Cimmerian sighting: Iron Maiden's The Trooper

(Note: Over at The Cimmerian, fellow blogger Deuce Richardson asked if we could supply posts to commemorate October 25th, which has resounded throughout military history as a date for epic, bloody battles. Following is my tribute to a famous charge and the heavy metal song that immortalized it, at least in my eyes).

Not everyone who comes to appreciate history arrives via the same path. Some have their interest piqued in school by reading traditional textbooks. Others learn from wisdom passed down in tales told by grandparents and great-grandparents. Still others get hooked from watching the (occasionally) fine programming of the History and Discovery channels.

Then there are those who learned about great historic battles at the feet of those long-haired, spandex-encased professors of heavy metal, Iron Maiden. I count myself in this crowd. ‘Twas Maiden who got me more interested in learning about the horrific World War I battle of Paschendale. ‘Twas Maiden that helped provide the impetus for my lifelong love of World War II with their take on the Battle of Britain, “Aces High.” And of course, it was Maiden that helped spark my interest in that famous engagement of the Crimean War, the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava.

This insane, glorious charge of horsemen into the roaring mouths of Russian guns was of course made famous by British poet Alfred Tennyson in his poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” But for those denim-jacketed outcast teens growing up in the 80’s, the Charge was immortalized by Maiden in their smash-hit, “The Trooper.” I've always thought of Iron Maiden as the heavy metal band that catered to the semi-nerdy crowd. If you were smart, you liked history and of course you liked Iron Maiden.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian web site.

Cimmerian sighting: A Q&A session with the editors of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly

Outside of a handful of anthologies and magazines, the market for the genre known as heroic fantasy is as dry as the sands of Stygia. Which is why I’m so excited to see newcomer Heroic Fantasy Quarterly (HFQ) enter the fray, broadsword in hand.

HFQ describes itself as a home for stories with “an emphasis on action. Be it an exchange of blows or insults, the spurring-on of steed, or the application of poultices to wounds, things happen and happen quickly in the pages of HFQ.”

HFQ publishes both short stories and heroic-flavored poetry on its web site. It’s a free publication and also pays its contributors, which will hopefully encourage new young writers to publish in this sadly neglected field.

Below, editors Adrian Simmons and David Farney generously provided the following answers to The Cimmerian regarding their new venture. HFQ published its first issue in July and recently released its second issue, featuring three short stories and two poems.

Q: What made you launch this venture, given the general trends in publishing that favor multi-volume, epic fantasy?

Adrian Simmons: Crazy as it sounds, the idea came from all the young adult fiction that grownups are reading. Why are they reading YA fiction? Because something HAPPENS in it. Plus, clearly there is a niche—the universe of short heroic fantasy venues has been shrinking, and although there are several places that pay for and publish the genre, there was a need for someone that paid triple digits.

David Farney: Turning 40! I’ve had real difficulty finding any fantasy I enjoyed as much as the Elric and Conan and Corum stories that blew me away as a teen. Translation: I think in HFQ I’m trying to rediscover or recapture some essence of my childhood. And though it’s been a lot of work, some of the stories coming into HFQ are indeed rekindling that sense of amazement in me. Also, like Adrian, I agree that S&S and Heroic Fantasy are getting pushed aside by the many other fantasy subgenres, both in short fiction and novel-length. That said, there’s PLENTY of solid short fantasy published both online and in print, but a real lack of S&S and Heroic. As writers of Heroic Fantasy, it occurred to us there are doubtless many others just like us who can’t find appropriate markets for their work, or who as fans keep reading older and older material (or YA) because the writing and storytelling is digestible and much faster paced.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: Karl Edward Wagner's contributions to the horror genre

Horror fiction has held a universal appeal throughout the ages. Every culture has had its myths of demons and ghosts and were-beasts. If Stephen King is read by millions today, so did Victorian readers line up in the streets to buy the latest chapters of the penny-dreadfuls, and eighteenth century readers shivered beside their candles over the pages of the newest Gothic novel. People like to be frightened, whether by a movie or a book or just a good spooky story told by firelight.

—Karl Edward Wagner, Introduction to The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X

There are many reasons to admire the horror anthology, among them the strong argument that horror fiction works best in the short form. There’s something to be said for the slowly simmering terror of novels like Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, but the nasty, bloodletting jabs and hard, short, terrifying hooks of Stephen King’s “The Boogeyman” and Ray Bradbury’s “The Crowd” are just plain icy fun.

In addition, I’ve always admired the utility of the anthology, which serves to gather the best material from a daunting range of publications and publish it in one place, saving readers an enormous amount of time and effort (and money) from having to track it all down.

