Horror Hunters, a review

The 70s paperback tour continues with Horror Hunters, a 1971 anthology edited by Roger Elwood and Vic Ghidalia. 

I own the 1975 Manor Books reissue. Last I checked 1975 was more than 50 years ago (I’m no good at math but I feel confident in this claim). That makes it old… and the stories it contains, even older. The first two were first printed in 1908 and 1910, respectively. Nothing newer than 1956 vintage, now 70 years in the past.

But old is often good, time-tested and true. And this is the time for horror. It’s October and the veil between our world and the spiritual realm, thinned. So, on to the contents.

• “Ancient Sorceries,” Algernon Blackwood

• “The Gateway of the Monster,” William Hope Hodgson

• "The Unnamable" by H. P. Lovecraft

• “The Thing on the Roof,” Robert E. Howard

• "Mr. Ames' Devil,” August Derleth

• "In the X-Ray,” Fritz Leiber

• "One Foot and the Grave,” Theodore Sturgeon

• "I Kiss Your Shadow,” Robert Bloch

Despite the lineup of heavy-hitters I found Horror Hunters a bit more mixed than I hoped. But overall it’s a solid little volume. I love the cover, even if the leering skull seems to portend flesh-eating zombies and a bit more mayhem than we get. Horror Hunters is the stuff of chills and atmosphere, less so murder or gore. 

Blackwood’s “Ancient Sorceries” sets a sedate tone. It’s a very slow burn … that eventually catches fire. I liked it once it got going. The story is about a timid, highly sensitive, conservative Englishman traveling in the Alps who wanders into a town of secretive lycanthropic cat-people. It turns his worldview upside down. It’s really about the fear of losing oneself, our helplessness when confronted with our primitive lusts. The narrator experiences equal measures of self-loathing and shame, and the release of taboo and sexual abandon that accompanies the dropping of his stifling civilized veneer. 

Blackwood wrote a series of stories about a paranormal investigator named John Silence and this is one of them. These were all collected at one point and I probably need to pick them up.

William Hope Hodgson’s “The Gateway of the Monster” was OK, a classic haunted house/haunted room story. Bumps in the night, restless spirits etc. Not a whole lot else to say.

Lovecraft’s story was the one that grabbed me most of all the stories in the volume. I’d read “The Unnamable” before, perhaps a couple times, but it was nice to revisit the moldering old graveyard in Arkham.

I say revisit not merely because it was a re-read but because I've visited the dilapidated 17th century burial ground in Salem/Arkham, aka., the Charter Street Cemetery, that serves as the setting of this story. I’ve seen many such houses Lovecraft describes here, low gambrel rooves nearly touching the ground in the back, and old diamond-paned windows that might have images of their long-dead former tenants burned into them. I have walked alone on the grounds of the abandoned Danvers State Mental Hospital before it was torn down. It is in my blood, the dark history and haunted atmosphere of old New England. 

“The Unnamable” is good stuff.

The Robert E. Howard story is a workmanlike Cthulhu mythos tale… not one of Howard’s best, a bit too paint by numbers pastiche, but I did enjoy the Von Junzt Nameless Cults myth-making. 

The August Derleth story was pretty lame, a ho-hum demon summoning story that read like C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters minus the philosophical insight.

Fritz Leiber’s “In the X-Ray” was excellent. Today, the ending is quite predictable (Stephen King wrote an entire novel about the concept of parasitic twin with The Dark Half), but Leiber’s execution is outstanding. A creepy and convincing depiction of simple hate, how some people are just plain bad—even one’s twin—such that even the grave can’t keep them from coming back to torment their victims.

Theodore Sturgeon invented Sturgeon’s Law, aka. 90% of everything is crap… in an ironic twist I found his story just that. So crap I did something I almost never do: I DNF-d it. It was intolerable … meandering, absent any horror or drama or compelling reason to go on. Not sure what happened here.

Fortunately the volume ends with a solid little shocker by Robert Bloch, a story of love reaching out its spectral arms from beyond the grave.

A book that inspired Growing Up Metal--and another that didn't

Note: This is an excerpt from this week's Arcane Arts, my weekly email newsletter. Sign up, its free. 

When I first heard of Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City circa 2008, I thought to myself: Finally, someone has written the book I want to read. Suburban nowhere in rural North Dakota + heavy metal, seasoned with youthful nostalgia. A look back at 80s metal and what it all meant.

I read it with avidity. I laughed at Chuck’s shrewd observations even when I disagreed with them, sometimes violently (the dude hates Iron Maiden. WTF). Chuck has a sparkling wit and combines genuine love for some of the material with an unserious, lampooning look at its 80s excesses. Plus, he’s a good writer.

But in the end Fargo Rock City was not the book I wanted, or hoped for. Reasons here.​

This is not the book’s fault, necessarily, even though the back cover copy is a bit misleading (“classic memoir of growing up as a shameless metalhead in Wyndmere, North Dakota”). It’s not really memoir. Fargo Rock City is largely adult Klosterman’s analysis of heavy metal music, the 80s metal scene, the best and worst albums and bands, and the cultural impact of it all. What has made metal last, and what hasn’t aged well.

What it isn’t is his story.

Yes, it has elements of memoir, a few scenes from his childhood, but most of its page count is devoted to adult, half serious, half lampoon analysis of heavy metal. There is very little if any of the details of Chuck’s life, and even less self-examination.

In summary, I believed that the first metal fan’s memoir remained unwritten.

Fast forward 14 years. In 2022 I began to give serious thought to what would become the detailed outline for Growing Up Metal. In preparation I did some deep internet research. And turned up this book:

I bought it, read it, and immediately thought, this is what I’ve been seeking. Here is a blueprint for how I might grapple with my own story. Adventures of a Metalhead Librarian was proof it could be done. It was also a reminder that, like O’Brien’s book, it had to be done with heart, and authenticity, and my interior life on the page.

Adventures of a Metalhead Librarian is wildly different than my book but the arc is the same: The story of a metalhead from high school to adulthood. The transition from a life of relative irresponsibility and freedom, to parenthood and mortgage payments and commitments. O’Brien’s journey is more “metal” than mine; in 1990 at the age of 18 she moved to Los Angeles to live on the Sunset Strip. Metal was at its zenith and her book is full of authentic sex/drugs/rock and roll (sometimes with the band members themselves). She even landed her dream job with Metal Blade Records and saw everything upended with the arrival of grunge. Reading it, I felt some trepidation—my life was not as interesting as hers—but also a measure of relief. Our stories are very different. While hers took her out west (she eventually settled down in Arizona) mine took place on the east coast.

O’Brien’s stories of the strip are compelling and interesting and well-told but that’s not what makes the book excellent IMO. It’s the rawness of the narrative. Memoirs are powerful because they have a messiness and realness and complexity that fiction often lacks. Life is rarely tied up in a nice bow. O’Brien grapples with her demons, including her parents’ divorce and her complicated relationship with her father, a damaged, alcoholic Vietnam War veteran. She was a huge reader in her childhood and sought escape in the pages of stories, a trait I recognize in myself. Metal fans are if nothing else split personas--passionate and plain, rebellious and conformist, loud and quiet, often in the same package. It’s all part of the mystique.

O’Brien does in fact go on to become a librarian.

I admired it so much that it served as a loose model for how I wanted to craft my own memoir. In the end I did not want to write tongue-in-cheek cynicism or artful distanced criticism like Fargo Rock City because I felt neither of these things about metal. Instead, I wanted to write about my passion for the genre and how it accompanied me on my life journey. This is what O’Brien’s book delivers. It is a true look inside the author and the soul of the metal fan.

I hope I’ve managed to capture some of the same magic.

To Walk on Worlds, a review

I dig this nostalgic cover art (Mike Hoffman).

Sword-and-sorcery occupies a small space in writing and publishing and so you probably already know the name Matthew John. He wears many hats. Host of the Rogues in the House podcast. Conan game contributor/designer. Does an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation that could be taken on the standup comedy circuit.

What about Matthew John the writer?

