Brak vs. the Sorceress: A really bad read

Ever the optimist, I managed to find a silver lining in the extreme suckiness of John Jakes’ 1977 novel Brak vs. the Sorceress, though I struggled mightily to do so.

If nothing else, it proves how talented Robert E. Howard was as a writer.

Howard could take the raw elements of a sword and sorcery story and make them come alive in unforgettable tales; in the case of Brak vs. the Sorceress one learns that muscled warriors in loincloths rescuing damsels in distress can also make for really, really bad camp.

I wish I had something good to say about this book, but I don’t. It’s not just derivative and lazy (though it is that, in spades), but it also serves as an instructive example in the art of bad writing. Brak vs. the Sorceress opens with a four-page infodump of cliché fantasy that is probably a recap of the previous book in the Brak series. I can’t be bothered to look it up and figure out whether that’s the case. Regardless, it proves utterly unnecessary to the remainder of the thinly plotted story. Here’s the description of the plot from the back of the cover, a poorly done run-on sentence that still makes the story sound much better than it actually reads:

Making his way south toward the golden land of Khurdistan, Brak must first traverse the desolate territory of the Manworm—a land gripped by terror of things unknown and awful—a land of unseen watchers and horrifying riddles—a land ravaged by the evil of Nordica Fire-Hair, the beautiful, hypnotic sorceress whose occult experiments include human sacrifice. To save the land and its terrorized people, Brak joins forces with the ailing Lord Stann and begins one of his most incredible adventures.

Basically the whole story is about how Brak accepts a mission solely to avenge the slaying of his pony and to teach a spirited woman a lesson in humility. I’m not making this up. From the book: To her the life of a pony was a small thing, and therein lay her evil. To him the pony’s life mattered much. His choice was clear-cut. He would not slink away. He would punish her. He was Brak, a man.

Got that? He’s a man, and she’s a wicked pony-killing woman. She must pay the price!

Back, and with more Red Nails

Whew, I'm back from a week-long, stressful business trip to San Diego during which I had no time to blog. But now that I'm home again I'll be getting back on track with some new posts (including a great piece of WWII history I plan on sharing here).

As it turns out SFFaudio.com today posted a recent podcast on Robert E. Howard's "Red Nails" in which I was invited to participate. I'm definitely more comfortable writing than speaking but I nevertheless had a lot of fun with this rare occasion to talk about one of one my favorite authors (my wife and kids aren't particularly interested in hearing about the Hyborian Age over dinner, what can I say).

You can listen to the podcast here. The entire story is read first by Gregg Margarite from Librivox, followed by our discussion.

Robert E. Howard “Red Nails” podcast Saturday

“Five dead dogs!” exclaimed Techotl, his flaming eyes reflecting a ghastly exultation. “Five slain! Five crimson nails for the black pillar! The gods of blood be thanked.”

--Robert E. Howard, "Red Nails"

This Saturday I'll be taking part in a podcast “readalong” of Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails,” hosted by Jesse Willis of SFFaudio.com. It's called a readlong as it will feature an unabridged reading of the story, followed by commentary.

“Red Nails” is one of my favorite tales of Conan of Cimmeria. It was the last story Howard wrote about his most famous creation, completed just three months before he died and published posthumously as a serial in the pages of Weird Tales. For those unfamiliar with the story, here's a brief outline: Conan and the beautiful but deadly Valeria of the Red Brotherhood enter the ancient, forgotten city of Xuchotl (they are more or less chased inside by a rampaging dragon/dinosaur). While at first the city appears deserted, the pair soon discovers that the final stages of a centuries-old blood feud between two warring tribes (the Xotalancas and Tecuhlti) is playing out to its grim, apocalyptic end. Into this incendiary mix Howard tosses a crawling monster from the crypts, a mad sorcerer, and dark magic. The story culminates with a murderous orgy of violence in the labyrinthine halls of the city. Awesome.

While preparing for the podcast I re-read the story and also took the opportunity to bust out Conan Saga #9 (pictured), featuring a wonderful adaptation of the story by Roy Thomas and legendary artist Barry Windsor-Smith. I bought this issue in 1988 or so and am proud to have it in my collection.

I appreciate the invite and I’m very much looking forward to the podcast. Not only is it a rare chance to talk about one of my favorite authors, but one of the other guests is supposed to be REH celeb Al Harron of The Blog that Time Forgot, a fine writer, scholar, and gentleman whose byline once appeared alongside my own at the now defunct The Cimmerian website. It should be fun! The gods of blood be thanked, indeed...