Though my collection of The Year’s Best Horror Stories is incomplete, I have enough volumes on my bookshelf to state that the late Karl Edward Wagner did some fine work during his time at the helm. KEW took over editorship of The Year’s Best Horror Stories in 1979, starting with series VIII. He remained as its editor for 15 issues until his death in 1994, when the anthology ceased its run with series XXII. Though he loved swords and sorcery, KEW had an obvious passion and erudite eye for horror as well.

KEW’s great enthusiasm for the genre was apparent from his introductions to The Year’s Best Horror Stories. In a pre-internet age, KEW provided a comprehensive overview of the year in horror publishing, from large magazines like Amazing and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, to small but evocatively-named small press outfits like Nyctalops, Cryptoc, Skullduggery, and Ogre. Horror was exploding in the late 70’s and early 80’s and KEW served as a shrewd and tireless surveyor of a broad, diverse field of anthologies, large circulation magazines, semi-pro publications, and the amateur press. Like the late Steve Tompkins, KEW was exceedingly well-read, almost disturbingly so.

KEW was quite outspoken and wasn’t afraid to ruffle some feathers—or even extend a few middle fingers—in his introductions to The Year’s Best Horror Stories. In the introduction to 1993’s Series XXI—KEW’s and the series’ second-to-last entry—he fired a wicked shot across the bow of splatterpunk, a movement in the horror field that began in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Splatterpunk works were noted for their graphic violence and sex, which was initially shocking but soon grew repetitive, tiring, and empty. Said KEW:

Sexual themes are now being used intelligently and are crucial to the story, as opposed to the teenage wish-fulfillment jerk-off exercises too often seen before. I have often wondered how many of the exuberant sex-and-gore writers are actually virgins and are incapable of cutting up a chicken or cleaning a fish. Or peeling a potato.

Ouch, that drew a little blood.

Like all anthologies, The Year’s Best Horror Stories was not perfect. More than once after finishing a story my reaction was, “Surely there must have been something more worthy of inclusion from 1982 than that.” But it’s a matter of taste, I suppose, and I’ve yet to read an anthology of short stories in which I enjoyed every entry. And the majority of entries in The Year’s Best Horror Stories were good.

In addition to his work as editor, KEW could pen a fine horror tale of his own. Although fellow blogger Al Harron very eloquently stole my thunder, I too would like to take a moment to recognize his fine tale “Sticks,” as well as mention a few of his other tales.

“Sticks” won an August Derleth Award from The British Fantasy Society as the best short fiction of 1974. It’s a deeply disquieting story, rendered even more so as it is based on a true account.

KEW obviously drew inspiration for “Sticks” from Lovecraft, whose works he deeply admired. “Sticks” contains an old but still active cult, cyclopean structures from an ancient age, and an evocation to awake the “Great Old Ones” from the earth. It even takes place in the heart of Lovecraft’s Arkham country, with references throughout to upstate New York, New Hampshire, and western Massachusetts. This is my neck of the woods and I always experience a thrill knowing that I’ve wandered some of the same streets and hills from Lovecraft’s and KEW’s tales. While this area is certainly far more developed than it was in the 1920s and 30’s (or the 1940s-1970s period described in “Sticks”), there’s enough wooded and desolate patches around to get you thinking that, yes, perhaps, something old and unspeakably evil may still lurk in these ‘here woods.

“Sticks” was inexplicably passed over for inclusion in The Year’s Best Horror Stories (it would have qualified for Series III, back when Richard Davis was editing the anthology), but has been widely published elsewhere. It first saw publication in the March 1974 issue of Whispers magazine. Since then it’s made appearances in the revised edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and The Mammoth Book of Zombies (its inclusion in the latter is a bit of a head-scratcher—a lich, though undead, ain’t a zombie), as well as the first Whispers anthology, which I own.

The landmark horror collection Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley, contains another fine KEW horror story, “Where The Summer Ends.” It bears some resemblance to “Sticks,” but instead of arcane bundles of tree branches, the disquieting motif is a heavy growth of kudzu, a climbing, coiling, pestilential vine that’s become a nuisance in the southern United States. Wagner set this story in a run-down section of his native Knoxville, Tennessee, where in between shabby, run-down Victorian houses and an abandoned ghetto a lurking fear threatens to overwhelm the cracked and broken sidewalks, “a green pall over the dismal ruin, the relentless tide of kudzu.” Beneath the vines, something even more evil waits, watching.