I set out to find more by picking up his To Walk on Worlds, a 2024 publication of Rogues in the House Presents. It’s a 250-odd page collection of 11 short stories, each of which stand alone but are connected by the land of Pathra, a loose chronology, and through the recurring appearance of a mysterious wizard Maxus who has the power to walk between worlds. As a result, it is something of a fix-up novel, akin to what Ray Bradbury did with The Martian Chronicles or Charles Saunders with Imaro. 

To cut to the chase: I enjoyed To Walk on Worlds. It is a cut above (pun intended) much modern sword-and-sorcery. I’ve heard good things about it, I try to support modern S&S, and I can recommend it.

John shines with his depiction of tough, terse, no-nonsense barbarian warriors and opaque wizards. Lachmannon is Conan like but also reminded me more than a little of Logen Ninefingers, which comes as little surprise given that John’s biggest literary influences are Robert E. Howard and Joe Abercrombie. Maxus cuts an intriguing figure, not evil but not even close to good. He’s self-centered and amoral, a wizard out of the pages of Jack Vance or Merlin pre-Disney moving in mysterious ways.

I like that the collection includes both of these characters in something of equal proportion, which speaks to both sides of the S&S equation: Its brawny, heroic, Robert E. Howard-esque side, and the weird, eldritch, Clark Ashton Smith-ian strain.

S&S (and S&P) fans will recognize its hallmarks. Low gravity leaps and interplanetary travel. Weird towers of green stone of an unknown origin beneath alien, multicolored skies. A page that has both “ziggurat” and “thews” on it (bold choice, Cotton). Another with the famous Abercrombie construction “let it be said that Lachmannon can find the humor in any instance.”

There is a risk here of becoming generic S&S, but what elevates it is John’s style and heart. His writing style is quite visual. He does dialogue well. He uses humor well, a dark and sardonic brand that can make you smile (grimly). A pit is described as “an agreeable pit as far as pits go.” I liked that; I laughed. And in a good way he wears his influences plainly, it makes the stories familiar and resonant. For example “Cries From A Sleeping City” reads like a cross of “Worms of the Earth” and Ridley Scott’s Aliens. It is a fine example of suffocating subterranean horror. “A Fate Worse Than Exile” was perhaps my favorite. It has echoes of both “Red Nails” and Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal with a persistent “dragon” that has much of a T-rex in him. What makes it work is the interplay of the two protagonists, the Conan-like Manus and the squirrely, loose with the truth rogue Quent. This was particularly well-done. The stories generally are propulsive with very little flab to them.

As with every collection I’ve ever read there were a couple stories that did not land, but these were greatly outweighed by the good. I’m not exactly sure where the broader story is going, I probably could have used a few more details to hook me on vol. 2 of the Maxus Cycle, Within the Weeping Eye. It feels like a bit of a prologue rather than a complete work in and of itself, even though the stories each have a beginning, middle and end, save for the last, which serves as both coda and teaser.

But sword-and-sorcery is supposed to be mysterious. The motivations of wizards are notoriously veiled. Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories did not need anything connecting them to some grand narrative beyond cool things happening in a cool setting. There are a few hints dropped that lead me to believe Matt has something interesting planned for future volumes and the fate of Maxus.

One final word about the presentation. To Walk on Worlds is graced with great cover art, some neat and unexpected black-and-white interior illustrations, and a throwback pocket-sized format. All of which makes for a nice package (resisting, and failing, the urge to add “that’s what she said”).

The Howling, Gary Brandner

Warning: Some spoilers and discussion of sexual assault.

We’re in the witching season, and with it comes my pivot to all things horror. Today a review of “A Terrifying Tale of the Occult”… Gary Brandner’s The Howling.

The basics: Published in 1977 by Fawcett Gold Medal. A little about them: Fawcett broke ground with paperback originals at a time when the standard was 1) Hardcover first and 2) Paperbacks later. Fawcett said straight to paperback.

Smart. The Howling probably doesn’t need a collectible hardcover edition. It is the definition of a disposable horror novel.

But I think it’s a little more than that.

The plot is basic: Abandoned town with a bad reputation, high number of strange disappearances, and a werewolf problem. Out of town couple moves in, trouble ensues. The characters are rather wooden, the build slow for such a short (223 page) novel. But I enjoyed it all the same. It’s the equivalent of a good B movie. It works, a solid little horror novel that rates a 3/5, or generously a 3.5/5.

Brandner is an effective writer of atmosphere. The story is quite telegraphed but that hardly matters. He creates a mood and I enjoyed said mood.

The book opens with a graphic sexual assault, so reader beware. This has gotten a lot of flak on review sites. Most declare it gratuitous and unnecessary and almost a DNF non-starter. For example (Goodreads sample):

Karyn endures a horrific assault at the beginning of the story which is described in grossly intimate detail. Worst of all, it's done just for shock value. It doesn't really aid in her character development, it doesn't add much to the overall plot and it just ends up feeling like pointless tastelessness. It's brushed off and dismissed way too easily. 

I agree with the part in bold. I get why it might stop you dead in your tracks.

I disagree with the rest of this paragraph.

Karyn’s terrible assault might be very hinge of the book. I think it is integral to the plot.

During the assault she is bitten on the thigh; werewolf bites transform their victim. Her attacker is not a werewolf, but after her experience Karyn is transformed. The bite is a metaphor for the terrible and deep trauma a sexual assault has on not just its victim, but their relationships. It ruins Karyn’s relationship with her husband. Everything else in the story afterward is its consequence. I get the complaints and the non-starter issues people have, but I think they’re missing something Brandner might have been trying to do. Am I giving him too much credit? Possibly. Brandner does not have a reputation as a sophisticated novelist and isn’t around to defend his choices (he passed in 2013). 

I’m just giving you my opinion. YMMV.

Heavy shit aside, let’s talk about the packaging, the 1970s, and the werewolf genre.

The Howling features an interesting back cover blurb declaring it “in the tradition of ‘Salem’s Lot.” Eh… not really. It’s hard to imagine how a tradition could be launched in two years (‘Salem’s Lot debuted in 1975). Stephen King was a rising force at the time and I suspect Fawcett was trying to catch a piece of the wave.

In fact, I wonder if King’s Cycle of the Werewolf (1983) isn’t in The Howling’s tradition, owing its inspiration to Brandner and the general werewolf craze of the era—not the other way ‘round. There were a lot of werewolf treatments at this time in book and film including Whitley Streiber’s The Wolfen and An American Werewolf in London. Cujo (1981) is another fine werewolf story, the tale of a St. Bernard transforming after a bite from a rabid bat into something monstrous. Not a werewolf per se, but the same principles apply.

The Wolfen and Cujo are far superior to The Howling if you’re asking for my opinion/recommendation. But that doesn’t make the latter worthless. It has a period charm of its own. 

If you like sex in your stories there’s a fair bit of that. In fact the best writing is the sex, in particular when Karyns’ husband Roy gets it on with the wicked and voluptuous Marcia. Brandner’s ordinary, workmanlike prose comes to life here in full Skin-emax, late-night glory:

The shadows of evening moved into the valley and darkened the windows of Marcia’s small apartment, but the people within had no sense of time. For Roy Beatty the universe consisted of the hills and hollows, the knowing hands, and the wet, clinging orifices of the wild black-haired woman.

I love the novel’s intense isolated 1970s vibe. No cell phones, no internet, everyone reading books (remember that?) The haunted town of Drago where the action unfolds is haunted and sinister and utterly insular. No police station, a creaky general store and post office, homes left mysteriously abandoned. As the howling intensifies and her pet dog disappears and the menace increases Karyn finds a sympathetic local schoolteacher who knows the town’s backstory. The two plow through books on werewolves, trying to discover all they can to defeat the supernatural monsters. 

Stuff that really doesn’t happen anymore unless you set your story in the past. Which is probably why I prefer this era of horror.

I’ll probably watch the film now, which at best shares a passing resemblance to the novel but has its moments.

The real message of Fahrenheit 451

The firemen are you.

People (myself included, until a recent re-read) often get one of the core messages of Fahrenheit 451 backwards.

People ended books. Not top-down government authority. 

People decided shallow entertainment was preferable to literature that challenges them to think and invokes discomfort. The Firemen who burn books—the splashy and memorable part of Ray Bradbury’s novel—aren’t one-dimensional monsters, they’re just men giving the people what they want. 

