The super, super-secret history of sword-and-sorcery is hidden in plain sight

The super, super- secret history of sword-and-sorcery is that there isn’t a secret at all.

Sword-and-sorcery, like all genres, was created with a series of small steps and missteps, right in public view.

It wasn’t heralded in 1929 with "The Shadow Kingdom" like Athena from the head of Zeus. It wasn’t conjured into being in 1961 in the pages of Amra/Ancalagon. It wasn’t animated with L. Sprague de Camp’s Swords & Sorcery anthology, or Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords.

It was assembled, slowly, over decades. 

When I say in public, there is something interesting about the subgenre, hidden right in plain view.

More than any other genre of which I’m aware, sword-and-sorcery is defined by a visual aesthetic as much as literary. Art, particularly the work of Frank Frazetta, helped to define what we think of it today. In fact, if you want the easiest way to define S&S to someone brand-new to the genre, your best bet might be showing them a picture of Death Dealer or Conan the Adventurer. Its fans love the comics for a reason. The art of sword-and-sorcery takes a backseat to no other genre, save perhaps horror.

The term “sword-and-sorcery” was coined in the 60s, but the real work began in the 70s/80s/90s/00s, when fans began sifting through piles of pop culture detritus. Zebra paperbacks, Warren magazines, pinball machines, van art, RPGs, cartoons, and music. 

It was kicked around in genre histories, specialty journals, websites, forums, YouTube videos and podcasts. 

And eventually given form, of a sort.

Sword-and-sorcery is malleable and its boundaries, permeable. That doesn’t make it not a thing; that makes it an amorphous thing (or Thog). Just like every other genre. Even older, seemingly more defined and mined genres like horror or mystery begin to lose shape and fall apart or morph once you begin to probe at them too much. 

Try to categorize Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Stephen King’s The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon … I dare you.

The term sword-and-sorcery is a helpful signpost pointing not to a destination, but a vicinity. 

This is OK, really. Sometimes there are no easy answers—or any answers at all. We all like a good internet debate/fight once in a while, but in the end (as Kurt Vonnegut once said) we’re putting on armor to attack a hot fudge sundae or banana split. Be wary of those who shout the loudest.

Uncertainty and permeable borders are OK. This is art, not engineering. I think this uncertainty is feature, not a bug. It helps the genre grow and remain vital. Borders give form and structure, no borders is shapeless void. But malleable borders give form and structure while leaving room for expansion. 

This is the healthiest type of genre. It keeps the conversation going instead of closing it off.

And I think sword-and-sorcery is healthier now than it has been in a long time. Just as sword-and-sorcery was growing in new directions in the 60s and 70s it continues to grow today. Verses and chapters continue to be added, edge cases debated. 

Secretly, right in public.

If you want more of my musings on the genre see here.

The votes have been cast. The 1000th post shall be...

And the 1000th post on The Silver Key shall be (actually the 1001st, as this post is technically no. 1000):

The Super, Super-Secret History of Sword-and-Sorcery

By a landslide. Here’s the voting by percentage.

The super, super-secret history of sword-and-sorcery:     60%

What I’ve learned after 1,000 posts:             17%

Another unhinged rant against grunge:             7%

A return guest post by Scott:                     7%

Something about Iron Maiden:             7%

Other:                     3%

An overdue farewell and then delete the blog:     0% (I live another day)

Given how most find their way here this is no surprise. Readers of this blog like S&S. Good thing I do too.

Sorry Scott, you’ll have to wait the full 16 years for the next guest post. And I’ve probably said plenty about Iron Maiden and grunge. For now…

Only one “other” vote” was a surprise, but it led to a pretty good suggestion: Thoughts on what you consider the best yet most obscure S&S film - can be animated or live action.

The other mild surprise was receiving more votes for “what I’ve learned after 1,000 posts” than anticipated. I think I will tackle that topic, and the “other” suggestion, after writing the super, super-secret history of sword-and-sorcery. 

The only problem is, there isn’t one, and I was being a bit cheeky with that option… but hey there’s always more to say about S&S. I’m a man of my word.

Deathstalker 2025: Unfortunately not my cuppa

One of the best and certainly the most fun podcasts I’ve ever been a part of is a Rogues in the House episode in which we tackle Deathstalker 2. If the first Deathstalker (1983) is rather trash I unabashedly love its 1987 sequel, and we laughed as the microphones started rolling and never stopped.

When I heard the Deathstalker franchise was being revived for a 2025 release, I was in.

This film should have landed squarely with me, its target audience. It did not, sadly. I don’t consider it a bust, just off the mark, it pains me to say. Mildly entertaining when I was hoping for another Deathstalker 2 or perhaps another Army of Darkness. The Dreadites-- blood-red, spiky, skeletal warriors serving the evil sorcerer Nekromemnon—echo the Deadites of the latter film, but Deathstalker isn’t close to Army of Darkness or Evil Dead 2 for comedic value. 

In the end I think Deathstalker fails because it lacks a comedic lead to pull it off. Daniel Bernhardt is very serviceable, certainly better than a lot of the thuddingly poor S&S leads of the 80s, but he’s not believable in the role of humorous hero, and not a John Terlesky or a Bruce Campbell.

So Deathstalker 2025 is in the end a semi-serious, semi-slapstick blend. If it doesn’t fail at both it doesn’t succeed at either, creating an uneven viewing experience—never rousing, never laugh out loud funny.

It’s far from the worst film I’ve seen. Entertaining in places, certainly better than a lot of the 80s S&S schlock I’ve watched over the years. It’s heart was in the right place… but I should have enjoyed this more than I did. It was not as good as I hoped. But of course YMMV.

What I did like:

• The genre self-awareness. A dude unironically named Deathstalker doesn’t belong in a  serious film. Deathstalker 2025 is entirely tongue-in-cheek which is refreshing. I mean, it has a four-bladed sword, because it just had to beat The Sword and the Sorcerer’s three-bladed sword.
• The real props. No AI slop or clunky CGI, mostly what appears to be physical props and rubber suits and masks. Loved this aspect of the film.
• Old school practical special effects including stop motion skeletons like something out of the old Sinbad movies. Clunky but charming and it adds to the overall 80s vibe.
• The ridiculous bloodshed. Buckets of blood, heads split in half, limbs lopped off. Fun.
• Callbacks to the original. The use of the original theme song, the melodrama, the cheesy entrances, are all there.
• The soundtrack. As I note repeatedly heavy metal and S&S are bedfellows and there is some solid metal backing here including guitar solos from GNR’s Slash.