I own two additional books containing works by KEW, including Whispers III, edited by Stuart David Schiff, which includes “The River of Night’s Dreaming.” In this tale of madness and dark eroticism, KEW draws inspiration from Robert Chambers’ The King in Yellow, a book which also impressed Lovecraft. It’s a beautifully written and powerfully evocative story of dreamlike, hallucinating horror.

Night Visions: Dead Image, edited by Charles L. Grant, features works by David Morrell, Joseph Payne Brennan, and KEW. It contains three tales by Wagner: “Shrapnel,” “Old Loves,” and “Blue Lady, Come Back.” Dead Image also includes a wonderful introduction by Grant which casts a good deal of illumination on KEW the writer and The Man:

By now, it’s a tired comparison—“he looks like a Viking having a holiday in Carolina.” Maybe he does. But he’s not as big as he looks—he gives the illusion of size, carried the illusion of intimidation, but to hear him speak is to hear a quiet man who tends to consider his words before they’re out, who knows the field, and who cares about it and the writers who are trying to make their marks before they’re smothered by the competition.

He is the creator of Kane, my favorite barbarian because he is a barbarian and not a Lancelot (or worse, Gawain) in furs; and he is the author of not enough short fiction for any of his fans’ tastes. He does not write fast. He does not, on the other hand, write slowly either. He writes deliberately. There are few who care about the language as much as Wagner does, fewer still who care, or even realize, that dark fantasy must deal first with people, and only then with whatever fantastic element is to be included in the piece … there is thunder, to be sure, and there is also a delicacy of touch and genuine emotion that is particularly, and specially, his.

Like Al, I highly recommend that readers of The Cimmerian and The Silver Key track down a copy of “Sticks,” “The River of Night’s Dreaming,” and KEWs other work in the horror field. And while you’re at it, hunt up some back issues of The Year’s Best Horror Stories, too. Hours of chilling reading await, courtesy of the late, great KEW.

May he rest in peace in a quiet grave.

Cimmerian sighting: Reveling in the slaughter of Agincourt

Bernard Cornwell’s Agincourt (2009, HarperCollins Publishers) does not tell the story of a battle, but rather of a terrible red butchery. Englishmen poleaxing French men-at-arms like cattle. Nobles, men of dignity and fine lineage and status, lying kicking in the mud, screaming, as low-born archers pried open their visors and thrust daggers through their eyes and into their brain. Gruesome stuff.

True, Agincourt was a great victory for the English in the Hundred Years’ War, one that has resounded through the ages. The events of October 25, 1415 are an incredible tale of a few (6,000 English soldiers) prevailing against many (an estimated 30,000 French knights and men-at-arms). The battle has gained additional resonance by Shakespeare’s magnificent play Henry V. But its actual events were not glorious.

In other words, it’s a tale that historical fiction writer extraordinaire Bernard Cornwell was born to tell. And tell the story he does, quite faithfully and well, although it does come off as a bit formulaic.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site .

A trifecta of links

Cross-posted fromThe Cimmerian, here's some interesting links from around the web.

The second issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is out. The guys over at HFQ put out a very enjoyable first issue, and they're back with three more short stories and two poems (love that!) for issue no. 2. It's free, so what are you waiting for? Go on over and do some reading.

A review of the Tantor Media audiobook, The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian . Hey, the author really seems to really know his REH :). Seriously though, SFFaudio.com, a cool Web site that you should be checking out, allowed me to post a review on their web site. I'll be very happy if it brings a few more REH readers into the fold.

How to Arm a 14th Century Knight. Great video and very instructive, if you like this sort of thing. I'm in the midst of reading Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell and had my interest in armor piqued. It's a good read so far, but I'm not sure whether I buy Cornwell's assertion that a longbow--even firing a bodkin-tipped arrow--could penetrate that type of protection with ease.

Cimmerian sighting: Good vs. bad art

All this talk around the web about the new Solomon Kane film has me thinking about bad vs. good art. Now, I have no idea whether Kane is a good film or bad. Although some of the early reviews I’ve read have dimmed my optimism, Kane may very well turn out to be the next “Skulls in the Stars” or “The Blue Flame of Vengeance.”

But consider a film like Conan the Destroyer. Many consider it as cheesy but fun, a fair use of an hour and half of one’s time on a rainy weekend afternoon. Personally I think it sucks, and lacks all of the atmosphere, fury, and grandiose bombast that made Conan the Barbarian a great film. But for the sake of argument, let’s just say you like rubbery demons, slapstick sidekicks, and films starring Wilt Chamberlain. That makes Conan the Destroyer harmless entertainment, right?

