, particularly praising the performances of Jeremy Irons and Ed Speleers. Eragon grossed approximately $75 million in the United States and $173.9 million elsewhere, totaling $249 million worldwide. It is the fifth highest-grossing film with a dragon at its focal point, and the sixth highest- grossing film of the sword and sorcery subgenre. Eragon was in release for seventeen weeks in the United States, opening on December 15, 2006 and closing on April 9, 2007.
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"The Castle of Terror" is a fantasy short story by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. It was first published by Lancer Books in the paperback collection Conan of Cimmeria (1969), which was reprinted several times, first by Lancer and later by Ace Books through 1993. It has also been published by Sphere Books in the omnibus paperback collection The Conan Chronicles (1989).
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Most of the "legendarium" was edited and posthumously published by his son Christopher. While Tolkien was preceded by other fantasy authors, his enduringly popular and successful works have had a remarkable influence on the genre. Thus he has been popularly identified as the "father of modern fantasy literature", or to be precise, high fantasy. L. Sprague de Camp and others consider him the father of modern fantasy together with sword and sorcery author Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian).
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The first two stories (the second original to the collection) showcase Leiber's Sword and Sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The other pieces originally were published in the magazines The Dragon Magazine for December 1977 and Fantastic Stories of Imagination for February 1962 and October 1964, the collection The Second Book of Fritz Leiber (1975), the magazines Fantastic for February 1969 and Worlds of If for August 1974, and the anthologies The Disciples of Cthulhu (1976) and Superhorror (1976).
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He also voiced Crusher in the Skylanders franchise and Retro Hercules in Smite. In 2015 and 2016, Sorbo played wizard Gojun Pye in a series of five Mythica sword-and-sorcery fantasy movies. In 2017, Sorbo played the ill-fated King Lar Gand of Daxam on the CW series Supergirl. He appeared opposite Teri Hatcher as his wife Queen Rhea—24 years earlier, they were almost cast opposite each other in Lois and Clark before Sorbo lost out to Dean Cain.
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Conan the Mercenary is a fantasy novel written by American writer Andrew J. Offutt and illustrated by Esteban Maroto featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, the second volume in a trilogy beginning with Conan and the Sorcerer and concluding with The Sword of Skelos. It was first published in paperback by Ace Books in 1980,Conan the Mercenary, 1st ed., Ace Books, 1981, c1980, title page verso. with an official publication date of January 1981.
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Though that project stalled, they kept in contact. In a 2006 interview, del Toro was quoted saying "I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits .... I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff". After he signed on to direct in April 2008, Del Toro posted on TheOneRing.net forums that he had been enchanted by The Hobbit as a child, but found that Tolkien's other books "contain[ed] geography and genealogy too complex for my prepubescent brain".
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Jonathan Pryce plays the role of The High Sparrow in the television series. The High Sparrow is played by the Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce in the television adaption of the series of books. Pryce admitted that one of the main reasons he took the role was because of how influential the character is plot-wise. While at first being quite sceptical about "sword and sorcery" shows, he later had a change of heart after his positive experiences on the Game of Thrones sets.
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Michael Moorcock's Elric: Tales of the White Wolf. Stone Mountain, GA: White Wolf Publishing, 2004, pp234-50. The character Kane is considered one of the most memorable and original anti-heroes of heroic fantasy.. Stephen Jones, "Raising Kane" in Midnight Sun (2003), p. 1. Inspired by the sword and sorcery adventures of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and Robert E. Howard's mighty-thewed barbarian Conan the Cimmerian, Wagner set about creating his own fantasy character while still attending medical school.
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She did write a foreword for each book and may have helped plan the storylines, and therefore was credited as a co-author for all three novels. The publisher, however, eliminated Cherryh's introduction from most or all editions of the book. The novels are unusual for the genre in their treatment of magic. Specifically, although wizards exist in the books, they do not cast magic spells in the manner typical of works of high fantasy or tales of Sword and Sorcery.
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Retrieved 2012-06-05. The tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth (2009) contains short fiction set in the world of the Dying Earth by numerous writers alongside tributes to Vance's work and influence. In 2010 Shea wrote another authorized story belonging to the Dying Earth series and featuring Cugel as one of characters: "Hew the Tintmaster", published in the anthology Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery, ed. Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders (Eos, 2010, pp. 323–362). . 2012-06-12.
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Domine is an Italian heavy metal band formed in 1983. The power metal band from Florence, who began releasing demo tapes in 1986, got some attention with their first album, Champion Eternal, released in 1997. Domine went on to release four more albums, touring Europe and playing at many festivals. They have been linked to heroic fantasy and sword and sorcery writers like Michael Moorcock and Robert E. Howard for their lyrics related to the Elric of Melniboné and Conan the Barbarian novels.
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Schwarzenegger's breakthrough film was the sword-and-sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian in 1982, which was a box-office hit. This was followed by a sequel, Conan the Destroyer, in 1984, although it was not as successful as its predecessor. In 1983, Schwarzenegger starred in the promotional video, Carnival in Rio. In 1984, he made his first appearance as the eponymous character, and what some would say was his acting career's signature role, in James Cameron's science fiction thriller film The Terminator.
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Sadamoto's character designs follow the fantasy theme as well, drawing influence from the sword and sorcery subgenre in particular. Character designs also draw on Celtic imagery: Director Mashimo acknowledged similarities between Bear's design and Mel Gibson in his role as William Wallace, an example of Celtic warrior. All the characters are given distinctive patterns resembling tattoos, the visual representation of a fictional gameplay aspect called Wave. In contrast with The World's scenery, real-world sequences are minimalist in their presentation.
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The Hour of the Dragon, also known as Conan the Conqueror, is a fantasy novel by American writer Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian. It was one of the last Conan stories published before Howard's suicide, although not the last to be written.Jones, Stephen; Afterword in The Conan Chronicles, vol. 2; 2001; The novel was first published in serial form in the December, 1935 through April, 1936 issues of the pulp magazine Weird Tales.
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The novel can be classed as a planetary romance. This genre is a subset of science fiction, similar to sword and sorcery, but including scientific elements. Most of the action in a planetary romance is on the surface of an alien world, usually includes sword fighting, monsters, supernatural elements as telepathy rather than magic, and involves civilizations echoing those on Earth in pre-technological eras, particularly composed of kingdoms or theocratic nations. Spacecraft may appear, but are usually not central to the story.
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The novel can be classed as a planetary romance. This genre is a subset of science fiction, similar to sword and sorcery, but including scientific elements. Most of the action in a planetary romance is on the surface of an alien world, usually includes sword fighting, monsters, supernatural elements as telepathy rather than magic, and involves civilizations echoing those on Earth in pre-technological eras, particularly composed of kingdoms or theocratic nations. Spacecraft may appear, but are usually not central to the story.
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When one of Cyber's henchwomen killed Trevor (in issue 180), Diana transitioned into working with Ching to bring down Cyber. Other adventures included sword-and-sorcery missions, supernatural villains, fighting militia sects, and helping people in trouble. Diana left the military, opening a "mod" boutique in New York City. After rescuing runaway Cathy Perkins, who had been captured by a weird dominatrix gang, she hired Cathy to be her assistant and run the boutique when Diana was called away for adventures.
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In Showcase #82 (May 1969), he and writer Dennis O'Neil co- created the minor sword and sorcery character Nightmaster—originally assigned to then-newcomer Bernie Wrightson, who was taken off it after his first seven pages proved disappointing. He contributed to at least one issue of the black- and-white humor magazine Sick (#70, Oct. 1969), edited by his friend Joe Simon, the Golden Age co-creator of Captain America, then collaborated with Simon at DC on issues of Champion Sports.
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Academy Comics was an American comic book publisher founded by Mark Paniccia (an editor at Marvel Comics as of 2011). It was founded as Pyramid Publishing in 1986, and became New Century Comics by 1990, which served primarily as a vehicle to publish Paniccia's own sword and sorcery comics. It later changed its name to Acid Rain Studios in order to publish a series of vampire and gothic comic books. The name was changed to Academy after it acquired the Robotech license in 1994.
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Dossouye is a fix-up novel created from the short stories "Agbewe's Sword", "Gimmile's Songs", "Shiminege’s Mask", "Marwe’s Forest", and "Obenga’s Drum", the last previously unpublished. Dossouye herself is a woman warrior inspired by the real-life female warriors of the West African Kingdom of Dahomey. Her first stories appeared in Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Amazons! and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress,Looking Back on the first Sword and Sorceress two anthologies designed to increase the number and recognition of female heroes in sword and sorcery fiction.
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The attraction opened at both Universal Studios Florida and Universal Studios Hollywood in 1992. The Florida venue replaced An American Tail Theatre, and the Hollywood version opened on an outdoor stage near the current site of "Super Silly Fun Land". The venue at Universal Studios Florida was refurbished in 1994, and a canopy was added to block the sun. The show at Universal Studios Hollywood was revamped and moved indoors in 1995, replacing The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular in the Castle Theater.
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"The Creig Flessel Interview" (2001), p. 2. Archived from the original on February 6, 2013. He broke into comics after answering an ad in The New York Times by Major Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, whose National Allied Publications would eventually become DC Comics, and began freelancing there. His first known work for the publisher appeared in More Fun Comics #10 (cover- dated May 1936), penciling and inking the two-page sword-and-sorcery feature "Don Drake" and the two-page humor strip "Fishy Frolics".
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Conan the Barbarian is a fantasy novel written by Michael A. Stackpole featuring Robert E. Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero of the same name, a novelization of the feature film of the same name. It was first published in paperback by Berkley Books in 2011. An earlier novel of the same name by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter and Catherine Crook de Camp, based on the original film of which the 2011 version was a remake, was published by Bantam Books in 1982.
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In 2015, he joined the cast of the HBO series Game of Thrones in Season 5 as the High Sparrow. Pryce admitted that one of the main reasons he took on the role was because of how influential the character is plot-wise. While initially being quite sceptical about "sword and sorcery" shows, Pryce later had a change of heart after his positive experiences on the Thrones sets. In 2015, he also appeared at The Globe Theatre as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
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"Red Moon of Zembabwei" is a short story by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. It was first published in the July 1974 issue of the magazine Fantastic, and was first appeared in book form by Ace Books in the paperback collection Conan of Aquilonia in May 1977, which was reprinted several times through 1994. The first British edition was published by Sphere Books in October 1978.
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"Shadows in the Skull" is a short story by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. It was first published in the February 1975 issue of the magazine Fantastic, and first appeared in book form by Ace Books in the paperback collection Conan of Aquilonia in May 1977, which was reprinted several times through 1994. The first British edition was published by Sphere Books in October 1978.
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"Black Sphinx of Nebthu" is a fantasy short story by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. It was first published in the July 1973 issue of the magazine Fantastic, and was first appeared in book form by Ace Books in the paperback collection Conan of Aquilonia in May 1977, which was reprinted several times through 1994. The first British edition was published by Sphere Books in October 1978.
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"The Witch of the Mists" is a fantasy short story by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. It was first published in the August 1972 issue of the magazine Fantastic, and was first appeared in book form by Ace Books in the paperback collection Conan of Aquilonia in May 1977, which was reprinted several times through 1994. The first British edition was published by Sphere Books in October 1978.
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Later big- and small-screen adaptations of Robert E. Howard's stories were considered by Sammon to be inferior to the film that started the trend. A spinoff from Conan was a 20-minute live-action show, The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular, that ran from 1983 to 1993 at Universal Studios Hollywood. Produced at a cost of $5 million, the show featured action scenes executed to music composed by Poledouris. The show's highlights were pyrotechnics, lasers, and an animatronic dragon that breathed fire.
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The Conan Chronicles: Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 2000 by Gollancz as eighth volume of their Fantasy Masterworks series. The book, edited by Stephen Jones, presents the stories in their internal chronological order. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines The Phantagraph, Weird Tales, Super-Science Fiction, Magazine of Horror and Fantasy Fiction.
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Witchaven (usually pronounced ) is a dark fantasy first-person shooter video game developed by Capstone Software and published by Intracorp Entertainment in 1995. Its sword-and-sorcery themed story tasks the knight Grondoval with a quest to seek out and destroy a lair of witches in their titular fortress, fighting hordes of hostile monsters along the way. Witchaven features action role-playing elements such as leveling, as well as an emphasis on melee combat. Its code was based upon an early version of the nascent Build engine.
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A unnamed, 34-year-old Japanese NEET is evicted from his home following the death of his parents. Upon some self-introspection, he concludes that his life was ultimately pointless. He intercepts a speeding truck heading towards a group of teenagers in an attempt to do something meaningful for once in his life, and manages to pull one of them out of harm's way before dying. Awakening in a baby's body, he realizes he has been reincarnated in a world of sword and sorcery.
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In the large German-language market, his books continue to be widely read. Vance was an original member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s and led by Lin Carter. Its purpose was to promote the sword and sorcery subgenre (such as Dying Earth stories by Vance), and some new works were published in Flashing Swords! anthologies edited by Carter, in both mass- market paperback and Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club editions.
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Shea continued the adventures of Nifft in The Mines of Behemoth (Baen, 1997), serialised one year earlier in the Algis Budrys magazine Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, and in a novel The A'rak (2000). The Nifft stories are "sword-and-sorcery" modeled on Jack Vance, notable for their imaginative depiction of the world of demons and their blend of horror, flowery diction, and occasionally crude humor. Shea's work overlaps the science fiction and fantasy genres, e.g., thematic use of demons and aliens that act as endoparasites.
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Bakshi's rock musical American Pop (1981) was another success, mostly made with the rotoscope technique in combination with some water colors, computer graphics, live-action shots, and archival footage. His next film Fire and Ice (1983) was a collaboration with artist Frank Frazetta. It was one of many films in the sword and sorcery genre released after the success of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and The Beastmaster (1982). Critics appreciated the visuals and action sequences, but not its script, and the film flopped at the box office.
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An island story; a child's history of England (1906). In his introduction to the reference Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter notes that the heritage of Sword and Sorcery is illustrious, and can be traced back to mythology, including the labors of Hercules, as well as to classical epics such as Homer's Odyssey, the Norse sagas, and Arthurian legend. It also has been influenced by historical fiction. For instance, the work of Sir Walter Scott was influenced by Scottish folklore and ballads.
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Although a Conan novel was nearly published in 1934, Howard's stories were never collected during his lifetime. The main outlet for his stories was Weird Tales, where Howard created Conan the Barbarian. With Conan and his other heroes, Howard helped fashion the genre now known as sword and sorcery, spawning many imitators and giving him a large influence in the fantasy field. Howard remains a highly read author, with his best works still reprinted, and is one of the best-selling fantasy writers of all time.
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Conan the Destroyer is a 1984 American epic sword and sorcery film directed by Richard Fleischer from a screenplay by Stanley Mann and a story by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway. Based on the character Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard, it is the sequel to Conan the Barbarian (1982). The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mako reprising their roles as Conan and Akiro, the Wizard of the Mounds, respectively. The cast also includes Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, Tracey Walter, and Olivia d'Abo.
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Harrison brilliantly depicts the workings of civilization on the verge of collapse and the heroic efforts of individuals to help it sustain itself a little longer. The third novel, In Viriconium (1982) (US title: The Floating Gods), was nominated for the Guardian Fiction Prize during 1982. It is a moody portrait of artistic subcultures in a city beset by a mysterious plague. Where the previous books in the series held some sword and sorcery elements, In Viriconium goes beyond black humour into a coma of despair.