What I didn’t like

• Jokes that largely fell flat. As noted it felt like it wanted to be Deathstalker 2 but it didn’t come close. Clunky and cheesy humor, nothing memorable.
• An irritating sidekick. Doodad (that is its name) is a friendly impish spellcasting demon-thing that looks like an extra out of Tom Cruise’s Legend. He largely stands around shouting from the sidelines or gets carried around on Deathstalker’s back from place to place, and his incompetence evokes echoes of Malek, though mercifully not as annoying.
• No nudity. Strangely and incongruously conservative in this regard. S&S is a subgenre that isn’t afraid to show a little skin but you won’t find any in Deathstalker 2025.
• Too epic in feel. It has grit and the action never stops, but the ubiquitous magic swords and demons and amulets and healing rocks, main characters dying and brought back to life, destinies fulfilled and never-ending reigns of darkness averted, etc. don’t feel very S&S to me. The plot itself is clunky and rather needlessly convoluted.
• The acting is not particularly great. I did not expect a whole here and it was fine, workmanlike, but many of the lines were rushed or delivered flat.

TL;DR

Deathstalker 2025 has its charms and is probably something hardcore S&S fans and genre completionists will seek out regardless. Many seem to like it. There are certainly worse ways to pass a Saturday afternoon. For me it was a disappointing “meh” and a missed opportunity. 

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

Here's what you're missing if you're not a subscriber. Fix that today by signing up using that email widget at right.

I played Gorgar

I marveled at its glory... and writhed at my suck.

… and I sucked at it. 

This past weekend I took a short dude’s weekend trip to Southington. None of us knew anything about this rather nondescript town in central Connecticut, save that it was a convenient halfway point between my buddy Scott, who lives in New Jersey, and the other three of us dudes from MA/NH.

Scott did some online scouting. Southington had a venue where we could throw axes, an arcade, and ample beer. The decision was made.

As it turns out GameCraft Arcade is not just any arcade. It’s a two-story homage to old-school gaming. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out, Double Dragon, Wizard of Wor, Asteroids, Tron, 1941, Castlevania, Joust, Frogger, dozens more of that ilk. So many that I decided to give the place a thorough scouting-out before plunking down my hard-earned coin.

And there it was. On the second floor, tucked way in the back corner, a holy grail for S&S enthusiasts. 

Scantily-clad chicks. Skulls. Muscular warriors with swords and horned helmets. The snake pit. And the leering red demon himself.

Gorgar, in all its glory. The 1979 machine made famous by being the first-ever talking pinball machine. One I've written about before, here.

I stood back, admired the beautiful artwork. It begged to be played. And of course, I did.

Unfortunately not much to report there. I batted the ball around a few times. Tried my best to land it in The Snake Pit. Failed, and watched helplessly as it guttered over and over before I got much done on the scoreboard.

Despite my enthusiasm for these games as artifacts I suck at pinball. I now realize I like the idea of pinball much more than the game play itself. I adore the aesthetic—the tactile steel ball and the bright lights and clack of the flippers—but in truth I’d rather play Double Dragon or Galaga. Which I did, and got a lot more mileage out of my coin.

GameCraft also had other related pinball games, including Seawitch, Paragon, and Black Knight. Someone there appreciates the sacred genre it seems. Paragon and Seawitch are, like Gorgar, heavily inspired by the Frank Frazetta aesthetic.

Axe throwing was fun, and the venue supervisor who made sure we didn’t plant a heavy hatchet into our foot or our buddies’ back was a huge Lord of the Rings fan, with a sleeve of tattoos on one arm including a JRRT rune on her shoulder and the “One Ring to Rule Them All” inscription wrapped around her bicep. Much Tolkien nerdity ensued. I did not come home with a tattoo of my own though the thought crossed my mind and was liberally encouraged by the dudes. The Groggy Frog was a worthy (2? 3?) beer stop and we got a kick out of the waitress with the Poison half shirt who evaded my question about her favorite Poison song. 

Anyway, should you ever be driving down I-84 and see signs for Southington it’s a worth a visit. Tell the Girl with the Gandalf Tattoo I said hi.

Heavy metal, sword-and-sorcery, the Outsider ... and Iron Maiden's “Drifter”

Anecdotally, readers of S&S listen to heavy metal in higher proportion than country or rap music. There are reasons for this.

The sound of S&S is heavy, and of battle. James Taylor cannot be the soundtrack of “Black Colossus.” 

Another is the appropriation of sword-and-sorcery imagery by metal bands. Dangle Kings of Metal in front of a Robert E. Howard reader and you’ll get a grunt of recognition, if not appreciation, even though they might have never heard of Manowar. Some will go on to sample the music, discover that “Heart of Steel” is really fucking awesome song, and become a metalhead.

Ken Kelly and Manowar can be none more metal.

That’s partially what happened to me. Fantasy imagery—along with the influence of high school friends and what was going on in the broader popular culture circa 1987--led me to sample metal bands. The sound and fury hooked me. And the rest is history.

Metal and sword-and-sorcery also share some deeper DNA …. a thematic attraction to the Outsider. Some examples fired off over a beer:

Judas Priest with “The Sentinel”

Whitesnake and “Here I Go Again.” Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.

Helloween: I Want Out

Metallica: Escape (Life’s for my own, to live my own way)

Etc.

Metal does not have a patent on the outsider concept; rock has always contained its seeds. See Dion’s “Runaway” and Rolling Stones “Tumbling Dice.” But the combination of imagery+heaviness+outsider makes metal music a substantial overlap in the venn diagram of S&S.

Iron Maiden’s “Drifter” is another fine example. As Paul DiAnno sings:

Gotta keep on roaming, gotta sing my song… ‘cause I’m a drifter, drifting on.

I hope you drift into a fine weekend on this Metal Friday.

Unboxing Savagery

It had been more than 30 years since I last bought an issue of the original Savage Sword of Conan*, and almost as long since I read one cover-to-cover.

But just a few days ago I unboxed all my back issues and laid them out in their glory on my bar top. And began to thumb through the old pages. 

Why now, after all this time?

I don’t quite know, but here’s a few possible explanations.

I’m tired of screens and digital art.

I’m an old newspaper guy and love the smell of newsprint and ink.

The covers are glorious.

But I also felt the draw of something deeper … an urge to reconnect with my past, which is what these comic books represent. They are a little bit of who I am. We are at least partially our things, or perhaps our things are an outward reflection of who we are. 

I am a little bit Conan. 

There is something awe inspiring about this picture. Beholding all at once the output of so many talented artists bringing to life an old pulp character now passed into myth, moves me.

The greatest creation of Robert E. Howard will endure forever.

Question: How many adventures can Conan go on? 

Answer: Yes.

I have a lot of old issues of Savage Sword of Conan from its classic run, 1974-1995. I had forgotten how many, and surprised myself in this great unboxing. I own more than I thought, just north of 100 issues. Should you want to know the exact numbers:

1, 5, 6, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 69, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 92, 94, 95, 97, 100, 103, 104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112, 113, 115, 117, 118, 121, 125, 126, 127, 129, 133, 135, 137, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178, 184

And I have more than just SSOC.

