publication date: Wednesday, December 12, 2018 (part of Winter 2019)

category: Movies

clue: Long before his career died on the vine when he fled his homeland to escape from Nazis, this expressionist director inflicted his own horror upon the world in films about mad hypnotists and unpunished murderers.

explanation: Wiene ("vine") was a German expressionist director best known for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Raskolnikow, the latter an adaptation of Crime and Punishment. more…

intended difficulty: hard

solved by: Russ Wilhelm, LaVonne Lemler, and Erik Bates

Gothic Goodbye: The RPG Gothic Earth> has been set in a world of literary creations roughly contemporary to its 1899 setting, with characters like Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula driving much of the storyline. After a decade of play, the game is now in its final weeks. Here's sending it off with a two-week retrospective of authors of that era whose works captured the popular imagination, in the order in which they shaped the world of Gothic Earth.

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Edgar Allan Poe

A raven, a cask of Amontillado, a black cat, a tale-telling heart, a purloined letter, and a fallen house of Usher are the legacy of this master of the macabre, whose obscurity is nevermore. Go »

W. Somerset Maugham

This mostly gay would-be doctor wrote about human bondage, a razor's edge, and a magician not unlike Aleister Crowley. Go »

Nathaniel Hawthorne

This early American master gave us Hester Prynne, Hepzibah Pyncheon, Dr. Heidegger, and Giacomo Rappaccini. Go »

H.P. Lovecraft

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Go »

Mary Shelley

Daughter of philosophers, wife of a novelist, she had plenty of Promethean figures in her life before she created one of her own. Go »

H.G. Wells

This author, who wrote classic novels about time travel, genetic horrors, an invisible person, and alien attacks, created a deep well of science-fiction concepts to inspire later authors. Go »