My equivocal, wishy-washy answer is both yes… and no. Let me explain.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: New Line settles; The Hobbit continues its quest

I’m not sure whether this qualifies as old news, but it’s news to me, and so I thought it worth sharing with readers of The Cimmerian and The Silver Key. According to thehollywoodreporter.com, New Line Cinema has settled a lawsuit from the Tolkien estate and can now press ahead with its film adaptation of “The Hobbit.” From that source:

Good news for all those J.R.R. Tolkien aficionados waiting for a film adaptation of “The Hobbit.”

New Line Cinema, the Tolkien estate and publisher Harper Collins have settled the lawsuit over profits from the “Lord of the Rings” films released between 2001 and 2003.

The Tolkien estate had sued New Line for at least $150 million in damages for failing to pay 7.5% of gross receipts from the three films, which netted an estimated $6 billion combined. The estate claimed it hadn’t been paid “one penny” from its contractual share and took issue with many of New Line’s claimed expenses, including “advertisement” payments made to AOL (also owned by Time Warner) and money for production offices and facilities being used for other New Line films.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: Satify your sword-fetish with Reclaiming the Blade

As a fan of medieval arms and armor and middle-ages combat, I highly enjoyed the recent documentary Reclaiming the Blade (Galatia Films, July 2009). Written and directed by Daniel McNicoll, it’s a well-done, fun piece of film with some terrific visuals, and an obvious labor of love.

Narrated by John Rhys-Davies (perhaps best known for his portrayal of Gimli in The Lord of the Rings), with appearances by LOTR stars Viggo Mortensen and Karl Urban, and LOTR artist John Howe—yes, it has a very strong LOTR feel and flavor—Reclaiming the Blade is all about the king of blades, the sword. Its central message is that the western art of sword-fighting, long overlooked and largely forgotten by historians, was just as effective and rigorously practiced and applied as its eastern counterpart. A popular belief exists that samurai, ninja and other eastern warriors were superior in training and skill to European knights and men at arms. For years many history books have perpetrated the untruth that armored combat was a clumsy and artless affair, consisting of unskilled opponents bashing away at each other with heavy arms and armor.

Reclaiming the Blade puts the sword to the myth by bringing to light the highly detailed and complex hand-to-hand combat texts of the middle-ages, which, with rigor and science, taught advanced forms of combat the equal of anything in the east. It dispels the romantic notions about sword fights, which the film reminds us typically ended on the ground, with the victor grimly driving a point through a visor slit or a weak chink in his opponent’s armor.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site http://www.thecimmerian.com/?p=5525.

Cimmerian sighting: The Tower of the Elephant dazzling on audio

“We saw men grow from the ape and build the shining cities of Valusia, Kamelia, Commoria, and their sisters. We saw them reel before the thrusts of the heathen Atlanteans and Picts and Lemurians. We saw the oceans rise and engulf Atlantis and Lemuria, and the isles of the Picts, and the shining cities of civilization.”

—Yag-kosha, “The Tower of the Elephant”

This week I’ve been listening to my new copy of The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (Tantor Media) on my drive to work. So far the experience has been a delight: With a talented narrator (Todd McLaren) delivering unaltered, pure Robert E. Howard with passion and precision, fans of the Texan can ask for little more.

Listening to the stories—I’ve gotten through six of 15 discs so far—has reminded me of the brilliance of “The Tower of the Elephant,” Howard’s fourth tale of Conan of Cimmeria. Howard would eventually complete 21 Conan stories, a few of which are arguably better than “Elephant” (I’d place “Red Nails,” “Beyond the Black River,” and “Queen of the Black Coast” in this category, representing the pinnacle of Howard’s ability). Nevertheless, when judged against the entirety of his output, “The Tower of the Elephant” is certainly one of Howard’s best stories.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: More thoughts on escape in Howard's Conan stories

I’ve been on an escape kick lately. I wrote about it over at The Cimmerian recently, and in the latest issue of The Dark Man I have a published opinion piece about its presence in the works of Robert E. Howard.

In short, while some critics consider escape a dirty word, I think it’s one of fantasy’s strengths, and a quality of the genre to be embraced, not shunned. I also think that readers who deny fantasy’s escapist element are deluding themselves; we love sword fights, and alien landscapes, and dragons. If we didn’t, wouldn’t we all be reading non-fiction or John Steinbeck novels instead?

As a followup on my recent post extolling the values of escapism, here’s some more of my thoughts on how this quality relates to Howard’s Conan stories.