You don’t hear a whole lot of enthusiasm for Conan Saga. It’s the red-head stepchild of Conan magazines, mentioned if at all as a vehicle for low-priced reprints.

There is a fair bit of truth to this. That’s what Conan Saga mainly did. But it wasn’t just SSOC reprints. The first nine issues are mostly reprints of Conan the Barbarian, black and white versions of the color originals—so original in a sense. Conan Saga also sprinkled in stories from Savage Tales and unexpected rares like “The Sword and the Sorcerers!” a non-Conan story from a comic I’d never heard of, Chamber of Darkness (1970), written by the great Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith. Here’s the synopsis:

A writer who is selling barbarian stories of Starr the Slayer that come to him in dreams plans to kill off Starr in the next story because the dreams are putting too much of a strain upon his health. On his way to the office, Starr assaults him out of an alley with accusations of assassin upon his lips. The writer is unbelieving, even to the point that Starr raises his sword and strikes him down. Starr wakes in his own world and relates a dream to his faithful minstrel wherein he struck down a grave threat to his life.

Cool. I’m going to give this one a read.

Only when it hit double-digits did Conan Saga largely give way to mainly SSOC reprints.

I believe the first nine covers by Barry Windsor-Smith are all first run originals. They make for beautiful keepsakes.

For me Conan Saga was a Godsend. I’ve said many times that SSOC was my gateway to sword-and-sorcery, and I was not lying—save that I forgot to mention the role of Conan Saga.

I guarantee you can track these down at a fraction of the price of SSOC.

I’ve also got other cool odds and ends, of the same savage ilk. Kull and the Barbarians #2. Savage Sword Super Annual. And a really cool full color Marvel Super Special #9, starring The Savage Sword of Conan in full color.

I love the text pieces on The Hyborian Legion and the Conan comics chronology. 

Unboxing these issues opened a window into my past. If you notice the long (near) unbroken run—roughly issues 148-178—it begins in May 1988 and ends in August 1990. I was born in 1973, so that means roughly age 14-17 I was regularly hitting my local book store and buying new issues as they came out, rarely missing a month.

… until senior year of high school and college. My disposable income shifted toward heavy metal, beer, and chicks and I stopped buying new issues.

The venerable magazine wrapped its incredible 21 year run with the July 1995 issue, just a few months after I graduated. I find it comforting that SSOC was there for me, all the way through college, as I left home to wench and swill ale on a grand adventure of which Conan himself would approve.

Savage.

*My brother bought me a couple of back issues a few years ago, including SSOC #1 which I recently broke out in honor of Robert E. Howard’s birthday. I have also purchased the first half dozen of the new Titan run.

A couple of books I am looking forward to reading: The Tower and the Ruin; To Leave a Warrior Behind

I don't know about you but my TBR pile is the size of a telephone pole. I have a towering pile of books I want to read, or re-read, and have only one life in which to do it. I'm pretty selective in my book purchases but when I see something interesting, I add it to my TBR. The list outpaces my reading, and so grows ever larger.

There is no formal mechanism for how I prioritize what to read next. I can only say that some books make their way to the top of this figurative telephone pole faster than others.

Here's two that hit my mailbox in the past week and promptly jumped the queue.

I have read a fair bit of literary criticism and have reached the conclusion that storytelling and voice matter, even in this medium. Dense, academic jargon makes for a lot of work; even if it's got something illuminating to say the juice isn't worth the squeeze if comprehension becomes the equivalent of deconstructing a mental jenga puzzle.

Michael D.C. Drout wrote one of my favorite Tolkien essays for The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On, a personal and revealing piece about the impact that work had on him during a trying time in his life as a young boy at the height of the Blizzard of '78. I found it both illuminating and emotionally powerful, relatable on multiple levels (among them I lived through that blizzard). And so when I heard he had completed The Tower and the Ruin I knew I had to have it. 

Right now I'm in the middle of The Two Towers and desire a companion to share in my reading. I'm hoping The Tower and the Ruin and a pint of beer will reaffirm the magic that is uniquely Tolkien's. 

To Leave a Warrior Behind is the story of the late Charles Saunders, author of Imaro. Saunders passed away in May 2020 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Halifax, Canada. His life and S&S contributions seemed destined for obscurity, but a group of friends and fans sprang for a gravestone. The project funded in 24 hours.

Now it seems we also have a proper biography. Jon Tattrie worked side-by-side with Saunders at the same newspaper for years. I've been hearing good things and am looking forward to reading this as well.

I'm sure I'll get around to reviewing both.

Against the Demon World by Dave Ritzlin, a review

(Note: I was given an advance reading copy of this book, which comes out next week.)

It was a life of little but feeding, fighting, and fornicating, but Avok found it a good one. Which was just as well, because he could neither recall nor conceive of any other.

--Against the Demon World, Dave Ritzlin

Yes, that demon has a spiked metal head.

A plain truth about sword-and-sorcery: It can be elevated and thoughtful and literary …but most often you’ll find it spraying arterial blood in gladiatorial pits, or rolling around between the sheets with a lusty demoness.

Dave Ritzlin’s new novel Against the Demon World is this. 

It’s the second standalone novel by the publisher of DMR Books, and the first full-length work of his I’ve read.

If you like classic old-school muscular S&S, you’ll like it.

***

The story opens with two dudes in leather kilts and boots going on an ogre hunt. Straight in, no foreplay, into a well-rendered fight scene. Their names are Kratorr and Avok. Hard, muscular, badass. They fit the story.

Ritzlin tells the tale with a straightforward, easy to read prose style, sprinkled with some Clark Ashton Smith like vocabulary: Fuliginous, trilithon, strophium, sanguineous. But just lightly sanguineous, like sprinkled drops of blood. He’s also not afraid to use exclamation points.

And “thews,” which appears in these pages early and often.

Against the Demon World wears its influences on its sleeve. REH, ERB, CAS, and Lin Carter, predominantly. We have a CAS-esque Fount of Invigorating Flame. But the overall feel seems to owe most to Burroughs, with the demon-world a fantasy stand-in for his red planet of Mars. Weird races everywhere, weird tech. Half-living sky ships with pterodactyl-like wings.

We get Manowar references. The god Agloran, aka.  “The Hammer,” whose worshippers honor him with the Sign of the Hammer. We even get a “leave the hall!” commandment, barked at the cultists of Iljer. Us Manowar fans will know.

And of course, it’s loaded with S&S tropes. Demon worshipping cults? Orgies? Blood sacrifice? Check, check, check. “Human sacrifices were required for said rituals, as they invariably are where demons are concerned.” An unironic observation by Dave. Thunderdome like gladiator fights? Check these, too.

