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? 

The 70s were weird, man: Darrell Schweitzer’s We Are All Legends

Sometimes the 1970s seem not so far away. Photos from my childhood confirm I was there; my old albums and books are a tangible affirmation. I can still see and touch that decade, I can smell it when I riff through the pages of my old first edition Dungeon Masters Guide (1979).

But the 70s are also a different, distant country. Things were Weirder then, or at least seemed that way. I don’t believe in ascribing magical properties to arbitrary 10-year windows of time other than to say that if the 60s were the decade of rebellion, the 70s, freed of shackles, were a decade of expression and experimentation.

With the demise of censorship codes and the rise of talented young directors we got some of the best films ever made in the 1970s. Record labels gave unpolished artists the financial freedom and a lengthy creative leash to experiment. The result was heavy metal, punk, … and disco (mistakes were made).

Fantasy fiction was likewise Weird. We had yet to become Sword of Shannara-fied and reading endless series of identical epic quests.

I was listening to a recent episode of the Geeks’ Guide to the Galaxy podcast discussing Flame and Crimson and the history of sword-and-sorcery. Somewhere around the one-hour mark one of the guests—a co-creator of the fine rotoscoped animated S&S film The Spine of Night—observed that the 70s and 80s were possessed of quality where it felt the “guard rails were off” and a reader or viewer felt that anything might happen.

I admire this quality. 

Give me Weird. 

S&S has a streak of this. Weird fiction predates sword-and-sorcery, originating with Edgar Allan Poe and carried on with Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft. But it was married to swordplay, probably, with the likes of Lord Dunsany, then continued in works by A. Merritt and Clark Ashton Smith, and on into Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Tanith Lee, and Michael Shea. Today you’ll see it in John Fultz and Schuyler Hernstrom, and others.

It’s always been in S&S’ DNA. Howard’s Kull of Atlantis stories, in particular “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” and “Striking of the Gong,” are in this tradition. Weird, brooding, dark, unsettling, introspective. They are the heritage of Weird Tales, the magazine from which S&S was born. If you abide by even a floor definition, its name, S&S needs swords (or a general medieval/pre gunpowder level of tech) and sorcery. Sorcery is not magic. It’s wild, dangerous, malevolent, often catastrophic to user as much as target. Think of a Neanderthal handling a hand grenade and trying to figure out whether to throw pin or charge; that’s sorcery. That’s Weird.

In that era a series of weird S&S stories appeared across publications now largely lost to time. Whispers. Void. Alien Worlds. Fantasy Tales. Weirdbook. These died out in the 80s as high fantasy rose to ascendancy, magic replaced sorcery, and the short story fell out of favor, replaced by epic quest. But for a time weird stories about weird characters drifted through these lost pages, including a wandering knight named Julian.

Darrell Schweitzer’s We Are All Legends collects 13 short stories published between 1970 and 1981. It’s a weird, wonderful little book. The stories take place in medieval Europe but of an uncertain date and place, with permeable borders. Magic has not left the world. It’s studded with Arthurian references, of wounded fisher kings and Merlin and Excalibur, even though its decidedly S&S. It’s dark, both in tone but also subject matter. Julian is haunted by his past sins. He believes he is beyond redemption, his faith in God irrevocably shaken, possibly shattered. “God” if there is one appears to be gnostic demiurge, a flawed, limited, and possibly malevolent creator:

I knew that if God is mad, and the signs show that he is, his Foe is mad also, and there can be no hope for the world between them, for creation is but a battleground for two maniacs in their death struggle.

We Are All Legends ticks a lot of my boxes. Obviously S&S, but also King Arthur, horror (some of these stories appeared in DAW Year’s Best Horror). Stories of anti heroes, even ostensibly peerless knights, grappling with a loss of faith and their own brokenness:

“When I was a child I heard about a man, a very, very old man, whose father had been a werewolf. So they took him, the son, whose father had been a werewolf, and shut him up in a tower. He remained there always, never knowing love, never knowing life. I, too, live in a tower, only mine is invisible and I carry it around with me. Its walls are just as strong though.”