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Conan the Valorous is a fantasy novel by American writer John Maddox Roberts, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in September 1985; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in September 1986, and was reprinted in January 1992. The first British edition was published in paperback by Sphere Books in September 1987. The book also includes "Conan the Indestructible", L. Sprague de Camp's chronological essay on Conan's career.
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Dragonsword is a novel written by Gael Baudino and published in 1988. It is the first in the Dragonsword Trilogy. The other novels are Duel of Dragons (1989) and Dragon Death (1992). According to the author, after completing an unfinished manuscript and fleshing it out to roughly double its length, she sold it to Byron Preiss Books, a "book packaging company" looking for a "series of sword and sorcery novels including dragons and a super-magical sword", who sold it to Lynx Omeiga Books.
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In an interview or commentary published in bilingual form (English and French) in a collection of his drawings (blockBuster, 2005) Buchet noted that science fiction had the peculiarity of "allowing a natural journey between past and future". The science fiction traditions of cryogenics and social manipulation at a grand scale made it possible for him and Morvan to explore the subgenre of steampunk in "gearing up", while the tradition of barbaric pre-industrial planets made an exploration of "sword and sorcery" possible in The sign of the Demons, and so on.
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The series is about the mythical sword-and-sorcery adventures of three companions: Galtar, Princess Goleeta, and her younger mind controlling brother Zorn. Galtar, with the help of his Golden Lance, is fighting with Tormak, the tyrannical usurper of the kingdom of Bandisar, who is conquering their entire world. Tormak is responsible for the death of both Galtar's parents and assassinating the rest of Goleeta and Zorn's family. Tormak covets the power of the Golden Lance, wishing to combine it with the Sacred Shield, which rightfully belongs to Goleeta and Zorn.
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Conan the Barbarian (also known as Conan the Cimmerian) is a fictional sword and sorcery hero who originated in pulp magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, several films (including Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer), television programs (animated and live-action), video games, role- playing games, and other media. The character was created by the writer Robert E. Howard in 1932 for a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales magazine. Conan is "one of the towering figures in fantasy and literature". Thief, savage, warrior, king.
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Film critic Luc Sante describes Driver's movies as "doorways into the unknown." Rosenbaum wrote that Driver's films "belong to what the French call le fantastique-- a conflation of fantasy with surrealism, science fiction, comics, horror, sword- and-sorcery, and the supernatural that stretches all the way from art cinema to exploitation by way of Hollywood."Jonathan Rosenbaum, "From Bowles to the Bowery: Sara Driver in Hyper Drive," Liner notes to Driver x 4 DVD collection, 2012. The moving image collection of Sara Driver is held at the Academy Film Archive.
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Wolfshead is the title of a 1926 novelette about lycanthropy by American author Robert E. Howard, as well as the title of a posthumously-published collection of seven novelettes by the same author, named after the story "Wolfshead", which it includes. The collection covers the genres of adventure fiction, horror, historical fiction, fantasy, sword and sorcery, weird fiction and the weird West, and was first published by Lancer. Five of the novelettes had previously been published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, and one each in Avon Fantasy Reader and Strange Tales.
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In the early 1970s, Gary Gygax was playing Chainmail, a wargame that bore some precursors of Dungeons & Dragons. In order to give his players as many different challenges as possible, Gygax was always on the look-out for new monsters. Although he was able to draw on pulp fiction and sword and sorcery stories for many of them, he also looked through dime stores for figurines that could be used in battle. On one of those occasions, he came across a bag of small plastic toys euphemistically labeled "prehistoric animals".
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The story deals with Smax and Toybox returning, via magical teleportation, to Jeff's magically enchanted homeworld. Smax, now a city dweller, seems embarrassed by his unsophisticated, sword-and-sorcery roots. They attend Smax's uncle's funeral where Jeff introduces Robyn as his wife, though no such relationship exists. At this point Jeff's sister Rexa Macksun is introduced, dressed in the typical garb of a female fantasy barbarian such as Red Sonja and just as tall and physically impressive as her brother with the same blue skin and white hair.
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In the mid-1930s Kline largely abandoned writing to concentrate on his career as a literary agent (most famously for fellow Weird Tales author Robert E. Howard, pioneer sword and sorcery writer and creator of Conan the Barbarian). Kline represented Howard from the spring of 1933 till Howard's death in June 1936, and continued to act as literary agent for Howard's estate thereafter. It has been suggested that Kline may have completed Howard's "planetary romance" Almuric, which he submitted to Weird Tales for posthumous publication in 1939, although this claim is disputed.
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Conan the Wanderer is a 1968 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writers Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories were originally published in various fantasy magazines. The book has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers, and has also been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Italian. It was later gathered together with Conan the Adventurer and Conan the Buccaneer into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990).
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Conan the Freebooter is a 1968 collection of five fantasy short stories by American writers Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times by various publishers, and has also been translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, and Japanese. It was later gathered together with Conan and Conan of Cimmeria into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles (1989).
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The game is set in a sword and sorcery setting, where the titular protagonist Blade the Warrior embarks on a quest to destroy the evil Black Witch and thus liberate the far-north land of Sayell that she rules over. Blade needs to follow the trail of Mazar the Wizard, who went on the same mission many months ago and did not return. Along the way, Blade fights against the Black Witch's monstrous minions while looking for enough magic to survive the witch's spells and defeat her, and hopefully save Mazar too.
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"Ill Met in Lankhmar" is a sword and sorcery novella by American writer Fritz Leiber, recounting the meeting and teaming-up of his adventurous duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. First published in 1970 in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, it is a prequel, as Leiber had by that time been chronicling the pair's adventures for thirty years. The story forms part four of the collection Swords and Deviltry. It was awarded the 1970 Nebula Award for Best Novella and the 1971 Hugo Award for Best Novella.
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Conan the Barbarian is a collection of five fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, first published in hardcover by Gnome Press in 1955. The stories originally appeared in the 1930s in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. This collection never saw publication in paperback; instead, its component stories were split up and distributed among other "Conan" collections. A later collection with the same title but different contents was issued in paperback by Del Rey/Ballantine Books in 2011.
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While the novel is often classed as science fantasy, it also belongs to the subgenre of planetary romance, which has affinities with fantasy Westfahl: 37. and sword and sorcery; it is distinguished by its inclusion of scientific (or pseudo-scientific) elements.Harris-Fain, p. 147. Planetary romances take place primarily on the surface of an alien world, and they often include sword-fighting and swashbuckling; monsters; supernatural elements such as telepathic abilities (as opposed to magic); and cultures that echo those of Earth in pre-industrial eras, especially with dynastic or theocratic social structures.
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The Sword of Conan is a collection of four fantasy short stories by Ametican writer Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, first published in hardcover by Gnome Press in 1952. The stories originally appeared in the 1930s in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. The collection never saw publication in paperback; instead, its component stories were split up and distributed among other "Conan" collections. Chronologically, the four short stories collected as The Sword of Conan are the third in Gnome's Conan series; the stories collected as King Conan follow.
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King Conan is a collection of five fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, first published in hardcover by Gnome Press in 1953. The stories originally appeared in the 1930s in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. The collection never saw publication in paperback; instead, its component stories were split up and distributed among other "Conan" collections. Chronologically, the five short stories collected as King Conan are the fourth in Gnome's Conan series; the novel Conan the Conqueror follows.
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This helped to invigorate the nascent sword and sorcery subgenre. Goldsmith obtained an early story by Cordwainer Smith, "The Fife of Bodidharma", which ran in the June 1959 issue, but shortly thereafter Pohl at Galaxy reached an agreement to get first refusal on all Smith's work. During the early 1960s Goldsmith managed to make Fantastic and Amazing, in the words of Mike Ashley, "the best-looking and brightest" magazines around. This applied both to the covers, where Goldsmith used artists such as Alex Schomburg and Leo Summers, and the content.
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The genre predates the mainstream popularity of science fiction proper, and does not necessarily feature any scientific rigor, being instead romantic tales of high adventure. For example, little thought is given to explaining why the environment of the alien planet is compatible with life from Earth, just that it does in order to allow the hero to move about and interact with the natives. Native technology will often break the known laws of physics. The genre tag "sword and planet" is constructed to mimic the terms sword and sorcery and sword and sandal.
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Based on the success of the 1982 film, Universal created a live-action show, The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular, that ran from 1983 to 1993 at Universal Studios Hollywood. Produced at a cost of $5 million, the 20-minute show featured action scenes executed to music composed by Basil Poledouris. The show's highlights were pyrotechnics, lasers, and an tall animatronic dragon that breathed fire. In 2013, the first dramatic on-stage version of 'Conan the Barbarian' - a Play based on the stories of Robert E.Howard - made its premiere in Tasmania, Australia.
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"Of Swordsmen and Sorcerers" [introduction], in Flashing Swords #1 (1973). Membership was soon extended to other authors sharing their taste for fantasy, such as Michael Moorcock, who was styled "Veiled Thaumaturge of the Mauve Barbarians of Ningg". The group remained fairly informal, with few expectations of its members; Moorcock has noted he "wasn't really an active member." Several sword and sorcery anthologies edited by L. Sprague de Camp for Pyramid Books and Putnam from 1963 to 1970 featured stories by SAGA members along with other, usually earlier fantasists.
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A redesigned Tyris Flare in Golden Axe: Beast Rider A different Tyris Flare is the protagonist of the 2008 reboot game Golden Axe: Beast Rider, in which she is a "half-gladiator/half-barbarian" defender of the Axirian Priestesses, a female sect worshipping the Great Dragon in the Island of Axir. After the sisterhood is wiped out by Death Adder's forces, she takes up sword and sorcery to avenge them and stop him from taking over the world. The game ends with her killing Death Adder in a snake form.
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Amra was a fanzine than began publication in 1959, created by L. Sprague de Camp and George Scithers, and grew to attract material from many famous authors and artists. Named after one of Conan's alter egos, it covered the subjects of Conan, Robert E. Howard and the sword and sorcery genre in general. It continued publication for thirty- three years. REHupa was formed in 1972 as an amateur press association, each of the small membership producing their own regular fanzine, which is sent to the Official Editor and subsequently disseminated to all members.
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The book collects five sword and sorcery or sword and planet short stories and novelettes by various authors, together with an introduction and introductory notes to the individual stories by the editor. All of the authors represented except Leigh Brackett were members of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a somewhat informal literary group of fantasy authors active from the 1960s to the 1980s, making the book a precursor of the five Flashing Swords! anthologies of SAGA-member works edited by Lin Carter from 1973 to 1981.
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Howard made his film debut in 2005 with the indie film Love Struck and worked primarily in television movies and short films. In 2010, he played the role of Ken Masters in the short film Street Fighter: Legacy opposite Jon Foo as Ryu. In addition to playing Ken, Howard also co-wrote the screenplay and assisted with fight choreography with director Joey Ansah. He earned his first male lead role in a feature film with Ross Boyask's sword and sorcery homage Warrioress opposite Cecily Fay, who met Howard while he worked as a stuntman.
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Similar to fighting games, MOBAs offer a large group of viable player characters for the player to choose from, each of which having different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses to make the game play style different. Choosing a character who complements player's teammates and counters his opponents, opens up a strategy before the beginning of the match itself. Playable characters blend a variety of fantasy tropes, such as high fantasy, dark fantasy, science fiction, sword and sorcery, Lovecraftian horror, cyberpunk and steampunk, featuring numerous references to popular culture and mythology.
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In most of his fiction, Carter was consciously imitative of the themes, subjects and styles of authors he admired. He usually identified his models in the introductions or afterwords of his novels, as well as in the introductory notes to self-anthologized or collected short stories. His best- known works are his sword and planet and sword and sorcery novels in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and James Branch Cabell. His first published book, The Wizard of Lemuria (1965), first of the "Thongor the Barbarian" series, combines both influences.
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"Newswatch: From Zero to Fifteen: Newcomer CrossGen Zooms Past Marvel and DC, Second Only to Fantagraphics in Harvey Nominations," The Comics Journal #242 (Apr. 2002), pp. 23-24. In 2003, other titles were released expanding the fictional universe: the sword and sorcery epic Brath; Chimera, a limited series about a Sigil- bearer on the far reaches of the Universe; the pirate adventure El Cazador; and two other titles that explain the origin of the Sigil-bearers, Solus and Mark of Charon. Titles such as Negation and Crux blended genres.
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"The Slithering Shadow" is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard and first published in the September 1933 issue of Weird Tales magazine. "The Slithering Shadow" is the original title, but the story is also known as "Xuthal of the Dusk" in further publications.Cover of Weird Tales September 1934, with original tile. It's set in the pseudo- historical Hyborian Age, and concerns Conan discovering a lost city in a remote desert while encountering a Lovecraftian demon known as Thog.
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Despite the importance of C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton, and other female authors, as well as Moore's early heroine, sword and sorcery has been characterized as having a strongly masculine bias. Female characters were generally distressed damsels to be rescued or protected, or otherwise served as an inducement or reward for a male hero's adventures. Women who had adventures of their own often did so to counter the threat of rape, or to gain revenge for same. Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress anthology series (1984 onwards) attempted the reverse.
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"The Tower of the Elephant" is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan infiltrating a perilous tower in order to steal a fabled gem from an evil sorcerer named Yara. Due to its unique insights into the Hyborian world and atypical science fiction elements, the story is considered a classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales.Patrice Louinet.
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The Warrior and the Sorceress is a 1984 Argentine-American fantasy action film directed by John C. Broderick and starring David Carradine, María Socas and Luke Askew. It was written by Broderick (story and screenplay) and William Stout (story). The Warrior and the Sorceress is a version of the classic Kurosawa film Yojimbo.DVD Talk - Roger Corman's Cult Classics Double Feature: The Warrior and the Sorceress/Barbarian Queen The film is noted chiefly for containing extensive nudity and violence and for being one of the more extreme examples of the sword-and-sorcery genre.
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GMs and players. Saturnalia was one of the first single-character sword and sorcery fantasy Play-by-Mail role-playing games run in the United Kingdom. The game started in 1984, being created by Neil Packer and Simon Letts and grew from its initial players at the University of Southampton up to over three thousand scattered across the United Kingdom and beyond. A company, Sloth Enterprises was formed, with many full-time GMs running Saturnalia from offices above a tyre/brakes/exhaust garage in the red-light district of Southampton.
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Conan the Liberator is a fantasy novel by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Bantam Books in February 1979, and reprinted in 1982; later paperback editions were issued by Ace Books (July 1987 and April 1991). The first hardcover edition was published by Tor Books in June 2002; a trade paperback followed from the same publisher in 2003. The first British edition was from Sphere Books (July 1987).
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Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II is a 1989 American sword and sorcery film written and directed by Charles B. Griffith and starring David Carradine, Mel Welles and Lana Clarkson. It was Griffith's last feature film credit and is a sequel to the Argentine-American cult film Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1985). The film includes stock footage of characters and scenes from Barbarian Queen (which starred Clarkson) and The Warrior and the Sorceress (which starred Carradine), both of which were also a coproduction between Argentina and United States.
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The conflict of good against evil is a theme in the many popular forms of fantasy; normally, evil characters invade and disrupt the good characters' lands. J. R. R. Tolkien delved into the nature of good and evil in The Lord of the Rings, but many of those who followed him use the conflict as a plot device, and often do not distinguish the sides by their behavior. In some works, most notably in sword and sorcery, evil is not opposed by the unambiguously good but by the morally unreliable.