For readers not afraid to embrace its delicious rewards, Howard’s stories offer a rewarding escape destination, “An age undreamed of when shining Kingdoms lay spread across the world, like blue mantles beneath the stars.” Like a long vacation after many months of thankless work, an escape to the Hyborian Age illuminates new possibilities for the reader.

Here are a few choice offerings.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: Alfred Tennyson at 200

I wish more readers appreciated poetry these days. In years past, verse was held as the highest expression of the written word, back in the days when John Milton wrote Paradise Lost and Shakespeare penned his great tragedies. When Homer composed his immortal Iliad, and an unnamed monk set quill to scroll to preserve the oral tradition of Beowulf, it was the unquestioned king.

Now, however, poetry is a shadow of its former self. This is primarily due to the ascendance of the novel, but also an anemic market for aspiring poets, which is why I give new fantasy fiction publication Heroic Fantasy Quarterly a hearty, resounding, “Hail and Kill” for having the fortitude to publish this out of fashion form of the written word.

All obstacles considered, I suspect poetry would have no problem carving out a sturdy foothold among today’s fantasy fiction readers were there more inspired, creative geniuses like Alfred Tennyson practicing the art. Last week (August 6, 1809) marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of the former United Kingdom Poet Laureate, and while poetry does not hold anywhere near the public acclaim that it did in Tennyson’s day, heroic verse (and prose swords and sorcery fiction, I would argue) remains forever changed because of his marvelous works.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: A harrowing look into 'The Face of Battle'

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, [conjure] up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favor’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.

–William Shakespeare, Henry V

My copy of The Face of Battle greets its reader with the profiled, mail-coifed skull of a Swedish soldier killed in the Battle of Visby, 27 July 1361. This simple, arresting image serves as a proverbial “worth a thousand words” summary of author John Keegan’s seminal work of military history. It is, in my opinion, a must-read for devotees of historical and/or fictional combat.

When I read fantasy literature I often find myself caught up in the action, thrilling in the swirl of combat without regard for the carnage and misery that actual battle wreaks on its participants. The Face of Battle is the bitter antidote to these vicarious feelings of heroism and joyous slaughter that possess me during my literary excursions, reminding me that a battlefield—medieval, Napoleonic, modern, or Hyborian Age, for that matter—is no place that I’d really want to be. Ultimately, Keegan’s book is a powerful statement against the insanity of armed conflict.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site .

A review of REH: Two Gun Raconteur #13

Damon Sasser, as one Robert E. Howard fan to another: Take a bow. The editor of REH: Two Gun Raconteur (The Definitive Howard Journal) gets my praise for putting out a superb issue no. 13.

Before I delve into a description of the contents of REH: TGR 13, I’ll drop any pretense as a neutral reviewer and offer a mea culpa: I stand in awe of Sasser’s publication and the other journals dedicated to the life and writings of Howard. These include REH: TGR , The Dark Man, and until recently, The Cimmerian. These publications require a great deal of work to write and illustrate, edit, produce, and distribute, and are labors of love for which Howard fans owe their editors a debt of gratitude. They certainly have mine. It is wonderful to see the flame of Howard’s literary and cultural reputation, passed down from the likes of Amra in the 1950s, kept alive and burning strong. I hope that these remaining presses of Howard fandom and literary criticism keep running in the years to come.

As a newcomer to the universe of Howard journals, this was the first issue of REH:TGR that I’ve ever seen. Although they say you cannot judge a book by its cover I was sold after viewing its wonderful full-color cover illustration of Kull and Brule battling a horde of serpent-men. This is perhaps the most memorable scene from Howard’s “The Shadow Kingdom,” commonly regarded as the first swords-and-sorcery tale ever written. The journal is a cleanly laid out, 8.5x11 black and white format with glossy paper, illustrated lavishly throughout and nice to look at and hold.

I was doubly pleased to find a Howard story leading off the issue, “The Black Moon.” This is a rare detective story by Howard and one I had never read before. Steve Harrison is a hard-bitten, tough, and muscular investigator that you don’t want to tangle with in a dark alley. The story starts with the murder of Harrison’s friend Wang Yun, an old Chinese shopkeeper who suffers a fatal bite from a cobra deviously planted in his shop. With his dying breath Yun tells Harrison that someone is after the Black Moon, described by Howard as “the biggest, most perfect black pearl in the world,” worn by the Empress Wu-hou in 684 A.D. and the prize of the crown jewels of China. The pearl is hidden in Yun's shop. Harrison spends the rest of the story finding the Black Moon, uncovering the identity of the murderer, and setting the trap to catch Yun’s killer.