An Ode to the Berkley Medallion Conans

...in all their tattered glory

Karl Edward Wagner was and remains the most qualified individual to weigh in on the issue of Conan stories penned by someone other than Robert E. Howard, given that he wrote arguably the best pastiche of them all (“The Road of Kings”). So it behooves us to listen to what he had to say in the foreward to the Berkley Medallion Edition of Conan: The Hour of the Dragon (August 1977):

“I have written Howard pastiches myself, so I can speak both as a reader and an author: Every author leaves his personal mark on whatever he writes; the only man who could write a Robert E. Howard story was Robert E. Howard. Read Howard pastiches as you will—but don’t let anyone kid you that you’re reading Robert E. Howard. It is far more than a matter of imitating adjective usage or analyzing comma-splices. It is a matter of spirit.”

While Howard fans these days are spoiled by the Del Reys, prior to 1977 you could not buy a collection of the Conan stories without editorial emendations or the presence of pastiches. Both the widely printed Lancer/Ace collections of the 1960s and 70s and the rarer Gnome Press editions from the 1950s were marred by editorial changes and additional non-Howard material. That all changed with the Berkley Medallion Editions, published by the arrangement of the late, great, Glenn Lord (1931-2011), and edited by legendary horror and swords and sorcery author Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994). These consist of three books in an aborted series that was supposed to run longer and include all 21 of Howard’s original stories. They include The Hour of the Dragon, The People of the Black Circle, and Red Nails. To prepare the Berkley Medallion Edition manuscript Wagner made photocopies directly from the pages of Weird Tales, correcting only obvious typographical errors.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Falling under the spell of the sword: de Camp’s Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers

I just received a book in the mail that I’ve had my eyes on for quite a while, and am now very pleased to own: L. Sprague de Camp’s Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy (1976).

If there was a book made for me, this is it. It’s an out of print hardcover from Sauk City Wisconsin-based Arkham House Publishers, Inc, whose very name awakes fond thoughts of Cthulhu and other tentacled horrors. The book is a handsome little volume with great black and white cover art by Tim Kirk that would be right at home as interior art of a Moldvay/Cook Dungeons and Dragons manual.

The back of the dust-jacket features a list of books available from Arkham House, complete with prices and ordering information. Does anyone else love to read these old lists and wonder if you could still write to the specified address and receive a “catalog available on request” straight from the 1970s, folded up and shipped off by a geeky clerk with a tweed jacket and horn-rimmed spectacles? The interior features some great full-page black and white photographs of all the authors covered. There’s also a nice picture of Sprague himself on the inside back dust-jacket, complete with dated sports coat, ready to pontificate on some SFF subject.

A Texan tale-spinner in J.R.R. Tolkien's court

I had my first book review published in Mythprint, the journal of the Mythopoeic Society. The Mythopoeic Society is an international organization dedicated to promoting the study of fantastic literature with an emphasis on Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. My review however was not on one of the works of the Inklings but of Robert E. Howard's Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures.

This is not exactly a barbaric coup of the Mythopoeic Society as Mythprint publishes reviews of a wide range of fantasy and historical fiction. But I am proud to have played perhaps some small part in bringing Howard, and in particular Howard's lesser-known characters like Cormac FitzGeoffrey and Agnes de Chastillon, to (potentially) a new audience.

The review initially appeared in the October 2011 issue of Mythprint but you can also read it in its entirety here on the Mythopeic Society website: http://www.mythsoc.org/reviews/howard-sword-woman/.

Sword Woman is the last in the Del Rey line and is highly recommended, by the way. In addition to wonderful stories and some fine scholarly essays it features a handful of excellent Howard poems, too. This was my first time reading “The Outgoing of Sigurd the Jerusalem-Farer," and I found it, well, positively Tolkien-ian. In it Sigurd seeks some "doom beyond the dooms" across an expanse of sea, rather like the Númenórean prince Aldarion of Unfinished Tales whose heart may have belonged to Erendis, but whose passion lay with the sea:

The fires roared in the skalli-hall,
And a woman begged me stay—
But the bitter night was falling
And the cold wind calling
Across the moaning spray.