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Foremost amongst the latter are The Tough Guide To Fantasyland, and its fictional companion-pieces Dark Lord of Derkholm (1998) and Year of the Griffin (2000), which provide a merciless (though not unaffectionate) critique of formulaic sword-and-sorcery epics. The Harry Potter books are frequently compared to the works of Diana Wynne Jones. Many of her earlier children's books were out of print in recent years, but have now been re-issued for the young audience whose interest in fantasy and reading was spurred by Harry Potter.de Lint, Charles (January 2000).
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"Description of the book, Zoran Stefanović, Amazon.com Publishers Weekly: "First published in Yugoslavia in 1993, Knežević's novel takes the form of a postmodern sword-and-sorcery adventure to comment insightfully on the nature of heroism and aggression. Its nameless narrator, a persecuted young Serb, bargains with a captive wizard to obtain the strength he needs to defend himself. (...) The allegorical intent of the story becomes clear only gradually, insofar as Knežević deliberately jumbles the order of his narrative, alternating early and later chapters in such a way that events of past and present are constantly mirroring and blending indistinguishably with one another.
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Dungeon (French title: Donjon) is a series of comic fantasy comic books created by Joann Sfar and Lewis Trondheim, with contributions from numerous other artists. It was originally published in France by Delcourt as a series of graphic albums; English translations of a large amount of stories have been released by NBM Publishing, first in a black-and-white periodical version and now as several color graphic novels. The series is a parody of sword and sorcery conventions in general, and specifically of the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. All of the characters are either anthropomorphic animals or other strange creatures.
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The 1973 film also included a Roman World and Medieval World, but Nolan has counted these out. Medieval elements were later included in a sword-and-sorcery fantasy-themed area known as Park Four, first shown in "The Winter Line". Nolan explained the series would explore, through its paying-guest characters, why "violence is in most of the stories we like to watch, but it isn't part of what we like to do". The autonomous existence of non-player characters in video games influenced the approach to the individual storylines in Westworld that are reset in a continuous loop.
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Swords and Deviltry is a fantasy short story collection, first published 1970, by Fritz Leiber, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the first volume of the complete seven volume edition of the collected stories devoted to the characters. The book was first published in paperback form during 1970 by Ace Books company, which reprinted the title numerous times through November 1985; later paperback editions were issued by ibooks (2003) and Dark Horse (2006). It has been published in the United Kingdom by New English Library (1971), Mayflower Books (1979) and Grafton (1986, 1988).
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He married fellow writer Frieda A. Murray in 1975; their one daughter Violette Y. Green was born in 1984. Green has worked as a full-time writer and reviewer most of the time since he sold his first novel, Wandor's Ride, in 1973. While his earliest published novels were the "Wandor" sword and sorcery series, Green's most prominent works are his military action adventures of the future, including the Starcruiser Shenandoah series, the Peace Company series, and Voyage to Eneh (2003). He has also written a number of Conan novels published by Tor Books and has co-authored several novels as well.
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"A Witch Shall Be Born" is one of the original sword and sorcery novellas by Robert E. Howard about Conan the Cimmerian. It was written in only a few days in spring of 1934 and first published in Weird Tales in December 1934. A book edition was published in 1975 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher with illustrations by Alicia Austin.A Witch Shall Be Born at Worldcat The story concerns a witch replacing her twin sister as queen of a city state, which brings her into conflict with Conan who had been the captain of the queen's guard.
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Conan the Victorious is a fantasy novel by American writer Robert Jordan, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in trade paperback by Tor Books in November 1984; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in December 1985, and was reprinted in March 1991 and August 2010. The first British edition was published in paperback by Sphere Books in April 1987. The novel was later gathered together with Conan the Magnificent and Conan the Triumphant into the hardcover omnibus collection The Further Chronicles of Conan (Tor Books, October 1999).
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An umbrella title that showcased a different heroic- adventure, science-fiction, or sword-and-sorcery character in virtually every issue. The title introduced the Marvel Comics characters Dominic Fortune in issue #2, Star-Lord in #4, and Rocket Raccoon in #7. The vigilante character the Punisher, introduced as an antagonist in the comic book The Amazing Spider-Man, had his first solo story in issue #2. The magazine had scheduling difficulties, with various "Next Issue" announcements proving unreliable. Issue #2 promised an adventure of the Marvel superhero Thor in #3, but a Blade story appeared, with the Thor story unseen until #10.
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Gez Walsh is a former joiner, former social worker and children's poet. He has written various books of children's comedy poetry including; "The Spot on my Bum", "The Return of the Spot", "Someone's Nicked My Knickers",Parents, Zits and Hairy Bits, Norah's Nasty Kickers, Fido's Foul Surprise, Don't Wee in the Bath, Terry and Mum, the Dog's Drunk Again! In addition, he is also the author of a trilogy of sword-and-sorcery fantasy novels: "The Man in the Skirt", "Banshee Moon" and "The Keeper". In 1997 he began touring promoting his wacky and zany poetry.
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Conan the Adventurer is a 1966 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writers Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers, and has also been translated into German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Dutch. It was later gathered together with Conan the Wanderer and Conan the Buccaneer into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990).
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He did the interior work on Ballade au bout du Monde (issues #5 to #8 written by Makyo). Later, he collaborated with on Les Mémoires d'Edward John Trelawnay, inspired by the real privateer Edward John Trelawny but in a science fiction universe with some fantasy elements. Then, in 1999, he created Krän ("crâne" which means skull in French), a series of fantasy comic books published in France by Vent d'Ouest. The series is a parody of sword and sorcery stories and specifically the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (Krän, the main character is a barbarian).
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An illustration of The Hyborian Age primarily based upon a map hand-drawn by Robert E. Howard in March 1932. Another version of the map, drawn by David Kyle for the 1950 Gnome Press edition of Conan the Conqueror. The Hyborian Age is a fictional period of Earth's history within the artificial mythology created by Robert E. Howard, serving as the setting for the sword and sorcery tales of Conan the Barbarian. The word "Hyborian" is derived from the legendary northern land of the ancient Greeks, Hyperborea, and is rendered as such in the earliest draft of Howard's essay "The Hyborian Age".
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In the United States, City of Heroes sold 330,000 copies ($13.8 million) by August 2006, after its release in April 2004. It was the country's 53rd best-selling computer game between January 2000 and August 2006. In 2004, Computer Gaming World hailed the game, saying, "City of Heroes blows a superpowered gust of fresh air into an increasingly stale sword-and- sorcery MMO world." PC Gamer, Game Informer, GameSpy and several other industry magazines lauded City of Heroes for its foray into the superhero genre and gave the game top or near top scores across the board.
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Stormquest, also known as El ojo de la tormenta (in Spanish: "The Eye of the Storm"), is a 1987 Argentine-American sword and sorcery fantasy adventure film directed by and written by Charles R. Saunders, based on a story Sessa created for the film. It was not released commercially in cinemas, and it was instead launched directly to the video market in USA in 1988. It was one of the last entries in a total of ten movies Roger Corman made in Argentina."Hollywood in Don Torcuato (third part)": When Roger Corman and his B-movies invaded Argentina Cinematófilos.com.
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Tara of the Twilight is a fantasy novel by American writer Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by Zebra Books in October 1979. According to Carter's introductory note, Tara of the Twilight represents his attempt to combine the genre of sword and sorcery with pornographic fantasy. Based on the unresolved state of the plot, he evidently projected at least one sequel, and three Tara short stories ("For the Blood is the Life", "The Love of the Sea" and "Pale Shadow") were published in the mid-1980s that presumably would have formed the basis for such a volume.
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Roberts cautioned that any political readings into these sword-and-sorcery films with regards to fascism is subjective. Film critic Richard Dyer said that such associations with Conan were inaccurate and influenced by misconceptions of Nietzschean philosophies, and scholars of philosophy said that the film industry has often misinterpreted the ideas behind the übermensch. Conan is also seen as a product of its time: The themes of the film reflect the political climate of the United States in the 1980s. Ronald Reagan was the country's president and the ideals of individualism were promoted during his two terms in office.
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The Treasure of Tranicos is a 1980 collection of a fantasy short story and essays by American writers Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian; the essays by de Camp are on the title story and on Howard. The book is illustrated by Esteban Maroto. The title story was revised by de Camp from the original version by Howard and was first published as "The Black Stranger" in Fantasy Magazine for February, 1953. It subsequently appeared in the collections King Conan (Gnome Press, 1953) and Conan the Usurper (Lancer Books, 1967).
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The Reluctant King is the overall title of a trilogy of fantasy novels written by L. Sprague de Camp as part of his Novarian series, as well as the 1983 omnibus collection gathering the books together into one volume. The trilogy features de Camp's sword and sorcery hero King Jorian of Xylar, and is composed of The Goblin Tower (1968), The Clocks of Iraz (1971) and The Unbeheaded King (1983). The omnibus was first published in hardcover by Nelson Doubleday in 1983 as an offering for its Science Fiction Book Club, and was reissued in paperback by Baen Books in 1996.
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"Wench Trouble" is the first episode of the first season of the comedic sword and sorcery series Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on April 9, 2009, then on BBC2 in the United Kingdom on June 11, 2009. The episode was written by series creator Peter Knight and directed by Alex Hardcastle. "Wench Trouble" introduced the protagonist Kröd Mändoon, played by Sean Maguire, as well as the other regular characters played by cast members Matt Lucas, India de Beaufort, Steve Speirs, Kevin Hart and Marques Ray.
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John Buscema (; ; born Giovanni Natale Buscema, December 11, 1927 – January 10, 2002)Social Security Death Index for Buscema, John N., Social Security Number 108-20-9641. was an American comic book artist and one of the mainstays of Marvel Comics during its 1960s and 1970s ascendancy into an industry leader and its subsequent expansion to a major pop-culture conglomerate. His younger brother Sal Buscema is also a comic book artist. Buscema is best known for his run on the series The Avengers and The Silver Surfer, and for over 200 stories featuring the sword-and-sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian.
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Torkan is a heroic fantasy comic strip written and illustrated by Roger Fletcher. The strip debuted in June 1976 in the Sunday Telegraph and has appeared continuously in the paper to the present day, with over seventy stories having been published. During the early 1970s, Fletcher began developing a comic strip about an Australian soldier-of-fortune, titled Nathan Cole—until he was introduced to the world of sword and sorcery by science- fiction writer Fritz Leiber that would have a profound impact on his future. In particular, the pair of characters called Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser influenced Fletcher greatly.
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Kane's side projects include two long works that he conceived, plotted and illustrated, with scripting by Archie Goodwin (writing under the pseudonym of Robert Franklin): His Name Is... Savage (Adventure House Press, 1968), a self- published, 40-page, magazine-format comics novel; and Blackmark (1971), a science-fiction/sword-and-sorcery paperback published by Bantam Books and one of the earliest examples of the graphic novel, a term not in general use at the time. Howard Chaykin served as Kane's assistant during the production of Blackmark and would call Kane "the most influential male" in his life.
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The People of the Black Circle is a 1977 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The collection was edited by Karl Edward Wagner. It was first published in hardcover by Berkley/Putnam in 1977, and in paperback by Berkley Books the same year. It was reprinted in hardcover for the Science Fiction Book Club, also in 1977, and combined with the Wagner-edited The Hour of the Dragon and Red Nails in the book club's omnibus edition The Essential Conan in 1998.
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Red Nails is a 1977 collection of three fantasy short stories and one essay by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The collection was edited by Karl Edward Wagner. It was first published in hardcover by Berkley/Putnam in 1977, and in paperback by Berkley Books the same year. It was reprinted in hardcover for the Science Fiction Book Club, also in 1977, and combined with the Wagner-edited The Hour of the Dragon and The People of the Black Circle in the book club's omnibus edition The Essential Conan in 1998.
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He continued to work at a distance for Marvel, providing the art for a number of stories in the horror anthology titles Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness. Thomas, a long-time fan of Robert E. Howard's 1930 pulp-fiction character Conan the Barbarian, had Windsor-Smith provide art for a sword and sorcery story, "Starr the Slayer", in Chamber of Darkness No. 4 (April 1970). Soon afterwards, Thomas offered Windsor-Smith the job as penciller for Marvel's adaptation of Conan, starting with Conan the Barbarian No. 1 (Oct. 1970).Sanderson, Peter "1970s" in Gilbert (2008), p.
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1975)McAvennie "1970s" in Dolan, p. 165 "Writer/artist Mike Grell elevated the sword-and-sorcery genre to new heights with the Warlord." and was soon given his own ongoing title (The Warlord No. 1, Jan/Feb 1976). In this series, Air Force pilot Travis Morgan crash-lands in the prehistoric "hidden world" of Skartaris (a setting highly influenced by Jules Verne's A Journey to the Center of the Earth and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar). For years thereafter, Morgan engages in adventures dressed only in a winged helmet, wristbands, boots, and breechclout, and armed with a sword and a .
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The Sword of Thongor is a collection of fantasy short stories by American writer Robert M. Price, featuring Lin Carter's sword and sorcery hero Thongor of Valkarth. It was first published in trade paperback by Surinam Turtle Press in September 2016. Some of the pieces were originally published in magazines, the author's website, or the collection Young Thongor (Wildside Press, 2012); the remaining pieces are original to the present work. The book collects ten tales by Price set throughout Thongor's career, some based on titles or outlines by Carter, together with an introduction by Richard A. Lupoff.
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Detail from Blackmark (1971) by scripter Archie Goodwin and artist- plotter Gil Kane. Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin's Blackmark (1971), a science fiction/sword-and-sorcery paperback published by Bantam Books, did not use the term originally; the back-cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition () calls it, retroactively, "the very first American graphic novel". The Academy of Comic Book Arts presented Kane with a special 1971 Shazam Award for what it called "his paperback comics novel". Whatever the nomenclature, Blackmark is a 119-page story of comic-book art, with captions and word balloons, published in a traditional book format.
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Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné series, about a sword and sorcery anti-hero, began with "The Dreaming City" in the June 1961 Science Fantasy, and Moorcock appeared frequently thereafter: he had either a story or an essay (and sometimes both) in all but four of the remaining issues edited by Carnell. Terry Pratchett's first story, "The Hades Business", appeared in the August 1963 issue.David Langford, "Terry Pratchett", in Clute & Grant, Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 783. Ashley regards the early 1960s as one of the high points of the magazine;Mike Ashley, "Science Fantasy", in Clute & Grant, Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 844.
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"Black Colossus" is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard and first published in Weird Tales magazine, June 1933.Publication history of Black Colossus retrieved 23 December 2007 Howard earned $130 for the sale of this story.REHupa Fiction Timeline retrieved 23 December 2007 It's set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan leading the demoralized army of Khoraja against an evil sorcerer named Natohk, "the Veiled One." This story formed part of the basis for the later Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon.
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Mark Schultz in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (Del Rey, 2003). The original short story was written by Robert E. Howard and first appeared in a 1952 issue of Space Science Fiction magazine. "The God in the Bowl" is one of the original short stories featuring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard but not published during his lifetime. It's set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan robbing a temple museum only to be ensnared in bizarre events and deemed the prime suspect in a murder mystery.
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Their lower stakes and less-than world-threatening dangers make this more plausible than a repetition of the perils of epic fantasy. So too does the nature of the heroes; most sword-and-sorcery protagonists, travellers by nature, find peace after adventure deathly dull. At one extreme, the heroes of E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros grieve for the end of the war and that they have no more foes equal to those they defeated; in answer to their prayers, the gods restore the enemy city so that they can fight the same war over again.