“The Black Moon” isn’t Howard’s strongest work and some of the dialogue is downright clunky, but as with almost all of Howard’s tales it’s carried by a compelling, fast-paced plot. There’s also some surprising humor in here (or at least surprising to those who only know Howard through Conan and the grim Solomon Kane): For example, there’s one scene in which a suspect refuses to take the Black Moon, telling Harrison with a perfectly straight face that, “Pearls like that cause more murder than women do.”

As much as I enjoyed “The Black Moon,” the centerpiece of the issue is Bob Roehm’s “The Long and Winding Road: A Poetic History,” which tells in detail the fascinating publication history of The Complete Poetry of Robert E. Howard, as well as previously published books of Howard poetry, including Always Comes Evening (1957) and Singers in the Shadows (1970). Roehm’s piece left me feeling very sad for Howard’s father, Dr. Isaac Howard, who suffered so much following his wife’s passing and his son’s suicide. Dr. Howard dearly wanted to see his son’s poetry published in his lifetime, but unfortunately he passed away in 1944, 13 years before Always Comes Evening and with his son’s poems in limbo, sitting in the hands of the faltering Druid Press. Roehm’s article also gave me another reason to admire the great work of Glenn Lord, whose tireless work tracking down Howard’s poetry led to the publication of Always Comes Evening.

“Kingdoms of Cloud and Moonmist: Casual Observations on the Harold Lamb influence in the Crusader tales of Robert E. Howard” by Brian Leno explores the influence of Lamb on Howard’s writings. Lamb was a noted writer of historic pulp fiction and Howard delved into the genre in the early 1930s with a few stories of his own set during the Crusades. I’ll admit to having read very little of Howard’s work in this genre, an oversight I plan to correct some day.

“The Hyperboreans Re-Imagined” by Morgan Holmes pieces together details on a little known race from the Hyborian Age, the Hyperboreans, offering a different vision of Hyberborea than the one presented in pastiches and role-playing games. This warlike nation lost a showdown with Aquilonia near the end of the Hyborian Age, and, crippled by the destruction of their army, fell to barbarian invasions. Pulling together evidence of various mercenaries and other surviving Hyberboreans from Howard’s tales, Holmes offers informed speculation on what the race and its empire may have been like.

“The Skald and the King” by Chris Green draws comparisons between Marvel Comics great Jack Kirby and Howard, two creative visionaries who burned with a fire to tell stories of larger-than-life heroes.

REH:TGR 13 concludes with “The Mighty Revelator Passes: Tributes and Farewells to Steve Tompkins.” These 10 mini-essays pay tribute to Tompkins, whose untimely death earlier this year extinguished the light of one of the brightest and most passionate minds in Howard studies. As I mentioned in a past post , I never met Steve, but e-mailed with him occasionally and read all of his essays I could find. His passing was and is a painful shock. I think Steve would have been humbled by the esteem in which he was held by guys like Rusty Burke, Mark Finn, Leo Grin, Al Harron, Scotty Henderson, Don Herron, Morgan Holmes, Deuce Richardson, Gary Romeo, Charles Saunders, and Sasser. For those who knew Steve, even peripherally, it’s difficult to get through this section with a dry eye. Access to these heartfelt tributes and farewells was worth the cover price alone.

Cimmerian sighting: King Arthur film to get 300 treatment

Ain’t It Cool News is reporting that comic book writer/novelist Warren Ellis is currently working on a script for a King Arthur movie that he plans to turn over to the producers of 300. For me at least (and I may be a chorus of one here), this news ain’t so cool.

I know 300 was a box-office hit, and by rights I should have enjoyed it more than I did. But while I wasn’t bored with the final product I don’t have the need to ever see it again. 300 was all spectacle and no heart, remarkably devoid of any of the pathos that should have accompanied a story about the noble sacrifice of a group of incredibly brave, well-trained, and loyal soldiers. It's a heartless, empty bronze cuirass with little to offer outside of its shouting, angry Spartan soldiers and CGI-happy, slow-motion, Matrix-style combat.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire did Thermopylae far, far better than Frank Miller or the one-note 300 ever did. Isn’t there more to fantasy films than the Helm’s Deep scene or knockoffs of Gladiator?

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: Will World War Z translate to the screen?

War and zombies are two of my favorite subjects. So it should come as no surprise that Max Brooks’ terrific tale of the zombie war that nearly ended of all humanity—World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War—made for some damned fine reading in my household. Pardon the pun, but I devoured this book the minute it came in the mail.