“Are you a werewolf then?”

“Only in my heart.”

Purple and awesome.

Schweitzer would have been in his mid-late 20s writing these stories, which is remarkable. He is very underrated, by me and the community at large, though this YouTuber is a huge fan of the book.  

Schweizer confirmed on a Facebook post by Charles Gramlich that the two biggest influences on these stories were Ingar Bergman’s 1957 film, “The Seventh Seal,” and “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville,” a 14th century travelogue (reportedly true) of an English knight into the middle and far east. It doesn’t seem The Life of Sir Aglovale de Galis is among its influences, but We Are All Legends feels something like Clemence Housman’s fine, near forgotten little tale, and its damned, forsaken, wandering knight, a tragic hero. I also noted the influence of Michael Moorock; a possible reference to Corum and the Hand of Kwll. Julian’s wanderings resemble something of a tormented Elric seeking the equilibrium of Tanelorn.

Fabian...

In addition to a fine series of stories the book is blessed with Stephen Fabian illustrations. These are terrific, both the wraparound cover and the wonderful black and white interior accent work. Weaknesses? It is tiring to read all at once; while I am happy having all the Sir Julian stories in one volume, some collections need to be dipped into and sampled from rather than read entire; eating too much rich food or red wine can spoil the effect. Perhaps too much repetition of theme, tone. Some of the stories are perhaps a little too weird for my tastes, untethered to the ground. I feel like this book could have used some more internal character work.

… but that is not what Schweitzer was after. He is of the belief fantasy is examining internal conflicts through explicit, external struggles against real-world demons. From an interview on Black Gate: 

In your estimation what are the elements that make truly great fantasy fiction? Truly great horror? Is “weird fiction” more than simply a co-mingling of these two genres?

The point of much fantasy is to deal with mythic elements directly, rather than through symbol and metaphor only. You could, for example, write a story about someone who “sells his soul” and makes a “Faustian bargain,” i.e. he sacrifices his personal integrity in an irretrievable manner for some dubious goal-say, success in the Mafia, or in Hollywood, or in politics. It needn’t have any fantastic content, and the Faust symbolism would resonate. But the fantasist’s approach is to bring the actual demon on stage and deal with the material directly.

Schweitzer is a former Weird Tales editor, living elder scholar, and longtime champion of the weird, you can find more of his observations here. Here’s a bit of his learned commentary on the weird and my response.

Of genre categories:

These categories are ultimately marketing tools. Horror is what is published as horror. Fantasy is what is published as fantasy. It’s all about labels and which shelf in the bookstore a book is displayed on. Aesthetically, the distinction is not particularly meaningful.

Believe it or not I an S&S historian agree with some of this. Genre categories began as marketing tools and probably function best that way, less so than tools of analysis. However, I do think having genre parameters or aesthetic template to follow, bend, or break, can produce surprising results and possibly great original art. As can deliberate mixing of genres. 

Of the greatness of Tanith Lee (agreed here; we need more Tanith Lee in this world):

Tanith Lee strikes me as the perfect Weird Tales writer, which is probably why WT has published more by her than anyone else. Her work is poetic, sensual, scary, imaginative, erotic if it needs to be. She’s got everything. 

And a final hell yeah; I could not agree more with his assessment of the winner take all state of publishing, death of the midlist author, and our need to cultivate more readers:

Forty years ago, you could assume anything in SF/fantasy would sell more like thirty to fifty thousand copies in mass-market paperback without even trying. Just slap the right kind of cover on it and it would sell this acceptable minimum. Well, maybe the ceiling on genre fiction has come off, and today you get an Anne McCaffrey or a Stephen King who can sell millions of copies, but we have also lost the floor, which protected us. Now the major publishers are only interested in writers who have the potential to be the next McCaffrey or King, not the interesting mid-list writers who are worth publishing for what they are, even if they never will sell a million copies — the Davidsons and Laffertys. We have lost our innocence. Once it was demonstrated that SF/fantasy/horror could go to the top of the bestseller lists, anything that doesn’t is now viewed as a failure by those faceless, impersonal Suits who control corporate publishing.