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From the 1960s up till the 1980s, under the guiding force of Lin Carter, a select group of writers formed the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA) to promote and enlarge the sword and sorcery genre. From 1973 to 1981, five anthologies featuring short works by SAGA members were published. Edited by Carter, these were collectively known as Flashing Swords!. Because of these and other anthologies, such as the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, his own fiction, and his criticism, Carter is considered one of the most important popularizers of genre fantasy in general, and S&S; in particular.
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"Shadows in the Moonlight" is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard and first published in Weird Tales magazine in April 1934. Howard originally named his story "Iron Shadows in the Moon". It's set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan escaping to a remote island in the Vilayet Sea where he encounters the Red Brotherhood, a skulking creature, and mysterious iron statues. The story was republished in the collections Conan the Barbarian (Gnome Press, 1954) and Conan the Freebooter (Lancer Books, 1968).
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"Rogues in the House" is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard and first published in Weird Tales magazine in January 1934. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age, and concerns Conan inadvertently becoming involved in the struggle between two powerful men fighting for control of a city-state. It was the seventh Conan story Howard had published. It is famous for the fight scene between Conan and an ape, often known as the cover by artist Frank Frazetta.
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Granado Espada is a Korean fantasy MMORPG developed by IMC Games Co.,Ltd. Originally released in South Korea in February 2006, the English localizations were launched in the summer of 2007 in North America and Southeast Asia. Granado Espada won the 2006 Korean Presidential Award for Best Graphics and Game of the Year, with features previously unseen in an MMORPG (such as the ability for players to control multiple characters at the same time). Granado Espada features a unique art style based on the Baroque period of Europe, differing from the standard “sword and sorcery” fantasy themes of the genre.
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The Dark Man and Others is a posthumously-published anthology of fifteen short stories by American author Robert E. Howard, named after his short story "The Dark Man", and covering the genres of adventure fiction, horror, historical fiction, fantasy, sword and sorcery, weird fiction and the weird West. It was first published in 1963 by Arkham House, and was edited by August Derleth. Eleven of the stories had previously been published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, and one each in Argosy, Oriental Stories and Strange Tales. It was reprinted in 1971 as a paperback by Lancer.
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The term sorcerer is more frequently used when the magician in question is evil. This may derive from its use in sword and sorcery, where the hero would be the sword-wielder, leaving the sorcery for his opponent. Witch also carries evil connotations. L. Frank Baum named Glinda the "Good Witch of the South" in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In The Marvelous Land of Oz, he dubbed her "Glinda the Good," and from that point forward and in subsequent books, Baum referred to her as a sorceress rather than a witch to avoid the term that was more regarded as evil.
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The 3DO is one of few CD-based units that feature neither regional lockout nor copy protection, making it easy to use illegal copies or homebrew software. Although there is no regional lockout present in any 3DO machine, a few Japanese games cannot be played on non-Japanese 3DO consoles due to a special kanji font which was not present in the English language console firmware. Games that have compatibility issues include Sword and Sorcery (which was released in English under the title Lucienne's Quest), the adult video game Twinkle Knights and a demo version of Alone in the Dark.
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Later, in the twentieth century, the publication of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien enormously influenced fantasy writing, establishing the form of epic fantasy. This also did much to establish the genre of fantasy as commercially distinct and viable. And today fantasy continues as an expansive, multi-layered milieu encompassing many subgenres, including traditional high fantasy, sword and sorcery, magical realism, fairytale fantasy, and horror- tinged dark fantasy. There is further discussion of the history of fantasy in other languages in "Sources of fantasy" and the history of French fantasy literature is covered in greater detail under "Fantastique".
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The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, editors John Clute and John Grant (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1997), page 474. These included some adaptions of television scripts for novelisations of television series including The Professionals.Pixley, Andrew: The Professionals MkIV Viewing Notes, Network, 2016. [Paperback book included with Blu-ray release] During this same period he wrote the text for Space Wars, Worlds and Weapons, a large format book in which he provided essays concerning the tropes of science fiction (and, in one chapter, sword and sorcery), accompanied by colour reproductions of related artwork. In 1980 Holdstock wrote Tour of the Universe with Malcolm Edwards.
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Conan and the Spider God is a fantasy novel by American writer L. Sprague de Camp featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Bantam Books in December 1980; later paperback editions were issued by Ace Books (April 1989, reprinted August 1991) and Tor Books (June 2003). The first hardcover edition was issued by Robert Hale in 1984, and the second by Tor Books in 2002. It was later gathered together with Conan the Swordsman and Conan the Liberator into the omnibus trade paperback collection Sagas of Conan (Tor Books, 2004).
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In 2006 Senile team announced a spiritual successor to Beats of Rage entitled Age of the Beast. Set in a high fantasy world of sword and sorcery, it was according to team members "going to smash Beats of Rage into a bloody pulp". However, after the initial preview Senile Team released no further information until Age of the Beast was removed from the team's project list in 2017. As part of another release (Rush Rush Rally Racing), an announcement briefly appeared in the team blog stating development costs and time budget to complete Age of the Beast were insurmountable.
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But the old Jaquie creeps back when she signs up with a new agent, despite the fact that Kim Sharee has quit her job to take care of Jaquie full-time. The two have a falling-out. Tom attempts to console Kim Sharee by offering her the chance to represent him and his aspirations to resurrect the sword and sorcery franchise with his script & screen test for 'Deathslayer 5'. Meanwhile, Jaquie's agent turns out to be a shark who negotiates such a high salary for Jaquie at the radio station that they have to fire James Coleman to afford it.
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Swords Against Death is a fantasy short story collection by American writer Fritz Leiber, first published in 1970 and featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the second volume of the complete seven volume edition of the collected stories devoted to the characters. It is an expansion of Leiber's earlier collection Two Sought Adventure, issued by Gnome Press during 1957. The earlier collection contained seven of the ten stories of Swords Against Death, plus an "Induction" omitted from the expanded edition, which was instead republished in its companion volume, Swords and Deviltry (1970).
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Swords in the Mist is a fantasy short story collection, first published in 1968, by American writer Fritz Leiber, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the third volume of the complete seven volume edition of the collected stories devoted to the characters. It was first published in paperback format during 1968 by Ace Books company, which reprinted the title numerous times through September 1990; later paperback editions were issued by ibooks (2003) and Dark Horse (2007). It has been published in the United Kingdom by Mayflower Books (1979) and Grafton (1986, 1987).
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Swords Against Wizardry is a fantasy short story collection, first published 1968, by Fritz Leiber and Harry Fischer, featuring their sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Fischer's contribution was limited to ten thousand words of The Lords of Quarmall. The book is chronologically the fourth volume of the complete seven-volume edition of the collected stories devoted to the characters. It was first published in paperback format during 1968 by Ace Books company, which reprinted the title numerous times up to October 1990; later paperback editions were issued by ibooks (2003) and Dark Horse (2007).
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The Swords of Lankhmar is a fantasy novel, first published 1968, by Fritz Leiber, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the fifth volume of the complete seven volume edition of the collected stories devoted to the characters. The book is an expansion of Leiber's earlier novella "Scylla's Daughter", which was published originally in the magazine Fantastic Stories of Imagination for May 1961. The full novel first published in paperback format during 1968 by Ace Books company, which reprinted the title numerous times through 1986; a later paperback edition was issued by Dark Horse (2008).
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Swords and Ice Magic is a fantasy short story collection, first published in 1977, by American writer Fritz Leiber, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the sixth volume of the complete seven volume edition of the collected stories devoted to the characters. It was first published in paperback format during July 1977 by Ace Books company, which reprinted the title numerous times through 1990; a later paperback edition was issued by Dark Horse (2007). It has been published in the United Kingdom by Mayflower Books and Grafton (1986, 1987).
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"The Dark Eidolon" was originally published in the January 1935 issue of Weird Tales. "The Dark Eidolon" is a sword and sorcery short story by American writer Clark Ashton Smith, forming part of his Zothique cycle of stories. It was first published in Weird Tales in 1935 and has been variously republished, notably in the anthology The Spell of Seven, edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Described by de Camp in his introduction to the story as 'one of the most horrible' of Smith's tales, it chronicles the life and death of the dread sorcerer Namirrha.
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Hill says Corman approached him to do a sword and sorcery film inspired by the success of Conan the Barbarian. Hill: > At that time, Roger had a special effects studio [at the New World Studios > in Venice, California] that was doing really good work. They had done some > of the special effects work on [John Carpenter's] Escape from New York > [1981] and some other big pictures, and Corman owned the special effects > unit himself, so he could do it for a low budget. So to me, it was an > opportunity to make something that would look like a big movie, which I had > never had an opportunity to do before.
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In the book, John Daker is taken from his ordinary life in the modern world and incarnated in the form of Erekosë, a long-dead hero. He learns that he has been summoned to lead the human race in a fight against the alien Eldren, as he once did in the legendary past. He must balance his 20th-century consciousness with his patchy memories of a past life as a sword and sorcery- type warrior. He also must learn to distinguish the truth, since the rules of his new world are not necessarily the rules of Earth, and he cannot decide whether reports of magical events are real.
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And while the storytelling is rough - due to the need to insert everything - and the resources limited, Blasetti shows how to make a little go a long way through beautifully staged and designed battle and crowd scenes. Although it's not classified as a fantasy film, Gene Kelly's Anchors Aweigh had a fantasy sequence called "The King who Couldn't Dance" in which Gene did a song and dance number with Jerry Mouse from Tom and Jerry. Because these movies do not feature elements common to high fantasy or sword and sorcery pictures, some modern critics do not consider them to be examples of the fantasy genre.
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Oerth (the name of the world where Greyhawk campaigns take place) is a "standard" medieval fantasy world, similar in many ways to the Forgotten Realms campaign, but overall darker in tone, closer to a sword and sorcery scenario. The first official edition of the campaign was published in 1980, although sections of it had appeared in articles published by the author. The campaign itself began as a dungeon and then expanded into an entire continent (Oerik) and eventually other added areas. In general, Oerth is an action-packed world which seems to be gradually descending into savagery and chaos and continually on the verge of war.
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The Beastmaster is a 1982 sword and sorcery film directed by Don Coscarelli and starring Marc Singer, Tanya Roberts, John Amos and Rip Torn. Loosely based on the 1959 novel The Beast Master by Andre Norton, the film is about a man who can communicate with animals, and who fights an evil wizard and his army. Commercially The Beastmaster was not considered a box office success during its original cinematic run; however later it received extensive television exposure and success on cable in the American market on channels TBS and HBO. The original film spawned two sequels as well as a syndicated television series that chronicled the further adventures of Dar.
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Conan of Aquilonia is a collection of four linked fantasy short stories by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The stories were originally published in Fantastic in August 1972, July 1973, July 1974, and February 1975. The collected stories were intended for book publication by Lancer Books, but this edition never appeared due to Lancer's bankruptcy, and the first book edition was issued in paperback by Ace Books in paperback in May 1977. It was reprinted by Ace in July 1981, April 1982, November 1982, August 1983, July 1984, 1986, June 1991, and April 1994.
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Bailey graduated from North Kansas City High School and received a B. A. in English and Anthropology and a M. A. in English Literature from Northwest Missouri State University.Diana J. Bailey, Robin's wife, 2011. He debuted as a fiction writer with the novel Frost, published by Timescape Books in 1983 and followed with two sequels and a few short stories during the next three years. Bailey's works include Shadowdance, the Frost series, The Brothers of the Dragon, and Dragonkin fantasy trilogies and Swords Against the Shadowland, a novel interpolated in the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series of sword and sorcery stories by Fritz Leiber.
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Each archetype has several more advanced classes, called "Classes" and "Subclasses", associated with it; these work much like prestige classes in standard d20 System games. Characters can freely mix the four basic archetypes, but may only take the more advanced classes associated with one of the archetypes. The EverQuest II Player's Guide did not contain rules for magic, though a free download at Sword and Sorcery Studio's website did give basic spells for low-level characters. Almost a year later, on March 1 2006, the EverQuest II Spell Guide, which included the core rules for magic and a full spell list, was published in PDF form only.
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During the "Age of Apocalypse" storyline, all X-Men titles were renamed; Madureira illustrated Uncanny X-Men's replacement as the four-issue miniseries Astonishing X-Men, Vol. 1. He left Uncanny X-Men in 1997 to work on his own sword and sorcery series Battle Chasers for Wildstorm Comics' creator- owned Cliffhanger imprint (before it was sold to DC Comics). Shortly before leaving Uncanny X-Men, he commented that he felt the series had become too "dark and depressing" for his taste. Madureira produced a total of nine issues in four years (publishing two to three a year), a pace for which he was criticized.
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Stableford suggests that the type of horror conveyed by fantasy stories such as William Beckford's Vathek and Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death "is more aesthetic than visceral or existential", and that such stories should be considered "dark fantasies" rather than the "supernaturalized thrillers" of conventional horror fiction. Karl Edward Wagner is often credited for creating the term "dark fantasy" when used in a more fantasy-based context. Wagner used it to describe his fiction about the Gothic warrior Kane. Since then, "dark fantasy" has sometimes been applied to sword and sorcery and high fantasy fiction that features anti-heroic or morally ambiguous protagonists.
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Conan the Barbarian is a 1982 American epic sword-and-sorcery film directed by John Milius and written by Milius and Oliver Stone. It is based on the character Conan, created by Robert E. Howard. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones, and tells the story of a young muscular barbarian warrior named Conan (Schwarzenegger), who seeks vengeance for the death of his parents at the hands of Thulsa Doom (Jones), the leader of a snake cult. Ideas for a Conan film were proposed as early as 1970; executive producer Edward R. Pressman and associate producer Edward Summer began a concerted effort to get the film made in 1975.
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The Coming of Conan is a collection of eight fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Kull and Conan the Barbarian, together with the first part of his pseudo-history of the "Hyborian Age" in which the Conan tales were set. It was first published in hardcover in the United States by Gnome Press in 1953 and by Boardman Books in the United Kingdom in 1954. The stories originally appeared in the 1930s in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. The collection never saw publication in paperback; instead, its component stories were split up and distributed among other "Kull" and "Conan" collections.
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Spacecraft may appear, but are usually not central to the story; this is a key difference from space opera, in which spacecraft are usually key to the narrative. While there are earlier examples of this genre, A Princess of Mars and its sequels are the best known, and they were a dominant influence on subsequent authors. Initially published in magazines with general readership, by the 1930s the planetary romance had become very popular in the emerging science fiction pulp magazines. The novel can also be classified as the closely related genre sword and planet, which consists of what are essentially sword and sorcery stories that take place on another planet.
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The Sword of Skelos is a fantasy novel written by Andrew J. Offutt featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, the third and final volume in a trilogy beginning with Conan and the Sorcerer and continuing with Conan the Mercenary (which was actually published after The Sword of Skelos, though relating events prior to it). It was first published in paperback in May 1979 by Bantam Books, and reprinted in August 1981. Later editions were issued by Ace Books (September 1987, reprinted May 1991) and Tor Books (February 2002). The first British edition was published by Sphere Books in 1989.
