Any Howard Pyle fans in the house? If so, or if you're looking for fun, old-school, historical fiction adventure, my review of Pyle's Men of Iron is now up on DMR Blog.
"Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other." --H.P. Lovecraft, The Silver Key
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Saturday, August 7, 2021
Technopoly, Neil Postman
Finished Neil Postman’s Technopoly the other day, and loved it, and was enlightened by it, challenged by it. It was very interesting to read a book published in 1992, pre commercial internet, with the premise that technology had (even by then) been so mindlessly and carelessly adopted wholesale, and given such primacy, that it quickly wiped away our norms and culture and destroyed its sanctity and symbols. It's hard to argue with this when we spend all our time with our heads down in our phones these days (self included). One wonders what Postman would have had to say about Tik-Tok.
There is great stuff in here about the insidiousness of "invisible technology," for example standardized testing and our harmful desire to assign IQ scores when intelligence cannot be measured with a single score. Basing our decisions on polling data when this data can change dramatically based on the subtle wording of a question and a given poll taker’s mood, and thus forfeiting our sovereignty or outsourcing it to the crowd. How ruthless efficiency and skill building has risen to prominence over liberal arts education in the drive to create skilled workers who can add to the GDP, warping the true purpose of education. The inevitable advance, today led by neuroscience, to reduce humans to 0s and 1s.
Postman asks some deeply penetrating questions on how we can fight back against Technopoly, which include establishing an academic curriculum rooted in history, across all subjects, that offers a narrative of the ascent of man and why decisions were made and from where our current beliefs/practices/scientific advances/theories have derived. In short, an education that makes us think, not conform, and embrace humanity and the human ideal, not machines. Education is not a means to an end; rather being educated, broadly and richly, is the end goal.
These issues and solutions may sound a bit like cranky conservatism or “old man shouting at cloud” but I happen to agree with many of them. There is something in these narratives that speaks to me, I think anyone who can take a step back and observe will realize that progress is not always for the good, but for the good and bad, simultaneous. More to the point, technology changes the landscape, forever, and while we make gains we inevitably lose something in the translation, including our individual sovereignty. J.R.R Tolkien was acutely aware of this, as was Robert E. Howard (see his letters to H.P. Lovecraft).
I am aware of my own hypocrisy, writing these words on a blog on the internet, with immediate distribution. I am a beneficiary of technology. But I also shake my head at our mindless adoption of the latest shiny that comes along.
In summary I like this damned blog just fine, I don't need a Twitter following.
Wednesday, August 4, 2021
The problem with reviews
I get asked for book reviews, with some amount of frequency.
I don’t blame anyone for asking me, or asking others, to review their
book. Now that I’m an author I empathize with that sentiment, quite deeply. All
authors want and need readers, and reviewers. More than money, or at least on equal footing, writers
crave readers who enjoy their work. They seek validation that their work is
good, and connects with a reader on some emotional level. And most want others to write about their book.
But please know that when I get your email, it makes me wince,
and hurt a little inside, as reviews present many problems to the reviewer.
Here are a few:
They’re a huge time
commitment. Reviewing a book requires you to read the book (you better read
it; “reviewing” a book because you know the author is unethical), and read it
closer than you might if you were reading for pure enjoyment. Then comes the
writing. To write a review of any substance requires some degree of planning,
and thought, and care. You can certainly go the route of a four-five sentence capsule
of what you liked about a book, and there is a place for those, particularly on
Amazon. But I think careful reviewing is an art form. An honest review should do
more than breezily sketch the plot and end with “I highly recommend this book
to anyone who enjoys Robert E. Howard.” A good, earnest review should teach you
something new about the book, or the genre, and place the author in a community
of like authors. There should be some indication of the style and manner in
which the story is told. In short, a good review is itself an art form, and
takes time to craft properly.
Related to the above, reading
something new must always close other doors, possibly to something better. Years
ago I wrote a post for Black Gate on the problem of the glut
of fantasy in the market. An intractable problem facing new writers is the
weight of history, and the hundreds of thousands of authors that have gone
before them. In my middle age is it apparent that I will NEVER be able to read
all the books I want to. Right now I’m barely managing a book a week, which
puts me at 52 books a year. At age 48, I might have another 40 years of life in
me, if I’m lucky… that’s a little over 2,000 books, at best. A sobering
thought. My time is finite and I want to spend it well. Should I read a new
book by an unknown author, or should I read the Poul Anderson and Fritz Leiber
and Michael Moorcock titles I haven’t gotten to yet? Or re-read a beloved old
classic?