Chilling.

What they think they want, anyway. Some resort to sleeping pills to silence the pain of existence. Some hold on to their books and are burned to husks. 

Montag never asks to think if his life—which includes a well-paying job and a wife and all material needs met--makes him happy. Without poetry or color or depth or diversity of thought, it does not. 

Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 as radio dominated and television surged in popularity. He saw and grew fearful for the steady erosion of reading and book culture. In the late 1950s he recounted the following incident:

In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451, I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

I can only imagine what Ray would have thought of the age of the smartphone and its endless short form video reels and doomscrolling and Twitter and AI.

We might lose to AI, and if we do people as much as big tech will be at fault. Because we settle for its comfortable babble, “create” with it instead of creating with our own skills and intuition and effort.

Fahrenheit 451 is also a stark warning against censorship in all its forms, including softer forms like “political correctness.” Interesting that Ballantine Books censored some of the “problematic” words from the text in a 1967 edition. Did anyone there read the book, I wonder?

If you’re a right-winger who wants to ban books with sex or depict a gay family in a positive light, you’re the person Ray Bradbury was warning against. If you’re a left-winger who condemns Lovecraft and Howard and Burroughs and labels any author who doesn’t check every diversity checkbox as “problematic,” you’re a person who needs to read this book. And do some rethinking. 

Fahrenheit 451 might be old but it’s still a very sharp book. It can cut. 

Great.

Reject machine culture. Reject TikTok. Read.

Growing Up Metal cover reveal

(note: this was the lead item in my free weekly email newsletter Arcane Arts. Sign up the link or at the widget at right)

I had some difficult decisions to make regarding the cover of Growing Up Metal. I engaged a cover designer and he sent me four treatments, three of which I liked but had to dismiss.

Spinal Tap volume dial: A bit too plain and a bit too clever.

Guitar: Clean look, great font, but implies I play the instrument.

Average dude with silhouette of guitar hero—near perfect, nearly the cover. But I could only pick one. 

It lost out to this one.

The winner. Fuck yeah!

Why did I go with this cover?

1. The over-the-top imagery and garishness. All characteristic of metal.

2. It's nostalgic. For a time of tapes, and of a time when heavy metal was new and vital and emerging from primordial sludge.

3. Its symbolism. The figure that is vaguely me stands atop the music that has helped make him who he is. He is made of metal.

4. It places me on the center stage. The book is a memoir, and the story is my own.

My cover designer nailed it. My only edits were to add a few more metal touches (amplifiers to match the “amplifier” sidebars you’ll find in the book) and a picture and the copy for the back cover design.

I hope it grabs you as it did me and inspires you to give Growing Up Metal a read. It’s almost ready for print.

This week I set up my Amazon Author account, which included enabling two-step verification, scanning my face (!) and driver’s license to verify my identity, and connecting my bank account to ensure I can receive payments.

I also selected a half-dozen representative photographs for a picture collage included in the back matter. I purchased two ISBNs, one each for print and digital editions. Next I’ll be exporting the final print-ready file and uploading it and the cover to the KDP platform. Setting the price, filling in the details and marketing copy on the Amazon website.

And pressing publish.

An email from marketing guru and author Seth Godin hit my inbox as I was writing this issue: On the Verge of Done. It can’t be a coincidence.

A History of Heavy Metal (Arcane Arts excerpt)

Unfortunate cover blurb.

(Note: The following is the lead item in this week's Arcane Arts. I also cover REH, Jane Yolen, 70s horror, and Mike Grell's Warlord. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox)

Metal is vast. Metal is diverse. Metal is sprawling. The number of subgenres is staggering … more than 70, are you kidding? And to be honest, a little stupid. Drone metal. Funeral doom. Djent metal. Some of the finer points make sword-and-sorcery vs. heroic fantasy look like high school debate club.

And so I don’t think it’s possible to write an absolutely definitive history of heavy metal.  And even if you could, who would be interested in such a thing? If you like doom are you likely also a fan of funk metal or Christian metal? 

This past weekend I finished reading an attempt at a comprehensive history, Andrew O’Neill’s A History of Heavy Metal. I’d describe it as breezy, entertaining, fairly well written. But also, quite biased and therefore incomplete. An ostensible history shouldn’t ignore bands that the author does not like. O’Neill hates glam metal, so we get 10 pages of why it sucks … except for maybe Appetite For Destruction. He also has little use for Anthrax and Megadeth (Dave Mustaine’s nasally voice grates on him) so they’re largely ignored too, despite their considerable footprint. 

For what it’s worth I recommend A History of Heavy Metal as a breezy, sometimes entertaining read that filled in a few corners for me. Black and death metal, mainly, and a lot of bands I’ve never heard of.

What he wrote was fine… but it’s not what I want to read. Or write. I’d rather go deep than broad. Curated instead of encyclopedic.

This is a roundabout way of explaining how I ended up writing a heavy metal memoir. We have histories. We’ve got Sound of the Beast and Louder than Hell and O’Neill’s book. We have information: Videos, podcasts, even, a map. We’ve got a million stories of the bands and performers themselves. 

We don’t need another Flame and Crimson for heavy metal.

So, I wrote something quite different. A story from one fan’s perspective—my own. My life, with heavy metal as the backdrop.

My memoir will only focus on the handful of metal genres I like. But I’m not writing a history. So if you’re looking for a treatise on Unblack Metal (a real subgenre, by the way) you’ll need to look elsewhere.

But if you’re looking for one fan’s utterly unique story, maybe you’ll like this. August is getting closer.

Smith and the Pharaohs and Other Stories: A Review

Say one thing of H. Rider Haggard: Say he wrote with range.

When we think of Haggard, we typically think of the man who gave us King Solomon’s Mines, She, and Eric Brighteyes. A writer of two-fisted adventure.

So thought I as well, until I read Smith and the Pharaohs and Other Stories. 

This is a “new” collection of 10 short stories assembled by Stark House for their Adventure Classics line. And it opened my eyes to Haggard as a writer of greater breadth and sensitivity than I anticipated.

In the first half of the collection there is nary a saber drawn nor a shot fired. Five stories of interrupted romances, lost loves, or marital strife. Jilted lovers, wounded husbands, grieving widows. And no wonder. Per Wikipedia, Haggard as a young man apparently lost the love of his life:

At about that time, Haggard fell in love with Mary Elizabeth "Lilly" Jackson, whom he intended to marry once he obtained paid employment in Africa. In 1878, he became Registrar of the High Court in the Transvaal, and wrote to his father informing him that he intended to return to England and marry her. His father forbade it until Haggard had made a career for himself, and by 1879 Jackson had married Frank Archer, a well-to-do banker. 

I know very little about Haggard the man (I have an unread biography by Morton N. Cohen sitting on my shelf, another brick in the wall of my groaning TBR) but such an event cannot fail to leave a mark. My guess is these stories have something of the biographical in them. They hit hard. Don’t think the lack of blood and thunder means a lack of drama or tension. We get plenty of that from Haggard even as he reveals a sensitive side to his art.

Putting on my English degree nerd hat for a minute, Haggard (1856-1925) bridged the Victorian and Edwardian eras of English literature but is generally placed within the latter school. We get in his stories something of a fading of empire and critiques of old institutions. Strict religious doctrine cracking in the face of Darwinian evolution, and social critique amid the rise of increasingly independent women.

These stories are rich with the air of the era: quiet stories seasoned with supernatural elements and exotic locations, romance and visions of heaven contrasted with period realism, consumption and death. In “Little Flower” a hard-headed Christian missionary is portrayed as unthinking and obstinate next to an evolutionist, and is ultimately shown up by a Zulu witch-doctor.

In “The Blue Curtains” a woman declares her undying love, but her “faithfulness” proves skin-deep; she turns to other men for surer income and a more comfortable lifestyle.