How could I stay in the feasting-hall
When the wild wind walked the sea?
The feet of the winds drew out my soul
To the grey waves and the cloud’s scroll
Where the gulls wheel and the whales roll,
And the abyss roars to me.

Man the sweeps and bend the sail—
We need no oars tonight
For the sharp sleet drives before the gale
That dashes the spray across the rail
To freeze on helmet and corselet scale,
And the waves are running white.

I could not bide in the feasting-hall
Where the great fires light the rooms—
For the winds are walking the night for me
And I must follow where gaunt lands be,
Seeking, beyond some nameless sea,
The dooms beyond the dooms.

Godspeed, Glenn Lord

I'm late to the game on this one, but I wanted to add my condolences to the family of Glenn Lord, father of Robert E. Howard studies, who passed away on Dec. 31 at the age of 80. I never met nor corresponded with Lord but like every other REH fan in existence I'm deeply in his debt.

Mark Finn, author of Blood & Thunder, posted a nice remembrance over on his blog about Lord's incalcuable work as a collector, preserver, and publisher of Howard's life works. There's also a wonderful co-post by John O'Neill and Barbara Barrett over at Black Gate that's worth checking out. Al Harron did a nice job over on the Conan Movie Blog with his post, Glenn Lord, the Greatest Howard Fan.

Rest in peace, Mr. Lord.

Let's hope 2012 is a better year for Howard fans; 2011 was pretty tough all around.

Updated Blood and Thunder Portends Good Start to 2012 for Robert E. Howard Fans

2011 hasn’t been the kindest year for fans of Robert E. Howard. January saw the end of the fine Del Rey series of Howard originals with the publication of the 11th and final volume Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures (sigh). In August we got a crummy new film purporting to be REH’s Conan that resembles no story the Texan ever wrote, and is currently sporting a woeful 22% “rotten” rating over at Rotten Tomatoes (still think you can tell a better story than REH, Marcus Nispel?)

But the waning days of 2011 have brought a bit of good cheer to brighten the day of Howard fans everywhere: News of the publication of a new and improved second edition of the REH biography Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard by Mark Finn.

Monkeybrain books published the first edition of the Blood and Thunder in 2006 in paperback; the second edition is being published in a limited run of 150 hardcover copies by the Robert E. Howard Foundation at a cost of $50 ($45 for members of the foundation). You can pre-order it now and it’s expected to ship by the end of January 2012. Here’s a description from the REH Foundation webpage:

Alongside the success of “Conan the Barbarian” was a neatly packaged, sound byte biography of a tortured young man, full of volcanic rages, playing at war inside his head, while the citizens in the small town of Cross Plains laughed at him behind his back—a man so undone by his circumstances and so strangely devoted to his mother that, on her deathbed, he pre-empted seeing her die by committing suicide.

In Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, author Mark Finn dispels many of those old, outdated myths that have grown up around Howard and his fictional creations. Armed with twenty-five years of research and a wealth of historical documents, Finn paints a very different picture from the one that millions of fans of Conan have been sold throughout the years.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Swords from the East, Swords from the Sea by Harold Lamb, a review

Swords from the Sea
Harold Lamb
Howard Andrew Jones, ed.
Bison Books (552 pp, $24.95, 2010)

Swords from the East
Harold Lamb
Howard Andrew Jones, ed.
Bison Books (476 pp, $24.95, 2010)

It must have been something, the pre-television age when pulp magazines were a widely consumed form of entertainment. I can only imagine the anticipation of opening up one’s mailbox, finding inside the latest copy of Adventure magazine, and settling in to an evening of rousing tales by the likes of Talbot Mundy, H. Rider Haggard, and Harold Lamb. It was a time of pulse-pounding action and tales of distant historic epochs on the printed page.

Those days are now gone, and for many years the contents of those now-yellowed pulps were largely inaccessible, save through the efforts of patient and often deep-pocketed enthusiasts. But fortunately some of these works are now being collected in anthologies. Editor Howard Andrew Jones has done the Herculean task of assembling Lamb’s stories in the eight volume “Harold Lamb Library” series by Bison Books. These include Swords from the Desert and Swords from the West, and recently concluded with Swords from the Sea and Swords from the East.

To read the rest of this review, visit The Black Gate website .