The moral quandary of
reviewing bad books, or books you don’t enjoy. What if you don’t like a book,
either one you’ve sought out, or one you’ve been asked to review? Do you write
the review, or say nothing? Do you write a (semi) dishonest review, focusing
perhaps on a few things you found OK, while leaving out your valid critiques? I
still think of this
brilliant review of Patrick Rothfuss’ The
Name of the Wind, a highly regarded book which I detested. Like a surgeon
Adam Roberts dissects his problems with that book, comparing it unfavorably with
The Children of Hurin, released at the
same time by the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien. Roberts’ review is perhaps a little
arch in places but it’s not mean-spirited. I find it illuminating, with much to
teach us about the potent spell good fantasy can place on the reader, and the
importance of being taken out of the modern world. Some might object to this
line of criticism. If you have nothing good
to say, don’t say anything at all. I do believe there is a time and place
for that sentiment, but I also believe that good critique serves a valuable
function. The problem is that I don’t think most authors want to hear it. And I’m
not sure I want to write it, as I don’t like hurting anyone’s feelings.
...
Now that I’ve spent some considerable digital ink expressing
my deep reservations of the book review enterprise, believe it or not I do want to do more reviews of new works—as I am able. I want to support the
sword-and-sorcery community, and there are many worthy publications and authors
and titles that deserve the exposure and the commentary. I’ll mix them in as I
can.
Tuesday, June 1, 2021
Bran Mak Morn: The Last King, a few thoughts
I recently finished a re-read of Bran Mak Morn: The Last King (Del Rey, 2005), inspired by a reading of the Karl Edward Wagner pastiche Legion from the Shadows. Some thoughts, rattled off rather quickly as a formal post is not in the cards:
Bran Mak Morn is like an ancient, savage, King Arthur. He is
a once and future king, who will unite all the original tribes of Britain, drive
out the “civilized” Roman and post-Roman invaders, and restore existence to a primitive
ideal. His Camelot/round table will be the Cromlech, an inscrutable symbol of
the unknown. Poul Anderson did this sort of thing with Hrolf
Kraki’s Saga, but Howard’s “Arthur” is even deeper in time, the late third
century.
A lineage of Picts connects all of REH’s material, like a
savage through line. They make appearances in the Kull, Bran Mak Morn, James
Allison, and Conan stories. Brule the spear-slayer’s lineage goes back to the
very beginning (the Thurian Age of Kull, the days of Atlantis and Lemuria). The Last King contains a nice essay on
this topic by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet, “Robert E. Howard, Bran Mak
Morn, and the Picts.” Bran Mak Morn taps into and unites this ancient spirit, successfully
uniting the tribes before eventually dying in battle. But his image persists, a
literal effigy in stories like “The Dark Man” and “The Children of the Night.” Will
he come again, a once and future king?
Picts are Howard’s image of the primal, original state of
man, whether that state is good or ill. Howard’s Picts are a primitive race.
They organize in tribes, live off the land as hunter-gatherers (notably they do
not farm, which makes men soft), don’t build cities, and work with flint. Howard
saw himself in these slanted forehead, dark complexioned, brutish, un-guiled
race. The Picts are a step below
barbarians in Howard’s taxonomy, unchanging, and eternal. Barbarians would
eventually organize, and civilize, and grow soft—not so the Picts. A
description of the Pictish chieftain Gorm from Howard’s “The Hyborian Age”:
In
the seventy-five years which had elapsed since he first heard the tale of
empires from the lips of Arus—a long time in the life of a man, but a brief
space in the tale of nations—he had welded an empire from straying savage
clans, he had overthrown a civilization. He who had been born in a mud-walled,
wattle-roofed hut, in his old age sat on golden thrones, and gnawed joints of
beef presented to him on golden dishes by naked slave-girls who were the
daughters of kings. Conquest and the acquiring of wealth altered not the Pict;
out of the ruins of the crushed civilization no new culture arose phoenix-like.
The dark hands which shattered the artistic glories of the conquered never
tried to copy them. Though he sat among the glittering ruins of shattered palaces
and clad his hard body in the silks of vanquished kings, the Pict remained the
eternal barbarian, ferocious, elemental, interested only in the naked primal
principles of life, unchanging, unerring in his instincts which were all for
war and plunder, and in which arts and the cultured progress of humanity had no
place.
The Picts did contain a purer, nobler strain, as exemplified
in Bran, from the Thurian Age. They morphed in conception in Howard’s mind as
he wrote the stories, and was exposed to new theories.