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In the late 19th century, however, more pseudoscientific or proto-science-fictional motifs gained prevalence. Common themes have included a depiction of the underground world as more primitive than the surface, either culturally, technologically or biologically, or in some combination thereof. The former cases usually see the setting used as a venue for sword-and-sorcery fiction, while the latter often features cryptids or creatures extinct on the surface, such as dinosaurs or archaic humans. A less frequent theme has the underground world much more technologically advanced than the surface one, typically either as the refugium of a lost civilization, or (more rarely) as a secret base for space aliens.
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The term "graphic novel", while seen in print as early as 1964 in an obscure fan publication, was not in mainstream use in 1971 when Blackmark, a science fiction/sword-and-sorcery adventure, was first published; the back- cover blurb of the 30th-anniversary edition published in 2002 calls the book, retroactively, "the very first American graphic novel." A 119-page story of comic-book art, with captions and word balloons, published in a traditional book format, Blackmark is the first graphic novel with an original heroic- adventure character conceived expressly for this form. It originally sold for 75 cents, comparable to other paperbacks at the time.
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The review says of the film as a whole: "For less than the effects budget of this year's other sword 'n' sorcery adventures, Percy Jackson and Clash of the Titans, Bassett has delivered a dark-as-balls Highlander for the 21st century, played with such conviction it's hard not to be swept along". Total Film also rated the film at 3/5 stars with the conclusion: "A brutal fusion of angst and action, this mini-epic gives the sword-and-sorcery genre a bleak, brusque new life. Watch it for some terrific limbchopping and a mighty turn by James Purefoy". Sister magazine SFX rated the film at 4/5 stars.
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On 19 May 2017, the fantasy anthology paperback "Swords of Steel III" was published by DMR Books. This publication contains a short story by Byron Roberts entitled "The Scion at the Gate of Eternity", the third installment of a trilogy featuring characters from the Bal-Sagoth lyrical canon. On 18 March 2018 the sword and sorcery anthology "Dreams of Fire and Steel" was published by Nocturnicorn Books. The book includes a short story by Byron Roberts titled "Caylen-Tor", featuring the character which first appeared in the lyrics of the second Bal-Sagoth album Starfire Burning Upon the Ice-Veiled Throne of Ultima Thule in 1996.
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"The Scarlet Citadel" is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard and first published in the January, 1933 issue of Weird Tales magazine. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns a middle-aged Conan battling rival kingdoms, being captured through treachery and escaping from an eldritch dungeon via unexpected aid. The story includes Tsotha-lanti, an evil wizard whose sorcerous arts help to ensnare King Conan. The story was republished in the collections King Conan (Gnome Press, 1953) and Conan the Usurper (Lancer Books, 1967).
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From 1968 to 1975 he was literary editor of the New Wave science fiction magazine New Worlds, regularly contributing criticism. He was important to the New Wave style which also included writers such as Norman Spinrad, Barrington Bayley, Langdon Jones and Thomas M. Disch. As reviewer for New Worlds he often used the pseudonym "Joyce Churchill" and was critical of many works and writers published using the rubric of science fiction. One of his critical pieces, "By Tennyson Out of Disney" was initially written for Sword and Sorcery Magazine, a publication planned by Kenneth Bulmer but which was never published; the piece was printed in New Worlds 2.
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The book collects four novelettes and two short stories by the author, together with an introduction by the publisher, D. M. Ritzlin. It gathers together all of Ball's published fiction, originally published in the 1930s and 1940s in Weird Tales, for the first time. The first story, featuring the barbarian adventurer Duar, and the second and third, featuring Rald the thief, were among the earliest sword and sorcery stories published after the pioneering work of Robert E. Howard, and were written in homage to him. The pieces following feature a modern-day quest for the legendary island of Circe, a fantastic detective yarn, and a traditional horror story.
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Claw is a fictional character, a sword and sorcery hero published by DC Comics. He first appeared in Claw the Unconquered #1 (June 1975), in which he was created by writer David Michelinie and designed by artist Ernie Chan. Similar in many ways to Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian (and, more particularly, Marvel Comics's depiction of him), Claw is a wanderer and a barbarian in an apparently prehistoric age who battles various wizards, thieves, monsters, and warriors who cross his path. Unlike Conan, however, Claw has a deformed, claw-like right hand, the result of a curse which has been placed on his family.
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The entire series was written by Michelinie (though the never properly published #14 was credited to Tom DeFalco) and Chan remained on the title up to #7, with Keith Giffen taking over pencilling duties with #8. With the addition of Giffen, the series began to incorporate some science fiction elements, moving away from its pure sword and sorcery beginnings. The relaunch of the series lasted just three issues, as it was suddenly cancelled with #12 (September 1978) as part of the "DC Implosion" when DC's comics line was drastically cut. The cancellation was so sudden that two further issues of the series had been fully written and drawn.
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Manowar is an American heavy metal band from Auburn, New York. Formed in 1980, the group is known for lyrics based on fantasy (particularly sword and sorcery) and mythology (particularly Norse mythology and Greco-Roman mythology), as well as numerous songs celebrating the genre and its core audience. The band is also known for a loud and emphatic sound. In an interview for MTV in February 2007, bassist Joey DeMaio lamented that "these days, there's a real lack of big, epic metal that is drenched with crushing guitars and choirs and orchestras... so it's nice to be one of the few bands that's actually doing that".
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Mike Ashley, Transformations: the History of the Science-fiction Magazine, Vol. 2: from 1950 to 1970, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 2005, p.316. He became especially noted for his works in the science fantasy genre, beginning with the 1964 novel A zecea lume ("The Tenth World"). It was followed by the short story volume of 1966, Viitorul al doilea ("The Second Future"), the 1972 sword and sorcery novel Divertisment pentru vrăjitoare ("Entertainment for Witches") and short story collection Capcanele timpului ("Time Traps"), and the 1975 novella Ultimul avatar al lui Tristan ("Tristan's Final Avatar") and short story volume Dinţii lui Cronos ("The Teeth of Chronos").
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In some of his other writings, the Romanian author adopted historical fantasy, sword and sorcery, and heroic fantasy, which he occasionally integrated within the framework of local history. The fantasy volume Pentagrama, favorably reviewed by Crohmălniceanu, evokes not only the pentagram's symbolic implication as a figure where five points on a circle always meet in nonconsecutive order, but also its presence as a cult object in many ancient traditions. The text thus aims to build connections with various mythologies, to which it constantly alludes, and is thought by Belgian critic Jean-Baptiste Baronian to take additional inspiration from the stories of Franz Kafka.Jean-Baptiste Baronian, Un nouveau fantastique.
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Conan of Venarium is a fantasy novel by American writer Harry Turtledove, edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in hardcover by Tor Books in July 2003; a regular paperback edition followed from the same publisher in July 2004. According to the table of contents the book includes a listing of "The Conan Novels in Chronological Order" at the end of the text; however, at least in the paperback edition, the list provided includes only Conan novels published by Tor and is not chronological, either in terms of content or publication.
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Stanley Mann (August 8, 1928 – January 11, 2016) was a Canadian screenwriter. Born in Toronto, Ontario,Greg Gatenby, Toronto: A Literary Guide (1999). he began his writing career in 1951 at CBC Radio, and was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the 1965 film The Collector,Popculture website - accessed Jan 2011 based on the John Fowles novel of the same title.IMDB website He worked in many different genres, but his best known credits included the horror sequel Damien: Omen II, the literary adaptations A High Wind in Jamaica, Eye of the Needle and Firestarter, and the sword-and-sorcery film Conan the Destroyer.
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" Christopher Null of FilmCritic.com gave the film four and a half stars out of five, writing: "Highlander has no equal among sword-and-sorcery flicks." Null later called Highlander "the greatest action film ever made," saying that it features "awesome swordfights, an awesome score, and a time-bending plotline that only a philistine could dislike". Matt Ford of the BBC gave the film three stars out of five, writing: "From the moody, rain-soaked, noir-ish streets of late 20th century America to the wild open spaces of medieval Scotland, Mulcahy plunders movie history to set off his visceral fight scenes with suitably rugged locations.
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Some issues of the reprint books featured new covers by John Severin, Marie Severin, Gil Kane, and Herb Trimpe. A 10-page sword- and-sorcery story starring King Kull, "The Forbidden Swamp", by writer Thomas and art by the Severin siblings, appeared in issue #16 (April 1972); it continued the story from Kull the Conqueror #2 (Sept. 1971), during a 10-month hiatus before that series resumed with #3. A flashback adventure pitting superheroes against Marvel monsters appeared in a 2005 one-shot comic with the cover trademark Monsters on the Prowl, and the copyrighted title Marvel Monsters: Monsters on the Prowl, as given in its postal indicia.
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Conan the Barbarian is a 1982 fantasy novel written by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter and Catherine Crook de Camp featuring Robert E. Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, a novelization of the feature film of the same name. It was first published in paperback by Bantam Books in May 1982. The first hardcover edition was issued by Robert Hale in 1983, and the first British edition by Sphere Books in April 1988. A later novel with the same title by Michael A. Stackpole was issued by Berkley Books in 2011 as a tie-in with the 2011 remake of the 1982 film.
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From 1969 to 1970, Belmont Books published a series of sword and sorcery novels by Fox, featuring the barbarian character Kothar. These were Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman, Kothar of the Magic Sword, Kothar and the Demon Queen, Kothar and the Conjurer's Curse and finally Kothar and the Wizard Slayer. These were followed in 1976 by another series (published by Leisure Books) featuring the barbarian Kyrik: Kyrik: Warlock Warrior, Kyrik Fights the Demon World, Kyrik and the Wizard's Sword and Kyrik and the Lost Queen. Kothar and the Conjurer's Curse was adapted by Marvel Comics as a six- part Conan story starting with Conan the Barbarian #46 ("The Curse of the Conjurer", Jan.
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ISSN 1548-3398 Sometimes dubbed "The Multiverse" and/or "The Omniverse", Roberts's lyrical world is an extensive landscape of fantasy/science fiction, ranging from intergalactic tales of rogue gods and cosmic empires, to historical epics and high adventures, to sword and sorcery style sagas. The stories of the lyrical world are all connected to a greater or lesser degree, and are roughly divided into several different eras. The first era is the "antediluvian" epoch, during which most of the sword & sorcery style stories take place. Tales occurring even earlier than this, such as when the planet Earth consisted of the mega-continent Pangaea, are also usually grouped into this broad chronological categorisation.
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Muir (1947), One Touch of Venus and Portrait of Jennie, both 1948. An astonishing anticipation of the full "sword and sorcery" genre was made in 1941 in Italy by Alessandro Blasetti. La Corona di Ferro presents the struggles of two imaginary kingdoms around the legendary Iron Crown (historically the ancient crown of Italy), with war, cruelty, betrayal, heroism, sex, magic and mysticism, a whirl of events taken from every possible fairy tale and legend source Blasetti could find. This movie is unlike anything done before; indeed, considering that it was finished fifteen years before the publication of Lord Of The Rings, its invention of a vast, national epic mythology is an act of genius.
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The flexibility of the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D;) game rules means that Dungeon Masters (DM) are free to create their own fantasy campaign settings. For those who wanted a pre-packaged setting in which to play, TSR, Wizards of the Coast (WotC), and other publishers have created many settings in which D&D; games can be based; of these, the Forgotten Realms, an epic fantasy world, has been one of the most successful and critically acclaimed settings. Many campaign settings include standard sword and sorcery environments, while others borrow Oriental, Central American, swashbuckling, horror and even space-travel themes. These are official D&D; campaign settings published or licensed by TSR or WotC.
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At the time he came up with the idea for the Smurfs, Peyo was the creator, artist, and writer of the Franco-Belgian comics series titled Johan et Pirlouit (translated to English as Johan and Peewit), set in Europe during the Middle Ages and including elements of sword-and- sorcery. Johan serves as a brave young page to the king, and Pirlouit (pronounced Peer-loo-ee) functions as his faithful, if boastful and cheating, midget sidekick. In 1958, Spirou magazine started to publish the Johan et Pirlouit story La Flûte à six trous ("The Flute with Six Holes"). The adventure involved them recovering a magic flute, which required some sorcery by the wizard Homnibus.
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Sword and sorcery stories, a genre which Howard had made much more popular with his stories of Conan, Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn in Weird Tales in the early 1930s, had continued to appear under Farnsworth Wright; they all but disappeared during McIlwraith's tenure. McIlwraith also focused more on short fiction, and serials and long stories were rare.Clute (1997), pp. 481–482. In May 1951 Weird Tales once again began to include reprints, in an attempt to reduce costs, but by that time the earlier issues of Weird Tales had been extensively mined for reprints by August Derleth's publishing venture, Arkham House, and as a result McIlwraith often reprinted lesser-known stories.
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Red Sonja is a 1985 Dutch-American epic sword and sorcery film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Clive Exton and George MacDonald Fraser. It is based on the character of the same name, created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith, who itself is based mainly on the character Red Sonya of Rogatino, created by Robert E. Howard. The film introduces Brigitte Nielsen as the title character, with Sandahl Bergman, Paul Smith, Ronald Lacey, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in supporting roles. As in Howard's stories of Conan, the film takes place in the Hyborian Age, a fictional prehistoric time that had been depicted previously in the films Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984).
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Magazine Management, the magazine and comic-book publishing parent of Marvel Comics at the time, released a number of magazine-format comics in the 1970s, primarily from 1973 to 1977, in the market dominated by Warren Publishing. The line of mostly black-and-white, anthology magazines predominantly featured horror, sword and sorcery, and science fiction. The magazines did not carry the Marvel name, but were produced by Marvel staffers and freelancers, and featured characters regularly found in Marvel comic books, as well as some creator-owned material. In addition to the many horror titles, magazines in this group included Savage Sword of Conan, The Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, Marvel Preview, and Planet of the Apes.
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The story is told by the unreliable narrator Hoptor the Vintner, a fast-talking operator with all the right contacts who is convinced in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary that he can smooth over anything. "Mention my name" is his tagline, meant to assure his auditors that dropping it in various quarters is their ticket to getting whatever they want. The book combines a number of cliches of the literature and pseudoscience regarding Atlantis, such as extraterrestrial visitors, as well as of the fantasy genre in general, most notably the ambitious barbarian brute, Conax of Chimeria, a satire on Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan of Cimmeria.
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Plant entered the publishing field in 1969 as one of the three publishers, along with Al Davoren and Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., of Promethean Enterprises—a fanzine that attempted to straddle the comic/comix boundary. (Promethean Enterprises lasted from 1969–1974.) In 1972, Plant took over the publishing responsibilities of the fanzine Anomaly from Jan Strnad who had published three issues since 1969. Plant published issue #4 of Anomaly, evolving it into an underground comic. As part of his retailing enterprise Comics & Comix (see below), in 1974 Plant co-published one issue of the underground/sword and sorcery hybrid Barbarian Killer Funnies; moving from there to the similarly themed The First Kingdom, written and illustrated by Jack Katz.
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The first set, simply called "Dungeoneer" was originally released by Citizen Games, but was later released by Atlas games, with some significant changes (both in the looks and in the game mechanics) and a new name, "Tomb of the Lich Lord", in November 2003. "Tomb of the Lich Lord" is much of a classic dungeon crawl, a crypt filled with undead and classical sword-and-sorcery archetypes. The first set has been followed by several others, each one with new cards and a different background: ; Vault of the Fiends (2003) : A twisted mage has built an impenetrable vault in which to pursue his heinous experiments. Horrendous fiends now plague the countryside, terrorizing helpless peasants and destroying vital crops.
