David Drake has passed away.
I’m no Drake scholar and unqualified to evaluate his life and career or the majority of his creative output, including the popular Hammer’s Slammers. I’ll leave all that up to someone else.
That aside I greatly enjoyed his sword-and-sorcery work wherever I encountered it. I’ve praised his short story “The Barrow Troll” on several occasions and link to the article I wrote for Tales from the Magician’s Skull. You can find this story in literally a dozen or more collections at this point, and for a reason: It’s damned good, a wonderful little subversion of S&S and Drake’s take on the dragon sickness, a topic that also interested Tolkien and the unnamed author of Beowulf.
I’m also a fan of The Dragon Lord, which, now that I’m re-reading Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Trilogy, did for King Arthur what Drake already did, two decades prior: Offer up a grim and gritty historical take on the myth.
In S&S circles his greatest legacy is probably his Vettius stories, published in various venues but collected in Vettius and His Friends. Swords Against Darkness I contains his excellent “Dragon’s Teeth” which I recommend as a good starting place/sampling of that character. DMR Books recently reprinted “Killer” (written in conjunction with Karl Edward Wagner) in Renegade Swords II, one of Vettius’ “friends” stories featuring the monster hunter Lycon. Also highly recommended; many have described it as “Predator” set in ancient Rome.
I recently picked up a copy of From the Heart of Darkness at Howard Days and will elevate that up the TBR. Drake wrote a lot of horror and this one looks like a great representative sample.
Drake was also recently interviewed in the Karl Edward Wagner documentary The Last Wolf. He knew Wagner as closely as few living people did.
I would put him up there with Wagner, Charles Saunders, Keith Taylor and maybe 1-2 others as the best new authors working in the 70s S&S revival.
RIP Mr. Drake. Thanks for the wonderful stories, and for your service and sacrifice to the country.
5 comments:
Oh, to have sat in on a night in Chapel Hill when Drake, Wagner, and Wellman got together for an evening.
Godspeed.
I can only imagine... not a stretch to say the S&S/Weird version of the Inklings.
RIP David. I haven’t read his S&S stuff, but I have read a couple other works by him. Time Safari was a fun take on the prehistoric hunting trip formula. I also enjoyed The Hunter Returns, which is actually a reprint of the young adult novel Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard with additional chapters by Drake.
Ian: Very interesting, I had not heard of The Hunter Returns, but Fire-Hunter was a formative book for me (see here: https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2021/04/16/brian-murphys-gateways-to-sword-and-sorcery/).
I really need to track down that book, as well as Monster Tales: Vampires, Werewolves & Things.
From the Heart of Darkness was my introduction to Drake decades ago. It was quite the introduction. "Ranks of Bronze" is my favorite short story of his. I'll miss him.
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