Howard uses the term “heather” very frequently when
describing the landscape of ancient Britain, and its wilds, again and again,
like an incantation. I have no knowledge of plant-life, but a quick Google
search reveals that heather is a dominant plant in the heathlands of moorlands
of Europe, yet is hardy and has been successfully introduced to many other
continents and climates, including North America. The way in which Howard uses the
term invites comparisons with his nostalgia for the frontier; I wonder how much
he had in mind old, pre-cultivated, pre-industrial Texas, before the cattle
farms and barbwire taming, while writing these stories.
Saturday, May 29, 2021
Teenage wasteland and examining the unexamined life
I did not look like these dudes, but was, in spirit. |
I grew up in the time period and was a teenager in the same timeline
of Teenage Wasteland, the late 1980s.
My own experiences were different from the kids in the book—I would say that my
hometown of Reading, MA was more affluent than Bergenfield, New Jersey, with more
promise in my particular geographic area, more jobs due to the presence of a
good economy in nearby Boston and its suburbs. My family was not affluent—my dad
held a blue collar job building and developing centrifuges at a production plant
in Brighton, while my mom took care of her three kids and did odd jobs (office
cleaning, baby sitting) to help make ends meet, before eventually taking a job
as a legal secretary as we got older. We were not anything close to wealthy, we
didn’t always get what we wanted for birthdays or Christmas, and we wore hand
me downs and a mixture of new and used clothing, and lived in a modest cape on
a dead-end, blue-collar street. My town had its burnouts like those described
in Gaines’ book: Reading High had a back parking lot where (incredibly, looking
back from today) you could smoke. We had the metal kids, long-haired and denim
jacketed, opposite the jocks. Some went to the nearby vocational school and became
mechanics.
I had brushes with the burnout culture, but had a foot in
each camp, which in hindsight may have made me somewhat unique. I played football,
and track, and kept my hair short, and my grades were unremarkable, C’s and B’s,
save for English, where I could pull As with little difficulty. But I also wore
metal T shirts and hung out with a semi-fringe, though not burnout crowd. We
loved metal, we drank when we could get our hands on beer or cheap vodka. A few
of my friends smoked—cigarettes, and again when we could get our hands on
it/post high school, weed. But, we didn’t do hard drugs, and we mostly stayed
out of trouble with the police, a few scrapes here and there aside.
Like the kids in Teenage
Wasteland I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted to do with my life. Not even
a clue. I went to state college because I was a decent student, but mainly
because it was the thing most kids did—not all kids, not for example my friend
Wayne who went from retail to house siding to carpentry, and now today has his
own small business. Not a couple other acquaintances and occasional drinking
buddies who drifted into substance abuse. But most. Although thankfully I didn’t
drift down that latter path, I was nonetheless a drifter, sliding into college,
going along for the ride, partying and going to class. At college I had two
major, life-altering occurrences—I met my future wife (we started dating as
sophomores, and got married a year after graduation, in August of 1996) and I discovered
a love of reading and writing after a false start in sociology and criminal
justice. Eventually I chose English as a major and worked on my college newspaper.
I excelled in all my English and writing classes because I loved the material.
I guess I was lucky, and met the right girl, which led to
buying our first town house, setting me on the path of home ownership (two
houses later, I’m living in the dream in a large colonial), and starting a family
with two girls of my own. My love of reading and writing turned into a job on a
small local newspaper, at the tail end of viability of local journalism. That later
turned into a job at a medical b-to-b publishing company and my current,
well-paying job and stable career.
Given my modest upbringing, the opportunities I had to take
my life in a different, darker, direction, how did I end up where I am today
and not in some dead-end, like that described in Teenage Wasteland?
The 80s had their issues. It was the decade of excess
(again, for some), and probably the beginning of the have/have not wealth
divide that is plaguing the country today. Manufacturing, blue-collar jobs like
my dad held were being steadily eroded (my dad retired at the right time, in the
late 90s, just as his company was bought and moved overseas. His old plant is
now a condo). I stayed out front of ruin by cashing out on our first home (though
taking a hit on our second), and getting out of print journalism just as the
internet killed newspapering. I was competent—I’m being unnecessarily humble, I
was an editorial star at my current job—which allowed me to survive the financial
crisis of 2007-2008 and a deep round of layoffs. Due to severe mismanagement at
the same company we endured an even worse series of layoffs and eventual purchase
in 2012/2013, and I again survived those.
Kids were troubled back in the 80s. I saw some of that
first-hand, and some of the consequences. But, kids were also troubled in the
60s, and 70s, and the 90s. And now today, with everyone wondering about the
effects of staring at cell phones all day. “Kids these days” has probably been
muttered by every single adult since ancient Greece, and in fact it has. Socrates
himself wrote, “the children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt
for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of
exercise.” Sound familiar?