… The U.S.A. has a population of three hundred million. Two thousand copies is not a lot. We have a reading public the size of Luxemborg’s. What any genre needs to stay healthy is more readers and a means of reaching them.

Of pastiche and John C. Hocking’s Conan and the Living Plague

These dead are unquiet...

I don’t mind pastiche … which is I suppose a bit of a lukewarm way of saying I support it.

Nonetheless it’s how I feel.

I’m on record as loving SSOC and Roy Thomas stories and even (gasp) some of the old Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp Conan stories. I’m not a purist, as long as we have unadulterated Howard somewhere in print I’m good with new stories and interpretations. The Del Reys stand, so bring on the rest.

No one will ever match Howard at his own game, because he himself was of course in every story. Unless you have access via medium to his soul, or his ghost visits your shoulder like Conan did Howard and compels you to write, there will never be another REH.

While I used to indulge in Conan pastiche it’s not something I seek out anymore. I don’t read much of it these days … but once in a while I dip back in. I’ve bought the first half dozen SSOCs. I’ve read Scott Oden’s The Shadow of Vengeance and S.M. Stirling's Blood of the Serpent. I still feel a dim stir when I see the name of “Conan” in new art and stories.

What do I think makes for a good Howard pastiche? I have a few boxes I like to see checked. Here they are, and as with everything I write, YMMV.

The first and faraway most important: The story must be good, above all else. This almost covers for breaking any of the subsequent rules that follow.

The character should closely mirror the original. Conan should feel like Conan, act according to the broad parameters of his established nature. If not, why write him? That said, if a pastiche writes an immature Conan or an aged Conan reflecting on his deathbed, I would expect some new ground to be broken.

The world should feel that way too. I don’t think you should eliminate Hyborian Age countries or distort the literal map Howard laid down. The same goes for its peoples; Cimmerians should be mostly brooding and fierce, Picts savage and Pict-y. But I’m OK with adding to what is there, exploring a new island in the Vilayet or a dark and forgotten corner of Stygia, creating outlier characters and so on.

Here's what I don’t care about.

Established timelines. Because pastiche isn’t canon there is no need to connect up all the history. There is no way Conan could pack in all the adventure from every pastiche into one lifetime, so we can assume that pastiche operates independent of other pastiche—and even the originals. I don’t care how or when pastiche fits into the established storyline, even Howard’s chronology. Telling me that Conan couldn’t have done something because he was 27 at the time and a pirate might be technically accurate, but it also makes me yawn. YMMV.

Writing style. I admire when someone like Scott Oden can mirror Howard’s prose, but I don’t find it necessary. When someone covers a song I actually prefer hearing their own interpretation. Bruce Dickinson covering Sabbath Bloody Sabbath on Nativity on Black is not trying to be Ozzy … and its awesome and still honors Black Sabbath. Likewise Rob Zombie put his own unique Charles Manson inspired spin on Children of the Grave and Yungblud is fanastic covering “Changes” with his very different voice, albeit the same lyrics. Honor the original but do something new. It can sound different, whether musically or on the ear of a reader. The style should be appealing of course but it doesn’t have to sound like REH’s prose. YMMV.

***

This is a big roundabout way of saying that author John C. Hocking checks my boxes with Conan and the Living Plague, one of two complete novels published in the recent Conan: City of the Dead by Titan Books (2024).

I’m not a fan of plot summaries and I don’t feel like doing one here. But here’s what I liked about it:

Conan feels like Conan. I really like when we get to see how strong Conan is in non-combat situations. There’s a great early scene of him wielding a log-like wooden “sword” that leaves  hardened mercenaries with their mouths agape; we see him lifting stone doors of crypts that baffle other strong men, on and on. Fun. But he also comports himself with the same rough barbaric code of honor, the same ferocity in battle but not recklessness, and so on.

The writing, which includes some really fine turns of phrase and metaphor. Hocking is an underrated stylist even within the small circle that is S&S but I really enjoyed passages like this:

Pezur saw Conan bare his teeth in an unconscious snarl of defiance and felt a surge of kinship with the barbarian. He knew the Cimmerian felt the rigid touch of those distant eyes as keenly as he did.

