Revisiting H.P. Lovecraft's "The Silver Key"

I don’t expend a lot of digital ink on H.P. Lovecraft, but everything I do is related in one way or other to the old gent from Providence (b. August 20, 1890). So I figured in recognition of his birthday I’d return to the story that inspired the name of my blog—and a lot more.

I began to give serious thought of starting a blog some eighteen years ago. I had plenty of grist for the mill: I was reading a shit-ton of fantasy, playing RPGs, and listening to heavy metal, and wanted to share my thoughts on it all. Blogging was a thing; I did some research, settled on blogspot as my platform of choice, and was eager to begin. 

But I paused: I was lacking a name, and didn’t want to rush the decision. I wanted something that aligned with what I planned to write about—all things fantastic, with an S&S and horror and heavy metal bent. But I also wanted something which revealed something personal about me, and my beliefs.

And so was born “The Silver Key,” after the Lovecraft story set in his Dreamlands cycle. A somewhat obscure entry,  but one of which I’m inordinately fond. The quote I’ve borne on the masthead remains as true today as the day he wrote it:

"Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other." 

The quote describes the plight of Randolph Carter, who once wandered his illimitable imagination until age 30, when some combination of obligation and science and the cowed insistence of the masses begin to harden him, fossilizing his ability to dream. The story is loaded with great quotes about Carter’s plight, here’s one I like, because I recognize myself in Carter’s reaction:

“He did not dissent when they told him that the animal pain of a stuck pig or dyspeptic plowman in real life is a greater thing than the peerless beauty of Narath with its hundred carven gates and domes of chalcedony, which he dimly remembered from his dreams; and under their guidance he cultivated a painstaking sense of pity and tragedy.

Once in a while, though, he could not help seeing how shallow, fickle, and meaningless all human aspirations are, and how emptily our real impulses contrast with those pompous ideals we profess to hold. Then he would have recourse to the polite laughter they had taught him to use against the extravagance and artificiality of dreams; for he saw that the daily life of our world is every inch as extravagant and artificial, and far less worthy of respect because of its poverty in beauty and its silly reluctance to admit its own lack of reason and purpose.”

I too recoil at the “logic bros” who think life can be reduced to the movement of atoms or chemical reactions in the brain … yet never think to question why they place such high value on their own opinion and proving everyone else wrong. Isn’t it all meaningless, logic bros? And what of our curious need to dream?

Feeling the hollowness at the center of life, Carter seeks out the occult and strange books of lore (here the story tips into the Lovecraftian). Finding these empty too he briefly contemplates suicide, but presses on. And eventually begins to dream again, though not as deeply as he did during his youth. During one of these dreams, his long-dead grandfather tells him of a strange and mysteriously engraved silver key in his attic. Carter finds the key and takes it on a trip to his boyhood home in the backwoods of northeastern Massachusetts, enters a mysterious cave, and is never seen again. 

His story remains for us to ponder, back here on earth.

My focus here has changed over the years, in conjunction with changes in my own life. It’s broadened. I’ve gotten more personal, biographical, sentimental with the passing of years and some momentous, life-changing events. 

But I’m recommitting to the work of exploring the fantastic, guided by the principle that there is no cause to value real things over that which we imagine.

Yes, there is firm ground under out feet. We need to perform work, however ordinary and prosaic it may be. We still need to farm and build, code and heal, teach and serve. The material world is a real, impersonal thing, and likes to remind us of this. Full retreat is not an option, at least for me.

But we also need to dream. We need fantasy. I need it like the very air or water. "The Silver Key" reminds us of that.

Others on my wavelength seem to respond to this story with similar enthusiasm. James at Grognardia recently wrote about The Silver Key as part of his Pulp Fantasy Library series, stating “When I was younger, I didn't hold this particular story in very high esteem. However, as I trudge toward old age, I judge it much more favorably. I suspect that those attuned to the imaginative currents that run between early fantasy fiction and tabletop roleplaying games will likewise find that “The Silver Key” offers a potent metaphor.”

A couple other interesting notes.

Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright initially rejected the story in 1927 but later asked to see it again and it eventually ran in the January 1929 issue. Wright later stated it was “violently disliked” by readers. Why, I wonder? Probably because it has no action, no external conflict. Not a lot happens … and yet everything happens. Might it be readers hated it because it revealed some void in their own lives? People hate having mirrors turned upon them.

I live in Northeastern Massachusetts, and have encountered odd spaces in the woods. Who knows, perhaps I too shall disappear into dream as Carter once did, and meet him, and if I do:

I shall ask him when I see him, for I expect to meet him shortly in a certain dream-city we both used to haunt. It is rumored in Ulthar, beyond the River Skai, that a new king reigns on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, that fabulous town of turrets atop the hollow cliffs of glass overlooking the twilight sea wherein the bearded and finny Gnorri build their singular labyrinths, and I believe I know how to interpret this rumor. Certainly, I look forward impatiently to the sight of that great silver key, for in its cryptical arabesques there may stand symbolized all the aims and mysteries of a blindly impersonal cosmos.

Read "The Silver Key" on Gutenberg.

What is this newsletter thing? =====>

Update: The form is working! I've got confirmed subscribers.

No, you’re not seeing things. That widget is there. I’m starting an email newsletter.

Why? 

• Third party platforms are ephemeral. Google might nuke Blogger from orbit… and all my readership would vanish in an instant.

• I need a better way to keep in touch with readers. I get a lot of flyby traffic that comes, reads an article and sometimes more, and then vanishes. I suspect because there’s no easy mechanism for getting back to this static blog. A quick signup form keeps people connected.

• I like what I’ve done here and don’t want to migrate over to something like Substack. Yes, it’s more modern, has better publishing architecture, and it has email distribution. But I’d lose the backlinks, the domain authority, etc.

What might I do with the NL? I don’t have a firm plan yet, nor even a name. I’m sort of building an aircraft in flight, but some ideas include:

• Brief summaries of posts with links to read the rest

• Bonus content you won’t get on the blog

• Updates about my new heavy metal memoir WIP and other projects

• Giveaways

It’s free, if you like what I do here please sign up. No spam; I'm thinking a monthly email. Just expect the unexpected… wizardry, arcana, that sort of thing.

I'm embedding it here in this post as well for better viewing.

"Mystification," Manilla Road

Dialing up a bit of Manilla Road this Metal Friday, one of the most swordly-and-sorcerous metal bands ever. 

I love the atmosphere of "Mystification." Mark Shelton sounds like an evil sorcerer out of a Clark Ashton Smith story here.

Through the winds of time

A poet found The Key

To The Elder Rhyme

Some call the song mystic

With tales of gore

And terror in the night

His words, no more,

Have kept me mystified

Someone in an online group posted that they fail to see the aesthetic connection between metal and S&S (?) Sarcasm doesn't always come across well on the internet so I hope this was a case of crossed wires ...  otherwise this is a really bad take.