1994? Sue and I, just getting started. |
I guess you could say (to use modern vernacular) that I was “privileged.” Some of that is true, in that I grew up in a stable if unremarkable U.S. suburbia of the late 20th century, not war-torn Bosnia. But I reject that as the sole story. I worked consistently, my entire life.
I have had jobs since I was 11-12, and worked at every school break, doing
every odd job you can possibly imagine. Shagging carriages, digging fence post
holes, sweeping floors, delivering newspapers. As a professional I didn’t take
work home with me, I didn’t kiss ass, but I always (and still) believed in
obligation, and keeping promises. Maybe it’s the old Northern European/Danish
blood in me, and my reverence for the oath and/or Protestant work ethic, but when I’m being paid to do a job
from 8:30-5, I work, and I do it to the best of my ability. I don’t believe in
half-assing anything I commit to. I don’t always commit, but when I do I’m in,
and my work, if not always brilliant, ranges from well-done competence, to
exceeding expectations. When you do this, over and over again, you will
eventually be noticed, and promoted. I have seen others in very similar circumstances and with similar abilities fail.
The world is a troubled place, and always has been, and despite our best efforts to socially engineer it, probably always will be. Some people
will get shit breaks. But I think hard work and dogged persistence can still
lift you up from teenage wasteland.
Sunday, May 16, 2021
Bran Mak Morn: Your favorite cover?
I'm currently on a Bran Mak Morn kick, having read Karl Edward Wagner's Legion from the Shadows (good, not great) and now am going back to the original REH stories themselves.
What is your favorite cover? I'm partial to the Dell Bran Mak Morn--a dark, brooding Frazetta painting, with savage Picts looking very much like a prehistoric race bridging the Hyborian Age and our own ancient world. I prefer it over the Gianni and Jeff Jones covers, but your mileage may vary.
Awesome art by uncredited Doug Beekman |
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Confess, Rob Halford (2020), a review
The Metal God tells all... |
So I was pleased to be able to buy and finally read lead
singer Rob Halford’s “tell all” Confess.
This highly anticipated autobiography came out in September 2020 and a couple of my
friends were like “you’re just reading that now?” But hey, what can I say, my
TBR pile is towering and ridiculous.
Straight off, if you’re a gay-hater, you’ll hate this book (and
you may also wish to engage in some self-introspection, there is no choice in
the matter for a man like Rob Halford, who simply knew he was gay from a very
young age). In places Rob went a bit overboard on his descriptions of his
various and often sordid sexual encounters. I couldn’t believe the lead singer
of such a hugely popular band had to resort to trolling in truck stops, for
example. So if you’re squeamish about these things or a prude you should probably
skip the book. But, these passages serve to underscore the double life Halford
was forced to lead, and the separate identities—bad ass metal god, sensitive closeted
gay man—he had to maintain and (attempt) to balance.
Not always well as it turned out.
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy
KEW? Is that you? |
I tend to react to a lot of new sword-and-sorcery with
indifference, but I don’t think S&S fares any worse than other subgenres or
most writing in general (the same can be said of my blog, where a handful of
posts I’ve written seem to get regular traffic, but most collect dust). This
book had as many hits as misses, which beats par for the course for many anthologies.
Four standouts for me:
“The Horror from the Stars,” Steve Dilks. This was my first story
from Dilks and I will definitely plan on reading more from him (his Gunthar collection
has been on my to-purchase list). Reminded me of Charles Saunders’ Imaro with
its bad-ass black main character on a path of vengeance. Well-written heroic
fantasy with some great fight scenes and real weirdness layered in.
“Disruption of Destiny,” Gerri Leen. A quiet story, probably
will not be what most readers who purchase this volume want or expect, but I
really enjoyed it. It reminded me of a couple tales in the Gerald Page/Frank
Reinhardt-edited Heroic Fantasy that
question the warrior’s path and the damage wrought by a violent lifestyle. The
protagonists’ suffering and care for her son were palpable, and I liked that
the ending was a bit ambiguous. It stayed with me.
“Red,” Chadwick Ginther. I think this was the best story in
the antho. The style reminded me very much of Joe Abercrombie—a bit crass,
unflinching in its violence, seasoned with humor. Very, very well written at
the sentence level, and the main character, a swordswoman named Red, was skillfully
developed, and her motivation in this relatively straightforward story
convincing. No infodumps. A scene in which she is swimming for her life
underwater was particularly effective, and the final monster was grossly
satisfying. This line: “Her sword was a strangely comforting weight on her
breast. It filled the hollow in her gut that told her Needle was already dead”
made me take notice.
