Some interpretations of the ambiguous ending of The Green Knight (2021)

If you haven’t seen The Green Knight, and don’t wish to be spoiled, stop here before you enter the Green Chapel and its perils. Thou hast been warned.

The 2021 David Lowery written and directed film The Green Knight is an interesting, inventive take on the old poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” 

It’s beautifully rendered. You can’t take your eyes off it. It also sticks with you, in part due to its ambiguous ending, which is very much open to interpretation.

Here’s a few thoughts I had from a recent re-watch. And yes, I seem gripped again by my annually recurring year-end fascination with King Arthur.

Needless to say spoilers coming. 

***

Brief recap: The plot of The Green Knight (book and film) centers around the arrival of a massive, green-skinned and armored knight in King Arthur’s court on Christmas. He offers up a challenge: Any knight can strike him a blow with sword or axe from which he will not flinch, save that he will return the blow one year hence.

Arthur’s nephew Gawain, the youngest knight in the court, takes up the challenge and strikes a savage cut that sends his head tumbling to the floor. Then, to the horror of all in the hall, the mysterious figure picks up his severed head and turns to leave the stunned court, but not before reminding Gawain he must ride out to his chapel in a year to complete the challenge.

Gawain commits, and embarks on a series of adventures en route. In one of these he is given a green belt/sash that renders him invulnerable to any blow. An obvious, unforeseen advantage in a contest of his sort. But also, unfair and dishonorable.

In the poem, Gawain leaves on the sash, and receives a nick on the neck as a rebuke.

In the film, Gawain removes his sash after an agonized internal struggle, then turns to await the blow. One we’re not sure lands, because the film ends before we see it.

So, does Gawain get his head cut off?

I don’t believe that’s what actually matters. What does is his decision moments prior.

Earlier in the scene Gawain asks an existential question as he stares death in the face: “Is this really all there is?”

This is not (merely) a question concerning the end of his own life, but the possibility of a life without meaning, one ruled by the material laws of nature in which purpose and beauty and meaning are empty and meaningless, and death and decay our only masters. The type of world described by the dragon in John Gardner’s Grendel: “It’s all the same in the end, matter and motion, simple or complex. No difference, finally. Death, transfiguration. Ashes to ashes and slime to slime, amen.”

If he leaves on the sash, he will be invulnerable, but also will have fatally compromised the only virtue that matters in such a word: His integrity. 

Gawain has a flash of what would happen should he leave on the sash: he becomes a king of a fallen kingdom, a dishonorable ruler, haunted by his choice over the long years until the kingdom falls, corrupted.

Ultimately he chooses honor. Does that cost him his life?

The film offers some clues. “Well done my brave knight,” the green knight says, after Gawain removes the sash. And then, the final cryptic line of the film: “Now, Off With Your Head,” which obviously implies he’s a goner. 

After all, a blow is due in return per the sacred rules of the game. Honor demands it.

However, the Green Knight delivers the final line with a good natured, light-hearted spirit, indicating that any blow will be only lightly given, which would make it true to the poem.

As important as this (obviously) is for Gawain and his future, I’m not sure it matters either way. 

Even if Gawain loses his head, the message of the film can be interpreted as profoundly hopeful. 

Let’s start with the idea that the Green Knight represents nature. If so, his acknowledgement of Gawain’s selfless act implies there is honor embedded in nature. It is not an abstract, empty term rendered meaningless by postmodernism, it is as real as the grass under our feet, the rotation of the earth and its seasons. We just have to make the choice.

Though there is a far bleaker interpretation. There may be honor but it ultimately doesn’t matter, nature is going to kill you in the end anyway. It’s all a cosmic joke.

But maybe we should still act honorably anyway, because doing so is its own reward.

Regardless, I believe Gawain's transformation from shiftless coward to noble knight suggests that facing death with dignity is essential to living a meaningful life.

What do you think?

I welcome any thoughts on this.

More (mediocre) content is not better than no content: A rant

Once in a while you’ve got to let off some steam (Bennett). For most, that means punching a heavy bag, screaming into a pillow, maybe going crazy and tearing the tag off a mattress.

