Ardor on Aros, andrew j. offutt

A cover better than the contents... unfortunately true of many Frazettas.

A very brief review of Ardor on Aros, by andrew j. offutt (1973).

(some spoilers follow)

The good

Great cover by Frank Frazetta, though unfortunately has nothing to do with the contents of the book (save perhaps symbolically, and I’m being generous).

It’s an easy, fast-paced read. Which says something for Offutt’s prose, which if not elevated or inspired does the job.

It’s unrepentant pastiche. Unlike some pastiches which dance uncomfortably with their source material, Ardor on Aros leans in all the way. The protagonist, Hank Ardor, is transported to Aros, a planet conjured from the imagination of three separate beings, one of whom is a female author writing a Burroughs pastiche. He arrives nude and is able to take huge leaps due to the thin atmosphere on the planet. We run into “Dejah Thoris” or someone closely approximating her; he names his two alien mounts “ERB” and “Kline”—the latter named after Otis Adelbert Kline, who wrote his own sword-and-planet including The Swordsman of Mars (1933) and The Outlaws of Mars (1933). Still not sure if this might not be better described as parody.

The bad

The pacing is off. It feels rushed, but not in a great barreling and breathless Burroughs manner. Too much emphasis on seemingly inconsequential details and not enough on important events.

Sexual assault and worse that will likely stop many readers dead in their tracks. Part of this is deliberate; the story attempts to tell a more “realistic” version of A Princess of Mars and what would happen were people walking around nude and taken captive by barbaric conquerors. But it’s still tough to digest.

It’s supposed to include the spicy sex ERB avoids but it’s almost as tame. The violence is more graphically described but it lacks ERBs style. In short, it doesn’t deliver what it says on the tin. The back cover trumpets, “what happens to a red-blooded young graduate looking for sex, fame, and answers when he suddenly finds himself naked, frightened, and several light years from earth? A lot.” Except, not really.

Can’t really recommend unless you’re an S&P completist.

Cold Sweat, Thin Lizzy

I love discovering old songs.

Few things are more rewarding than stumbling across or being served up in the algorithm an awesome tune, looking it up, and getting gobsmacked to discover is more than 40 years old.

See "Cold Sweat" by Thin Lizzy (1983). Never heard it until a month or so ago. Am glad I did, even if I'm pissed I wasn't cranking it 30 years ago. I think you'll enjoy it too, on this Metal Friday. 

Chalk this up to Boys Are Back in Town syndrome. It's borderline tragic that Thin Lizzy's entire legacy is wrapped up in that fine but terribly overplayed song. Thin Lizzy is massively underrated and under-appreciated.

RIP guitarist John Sykes, whom we lost back in December. I'm pouring one out on the curb for you, man. You tore this one up.

An interesting personal insight into Moorcock’s inspirations

Was just listening to an interview with Michael Moorcock on the Monsters, Madness and Magic podcast (recommended BTW). Co-host Dave Ritzlin of DMR Books posed an interesting question, which prompted an unexpected response from this grand master of fantasy (lightly edited for clarity):

Ritzlin: “Earlier, we were talking about the tragic aspect of your fiction. I was wondering if there were any tragedies from your personal life, perhaps the death of a loved one or a romantic relationship that inspired some of your writing, and did it like in a therapeutic way.”

Moorcock: “A few years ago, I would have said no. But since then, I’ve been writing the Whispering Swarm series, which is partly autobiography … as a result I’ve been having to look at myself a bit more closely, as it were. And I think probably my father leaving, which I’ve always said was a good thing for me, I mean he was a pretty dull man and it wouldn’t have been much fun, you know, with him being around when I was younger… but I also had a problem pretty much most of my life, which I didn’t really get to the roots of until I was doing this book. And it’s basically just separation anxiety. It’s abandonment issues as it were, which come from my father leaving when I was what, five or six? … I can’t really think of losing anybody, except my father. Effectively, I suppose he died.”

There is a much separation in Moorcock’s works. I haven’t read all of his stuff, but clearly it comprises a large part of the Elric and Corum stories. Lost eyes/hands, lost loves … severed and destroyed families, separation from home and country. Anything any capable writer without a great personal loss can include in his or her stories, but perhaps given additional resonance and authenticity in these stories due to Moorcock’s very personal loss.

Take this with a bit of a grain of salt. Moorcock later admits in the interview he was writing Elric at a young age, when everything seemed a tragedy (including getting dumped by his then girlfriend), and was “maybe” just channeling teenage angst. Which is a common interpretation of this very angsty character … but maybe it was something more.