Indeed, Conan sensed the unnatural scrutiny as well as if the dim figure had reached out across Dulcine and laid a cold hand upon his breast. The undulled instincts of the barbarian sent the same thrill along his nerves that he might have felt confronting a lion in a jungle grove. Though he could not give it a name, he knew there was danger here, a danger born of black sorcery.

“What are you, devil?” growled Conan.

It’s not Howard’s style but it doesn’t have to be.

The fast pace. The chapters are short and end on something of a cliffhanger, the action  almost unrelenting. Yes, we do have other characters, a small cast, which you need in a novel that doesn’t spend time inside the characters’ minds. But it’s still recognizably S&S, nothing like A Game of Thrones or its epic fantasy ilk. It reads fast.

A few particularly memorable scenes. A harrowing trip through dank underground crypts pursued by a horde of ghouls, and later an encounter with waves of plague infected living that attack in mindless zombie like hordes and whose touch brings death, are suitably hair-raising and stick with you.

Nice fights with mini-bosses. No spoilers but Conan has a nice mano-y-mano with a towering armored plague knight that was really freaking cool, a sorcerer wielding dangerous spells, and so on.

The sword-and-sorcery easter eggs (don’t think I didn’t see these, John). Two paired soldiers hold Conan at crossbow point, one named Rald and the other, Duar. A spell ripped right out of Jack Vance. Nice little nods there to the S&S faithful. And there’s also Lovecraftian menace and oblique reference, including the likes of the Hounds of “Thandalos.”

Little dashes of humor. Conan engaging in a bit of self-deprecation over his (very) short career as a sorcerer. A mercenary mutters that a sword weighs as much as his wife. And so on. It’s OK to have a little fun in S&S.

Rare 2019 Perilous Worlds edition... it's mine! mua-ha.

The plague and the characters needing to mask anticipates the COVID-19 pandemic. Prescient but happenstance because the novel was written pre-COVID (I have a rare copy of a limited printing from 2019), but it nevertheless serves as prospective commentary and evokes memories of the real-world outbreak.

I noticed a few wobbles (a side character is given a backstory late for no reason; perhaps too much description of architecture and rooms and the like, one of the big bads, a demon, is set up well but removed from the stage too quickly), but these are minor and hardly worth noting. 

What Conan and the Living Plague is not, is REH. It never will be, nor can be. And that’s OK. It’s still a hell of a lot of fun and a worthy S&S novel.

Celtic Adventures wrapup and on into Cimmerian September

Worth your 10 cents...

I just closed the cover on DMR Books’ latest release, Celtic Adventures, and had to say a few words about the final entry collected therein: “Grana, Queen of Battle,” by John Barnett.

Because it’s damned good. 

Were it anthologized amid a dozen modern S&S/historical adventures it would not be out of place—except it would likely be the best story in the collection. And it was written in 1913 for The Cavalier. That’s pre-World War I for those keeping score at home, and yet it is in no way dated. In fact, it is burning with life in these pages.

“Grana, Queen of Battle” is a novella comprised of six chapters and 94 pages. Each chapter is a standalone story with minor reference to the preceding chapter, the same type of thing Howard Andrew Jones was doing with the first book in his Hanuvar series. Clearly this is the stuff from which sword-and-sorcery would be made. Short, episodic stories building on one another, action-packed, relatively small stakes (save to Grana herself of course).

Grana O'Malley is a badass S&S style heroine. Per the introduction she was a real person, a formidable Irish pirate whom the English dubbed Grace O’Malley. She comes alive in these pages thanks to Barnett’s skill. REH dedicated “Sword Woman,” his story of Dark Agnes, to Grace and a few others.