Mystification is basically Weird Tales with guitars.

Manilla Road also has a song called ... Queen of the Black Coast.

Manowar exists.

I've got nothing else.

White Noise by Don DeLillo, a review

At the time Don DeLillo wrote White Noise (1985) computers were still a discrete object and something that you engaged with on an occasional basis. We had PCs but they were chained to desks and their applications limited.  Today we’ve got a device 100x more powerful with a bottomless scroll and an insatiable appetite for our attention. ChatGPT and other AI applications spit out answers that flatter you and may or may not be correct, with the only certainty that you haven’t learned a damned thing. And here comes a new bright shiny and it's time to stare at the next thing!

We have WAY too much information at our disposal and most of it is noise, not signal. 

This is the low hum of DeLillo’s novel.

You don’t need a plot summary; as with a book like Stoner the plot is entirely secondary and almost irrelevant. Remarried suburban well-to-do husband and wife raising a family are outwardly OK but inwardly unhappy, living a life of mindless consumption. The husband is a college professor who has built his entire career teaching an undergraduate seminar on Hitler. Weird, but he’s the king of his odd fiefdom of hyper-specialized knowledge.

The family is awoken from its torpor by a chemical spill which briefly threatens to tip the novel into postapocalyptic territory. It does not, but exposure to the chemical lends an apocalyptic air to the rest of the book. The husband is poisoned, likely fatally. His wife is caught taking experimental pills to remove her fear of death. This leads to some late novel drama that I won’t spoil here.

Is it worth your time?

Qualified yes. You need to read outside your genre; White Noise won a National Book Award and DeLillo is a wonderful stylist.

We are drowning in white noise more than never. Even though the technology of the book is dated the underlying message is even more relevant today than 1985.

I recognize myself in the novel’s protagonist. My head is stuffed with useless information; I have become an “expert” on things like sword-and-sorcery and heavy metal, but I could not fix a car engine or build a house. I suspect many of you will identify.

Now the qualifications.

It’s a postmodern novel and rather enervating. I’m much more aware of what I consume (even if I still eat too much junk food and drink too much beer); I know that you are impacted by that with which you choose to spend your time. And this book doesn’t have a particularly uplifting message ... though neither does A Song of Ice and Fire and people seem to like that well enough.

I would not recommend reading too many postmodern novels without a strong foundation of other works. Balance this stuff with heroics or fantasy or the spiritual because there is none of that here. It offers no answers to life, just an (admittedly beautiful) depiction of our powerlessness, and helplessness in the face of death.

It’s the usual stuff: God doesn’t exist, we’re just chemical reactions, even a gorgeous evening sunset is just natural phenomena—and quite likely the result of toxic fumes from the spill. 

None of this is presented as a Good Thing by DeLillo; the protagonist goes from complacency to ennui, to unnerved, and finally disappointed by the state of the world. He refuses to engage with it, the hard cold data of it, and remains in a state of denial. And when he does attempt action the book steers into something of the pathetic and comic.

But if you want to learn how to incorporate theme into your work, or what heroic fantasy/S&S pushes back against, or how to create believable characters, I’d recommend White Noise.

Sword of the Gael by Andrew J. Offutt, a review

Sword-and-sorcery typically works better in the short form than the novel, and I think I know why. It’s a lot harder to sustain breakneck action over 250-300 pages. I was reminded not for the first time of this maxim while reading Andrew J. Offutt’s Sword of the Gael (1975, Zebra Books), which I found to be a bit of a mixed bag.

Sword of the Gael is the first in a series of six books from Offutt (and later co-writer Keith Taylor) of Cormac Mac Art, a quasi-historical/mythic High King of Ireland out of medieval Irish legend. Robert E. Howard wrote a handful of stories about the character collected posthumously in Tigers of the Sea, two of which were completed by S&S author Richard Tierney. It is from REH’s interpretation of Mac Art that we get Offutt’s series. 

Got all that? If you want to learn more about Taylor's participation in the series check out this Q&A I did with him over on DMR Books.

Sword of the Gael opens with a couple fantastic chapters that hooked me out of the gate. A dragon-prowed ship bearing Cormac and his crew capsizes in a storm; many men drown but about a dozen or so including the mighty Dane Wulfhere the Skull-splitter cling to the wreckage and survive after they wash ashore on a rocky isle. Combing the barren spit for any signs of life or life-giving water they happen across a temple of anachronistic construction. Something not of Roman construction, nor even ancient Celtic, but of Atlantis. And it’s occupied by a hostile Viking crew.

Had Offutt ended there it would have made for an excellent short story. But after this well-done piece of Howardian world-building and weirdness we never see nor hear of Atlantis nor the temple again. A classic unused Chekov’s gun. Maybe we will in the second book, The Undying Wizard (1976) however this is not pitched as a series nor a book one. And after the great opening sequence the story begins to flag.

But hold your judgement for a moment. 

Though it fails to live up to its opening promise there are many interesting elements in the reminder of the book that carried me through to the end. Offutt says in the introduction he read millions of words and took thousands of words of notes researching ancient Ireland, aka., Eirrin, and in the process fell in love with its history and legends. This is evident. The story feels historical and interesting in a way a lot of generic fantasy does not, clothing and food and Irish culture faithfully depicted. We get so little of Ireland/Eirrin as the setting of fantasy novels (Taylor’s Bard is a notable exception) that this was welcome, and moreover well-rendered. Here’s a bit of that rendering, from a monologue delivered from Cormac’s love interest, the Irish princess Samaire:

There are no former sons of Eirrin, Cormac of Connacht! It’s a spell there is on the fens and the bogs, and the cairn-topped hills of green Eirrin called Inisfail, and it envelops us all at birth like a cloak about the mind. We are forever under it—even those who so long and long ago moved across Magh Rian to Dalriada in Alba. Eirrin-born is Eirrin-bound, as if by stout cords and golden chains.”

This stirs my Irish blood. What do you expect with a last name like Murphy? More than a bit of Eirrin is in me (as well as Danish blood from my mother’s side). 

Speaking of stirred/spilled blood, we also get a desperate pitched battle against Picts, and a fun battle against a pool dwelling giant squid. We get a reasonably well done and familiar story of a hero’s homecoming, back to the land that once declared him an exile. Cormac is the son of a murdered high king but cannot return to Eirrin because of a killing he committed years before at a great assembly, a sort of great fair and friendly gathering of competitive clan rivals where no quarrels are permitted (not unlike a Danish Thing). But the young and hot-headed Cormac is goaded to violence and flees his homeland for a dozen years.

Offutt isn't Howard but he’s a good storyteller in his own right. Sword of the Gael is earnest (Offutt even includes bits of his own verse); you cannot fake its enthusiasm. As a standalone novel it’s not entirely successful. But it’s an interesting failure, entertaining enough, and moreover instructive for writers working in the field. I’d give it a tentative recommendation to S&S fans.