“The Reconstructed God,” Adrian Cole. I was initially put
off by the non-human/familiar demon protagonist, but damn if Cole—author of the
revived Elak stories and the Dream Lords series—didn’t make the little imp
work. A fine cross/doublecross tale populated with a bunch of roguish,
self-interested thieving/scheming types, in the vein of a Jack Vance Cugel
story. Good world-building here, but deft, not heavy-handed.
I loved the homages to classic sword-and-sorcery sprinkled
throughout. I mentioned the Dilks story owing something to Saunders; Steve
Lines’ “The Mirror of Torjan Sul” took its style and verbage from Clark Ashton
Smith, while Geoff Hart’s “Chain of Command” was a straight up homage to Fafhrd
and the Gray Mouser, albeit with a role/sex reversal (too Leiber on the nose
for my tastes, but I appreciated the sentiment). Cole threw in a nice reference
to an old classic with his use of “Thorgobrund the jeweler” (I see what he did
there). And the introduction by editor David Riley pays tribute to one of the
first volumes in the Pyramid anthologies that started it all, the classic L.
Sprague de Camp-edited The Spell of Seven
(1965).
All the other tales had points of merit. “The City of
Silence” started excellent, with a shocking injury suffered by its protagonist,
but ended flat (there were a few flat endings to otherwise fine stories, including
“Trolls are Different” by Susan Murrie Macdonald). “The Mirror of Torjan Sul”
had a fine, hot, demonic foe and was set in a well-drawn, atmospheric
necropolis.
Of course I have to mention the nice artwork by Jim Pitts. I
love seeing these veteran sword-and-sorcery artists get work thrown their way (I
was pleased to be able to do the same for Tom Barber, who illustrated the cover
of Flame and Crimson). I liked the cover illustration but also the skulls and
motif art throughout.
I am looking forward to volume 2, and hope that vol. 1 sells
well enough to encourage further volumes in the series—and helps spur the
steady trickle of new sword-and-sorcery/heroic fantasy that we’re currently seeing.
Sunday, March 7, 2021
A review of Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road (Neil Peart)
Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road (2002) did not quite meet my expectations, both the book itself and in a larger sense who I believed/expected Neil Peart to be. In life Peart was such a private person that I knew very little about him, even after listening to Rush for decades, seeing them in concert some 6-8 times, and reading articles and interviews here and there. With Ghost Rider I spent 460 pages inside Peart’s head, and now feel like I know him a lot better.
The bulk of the book consists of reprinted letters to his
friends written and sent while on the road from approximately 1998-2000, during
some 2 years of solo motorcycling that took him across Canada, North America,
and Mexico. Peart would get up early and ride his BMW motorcycle all day,
stopping at hotels around 4 or 5 p.m. to eat, drink, and smoke, occasionally tour
the local scenery, and write letters. He often rode through the rain or
navigated unpaved roads, putting a beating on his bike which necessitated
frequent repairs. Peart is revealed as a lover of nature, an aficionado of good
food and wine/scotch whiskey, books including the likes of Jack London (he’s a fellow
The Sea-Wolf and Martin Eden fan, I was pleased to discover), and someone who valued
staying connected through letters and evening calls with a circle of friends. Peart
also put a premium on staying private from the general public. He was rarely
recognized during his travels and when he was, was intensely uncomfortable with the attention. Ghost Rider reveals that Peart
had some low(ish) self esteem issues, and was amazingly humble given that he
was/is a top 5, maybe top 3, rock drummer of all time. I’d also put him way up
in the pantheon of all-time great rock lyricists.
Of course this trip was prompted after the crushing loss of his daughter and common-law wife within a year of each other, the first at age 19 in a single car accident, the latter from cancer but also depression and a broken heart. Heart-rending stuff. These experiences destroyed the former Peart and left him rootless, unmoored from his past, and severing him from what he thought to be his chief interests, including drumming, which he abandoned for more than 18 months. Certainly he lost all interest in touring and playing with Rush, which clearly he considered his work/professional life, separate from the interests that fed his soul. Rush and music are mentioned surprisingly little in Ghost Rider.
Ghost Rider is also raw at the edges.Peart is at a few points angry, even petty, in his
criticism of “fat Americans,” and an inattentive waitress. Some of these
passages come across as a bit mean-spirited, directed at people who didn’t seem
to actually interact with him, and were just in the wrong place at the wrong
time. But these incidents were most prevalent earlier in his ride/early in the
book, when he was angry at the world. A few times Peart expresses
(understandable) anger that loud, boorish people are alive, while his wife and
daughter are dead. I can’t blame him—that’s a catastrophe that I cannot imagine
enduring, and I’m sure it led to emotions spilling out of which he had no
control. I give him a pass.