Regardless this anecdote is an interesting window into Moorcock as a writer, and his influences, which I don’t think any of us writer types can ever fully know.

Knightriders, a review

(Warning: Spoilers)

Utopias cannot survive contact with the world of commerce. It’s a message delivered in brutal fashion in the catastrophic ending of George Romero’s Knightriders (1981). Idealism meets the hurtling steel of a freight truck, alternative counterculture going under the wheels of the unstoppable economic engine of the 1980s.

The outcome is predictable and sad. But the leadup and the message of the film is magic.

Weird and flawed, too on the nose perhaps with heavy-handed messaging, Knightriders nevertheless succeeds. It’s unpredictable, meaningful, wonderfully anti-establishment, and utterly singular.

The film opens with a knight (Ed Harris) waking up in a forest, naked and in the arms of his paramour. He kneels and prays over the hilt of his sword, enters a nearby pool to bathe … and proceeds to beat his back with a branch in what we can only presume to be some sort of purification ritual.

Right then you know you’re in for an offbeat movie. And if you had any doubts Knightriders goes straight off the deep end when instead of a horse Harris climbs on a motorcycle and rides back to “Camelot.” 

Romero apparently got the idea for Knightriders from the violent medieval reenactments hosted by the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA). He had planned on horses but producer Sam Arkoff told him to put his knights on motorbikes. The rest is history. Despite the obvious anachronisms it makes painstaking efforts toward medieval realism, from the forging of weapons, romance, and chivalric oaths sworn in fealty to a king, who is really only a man (and a flawed one at that) full of grand ideas and a vision of something better.

Knightriders engages with the myth of King Arthur in a very unique way, demonstrating the extreme malleability of the old stories. It skips the “historical” Arthur of the 5th/6th century and the romantic late medieval-ish setting of Excalibur and instead leaps straight into 1980. There are no knights, no nobles, no real king. The story instead follows a troupe of traveling entertainers who put on a combination renaissance fair and tournament, complete with jousting and full-on melee conducted by knights riding motorcycles. At its head is Billy (Harris), a stand-in for Arthur. He is the heart of this comic but earnest ragtag group of misfits.

Instead of Camelot Billy’s “kingdom” is a commune of outsiders, all wanting something different than the 20th century has to offer. It’s got some similarities with the hippie communes of the 60s, perhaps the last gasp on the verge of the decade of excess.

It wasn’t at all what I was expecting. I of course know Romero from Night of the Living Dead and its various sequels, and so I thought I might be getting ultraviolence, apocalypse, bloodshed. Knightriders is none of the above. There’s plenty of action, of course (the stunts are fantastic and I winced at a couple of the crashes--stuntmen hit the ground HARD. These guys were not making an easy paycheck). But its basically a character drama spread across a large troupe of actors. All of Romero’s old cronies are in the film … as I was watching every five minutes I was like, “wait, there’s the guy from Dawn of the Dead, and another guy from Dawn of the Dead. That’s the guy from Day of the Dead! Wait is that a Stephen King cameo?” (answer—yes.) Tom Savini plays a major role, not a villain but a foil to the king, and who knew—Savini can act. It’s got an interesting Merlin too, a dude with some medical training but equal parts witch doctor, harmonica playing savant, and prognosticator.

It’s amazing Knightriders ever got made, and unsurprisingly it was a commercial flop. Harris admits in a relatively recent interview that while he remains a fan he knew it was destined for obscurity. It’s too odd and offbeat, non-genre, and the intended audience is unclear. Truth be told it’s also flawed. Some of the acting is, to be charitable, pedestrian. The dialogue in many places is stilted. It’s at least 30-40 minutes too long and badly in need of an edit. It meanders and threatens to lose the thread of story. 

But I can deal with these imperfections, even its deep and abiding flaws, for what we did get. Imperfection is the way of the world. The courage of knights wavers, their honor and fealty are tested by fortune and fame and lust, and often fail. This film does not fail, and for what it lacks in technical artistry it succeeds through heart. I can think of very few films as earnest and sincere. Romero set out to make a statement about the pressures to sell out vs. staying true to your art, and of the extraordinary difficulties of leading a principled life. Of living a values-led life, to whatever end. 

I felt a deep stir of emotion near the end of the film when Harris/Billy/Arthur sees himself not on a bike, but a horse, galloping off on some quest through green lands in a better place. He passes on his legacy in the form of a sword, handing it to a wide-eyed young fan who wanted only an autograph but got much more.

Even if we cannot ever experience earthly utopia the elusive search continues. As long as nonconformists and artists and the disaffected yearn for something more, Camelot beckons.