The Dark Crusade

WARNING: EPISODE CONTAINS CONTENT RELATED TO SEXUAL VIOLENCE The River of Night’s Dreaming Originally published: Whispers III edited by Stuart David Schiff (1983) Awards: Nominated for 1982 Balrog for Short Fiction, Nominated 1982 World Fantasy for Best Novella Whiskey Pairing: Kings County Distillery Straight Bourbon (Special note: Wagner fan Lincoln Brown, pointed out the Afterward of &#82...

  Sheets by Alan Ryan Billy Wolfe’s Riding Spirit by Kevin A. Lyons Lex Talionis by Russell Kirk Entombed by Robert Keefe

  The Baby-Sitter by Davis Grubb The Well at the Half Cat by John Tibbetts My Beautiful Darkling by Eddy C. Bertin A Serious Call by George Hay

If you missed my blog entries here they are as a bonus episode! Enjoy. Introduction: Access to Horror by Karl Edward Wagner The Dead Line by Dennis Etchison To Wake the Dead by Ramsey Campbell In the Fourth Year of the War by Harlan Ellison From the Lower Deep by Hugh B. Cave

Link to the blog entry where John Mayer talks about Wagner’s suspension from medical school. here Link to ‘The Last Interview’ in Dark Troubador Magazine here Though I called it the last interview in the episode it is only one of the last. The last interview was done by Bradley H. Sinor for Horror Magazine Issue … Continue reading "Episode 6 ‘The Fourth Seal’- A...

For an in depth reading of Howard’s Men of the Shadows and the pictish connection to Machen’s work I suggest Nameless Tribes: Robert E. Howard’s Anthropological World-Building in “Men of the Shadows” by Jeffrey Shanks in Skelos 1 : The Journal of Weird Fiction and Dark Fantasy. As a further connection to Brandon and Bran Mak Morn … Continue reading "Episode 5 &#...

This story truly has it all, action, humor, romance, mystery, horror, and myth. I think the first time I read this story all the moving parts went over my head and on re-examination I decided this is one bad-ass yarn. The heart of this tale to me is greed. It’s the pursuit of gold and … Continue reading "Episode 4 ‘.220 Swift’ Part 1- The Mines of the Ancients"

Welcome to the third episode of The Dark Crusade where we finish up our coverage of ‘In the Pines’.  I’m so glad to have discovered the writing of Oliver Onions through this story. The parallels between ‘The Beckoning Fair One’ and ‘In the Pines’ are strong but Wagner has really inserted his own life and … Continue reading "Episode 3 ‘In the Pi...

Welcome to the second episode of The Dark Crusade. This week we’re featuring ‘In the Pines’ which we split into two episodes. I have to say this is probably one of my favorite Wagner tales. To the left is the the cover for the first appearance of this story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science … Continue reading "Episode 2 ‘In the Pines’ Part 1-Where the Sun N...

Here it is our first episode! We lay out what we hope to accomplish, our plans for the first season, as well as a discussion of Wagner’s BFA winning short story ‘Sticks’. A special thank you to our reader Malcolm Mills and to the artist Andrea Sparacio for the beautiful portrait of Wagner. Check here … Continue reading "Episode 1 ‘Sticks’-A Weird and Wild C...