Who is our man Avok? He’s a hybrid Conan and Thongor. He worships Agloran at a Crom-like distance, and abides by a rough moral code of behavior (he dislikes stealing from honest men and doesn’t force himself on women, though he certainly accepts their ardent advances).

The plot is basic: Avok finds himself an unwilling pawn in a war between the barbaric free peoples of Cythera vs. the Cult of Iljer (“Hail Iljer!”). The latter wishes to convert and enslave all of Nilztiria’s free races. Avok’s sister’s entrapped immortal soul is the ransom, keeping Avok compliant. The conflict widens; Avok is pressed into something much more than typical S&S self-interest; returning runaway slaves trapped in the demon world to their homes in Nilztiria, where they can live freely and walk in daylight. 

But make no mistake, this is beefy men’s fiction, all the way. Easy reading. Action-packed. Mortal peril, demon-summoning, fight after fight. Fun! And funny:

Heltorya leaned forward, scrutinizing Avok with her lush jade-green eyes. “What is that jutting from his body? It appears erect.”

Avok glanced down at his crotch before realizing she was referring to the tentacle. It must have sprung to life recently without his awareness.

Nilztiria is a loose anagram for Ritzlin which I assume is deliberate. Dave gives his created world color and life through epigraphs leading off each chapter, written by a sorcerous chronicler. I like this device; it offers short dabs of world-building flavor that never detracts from the action. If Nilztiria feels a little generic, the demon world of Uzz is wildly imaginative. Here are egg-headed snake monsters, demons like spiky monkeys, wasps the size of mantichores wielding weapons in their tails. Gorgeous demon women who bathe in the distilled tears of their prisoners? Yep, that too. 

Here’s a description of one of my favorite demons:

This bestial specimen possessed the head and arms of a black bear, and a pair of squamous limbs which resembled headless snakes emanated from its hips. The lower half of its body was coated entirely in some type of scummy fungus. As it pulled itself aboard, it opened its jaws to emit incongruously high-pitched peals of laughter.

Avok’s chief opponent is Nelgasthros, a demon with a spiked metal head (this appendage can be used to parry sword blows. Cool). When Avok wants to ram his vengeance down the demon’s throat, his love interest quips that will be difficult, as Nelgasthros lacks a visible mouth. “Then I’ll make a few holes in the bastard’s head,” Avok replies. 

This is fun stuff, entertainment as fiction’s purpose (which by the way was Burroughs’ mantra). 

We read these kind of stories because they’re fun. Dave never takes grim matters too seriously: 

They were certainly an odd-looking crew, Avok thought: nearly two dozen hairy, disheveled men and women who appeared as if they knew not the touch of civilization, alongside a proud, noble lady whose captive was a full-bosomed demoness, all following a man with a thrashing tentacle extending from the base of his skull. Avok could not help but laugh, for it was his nature to find humor in the absurd, even when struggling to overcome grave danger as he was now.

I appreciated Dave’s small but steady injection of humor. We get high school locker-room, bro-like conversation about how to attract a woman. Avok is an unwilling mediator in a fight between two bickering women, one a princess, the other a demoness, rife with petty jealousies and insecurities and sexual tension. 

Avok stifled a chuckle. In a way, he was living out every man’s dream, sharing a bed with two beautiful women. When he returned to Cythera, he might boast of the feat to his friends. True, one was unconscious due to an injury, and the other was an evil monster, but he could leave out those details.

As is often the case with villains I found the demoness Heltorya the most compelling character. She possesses no morality, and views life (if she is even capable of self-reflection) as a thing upon which she can sate her lusts, consume and spit out the remnants.

“So the only measure of a living creature’s worth is how you can exploit it?” asked Avok.

“Of course,” said Heltorya. “Is that not self-evident?”

***

OK, Enough Talk! 

(BTW this line from Conan the Destroyer appears in the book; I use it here to cut to the chase).

Against the Demon World is muscular and fun. Good Saturday afternoon reading with a 6 pack of Miller High Life type of fun. At a breezy 200 pages and a top-notch cover illustration you won’t go wrong.

If you don’t like this muscular style of S&S, great—there’s plenty elsewhere to be found.

Kudos to Dave for telling a good story and for keeping this brand of S&S alive longer than any other publisher. 

Happy 120th, REH!

I live in the northeast. We’re in the middle of a cold snap in the dead of a rougher than usual New England winter and are expecting a huge snowstorm Sunday into Monday. 

Given the conditions, may I suggest “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter”?

It is a good day to read some Robert E. Howard. After all it’s his 120th birthday.

I read a bit of “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” on the recently released birthday tribute video by the Robert E. Howard Foundation. I recommend the whole thing, but if you just want to see what my basement bar looks like here’s the bit at 16:37.

As you’ll see in the video I have SSOC #1 and it contains a kick-ass adaption of the story by the great Roy Thomas, illustrated by the great Barry Windsor-Smith.

As I noted the story contains a mythic quality present in some but not all of Howard’s stuff. It feels like myth and in a sense it was, adapted from the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo.

But it feels like a northern myth. Atali is a Valkyrie gone bad, not collecting the bodies of the slain but instead leading men to their deaths, at the hands of her two hulking brothers.

Until they meet Conan, that is.

Hoist a tankard of ale or a glass of your favorite adult beverage in honor of the greatest pulpster ever. He lives on in literary Valhalla.

The Silver Key: 2025 in review

T-800s like it here... but people too.

Traffic to the blog EXPLODED in 2025.

Unfortunately some of it appears to be robots, likely using my posts to train LLMs. But robots are only part of the story. There are also a lot of fine folks who seem to like what I have to say here on the Silver Key. Lots of returning visitors, lots of comments. For which I remain very grateful.

I’ve got a lot to be grateful for on the writing front in 2025.

2026 will be the year of my heavy metal memoir. I spent a lot of time working on it behind the scenes. I shared it with three readers who appear in it and have taken their advice into consideration. Made a few changes. Re-read it after 3 months and rewrote quite a bit.  

The writing is done, I can’t make it any better nor tell the story I want to tell any more effectively. Next will be editing and cover design.

I’m in the process of helping my friend Tom Barber publish his memoir via Kindle Direct Publishing. I can’t wait to share more details about Tom’s book, which details the depths of his alcohol addiction, his travels out west, all lavishly illustrated with his own artwork. 

KDP is pretty easy to use and I’m near certain I will be using the same platform for my book.

It was a productive year for me on The Silver Key. This post is my 89th, the most I’ve published in a year since 2022, and my fourth highest annual output all-time. And as noted, traffic went through the roof.