Barbarism meets academia at College of St. Joseph in Vermont

Cross posted with the permission of Rob Roehm of the Robert E. Howard Foundation website, I thought the following too interesting not to share with readers of Black Gate and The Silver Key:

Enduring Barbarism: Heroic Fantasy from the Bronze Age to the Internet

College of St. Joseph Popular Culture Conference
Contact email:
Dr. Jonas Prida
jprida@csj.edu

The inaugural popular culture conference will be held at the College of St. Joseph, located in Rutland, Vermont, April 13th-14th, 2012.

Proposal deadline: Dec 15th, 2011.

We are looking for a wide range of topics, figures, panels and cultural studies methodologies to explore the enduring figure of the barbarian in Western popular culture. Graduate students, established faculty, and independent scholars are encouraged to submit ideas. Possible paper topics:

The multi-faceted use of the barbarian in popular culture

Rise and fall of heroic fantasy in the 1970s

Comic book barbarism

Heroic fantasy as a heavy metal trope

The gendered barbarian

Explorations of lesser-known sword and sorcery texts

Italian sword and sandal movies

The barbarian’s future

We are actively interested in innovative panel ideas as well.

Please send 250 word paper proposals, 400-500 word panel ideas, or general questions to Dr. Jonas Prida at jprida@csj.edu

If it only had Eric Adams as the keynote, this would be pitch-perfect.

But seriously, it does my heart good to see serious treatment of swords and sorcery. Now there’s a conference I’d love to attend. Get those proposals in!

Some thoughts on the eve of Conan the Barbarian

I’ve refrained from talking about Conan the Barbarian (2011) until now, despite my love for Robert E. Howard’s works. But now that we’re poised on the eve of its U.S. release, I thought I’d weigh in with my personal hopes—and fears—regarding the film.

The bottom line for me is this: I’m going to do what the studio execs want, which is opening my wallet and seeing the movie. And I might even consider it money well spent. That said, the updates I’ve followed up to this point (your ultimate source is Al Harron’s Conan the Movie Blog) don’t leave me with great expectations.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website .

(Closing in on) 100 years of Tarzan of the Apes

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes was first published in All-Story Magazine in 1912, which means that we’re closing in on 100 years of the iconic jungle hero (wow!). Tarzan of the Apes proved so popular among All-Story’s readers that it spawned two dozen sequels, several movies, and stacks of comic books.

Yet somehow I’ve managed to avoid reading the original story that started it all—until now.

Shame on me, because was I missing out. Tarzan of the Apes is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. It’s a lean novel but packs a big story into its 245 pages (paperback—I own the Ballantine Books authorized edition, pictured here). It’s chock-full of action and violence, the clash of animal vs. animal, man vs. animal, and man vs. man in the savage jungles of darkest Africa. There’s some really manly, barbaric stuff going on in here, like Tarzan’s battle with the great ape Kerchak for possession of Jane in a clash with prehistoric echoes:

Jane—her lithe, young form flattened against the trunk of a great tree, her hands tight pressed against her rising and falling bosom, and her eyes wide with mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration—watched the primordial ape battle with the primeval man for possession of a woman—for her.

As the great muscles of the man’s back and shoulders knotted beneath the tension of his efforts, and the huge biceps and forearm held at bay those mighty tusks, the veil of centuries of civilization and culture was swept from the blurred vision of the Baltimore girl.

Although I hadn’t read Tarzan of the Apes previously I knew the story well enough through exposure to movies and the comics. Aristocratic English couple John and Alice Clayton, the Lord and Lady Greystoke, are marooned in western Africa following a violent mutiny aboard their ship. Alice’s delicate constitution can’t handle the shock of the jungle and its terrible denizens and she dies after giving birth to a son. Her husband is mauled to death by a great ape shortly thereafter. A female member of the ape tribe, Kala, takes the then six-month old infant John to her breast and raises him as a member of the tribe.

Named Tarzan (which means “White Skin” in the language of the apes), the young Lord Greystoke attains near-superhuman levels of agility and strength through his rough upbringing among the great apes. Though he never attains the full strength the bull males possess, Tarzan is more agile, smarter, and equipped with a hunting knife and rope which he uses as an accurately thrown noose from the treetops. Soon he becomes the fiercest beast in the jungle, rising to the top of his tribe. Eventually Tarzan finds his parents’ abandoned cottage and manages to teach himself to read. Through the printed word and encounters with civilized visitors he discovers his humanity and his ancestry and finally returns to England.