Haggard could write, which is a big part of the reason why he endures, and so many others who toiled in the pages of Adventure and other popular magazines of the day have faded into history. This sequence of the jilted ex-lover Bottles discovering his old flame is suddenly widowed, and available, after 14 years, and making his way to her home, in the driving rain, swept up in the romance, took my breath away:

“He crossed over to the other side of the street, and looked up at the house, but could scarcely make it out through the driving rain. There was no light in the house, and no sign of life about the street. But there were both light and life in the heart of this watcher. All the pulses of his blood were astir, keeping time with the commotion of his mind. He stood there in the shadow, gazing at the murky house, heedless of the bitter wind and pelting rain, and felt his life and spirit pass out of his control into an unknown dominion. The storm that raged around him was nothing to the convulsion of his inner self in that hour of madness, which was yet happiness.”

In the title story of the volume, “Smith and the Pharaohs,” James Smith falls in love with an image of an ancient Egyptian queen, raises money for an archeological dig in search of her tomb, and discovers her resting place—and much more. Love runs deep, spanning the ages in this ghostly little historical romance.

“Only a Dream” is a powerful little shocker of a story, almost like something Roald Dahl might have written. This time it is a wife, deceased, who … returns to her husband on the eve of his second marriage.

There are literal trips to heaven and the return of deceased souls to earth. It is the stuff of romance, of fancy, and beauty. 

What about my adventure bro?

Keep it in your pants, lovers of adventure: the second half the collection delivers on the action. We get four short stories of Alan Quatermain, the famous hunter and treasure-seeker. Although these are technically prequel stories of a character well-established in King Solomon’s Mines, these are largely told from the perspective of an older Quatermain. They had just a bit of flavor of the tall-tale stories of Commander McBragg (remember that pith-helmeted dude from Saturday mornings, fellow Gen-Xers?), save that Quatermain is reserved, and his stories, real. Yet like McBragg his exploits are so incredible everyone is left spellbound—including us, the reader. 

Haggard is a fantastic storyteller and his considerable talents are on display here. It’s no wonder Robert E. Howard was among the millions of readers and dozens of famous writers that fell under his spell. Haggard’s influence on Robert E Howard is plain, IMO. A couple lines jumped out at me; hard to say if these are a direct influence, especially “sere and yellow leaf,” which also appears in Macbeth, but Howard used that line in a conversation with Novalyne Price and I was surprised to see it also appear here:

And this one:

“Mashune was, I think, one of the bravest men I ever knew in the daytime, but he had more than civilized dread of the supernatural.”

Haggard is truly in his element these Quartermain stories, conveying the tension of big-game hunts, the palpable danger of hungry lions on the prowl. It pulls you straight in.

Again in reference to Howard, Haggard’s description of lions’ blazing eyes just outside the camp firelight reminded me of Howard’s descriptions from "The Tower of the Elephant."

Speaking of elephants … we get elephant hunting, tusks harvested for trade, Zulu servants, and the “n” word making appearances, so be prepared for all of this.

The last story in the volume is worth mentioning, as is the introduction.

“The Mahatma and the Hare” is unlike any of the preceding entries and at least at the moment I probably would call it the best of the lot. It is something great; something of the Grail is in it. Think Watership Down condensed into 45 pages, focused on a single rabbit rather than a troupe, with more period horse and hound hunting and a clearer vision of heaven and divine judgement. It contains much truth about human cruelty and ignorance of the “other.” It really is a fantastic little story and you can read it in full here, free on Gutenberg. But do support the publisher, too.

Finally, Deuce Richardson provides a wonderful introduction to the volume, “H. Rider Haggard: Imagination, Death and Immortality,” summing up Haggard’s influence, the big picture of his literacy legacy, and a thematic tie-in to all the stories that follow.

In short, highly recommended. These stories are old, but startlingly imaginative and vital and graceful. While Haggard died more than 100 years ago, he has much to teach any modern writer—and can still bind the modern reader with a potent spell.

Some final thoughts on Stephen King’s The Stand

Warning: Minor spoilers

I’m done with the re-read, and had a few final thoughts on this very big book.

Where does Stephen King stand (ahem) on the big questions? The existence of God? Fate vs. free will? 

We can’t say for certain from reading The Stand in isolation. It is an error to think that an author’s depiction of anything in a work of fiction must be what he/she believes. It is also an error to think that a work conceived in 1978, and updated for an uncut 1988 re-release, is a still-living author’s last word. I have not read much of recent King; I have not read what most consider his magnum opus, The Dark Tower, for example. Any of these works surely may reveal a very different take on these sizable questions.

But, is interesting how much of a moral universe we get in The Stand … and how closely it aligns with that of J.R.R. Tolkien.

We may be able to attribute this to a simple cause. Stephen King was heavily influenced by The Lord of the Rings at the time he wrote The Stand. So much that not just its trappings—dark lords and epic quests and character echoes—but Tolkien’s themes and worldview permeate its pages.

These might be King’s too, or King circa1978.

A few examples.

Stephen King is not a fan of the state. By the end of the book people are leaving even the seemingly idyllic Free State of Boulder because too many cooks leads to conflict, and corruption. As Glen Bateman (perhaps the closest we get to a stand-in for King) says: “Show me a man or a woman alone and I’ll show you a saint. Give me two and they’ll fall in love. Give me three and they’ll invent the charming thing we call ‘society’. Give me four and they’ll build a pyramid. Give me five and they’ll make one an outcast. Give me six and they’ll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they’ll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.” This is a Howardian theme, too. And Moorcockian… the quest for Tanelorn continues.

King believes in good and evil. There are evil forces at work in the world in tangible, Manichean form, but also in the hearts of the characters. There is objective right and wrong, and there is temptation that makes the struggle difficult and complex.

King believes in free will of some sort. Harold Lauder had chances to turn back. Reading Fran’s diary was a choice, as was his choice to take in Nadine and commit the ultimate act of sabotage. Each time his choices escalated until he hit a point of no return. But, King offers complexity. Making a choice is easier for some. Harold was bullied as a child. He did not have his sister’s social savvy or good looks. His choices were therefore going to be harder, and influenced. Biological determinism and environmental factors play a part, fate plays a part… but ultimately we have a choice (I think this is where The Stand gets its name).

King shows us that evil is a destroyer, not a creator. Randall Flagg is a demonic-like force, the equivalent of Sauron, or if not quite that powerful, some combination of Balrog and Ringwraith. But while the forces of good set about rebuilding, Flagg puts his followers to work reactivating the machinery of war. His true power is in fear and manipulation and preying on people’s weakness, destroying them from within.

Returning to the mistake of equating fictional story with authorial belief, if you read all of this in a vacuum you might conclude that King = conservative Catholic. We know this not to be true. But I think party affiliation is a very crude and incomplete tool for understanding a human being. We share more in common than we think.

Likewise I think The Stand has something for everyone.

If you had a bad experience with King reading the inevitable clunker somewhere in his vast corpus, I wholeheartedly recommend you give him another try—and make that book The Stand. It is perhaps his magnum opus (even considering The Dark Tower and IT). It offers a grand adventure. And even though it is clearly Tolkien inspired, it is a model of how an author can wear his/her Tolkien influence on their sleeve while still creating something new. Set in the modern era, after the fallout of plague virus, a myth for America instead of England, The Stand qualifies. It is no Lord of the Rings, but so what? No other work is either. 

So it begins... a final big push

A few items of note.

Arcane Arts: Dispatches from the Silver Key went out yesterday, covering heavy metal, sword-and-sorcery (including Karl Edward Wagner's Kane, a cool fanzine I'm a part of, and an academic panel on REH I'll be speaking on). 

Remember to sign up if you haven't already. It's a free email and covers stuff I don't cover here. 

It also included something important I want to talk about in a bit more detail: The heavy metal memoir.

The Silver Key went dormant from 2013-2019, not coincidentally the same time I went to work on Flame and Crimson.

The good news is: That's not going to happen with the latest WIP. It's fully written, reviewed by a couple close friends and my wife who all appear in it. I rewrote it until I couldn't look at it anyore.

But on Friday/Saturday it came back from a contracted line editor. And, I have some work to do.

I plan to have it done by July-early August. I need to have it done by then. I’m giving myself a little wiggle room, but not much.  I’m hosting a heavy metal party with a live band in mid-Septemer, at which I’m handing out a few free copies of the book.

It must be done by then. And so the big, difficult, final push is on.

Posting here will be less frequent and less substantive. 