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With their own fields of gravity and atmosphere, the ships have open decks and tend not to resemble the spaceships of science fiction, but instead look more like galleons, animals, birds, fish or even more wildly fantastic shapes. The Spelljammer setting is designed to allow the usual sword and sorcery adventures of Dungeons & Dragons to take place within the framework of outer space tropes. Flying ships travel through the vast expanses of interplanetary space, visiting moons and planets and other stellar objects. Like the Planescape setting, Spelljammer unifies most of the other AD&D; settings and provides a canonical method for allowing characters from one setting (such as Dragonlance) to travel to another (such as the Forgotten Realms).
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Having corresponded with enthusiasts in the field such as Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, Glenn Lord, W.H. Pugmire and Gregory Nicoll, he began (aged 13) to write fiction and speculative poetry in the vein of Lovecraft and C.A. Smith. Fictional juvenilia included "The Last Town" (a Lord Dunsany pastiche), "The Sacrifice" (based on an image of death from Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, and an uncompleted sword-and-sorcery novel, Starbreaker (with Ashley Morris). A few of these juvenile tales were first printed in Charles Danny Lovecraft's fanzine Avatar in the 1990s. His earliest in-print appearances included Lovecraftian sonnets in R. Alain Everts' magazines The Arkham Sampler (new series) and Etchings and Odysseys.
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The Flame Knife is a 1955 fantasy novella by American writers Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was revised by de Camp from Howard's original story, a then- unpublished oriental tale featuring Francis X. Gordon titled "Three-Bladed Doom". De Camp changed the names of the characters, added the fantastic element, and recast the setting into Howard's Hyborian Age. The story was first published in the hardbound collection Tales of Conan (Gnome Press, 1955), and subsequently appeared in the paperback collection Conan the Wanderer (Lancer Books, 1968), as part of which it has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian.
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The Complete Chronicles of Conan: Centenary Edition is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 2006 by Gollancz and is an omnibus of their earlier collections The Conan Chronicles, Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle and The Conan Chronicles, Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon, though the stories are rearranged. The collection is edited by Stephen Jones and was issued to celebrate the centenary of Howard's birth. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines The Phantagraph, Weird Tales, Super-Science Fiction, Magazine of Horror, Fantasy Fiction, Fantasy Magazine and The Howard Collector.
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174: "Gerber and artist Frank Brunner quickly brought Howard back...in his own comic book." as well as the anthologies Chamber of Chills, Haunt of Horror, and Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction. He drew covers for the supernatural series The Tomb of Dracula and the swamp-monster series Man-Thing. Also for Marvel, Brunner adapted Robert E. Howard's sword-and-sorcery pulp fiction hero Conan the Barbarian in the 42-page story "The Scarlet Citadel", and drew many covers for the similar series Red Sonja and Savage Sword of Conan. Brunner left Marvel in 1979 and wrote an essay in The Comics Journal stating that he "felt the romance with comics was over".
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Willy Vandersteen used a wild variety of themes and influences in his work from early on. He made fairytales, historic series, westerns, but also science fiction and many contemporary comics. While some series like De Familie Snoek and Bessy stuck very close to their origin (an everyday Flemish contemporary family for the former, and a pioneer family in the American Old West in the latter), others were more loose. De Rode Ridder, the story of a medieval knight, wandered from Arthurian tales over the crusades until the explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, thereby spanning some ten centuries, and later (when Vandersteen was less involved in the series) brought in many elements of sword and sorcery and fantasy.
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Pratt and de Camp were among several contributors to Unknown Worlds, a pulp magazine which emphasized fantasy with a comedic element. The work of Fritz Leiber also appeared in Unknown Worlds, including his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, a jocose take on the sword and sorcery subgenre. In more modern times, Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, Piers Anthony's Xanth books, Robert Asprin's MythAdventures of Skeeve and Aahz books, and Tom Holt's books provide good examples, as do many of the works by Christopher Moore. There are also comic-strips/graphic novels in the humorous fantasy genre, including Chuck Whelon's Pewfell series and the webcomics 8-Bit Theater and The Order of the Stick.
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The Blood-Stained God is a 1955 fantasy novella by American writer Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was revised by de Camp from Howard's original story, an unpublished non-fantasy oriental tale that featured Kirby O'Donnell titled "The Curse of the Crimson God". De Camp changed the names of the characters, added the sorcery elements, and recast the setting into Howard's Hyborian Age. The story was first published in the hardbound collection Tales of Conan (Gnome Press, 1955), and subsequently appeared in the paperback collection Conan of Cimmeria (Lancer Books, 1969), as part of which it has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian.
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The pulp magazine format was at the height of its popularity at this time and was instrumental in bringing fantasy fiction to a wide audience in both the U.S. and Britain. Such magazines also played a large role in the rise of science fiction and it was at this time the two genres began to be associated with each other. Weird Tales published works by such authors as Robert E Howard Several of the genre's most prominent authors began their careers in these magazines including Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, and Ray Bradbury. The early works of many sword and sorcery authors such as Robert E. Howard also began at this time.
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McIlwraith continued to publish some of Weird Tales most popular authors, such as Fredric Brown and Fritz Leiber, but eliminated sword and sorcery fiction, which Robert E. Howard had popularized under Wright with his stories of Conan, Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn.Clute (1997b), pp. 481–482. August Derleth, who had corresponded with Lovecraft until the latter's death in 1937,Joshi (2004), pp. 64–65. continued to send Lovecraft manuscripts to McIlwraith during the 1940s,Joshi (2004), pp. 292–294. and at the end of the decade decided to issue a magazine to publicize Arkham House, a publishing venture he had begun in 1939 that reprinted largely from the pages of Weird Tales.Eng (1985), pp. 112–114.
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Herda joined the United States Army from his birth city of Cleveland, Ohio, and by June 29, 1968 was serving as a private first class in Company A, 1st Battalion (Airborne), 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile). During an enemy attack on that day, near Dak To in Quang Trang Province, Republic of Vietnam, Herda smothered the blast of an enemy-thrown hand grenade with his body to protect those around him. He survived the blast, although severely wounded, and was subsequently promoted to specialist four and awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. Herda published the sword and sorcery novel, The Cup of Death: Chronicles of the Dragons of the Magi, in 2007.
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Witch World is a speculative fiction project of American writer Andre Norton, inaugurated by her 1963 novel Witch World and continuing more than four decades. Beginning in the mid-1980s, when she was about 75 years old, Norton recruited other writers to the project, and some books were published only after her death in 2005.. Retrieved 2013-07-07 The Witch World setting is one planet in a parallel universe where magic long ago superseded science; early in the fictional history it is performed exclusively by women. The series began as a hybrid of science fiction and sword and sorcery but for the most part it combines the latter with high fantasy. The Lands of the Witch World, including Western and Eastern Continents.
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He also appeared as a SPECTRE-backed assassin in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again, and as bandit-warlord Lord Brytag in the sword-and-sorcery film Red Sonja. He appeared as the skull-helmeted General Kael in the film Willow; the evil wizard Thoth-Amon in Conan the Destroyer and as the Celtic chieftain in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. In an alternative from playing strongman villains, in 1985 he played Petty Officer Edgar Evans in the Central TV miniseries The Last Place on Earth about Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole. Roach was turned down as Darth Vader in Star Wars; however, its director, George Lucas, subsequently cast him as several burly villains in the Indiana Jones film series in the 1980s.
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Conan of the Isles is a fantasy novel by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published October 1968 in paperback by Lancer Books, and reprinted in July 1970, 1972, and May 1973; publication was then taken over by Ace Books, which reprinted the novel in May 1977, May 1979, April 1980, July 1981, April 1982, November 1982, November 1983, June 1984, September 1986, February 1991, and May 1994. The first British edition was published in paperback by Sphere Books in December 1974 a number of times since by various publishers. It has also been translated into French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Japanese.
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The Conan books are sword and sorcery fantasies featuring the character of Conan the Cimmerian originally created by Robert E. Howard. Written by numerous authors and issued by numerous publishers, they include both novels and short stories, the latter assembled in various combinations over the years by the several publishers. The character has proven durably popular, resulting in Conan stories being produced after Howard's death by such later writers as Poul Anderson, Leonard Carpenter, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Roland J. Green, John C. Hocking, Robert Jordan, Sean A. Moore, Björn Nyberg, Andrew J. Offutt, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, Harry Turtledove, and Karl Edward Wagner. Some of these writers finished incomplete Conan manuscripts by Howard, or rewrote Howard stories which originally featured different characters.
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Since his debut in December of 1932, Conan of Cimmeria has been the pre-eminent hero of sword and sorcery. Redefining the hero archetype through the high adventure tales written by his creator Robert E. Howard, and altering the landscape of American literature in the process, the barbarian's mythos has attracted new readers with every successive generation. Bolstered through his early years by Howard's rip-roaring tales of glory on the battlefield, immortalized by the incomparable artwork of Frank Frazetta in the 1960s, and reinvented in a media explosion of the 1970s and 80s, the noble savage is a vivid and iconic fantasy character, the likes of which stirred the imaginations of audiences the world over for more than seventy years.
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Pugh's earliest work included penciling John Ostrander's Youngblood, telling the story of his futuristic sword and sorcery character Grimjack's childhood and early adulthood, as well as providing covers for the Grimjack Case Files limited series. He also illustrated Pat Mills' Third World War before starting a brief run on Hellblazer with writer Jamie Delano. Pugh returned to Animal Man starting with issue 7, replacing Travel Foreman Recent work includes writing and drawing Hotwire: Requiem for the Dead, a story based on concepts developed by Warren Ellis. It was originally planned to appear in Atomeka Press's Blast and then in 2005 their Bojeffries Terror Tomes #1Hotwire, Steve PughHotwire, Blog posting, August 15, 2005Hotwire gallery before finally being published by Radical Comics.
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Dark Rising is a sword and sorcery adult-oriented franchise of two made-for- television films, a twelve episode television series and a five-episode television series, from the husband and wife team of Andrew Cymek and Brigitte Kingsley. The franchise is written by creator Cymek, produced by Kingsley and adapted for film and television by executive producer Mihkel Harilaid. The original film in the series, Dark Rising: Bring Your Battle Axe (2007), introduced lead character Summer Vale, played by Kingsley through the entire series of films. The series continued with the television series Dark Rising: The Savage Tales of Summer Vale (2011), the television film Dark Rising: Summer Strikes Back (2011) and the five-episode television series Dark Rising: Warrior of Worlds (2014).
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The notion of racial superiority, symbolized by this Aryan hero, was a criticism given by J. Hoberman and James Wolcott; they highlighted the film's Nietzschean epigraph and labeled its protagonist as Nietzsche's übermensch. Ebert was disturbed by the depiction of a "Nordic superman confronting a black", in which the "muscular blond" slices off the black man's head and "contemptuously [throws it] down the flight of stairs". His sentiment was shared by Adam Roberts, an Arthurian scholar, who also said Conan was an exemplar of the sword-and-sorcery films of the early 1980s that were permeated in various degrees with fascist ideology. According to Roberts, the films were following the ideas and aesthetics laid down in Leni Riefenstahl's directorial efforts for Nazi Germany.
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Whereas most comic book and pulp adaptations were box office failures in the 1980s, Conan the Barbarian was one of the few that made a profit. According to Sammon, it became the standard against which sword-and-sorcery films were measured until the debut of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001; several contemporary films of the same genre were judged by critics to be clones of Conan, such as The Beastmaster (1982). Conans success inspired low-budget copycats, such as Ator, the Fighting Eagle (1982) and Deathstalker (1983). Its sequel, Conan the Destroyer, was produced and released in 1984; only a few of those involved in the first film, such as Schwarzenegger, Mako, and Poledouris, returned.
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Blackmore has been a guest lecturer on science fiction, fantasy and horror for the University of Wollongong's Faculty of Creative Arts. He has guested as an expert on horror literature and film on TV programs in Australia including Ray Martin's Midday (television show), cable TV program The Graveyard Shift and Jennifer Byrne Presents and has been interviewed on Sydney's 2SER radio in the same capacity. He became the second President of the Australian Horror Writers Association, serving from September 2010 until September 2011. Blackmore is Official Editor (with Scott A. Shaeffer) of the Sword and Sorcery and Weird Fiction Terminus (SSFWT) amateur press association (founded by Benjamin Szumskyj) which has members in Australia, the US, the UK, Sweden and Finland.
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""Spacemen's Realm," The New York Times, January 13, 1952, p. BR22. Commenting on later novels in the series, Lester del Rey in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact wrote of The Hostage of Zir that "[t]here's only one way to describe [the book]; it's a new Krishna novel. And like de Camp's other popular Krishna novels, it's a wry and wacky story of a human forced to contend with the semicivilized and semihuman cultures of an alien world where Murphy's law always holds good, and nothing ever goes according to plan. You could call it sword-and-sorcery, since swords are buckled with a touch of swash, and human science is a sort of magic to the too-human but egg-laying Krishnans.
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Since its inception, Masters of the Universe has usually placed its focus on the two primary characters, the blonde muscular He-Man, "the most powerful man in the Universe," and his nemesis, the evil skull-faced, blue-skinned sorcerer Skeletor and their many moral-themed encounters on the planet Eternia. Set in a hybrid world of sword and sorcery and technological sci-fi, He-Man battles with Skeletor to prevent him from conquering Eternia and discovering the secrets of Castle Grayskull—a mysterious ancient fortress with a skull-shaped facade, containing great power and magic. As with many toy franchises that have been transferred to several different media, there are a number of story differences between the various versions of Masters of the Universe.
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David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor, although praising the sets and pacing of the film, criticised it for lack of originality, stressing that MacNicol's and Richardson's characters bore too many similarities to the heroes of Star Wars. A similar critique was given by John Coleman of the New Statesman, who called the film a "turgid sword-and-sorcery fable, with Ralph Richardson in a backdated kind of Star Wars of Alec Guinness role." Tim Pulleine of the Monthly Film Bulletin criticized the film's lack of narrative drive and clarity to supplement the special effects. Upon the film's first television broadcast, Gannett News Service columnist Mike Hughes called the story "slight" and "slow-paced", but admired a "lyrical beauty to the setting and mood".
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Sword and sorcery's frequent depictions of smoky taverns and fetid back alleys draw upon the picaresque genre; for example, Rachel Bingham notes that Fritz Leiber's city of Lankhmar bears considerable similarity to 16th century Seville as depicted in Miguel de Cervantes' tale "Rinconete y Cortadillo".Dr. Rachel B. Bingham, "The Enduring Influence of Cervantes" in "Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Spanish Literature and Culture" (published in Spanish, French and English) Sword and sorcery proper only truly began in the pulp fantasy magazines, where it emerged from "weird fiction". Particularly important was the magazine Weird Tales, which published Howard's Conan stories and C. L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry tales, as well as key S&S; influences like Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
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The stories are written on a competent pulp level (a higher level, by the way, than that of some best sellers) and are allied to the Superman genre which pours forth in countless comic books and radio serials." Hays then moved on to Howard himself and the genre in which he wrote: In a review of Michel Houellebecq's essay "H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life" published in the Los Angeles Times, April 17, 2005, Stephen King implies that Howard did not work at his craft and was merely pastiching Lovecraft. King described his disapproval of the sword and sorcery genre, and superheroes, in his book on writing Danse Macabre: "[It] is not fantasy at its lowest, but it still has a pretty tacky feel.