Peart on the road. |
I find myself these days listening to more Rush than I have
in a long time. It’s fueled by a love of great music of course, but I suspect
it’s also nostalgia for my youth, and for my days seeing Rush in concert, which
will no longer happen again after Peart passed away in early 2020 from a
glioblastoma.
Farewell Neil Peart, you are gone but never forgotten.
Thank you for Ghost Rider, and the
music, and your life.
Friday, February 5, 2021
Sword-and-Planet Love-Letter: Gardner Fox’s Warrior of Llarn
Warrior on a blue zebra with horns! In space... |
New post up at the blog of Goodman Games, publisher of Tales from the Magician's Skull: Sword-and-Planet Love-Letter: Gardner Fox’s Warrior of Llarn.
I enjoyed this immensely and without reservation, too much for my own good. So much fun, and the pacing is basically a dead sprint. If you're bored reading Warrior of Llarn there's minimal to no hope for you. Definitely worth seeking out and reading. If you're a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series it will feel intensely... familiar. It's basically an homage to A Princess of Mars. But still great. Thief of Llarn doesn't rise to the same heights, but it's still good.
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Kothar!
By Dwalka! This was a fortune to make a man mad. |
At right is the complete Kothar series. Below is a period advertisement from Kothar and the Wizard Slayer. It's so cool I think I'll take up smoking.
Smoke up Johnny. |
Monday, January 18, 2021
Swords Against Darkness: Heyday of sword-and-sorcery
.My favorite cover goes to vol 4, I'm digging the mounted barbarian and skulls. On the back is a wicked wyrm. | |
Today's entry is the Andrew Offutt-edited Swords Against Darkness, a series of five anthologies published between 1977-79. This was still the heyday of sword-and-sorcery, as the subgenre was attracting names like Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Charles De Lint, and Orson Scott Card, the latter fresh off a John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer. All were published in the pages of Swords Against Darkness, along with many other fine authors. These were all new stories Offutt bought for the anthologies (and/or finished, in the case of the Robert E. Howard story "Nekht Semerkhet,") attesting to the health of sword-and-sorcery during this time period.
A lot of variety, much darkness and horror, and some fun introductions penned by Offutt. Five excellent volumes and I wish there were more.
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Flashing Swords: More from the S&S collection
The five-volume Lin Carter-edited Flashing Swords series (1973-81) is my next selection for gratuitous display. Gotta go with the cover of #1 for best art, but Frazetta's second piece in the series for Flashing Swords #2, featuring iconic warrior, wizard, and angry Ent, draws a close second.
I'd like to also call out the dedications: Carter dedicates the first volume to Robert E. Howard, "without whom we would all probably be writing nothing but science fiction stories," vol. 2 to Henry Kuttner, "one of the best Swordsmen and Sorcerers of 'em all," vol. 3 to Clifford Ball, "one of the first writers of Sword & Sorcery, now, sadly, forgotten and, even more sadly, uncollected," and vol. 4 to Norvell Page, "our late colleague, the chronicler of the saga of Hurricane John." Oddly, vol. 5 does not have a dedication, at least in the Nelson Doubleday Book Club Edition that I own.
Friday, January 15, 2021
Book porn: Pyramid sword-and-sorcery
For no other reason than it brings me great joy, I present you some book porn today: My copies of the L. Sprague de Camp edited four volume sword-and-sorcery series, published by Pyramid (last volume Putnam) between 1963-1971. Classics of the subgenre.
I'm not a collector. I don't particularly value items that are inherently collectable (i.e., rare, highly coveted, mint condition, bagged and as unhandled as possible). I don't care if the books I have are in excellent condition or are worn readers' copies, though obviously given a choice I would prefer the former. I am a man of utility. I buy books for what they contain, in order to read them, enjoy them, and occasionally write about them here and elsewhere.
That said I am a completist. Not owning a particular volume in a series gnaws at me until I can track it down and add it to the shelf, with a sigh of relief. I've got a few holes that I'm working to fill.
I'm also a lover of print. Outside of a couple digital subscriptions to new publications, I far prefer books over e-pubs/Kindle and the like. I love books for their artwork, their feel, the smell (creepy?), and being able to cast my gaze across a full bookshelf or three, and get lost in the titles and the thought of what I will read next.
I'll do more of these posts
Wonderful covers by Finlay, Gaughan, Steranko. Favorite cover = The Spell of Seven. |
in the coming days. I won't always have anything to say. The pictures will mostly do the talking.
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
What I've read to date, in 2020
I keep a relatively modest goal of reading one book a week, about 52 books in a year. I wish I could increase that total, but between work, family and friends, keeping a modicum of physical fitness, writing, housework, other obligations, and occasional bouts of laziness, a book a week is the most realistic number for me these days.