Like A Princess of Mars which I recently re-read after a span of many years Tarzan of the Apes is not without its flaws. Edgar Rice Burroughs has been described as a great writer of ideas, but not necessarily great in the execution of said ideas. I tend to agree. A more patient, careful writer than Burroughs might have turned the transformation of savage into man into something even more powerful and beautiful than we see in Tarzan of the Apes, and ultimately, in a more believable fashion (in the novel Tarzan transforms from savage ape-man to courteous, timid love interest in a span of a few pages, which I found hard to swallow). Burroughs is a writer of boundless imagination and energy but I think he suffered from turning out his stories at a white-hot pace.

But these criticisms are ultimately minor. As I said before I enjoyed Tarzan of the Apes a lot, even more than A Princess of Mars. More than just action, Tarzan of the Apes offers a thoughtful, multi-faceted view on the nature of civilization. In general it’s roughly equivalent though slightly more positive than we find in Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. Howard wrote in “Beyond the Black River” that “Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.” Likewise, in Burroughs’ universe being raised among the animals in the wild seems to trump city life. Tarzan is not only far physically superior to civilized men, but he’s morally and spiritually superior as well. Tarzan views black cannibals and white murdering pirates with an equal degree of disgust. Back in England he’s able to see through the schemes of the gentleman Robert Canler, who is little more than a finely mannered animal. He judges with clarity man’s capacity for not just sub-human, but sub-animal behavior (“for it has remained for man alone among all creatures to kill senselessly and wantonly for the pleasure of inflicting suffering and death.”)

But again the novel is not that black and white. Too much city life may make us weak and dissolute, but living in the jungle isn’t fit for a man. Education and civility are a good thing and man (or more accurately, cultured, aristocratic man) is more than animal, a superior creation. Though he’s lived among brutes and feasted on raw flesh, Tarzan still treats Jane with a natural sense of chivalry. But unlike a gentleman his attitude is unfeigned and not a scheme to maneuver her into bed.

Yet Jane, though attracted to Tarzan’s vitality and stunningly good looks, is simultaneously repelled by this man-ape. She’s reluctant to marry him and risk severing her place in the social order. I found the Tarzan-Jane dynamic to be one of the book’s chief strengths.

“Could she find anything in common with a husband whose life had been spent in the treetops of an African wilderness, frolicking and fighting with fierce anthropoids; tearing food from the quivering flank of fresh-killed prey, sinking his strong teeth into raw flesh, and tearing away his portion while his mates growled and fought about him for their share?

Could he ever rise to her social sphere? Could she bear to think of sinking to his? Would either be happy in such a horrible misalliance?

Read Tarzan of the Apes to find out.

The Top 100 Fantasy Books of all time … or not

Confession: I’m a top 10/top 100/top whatever list addict. If I find an article on a subject about which I’m even remotely interested, and written in the form of a numbered list, I’ll generally stop to read it. That chance increases when said list is arranged in ascending or descending order of quality.

I fully admit that many top 10/ top 100/top whatever lists are contrived hit count fodder (slugging something a “top 10” anything is guaranteed to increase the number of visits to your web site–you’re welcome Black Gate editors!), but occasionally these lists serve a worthy function. For example, if I’ve just finished The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or Flags of Our Fathers and am looking for another good World War II title, I’ll Google “top 10 world war 2 histories.” This practice typically generates a good suggestion or two–and another “top 10″ article to read.

Top 10/top 100 lists are also flashpoints for debate, often stirring up vigorous agreement or righteous anger and indignity. I generated an angry response with my Top 10 Fantasy Fiction Battles of All-Time, in which former Cimmerian blogger Al Harron took me to task for excluding Robert E. Howard, and also for including some borderline “fantasy” choices. Hey Al, let’s still be friends, okay?

Which leads me to the point of this post. Have you ever typed “top 100 fantasy novels,” or “top 10 fantasy books,” into your search bar? If not, I’ll save you the work. You get this site, the “Top 100 Fantasy Books”.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Looking for the real Robert E. Howard in One Who Walked Alone

It couldn’t have been easy for Novalyne Price Ellis to write One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard the Final Years (Donald M. Grant Publisher, Inc., 1986). Price Ellis’ memoir of her relationship with Howard (roughly 1934-36) is illuminating in its raw honesty. It’s also painful, at turns disappointing and downright frustrating. We might find escape in Howard’s sword and sorcery tales but there is none to be found here.