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In March 1928, Howard salvaged and re-submitted to Weird Tales a story rejected by the more popular pulp Argosy, and the result was "Red Shadows", the first of many stories featuring the vengeful Puritan swashbuckler Solomon Kane.Burke (¶¶ 15 & 20) Appearing in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales, the character was a big hit with readers and this was the first of Howard's characters to sustain a series in print beyond just two stories (seven Kane stories were printed in the 1928–32 period).Burke (¶ 21) As the magazine published the Solomon Kane tale before Kull, this can be considered the first published example of sword and sorcery. 1929 was the year Howard broke out into other pulp markets, rather than just Weird Tales.
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In 1930, with his interest in Solomon Kane dwindling and his Kull stories not catching on, Howard applied his new sword-and-sorcery and horror experience to one of his first loves: the Picts. His story "Kings of the Night" depicted King Kull conjured into pre-Christian Britain to aid the Picts in their struggle against the invading Romans, and introduced readers to Howard's king of the Picts, Bran Mak Morn. Howard followed up this tale with the now-classic revenge nightmare "Worms of the Earth" and several other tales, creating horrific adventures tinged with a Cthulhu-esque gloss and notable for their use of metaphor and symbolism. With the onset of the Great Depression, many pulp markets reduced their schedules or went out of business entirely.
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Fritz Leiber's first published story was "Two Sought Adventure", which appeared in the August 1939 issue of Unknown; this was the first story in his long-running Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series about a pair of adventurers in a sword and sorcery setting. Four more Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories appeared in Unknown in as many years, and Leiber's novel Conjure Wife, about a man who discovers that all women are secretly witches, was the lead story in the April 1943 issue. The protagonist, a university professor, "is forced to abandon scepticism and discover the underlying equations of magic, via symbolic logic", in critic David Langford's description.David Langford, "Fritz Leiber", in Clute & Grant, Encyclopedia of Fantasy, pp. 573–574.
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The Enchanter Merlin, by Howard Pyle, from The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903) In medieval chivalric romance, the wizard often appears as a wise old man and acts as a mentor, with Merlin from the King Arthur stories being a prime example. Wizards such as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter are also featured as mentors, and Merlin remains prominent as both an educative force and mentor in modern works of Arthuriana. Other magicians, such as Saruman from The Lord of the Rings or Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter, can appear as hostile villains. Villainous sorcerers were so crucial to pulp fantasy that the genre in which they appeared was dubbed sword and sorcery.
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Arena of Valor is developed by TiMi Studios with the same engine and user interface design as Honor of Kings and published by Tencent Games for the western market. Garena joined the development team as they helped to westernize the atmosphere of the game. The in-game characters have been swapped from characters inspired by Chinese folklore and Chinese mythology, to characters inspired by European folklore and several mythologies from other nations, with blending a variety of elements including Lovecraftian horror, steampunk, high fantasy, and sword and sorcery to appeal audiences outside mainland China. The appearance of in-game characters mostly recycled and revamped designs of characters from Heroes of Newerth, a MOBA game that Garena had acquired from S2 Games.
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The Riddle of Steel (abbreviated as TRoS) is a role-playing game (RPG) created by Jacob Norwood and published by Driftwood Publishing. It is designed for role-playing in a typical sword and sorcery or high fantasy gameworld environment. The title of The Riddle of Steel is inspired by several references in the movie Conan the Barbarian, including a line of dialogue in which the villain, Thulsa Doom, asks the captured Conan, "What is the riddle of steel?" Doom answers this question by explaining to Conan that the true strength of steel is in the hand that wields it – in other words, it is the resolve and commitment we bring to a task, not the quality or quantity of tools we use in performing it, that is the most important factor in determining success.
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The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its fifth SFWA Grand Master in 1981; the Horror Writers Association made him an inaugural winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1988 (named in 1987); and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001, its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers. Leiber was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of Heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, led by Lin Carter, with entry by fantasy credentials alone. Some works by SAGA members were published in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. Leiber himself is credited with inventing the term sword and sorcery for the particular subgenre of epic fantasy exemplified by his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories.
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1980s fantasy films were initially characterised by directors finding a new spin on established mythologies. Ray Harryhausen brought the monsters of Greek legends to life in Clash of the Titans while Arthurian lore returned to the screen in John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur. Films such as Ridley Scott's 1985 Legend and Terry Gilliam's 1981–1986 trilogy of fantasy epics (Time Bandits, Brazil, and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen) explored a new artist-driven style featuring surrealist imagery and thought-provoking plots. The modern sword and sorcery boom began around the same time with 1982's Conan the Barbarian followed by Krull and Fire and Ice in 1983, as well as a boom in fairy tale-like fantasy films such as Ladyhawke (1985), The Princess Bride (1987), and Willow (1988).
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In Peter David's one-shot graphic novel Rahne of Terra there exists a sword and sorcery version of the New Mutants and X-Men, with the likes of Sam "Cannonball" Guthrie being a knight who uses seven league boots to fly (and a rifle called "Cannonball" as a weapon). Here, Rain (an alt-version of Rahne "Wolfsbane" Sinclair) is the Princess of the realm of Geshem, and Doug is a commoner, a nobody whose mother is a washerwoman. However, he loves Rahne from afar, and it is partly through his unexpected courage and a magic spell that the mainstream Rahne Sinclair, who has replaced Rain, survives. The thought of Doug being killed again is enough to trigger her use of the magic of Geshem and her mutant powers to protect him.
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Glorantha is a fantasy world created by Greg Stafford. It was first introduced in the board game White Bear and Red Moon (1975) by Chaosium and then in a number of other board, roleplaying and computer games, including RuneQuest and HeroQuest, as well as several works of fiction and the computer strategy game King of Dragon Pass. The Gloranthan world is characterised by its complex use of mythology, heavily influenced by the universalist approaches of Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade, its sword and sorcery ethos, its long and distinctive history as a setting for role-playing games, its community development and expansion, and (unusual among early American fantasy role- playing games) its relative lack of Tolkienesque influence. Stafford first wrote about in Glorantha in 1966 as a way to deepen his own understanding of mythology.
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In 1984, Gurr created the UFO spectacle that closed out the opening ceremony of the 1984 Summer Olympics. In 1984, Gurr joined with former Imagineer Dave Schweninger to cofound Sequoia Creative. That firm, under Gurr's aegis developed the 30-foot tall King Kong Encounter animatronic and the animatronic serpent in The Adventures of Conan: A Sword and Sorcery Spectacular for Universal Studios Hollywood. Sequoia Creative built the giant animatronic of the Tunnel du temps stunt show in Big Bang Schtroumpf, 1989 (now Walygator Parc), France.Sébastien Roffat, « Disney et la France: les vingt ans d’Euro Disneyland », , Éditions L’Harmattan, 2007 or In 1997, when casino magnate Steve Wynn wanted to sink a pirate ship several times nightly at his Treasure Island Hotel and Casino, he called upon Gurr, whom figured out how to do it.
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"The Snow Women" was originally published in the April 1970 issue of Fantastic Stories, under a cover painted by Jeff Jones "The Snow Women" is a sword and sorcery novella by American writer Fritz Leiber, recounting the early history of Fafhrd, a future member of the adventurous duo Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1971 (although Leiber withdrew it in favor of "Ill Met in Lankhmar"),SF Awards Database and finished second in the annual Locus poll for short fiction.ISFDB First published in 1970 in Fantastic magazine, it's in the nature of a prequel, as Leiber had by that time been chronicling the pair's adventures for thirty years. The story forms part two of the collection Swords and Deviltry.
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The lich developed from monsters found in earlier classic sword and sorcery fiction, which is filled with powerful sorcerers who use their magic to triumph over death. Many of Clark Ashton Smith's short stories feature powerful wizards whose magic enables them to return from the dead. Several stories by Robert E. Howard, such as the novella Skull-Face (1929) and the short story "Scarlet Tears", feature undying sorcerers who retain a semblance of life through mystical means, their bodies reduced to shriveled husks with which they manage to maintain inhuman mobility and active thought. Gary Gygax, one of the cocreators of Dungeons & Dragons, stated that he based the description of a lich included in the game on the short story "The Sword of the Sorcerer" (1969) by Gardner Fox.
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Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are two sword-and-sorcery heroes appearing in stories written by American author Fritz Leiber. They are the protagonists of what are probably Leiber's best-known stories. One of his motives in writing them was to have a couple of fantasy heroes closer to true human nature than the likes of Howard's Conan the Barbarian or Burroughs's Tarzan."Author's Foreword", Ill-Met in Lankhmar, 1995, White Wolf Publishing Fafhrd is a very tall (nearly seven feet) and strong northern barbarian, skilled at both swordsmanship and singing; the Mouser is a small (not much more than five feet) mercurial thief, gifted and deadly at swordsmanship (often using a sword in one hand and a long dagger or in the other), and a former wizard's apprentice who retains some skill at magic.
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Claw the Unconquered #1 debuted in mid-1975, a period when DC Comics launched a record number of new titles on to the comic book market (16 new titles debuted in 1975 alone). Claw was one of several of these new series which were set in the "fantasy" or "sword and sorcery" genre. (Other such titles include Warlord, Stalker, Starfire, Nightmaster, Tor, and Beowulf, Dragon Slayer.) At the time, DC's main rival, Marvel Comics, had found success in the genre with its Conan the Barbarian comics, and of all of DC's new fantasy characters, Claw most closely resembles Conan in both his character and appearance, except for the fact that Claw has a deformed hand. Claw the Unconquered was published bimonthly up until #9 (October, 1976), restarting again at #10 (May 1978).
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Harry Otto Fischer (1910–1986) was an American science fiction writer and fan best known for helping his college friend Fritz Leiber create the sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and their imaginary world of Nehwon. The fictional heroes were based vaguely on their creators, the barbarian Fafhrd on the tall Leiber, and the thief The Gray Mouser on Fischer. During 1937, Fischer and Leiber designed a board game set in this fantasy world and each began composing a story with the same setting, Fischer's being "The Lords of Quarmall" and Leiber's "The Adventure of the Grain Ships." Neither story was finished until much later; Fischer's work on "The Lords of Quarmall" amounted to 10,000 words of the eventual story, which was finished by Leiber.
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Trasgu's pranks are told with variations in numerous towns of the Iberian peninsula, and his adventures are evoked in classical works of Spanish literature, like the anonymous 1554 novella Lazarillo de Tormes, the short farces of Miguel de Cervantes and the comedies of Lope de Vega.Mitos y leyendas de Asturias In instances of fantasy literature, and many times in sword and sorcery literature, the term "trasgo" may be confused with "orc", when it more generally is used to translate the English term "goblin" (and vice versa from Spanish to English). For example, the Spanish translation of the novel The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien uses the term "trasgo" to signify the "goblins". However, in the Spanish translation of The Lord of the Rings, the orcs are referred to by the term "orcos".
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While the folklore that fantasy drew on for its magic and monsters was not exclusively medieval, elves, dragons, and unicorns, among many other creatures, were drawn from medieval folklore and romance. Earlier writers in the genre, such as George MacDonald in The Princess and the Goblin (1872), William Morris in The Well at the World's End (1896) and Lord Dunsany in The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924), set their tales in fantasy worlds clearly derived from medieval sources, though often filtered through later views.R. C. Schlobin, The Aesthetics of Fantasy Literature and Art (University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), p. 236. In the first half of the twentieth century pulp fiction writers like Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith helped popularise the sword and sorcery branch of fantasy, which often utilised prehistoric and non-European settings beside elements of the medieval.
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The 1982 film adaptation of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, for example, is a personal (non-epic) story concerning the hero's quest for revenge and his efforts to thwart a single megalomaniac—while saving a beautiful princess in the process. Some critics refer to such films by the term Sword and Sandal rather than Sword and Sorcery, although others would maintain that the Sword and Sandal label should be reserved only for the subset of fantasy films set in ancient times on the planet Earth, and still others would broaden the term to encompass films that have no fantastic elements whatsoever. To some, the term Sword and Sandal has pejorative connotations, designating a film with a low-quality script, bad acting, and poor production values. Another important subgenre of fantasy films that has become more popular in recent years is contemporary fantasy.
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This was the first tale of the Cthulhu Mythos, a fictional universe in which Lovecraft set several stories. Over time other writers began to contribute their own stories with the same shared background, including Frank Belknap Long, August Derleth, E. Hoffmann Price, and Donald Wandrei. Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith were friends of Lovecraft's, but did not contribute Cthulhu stories; instead Howard wrote sword and sorcery fiction, and Smith produced a series of high fantasy stories, many of which were part of his Hyperborean cycle. Robert Bloch, later to become well known as the writer of the movie Psycho, began publishing stories in Weird Tales in 1935; he was a fan of Lovecraft's work, and asked Lovecraft's permission to include Lovecraft as a character in one of his stories, and to kill the character off.
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Also in 2008, McGowan took on a recurring role as a con artist on the acclaimed drama series Nip/Tuck, and co-hosted the TCM's film-series program The Essentials alongside Robert Osbourne, discussing classic Hollywood film. In 2010, McGowan shot a cameo in the Robert Rodriguez feature Machete, a role ultimately cut, but included on the DVD release, and played a semi- homeless junkie in the fantasy drama Dead Awake. In the 3-D sword and sorcery film Conan the Barbarian (2011), a reimagining of the 1982 film of the same name which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, McGowan starred as an evil half- human/half-witch. Roger Ebert described her role as a "piece of work", writing: "She has white pancake makeup, blood red lips, cute little facial tattoos and wickedly sharp metal talons on her fingers".
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Writers associated with this include Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie, and Scott Lynch, magazines such as Black Gate and the ezines Flashing Swords (not to be confused with the Lin Carter anthologies), and Beneath Ceaseless Skies publish short fiction in the style. These authors and editors are attempting to return the genre to the status it enjoyed during the pulp era of the twenties and thirties. According to the literary critic Higashi Masao, of Japanese works, Guin Saga and Sorcerous Stabber Orphen were initially planned by their authors as novels that could be classified as belonging to the European sword and sorcery subgenre, however, later Guin Saga volumes centered too much around conspiracy, while Sorcerous Stabber Orphen was only officially published in light novel format and its later development involved increased reliance on magic and elements of high fantasy.
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"The Pool of the Black One" is a fantasy short story by American author Robert E. Howard, one of his original short stories starring the sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian. It is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age, and concerns Conan becoming the captain of a pirate vessel while encountering a remote island with a mysterious pool which has the power of transmutation. First published in Weird Tales in October 1933,The Pool of the Black One on Project Gutenberg the story was republished in the collections The Sword of Conan (Gnome Press, 1952) and Conan the Adventurer (Lancer Books, 1966). It has more recently been published in the collections The Conan Chronicles Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle (2000) and Conan of Cimmeria: Volume One (1932-1933) (Del Rey, 2003).
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Nichols starred as a police detective assigned to investigate the murder of a young boy in the small-scale crime drama Meskada (2010), which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and received a limited theatrical release in North America. In the 3-D sword and sorcery film Conan the Barbarian, a reimagining of the 1982 film of the same name which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nichols starred as a master of martial arts, a priestess, and the love interest of the titular character. She performed her own stunts in the high-stakes action scenes and fight sequences, but a double was used for a sex scene with co-star Jason Momoa. Filming occurred between March and July 2010 in Bulgaria, and Conan was released on August 19, 2011. Budgeted at US$90million, the film received negative reviews, and only grossed US$48.8 worldwide.