For me, it’s … angry blogging! Friday rant incoming.

What’s gotten under my skin?

The incessant need for “more content.”

I’m hearing this in the cries of Rings of Power defenders, many of whom admit that while the show is mediocre at best, and plays fast and loose with Tolkien lore in nonsensical ways, they nevertheless continue to watch. Because “its more Tolkien content, and I need more Middle-Earth. I need more content.” 

Actual quotes.

This chaps my ass.

No one needs “more content.” Not of this sort.

To me it sounds like infantile and babylike cries of, “more food, mama!”

How about, more art, please.

Stop consuming cheap and disposable shit, and begging for more. Find the good stuff that already exists, and enjoy that instead. 

There’s more content right now than anyone can consume in a lifetime.

If everyone stopped producing content tomorrow—if somehow we implemented a worldwide ban, and you could only consume content that’s already been made—you’d have enough for 50 lifetimes.

You’ve got way more than enough. I’m not advocating this, BTW, just making a point.

I hate the need for more, at any cost. I also strongly dislike the word “content” when it comes to media. “Content” is the stuff we expel from our bowels. Probably not what we should be feeding our minds with.

We do need good art. But corporations don’t make art. Corporations make content, on an industrial scale, for undifferentiated masses, in order to make loads of cash. As we see with Star Wars and now (unfortunately) The Lord of the Rings “franchises.” Corporations buy franchises and expect massive ROI on their investments. In Amazon’s case, it’s all about getting more Amazon Prime subscribers, converting to product consumers. The Lord of the Rings becomes a means to an end, a power grab, which is the opposite message of the book.

When you consume poorly made “content” produced by corporations it encourages more of the same behavior. Instead:

Support independent artists and small businesses producing new material. Discuss thoughtful and well-made art. Appreciate it. Encourage creation of more of that sort of art. Or, explore the good, old, time-tested stuff. 

If you adopt these practices worry not, you still have near infinite options.

More “content” comes with a cost.

It devalues the historical wealth of riches we already have. I have a bias here; I’m a historian. I do wonder: Who talks about Fritz Leiber anymore? Clark Ashton Smith, Leigh Brackett, Poul Anderson? Very few, in comparison to the new and shiny content of the moment. Hell even Ursula LeGuin, once a household name, is starting to slip into the past. 

I worry these men and women will be lost to time under an avalanche of new “content.”

“More content” chokes out the magic of what makes old properties special in the first place. The avaricious need for more content causes every timeline, every side character, every magic item or scroll, every byway, to be fully filled in. Until the magic is gone. 

We no longer need to wonder how the force operates. We no longer need to speculate about the Blue Wizards and what they were doing.

They’ve all been spelled out, like an adult paint by numbers, in the pursuit of feeding the content machine.

We need dark places in the woods, unexplored realms beneath the seas. 

And we need white space on the page. 

Obviously, I enjoy modern adaptations. Obviously, I consume some of them. Perhaps that makes me a hypocrite. But I’m definitely more judicious these days with what I watch and read, because I know that you are what you eat. And I’m not a big fan of eating shit.

I’m not advocating closing off possibilities. What I do advocate is, mindful consumption. Read or watch deeply instead of broadly. Then share that out. Celebrate the good. And stop giving your time and attention to the mediocre. 

Weird Tales of Modernity: Elevating the artistry of the Weird Tales Three

Pulp and other forms of genre fiction have become not just an accepted form of entertainment, but an acknowledged outlet for meaningful artistic expression. But this is a relatively recent phenomenon. For more than a century literary critics shunned pulp, categorizing it as cheap entertainment for coarse consumers, junk food devoid of value. Some actively discouraged its consumption.

Today literary elites no longer dictate broad cultural tastes—or if any do, they certainly wield less power and influence than the likes of Harold Bloom, Edmund Wilson and William Dean Howells once did. At least from my limited perspective.