Stephen King on REH

Stephen King had … things to say about Robert E. Howard and sword-and-sorcery.  He mostly liked the former … not so much the latter.

If you own a copy of the Del Reys and their pure Howard texts, you've probably seen this positive, forceful quote placed prominently on display:

“In his best work, Howard's writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks.”

This is an excerpt from King's1981 survey of horror and dark fantasy Danse Macabre. In it King references Howard with praise, though has no use for the subgenre he spawned. 

King calls sword-and-sorcery a mediocre branch of fantasy that catered tales of power and wish-fulfillment for the powerless, “stories of strong-thewed barbarians whose extraordinary prowess at fighting is only excelled by their extraordinary prowess at fucking.” Added King, “This sort of fiction, commonly called ‘sword and sorcery’ by its fans, is not fantasy at its lowest, but it still has a pretty tacky feel; mostly it’s the Hardy Boys dressed up in animal skins and rated R.”  King mentions no individual works or authors of sword-and-sorcery in his savage broadside, save Howard, who he also praises as “the only writer who really got away with this stuff. … Howard overcame the limitations of his puerile material by the force and fury of his writing and by his imagination.” 

You can find more King commentary on REH here on the blog of Gary Romeo, who examines a flawed piece from King that appeared in the Jan. 1978 issue of the men’s magazine Oui. Though I must say King’s “mama’s boy” commentary sounds suspiciously like something he would have picked up from a DeCamp intro. Romeo gives us the full Danse Macabre quote from King, which is decidedly more of a mixed opinion of Howard:

 “In his best work, Howard’s writing seems so highly charged with energy that it nearly gives off sparks. Stories such as “The People of the Black Circle” glow with the fierce and eldritch light of his frenzied intensity. At his best, Howard was the Thomas Wolfe of fantasy, and most of his Conan tales seem to almost fall over themselves in their need to get out. Yet his other work was either unremarkable or just abysmal….The word will hurt and anger his legion of fans, but I don’t believe any other word fits.”

All this comes up here because as I continue to work my way through the The Stand I’ve encountered another REH reference. Harold Lauder, a troubled Gollum-like figure who hovered on the edge of “good” and might still have become that way, is jilted by Frances Goldsmith, gives in to his worst adolescent impulses, and ultimately throws his lot in with Vegas and Flagg and the wicked West.

Pre-superflu Lauder was once a reader of adventure fiction … then gave it up for the (imagined) company of girls:

At age sixteen he had given up Burroughs and Stevenson and Robert Howard in favor of other fantasies, fantasies that were both well loved and much hated—not of rockets or pirates but of girls in silk see-through pajamas kneeling before him on satin pillows while Harold the Great lolled naked on his throne, ready to chastise them with small leather whips, with silver-headed canes. They were bitter fantasies through which every pretty girl at Ogunquit High School had strolled one time or another.

Ah Harold, you shouldn’t have read Frannie’s diary…no turning back from that.

King is a king of pop culture references. Howard-heads, are you aware of any other REH references?

Anyway, well past the halfway mark of The Stand.

Returning to The Stand, and its comforts

I find Stephen King’s The Stand to be comfort food. I’m not sure what that says about me … but there it is.

A devastating plague accidently leaks from a top-secret U.S. Department of Defense biological weapons laboratory located under the California Mojave Desert. Extremely contagious and extraordinarily deadly, the plague, nicknamed Captain Trips (also Tube Neck and the choking sickness) suffocates its hosts in pleurisy and mucous, eliminating most of the world’s population.

There are survivors but many suffer far worse fates.

Unimaginable horror … but comforting to me, nonetheless. Perhaps because there is something of The Lord of the Rings in it, a novel to which I also return to again and again for familiarity and relief. King has stated on a few occasions that he was attempting with The Stand to write an American Lord of the Rings, and all the broad strokes are there: troupe of heroes banding together, an epic quest of good vs. evil that stretches from coast-to-coast in which Boulder serves as Minas Tirith and Vegas, Mordor. Maine is a sort of Rivendell. 

Randall Flagg, the Walking Dude, an American dark lord.

The second way in which I find The Stand comforting is its nostalgia. It takes me back to a different time and place in my life, enveloping me like a warm blanket. I think I read the original 1978 version sometime in the late 80s, when my King obsession was in full swing. I used to own this version, and was a fan of the depiction of Flagg’s cold and menacing eyes. I’m saddened to learn that at some point I parted ways with it.

When The Stand was re-released in 1991 for the first time complete and uncut, I bought the first edition Signet paperback, which I still own, and read it voraciously. Here it is.

My cherished, first edition paperback.

I graduated high school in ’91 and at the time my buddies and I were all mainlining thrash metal. Anthrax’s “Among the Living” (song and album) was the ultimate complement to this re-released uncut version of The Stand, which several of us read and chatted about. It was a glorious time. The period in which the events of the original novel is set--the late 70s--is the time of my early youth.

It's a vibe man, one I dig.

Like LOTR The Stand is about loss and the Fall. King says in Danse Macabre that he was inspired to write the book after America’s early 1970s backslide—the disgrace and resignation of Richard Nixon, the divisive and fruitless Vietnam War, inflation, and the 1970s energy crisis. “The America I had grown up in seemed to be crumbling beneath my feet,” King said. “It began to seem like an elaborate castle of sand and unfortunately built well below the high tide line.”

The Stand is absolutely fantastic in its depiction of rapid societal collapse. If we had any doubt how quickly our own bindings could come undone the events of 2020 made that clear. We disintegrated pretty damned quick. Rather than rally together the pandemic and its response drove a wedge in this country.

The Stand is entirely reframed post-COVID-19. It no longer feels so fantastic. Though we don’t know (and may never know) its ultimate origins, Covid probably escaped from a Wuhan Lab; perhaps an infected Chinese scientist escaped quarantine and went on the run with his family before the outbreak could be contained. 

Let’s hope we’ve seen the worst and will be better prepared next time. Maybe we should all read The Stand and remember what is at stake.

Postapocalyptic novels offer clarity and simplification. Office politics and tax rates and school budgets are wiped away, replaced by simple survival. With fewer choices, our minds are unburdened. We imagine how we’d do in that situation.

We hope good people would still come together in the end. 

King is in a very small handful of the most recognizable and read authors of our generation, and not without cause. Re-reading The Stand (I’m on page 272 of this 1,141 page monster) I’m reminded why. 

He’s a creative genius.

I haven’t read The Stand in perhaps 20 years and as I revisit it now I'm finding the number of small strokes of imaginative detail staggering. The cold-blooded Elder, an icy-eyed assassin in a hazmat suit who at the last hour will make sure Stu Redman doesn't survive to tell the tale. The wild-eyed Monster Shouter, a mad prophet who roams a barren New York landscape declaring that the monsters are returning. He's right.

King’s second authorial gift is bringing characters to life. The Stand introduces us to an broad and diverse cast, yet King renders each uniquely memorable. At this point in the book I’ve been reacquainted with the deaf-mute Nick Andros, laconic, blue-collar Stu Redman, troubled, budding rock star Larry Underwood, pregnant and free-spirited Frannie Goldsmith, petty crook Lloyd Henreid, and the creepy and nerdily awkward Harold Lauder. Each time it’s like meeting an old friend.

And then there’s Randall Flagg, the Dark Man, a half-man, half-demon, charismatic, mad, and full of evil design. 

King’s third gift is his ability scare the shit out of you. You don’t forget Underwood’s crawl for freedom through the Lincoln Tunnel in a terrifying, pitch-black sequence. Or the cool hand that slides out and around Stu’s ankle in the dark stairwell in his final escape from a Vermont CDC lab. Come down and eat chicken with me, beautiful…

Imagination, characterization, fear… The Stand combines all this with an epic storyline and so is one of King’s best. I’m not sure if it’s his best book—take your pick of IT, The Shining, Pet Sematary, 11/22/63, Salem’s Lot, Misery, a few others—but The Stand is in that conversation.

The Stand has been adapted for television twice, as recently as 2021, which I haven't seen, and apparently is not very good.

I watched the 1994 miniseries at college when it debuted and enjoyed it for the most part, though it still fell far short of the high bar set by the book. The opening sequence remains effective; I can no longer hear Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” without thinking of dead scientists in lab coats slumped over lunch tables.

