Flame Tree Fiction

Robert E. Howard's first story featuring Solomon Kane, his swashbuckling puritan warrior, was published in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales (1928 being a great year for pulp fiction with the first Buck Rogers story, and H.P. Lovecraft's iconic Call of the Cthulhu). Not quite as illustrious as his more celebrated barbarian stablemate, Conan of Cimmeria, Mr Kane's story is still a power-packed read and a worthy addition to our collection of creepy stories.

The Buck Rogers pulp sf fiction stories, along with the competing Flash Gordon tales, were a core inspiration for George Lucas' Star Wars. Rogers' first appearance, in Armageddon - 2419 hit the same publication year, 1928, as Lovecraft's Call of the Cthulhu and Robert E. Howard's first Solomon Kane romp, Red Shadows. The late twenties were an exciting time for the pulps: the possibilities of new technology combined with the age-old fear of the unknown fuelled the imagination of writers across the US and Europe and it was from this wellspring that Buck Rogers flourished.

H.P. Lovecraft, the master of the weird and macabre, the ultimate writer of creepy stories, set a fantastical world in motion with the publication of this short story in the February 1928 issue of Weird Tales. He stood on the shoulders of horror giants Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen; and a generation of pulp writers, including the muscular genius of Robert E. Howard (with his ultimate creation, Conan of Cimmeria) claim Lovecraft as their inspiration.

It seems incredible that some of Philip K. Dick's fiction is in the public domain. A superlative writer of science fiction and fantasy books Dick gave us so many powerful novels and films (Blade Runner, The Adjustment Bureau, Total Recall) but his first stories are available because their copyright was not renewed.