Metal, and the Ozzman, on my mind

For many reasons I have metal on my mind these days. I mean, it’s never far—I’m a confirmed metalhead, lifelong—but my enthusiasm waxes and wanes. 

Right now we’re waxing full.

I can’t shake Ozzy’s death. I suspect it might be at least partly due to the algorithms that shape our online existence. It’s everywhere I go, from Youtube to Instagram to Reddit. I’ve been listening to a lot of OG Sabbath and Ozzy solo material.

More on Ozzy in just a moment.

I also have had three people close to me read my heavy metal memoir WIP and am processing their feedback. I’ve submitted proposals to a few specialty publishers and will continue to do so.

I suspect I will self-publish via KDP but who knows… I just know I have to do the thing. I believe in the story. I hit a bit of a lull and the 10th or 20th or 50th crisis of self-confidence but now am coming out on the other side.

Onwards.

***

Back to Ozzy. He’s everywhere right now.

As I write this the live stream of his public funeral in Birmingham is set to begin. 

If you haven’t read this fine remembrance by Geezer Butler, please do so: “Ozzy Osbourne was the Prince of Laughter.” It confirms everything I said above.

Darkness? Hell no, he was a beacon of light.

We are perceived a certain way, but that doesn’t mean we are that way.

We make mistakes, even grave ones. We do dumb shit, harmful shit. But that doesn’t define us. 

We get a second chance, because we get to decide.

You can change your life (you must). You have tendencies and biases and weaknesses and strengths, but you are a (semi) rational being. You’re born with a personality archetype that leads to introversion or extroversion, anxiousness or confidence, reflective or active postures to life.

But these fall along a spectrum. None of these traits are immutable. 

I reject biological determinism and materialism. I believe in free will. I believe there is an immortal soul in every human, bound to our houses of flesh but also something apart, malleable, full of potential (for good or ill). We can deduce the presence of a soul by its absence.

Life is not fixed. And that is a miracle.

Where’s my proof?

Ozzy. 

How unique was this dude? There will never be another like him. No AI, no algorithm, can replicate his contradictions—his wild acts and occasional descents into darkness, juxtaposed with his jubilant, caring spirit.

We all must wear masks and adopt personas. Ozzy wore one for the stage. But you could see the real person underneath.

Go back and read Butler’s remembrance, but in particular this bit:

People always thought Ozzy was a feral wild man, but he had a heart of pure gold. Most of his infamous antics — the bat saga, biting the head off a dove, pissing on the Alamo, snorting lines of ants, and the rest — came in his solo years, away from the restraints of the Sabbath crew. But if you were a friend in need, Ozzy was always there for you. When my son was born with a heart defect, Ozzy called me every day to see how I was coping, even though we hadn’t spoken for a year.

His wife Sharon forgave his transgressions. We can forgive too.

His friends loved him because he was full of humor and hope. He came from nowhere Birmingham and changed the world.

Not a bad legacy for a Prince of Darkness.

Godspeed to a lighthearted Prince of Darkness

Unreal, less than three weeks after “Back to the Beginning,” the end of the road for a once in a generation frontman.

Farewell Ozzy Osbourne.

Ozzy was not a musical genius, save his voice, which was awesome and inimitable. He resides firmly in this old and flawed Top 10 heavy metal vocalists list which I should probably update. 

He was the face of heavy metal, and its soul. If not its brightest talent its center, the sun around which the rest of the metal universe revolved. His charisma was off the charts. The world turned out to see him and Black Sabbath off in Birmingham, which you don’t do for assholes.

I've never known a world without Ozzy Osbourne. Four of Sabbath's legendary first six albums were out before I was born. His loss is immeasurable.

I think some of Ozzy’s solo material is overlooked. Certainly not “Crazy Train,” “Bark at the Moon,” “Mr. Crowley” or “Mama I’m Coming Home,” but how about “Fire in the Sky,” “Mr. Tinkertrain” or “The Ultimate Sin”? 

As I noted in my Black Sabbath post our metal heroes are dying off, and the list is getting longer. Lemmy, Dio, EVH, Paul Di'Anno, and now Ozzy. That’s how it goes, none of us are getting out alive.

It makes me sad of course, but also reflective, and expansive. Paradoxically death opens my heart. See enough of it, and you realize life is too short for grudges and pettiness and trying to “own” each other. How about more celebration of the good, of reading and taking a few notes from the “Diary of a Madman” who wrang every fucking bead of sweat out of this life?

Maybe if we can all stop hating each other for five minutes and realize that we’re walking a finite and short path on a spinning ball of rock in the darkness of an unfathomably massive void we’d all be … a little happier? Or at least more appreciative of the miracle of our own lives. Ozzy had his dark moments and transgressions and addictions, but the outpourings of support confirm a few common traits: He laughed a lot, he cared about his friends, and he was hopeful.

Maybe it’s not too late

To learn how to love, and forget how to hate

A sorely needed, swordly-and-sorcerous week off

It's 5 o'clock somewhere ...

My grandfather had fabulous foresight. After WW2 he and his buddy bought a piece of property in the lakes region of New Hampshire and built a pair of cabins that still stand today, with modifications. It’s an inspiring story of wartime service and family sacrifice you can find here on the blog.

We still have the cabin. It’s passed through a couple generations and today I’m a 1/5 owner. My extended family splits the cost of utilities, taxes, maintenance, etc, and we all put in for vacation weeks in the summer.

I’m currently in the midst of our week away. I didn’t realize how much I needed it until I saw the lake, and felt an unseen load lift from my shoulders. It had been too long.

My company has an unlimited PTO policy, which means you can take as much time off as you want (with approval). What this ideal scenario means in practice is often less time off. Guilt and the protestant work ethic are powerful forces. I hadn’t’ taken anything beyond a few scattered days off this year. But right now I’m enjoying a whole lot of little. Pontoon boat rides, Old Fashioneds, the mournful wails of loons.

I’ve put blogging on hold too, but this morning as I was sitting out on our deck listening to the wind sighing through the maples and ripple across the water I was inspired to write something I could reasonably shoehorn onto the blog.

Here’s a few swordly and sorcerous updates.

I enjoyed a visit from Tom Barber. Tom and I get together at least once a year but typically at his house. This year I invited him to the camp and took him out on a leisurely pontoon boat cruise. We got caught up on everything in his life, including the loss of his beloved partner Terri. Tough times for Tom but he seemed to leave in good spirits.

After a span of more than a decade I watched The Whole Wide World with my wife and daughter. I loved it; they liked it although they found themselves annoyed by Bob’s erratic behavior and creeped out with his too close relationship with Hester. This is a very well-done movie and it left me choked up, but I can see the issues it can cause for an outsider with no context for Howard’s life. For example, there is no mention of the extremely late payments from Weird Tales, which we now know greatly impacted his mental health. But you can't expect too much from a 106 minute film and there is some fabulous acting by Zellweger and D'Onofrio. I enjoyed this revisit of Cross Plains.