I’m sure I’ll share a few more thoughts as I finish, but it’s a long way to Vegas. Better get on my walking boots.

The great quest continues: Joseph Campbell's Romance of the Grail

I’m probably not going to find the holy grail—the cup Joseph of Arimathea used to gather the blood of Christ, and later brought to Glastonbury—in the wooded trail behind my house.

But then again, perhaps I might.

The search for the holy grail is not a search for physical relic, but a spiritual awakening within.

This second, deeper layer is why it and its associated myths endure. These comprise the heart of Joseph Campbell’s Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth.

I find myself needing a daily walk through the woods behind my home to reset from a world that is increasingly online and artificial and ugly. I recently made the mistake of following a thread over to Twitter/X and was confronted with a digital manifestation of The Wasteland, damaged 30-year-old dudebros cursing at one another and asking Grok to confirm the veracity of a series of AI generated text and images that would have made the editors of The Inquirer or Weekly World News blanch, and turn away.

And I turn again to nature, and physical books, for healing. And to those who have sought the path of wisdom.

The Middle Way... an old railroad bed behind my house.

Joseph Campbell examined myths across cultures, looking for patterns and similarities. These patterns led him inexorably back to the human heart. Many researchers err by trying to tie myths to history or prove or disprove them by sifting through physical artifacts, rather than their psychological truths, which are found within. In his words:

“It is one of the prime mistakes of many interpreters of mythological symbols to read them as references, not to mysteries of the human spirit, but to earthly or unearthly scenes and to actual or imagined historical events—the Promised Land as Canaan, for example, and heaven as a district of the sky—or to see the Israelites passage of the Red Sea as an event such as newspaper reporter might have witnessed. It is one of the glories, on the other hand, of the Celtic tradition that in its handling even of religious themes it retranslates them from the languages of imagined fact into a mythological idiom, so that they may be experienced not as time-conditioned but as timeless, telling not of miracles long past but of miracles potential within ourselves, here, now, and forever.”

This truth can be understood by examining the early mythological sources of the grail. The grail resists a definitive single physical instantiation. For example, in its earliest depictions from Welsh and Celtic sources it took the form not of a cup, but a cauldron. The cauldron of Rebirth/Pair Dadeni, from the central Welsh myth featuring a vessel that can revive dead warriors, which plays a major role in the Mabinogion (and much later, the Prydain Chronicles). The Dagda’s Cauldron, one of the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann, an inexhaustible vessel out of deep Irish lore from which "no company ever went away hungry." And Ceridwen’s Cauldron, of Poetic Inspiration and Knowledge, which bestowed wisdom and transformation on its user. 

Multiplication of food/unlimited sustenance, wisdom and transformation, resurrection. 

These ancient Celtic sources were almost certainly the basis for the grail myth, which became transmogrified by the likes of Wolfram von Eschenbach (who depicted the grail as a stone from heaven), and the unfinished romance Perceval le Gallois by Chrétien de Troyes. You can find a good article on that process here. And of course, in this book.

Campbell’s first mythological obsession was the Grail. We get in this book his master’s thesis, “A Study of the Dolorous Stroke,” which he submitted to the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in 1927, when he was just 22 years old. It’s a deep examination of the myth of the Fisher King, the story of the wounding of a king by a lance through the thigh or groin (sometimes burning of a hand). The king is left in agony, unable to find relief save through fishing. 

The wound is also spiritual. Fishing is equated to going down into unconscious waters to pull souls, or beings, out of the unconscious state into the light, Campbell says. We’ve all been hurt, deeply. We need someone to, without expectation of reciprocity or mercenary motive, ask the question: what ails you, friend? 

After asking the question, a draught from the grail brings healing, to the king and the land.

Peace is all around us, but our monkey minds won’t permit it to be seen. One path is the search for the grail, through examining its symbolic importance as a vessel of wisdom and rebirth. 

In its stories you might find what it has to teach about your own plight, friend. 

The best chapter is probably Campbell’s examination of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, which I do need to read, one of these days. Here Campbell’s does his unique magic of convincingly tying Buddhism to Arthurian Romance. Both are concerned with the search for a path to liberation known as the Middle Way. “The Middle Way between heaven and hell is earned through exercise of the three virtues, plus a fourth: 1) disengagement from the fury of the passions, 2) fearlessness in the face of death, 3) indifference to the opinion of the world, and 4) compassion.” In von Eschenbach’s tale a Muslim knight confronts Anfortas, the Fisher King, on the jousting field; Anfortas kills his foe but receives a wound through his thighs. Campbell interprets this wounding not as a simple battle, but as a symbolic disaster representing "the dissociation within Christendom of spirit from nature". The Christian king (Anfortas) is wounded by a representative of nature (the "oriental" or pagan warrior). These two opposing forces, nature and spirit, can only be resolved through access to a middle way.

Writes Campbell, “The first birth of man, as a physical culture motivated by the animal energies of the body, is biological. Man’s second, properly human birth, is spiritual, of the heart and mind.” 

Or as one of his great inspirations, Carl Jung, said, “your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart, who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside awakes.” 

There are many curious parallels between tales of the Crucifixion and of the dolorous stroke. Both point to a similar lesson:

Nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Romance of the Grail is studded with insights like this. It will lead you on a merry chase, for example to this terrific video. If you can bear the terrible tinny 80s music and production, a fantastic watch.

Recommended.

***

The path behind my house is a Middle Way. A railroad once ran on it, iron and coal combustion driving freight across the country. Now it’s given way to trucking, the rails and ties torn out. But the bed remains, a path that now accommodates foot traffic into nature.

Probably some type of symbol there. Maybe I’ll find a cauldron out in these woods.

Some notes on Crime and Punishment

I just finished Crime and Punishment (Bantam Books 1958 edition, translated by Constance Garnett), and its story of Raskolnikov, an idealistic, poverty-stricken young man wracked with guilt after murdering a pawnbroker for what he believes to be a justified, if selfish, cause.

Here’s a few impressions/notes.

***

Among its lessons: Mere theory cannot survive life, and we cannot live by philosophy alone. 

Utilitarianism (permitting acts however terrible if they lead to a greater good, under the rubric that ends justify the means) is seductive but pernicious; placing one’s own ego at the center of your existence (I’m more important/smarter/ideologically pure than my fellow man, and therefore my actions justified) is an error. Our attempts to try to implement constructed, top-down, logically sound societies like communism fail because they cannot account for human irrationality. Humans will be filed off to fit, or marched to the pit for the greater good.

People who set out to be Napoleon and stop at nothing to achieve greatness are not to be admired. When you view those who don’t share your grand visions as lice or vermin, you’ve erred.

We are romantic and irrational creatures; ignore human nature at your peril. It will push up through your theory and crack its very foundations.

Nihilism is seductive but ultimately an error. Life has incredible riches to offer, but we must surrender to it. Commit to this life, and to a higher power. Which even if you don’t believe in God means you must surrender to something beyond you. To love, of another being. To seeing another person for who they are, not as a means to an end.

When you turn the last page on this book you will be shaken … and uplifted. The suffering of the protagonist and his agonizing path to confession is like the interminable wait of the condemned man of Iron Maiden’s “Hallowed be thy Name.” It’s a story of claustrophobia and suffering but with great relief only expiation can bring, and the beginnings of renewal.

Crime and Punishment is a reminder that redemption is possible, even from the most grievous of sins. 

We’ve all made terrible mistakes. I am sorry to those against whom I’ve sinned or been unjust. I accept the unjustness inflicted on me. Through suffering we can reach higher levels of consciousness.

***

I read outside of fantasy and this book gets added to my list of recent recommendations. But you certainly don’t need me to tell you to read what is acknowledged as one of the greatest novels of all time.

To Leave A Warrior Behind by Jon Tattrie, a review

“What blazed in Charles’s eyes? What was at his core? I think he planted it deep in his books, liberating himself. Readers purify their own emotions and memories in the refining fire of his words.”

--Jon Tattrie, To Leave a Warrior Behind

A talented author working in the second wave of sword-and-sorcery, Charles Saunders twice had his Imaro books under contract and in print by a publishing house … and twice had the series yanked from under his feet.