The best zombie stories are not only fun and gruesome, but also reveal truths about the human condition. In this regard, World War Z can stand alongside the George Romero films with its combination of violence and horror sandwiched around a heaping helping of thoughtful social and political commentary.

The zombie plague of World War Z is deliberately left unexplained—it starts in the heart of China, half-hinted as the result of some undescribed industrial waste leak. But beginning with “Patient Zero,” an infected, gray-skinned, 12-year-old-turned zombie, Brooks manages to paint a very convincing picture of how the plague quickly spreads and threatens to overwhelm all of humanity. Brooks has done his research on politics, world economics, plague outbreaks, military tactics and technology, combat fatigue, and climate conditions, and the result feels like history, an event that really happened (or, chillingly, could actually happen).

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly issue #1 debuts!

Action, bloodletting, foul magic, swordplay, and epic poetry are all featured in the debut issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, now available for a free read here at the HFQ Web site.

The first issue features three pieces of fiction and two poems. These include the following:

Fiction Contents

BLACK FLOWERS OF SEVAN, by James Lecky
Rising star Lecky delivers classic sword and sorcery across a desert frontier. This story will stay with you.

MAN OF MOLDANIA, by Richard Marsden
Marsden brings it in an historical setting. Just when you thought dragon-slaying-heroes were all washed-up, Marsden gives a fresh perspective.

BEYOND THE LIZARD GATE, by Alex Marshall
Marshall comes in at the bell, a Brit holding his own against Irish and American contributors and throwing a potent punch of epic fantasy sure to satisfy the most bloodthirsty of fans.

Poetry Contents

ANSEL’S ARMY, by Elizabeth Barrette
In a word: universal.

LEO PASSIMUS REMEMBERS HIS FIRST VOYAGE, by Danny Adams
The truth as to why most of us don’t go adventuring in the first place.

I very much enjoyed the issue, and it was pretty wild to actually read heroic fantasy inspired verse. Every story was well-written, fast-paced, and packed a twist or two to keep you guessing. If I had to pick a favorite, I’d probably go with the action-packed "Beyond the Lizard Gate" with its compelling theme of revenge, extending beyond even the realms of death.

"Man of Moldania" featured a very well-portrayed and believably dangerous dragon, and a likeable, humorous, aging dragon slayer. "The Black Flowers of Sevan" was the most unique and ambitious of the three stories and contains some great visual imagery and imagination. All three pieces of fiction feature main characters that could become recurring heroes.

My one mild disappointment is that I thought HFQ was going to be available as a laid-out, downloaded PDF instead of single story downloads. With no advertising of any kind on the site, it’s unclear how these guys are paying their authors ($100 per story, $25 for a poem). But regardless of how or why they’re doing it, the editors of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly deserve our thanks and praise for making the effort to revive fantasy fiction and poetry in the spirit of Elric and Conan and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and putting together a very solid and entertaining first issue. Now head on over and get reading!

Cimmerian sighting: Celebrating a pair of milestones in Howard studies

In studying Howard’s philosophy, one thing becomes abundantly clear: if there is a single overriding reason for critically analyzing Howard outside of the pulp ghetto, it’s that he so often managed to write himself out of it. In Howard’s best work one sees fantasy clichés bowled over like ten-pins in his pulsing rush to portray hate and vengeance. In doing so Howard forces the stories, at sword-point, out of the clichéd trappings of genre and into a different realm altogether: the realm of real literature.

–Leo Grin, “The Reign of Blood,” from The Barbaric Triumph

This year marks a milestone for two classic anthologies of Robert E. Howard criticism: The Dark Barbarian (1984) and its sequel, The Barbaric Triumph (2004) turn 25 and five years old, respectively. If you don’t already own these volumes, now is the time to go hunting on Ebay: According to editor Don Herron’s Web site, the two books have recently gone out of print, and prices are likely to climb:

The five-year contract with Wildside Press just ran out on Don’s two critical anthologies about Robert E. Howard, The Dark Barbarian and The Barbaric Triumph, and he’s decided to let them lapse out-of-print and see where the prices go on the collectors market. The Dark Barbarian has been in-print for twenty-five years, originally in a 1250 copy hardback edition from Greenwood Press — looks like the trade paperback reprint from Wildside moved out approximately 275 more copies. The Barbaric Triumph is going to be tougher to land someday, since it was only available in print-on-demand for that five-year window and critical anthologies don’t tend to sell fast — the Wildside hardback seems to have sold approximately 150 copies while the trade paperback state edged close to 300 copies sold. Hardcore collectors have a perverse love for those low numbers, since they make the game all that much tougher and correspondingly more fun — and good hunting to the folk who didn’t get their copies while they were easy to order new.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: I scored a copy of Savage Sword of Conan #1

I would guess it’s been well over a decade—perhaps 15 years or more—since I bought my last issue of The Savage Sword of Conan, the great old magazine that was my introduction to the writings of Robert E. Howard. But I’ve kept all my back issues safely tucked away in a magazine box and I still break them out from time to time. They remain great reads.