In the barest space imaginable—the first three pages—we meet a dying Irish chieftain, Dubhdara. Sonless, his lands and castle must pass to his daughter Grana. We meet Grana’s sidekick, a rawboned and lean fool in motley named Bryan Tiege, deadly with a sword. And we meet Grana, “a woman whom Fate restricted to a petty stage, but who might have ruled a kingdom. A woman who mastered men, whom men followed because she was stronger, bolder, and more daring than themselves.” And we get the setup for the conflict of the first chapter, a brewing coup by Red Donell, who with his lord on his deathbed schemes to take the castle for himself--even as Dubhdara breathes his last, and Grana offers her dying father a few comforting final words.

All of this is done with incredibly deft strokes of detail and emotion in just three pages. The economy is worth studying for anyone writing this stuff.

It’s positively wonderful and reminds me why I read S&S and classic historical adventure.

***

It’s Cimmerian September, the equivalent of the high holy days for sword-and-sorcery and all things REH.

I don’t typically participate but the enthusiasm I’m seeing feels around the interwebs is contagious. I might have to get in on it, either with something by Howard or a Conan pastiche. Or both. 

What are you planning to read?

"Mystification," Manilla Road

Dialing up a bit of Manilla Road this Metal Friday, one of the most swordly-and-sorcerous metal bands ever. 

I love the atmosphere of "Mystification." Mark Shelton sounds like an evil sorcerer out of a Clark Ashton Smith story here.

Through the winds of time

A poet found The Key

To The Elder Rhyme

Some call the song mystic

With tales of gore

And terror in the night

His words, no more,

Have kept me mystified

Someone in an online group posted that they fail to see the aesthetic connection between metal and S&S (?) Sarcasm doesn't always come across well on the internet so I hope this was a case of crossed wires ...  otherwise this is a really bad take.

Mystification is basically Weird Tales with guitars.

Manilla Road also has a song called ... Queen of the Black Coast.

Manowar exists.

I've got nothing else.

Sword of the Gael by Andrew J. Offutt, a review

Sword-and-sorcery typically works better in the short form than the novel, and I think I know why. It’s a lot harder to sustain breakneck action over 250-300 pages. I was reminded not for the first time of this maxim while reading Andrew J. Offutt’s Sword of the Gael (1975, Zebra Books), which I found to be a bit of a mixed bag.

Sword of the Gael is the first in a series of six books from Offutt (and later co-writer Keith Taylor) of Cormac Mac Art, a quasi-historical/mythic High King of Ireland out of medieval Irish legend. Robert E. Howard wrote a handful of stories about the character collected posthumously in Tigers of the Sea, two of which were completed by S&S author Richard Tierney. It is from REH’s interpretation of Mac Art that we get Offutt’s series. 

Got all that? If you want to learn more about Taylor's participation in the series check out this Q&A I did with him over on DMR Books.

Sword of the Gael opens with a couple fantastic chapters that hooked me out of the gate. A dragon-prowed ship bearing Cormac and his crew capsizes in a storm; many men drown but about a dozen or so including the mighty Dane Wulfhere the Skull-splitter cling to the wreckage and survive after they wash ashore on a rocky isle. Combing the barren spit for any signs of life or life-giving water they happen across a temple of anachronistic construction. Something not of Roman construction, nor even ancient Celtic, but of Atlantis. And it’s occupied by a hostile Viking crew.

Had Offutt ended there it would have made for an excellent short story. But after this well-done piece of Howardian world-building and weirdness we never see nor hear of Atlantis nor the temple again. A classic unused Chekov’s gun. Maybe we will in the second book, The Undying Wizard (1976) however this is not pitched as a series nor a book one. And after the great opening sequence the story begins to flag.

But hold your judgement for a moment. 

Though it fails to live up to its opening promise there are many interesting elements in the reminder of the book that carried me through to the end. Offutt says in the introduction he read millions of words and took thousands of words of notes researching ancient Ireland, aka., Eirrin, and in the process fell in love with its history and legends. This is evident. The story feels historical and interesting in a way a lot of generic fantasy does not, clothing and food and Irish culture faithfully depicted. We get so little of Ireland/Eirrin as the setting of fantasy novels (Taylor’s Bard is a notable exception) that this was welcome, and moreover well-rendered. Here’s a bit of that rendering, from a monologue delivered from Cormac’s love interest, the Irish princess Samaire:

There are no former sons of Eirrin, Cormac of Connacht! It’s a spell there is on the fens and the bogs, and the cairn-topped hills of green Eirrin called Inisfail, and it envelops us all at birth like a cloak about the mind. We are forever under it—even those who so long and long ago moved across Magh Rian to Dalriada in Alba. Eirrin-born is Eirrin-bound, as if by stout cords and golden chains.”