I’m reading Andrew J. Offutt's Sword of the Gaels and finding it fun. The first two chapters are absolutely fantastic, setting up the reader for a late Roman Empire/Viking Age historical … that suddenly takes an unexpected left turn into the weird. Cormac and his crew are shipwrecked on a seemingly deserted rocky isle and discover a fortress that seems out of another era, evoking deep ancestral memories of Atlantis and snake-men:

Unfortunately some 70 pages later I can feel a bit of sag that plagues so much long-form S&S. It seems hard to sustain swordplay and fast pacing and lack of character interiority over a few hundred pages. We’ll see what else Offutt can do with the rest of the book.

I read a draft of David C. Smith’s Cold Thrones and Arcane Arts. This is a new title in the works from Pulp Hero Press that offers analysis of what makes sword-and-sorcery fiction tick—what it is, and what it does well when it’s at its best. Interestingly Smith spends most of the page count on new S&S, authors like John Fultz and Schuyler Hernstrom and John Hocking and Howard Andrew Jones and many, many others besides. I suspect this will be well-received in the community although I did offer up a few ideas for expansion and revision. Some inspired stuff here.

Lakelife!

I am Werewolf Boy

Written storytelling has a unique and curious aspect. If a story has a great enough impact on you as a child or young adult, re-reading it can take you back to a distinct place and time in your life, even decades later. It’s a power that I don’t think movies quite possess, perhaps because of the images you form in your brain while reading, or the tactile book you once held in your hand.

After a span of 40-odd years I obtained and re-read Monster Tales, and once again was Werewolf Boy.

This proved to be a fun collection, obviously written for adolescents though it certainly has sharp edges. Every protagonist is a kid and few have happy endings. The 70s “hit different” man.

I enjoyed some of the stories more than others. The standouts included “Torchbearer” and “The Call of the Grave.” “Wendigo’s Child” by horror veteran Thomas Monteleone was pretty good too, if a bit telegraphed.

I also remembered “The Vrkolak” though I remembered it being better. It reads like a PG version of Friday of 13th with Jason swapped out for a giant toad, and murder replaced by scaring a nasty camp counselor half to death.

But the story that most captured my imagination was Nic Andersson’s “Werewolf Boy”, both now and then. I am plagued with a lousy memory but somehow I recalled most of the beats. I think what makes it  memorable was my identification with the protagonist, Stefan, a young boy who is treated with a cruelty that stays with you.

(spoiler alert coming)

The story is set long ago in medieval Europe. Stefan is caught out in the woods coming home at night with a puppy. A sadistic local baron is out hunting with his cruel hounds Arn and Bern and tree the young boy. As he reaches for a branch Stefan drops his helpfless pup to the ground. And watches in horror as the hounds tear it to shreds.

To add injury to insult, the baron calls Stefan down, strikes him cruelly across the face with his whip, and rides off laughing.

That’s some callous shit and a shock for anyone to read, but especially when you’re eight years old or so.

But vengeance is Stefans. He encounters a hideous old witch in the woods (she’s missing her nose, which we find out is also the baron’s doing), and asks if she’ll cast a spell to grant him revenge. She does, but not without great cost. The spell turns the boy into a werewolf—and also costs him his soul.

Memory is not just a recall of facts, but also of feelings, emotions. It can be unlocked by a certain smell, a sound—or a story. It can even make you... transform.

As an adult, I found myself shape-shifting, into 10 year-old me. I remembered being shocked by the baron’s cruelty, then (and now). I remembered reveling in Stefan’s vengeance, and thinking how cool it would be if I could become a werewolf, and take care of a few childhood problems of my own. 

The bits in the story of Stefan’s transformation from boy to beast and development of a shocking new power and inhuman sense of smell are well-rendered. The fights with Arn and Bern are a slightly less bloodless but no less ferocious version of something in The Call of the Wild. And so were burned into my memory, there for the retrieval--and re-living.

“Werewolf Boy” is an effective little tale and I was pleased to re-read it. And equally pleased to learn that it had the same effect on at least a couple other readers. While searching for details about the author I came across a couple threads where folks who had also read the story long ago were asking if anyone could recall it from its details.

Evidently this story holds a stranger power over more people than just myself.

Anyway, I'm glad I finally have a copy of Monster Tales, and equally pleased to become a werewolf boy once more.

Goodbye to Romance: Reflections on Black Sabbath, Back to the Beginning, and the end of the road

This past weekend I was away celebrating the long July 4 holiday. My extended family is fortunate enough to own a seasonal camp on one of the small lakes that dot southern New Hampshire like lapis lazuli under the mountains. We watched fireworks on the beach, puttered around in the pontoon boat, drank spirits, and forgot about life for a while.

But my mind kept wandering. Far away, to Birmingham, England, where an old greying band dressed in black was taking the stage one last time. Saturday was “Back to the Beginning” and the beginning of the end for a band near-and-dear to my heart.  

I’m talking about Black Sabbath, of course.

If you believe Rob Halford and Ozzy Osbourne (who wouldn’t? they are our metal gods, infallible, their word comes from on high), heavy metal’s distinctive sound and look derived at least in part from the sound of clashing steel machinery and billowing fire and smoke of the iron foundries of Birmingham. Birmingham was among the principal engines of the industrial revolution of the mid-18th/early 19th centuries. After the Luftwaffe bombed the shit out of it in WW2—which come to think of it is very fucking metal—it rebounded with a period of economic growth, before beginning a slow decline in the 70s. 

Against this curtain of dirty steel and fire heavy metal was born.

Ozzy was born in Aston, a ward in the city, in 1948, growing up in a row of terraced houses. Not a lovely place to spend your childhood. “Unless your life’s ambitions was to work in a factory, killing yourself with all-night shifts on an assembly line, there wasn’t much to look forward to, growing up in Aston. The only jobs to be had were in the factories,” he says in his 2009 autobiography I Am Ozzy.

From this cauldron of crashing iron, molten steel slag and urban decay came Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, the alpha and omega of heavy metal. And others besides. Ozzy escaped the slaughterhouse in which he worked, and hitched to Tony Iommi his star quickly ascended.

Sabbath is regarded as the first metal band by almost everyone; if you think it was actually someone like Blue Cheer you are more than a little pretentious; if you think it was Led Zeppelin you’re an amateur but us metalheads can work with you, young grasshopper, and get you on the path to enlightenment. Those bands made metal sounds, sprinkled in metal chords, and sometimes wrote metal songs: “The Immigrant Song” is thoroughly metal, for example. But Zeppelin as a whole is not. They are blues-based rock. Likewise Blue Cheer may have made songs with heavy metal elements, but they did not start a movement. Black Sabbath did, by going all in with the sound and the look, consistently, album over albums. Their self-titled album debuted on Feb. 13, 1970, and with it heavy metal was born.