Partially as a result of these and other ill fortunes including shuttering of the newspaper on which he worked, Saunders died alone, near penniless. Worse, without family to claim his body he was buried in an unmarked grave.

That’s hard.

If that was your end, would you consider your life a success? Do you consider Saunders’ life a success?

You might not… unless you were to read To Leave a Warrior Behind (2026, McClelland & Stewart).

After which you’d answer that question quite differently. With a hell yeah. Saunders’ life might not look anything like the “success” you see on Instagram, but it was, nonetheless. Why?

He wrote some kick-ass S&S that we still read today.

He created a new (sub) sub-genre of fiction, sword-and-soul. 

He had hundreds of admirers with whom he corresponded. Many friends, and as all fans of “It’s a Wonderful Life” know, no man is a failure who has friends.

And he will continue to be remembered thanks to this new biography.

Biography is what’s on the cover but probably the wrong word to describe To Leave A Warrior Behind. Biography often brings to mind dry text, heavily footnoted and indexed, the plain recitation of the facts of a life. To Leave a Warrior Behind is part compelling story of a fatherless boy, just like his greatest creation, Imaro, “son-of-no-father.” It’s part literary analysis of Saunders’ works. Part detective novel, from the search for an unclaimed body to the search for a missing past in the pages of hand-written letters. Part funeral dirge for the dying newspaper industry. And above all it honors Saunders the man, his unique life and literary and human legacy.

I don’t want to spoil all of that story here, as the book’s revelations keep coming, building chapter by chapter to a satisfying finish. By the end you will meet a Saunders you probably did not know. 

But I do need to review it and so will reveal some of its contents here. You’ve been warned.

***

Tattrie knew Saunders, as the two worked together for years as newsmen at the Halifax Daily News. So the work includes a fair deal of self-biographical/emotional/personal reflections from the author, which I enjoyed.

Shuttering the newsroom at the Daily News hit close to home. I was fortunate in 2004 when I quit my full-time job at a newspaper whose best days were behind, but one I loved and for which I felt survivors’ guilt. Tattrie observes that leaving journalism for greener, safer, corporate pastures can feel like a sellout, and as an ex-journalist I agree. I admire people who stuck out the profession for the love of the game. People like Saunders.

Saunders never wanted to do anything with his life but tell stories, and that’s what he did, even when there was no money to be made.

This book is worth a small fortune.

Most of Saunders’ newsroom colleagues did not know he wrote the Imaro books. We get the full history here, starting with Saunders’ immense relief and pride after getting a $2,500 advance, to his crashing disappointment at finally seeing the cover of Imaro, which featured a tanned Tarzan-like, possibly white hero and the infamous blurb “epic novel of a black Tarzan.” This drew the ire of the ERB estate and led to it being yanked from shelves, a costly delay. We also get a bit of insight into the workings at DAW. In 1985 founder Donald A. Wollheim was hospitalized and his daughter Betsy took over the day-to-day management of the company. It was her call to ultimately cancel Imaro. 

Because DAW held the copyright to the first three Imaro books, Saunders was in a bind, unable to offer them elsewhere.

The book shines in its Imaro deep-dive, which all sword-and-sorcery fans and historians (ahem) will appreciate. Tattrie gives the series its due like few places did, save for perhaps The Cimmerian and Steve Tompkins (who by the way Saunders later extolled in an essay published in Rob E. Howard: Two-Gun Raconteur). We get the beginnings of Imaro, jointly influenced by Tarzan and a black character in Andre Norton’s postapocalyptic SF novel Star Man’s Son—2250 AD. But Saunders’ number one influence was Robert E. Howard, through the Lancers. We get his first appearances in the Gene Day edited magazine Dark Fantasy, and the big break when Lin Carter selected an Imaro story for his Year’s Best Fantasy Stories (DAW, 1975). It was Don Wolleheim himself who encouraged Saunders to submit Imaro for consideration, and ultimately acceptance.

After DAW cancelled the series Saunders did not publish a single piece of fiction between 1990-99. He did write the screenplays for a couple admittedly terrible S&S films, Amazons and Stormquest, which allowed him to pay the bills. He also wrote a few works of nonfiction about local black history and boxing.

***

But beyond Saunders’ literary legacy we also get much on him the person. His college days during the rise of the Black Power movement. An attempted suicide in the 70s. The lifeline provided by his friends in letters, including the authors Charles De Lint and David C. Smith. With Smith Saunders mourned a joint loss of their early successes when their brand of “masculine fiction” fell from favor. We get the details of his marriage and its eventual failure. His work at the newspaper, Saunders’ raising his arms in triumph when CNNs’ Wolf Blitzer read on air his editorial about Canada sending ships to help the US during Hurricane Katrina. Lots of great details like this.

And we get Saunders’ fiction revival. His resurfacing after he was asked to submit a piece to the anthology Dark Matter. The republishing of his stories by Night Shade in the mid-2000s, which led Saunders to revisit the old Imaro stories and improve them. Tattrie walks us through Saunders’ work strengthening and deepening his characters, especially Imaro’s love interest Tanisha. “As he matured, Charles started treating fantasy not as a way out of our world, but as a deeper way into it,” Tattrie writes. Imaro begins to consider the feelings of others … “over time, core character traits reveal the man beneath the warrior.” Tattrie believes Saunders ultimately eclipsed Howard and his S&S roots by turning the focus of the stories from outer action to inner character revelation.

We get Night Shade’s disappointing cancellation of the series, but then the launch of Sword and Soul Media, and the first true visual depiction of Imaro on a cover that Saunders long imagined. In 2009, 25 years since his last new novel about Imaro, Saunders published his 4th and longest novel—Imaro: The Naama War, which brought with it a shift from the heroic fantasy of Imaro to a more epic storyline.

In short, To Leave a Warrior Behind is not just a biography, but important literary analysis. Analysis that along the way reveals striking parallels between creation and creator. Saunders, like Imaro, was deeply marked by the abandonment of his father and separation from his mother. Tatrie notes that he assembled the book by reading more than 250 letters over 50 years to a range of friends. Each letter was 3 pages, adding up to more than 700 pages of Charles writing about his life. In all that paper Saunders mentioned his father just once. When he fled to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War he largely left his mother behind, too.

Yet this is not a good guy/bad guy story… I’ll end my review here, I don’t want to spoil anything, as there are some big twists at the end. Read this book for yourself and you’ll walk away with brand-new insights into Saunders the man. I regret not meeting Saunders when I had the chance, but I feel like I did after reading To Leave a Warrior Behind. Which is about the highest praise I can give it.

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Kane vs. the Werewolf by Jeff Easley.

I just pressed publish on issue #5 of Arcane Arts, my free weekly newsletter of arcane miscellany. This one includes:

• News of a couple of print S&S articles I recently completed
• A few early thoughts on a recently published Charles Saunders biography
• Some speculation on the King Conan film announcement

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The Tower and the Ruin by Michael D.C. Drout, a review

“Tolkien’s vision is deeply and essentially true, and it gives shape and meaning to the grief and loss that is our common and inescapable inheritance as humans incarnate in time.”

--Michael D.C. Drout, The Tower and the Ruin

As a 52-year-old with more of my life in the rear-view mirror than the road ahead, I find myself looking back on fond memories as much as forward. I think of growing up in the 1980s, which for me meant marathon sessions of Dungeons and Dragons at the kitchen table with friends, afternoon-consuming sessions of Atari 2600 with my brother and cousin, and of course, getting lost in the pages of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Those days are gone, irretrievably, save only in the wells of memory. When I recall them now they are accompanied with intense pangs of nostalgia. They are broken remnants of past glories, even if the artifacts remain.

Towers, and ruins.

A tower and a ruin makes for a powerful symbolic contrast and one author Michael D.C. Drout puts to full effect in this new work of Tolkien scholarship. The Tower and the Ruin (2025, Norton) is a striking blend of deeply personal memory and reflection, sharp intellectual rigor, and voluminous engagement with what is now a great breadth of published Tolkien scholarship. 