This stirs my Irish blood. What do you expect with a last name like Murphy? More than a bit of Eirrin is in me (as well as Danish blood from my mother’s side). 

Speaking of stirred/spilled blood, we also get a desperate pitched battle against Picts, and a fun battle against a pool dwelling giant squid. We get a reasonably well done and familiar story of a hero’s homecoming, back to the land that once declared him an exile. Cormac is the son of a murdered high king but cannot return to Eirrin because of a killing he committed years before at a great assembly, a sort of great fair and friendly gathering of competitive clan rivals where no quarrels are permitted (not unlike a Danish Thing). But the young and hot-headed Cormac is goaded to violence and flees his homeland for a dozen years.

Offutt isn't Howard but he’s a good storyteller in his own right. Sword of the Gael is earnest (Offutt even includes bits of his own verse); you cannot fake its enthusiasm. As a standalone novel it’s not entirely successful. But it’s an interesting failure, entertaining enough, and moreover instructive for writers working in the field. I’d give it a tentative recommendation to S&S fans.

A sorely needed, swordly-and-sorcerous week off

It's 5 o'clock somewhere ...

My grandfather had fabulous foresight. After WW2 he and his buddy bought a piece of property in the lakes region of New Hampshire and built a pair of cabins that still stand today, with modifications. It’s an inspiring story of wartime service and family sacrifice you can find here on the blog.

We still have the cabin. It’s passed through a couple generations and today I’m a 1/5 owner. My extended family splits the cost of utilities, taxes, maintenance, etc, and we all put in for vacation weeks in the summer.

I’m currently in the midst of our week away. I didn’t realize how much I needed it until I saw the lake, and felt an unseen load lift from my shoulders. It had been too long.

My company has an unlimited PTO policy, which means you can take as much time off as you want (with approval). What this ideal scenario means in practice is often less time off. Guilt and the protestant work ethic are powerful forces. I hadn’t’ taken anything beyond a few scattered days off this year. But right now I’m enjoying a whole lot of little. Pontoon boat rides, Old Fashioneds, the mournful wails of loons.

I’ve put blogging on hold too, but this morning as I was sitting out on our deck listening to the wind sighing through the maples and ripple across the water I was inspired to write something I could reasonably shoehorn onto the blog.

Here’s a few swordly and sorcerous updates.

I enjoyed a visit from Tom Barber. Tom and I get together at least once a year but typically at his house. This year I invited him to the camp and took him out on a leisurely pontoon boat cruise. We got caught up on everything in his life, including the loss of his beloved partner Terri. Tough times for Tom but he seemed to leave in good spirits.

After a span of more than a decade I watched The Whole Wide World with my wife and daughter. I loved it; they liked it although they found themselves annoyed by Bob’s erratic behavior and creeped out with his too close relationship with Hester. This is a very well-done movie and it left me choked up, but I can see the issues it can cause for an outsider with no context for Howard’s life. For example, there is no mention of the extremely late payments from Weird Tales, which we now know greatly impacted his mental health. But you can't expect too much from a 106 minute film and there is some fabulous acting by Zellweger and D'Onofrio. I enjoyed this revisit of Cross Plains.

I’m reading Andrew J. Offutt's Sword of the Gaels and finding it fun. The first two chapters are absolutely fantastic, setting up the reader for a late Roman Empire/Viking Age historical … that suddenly takes an unexpected left turn into the weird. Cormac and his crew are shipwrecked on a seemingly deserted rocky isle and discover a fortress that seems out of another era, evoking deep ancestral memories of Atlantis and snake-men:

Unfortunately some 70 pages later I can feel a bit of sag that plagues so much long-form S&S. It seems hard to sustain swordplay and fast pacing and lack of character interiority over a few hundred pages. We’ll see what else Offutt can do with the rest of the book.