But above all, One Who Walked Alone is brave. Price Ellis never sacrifices accuracy to save face. Howard was a successful writer and a free spirit, and told wild, vivid stories, traits that Price Ellis found irresistible. But she was also painfully embarrassed with the Texan, unable to accept his occasionally odd public behavior. She was disappointed that he didn’t conform to her own conception of manliness and began to date other men, including one of his best friends, Truett Vinson, which cut Howard to the quick. While her reactions were understandable, at times I found her to be rather shallow and unlikeable. And yet rather than off-putting I find that uncompromising truthfulness highly admirable.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Sale offers proof that J.R.R. Tolkien likely read Robert E. Howard

L. Sprague de Camp is not exactly known as a bastion of credibility among readers of Robert E. Howard. In his 1983 biography Dark Valley Destiny, de Camp combines research and first-person interviews with exaggeration and embellishment, speculation and psychological conjecture, and at times outright fancy to paint what is at best a suspect portrait of the man who brought us Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane and others.

Unfortunately de Camp is the only source (that I know of, at least) linking Howard with J.R.R. Tolkien. This comes via a recount of de Camp hanging out with JRRT in a memorably described encounter, as detailed in his non-fiction review Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy:

"We sat in the garage for a couple of hours, smoking pipes, drinking beer, and talking about a variety of things. Practically anything in English literature, from Beowulf down, Tolkien had read and could talk intelligently about. He indicated that he 'rather liked' Howard's Conan stories."

In J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment by Michael Drout, de Camp adds the following explanation/equivocation of the above quote:

"During our conversation, I said something casual to Tolkien about my involvement with Howard's Conan stories, and he said he 'rather liked them'. That was all: we went on to other subjects. I know he had read Swords and Sorcery because I had sent him a copy. I don't know if he had read any other Conan besides 'Shadows in the Moonlight', but I rather doubt it."

I know I’ve always been hopeful but rather skeptical of the claim that Tolkien actually said he “rather liked” the Conan stories, given that the quote’s source is, well, de Camp.

But this sale which I recently found during a web search seems to provide proof that Tolkien at least read “Shadows in the Moonlight,” aka., “Iron Shadows in the Moon.” At the very least it provides concrete evidence that he owned the book, and that de Camp sent him the copy. Cool stuff. I can't help but wonder what Tolkien thought of this bit:

With a gusty laugh he lifted her to his fierce lips.

"I'll make you Queen of the Blue Sea! Cast off there, dogs! We'll scorch King Yildiz's pantaloons yet, by Crom!"

Robert E. Howard in his own words

In honor of what would be his 105th birthday, I thought I’d let Robert E. Howard’s own words do the talking.

Here’s a few of my favorites culled from his Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane stories. There’s so many to pull from but I chose these because they capture the ferocity, humor, and poetic qualities of Howard’s writing.

If you got any favorite passages to share, post ‘em here.

There comes, even to kings, the time of great weariness. Then the gold of the throne is brass, the silk of the palace becomes drab. The gems in the diadem and upon the fingers of the women sparkle drearily like the ice of the white seas; the speech of men is as the empty rattle of a jester’s bell and the feel comes of things unreal; even the sun is copper in the sky and the breath of the green ocean is no longer fresh.

–"The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Tolkien and Howard still The Two Towers of fantasy

Not to beat the subject, like Fingon, to death, but neither writer is trod into the mire by a comparison to the other. The shortest distance between these two towers is the straight line they draw and defend against the dulling of our sense of wonder, the deadening of our sense of loss, and the slow death of imagination denied.

–Steve Tompkins, “The Shortest Distance Between Two Towers”

With my first Black Gate/Silver Key post of 2011 I thought I’d kick off the New Year with one of those big, bold, declarative, prediction type posts. So here it is: J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard are firmly ensconced as the two towers of fantasy, and as the years pass they will not only remain such, but perhaps will never be dethroned.

Although they arguably did not blaze the trail, Tolkien and Howard set the standard for two sub-genres of fantasy—high fantasy and swords and sorcery, respectively—and no one has done either better before or since.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website .

