Appendix N Book Club

Oliver Brackenbury joins us to discuss August Derleth's "The Mask of Cthulhu", the Lin Carter Conan stories, competing Appendix N Book Club listener complaints, writing in another author's IP, dem hillbillies who ain't talk too good, being a broke millennial while reading about haunted inheritances, the authorial voice, psychic residue, letting players continue to run their characters during PC po...

Angeline B. Adams joins us to discuss Fredric Brown's "What Mad Universe”, psychogeography, toxic fandom, fictionalizing the writer's process, near-future sci-fi, the Troubles conflict in Northern Ireland, the relationship between the text and the art, loose worldbuilding, environmental and knowledge hazards, having protagonists deal with a big scary world, organic plot development, what this book...

Newton Nitro joins us to discuss Stanley G. Weinbaum's "The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum", Brazilian speculative fiction, Malazan Book of the Fallen, celebrations of the heterosexual white male, coming to acceptance with death, different cultural moral frameworks, the Virgin-Whore Complex, Brazilian miscegenation, dark humor, reskinning the Keep on the Borderlands, using RPGs to subvert facism, and...

Peter Bebergal joins us to discuss Michael Moorcock's "Elric of Melniboné", gaming stores, Gygax's love of pulp, meta-levels inside of dungeons, grimoires IRL, Elric's rotating sidekicks, the limits of idealism, the tragedy of addiction, Elric in art, the Eternal Champions, Elric as anime, and much more!

Shauntelle Benjamin joins us to discuss Roger Zelazny's "The Hand of Oberon", TTRPG Twitch streaming, the protagonist's internal experience, similiar sounding names, casual incest, combat mechanics in literature, cybernetic limbs, life-draining highways, getting stabbed by uncles you've just met, interior monologues in gaming, and much more!

Kienna Shaw joins us to discuss Philip José Farmer's "The Lavalite World", using present-day religious texts as mythology, literary info dumps, the petty egos of immortals, making moral choices when you your life is at stake, close third-person narration, the dangers of presenting racist characters without critique, Bluebeard's Bride, being a collaborative player instead of a lone wolf, constantly...

Ginny Loveday joins us to discuss Fletcher Pratt's "Invaders from Rigel", small books with even smaller fonts, colonialism, space travellers who don't understand combustibles, goofily over-capable heroes, interesting adversaries, home play vs organized play, overly replying on combat to handle challenges, separating the art from the artist, and much more!

Paige Leitman joins us to discuss Jack Vance's "The Killing Machine", Alexandre Dumas, sexism, interplanetary skin tones, examples of successful worldbuilding, D&D as a western, roleplaying vs rollplaying, planet-hopping revenge games, Star Wars, the OSR community, and much more!

Jason Ray Carney joins us to discuss Fritz Leiber's "The Big Time", urban modernism, Lovecraft's fear of the other, period slang, the time travel genre, deeply traumatized protagonists, Leiber's understanding of language, being the Black Svengali to one's Trilby, unity of time and space, Conan vs Fafhrd, chronomancy, and much more!

Nicole Emmelhainz-Carney joins us to discuss Robert E. Howard & L. Sprague de Camp's "Conan the Usurper", body horror, de Camp's heavy-handed editing, offensive physical descriptions of black characters, Lovecraft's contemporaries, the experience of talking about problematic elements in the fandom, Howard's creative process, audience analysis in pulps, the cliche of the dumb barbarian, unknown cha...

Kira Magrann joins us to discuss Lin Carter's "The Immortal of World's End", LARPing as an awkward teenager, goth teenage years, blending sci-fi and fantasy, tonal shifts, strange metaphors, the cognitive dissonance of glorifying violence after seeing war firsthand, evolving cultural norms, positive inclusions of beasts and animals, sexualizing all or none of the characters instead of just the fem...

Jason Vey joins us to discuss Fred Saberhagen's "The Black Mountains", owlbears, waiting for the fun evil parts, the Swords trilogy, cold war themes in a post-apocalyptic world, wizards with swords, the root of the lich, making magic unique, designing for 5e vs DCC RPG, mutations tables, and much more!