Given that I’m hardly a collector of the magazine it was with great surprise that I opened a birthday present from by brother last week to find SSOC # 1 inside. I’m not sure why he bought me the issue—perhaps because he knows I now write blog posts for The Cimmerian—but regardless, I was thrilled.

For those who don’t own a copy—or for those die-hard collectors who have it hermetically sealed and have never read its contents—I’m including a full review of SSOC #1, and my initial thoughts on opening this holy grail of Conan collectables.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Dracula revisited: Some observations on an old classic

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of those books that, like The Lord of the Rings, I find myself returning to time and time again. There’s a lot going on in this book and a lot to like, both on a literary and a visceral horror/pure entertainment entertainment level. I’ve just finished re-reading it and there’s no doubt that it’s worthy of its classic status. There’s so much to comment upon in this novel, far more than I could ever cover in a single blog post, so I’ll direct my focus on two notable elements:

1. Dracula is a really bad guy (and not all that sexy)

Stoker’s depiction of the vampire contrasts sharply with the way they’re portrayed in popular media these days. Buff sex-symbols and/or world-weary, misunderstood, angst-ridden emo-types seem to have replaced the bloodsucking, undead monsters of yore. I blame Anne Rice’s novels for popularizing this trend, which has reached its full bloom with the Twilight movie.

Now, it’s true that Count Dracula is somewhat of an alpha-male and a sex symbol. Lucy transforms into quite the slut after she’s sampled his wares, and her suitors (and even old Van Helsing) pour their fluids—ahem, blood—into her, one after the other, to sate her ravenous needs. There’s reams of essays describing the scandalous sexuality of Dracula, particularly when viewed against the stiff, priggish Victorian era in which it was written.

But Dracula’s sexual element is mainly subtext. Count Dracula is hardly a suave, debonair Tom Cruise lookalike, seducing women with charm and good looks: He hypnotizes his female victims and drains their blood against their will. In Stoker’s world, sex is a corruptive influence: It’s a monster to be shunned and feared, not a buried urge to liberate and embrace.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site .

Cimmerian sighting: The Life of Sir Aglovale De Galis

(Warning—some spoilers ahead)

King Arthur: Which is our greatest quality of knighthood? Courage, compassion, loyalty, humility? What do you say, Merlin?

Merlin: Ah, the greatest. Well, they blend, like the metals we mix to make a good sword.

Arthur: No poetry, just a straight answer. Which is it?

Merlin: All right then. Truth. That’s it. Yes, it must be truth. Above all. When a man lies he murders some part of the world. You should know that.

—Excalibur, John Boorman

If you’re a fan of the Arthurian myths, the above exchange of dialogue from John Boorman’s Excalibur—still the best version of the King Arthur myth ever put to film—is probably scored upon your memory. It’s a shame that, in comparison, Clemence Housman’s The Life of Sir Aglovale De Galis languishes in obscurity. Published in 1905, Housman’s book presages Excalibur by more than 70 years, and Merlin’s prophetic words of wisdom and warning are at the heart of this fine and all too little known novel.

The Life of Sir Aglovale De Galis has for most of its history been a difficult book to track down. In 2000, Green Knight Publishing—a small and apparently defunct firm—republished the story, giving it new life and allowing people like me to finally get a copy. In addition to publishing original and reprinted Arthurian fiction, Green Knight also published the fine Pendragon role playing game, much like TSR and later Wizards of the Coast published a line of novels in conjunction with the Dungeons and Dragons game line. But if you come to The Life of Sir Aglovale De Galis expecting to encounter typical role-playing game fan fiction, you’re in for a rude shock. This is not some breezy tale of the Forgotten Realms. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it archaic, the language Housman uses is, even for the (roughly) Victorian Era in which it was written, anachronistic. Housman writes in Middle English in a style deliberately imitative of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte D’Arthur.

In short, The Life of Sir Aglovale De Galis is a difficult book to read. I had to go back and re-read opaque sentences and, on one or two occasions, found myself bogged down in the language. But bearing down and continuing on to the end was very much worth the effort.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.