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The Knight and Knave of Swords is a fantasy short story collection by American writer Fritz Leiber, first published in 1988, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the seventh and last volume of the complete seven volume edition of the collected stories devoted to the characters. It was first published in hardcover format during December 1988 by William Morrow and Company, and in paperback format during February 1990 by Ace Books company; it was later reissued with the title Farewell to Lankhmar in both hardcover and paperback formats by White Wolf company (1998, 1999); the most recent later paperback edition, from Dark Horse (2008), reverted to the original title. It has been published in the United Kingdom by Grafton (1990, 1991) and Gollancz (2000); the latter adopted the title used by the White Wolf editions.
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He is widely regarded as one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, as well as the sport's most charismatic and famous ambassador. Schwarzenegger gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action film icon. His breakthrough film was the sword-and-sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian (1982), a box-office hit that resulted in a sequel in 1984. He appeared as the title character in James Cameron's critically and commercially successful science fiction film The Terminator (1984), and subsequently played similar characters in the sequel films Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator Genisys (2015) and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019). He also starred in other successful action films such as Commando (1985), The Running Man (1987), Predator (1987), Total Recall (1990) and True Lies (1994), in addition to comedy films such as Twins (1988), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Junior (1994) and Jingle All the Way (1996).
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Sherrell was a commercial artist for most of his life, occasionally working as pulp illustrator for publications such as Fantasy Newsletter or even esoterical non-fiction works such as Frater Albertus's From "One" to "Ten". Starting in 1979, Sherrell began a career as a novelist in which he would try several genres. His first and most successful attempt was Raum, a sword and sorcery fantasy starring an eponymous anti-hero, the demon Raum, who after being summoned by a wizard into an alternate history medieval Britain causes considerable mayhem before encountering King Arthur, Merlin, Morgan le Fay and other characters of Arthurian Legend who will eventually teach him about life here and inspire him human values. Despite his first novel's cliffhanger ending, Sherrell would abandon the character and the genre to try a more high fantasy-oriented style in Arcane, starring a fool in a world governed by the rules of tarot.
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A de Camp-Pratt "Gavagan's Bar" story was cover-featured on the January 1959 issue of Fantastic Universe de Camp's heroic fantasy novel The Tritonian Ring was cover-featured on Two Complete Science-Adventure Books in 1951 De Camp was best known for his light fantasy, particularly two series written in collaboration with Pratt, the Harold Shea stories (from 1940 et seq.) and Gavagan's Bar (from 1950). Floyd C. Gale in 1961 said that they "were far and away the finest team of fantasy collaborators". De Camp and Pratt also wrote some stand-alone novels similar in tone to the Harold Shea stories, of which the most highly regarded is Land of Unreason (1942), and de Camp wrote a few more of this genre on his own. He was also known for his sword and sorcery, a fantasy genre revived partly by his editorial work on and continuation of Robert E. Howard's Conan cycle.
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He is possibly best known for introducing the pulp magazine hero Conan the Barbarian to American comics, with a series that added to the storyline of Robert E. Howard's character and helped launch a sword and sorcery trend in comics. Thomas is also known for his championing of Golden Age comic-book heroes – particularly the 1940s superhero team the Justice Society of America – and for lengthy writing stints on Marvel's X-Men and The Avengers, and DC Comics' All-Star Squadron, among other titles. Among the comic characters he co-created are Wolverine, Vision, Doc Samson, Carol Danvers, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Ultron, Yellowjacket, Defenders, Man-Thing, Red Sonja, Adam Warlock, Morbius, Ghost Rider, Squadron Supreme, Invaders, Black Knight (Dane Whitman), Nighthawk, Havok, Banshee, Sunfire, Thundra, Arkon, Killraven, Wendell Vaughn, Red Wolf, Red Guardian, Daimon Hellstrom, Brother Voodoo and Valkyrie. Thomas was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2011.
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Many other similar magazines eventually followed, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; when it was founded in 1949, the pulp magazine format was at the height of its popularity, and the magazine was instrumental in bringing fantasy fiction to a wide audience in both the U.S. and Britain. Such magazines were also instrumental in the rise of science fiction, and it was at this time the two genres began to be associated with each other. By 1950, "sword and sorcery" fiction had begun to find a wide audience, with the success of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.L. Sprague de Camp, Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy, p 135 However, it was the advent of high fantasy, and most of all J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which reached new heights of popularity in the late 1960s, that allowed fantasy to truly enter the mainstream.
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Another established literary trope found in the plot of Conan the Barbarian is the concept of death, followed by a journey into the underworld, and rebirth. Donald E. Palumbo, the Language and Humanities Chair at Lorain County Community College, noted that like most other sword-and-sorcery films, Conan used the motif of underground journeys to reinforce the themes of death and rebirth. According to him, the first scene to involve all three is after Conan's liberation: his flight from wild dogs sends him tumbling into a tomb where he finds a sword that lets him cut off his chains and stand with newfound power. In the later parts of the film, Conan experiences two underground journeys where death abounds: in the bowels of the Tower of Serpents where he has to fight a giant snake and in the depths of the Temple of Set where the cultists feast on human flesh while Doom transforms himself into a large serpent.
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Howard's most famous character, Conan the Cimmerian, has a pop-culture imprint that has been compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.: "Robert E. Howard of Cross Plains, Texas, created one of the great mythic figures in modern popular culture, the Dark Barbarian... [which] put Howard in the select ranks of the literary legend-makers: Ned Buntline, Alexandre Dumas, père, Mary Shelley, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dashiell Hammett, H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Ian Fleming." Howard remains a highly read author,: "Between 1932 and 1936 Weird Tales also provided Robert E. Howard an outlet where he could create the Hyborian world of Conan the Barbarian, thereby begetting the "Sword-and- Sorcery" motif which not only dominates much of contemporary heroic fantasy but has remained a principal ingredient of science fiction itself." with his best work endlessly reprinted.: A comprehensive listing of past and present Howard volumes.
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On keyboards, after auditioning several high-profile artists, including Vanilla Fudge's Mark Stein, Procol Harum's Matthew Fisher and ex-Curved Air and Roxy Music man Eddie Jobson, Blackmore finally selected Canadian David Stone, from the little-known band Symphonic Slam. For a bass player, Blackmore originally chose Mark Clarke, formerly of Jon Hiseman's Colosseum, Uriah Heep and Tempest, but once in the studio for the next album, Long Live Rock 'n' Roll, Blackmore disliked Clarke's fingerstyle method of playing so much that he fired him on the spot and played bass himself on all but four songs: the album's title track, "Gates of Babylon", "Kill the King", and "Sensitive to Light". Former Widowmaker bassist Bob Daisley was hired to record these tracks, completing the band's next line-up. After the release and extensive world tour in 1977–78, Blackmore decided that he wanted to take the band in a new commercial direction away from the "sword and sorcery" theme.
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According to Saunders he read his first work of science fiction in 1958, a misremembered novel by Andre Norton; this he states was what got him into the genre. (The mutated Siamese he recalls in an interview with Amy Harlib was most likely Lura, the giant Siamese cat and companion to the hero Fors in Norton's 1952 novel Star Man's Son [later reprinted as Daybreak 2250 A.D. and Star Man's Son – 2250 A.D.].) Inspired in Africa, he created the fictional continent Nyumbani (which means "home" in Swahili), where the stories of Imaro, his sword and sorcery series, take place.Stories from a S&S; Griot: Nyumbani Tales by Charles R. Saunders In 1974, Saunders wrote a series of short stories for Gene Day's science fiction fanzine Dark Fantasy. The issue of Dark Fantasy with the first Imaro story found its way to Lin Carter, who included it in his first Year's Best Fantasy Stories collection, published by DAW Books in 1975.
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Comics artist Don LawrenceDeluxe hardback collection of Karl the Viking strips by Don Lawrence Eric (and Karl) fought a weird but impressive collection of legendary and fantasy monsters, in sword-and-sorcery epics which had some reflections in Lawrence's art for his contemporary work on the highly regarded all-colour science fiction strip The Trigan Empire then running in Look and Learn. This was not even the first reprint: retitled Swords of the Sea Wolves it had initially been reprinted in Lion, in part, between 1 October 1966 and 7 October 1967, with the lead character renamed Rolf the Viking. And it would later be reprinted again, in the European version of Vulcan: on that occasion translated into German and retitled 'Kobra'. Two of the new IPC adventure strips – Sergeant Rock Paratrooper and Bunsen's Burner – were introduced five or six weeks early, in an attempt to conceal how few Odhams strips had actually survived, by making these appear to be existing strips although they were not.
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With the title itself invoking afrofuturism, the stories include a range of sub-genres of speculative fiction. For example, representative stories and sub-genres include "The Effluent Engine" as an alternate history steampunk story set in 19th century New Orleans, "Cloud Dragon Skies" as climate fiction, "Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows" as a time travel story, "The Storyteller's Replacement" sword and sorcery, "On the Banks of the River Lex" post-apocalyptic fiction, and "The Trojan Girl" cyberpunk. Referencing older fiction, Jemisin includes a pastiche of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" with "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" and an alternative take on Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters with "Walking Awake". Three of the short stories, described by Jemisin as "proof- of-concept" stories, would later be used as a basis for future novels: "The Narcomancer" for The Killing Moon, "Stone Hunger" for The Fifth Season, and "The City Born Great" for The City We Became.
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Good versus evil is a common theme in high fantasy, and the character of evil is often an important theme in a work of high fantasy,Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, p 120, as in The Lord of the Rings. Indeed, the importance of the concepts of good and evil can be regarded as the distinguishing mark between high fantasy and sword and sorcery.Joseph A. McCullough V, "The Demarcation of Sword and Sorcery" In many works of high fantasy, this conflict marks a deep concern with moral issues; in other works, the conflict is a power struggle, with, for instance, wizards behaving irresponsibly whether they are "good" or "evil".Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Question I Get Asked Most Often" p 274, The Wave in the Mind, There is often some evil that must be defeated, sometimes, a mysterious Dark Lord, often obsessed with taking over the world and killing the main hero.
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Conan, the sword-and-sorcery character created by Robert E. Howard, is the protagonist of seven major comic series published by Dark Horse Comics. The first series, titled simply Conan, ran for 50 issues from 2004 to 2008; the second, titled Conan the Cimmerian, began publication in 2008 and lasted 25 issues until 2010; the third series, titled Conan: Road of Kings, started publishing in December 2010 and ended in January 2012 after 12 issues; a fourth series, titled Conan the Barbarian, continuing from Road of Kings, lasted 25 issues from February 2012 to March 2014; a fifth series, titled Conan the Avenger, started publishing in April 2014 and ended in April 2016 after 25 issues; a sixth and final series, titled Conan the Slayer lasted 12 issues from July 2016 to August 2017. Another series, titled King Conan, which takes place during Conan's time as king, ran in parallel and launched in February 2011, concluding in 2016 with 24 issues. Dark Horse also published half a dozen one-shots and almost a dozen mini-series.
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He was later educated at North Sydney Boys High School (1971–72) and Newcastle Boys' High School (1972–76). In high school, after reading the science fiction anthology series "Out of This World" (edited by Mably Owen and Amabel Williams-Ellis), he graduated to devouring the works of Ray Bradbury, Peter Saxon, H. Rider Haggard, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Leslie Charteris, and became a keen enthusiast of sword and sorcery fiction as represented by Lin Carter's Flashing Swords anthologies and Thongor series novels , Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian tales, Michael Moorcock's Elric sequence and others, and horror fiction (especially the Weird Tales school, including Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, Frank Belknap Long, Donald Wandrei and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos), discovering their work via anthologies edited by August Derleth, Peter Haining, Karl Edward Wagner (the Year's Best Horror Stories series), and via publications of Arkham House which he special-ordered via Space Age Books (Melbourne), then Australia's only specialist supplier of science fiction and fantasy books."Space Age Closes". Locus (Jan 1986).
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In the mid-1990s, Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner, Terri Windling, Heinz Insu Fenkl, Midori Snyder, Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, Gregory Frost, Theodora Goss, Veronica Schanoes, Carolyn Dunn, Colson Whitehead, and other American writers interested in fantastic literature found themselves commiserating over the common perception that the genre-oriented publishing industry found it difficult to market truly innovative fiction involving unusual, fantastical, or cross-genre elements—because the mainstream literary fiction field demanded stories based in realism, while the fantasy field demanded stories that mostly followed the standard conventions of sword and sorcery or high fantasy. Yet it seemed to the authors that some of the best literature was that which didn't quite fit tidily into either category but instead was being discussed in terms of more amorphous, "in-between" descriptors such as "magic realism", "mythic fiction", or "the New Weird". Further, the idea of interstitiality applied to other kinds of "in-between" fiction (unrelated to fantasy) and other "in-between" arts. Over a period of several years, Kushner and Sherman prompted ongoing discussion about the importance of cultivating artistic "in-betweenness" led to the formulation of the broad concept of interstitial art.
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During 1999 / 2000, Sidaway was a writer on the sword and sorcery television adventure The Dark Knight. Originally brought in to establish the tone of the series, he ended up writing seven scripts during the two seasons. Shot on location in New Zealand, the series was first shown on Channel 5 commencing 1 July 2000. Producers Ashley Sidaway, Robert Sidaway and Richard Goudreau in Prague, June 2004, during the orchestral recording sessions for the film Nouvelle France Between 2000 and 2008, Sidaway was involved as Producer, Executive Producer or Co-Producers on feature films including: Nouvelle France starring Gérard Depardieu, Irène Jacob, Vincent Pérez, Tim Roth and Jason Isaacs; My First Wedding starring Rachael Leigh Cook; Modigliani starring Andy Garcia; School for Seduction starring Kelly Brook and Emily Woof; Day Of Wrath starring Christopher Lambert; Joy Division starring Ed Stoppard and Bernard Hill; The Piano Player starring Christopher Lambert, Dennis Hopper and Diane Kruger; Silence Becomes You starring Alicia Silverstone and Sienna Guillory; Save Angel Hope starring Billy Boyd, Eva Birthistle and Bernard Hill; and Forest of the Gods based on the classic novel by Balys Sruoga and starring Steven Berkoff.
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Bullpen Bulletins: "A Few Surprises — A Smattering of Surmises — and a Hint about Prizes", in Marvel Comics cover-dated May 1974, including Ka-Zar #3 Alcazar quickly became a regular freelancer for Archie, Marvel, Warren, and soon DC Comics and Charlton Comics, primarily drawing horror stories but also sword-and-sorcery (drawing the cover and inking penciler Val Mayerik's "Thongor! Warrior of Lost Lemuria" feature in Marvel's Creatures on the Loose #27, Jan. 1974); war comics (DC's Star-Spangled War Stories #178 (Feb. 1974); and science fiction (the Larry Niven short story adaptation "...Not Long Before The End" in Marvel's black-and-white comics magazine Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #3, May 1975; and stories in Charlton's similar Space: 1999 #6-8, Aug.-Oct. 1976). Writer Shaqui Le Vesconte said of Alcazar's Space: 1999, "His style was very Gothic and experimental, using a variety of techniques that could be described as 'monochrome psychedelic', and matching the nightmarish feel of episodes like 'Missing Link', 'End Of Eternity' and 'Dragon's Domain'". After inking penciler Ernie Chan on DC's Jonah Hex #8 (Jan. 1978), he became that Western series' regular penciler and inker beginning with #12 (May 1978), working with writer Michael Fleisher. He continued through #22 (March 1979) and additionally drew #27 (Aug. 1979).
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