People are somehow still visiting this archaic corner of cyberspace. As of this writing (Saturday, Dec. 20) I’ve had 71,000 views in 2025, up from 45,000 in 2024 and 29,000 in 2023. I expected to see traffic decline as folks use AI to find answers or information without going out to websites, but that’s not the case here.

I published broadly on heavy metal, sword-and-sorcery, reading trends, Arthuriana, and the war for our attention. All topics that interest me. All seemed to resonate.

My most popular post by far was a guest blogger writing about Rob Zombie.

Let’s take a look at the 20 most popular posts of 2025.

1. An interesting personal insight into Moorcock’s inspirations (733 views). I learned something new about the author of Elric and Corum during this podcast interview—his father left the family when Moorcock was quite young, and the experience left him with abandonment issues and separation anxiety. Could this have been a formative influence on his writing?
2. Celtic Adventures wrapup and on into Cimmerian September (760 views). I’ve read 40 books in 2025 including DMR’s Celtic Adventures. Highly recommend this title, if for nothing else than John Barnett’s “Grana, Queen of Battle.” A unbelievably cracking good bit of historical adventure written in 1913.
3. Rest in Peace James Silke (775 views). The author of the Death Dealer series left us in February, age 93. That reminds me I need to read and review book 4, Plague of Knives. As I’ve noted these are so bad they cross back over to good territory.
4. We're living in an outrage machine (776 views). I’m not a conspiracy theorist but I can say with certainty that most of the problems we have are not as large and certainly not apocalyptic as you’ve been led to believe by the media. Rather, your attention is monetized and fear and outrage sells.
5. The Empress of Dreams—an (overdue) appreciation of Tanith Lee (776 views). I’ve never given Tanith Lee her just due and this collection from DMR books reminds me I need to read more of her stuff. Master stylist and atmosphere-ist.
6. Rest in Peace, Howard Andrew Jones (783 views). Sad and terrible news about HAJ, who was taken from us far too early. His works will endure.
7. The Ring of the Nibelung/Roy Thomas and Gil Kane (791 views). I’m glad I picked up this wonderful graphic novel by a pair of comic book greats. Recommended as an easily digestible entry point to Richard Wagner’s classic opera.
8. Of pastiche and John C. Hocking’s Conan and the Living Plague (797 views). Anything I write about Conan or Robert E. Howard performs well. This is one of the better pastiches I’ve read, and here I weigh in on John C. Hocking’s book and what I like to see in pastiches in general.
9. Knightriders, a review (817 views). As a fan of all things King Arthur I can’t believe I’ve never watched this odd little film about modern “knights” on motorcycle horseback. Quirky and flawed but unique and recommended.
10. Cold Sweat, Thin Lizzy (855 views). I continue to say that Thin Lizzy has been unfairly pigeonholed as a one hit wonder. Forget The Boys are Back in Town, listen to Cold Sweat. It rocks.
11. Revisiting H.P. Lovecraft's "The Silver Key" (927 views). Wherein I revisit the story that gave this blog its name. There is no cause to value material fact over the content of our dreams. 
12. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck, a review (1033 views). I finally got around to reading Steinbeck’s treatment of the Athurian myth. Sadly unfinished but definitely worth reading.
13. Goodbye to Romance: Reflections on Black Sabbath, Back to the Beginning, and the end of the road (1036 views). Another sad loss this year; the death of Ozzy Osbourne and the end of the first heavy metal band. Am waiting on the release of their final concert on DVD.
14. Robert E. Howard, The Life and Times of a Texas Author (1039 views). Kudos to my friend Will Oliver on writing what may well prove to be the definitive biography of Robert E. Howard. A heroic amount of research. Pick this one up.
15. Martin Eden (1909), Jack London 1083 views. Speaking of Robert E. Howard, this great story by the great Jack London contains many striking parallels to his life. It's an incredibly powerful book on its own merits.
16. Reading is in trouble … what are we going to do about it? (1084 views). Reading is in serious decline and it saddens me. I don’t want to live in a world where we have no attention span and consume content no longer than Tweets and short-form video, though that is on our doorstep. Keep reading, and read to your children.
17. Paper books are better than digital: Five reasons why (1085 views). I’m still a paper-only reader, don’t even own a kindle. One day that may change… but it is not this day.
18. Bruce Dickinson at the House of Blues, Boston MA Sept. 11, 2025 (1182 views): Fantastic concert by the seemingly ageless singer of Iron Maiden, whom I had ever seen perform solo until this fall. Tears of the Dragon nearly brought me to tears.
19. Disconnect (1423 views). The best remedy for many of the above ills is to take a technology detox (except for coming to the Silver Key). Also RIP Robert Redford.
20. Celebrating Rob Zombie, graphic artist, at sixty (4,529 views)  Guest poster Deuce Richardson stole my thunder with the biggest runaway post of the year. Why did this one outperform? Its well written, about a famous performer … but I also suspect it’s because Deuce had me include so many images of Rob's art. These show up in searches and drive traffic. Something for me to consider in my own posts. Either way, nice job Deuce.

***

Anyway, if you’ve gotten this far thanks for reading the blog, today and all year long. I always welcome your comments and suggestions. 

Merry Christmas and I wish you a very fine 2026.

Why I believe The Snow Women is a great story (and you might not)

First appearance of this fantastic story?
Fantastic.

It feels hyperbolic to describe any sword-and-sorcery story as divisive. So few read them. But within S&S limited circles Fritz Leiber’s “The Snow Women” qualifies. Its very mention seems to provoke ice-ball fights in internet forums, leaving bloodied lips and bruised egos (including mine).

I want to explain why, as well as why I consider “The Snow Women” a very good, perhaps great story. 

But first let’s set the scene.

• The Snow Women was originally published in 1970 in Fantastic magazine.

• It’s a novella, clocking in at about 95 pages in my copy of Swords and Deviltry

• It was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1971 (although Leiber withdrew it in favor of “Ill Met in Lankhmar”)

• It’s one of Leiber’s “later” Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories but is the one many readers encounter first, as it is the first story in volume 1 of the popular “Swords” series.

• It’s Fafhrd’s origin story and centers around his attempt to break away from a matriarchal barbaric tribe. A wandering troupe of performers and the beautiful dancer Vlana offer him the opportunity to escape to warmer southern civilized lands. Conflict ensures.

Again, I think “The Snow Women” is terrific. Its nomination for the two highest awards in the land shows that others do too, or did, once upon a time. Nevertheless, its reputation among S&S fans is quite mixed.

Why?

I’ll start with this: When we read a story we do so through a lens—or own unique contexts and perspectives, but also, the lens of genre expectations. 

Viewed through an S&S lens “The Snow Women” is blurry.