Clio Yun-su Davis joins us to discuss Gardner F. Fox's "Kothar and the Conjurer's Curse", sexual violence, sword and sorcery LARP ideas, non-stop magical hijinx, video game boob physics, the journey in gaming, using the "rule of cool" with cultural sensitivity in mind, monsters that represent human populations, coincidences as plot devices, creative death curses, power levels for heoric gaming, an...

Misha B joins us to discuss Jack Williamson's "The Humanoids”, relatable yet opposing idealogies, babies kept in cribs too long, the value of degenerates, the character arch of authors within their careers, morally ambiguous antagonists, superpowered humans overtaking the galaxy, setting ground rules at the table, characters with godlike abilities, moving force down the chain of challenges, and mu...

Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss Manly Wade Wellman's "Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds", classic Sherlock, the Professor Challenger stories, sycophantic women, the differing moral compasses of the characters, the lens of the Vietnam War, tearing down H.G. Wells, undefeatable villains, adding mechanical wings to random encounters, proto-Lovecrafian beasties, high versus low-level gaming...

Our Patron Book Club joins us to discuss H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror and Others”, setting construction, Lovecraftian punchlines, Robert Bloch, character development, ancient castles, inescapable monsters, the Whateleys, sudden developments of secret knowledge, characters built on people we know, and much more!

Vicki Lalonde joins us to discuss Edgar Rice Burroughs's "Back to the Stone Age”, damsels in distress, messages of empathy, shedding the bonds of the civilized world, the power of friendship, Barsoom, slavery as a plot device, large megafauna, fighters with six-shooters, foreshadowing villains, and much more!

Chris Wolf joins us to discuss A. Merritt's "The Ship of Ishtar", slaves in pulp fiction, magic hair-growing shrubs, film noir femme fatales, early wargaming, magic compasses, epic death as a story ender, the Mega Dumb Cast, playing on the Spaceship of Ishtar, and much more!

Members of our Patron Book Club (Jeremy Harper, Christopher Murrie, and Adam Styers) join us to discuss Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Warrior", the Conan paperback publication history, Conan's rapey inner-dialogue, the "barbarism is the natural state of mankind" quote, the roles of priests in sword and sorcery, Red Sonya and Dark Agnes, the strengths and weaknesses of Valeria, the fragile state of...

Sharang Biswas joins us to discuss L. Sprague de Camp's "The Clocks of Iraz", Indian classics, wights, internal logic, stories within stories, female characters who entirely exist as sex objects, queer bashing, unified tonal through lines, pre-skill system play styles, diversity in medieval simulationism, magic as a source of law or chaos, how to support sex-positive charities, and much more!

Jerry D. Grayson joins us to discuss Michael Moorcock's "The Vanishing Tower", discovering gaming as a kid, fantasy reading as a kid, comics, looking for representation, Elric as pulp, the grab-bag style of old-school gaming, morose scenery-chewing, the other Eternal Champions, Elric's childhood education, DMG relics, how you too can make hundreds of dollars in the roleplaying industry, and much m...

Becky Annison joins us to discuss Roger Zelazny's "Sign of the Unicorn", female authors, murder-mysteries, audiobooks, characters with godlike powers, world-building, rooting games in a setting, one-on-one gaming, making allies out of enemies, using player imagination, gaming in the era of Critical Role, and much more!

Brian Murphy joins us to discuss Andrew J. Offutt's "Swords Against Darkness", reading fantasy fiction as a kid, writing about swords and sorcery, second generation sword and sorcery authors, the understated prose of Poul Anderson, O. Henry's sword and sorcery, multiclass characters, the collected Ryre stories, elves and dwarves in swords and sorcery, sword and planet, and much more!

Jamila R. Nedjadi joins us to discuss Philip José Farmer's "Behind the Walls of Terra”, World of Darkness games, the false divide between the OSR and indie games, simulacrums, motorcycle gangs, one's own mother as a romantic love interest, hippie culture, fiction written by random tables, GMs building on what players give them, PBtA moves, describing modern items as marvelous artifacts, the perfec...

Hoi and Jeff interview Tim Kask, the co-compiler of the Appendix N list, who gives us some interesting insight into its history!