ratmmjess has decided to give a "small" peek inside Strange Tales of the Century here.

Two weeks ago I posted about the State of the Hat, listing out most of the projects I was comfortable talking about as being in Evil Hat's sky. Today, after exchanging some emails with ratmmjess, I'm ready to admit to the existence of another one (no, not Spirit of the [Encrypted] -- that one's still waiting).

Strange Tales of the Century

Jess Nevins (author of The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana and well known for his exhaustive League of Extraordinary Gentlemen annotations) is signing on board to turn his massive librarian brain to the perspective of global pulp. While the pulps in our experience have had a strongly American bent, there was a lot going on in the rest of the world's pulp publication scene, and Strange Tales of the Century will be exploring the entirety of it, unveiling the many strange and exciting character archetypes seen across the planet during pulp's heyday. This will be part game aid, part reference book, acting as an index into at least two decades' worth of the pulps through the lens of the heroes and villains writ large on the page. It will also act as something of an optional setting bridge between Spirit of the Century and Shadow of the Century, with compact updates to the 1935-ish area, a detour through more noirish territories, and finally rounding out with a healthy dash of 1950's style atomic pulp. Also found within should be some anecdotes taken from the pages of Strange Tales of the Century, a fictional pulp publication that chronicles the adventures of the (possibly fictitious -- you decide) Century Club. This shouldn't conflict with Bruce Baugh's territory to be covered in New Horizons -- the focus here is more on providing a full view of what was out there, rather than the social commentary angle.

We probably won't be looking at even having a manuscript until September or later -- Jess has a cross country job related move and a baby on the way that are somewhat understandably going to eat up his time -- and that's when the clock (and the ability to project some delivery dates) on this project will truly start, as we go through the editing, revision, layout, art direction, and publication parts of the process.

Resources tied to this project: Jess Nevins, myself, probably chadu on the edits at least if he's available, others TBD.

At least, that's the plan. :)

Thought you might want to hear about it!