If a band is to be considered heavy metal it must embrace that identity all the way--thematically, visually, and most of all, unapologetically. Without irony, unless you are Steel Panther or GWAR. This describes Black Sabbath. The quartet of lead vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, founder and lead guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward, and bassist Geezer Butler, went all-in with crunching, guitar-forward riffs, demonic imagery and lyrics. To get a sense of his sound and how different Black Sabbath is than say, the Rolling Stones—who rock hard but are not heavy metal—you must listen. Words are inadequate. I recommend pulling up “Into the Void” on Youtube or Spotify. You might at first think you’re stoned; the drawn-out intro is downbeat, slow, murky. Coupled with a trippy album cover you might think you were listening to some obscure act who had their heyday at Woodstock and burned out on acid. But then, suddenly, at the 1:14 mark, the song takes a hard right turn into the primal. A primitive downshift to an entirely new type of thing altogether. If you have a pulse this is guaranteed to cause a few involuntary reactions. Your mouth will harden into a rigid, righteous attitude. Your lips will purse. In short order your head will begin nodding to Ward’s driving drumbeat. You may break out into air guitar, mimicking Iommi’s inimitable guitar tones, or you may air drum, swinging your arms to hit an invisible snare. No one seems to play air bass but if that’s your thing, have at it. Go do this now; I’ll wait here. If you experience no involuntary reaction to “Into the Void” or “War Pigs,” you are not metal and never will be.

Sabbath were the torchbearers for metal from 1970-1976, putting out classic after classic album including their self-titled debut, followed by Paranoid (1970), Master of Reality (1971), Vol. 4 (1972), Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973), and Sabotage (1975). Sabbath’s distinctive sound came from its tuned down guitars; Iommi needed to loosen his guitar strings after losing the tips of two fingers in an industrial accident (a story that is so metal it has passed into legend, or True Myth). Although they received little commercial airplay Black Sabbath built a massive following with hits like “Paranoid,” “War Pigs,” “Iron Man” and “Children of the Grave.” Their sound would influence subsequent waves of American thrash bands across the Atlantic, including the most commercially successful metal band ever, Metallica. Said Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich during Sabbath’s Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony,:“Bill, Geezer, Ozzy and Tony, if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here. Obviously if there was no Black Sabbath, there would be no Metallica. If there was no Black Sabbath, hard rock and heavy metal as we know it today would look, sound and be shaped very, very differently. So if there was no Black Sabbath, I could possibly still be a morning newspaper delivery boy.”

Sabbath was also the first metal band to feel the unending attacks of self-righteous and pretentious critics, who were unable to appreciate this groundbreaking genre of music because they had their heads jammed firmly up the Beatles’ asses. Rolling Stone critic Lester Bangs in September 1970 panned Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut—the same album that launched thousand metal careers and today remains a stone-cold classic—with the following bucket of ice water: “Over across the tracks in the industrial side of Cream country lie unskilled laborers like Black Sabbath, which was hyped as a rockin' ritual celebration of the Satanic mass or some such claptrap, something like England's answer to Coven. Well, they're not that bad, but that's about all the credit you can give them. The whole album is a shuck.” 

55 years later the laugh is on him. Apparently all 45,000 tickets for the concert sold out in 16 minutes. I was giving the streaming pay-per-view serious consideration but again, family comes first.

I’m on record as saying my favorite incarnation of Sabbath is the Dio years, in particular Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules (though you shouldn’t sleep on Dehumanizer). But I recognize the power, the legacy, and most of all the groundbreaking performance of the original four.

I’m glad I got to see the OG Sabbath a couple times on the Ozzfest tour in the late 90s and early oughts. When I was getting into metal in the late 80s Sabbath were at their nadir. I didn’t understand all the hype… until I started figuring it out with the tribute album Nativity in Black. Their performances at Ozzfest confirmed that the old stories were true. Sabbath was awesome and blew me away.

Sabbath’s last live performance as the original four was at Ozzfest in 2005, although a new incarnation picked up in 2006 as Heaven and Hell (I do consider H&H Sabbath in all but name—Iommi drives the boat, Chief. Not Sharon).

But no original four for a stretch of 20 years. Until Saturday, when they took their final bow. Back in Birmingham, as it should be.

Seated on his black throne Ozzy managed to summon some of his old power and haunting vocals, the unmistakable keening wail. I was pleasantly surprised by their performance, both the Sabbath final set and Ozzy’s solo material prior. Seeing him struggle through “Mama I’m Coming Home” brought a tear to my eye. I think he was struggling because of the words and what they represent, not the effort.

Some of the old guard summoned some great performances, too, pieces here and there I’ve been able to catch. Slayer was great. Steven Tyler was fantastic though he did not perform any Sabbath songs. Metallica rocked (“Johnny Blade”? Are you kidding? Awesome). Jake E. Lee, Nuno Bettencourt, and KK Downing shredded. I was also impressed by some young blood/Yungblud. Whew, that dude can sing. I’ve heard great things about Rival Sons cover of “Electric Funeral.”

I haven’t seen all the performances yet, just what I’ve been able to find on YouTube. I’m sure there will be some special DVD release and I’m looking forward to seeing it in full.

We also had some great recorded performances. Jack Black’s School of Rock version of “Mr. Crowley” made me smile, and nod… and cheer. He played it straight, rare for him. Over the top in an early 80s Ozzy tribute costume, but not straying into buffoonery or mockery, and he sounded great. I’ve already mentioned Judas Priest’s cover of “War Pigs,” which was sort of a separate thing though obviously timed for the show.

I don’t believe another metal band will ever receive this sort of all-star sendoff. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Metallica are rivals in influence (though I think Sabbath still gets the nod here) and Metallica is more commercially popular, but by the time Metallica retires—they are still in their early 60s and could have another solid decade ahead of them—the old guard will have slipped away, either into musical senesce or their mortal coil. We won’t have Slayer and Steven Tyler to perform; we won’t have Judas Priest to create a video tribute.

Metal is going, boys. Its passage had already begun with the deaths of Ronnie James Dio and Lemmy, but with Sabbath’s departure from the stage we’re truly seeing the beginning of the end.

And it makes me sad.

Classic heavy metal is tied to the romance of my life. Growing up I discovered its magic. For me heavy metal was a release from conformity. When I joined the ranks of metal warriors I wasn’t scared; I was part of something powerful, unique, wild, weird. I wore the denim, and the black.

So I say goodbye to romance.

The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell; a review

“Myths formulate things for you. They say, for example, that you have to become an adult at a particular age. The age might be a good average for that to happen—but actually, in the individual life, it differs greatly. Some people are late bloomers, and come to particular stages at a relatively late age. You have to have a feeling for where you are. You’ve got only one life to live, and you don’t have to live it for six people. Pay attention to it.”