The Lion of Cairo by Scott Oden, a review

I think it’s totally cool that the dedication page of Scott Oden’s forthcoming novel The Lion of Cairo (U.S. publication date Dec. 7) pays homage to a sword and sorcery legend:

To Robert E. Howard
whose tales of swordplay and sorcery
gave inspiration to a kid from Alabama
and caused him to take up the pen
in his own time

After the Howard name-drop you pretty much know what you’re in for: Pulse-pounding sword play, leagues of warring assassins, political intrigue, a hint of evil sorcery, and the clash of armies on a grand stage. On all these elements Oden delivers.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

“Worms of the Earth”: Bending the rules of swords and sorcery

“Worms of the earth, back into your holes and burrows! Ye foul the air and leave on the clean earth the slime of the serpents ye have become! Gonar was right—there are shapes too foul to use even against Rome!”

–Robert E. Howard, “Worms of the Earth”

Robert E. Howard has received his fair share of criticism over the years, including the accusation that he wrote shallow, muscle-bound characters that cut their way out of every situation. Violence by strong, self-sufficient swordsmen is the end game for solving all problems in REH’s stories, his detractors argue, not wits or guile or diplomacy. For example, in his audio book survey of fantasy literature Rings, Swords, and Monsters, author Michael Drout declares Conan an uninteresting character who simply “smashes everything in his path.” L. Sprague De Camp, who penned the introductions to the famous (infamous?) Lancer Conan reprints of the 1960s and 70s, wrote that Howard’s heroes are “men of mighty thews, hot passions, and indomitable will, who easily dominate the stories through which they stride.” Howard wrote escape fiction, De Camp continued, wherein “all men are strong…” and “all problems simple.”

These generalizations lead casual readers to conclude that Howard considered violence to be the answer to all of life’s problems. They reduce Howard’s stories to brutish pulp escapism and denude them of subtlety or complexity. Sword and sorcery and its fans are painted with the same broad, clumsy brush by association. “Sword and sorcery novels and stories are tales of power for the powerless,” wrote Stephen King in his overview of horror and fantasy Danse Macabre (1981). “The fellow who is afraid of being rousted by those young punks who hang around his bus stop can go home at night and imagine himself wielding a sword, his pot belly miraculously gone.”

These criticisms aren’t entirely groundless. It’s rather easy to find examples of Howardian heroes hacking their way through a problem. Kull of Valusia butchering a horde of Serpent Men in an orgiastic, cathartic red fury in “The Shadow Kingdom” springs immediately to mind, for instance. Howard was in many ways bound by the conventions of the pulps in which he made his living as a writer. But there are an equal number of examples of Conan using his wits to extricate himself from situations when brute force won’t suffice, his reaver’s instinct restrained by sovereign responsibility. And of course, Howard penned many more characters than his famous Cimmerian.

Howard’s 1932 story “Worms of the Earth” features the Pictish king Bran Mak Morn on an ill-advised mission to enlist supernatural aid to defeat an invading force of Romans. In it Howard substitutes complexity and compromise for crashing swordplay and victory in arms. While “Worms” is a tale of vengeance, it’s of a rather hollow, unfulfilling sort.

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Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto

We expect responsibility and accountability on your part. We are not interested in your grand pronouncement on a subject which has yet to be settled by people who have spent decades studying the issue at hand. We expect you to do your homework. There are a number of websites and literally stacks of new books that likely cover or answer most of your questions regarding Robert E. Howard. To not utilize those sources when doing your research smacks of willful ignorance and will not be tolerated by the fans of Robert E. Howard.

--Mark Finn, "Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto"

Mark Finn, author of Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, has written an essay entitled "Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto." It's currently making the rounds on the internet. You can read in its entirety at Al Harron's The Blog That Time Forgot http://theblogthattimeforgot.blogspot.com/2010/10/robert-e-howard-new-manifesto.html#more.

While I'm a little uncomfortable endorsing a manifesto in total and disagree with a few of its details, I am completely in agreement with the spirit of Finn's essay. One of the great things about the internet is that it allows anyone to post anything they want. Conversely, one of the awful things about the internet is that allows anyone to post anything they want. What the Manifesto says is that, if you introduce Robert E. Howard's life into a blog post or essay or argument, please take the added step of actually doing some homework (what a concept!). Read his biographies. Seek out his letters. Examine the many journals and works of criticism dedicated to his life and works. And if you insist on making outrageous, unfounded statements, be prepared to be called on it.

Finn's Manifesto is tough stuff and some may find it abrasive, but frankly wakeup calls are sometimes necessary. After some of the unfounded accusations, wacky theories, and uninformed, inflammatory, contextless arguments I've read around the internet recently, "Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto" is a welcome wake-up call.

Shields up!