It appears that I'm not going to quite hit that goal this year, though I'm going to come real close (I've just begun The Two Towers and I have the rest of the year off from work). Yes, I fudged a bit with a bunch of disparate short stories I read in preparation for the Goodman Games S&S panel, but I figure the combined page count was about right to qualify as a "book."
The list follows:
1. Tolkien and the Critics, Neil Isaacs and Rose Zimbardo (finished 1/5)
2. Hap and Leonard, Joe Lansdale (finished 1/12)
3. The Evolution of Modern Fantasy, Jamie Williamson (finished 1/26)
4. Getting Things Done, David Allen (finished 2/2)
5. Can’t Hurt Me, David Goggins (finished 2/6)
6. The Last Celt, a Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard, Glenn Lord (finished 2/9)
7. Jack London Stories, Jack London (finished 2/16)
8. The Door to Saturn, Clark Ashton Smith (finished 2/29)
9. Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse, Gardner Fox (finished 3/1)
10. Kothar of the Magic Sword, Gardener Fox (finished 3/8)
11. Steppenwolf, Herman Hesse (finished 3/19)
12. The Wanderer’s Necklace, H. Rider Haggard (finished 3/28)
13. Tarnsman of Gor, John Norman (finished 4/5)
14. Outlaw of Gor, John Norman (finished 4/10)
15. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (finished 4/14)
16. The Return of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs (finished 4/23)
17. The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell (finished 5/7)
18. Hannibal, Thomas Harris (finished 5/13)
19. The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard (finished 5/22)
20. The Swords of Lankhmar, Fritz Leiber (finished 5/28)
21. Swords and Ice Magic, Fritz Leiber (finished 6/9)
22. Swords Against Darkness, Andrew Offutt ed. (finished 7/3)
23. The Knight and Knave of Swords, Fritz Leiber (finished 7/6)
24. Witches of the Mind, Bruce Byfield (finished 7/12)
25. The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (finished 7/17)
26. Darkness Weaves, Karl Edward Wagner (finished 7/22)
27. My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir, Chris Offutt (finished 7/25)
28. The Conan Companion, Richard Toogood (finished 7/26)
29. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller Jr. (finished 8/5)
30. Heroes of Atlantis and Lemuria, Dave Ritzlin ed. (finished 8/11)
31. The Knight of the Swords, Michael Moorcock (finished 8/24)
32. Artists, Outlaws, and Old-Timers, Tom Barber (finished 8/30)
33. The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers (finished 9/7)
34. “Laughing Shall I Die”: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings, Tom Shippey (finished 9/20)
35. Sword-and-sorcery short story mix (“The Shadow Kingdom,” “The Tower of the Elephant,” “Black God’s Kiss,” “Hellsgarde,” “Liane the Wayfarer,” “Turjan of Mir,” “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros,” “The Seven Geases.” Etc.). (finished 10/2)
36. The Tritonian Ring, L. Sprague de Camp (finished 10/4)
37. The Knight of the Swords, Michael Moorcock (finished 10/8)
38. Bloodstone, Karl Edward Wagner (finished 10/12)
39. The Broken Sword (1971), Poul Anderson (finished 10/19)
40. Hammer of the Gods, Gavin Chappell ed. (finished 10/24)
41. ‘Salem’s Lot, Stephen King (finished 11/1)
42. Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny (finished 11/8)
43. The Guns of Avalon, Roger Zelazny (finished 11/15)
44. Sign of the Unicorn, Roger Zelazny (finished 11/17)
45. The Hand of Oberon, Roger Zelazny (finished 11/22)
46. The Courts of Chaos, Roger Zelazny (finished 11/26)
47. The Long Ships, Frans Bengtsson (finished 12/7)
48. Mythago Wood, Robert Holdstock (finished 12/14)
49. The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien (finished 12/22)
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
The Long Ships, Frans Bengtsson (or, what a year was 1954)
I have this very edition. |
That fabled year saw the publication of none other than:
- The first volume of the greatest work of high fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
- Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, arguably the finest book-length example of sword-and-sorcery/heroic fantasy
- The complete English language translation of Frans Bengtsson’s The Long Ships, one of the finest examples of historical fiction I have encountered.
Not a bad year (he says, with typical tongue-in-cheek Viking
understatement).
To be fair, Bengtsson’s novel was first published in the
early 1940s in a two volume set, but in Swedish, the author’s native tongue.
Book one (The Long Ships contains
four short books) was published in the United States in 1942 under the title Red Orm. But 1954 was the first time the
complete book was made available to an English-speaking audience.