It is not a story of fast-paced swordplay. We get a little of that, but only at the end. The sorcery is relatively subdued, mostly limited to manipulation of weather and minds by domineering matriarchs. The protagonist appears to fit a familiar S&S trope, a tall and strong barbarian from the north. But this is not Conan of "The Tower of the Elephant." Fafhrd does not scale a towering spire guarded by lions and spiders, in search of treasure.

His enemy is hidebound tradition, and most of his struggles, internal.

"The Snow Women" reflects the changing interests of a maturing author who wanted to do something different. Leiber developed a fascination with the works of Carl Jung. For better or worse this significantly changed the direction of his later stories. 

I will not offer a primer on Carl Jung, but as a clinical psychologist Jung viewed the true struggle as within the human breast, our universal need to embrace our shadow self and individuate—become a full-fledged, integrated, authentic human.

This is the matter of “The Snow Women.” I believe Leiber portrays these conflicts with subtlety, complexity, and beauty. The skeletal arms of his dead father trying to draw Fafhrd down (and later, lift him up). The cold grip of his mother freezing him in a barbaric stasis. The tribesmen who watch civilized freedom parade across the stage of Godshall passively from the audience, and then return to their one-dimensional lives, and bar Fafhrd’s path to freedom as he tries to win flee. Fafhrd wants more than tribal traditions. He wants to live a full color life, not a world of uniform white. 

The tricky part with stories that engage with the human condition is the loss of narrative drive so crucial to S&S. These describe the latter Leiber stories which arguably become something else. In “The Snow Women” the pacing drops as Leiber zooms the lens in on Fafhrd and his internal struggles. 

There also seems to be a general aversion in the S&S community to origin stories. We love Conan because he resists this traditional storytelling device (when we first meet him in “Phoenix on the Sword” he is a king at the height of his achievements; Howard gives us no background, none is needed). S&S heroes don’t need the bildungsroman character arcs of epic fantasy and we like it that way. Leiber likewise offered no origin for his heroes for more than 20 years, until the Gray Mouser received that treatment in “The Unholy Grail” in 1962, and Fafhrd eight years later with this sotry. Did we need to know that Fafhrd left behind a pregnant wife to be when he fled for civilized lands with Vlana? Maybe … or maybe not. But I understand why S&S fans don’t want or need this detail.

We also read stories through a political lens, what they have to say about power structures and social issues, including sex and relations between the sexes. Women in Leiber’s later stories don’t always hold up well. He had a noted obsession with (too) young women, though that is not the case here; Fafhrd and Mara are the same age and Vlana the dancer is nearly 10 years older. But the snow women are uniformly oppressors. Some find this off-putting. I don’t; I find them to be a credible menace and possessed of fierce agency. They dominate the men of the tribe, and this makes it credible for the freedom loving Fafhrd to want out. 

I get all these complaints … but then again I’m reading the story through a different lens. The true power of “The Snow Women” is in its striking presentation of archetypes, the universal, recurring symbols and patterns rooted in the collective human psyche. And here, I argue it soars.

For example: The chasm. Trollstep Canyon is both a literal dark gulf Fafhrd must cross, but also an old part of himself that must die. Is he going to stay and become a frozen corpse like his father, a grasping half-man like the men of Godshall, staring at playlife on the stage? Or is he going to live authentically, choose the life he wants to live, and make the leap? This stark choice, the fear of death and being reborn, freezes Fafhrd … until he finds room for it. He becomes death, flying through the snow on a pair of rocket-propelled skis, his face a death-mask.

I love this image, so much.

We also get a nuanced look at civilization vs. barbarism. Fafhrd swings from rapture and infatuation with civilization to viewing it as a “tawdry thing, unworthy of his interest.” But he also despises barbarism, telling Vlana, “Barbarism can match civilization’s every stench. Not one move in our frostbit lives but is strictured by a mad god’s laws, which we call customs, and by black-handed irrationalities from which there is no escape.” He’s trapped between two worlds. Leiber’s description of Fafhrd as a “lonely ghost, doomed to roam the Cold Waste” is an archetypal young man struggling to make sense of a complex world, his emotions a storm. 

Aside from all its symbolic, archetypal matter, there’s also the matter of the writing. Leiber was a beautiful stylist and “The Snow Women” contains fantastic flourishes of his pen. Here’s one of my favorite passages; I cannot shake the image of Fafhrd’s father Nalgron and his sightless eyesockets reaching up through the dark soil with bony arms for his son like the image of a draugr:

“He thought of his last sight of his father, blue and shut-eyed, his broken limbs straightened, his best sword naked at his side with his slate-colored fingers fitted around the hilt. He thought of Nalgron now in the earth under the tent, worm-gnawed to a skeleton, the sword black rust, the eyes open now—sockets staring upward through solid dirt. He remembered his last sight of his father alive: a tall wolfskin cloak striding away with Mor’s warnings and threats spattering against it. Then the skeleton came back into his mind. It was a night for ghosts.”

The timing of this story adds another interesting wrinkle. We don’t know of Vlana’s ultimate grim fate as “Ill Met in Lankhmar was published shortly after The Snow Women, but we do know through Leiber’s earlier stories that she was right, civilization is no place for honest and noble men. But neither is the Cold Waste. Nalgron’s reward for “setting and unswervingly striding toward a high, romantic goal,” is a cold death. He tries to teach his son but Fafhrd only hears some of his wisdom in snatches. The rest must be acquired by painful experience. 

The action intensifies as the story ends. We get a blur of well-written violence. An ecstatic and memorable escape, tempered with a deep foreboding that nothing has really been left behind. 

You don’t have to love or even like the story. But I think you have to respect what Leiber was doing here. If you want fast-paced S&S you have Leiber’s entire early catalog to choose from. “The Snow Women” is not that; but as I hope to demonstrate it is different, not lesser.

The Merman’s Children by Poul Anderson: A review

Anderson must have been pissed at the spelling of "Faery"

Did magic exist, once upon a time? Did the creatures of Faerie roam the deep woods, inhabit dark and lonely mountains, or swim beneath the ocean waves?

And if so, why did magic leave the world?

This is the premise of The Merman’s Children. I just wrapped up Poul Anderson’s 1979 novel last night, and my review is decidedly mixed.

To start: I’m a big Anderson fan. The Broken Sword resides somewhere in my favorite novels of all time. Not just fantasy novels, but novels period. Hrolf Kraki’s Saga is incredible as well, and don’t sleep on War of the Gods or his short stories from “The Tale of Hauk” to Cappen Varra. All highly recommended.

The Merman’s Children does not rise to these heights. It is far less savage than The Broken Sword though that’s no sleight; Vietnam in 1965 was less savage. But a meandering plot that lacks a propulsive narrative ultimately drags it down below his other fantasy efforts, to something of mediocre territory.