I read a draft of David C. Smith’s Cold Thrones and Arcane Arts. This is a new title in the works from Pulp Hero Press that offers analysis of what makes sword-and-sorcery fiction tick—what it is, and what it does well when it’s at its best. Interestingly Smith spends most of the page count on new S&S, authors like John Fultz and Schuyler Hernstrom and John Hocking and Howard Andrew Jones and many, many others besides. I suspect this will be well-received in the community although I did offer up a few ideas for expansion and revision. Some inspired stuff here.

Lakelife!

S&S publishing news: Plunder-a-plenty

Lots of swords, lots of sorcery going on.

My friend Ken Lizzi, one of the dudes with whom I split a house rental at 2023 Robert E. Howard Days, is having his Cesar the Bravo fiction collected and kickstarted by Cirsova. Cesar, a sometimes-condottiero and a bravo by trade, has earned a reputation as one of the best swords for hire in the city of Plenum. If you need a foe humiliated before a cheering crowd, he’s your man! 

This collection includes 5 previously published adventures plus an all-new full-length novel! Ken is a good dude and a good writer. Get in on that today.

I'm giving Old Moon Quarterly a shot. I bought one of their issues recently and now am kickstarting issues #9-10. One of these is Arthurian themed which ticks a lot of my boxes. I'm liking the aesthetic of this publication. As I write this entry I can see they've met their funding minimum and now we'll see what else they might unlock. Maybe Excalibur from the stone?

Digging the Celtitude.

Speaking of great aesthetics, DMR Books has published Celtic Adventures, with one of the best covers I've seen. This reminds me I still need to pick up Swords of Steel vol. 4. Some awesome reprints in this one, including the likes of REH and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, whose "Vengeance" in DMR Books' Viking Adventures I could not put down.

I'm also kickstarting David C. Smith's Sometime Lofty Towers. You should too, as its one of the best modern sword-and-sorcery stories I've read. You can read my prior review of this fine title here. This one is just about to fund, you can be the one to put it over the top!

In summary, no shortage of excellent stuff going on these days in S&S. I love the old stuff too but try to support new authors and projects. 

Note: This roundup is far from comprehensive, just a few things that have crossed my transom recently.

I've finally got it: Monster Tales: Vampires, Werewolves & Things

Pumped for this delivery.

When I was a kid I used to regularly check out Monster Tales: Vampires, Werewolves & Things (1973, Rand McNally & Company) from my elementary school library. I LOVED this book even though it scared the piss out of me. But when I moved on to middle school that was the last I saw of it.

Until now.

You may recall my prior posts about it here on the blog. Here's the first, A scare from the deep mists of time: Monster Tales, from July 2009. At the time I could not even remember the name of the book, only a few vivid details. A happy Google search struck paydirt. I wrote at the time:

Were you ever seized by the intoxicating memory of reading a much-loved book as a child, only to despair that you'd never remember the title? This happened to me today. From some subterranean depths in my brain came the tale of a boy who exacts revenge on his family's killers by voluntarily taking on the form of a werewolf. I remembered it being a short story contained in a red hardcover book, filled with startling black-and-white illustrations. I remember reading it over and over again in my elementary school library in the 1970s. But that was the extent of my recollection.

I plugged in "werewolf stories for children" and "horror anthologies for children and 1970s" into Google to see what would come up... and eventually came across this marvelous link, courtesy of The Haunted Closet: http://the-haunted-closet.blogspot.com/2008/10/monster-tales-vampires-werewolves.html.

Twelve years later I revisited Monster Tales in a post for the blog of Goodman Games/Tales from the Magician's Skull, Brian Murphy's Gateways to Sword-and-Sorcery. Monster Tales was one of my gateway drugs to S&S, and a potent one. As I wrote in that 2021 blog post:

In hindsight I can see how I was being inevitably steered toward sword-and-sorcery by consuming its various components; historical elements, grit and danger, monsters, tough and resourceful heroes, horror, and the weird. I am grateful to have had access to books that moved me, exposed me to grim struggle, even disturbed me. Here’s a PSA for parents of young children: A few bad dreams are OK if the reward is making a lifelong reader. 

