When I first started getting into sword-and-sorcery fiction, the internet was a fledgling, creaky, place. Charming, but impractical. Think bare-bones HTML websites and USENET and bulletin boards. Interesting, but not much help in finding what you were looking for, save by happy accident. Encyclopedias still had a place in this world.
So, I read the introductions of books, written by real people.
I found L. Sprague de Camp’s Swords & Sorcery (Pyramid, 1963) and read the stories of Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. I sought them out, and in so doing found authors like Poul Anderson and Jack Vance.
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| Lin Carter, champion S&S enthusiast. |
As the internet began to bloom I found the likes of Steve Tompkins at The Cimmerian and articles by Howard Andrew Jones at Flashing Swords and Black Gate. I read about authors like Harold Lamb and Karl Edward Wagner in their essays and sought them out.
In hindsight I was lucky. I was steered by people who knew what they were talking about.
In recent years I’ve been steered toward new finds by the likes of Morgan Holmes and G.W. Thomas and Deuce Richardson. Today I try to do that here and carry on the tradition. I am always very pleased when I read comments like this one, which I just got on a recent post about Darryl Schweitzer’s We Are All Legends.
I love hanging around this blog, for several reason but especially for a post like this. I had never heard of Schweitzer or seen his works in the wild until now. Seeing a "new author" to me is always exciting. Immediately ordered from Schweitzer's Ebay store.
We need people we know and trust and respect to give good recommendations.
One person who understands this better than most is marketing guru Seth Godin, who I can’t recommend enough for works like The Purple Cow (look, I’m playing tastemaker!). Godin views tastemakers and curators as leaders who define culture by selecting and combining experiences for a specific audience, helping to build trust and navigate an overwhelming flood of content. In his view, tastemakers and curators stand in contrast to algorithms and mass platforms, which tend to promote a race to the bottom by simply surfacing what is popular.
I love this. Algorithms push us toward an average and mean, and who wants to be average, or mean (as in, not nice)?
Curation and tastemaking is a place where editors of S&S publications can step up. Set the direction. Show some taste. Differentiate yourself from AI slop. Give me the names of authors and artists whose work has moved you, and tell me why. You might convince me to give them a try.
I don’t want ChatGPT or Instagram algorithms steering me dully, without thought, toward whomever and wherever their programming tells me to go. Which is probably toward cat videos and thirst traps.
Give me odd, weird, and sympatico people.
We need tastemakers.
Who are yours?
11 comments:
I mostly agree, though I can see some detriments to it. I mean Edmund Wilson's dismissal of Tolkien (and Lovecraft and the entire mystery genre) may have steered people away from the great author. At the same time, I've seen people just follow the algorithm blindly or whatever is popular in the moment so I am not entirely disagreeing with you.
Agreed ... but with their power (such that it is) comes responsibility. With Wilson specifically he strayed too far out his lane; he was a traditional literary critic unschooled in spec-fic and didn't know what to make of Tolkien. I doubt he read Haggard and Morris and MacDonald and Eddison and certainly the pulps. He also seemed like a pretentious dick TBH but that's for another day...
"Curation and tastemaking is a place where editors of S&S publications can step up. Set the direction. Show some taste. "
A modern anthology of sword and sorcery fiction that I believe is a good showcase for the subgenre is the book "Swords Against Darkness" by Paula Guran. It's a fine selection of quality s&s stories ranging from Robert E. Howard to Karl Edward Wagner to Kameron Hurley. Someone unfamiliar with s&s could read Guran's anthology and say, "Hey, I like this stuff. I'd like to read more."
Allow me to second your praise for Steve Tompkins and Howard Andrew Jones. Reading their work gave me an new appreciation for REH's fiction, as well as guiding me towards Harold Lamb, Arthur D. Howden Smith, and other fine writers of swashbuckling yarns.
Thanks for this... for whatever reason I have not picked up that particular anthology. Good to know!
A recent tastemaker of mine is Gabino Iglesias--several years ago he did a social media thread with 75 horror novels. I purchased and read a small chunk of them, all good (I'd read his fiction, so I trusted his opinion). If you're into horror, you can't go wrong with him or Stephen Graham Jones. BTW,f I ever want a S & S recommendation, I'll use your book or blog, so you're doing it in your own way.
Also: you introduced me to Blind Guardian (just in time for me to catch them live), so that's another tastemaker cred for you!
I agree wholeheartedly. I've discovered many great metal bands through curated recommendations, most of which I likely wouldn't have been introduced to by the Spotify algorithm.
Appreciate it Jason! Thanks for the Iglesias recommendation and agree about SGJ--he's guided me to some good finds.
I'm pretty much old school when it comes to S&S tastemakers, so de Camp and Carter were my navigators in the 60s and 70s. If it weren't for them, we may not have the abundance of classic S&S as we know it today. Despite both of them receiving criticism for their "hack" pastiches, they soldiered on through the literary shield wall. I read de Camp's bio of H.P. Lovecraft when it was first published in 1975. Later, it would garner negative criticism for errors and other content. One must remember that he was on the leading edge with his scholarship of the Old Gentleman and much more information on HPL has come to light and become accessible over the last 50 years.
Nothing wrong with old school. Carter and de Camp certainly steered me toward many great finds. I have not read de Camp's bio of HPL, of course I have read Dark Valley Destiny and continue to recommend it, with caveats and some acknowledged flaws.
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