It’s mediocre Anderson … which still makes The Merman’s Children better than a lot of books you’ll read.

What’s to recommend? We get some pulse-heightening encounters with fearful and unique monsters, some well-done late medieval northern European atmosphere, and most of all an interesting examination of the question I posed to start this review:

Why do the myths of Faerie persist? Were mermen just a sailors’ fancy? Or might they have been real?

Anderson posits they were real, and Christianity ultimately drove them out. Anderson’s sympathies are clearly with faerie. Men are prejudiced, judgemental, and inflexible, constantly double-crossing and betraying the mer-people who want only to live and enjoy all of the pleasures of this world. This becomes doubly interesting if you view the mer-folk as metaphor for pre-Christian pagans, the Tuatha Dé Danann and the children of Odin crushed beneath the merciless heel of the followers of the one god. Says the merman king Vanimen: "I who've hunted narwhals under the boreal ice and had lemans that were like northlights ... no, I'll not trade that for your thin eternity." 

This concept been done before, by other authors and even Anderson himself (the coming of the “White Christ” in The Broken Sword), but never so directly as he does here. There is a great tension in the book between men and faerie. As beings made in the image of God the former are ostensibly bound for the paradise of a heavenly afterlife, and so priortize modesty and sacrifice in this world in order to ensure their passage to the next (though they often fail—humans suck). In contrast the mermen have no souls, so this world is their paradise, and they drink it all in. Despite its considerable perils they roam the seas with abandon and indolence. They are quite lusty, sleeping with everyone including other races and even brother and sister. They are also extremely long-lived, near immortal though they can be slain by violence. This makes them feel sufficiently otherworldly, not just comely human-like beings with webbed hands and feet wielding tridents.

Though not as otherworldly as I’d like. Anderson’s mermen are in my opinion not strange enough; their undersea realm falls short of the enchanted lands of The King of Elfland’s Daughter or the perilous realms of Middle-Earth. To be fair their world lies within our world, and so it should feel more familiar. And it does. You can feel the old world giving way to new, and mourn the creatures of faerie fading into legend. Many submit to baptism and forget their past, and are bred out of existence. Anderson gives us a wonderful lament of the passing of the era in the song of the whales, whose mournful language the mermen understand: 

The seasons come and the seasons go,

From the depths above to the depths below,

And time will crumble our pride and grief

As the waves wear even the hardest reef.

The Broken Sword bears none of Tolkien's influence (it could not; both were published in 1954). Anderson was certainly deeply read of the wellspring myths and like JRRT drew on those, not secondary sources. But, by the time of The Merman’s Children he had certainly read The Lord of the Rings and the novel feels quite Tolkienian, even though it is based on the Danish ballad, “Agnete og Havmanden (Agnete and the Merman)." Like Anderson Tolkien greatly admired the pagan heroes of old, and wondered at their ultimate fate, unbaptized and unshriven and therefore presumably doomed to perish forever. But maybe not… there are some gleams of hope in the novel. I won’t spoil the ending but the story ends on a poignant note familiar to readers of LOTR.

Portions of The Mermen's Children appeared in Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords series and I feel like that is part of its problem. It is a series of interesting scenes and concepts patched together with a narrative too gauzy to support a 260 page novel. The plot is quite basic: A priest performs an exorcism on the mermen’s undersea kingdom causing them to flee for new lands in the New World. When the mermen splinter and the narrative splits, neither group is given sufficient attention and we lose urgency and interest. Or at least I did.

A couple other notes.

I sometimes get asked about borderline novels and whether they fit in my preferred subgenre. Is The Merman’s Children S&S? I don’t find a whole lot of use in that question, but I’d say, no. Its cast of characters, high fantasy feel, multi-year narrative, and relative lack of action pushes it in the category of general fantasy. But it does have some S&S DNA in it (the word “thews” is used at least twice, for those keeping score at home). A chapter like “The Tupilak,” in isolation, is S&S, which makes it a fit for Flashing Swords, but as a novel it probably isn’t.

The late Howard Andrew Jones thought S&S was all about pacing; The Merman’s Children takes its time building a world, and its emphasis is on theme, not action. This is not to say S&S can’t have theme; Howard’s Conan stories had an underlying theme of civilization vs. barbarism. But never at expense of action.

I have to mention the cool run-in with a Vodianoi, an underwater version of an umber hulk. I can’t be sure if this is the chief inspiration for the Dungeons and Dragons monster but it seems possible.  Gary Gygax was inspired to use the green skinned regenerating trolls and plucked the paladin character class from the pages of Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions. There's also a great encounter with a kraken.

The sexual violence in the novel probably warrants a reader beware message.

Of Blind Guardian and The Quest for Tanelorn

The City of Rest... Tanelorn.

Michael Moorcock’s stories are populated with characters ill-fitted to their world, outsiders in lands where betrayal and cruelty and sadism are woven into the very fabric of existence.

There is no truth, no golden age, but only the eternal struggle. All that we love—our creations, our friends, and ultimately, ourselves—cannot avoid immolation. We are doomed to die, and this doom is stronger than the will.

What do you seek in such savage worlds? The rest of equilibrium, a place which Moorcock gives tangible form in the elusive city of Tanelorn. Also known as “The City of Rest” or “The Eternal City,” Tanelorn is a sanctuary for Eternal Champions and their constant stuggles against the opposed forces of Law and Chaos.

Tanelorn is everywhere (and nowhere) in Moorcock’s multiverse.  In The Quest for Tanelorn (which I admittedly have not read) Dorian Hawkmoon has been reunited with his true love Yisselda, but his two children are still missing. To finally reunite his family he must first find his way to the fabled city.

I described it in Flame and Crimson as an “El Dorado-like city” because it’s half legend if not fully so. It might only exist within. It’s a powerful and enduring symbol, influencing a generation of readers …  including the German power metal band Blind Guardian, whom I got to see playing the Worcester Palladium on Wednesday. The Somewhere Far Beyond tour features the band playing the entirety of the 1992 album, including “The Quest for Tanelorn,” a song that packs a big chorus. 

Sings Hansi Kursch:

On a quest for Tanelorn, we lose our way

We lose our way could mean physically lost, but that’s not how I read this. We lose our way because we cannot find an internal equilibrium. We fall short due to our own weakness.

But we keep looking. The Quest for Tanelorn continues.

“Tanelorn will always exist while men exist,” says the hermit at the conclusion of The Bane of the Black Sword. “It was not a city you defended today. It was an ideal. That is Tanelorn.”

As songs go I actually prefer Blind Guardian’s other song about the mystic city, “Tanelorn (Into the Void)” off At the Edge of Time (2011). That 20 years separate the songs speaks to its enduring power as a symbol and source of inspiration.