Within a year or so of consuming the titles in this list I would discover Robert E. Howard in the pages of The Savage of Sword of Conan, and my path was fixed. But I have these gateway books to thank for getting me started down that savage trail.

Sixteen years later, I now have a copy of my own.

I haven't been looking with any regularity. No ebay or Google alerts. Just the occasional search... and blanching at the typical $80-100 asking price (I've seen it listed for as much as $120. WTF). But a couple weeks ago I popped it into ebay and saw a copy listed by Thrift Books for $33. Immediately bought it. Today it arrived in the mail, in surprisingly excellent shape.

With patience, you can still get a decent deal. BTW I also tracked down a copy of Fire-Hunter.

Looking forward to a re-read for the first time in a VERY long time.

Tell me these aren't some creepy images for a kid...

Sword-and-sorcery pinball machines are fucking cool

That’s the post.

I love the pairing of sword-and-sorcery aesthetic with machines of glass and steel. My idle daydream is to acquire a couple. Given the time and money I’d build a dedicated gaming den, dominated by … Gorgar.

I’ve never played this but chanced upon it in a happy internet search and fell in love with this and a bunch of other games that hold a dim place in my Gen-X memories.

What’s not to love about Gorgar? Hot chick in a bikini on a bloody altar? Check. Skulls. Muscular warriors. And giant snakes everywhere (a meme has been circulating that sword-and-sorcery is when the snakes are big). “Beware of the Pit.”

And of course, Gorgar himself, a red skinned demon with a menacing bass voice. The world’s first-ever talking pinball machine.

Then there’s Sorcerer. Seriously, look at this thing: https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/sorcerer/gallery It’s got that stoned 70s vibe, an image you once saw airbrushed on the side of a van. Hard to rip your eyes away.

Centaur (1981) is absolutely balls-out as well. Take a listen to the voice and sound effects, a robotic “Destroy Centaur!” Incredible.

Even cooler, the centaur isn’t half man, half horse, it’s a half man, half motorbike. Wielding an axe. This can be none more metal.

This dude has it going on with Centaur in his game room (and don’t think I don’t see that collected edition of Captain America).

Apparently player demand for Centaur led to Centaur 2. This video gives a better look at the complex clockwork mechanisms underpinning the game. Pretty freaking cool.

A few others include

Paragon.

Black Knight (1980). 

Seawitch.

Grand Lizard.

(edit) and of course Lost World, which I once highlighted here).

Absent any space restrictions I’d include Hercules, allegedly the world’s largest pinball machine. Which is reportedly lousy to play but sizewise it goes to 11. 

Today everyone is playing fully immersive MMORPGs with photorealistic graphics and novel-quality storylines. I have no problem with this, even though I gave up video games long ago. But there is something about real steel and glass, painted cabinets and game boards and lightbulbs and rubber bumpers. The tactile, analog, reality of these games, that have huge appeal.

Further there is something about the aesthetic of the late 70s/very early 80s games in particular that grip me. The colors have that Frank Frazetta/Jeff Jones muddiness/dun pallor to them, yellows and tans mixed with splashes of bright red and pale gold. As you slide into the mid-and late 80s the cabinets are brighter, a bit more comic book bright and garish. There are still amazing games here but just a little bit outside of what I’m looking for. And while I’m no pinball historian the video game boom of the early 80s dimmed this golden age of the silver ball.

By the way this theoretical S&S game room is not restricted to pinball. I’d have Heavy Metal, Fire and Ice, Conan the Barbarian 1982 and Thundarr the Barbarian playing in a continuous loop on a projection screen. Perhaps Gauntlet in the corner, or Joust. And of course, a bar with a couple kegs of beer tapped 24-7. Which is dangerous … but sword-and-sorcery is not for the faint of heart, and ale must be quaffed in quantity. 

My tastes are simple, Conan with a slight tweak:

Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I play pinball, and am content.”