--Joseph Campbell

Myths—the old great ones—are true. Not because they necessarily happened—though some have, in some form or fashion, even if distorted or exaggerated over centuries and millennia of retelling—but because they convey timeless truths about the human condition. We recognize something of ourselves in them. The wanderings of Odysseus. King Arthur and the quest for the Grail and the fall of Camelot. The Celtic myths and legends, of Cú Chulainn and the Tuatha Dé Danann. These stories endure because they tell us something profound about human nature, both how it is and how it might be different, how we might live better lives. 

I was reminded of everything I love about myth in a recent reading of The Power of Myth. Published in 1988, the book is an extended conversation between Joseph Campbell and television journalist Bill Moyers (who just passed away last month) that took place in 1985 and 1986 at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch and the Museum of Natural History in New York. Portions of the interview were aired in a six-hour PBS series, which proved wildly popular at the time and led to a Campbell revival. The interviews spanned more than 24 hours and The Power of Myth is the complete edited transcript. 

Campbell passed away just a year after the interview and The Power of Myth serves as a repository of his thinking late in life. I’m glad we have it. I cannot do justice to his unique intellect except to say he understood humanity at a level few have before or since. His great genius was in comparative mythology. Campbell spent a lifetime studying the great myths of all the world and came to find they shared much in common. People across cultures and ages are different, but also struggle with the same concerns and problems—the aimlessness of youth, the difficult transition from childhood to adult responsibility, aging and death. And these common stories become encoded into myth.

The Power of Myth is not Bulfinch’s Mythology. It is not a history of the myths, but instead addresses their metaphysical aspects: What are myths? Why do we need them? How have they come to endure?

The answers lie in the pages of this book, but also Dr. Robert Johnson, a contemporary of Campbell and like him a student of Carl Jung, who said of myth, “People have such a tendency to think that mythology is something that happened way back yonder, but mythology is a current, immediate, living thing. Everybody has his own myth, churning away inside himself.”

This speaks to me.

I spent much of my life walking around in a fog, consuming music, books, porn, social media, whatever. Never turning inward; never attempting to come to grips with my unconscious self that ruled my actions like an unseen hand on the tiller. Myths offer a way out, into a higher plane of existence, because they make you look within, where the answers lie, and where the dragon waits. This is the hero’s journey and one we all must undertake. I have personally experienced it, and see the same story and archetypes and patterns play out again and again in the broader culture. 

Jung and Campbell have somewhat fallen out of favor today. We have a blossoming field of neuroscience plumbing the depths of the human brain at a physical, biochemical level. I suspect the scientific community would consider the idea of a shadow self or the collective unconscious unscientific, speculative, lacking empirical support. But they continue to provide a working model of the human psyche and development that speaks to me, deeply. I have to come to believe in dualism. Mind and body are separate though related. Although concepts like love and honor and pride are not physical objects they exist, and so are of no less import than physical matter. We need abstract symbolic language to navigate the concrete world. Myths offer the roadmap.

The real quest is within, our foe to be conquered is the unexamined life, the un-individuated self. We believe our lives will be fixed if a certain politician gets into office or some bill is passed; we are mistaken.  The hard truth is that no calvary is coming over the hill; we must accept the burden of accountability, which is paradoxically liberating. Says Campbell: 

“Ultimately, the last deed has to be done by yourself. Psychologically, the dragon is one’s own binding of oneself to one’s ego. We’re captured in our own dragon cage. The problem of the psychiatrist is to disintegrate that dragon, break him up, so that you may expand to a larger field of relationships. The ultimate dragon is within you, it is your ego clamping you down … Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life, and Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself. That’s the helpful thing about the Indian idea of karma. Your life is the fruit of your own doing.”

As Jung said in The Undiscovered Self, “A million zeroes joined together do not, unfortunately, add up to one. Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but the fatally shortsighted habit of our age is to think only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations.” Adds Johnson: “You have to have some sane people as individuals before you can talk about community. Otherwise you have a community of sickness.”

This is not a call for selfishness; it’s a call for living an authentic life and then sharing the bounty outwards. Being curious about other people’s lives; expressing true empathy. This is the truth at the heart of the Holy Grail myth, in which the knights set out each on their own path, entering the Forest Sauvage at their own entry points. Per Campbell:

“The theme of the Grail romance is that the land, the country, the whole territory of concern has been laid waste. It is called a wasteland. And what is the nature of the wasteland? It is a land where everybody is living an inauthentic life, doing as other people do, doing as you’re told, with no courage for your own life. And that is what T.S. Eliot meant in his poem The Waste Land … the Grail becomes the—what can we call it?—that which is attained and realized by people who have lived their own lives. The Grail represents the fulfillment of the highest spiritual potentialities of the human consciousness.”

Once we have found ourselves, we help others. That completes the circle. Perceval recovers the Grail only after he formulates the question to the wounded Fisher King: “What ails thee?” 

“The question is an expression, not of the rules of the society, but of compassion, the natural opening of the human heart to another human being,” Campbell explains. “That’s the Grail.”

It’s not easy, but life is hard, and has always been thus. But Campbell chose to play it. His lessons are worth reading. "I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera--except that it hurts".

On a bit of a lighter note, if you’re a Star Wars fan The Power of Myth contains some insightful analysis of the film. For example, Campbell describes Darth Vader as an unformed man, undeveloped as a human individual, but is instead a bureaucrat living for an imposed program (Lucas was a big Campbell devotee and Star Wars an homage to his teachings). Vader’s monstrous mask is a symbol; when taken away his “strange and sort of pitiful undifferentiated face” is laid bare. 

We need the myths; without the great stories we lack the models and language to become self-sufficient individuals, susceptible to propaganda and mass subjugation. Fortunately we have Campell’s teachings as a north star to guide us out of our own personal wasteland, if we brave the journey. We must.

War Pigs, Judas Priest

Easy call this Metal Friday. A fantastic Judas Priest tribute to the great Black Sabbath, who are playing their final show this weekend.

Glenn Tipton in there too? Outstanding.

Sabbath is at the end. Priest is nearing the end. At this point all the great classic heavy metal bands are in their twilight.

But I'm grateful to have lived through it--and Priest still sounds pretty awesome here. I hope Ozzy still has a bit in the tank for his final show.