The Long Ships is
quite simply terrific in almost every way. It’s a highly readable page turner,
with adventure packed onto almost every page. It’s studded with good humor and
some laugh-out-loud funny moments and exchanges, even in the midst of some pretty
grim events. And it is the distillation of the Northern Thing. The Long Ships channels the old
Icelandic Sagas into a modern style, while keeping some of the cadence of the language
and literary conventions of this old story-style and preserving the spirit of
that heroic age. The Sagas were known for their deadpan delivery of heroic deeds,
nasty misadventures, and terrible tragedies that would leave us moderns
standing slack-jawed in awe, horror, or incomprehensibility, and The Long Ships likewise delivers. For
example: “The year ended without the smallest sign having appeared in the sky, and
there ensued a period of calm in the border country. Relations with the
Smalanders continued to be peaceful, and there were no local incidents worth
mentioning, apart from the usual murders at feasts and weddings, and a few men
burned in their houses as the result of neighborly disputes.”
Now, my neighbor sometimes lets his leaves sit on his lawn a
little too long for my liking, and these sometimes blow onto my greensward. But
I don’t burn his house down (with him in it) out of retribution. But I do live
in a very different age (for which I thank God—mostly. An occasional murder at
a feast would be nice).
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Stephen King, Halloween, and the joy of reading
I own this edition, just a lot more beat up. |
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
A review of Tom Shippey’s Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings
The man, the myth... Tom Shippey |
Laughing Shall I Die:
Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings (2018, Reaktion Books) is Shippey’s semi-bombastic
rebuttal to the revisionists and whitewashers. It’s not that Vikings weren’t
also great traders, or slowly shifted from raiders and slave-takers to
land-owners and eventually settlers, but Saga literature and even the
archeological record paints a picture of savagery and warrior ethos that can’t
be so easily explained away.
“Academics have laboured to create a comfort-zone in which
Vikings can be massaged into respectability,” Shippey writes. “But the Vikings
and the Viking mindset deserve respect and understanding in their own terms—while
no one benefits from staying inside their comfort zone, not even academics.
This book accordingly offers a guiding hand into a somewhat, but in the end
not-so-very, alien world. Disturbing though it may be.”
Shippey lays out these uncomfortable facts in entertaining
style in Laughing Shall I Die. This
book takes a close look at the old Norse poems and sagas, and uses them to create
a psychological portrait of the Viking mindset. But it also goes a step further:
It interprets the findings from archeology and recent excavations to lend these
literary interpretations tangible and physical reinforcement. For example,
Shippey describes the discovery of two recent Viking Age mass graves in
England, one on the grounds of St. John’s College, Oxford, the other on the Dorset
Ridgeway. Both were organized mass executions, the latter the single largest
context of multiple decapitations from the period. Fearsome stuff.
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
A Canticle for Leibowitz, a review
This is the world of Walter M. Miller Jr.’s wonderful A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) which I
recently had the pleasure of re-reading after a span of many years.
A Canticle for
Leibowitz is a fragmented read, consisting of three discrete stories separated
by centuries of time. Each were short stories originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
As a novel this stitched-together structure helps to reinforce one of Miller’s
central messages: The painstaking, fragmentary, and precarious state of knowledge
transmission and preservation.
At its heart Miller’s book is a re-imagining of what the medieval
monks did with classical Greek and Roman literature, transcribing it
laboriously and preserving the flame of past knowledge until it could be used
in a more enlightened age. While historical monks survived barbarian predation
and Viking raids, in Miller’s novel nuclear war and predatory radiation-scarred
scavengers are the equivalent of barbarian invasions circa 476 AD. The
survivors of the nuclear exchange are subject to a brutal period called the
“Simplification,” where mobs of bitter, vengeful survivors attempt to
eliminate any trace of the science that led them down the path to oblivion.
Books and men that dare to read them are burned and destroyed.
This scenario is played out again in A Canticle for Leibowitz, with the monks of Albertian Order of
Leibowitz carefully preserving the old scientific literature, resurrecting an
arc lamp from old electrical blueprints. By the second and third act technology
has again risen from the ashes.
Sunday, August 9, 2020
My Father, The Pornographer: A Memoir
His son, author Chris Offutt, tells his father’s story with
incredible bravery and honesty and a raw, pull no punches style in My Father the Pornographer: A Memoir (2016).
I found this book to be absolutely fascinating and extraordinarily
well-written, and burned through it in a matter of two days.
Andrew J. Offutt was “controlling, pretentious, crude, and
overbearing” and spent most of his hours “in the immense isolation of his
mind,” according to Chris. He demanded dead silence in the house while he
hammered away in his office at this typewriter, churning out content. Chris
often took to the woods to escape a stifling home existence.