But one result of this century of neglect is comparatively few literary studies. Only recently have we seen a steady uptick with the likes of Jonas Prida’s Conan Meets the Academy (2012), Justin Everett and Jeffrey Shanks’ The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales (2015), Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie (2017), Bobby Derie’s Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others (2019), John Haefele’s Lovecraft: The Great Tales (2021), and Stephen Jones’ The Weird Tales Boys (2023). We have plenty of catching up to do, which makes Jason Ray Carney’s Weird Tales of Modernity (McFarland, 2019) a welcome volume. It’s a work that certainly deserves more attention. I recommend it strongly, with a few caveats.

The first caveat is price. McFarland describes itself as a leading independent publisher of academic and general-interest nonfiction books, but academic publishers typically charge more due to their small print runs, and McFarland, though cheaper than some academic presses, is still pricey. This book runs nearly $40 new at just under 200 pages.

The second is accessibility. Weird Tales of Modernity is a challenging read. It took me a while to get into the flow due to the denseness of Carney’s language and use of academic jargon. I have a degree in English and have read (and even appreciate) academic writing, but it’s been a while since I tackled such material and needed to shake off a little rust to get back into that headspace. It probably also assumes a little too much familiarity with literary modernism.

But once I acclimated to the language I both enjoyed Weird Tales of Modernity as an entertaining read, and for the compelling case it makes for the literary merits of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard. Carney’s central thesis is that the “Weird Tales Three” were not just producing entertainment, but contributing meaningfully as original artists writing in reaction to literary modernism.

This would be a good time to explain that particular term. 

Literary modernism was an experimental mode of fiction in vogue from roughly the late 1800s to the early 1940s, peaking in the interwar period (1920-39)—roughly concurrent to the literary output of Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith. It was a time marked by profound disillusionment in institutions and doubt that universal truth and human progress were possible. Rapid changes in technology and industrialization coupled with the carnage of World War I made old certainties a shifting sand.

Amid these rapid changes artists such as T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, William Faulker, and Virginia Wolfe adapted modes of literary expression to match, abandoning old traditions and pioneering new prose and poetry techniques--slice of life, introspection, emphasis on realism, abandonment of meter and rhyme in poetry. As the old sureties in life were slipping away, they sought to achieve immortality through “art in amber,” even if just in limited, fragmentary glimpses. A chief example is Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), a dense and sprawling work which depicted the events of 24 hours in the life of Leopold Bloom.

Carney argues that Smith, Lovecraft, and Howard were aware of this movement, but instead of engaging in it produced stories of shadow modernism, “strange art, artists, and experience of art created in reaction to modernity.”  Howard’s decaying cities and corrupt civilizations and Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones and uncaring, indifferent cosmicism were symbolic representations of the terrible ephemerality that lurked behind the seeming consistency of our day-to-day lives—the inevitable march of time and the subsequent corruption and decay of all human endeavor. The Weird Tales Three saw through this veil and understood the ephemerality of life—the “ephemerality of the ordinary” as Carney repeats in an oft-used phrase.  “Irrespective of tribe, race, clique, or coterie, we are all ephemeral forms trembling in strange stasis destined for formlessness.” 

Capturing the ephemerality of human endeavor required more than the language of literary modernism could provide. It required fantastic and extraordinary literary techniques married to the techniques of the Gothic novel—hallmarks of the Weird Tales Three. Writes Carney, “After many creative iterations honed over several stories—e.g., Pickman’s demented art, Malygris’s sorcery, the fell mirrors of Tuzun Thune—this shadow modernism becomes an inhuman form of technology that, functioning like a cognitive prosthesis in the virtual world of fiction, thereby reveals the secret truth of history: history is a cruelly accelerating process of deformation. The ordinary is ephemeral. History is the interplay of form and formlessness with formlessness terminally ascendant.”

Carney does an impressive job supporting his thesis with multiple references from the literature, both from mainstream modernist writers and from Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith. I found his arguments original and convincing, offering new insights and perspectives I hadn’t previously considered. If you take these writers seriously it’s a book you ought to seek out.

In addition to his scholarship Carney has done much of note for sword-and-sorcery and the broader field of pulp fiction. His efforts building the online Whetstone discord community (which recently shut down after a notable run of some five years), initiating the Trigon awards and associated conference, organizing academic panels at Howard Days, and of course establishing the Whetstone Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword-and-Sorcery, served an important function for many. We’re all on the same path of dissolution and formlessness, which makes any efforts to make sense of the art we enjoy while offering warmth and community for other like-minded souls deeply appreciated and sorely needed. Weird Tales of Modernity and Carney’s broader oeuvre serve as a bulwark against the ephemerality of the ordinary.