Drout tells us how Tolkien forever changed the course of his life, then sets out to show us how Tolkien’s works (principally The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and LOTR) achieve their potent spell through literary effect. In somewhat of a surprise Drout dispels the myth that Tolkien set out to create a mythology for England, arguing this common refrain is a misread by Tolkien’s principal biographer Humphrey Carpenter. Instead, Drout writes that Tolkien sought to create works of literary art … “that would produce in their readers some of the same effects that the works of medieval literature produced in him.”

The Lord of the Rings is great for many reasons, but among them for evoking the feeling that you are in a world of tremendous depth and history. It feels real, and lived in, like inhabiting a “coherent, consistent, deeply fascinating world … glimpses of a large history in the background.” We can feel this when we read him. Tolkien achieves this effect by layering in references to older ages of Middle-earth, evocative names, and even inconsistencies, all of which combine to produce the effect of displacement and historicity that we get from reading something like Beowulf. Drout explains how this is done with Tolkien’s use of intertextuality; for example writing the chapter “The Council of Elrond” through the telling of a number of implied histories shared by the tellers, all of whom have their own unique voice and viewpoints informed by their unique cultures and races. Tolkien drew on old medieval sources but also sophisticated literary techniques like patterning, interlace, and “heterotextuality,” or the illusion of a story told by multiple authors (Bilbo and Frodo and the fictitious “Red Book of Westmarch”). These create the effects of “textual ruins.” Literal ruins like the tumbled Tower of Amon-Sul, but also the feeling that this is a Third Age which of course means two prior Ages, greater Ages, preserved in song and tales of Beren and Luthien and Turin. It all creates per Drout “the convincing illusion that the work has a long and complex composition and transmission history rather than merely being the creation of a single Oxford professor in the twentieth century.”

Some of this I knew through the likes of the scholarship of Tom Shippey, but some was new to me including Drout’s examination of Tolkien’s deliberate use of racism among the Elves as a motivating force in the narrative of The Silmarillion and to a lesser degree, LOTR and The Hobbit. Drout makes a convincing case that the Elves’ rigid racial hierarchies led to internecine conflicts and great tragedies and helped speed their downfall. See the Kinslaying at Alqualondë and its conflict of Noldorin Elves, led by the prideful Fëanor, vs. the Telerin Elves. This also serves as an interesting counterpoint to modern critiques of Tolkien’s perceived racism; per Drout Tolkien was not only very aware of the pernicious effects of racism but actively grappled with it in his works. 

I found myself nodding along to Drout’s summary that the problems of death and immortality, and the critical importance of individual freedom, are all front and center themes of Tolkien’s works. Even as I learned and/or reinforced what I knew, I found myself not always seeing eye-to-eye with Drout  … but I can’t stress enough how much I enjoyed the act of mental dialogue and sparring.

For example, I really wish Drout—a professor of English at Wheaton College, who not only specializes in Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature but also science fiction and modern fantasy--would read more sword-and-sorcery. He lists early examples of fantasy that add reality and verisimilitude to their works through replicating the feel of old medieval texts, and to his credit gives props to the likes of H. Rider Haggard, William Morris and Walter Scott … but somehow ignores Robert E. Howard, who employed the same “pseudo references” for which he gives so much to credit to Tolkien. Howard not only incorporated his own pseudo references like the Books of Skelos but also incorporated Lovecraft’s pseudo references … which I suppose makes him a pseudo-pseudo referencee/referencer. Like Tolkien Howard also used our real world to frame his fictitious Hyborian Age. Steve Tompkins considers Howard and Tolkien the Two Towers of fantasy with only a short distance between. I agree; the towers and ruins they’ve left behind leave us in awe.

Speaking of Tompkins, one of the things that drew me to Drout was his essay in The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On. Steve’s mention of that essay on The Cimmerian website led me to track it down. You can read my review/experience of that here. Drout’s essay is intensely personal, a recollection of his first encounter with The Silmarillion which he received as a Christmas present in December of 1977. He had just moved from New York to a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts (my neck of the woods, incidentally). That winter the region was hit with the Blizzard of 1978. In addition to the suffocating snows the nine year-old Drout was coping with his parents’ impending divorce and separation from his friends, family, and childhood home. 

Yet paradoxically the bleakness of The Silmarillion and its terrible scenes of carnage and defeat (The Battle of Unnumbered Tears, the Fall of Gondolin) served as a salve for Drout, who learned in its pages the value of courage and resilience and of exhibiting tenacity in defeat. Drout also learned that nostalgia is a genuine emotion worthy of exploration, not of shame, as it is a part of the spectrum of the human condition. 

As Steve wrote, with his typical poetic sensibility:

We humans aren’t as lucky (or is it unlucky?) as Tolkien’s Elves, but Valinors of sorts are available to us, be they the green-gold stun grenade of a spring day, the Polaroid poignance of that one page it might be easier to skip in the photo album, or a chance hearing of a long-ago hit single that ruled the airwaves all during one of those cusp-between-adolescence-and-adulthood summers when possibility and probability were still in equipoise.

In The Tower and the Ruin Drout expands on that essay, but abandons “nostalgia” for the term Heimweh, a German word meaning “home pain” and originally a medical diagnosis. I won’t quibble overmuch with Heimweh… except to say I think nostalgia is a fine word, it signifies something you long for but can never reach. I believe it still fits for how I feel when reading Tolkien, even if it’s been corrupted. We can’t let word corrupters take our language and adapt with constant new (or old) terminology. That’s like playing whack-a-mole.

Anyone who has followed me for any length of time knows how much I detest “Epic Pooh,” which is more or less uniformed teen angst (in fact, Moorcock only read LOTR once, as a teenager, by his own admission). Why anyone gives it any weight beyond the author’s name and some misguided appeal to “authority” eludes me. Drout doesn’t address that essay precisely but he does craft a perfect takedown of its overwrought claims. Here I slightly paraphrase:

“It must be, instead, that there is something about Tolkien’s work that triggers a critical blindness or a perverse reflex to claim the opposite of the truth. I think I can identify one of the major factors. The standard, cliched twentieth-century rejection of any works of literature that depict humanity and its works as being substantially good and beautiful and thus worthy of preservation is to call them “fairy-tales,” with the implication that such are just simple, happy stories that only children would believe.”

There is also a particularly choice and delicious shot at postmodernism and the misguided belief that there is no such thing as good and evil, only power, among some of the intellectual elite… but I won’t spoil it ere.

The Tower and the Ruin is Drout’s first book on Tolkien and ultimately it is mostly for the Tolkien nerd, perhaps more than I was anticipating, mainly because it is in conversation with and builds upon the work of other Tolkien scholars and in particular Tom Shippey. Drout owes a sizable debt to Shippey; you could say this book is built on the textual ruins of Shippey’s groundbreaking scholarship. There is some direct recapitulation of Shippey’s work including his theory of how bourgeois Bilbo vs. the older epic world he encounters gives The Hobbit its unique power. But this is not a critique of Drout; every Tolkien scholar since The Road to Middle-earth is in Shippey’s debt. Drout also references and interprets the likes of Verlyn Fleiger, John Garth, Gergely Nagy, and Thomas Hillman. He’s responding to critics, not just the source texts, which is what any good critic should do. In fact, if you’re looking to get into Tolkien scholarship The Tower and the Ruin is a good place to begin that epic quest; Drout references a number of essays and critical works to take you ever deeper into the whys and hows of JRRT. 

But, this makes The Tower and the Ruin predominately a work for hardcore Tolkien-heads/scholar-types, and less so a broadly popular/mainstream accessible work. I thought it would be more of the latter; I’m not disappointed because I am a Tolkien nerd but I wanted even more of Drout’s experiences as a child escaping from the arguments of his near-divorced parents to his snow and ice castle of Nargothrond. And a pair of terribly sad personal losses, which I won’t spoil here but Drout describes with some haunting, beautiful writing. 

That we do get these personal experiences in The Tower and the Ruin is quite unique. Scholars don’t do this; academic writing is a unique beast, with its own norms and codes. Drout bravely puts his own ruins on display alongside the tower of Tolkien’s art, which makes me grateful we have The Tower and the Ruin. 

Read it.

Here’s an interview with Drout focused on The Tower and the Ruin you might want to check out.