As for the show itself, it was awesome. If you’re a metal fan you simply must see Blind Guardian and sing along to “The Bard’s Song.” “Nightfall” is one of the all-time great concert songs. It’s not unlike “Fear of the Dark,” a terrific song that’s even better played live. Along with “Time Stands Still (at the Iron Hill)” these were the highlights of an overall excellent show. We had great seats, first row in the balcony with a fine sight line to the band and a bird's eye view of a wildly entertaining mosh pit.

Here's a bit of "Nightfall."

Full setlist here.

I am too busy to blog right now but here's three things to know...

I’m a busy dude. I imagine most men and women with adult commitments are too, so no excuses.

But this past 10 days has seen me fly to Texas for a company retreat, then from there fly straight to Rhode Island for a guy’s weekend. Then back to a busy work schedule Monday, helping out my ailing Dad with a few things, and I leave tonight on a flight to Tennessee. It’s not easy being me … but in all honesty my liver and my sanity are paying the price. 

That has left me no time for blogging. Which sounds like a small price to pay, but when I don’t write here I start getting a bit twitchy. Blogging about all things fantastic provides me some creative outlet that I can’t quite articulate, just that it exists, and I feel its absence acutely.

So here’s a few interesting items to tide me over until I can write something more substantial.

1. My friend Ken Lizzi has a new S&S novel out, Cesar the Bravo. I’ve known Ken mainly through online interactions but got to spend some time with him in Cross Plains TX in 2023 for Robert E. Howard Days. We spoke on a pirate S&S panel together and drank Shiner Bock while watching Master and Commander. Support S&S, support contemporary authors doing good work, and check out Ken’s book. Bravo, Ken (#dadjoke). Learn more here or order on Amazon. BTW you should follow Ken's blog.

2. I continue to work on my heavy metal memoir. I’ve shown it to a few friends and gotten some good feedback. I also sent it or pieces of it to a handful of specialty publishers back in June and was met with deafening silence, so that means in all likelihood it will be self-published. I’m more than good with this; traditional publishing is, with some exceptions, a losing proposition. Writing is brutally hard, and when you’re done with agonizing draft after draft and self-doubt and the realization that you suck as a writer but you keep going and grinding and finally have something readable, the work is just beginning. Because you have to be found in a sea of other books, millions of which are being published in a year. Marketing is the hard part and publishers don’t do this; it’s on the author. Which I will do. I’m sure the memoir will sink beneath the waves after I publish it, but that’s not why I am writing it. I literally need to write this, and I’m pretty happy with how its shaping up. 

3. Carl Jung is the man. I am working my way through Man and His Symbols, which is generally accorded his most accessible work. It’s an odd book; only the first section is his, the rest is written by Jungian disciples/believers or whatever term you want to apply. But his stuff is, to risk hyperbole and hero-worship, a bit of genius. Here’s a few choice quotes; I’ve been writing them down feverishly as I read:

***

It is true, however, that in recent times civilized man has acquired a certain amount of will power, which he can apply where he pleases. He has learned to do his work efficiently without having recourse to chanting and drumming to hypnotize him into the state of doing. He can even dispense with a daily prayer for divine aid. He can carry out what he proposes to do, and he can apparently translate his ideas into action without a hitch, whereas the primitive seems to be hampered at each step by fears, superstitions, and other unseen obstacles to action. The motto “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” is the superstition of modern man. Yet in order to sustain his creed, contemporary man pays the price in a remarkable lack of introspection. He is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by “powers” that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food—and, above all, a large array of neuroses.

***

 A man likes to believe that he is the master of his soul. But as long as he is unable to control his moods and emotions, or to be conscious of the myriad secret ways in which unconscious factors insinuate themselves into his arrangements and decisions, he is certainly not his own master.

***

But all such attempts have proven singularly ineffective, and will do so as long as we try to convince ourselves and the world that it is only they (i.e., our opponents) who are wrong. It would be much more to the point for us to make a serious attempt to recognize our own shadow and its nefarious doings. If we could see our shadow (the dark side of our nature), we should be immune to any moral and mental infection and insinuation.

We need tastemakers

When I first started getting into sword-and-sorcery fiction, the internet was a fledgling, creaky, place. Charming, but impractical. Think bare-bones HTML websites and USENET and bulletin boards. Interesting, but not much help in finding what you were looking for, save by happy accident. Encyclopedias still had a place in this world. 

So, I read the introductions of books, written by real people.

I found L. Sprague de Camp’s Swords & Sorcery (Pyramid, 1963) and read the stories of Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. I sought them out, and in so doing found authors like Poul Anderson and Jack Vance.

Lin Carter, champion S&S enthusiast.

The best of these early tastemakers was probably Lin Carter, whose glowing and enthusiastic (and occasionally erudite) introductions to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series led me down many a merry chase. Carter (June 9, 1930 – February 7, 1988) was long deceased, but was posthumously leading me toward many other fine authors like Lord Dunsany and E.R. Eddison and William Morris.

As the internet began to bloom I found the likes of Steve Tompkins at The Cimmerian and articles by Howard Andrew Jones at Flashing Swords and Black Gate. I read about authors like Harold Lamb and Karl Edward Wagner in their essays and sought them out. 

In hindsight I was lucky. I was steered by people who knew what they were talking about. 

In recent years I’ve been steered toward new finds by the likes of Morgan Holmes and G.W. Thomas and Deuce Richardson. Today I try to do that here and carry on the tradition. I am always very pleased when I read comments like this one, which I just got on a recent post about Darryl Schweitzer’s We Are All Legends. 

I love hanging around this blog, for several reason but especially for a post like this. I had never heard of Schweitzer or seen his works in the wild until now. Seeing a "new author" to me is always exciting. Immediately ordered from Schweitzer's Ebay store.

We need people we know and trust and respect to give good recommendations. 

One person who understands this better than most is marketing guru Seth Godin, who I can’t recommend enough for works like The Purple Cow (look, I’m playing tastemaker!). Godin views tastemakers and curators as leaders who define culture by selecting and combining experiences for a specific audience, helping to build trust and navigate an overwhelming flood of content. In his view, tastemakers and curators stand in contrast to algorithms and mass platforms, which tend to promote a race to the bottom by simply surfacing what is popular. 

I love this. Algorithms push us toward an average and mean, and who wants to be average, or mean (as in, not nice)? 

Curation and tastemaking is a place where editors of S&S publications can step up. Set the direction. Show some taste. Differentiate yourself from AI slop. Give me the names of authors and artists whose work has moved you, and tell me why. You might convince me to give them a try.

I don’t want ChatGPT or Instagram algorithms steering me dully, without thought, toward whomever and wherever their programming tells me to go. Which is probably toward cat videos and thirst traps.

Give me odd, weird, and sympatico people.

We need tastemakers.

Who are yours?