The Shining Wire

They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away. They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy’s warren and paying his price? They found out other marvelous arts to take the place of tricks and old stories. They danced in ceremonious greeting. They sang songs like the birds and made Shapes on the walls; and though these could help them not at all, yet they passed the time and enabled them to tell themselves that they were splendid fellows, the very flower of Rabbitry, cleverer than magpies. They had no Chief Rabbit—no, how could they?—for a Chief Rabbit must be El-ahrairah to his warren and keep them from death: and here there was no death but one, and what Chief Rabbit could have an answer to that? Instead, Frith sent them strange singers, beautiful and sick like oak apples, like robins’ pincushions on the wild rose. And since they could not bear the truth, these singers, who might in some other place have been wise, were squeezed under the terrible weight of the warren’s secret until they gulped out fine folly—about dignity and acquiescence, and anything else that could make believe that the rabbit loved the shining wire.

--Richard Adams, Watership Down

Generative AI = the shining wire.

Still time to escape to a new warren over the hill, if you are willing to brave the journey.

S&S publishing news: Plunder-a-plenty

Lots of swords, lots of sorcery going on.

My friend Ken Lizzi, one of the dudes with whom I split a house rental at 2023 Robert E. Howard Days, is having his Cesar the Bravo fiction collected and kickstarted by Cirsova. Cesar, a sometimes-condottiero and a bravo by trade, has earned a reputation as one of the best swords for hire in the city of Plenum. If you need a foe humiliated before a cheering crowd, he’s your man! 

This collection includes 5 previously published adventures plus an all-new full-length novel! Ken is a good dude and a good writer. Get in on that today.

I'm giving Old Moon Quarterly a shot. I bought one of their issues recently and now am kickstarting issues #9-10. One of these is Arthurian themed which ticks a lot of my boxes. I'm liking the aesthetic of this publication. As I write this entry I can see they've met their funding minimum and now we'll see what else they might unlock. Maybe Excalibur from the stone?

Digging the Celtitude.

Speaking of great aesthetics, DMR Books has published Celtic Adventures, with one of the best covers I've seen. This reminds me I still need to pick up Swords of Steel vol. 4. Some awesome reprints in this one, including the likes of REH and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, whose "Vengeance" in DMR Books' Viking Adventures I could not put down.

I'm also kickstarting David C. Smith's Sometime Lofty Towers. You should too, as its one of the best modern sword-and-sorcery stories I've read. You can read my prior review of this fine title here. This one is just about to fund, you can be the one to put it over the top!

In summary, no shortage of excellent stuff going on these days in S&S. I love the old stuff too but try to support new authors and projects. 

Note: This roundup is far from comprehensive, just a few things that have crossed my transom recently.

More generative AI harm

The result I was anticipating has occurred. A Federal California Judge today ruled in favor of AI giant Anthropic, stating that the company’s training of its large language models on the works of authors without permission constitutes fair use. He did rule that its use of pirated material is theft, but this latter win is quite minor in comparison to the win handed to tech giants.

From 404 Media, “The complex decision is one of the first of its kind in a series of high-profile copyright lawsuits brought by authors and artists against AI companies, and it’s largely a very bad decision for authors, artists, writers, and web developers.”  

It's the precedent for which all the major AI firms were waiting. They can now ingest all your work freely and then sell it back to you for a monthly licensing fee.

 The rich get richer and the rest get ever smaller scraps.

All while gleefully continuing to destroy your jobs and your family’s future. Because, China?

Just a few weeks ago Anthropic’s CEO predicted that their product and its AI ilk will lead to the elimination of 50% of all entry level jobs, and 10-20% unemployment more broadly. 

This is not me playing Boy Who Cried Wolf. The wolf is at your door, and its hungry.

Job losses are already happening. In my work outside of the blogosphere I serve a slice of healthcare. Providence Health Care recently laid off 600 employees amid restructuring and is now heavily investing in AI.

That’s 600 jobs replaced by machines. This trend will grow exponentially.

EVEN IF the end result is something like universal basic income it will be a net loss for humanity. We’re meant to do hard things, not play with ourselves on our fucking computers and lap up the output of machines that have strip-mined humanity’s riches and spoon feed it back to you as slop.

A few other wonderful AI news briefs worth mentioning.

• Unqualified job candidates are flooding inboxes with AI generated resumes tailored to match job descriptions. Companies are using AI to weed out candidates, and in some cases interview candidates with voice AI. AI agents are talking to AI agents. No humans apparently needed. 
• Communication skills are being incredibly degraded. No one can write without a machine, and those that do use machines are getting dumber. Students using ChatGPT to write their papers show vastly lowered brain activity and little to no recall. This is not me blowing gas, it’s an MIT study.

Sometimes progress isn’t. 

I suppose I could just stick my head in the sand and go back to blogging about old books and pulp authors and heavy metal. I’m sure a few of my half-dozen readers would prefer this. No fear, I will blog about these subjects. 

But none of this exists without people. I love looking at works made by people, for other people, not the output of machines. I can’t and won’t stop writing about this issue. 

I continue to maintain that for creative work and deep learning, and possibly our future as a species, gen AI is a cancer.

A little piece of Howard Days wends its way home: God's Blade

One of the cool things you encounter attending Howard Days are many bits of Howard and Howard-adjacent ephemera fans bring to the silent auction or the dealers' tables or just carry as handouts to the one place in the world they know will find an appreciative audience.

One of those pieces made its way back home to Massachusetts where I call home. God's Blade: A Sketchbook by Michael Rollins. Editor Jason Hardy put together this modest but terrific little handmade book and asked me to write a short introductory essay. Which I was proud to do, for a gratis copy. See "Solomon Kane Against Injustice."

The book features some fine poetry by Hardy, Charles Gramlich, Michael Rollins, and Chris L. Adams. At first glance I'm struck by the outstanding artwork by Rollins. Very unique style, dark, lonely, Puritanical in feel. Kane's visage is cast into shadow, suitable for this somewhat complex figure. In the preface to the book Rollins says his art was inspired by the stark trees native to his hometown of Cumbria, England. He notes that when composing these pieces he "rarely began with Solomon, rather placing him in the landscape, which I think accentuated the feeling of his almost hopeless fight against the darkness around him."

Well done.

"Powerslave," Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden is so damned good and has so many damned good songs that I can't listen to them neutrally. I've lost track of the number of times I've found myself sitting next to a friend with a cold beer, and had to stop our conversation mid-sentence.

"So man I've always wanted to tell you something. And never had the courage. It's just that..."

"Wait, hold that thought--you need to hear this. Wait for it..."

And then I launch into how awesome this bit of Maiden-ness is.

The guitar solo in "Powerslave" is one of those moments. Stops me cold every time. Easily in my top 5 Maiden solos, and that's saying something. I'm proud of the work I did capturing the fantastic work of Nikki Stringfield of the Iron Maidens absolutely killing it at Wallys on Hampton Beach. 

I mean, just beautiful. So is the guitar solo.

"Powerslave" brings dry and dessicated ancient Egypt to vivid visceral life through the power of heavy metal. When Bruce Dickinson dons his owl Horus mask (as I saw him do in 2008) the effect is complete. We're hearing the words of an ancient Pharoah, believing he is a god but finding out he is all too mortal, subject to the eternal law of death.

Tell me why I had to be a Powerslave

I don't wanna die, I'm a God, why can't I live on?

When the Life Giver dies, all around is laid waste

And in my last hour, I'm a slave to the Power of Death.

Have a very metal weekend.

I've finally got it: Monster Tales: Vampires, Werewolves & Things

Pumped for this delivery.

When I was a kid I used to regularly check out Monster Tales: Vampires, Werewolves & Things (1973, Rand McNally & Company) from my elementary school library. I LOVED this book even though it scared the piss out of me. But when I moved on to middle school that was the last I saw of it.

Until now.

You may recall my prior posts about it here on the blog. Here's the first, A scare from the deep mists of time: Monster Tales, from July 2009. At the time I could not even remember the name of the book, only a few vivid details. A happy Google search struck paydirt. I wrote at the time:

Were you ever seized by the intoxicating memory of reading a much-loved book as a child, only to despair that you'd never remember the title? This happened to me today. From some subterranean depths in my brain came the tale of a boy who exacts revenge on his family's killers by voluntarily taking on the form of a werewolf. I remembered it being a short story contained in a red hardcover book, filled with startling black-and-white illustrations. I remember reading it over and over again in my elementary school library in the 1970s. But that was the extent of my recollection.

I plugged in "werewolf stories for children" and "horror anthologies for children and 1970s" into Google to see what would come up... and eventually came across this marvelous link, courtesy of The Haunted Closet: http://the-haunted-closet.blogspot.com/2008/10/monster-tales-vampires-werewolves.html.

Twelve years later I revisited Monster Tales in a post for the blog of Goodman Games/Tales from the Magician's Skull, Brian Murphy's Gateways to Sword-and-Sorcery. Monster Tales was one of my gateway drugs to S&S, and a potent one. As I wrote in that 2021 blog post:

In hindsight I can see how I was being inevitably steered toward sword-and-sorcery by consuming its various components; historical elements, grit and danger, monsters, tough and resourceful heroes, horror, and the weird. I am grateful to have had access to books that moved me, exposed me to grim struggle, even disturbed me. Here’s a PSA for parents of young children: A few bad dreams are OK if the reward is making a lifelong reader. 

Within a year or so of consuming the titles in this list I would discover Robert E. Howard in the pages of The Savage of Sword of Conan, and my path was fixed. But I have these gateway books to thank for getting me started down that savage trail.

Sixteen years later, I now have a copy of my own.

I haven't been looking with any regularity. No ebay or Google alerts. Just the occasional search... and blanching at the typical $80-100 asking price (I've seen it listed for as much as $120. WTF). But a couple weeks ago I popped it into ebay and saw a copy listed by Thrift Books for $33. Immediately bought it. Today it arrived in the mail, in surprisingly excellent shape.

With patience, you can still get a decent deal. BTW I also tracked down a copy of Fire-Hunter.

Looking forward to a re-read for the first time in a VERY long time.

Tell me these aren't some creepy images for a kid...

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, a review

Lady Gaga would appreciate this romance....

I don’t read much romance. But when I do, I read The Romance of Tristan and Iseult. It’s an old romance, a medieval romance. Definitely not a bad romance.

There is something to old.

Many of today's fantasy authors attempt to replicate the medieval age by slapping armor on a modern talking dude operating within a modern moral framework. Which is not wrong (it’s fantasy; they can do what they will), but it’s also not the past; it’s a contemporary novel draped in the outwear of the archaic. 

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult is old, and feels it. It traces back to the 12th century and likely older Celtic legends. Its soul is medieval. Modern politics are as out of place here as a 9mm pistol. Women are married off to mollify tension between kingdoms; children are taken as chattel slaves; men risk everything to ride to the defense of other lords. Kings make the rules … and they are not all good.

The story is a basic tale of star-crossed lovers. Iseult, an Irish princess, is promised as a bride to King Mark of Cornwall. But she and Mark’s young nephew Tristan fall in love and begin an affair. Conflict ensues. 

What makes it “new” is the deeply medieval moral framework in which the story exists. All the same petty jealousies and betrayals that we recognize today are here but with medieval twists. When Mark discovers the affair he’s pissed and orders the lovers … burned at the stake. No trial, no one riding to their defense. This is pre-bill of rights, pre-courts. I feel like the Old Norse Thing settled disputes far more equitably. We experience a terrible/wonderful tension of illicit love at conflict with fidelity to lord/honor and obligation, each side fairly represented in a classic courtly love which fueled so many medieval romances. Other modern dissonances: Tristan decides for Iseult that she shall marry King Mark (she has no say). Tristan falls for another Iseult, Iseult of the White Hand, marries her, and then leaves her hanging, marriage unconsummated, when he realizes he still loves the OG Iseult. Iseult of the White Hand returns the ill favor a hundredfold in a stunning end that I won’t spoil here (can 1000 year old stories be spoiled)? There is deference to God; Iseult takes a test of purity to prove her innocence, submitting her flesh to a hot brand. 

You don’t see this type of thing being written today. Maybe we do and I’ve missed it.

Tristan and Iseult is part of the Arthurian cycle, occupying the same shared universe, but only peripherally. Arthur and his knights are mentioned in the story but play no significant role. The tale serves as likely inspiration for the Launcelot-Guinevere-Arthur love triangle. There are small incursions of magic, including a magic dog with a bell that distracts its owner from grief, a gift from the mystic isle of Avalon. Most notably it includes a love potion whose accidental ingestion causes Tristan and Iseult to fall madly in love. The potion has been the subject of much debate; was it placed here to remove some of the responsibility for the affair, or evoke our sympathy? Far be it from me to criticize timeless works but it did not feel wholly necessary and may have made more sense to a medieval audience.

I read an accessible modern-ish retelling assembled by French medievalist Joseph Bediere in 1900, translated into English in 1945. It is told with the reference point of a Celtic bard talking to an audience of nobles, breaking of the fourth wall with direct references to the reader. We are a listener in this hall of fire. This device allows the tale to cover a lot of ground but without the detail we’d expect in a modern novel. For example, battles are relayed as events that occurred minus the up-close cut and thrust of Joe Abercrombie. But some are desperate and memorable, including Tristan’s one-on-battle duel on a small island vs. the massive and intimating Irish champion the Morholt (what a menacing name; a possible precursor to The Mountain?) Speaking of the Mountain the combat and the broader story features a liberal use of poison. 

I was moved by the incredibly touching end image, a persistent vine that even when cut continues growing to connect the two graves. Love endures all.

Recommended of course.

Notes

• The tale endures the ages, adapted by Richard Wagner and others. 

• This seems to be the kind of thing Old Moon is reviving and I backed their recent Arthurian/dark fantasy kickstarter here.

• No need to find old books; you can read Tristan and Iseult right now on Project Gutenberg.