This review also appeared on the blog of the Rogues in the House podcast.

Can you separate the art from the artist?

The Graveyard Book and American Gods are good books. Both before Neil Gaiman became embroiled in the current controversy … and after. 

That doesn’t mean I have to like Neil Gaiman the person to enjoy his books (and if the current allegations are accurate, he’s a pretty slimy dude). But I can still read and enjoy The Sandman.

Because art is separate from the artist. Anyone who claims they had an inkling of Gaiman’s alleged behavior from reading Coraline is full of shit. 

There is no need to learn all about your favorite artists. It used to be you knew almost nothing of SF/F authors, save in the occasional printed interview in Analog or the like.

Let’s step away from Gaiman for a moment, who for obvious reasons is a bit of a lightning rod.

Closer to home for me are writers like Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. Both writers of a long-ago age, some of their stories literally published 100 years ago. 

Both with well-documented racist beliefs….beliefs which were incredibly common in their day and age. And which aren’t even immediately noticeable in huge swathes of their fiction, regardless.

Both are being read today, and will continue to be read, long after all their critics are dead and forgotten. 

You should be reading these guys if you’re a fan of speculative fiction.

You should be reading these guys if you’re a writer of speculative fiction.

You should be reading these guys if you’re a historian of speculative fiction.

If you don’t, you’re missing out on formative writers that will make you a better writer. And great stories that will give you experiences you can’t get anywhere else. And important literary history that will leave blind spots in your understanding of how fantasy fiction came to be today.

Are there some truly abhorrent writers that make this decision murky? Of course. Marion Zimmer Bradley and David Eddings come to mind. I understand why some want to disown these authors and never read them again.

But even these guys can still be read. I won’t stand up for MZB or Eddings like I do Howard and Lovecraft, both because of personal tastes and because I don’t think they’re nearly as good or important. I am not convinced either will be read 100 years from now. In fact, they probably won’t.

But both can still be read. Because we can separate art from artist.

I realize this question is subjective. Every individual’s threshold for offense is entirely unique. Each reader brings his or her own unique experiences to the table. Some readers are afflicted by past traumas they cannot overcome. Some readers are better than others at compartmentalizing.

But that makes the objective statement, “art cannot be separated from artist,” false. 

Yes, every artist brings something of his or herself to their writing, but the alchemy of creativity defies analysis. An artist does not pour everything of themselves into every story, they choose what goes in. Or they themselves compartmentalize, pour their self-loathing into evil characters committing bad deeds, in acts of self-introspection.

There are many beloved writers, living and dead, with skeletons in their closet—skeletons we don’t know about, skeletons which will never see the light of day. Because the artist is long dead, or no record of their behavior exists.

Every human being on the planet has skeletons. We just don’t know about many of them. Nor do we have to.

If you happen to be one of those rare birds who watches 30 minutes of local news, reads Neil Gaiman, and stays off the internet—you’d never know about the unfolding scandal. It would not diminish your enjoyment of his books. You don’t know who the artist is beyond what is on the page, and you don’t to have to, to enjoy and appreciate his or her work.

Can you separate art from artist? Ultimately it’s an individual choice.

But if you’re asking me? Of course you can. 

And you should.

You already have.

The Battle of Evermore and the timeless nature of fantasy

(early metal-ish Friday)

That it is told in the language of fantasy is not an accident, or because Tolkien was an escapist, or because he was writing for children. It is a fantasy because fantasy is the natural, the appropriate language for the recounting of the spiritual journey and the struggle of good and evil in the soul.

--Ursula LeGuin, “On Fantasy and Science Fiction”

The critics who have dismissed fantasy as juvenile escapism have failed to recognize that fantasy grapples with real and eternally pressing issues, albeit wrapped in metaphor and fantastic trappings.

The same critics who worship at the altar of realism and extol the virtues of novels about average people in familiar times cannot admit their darlings have rapidly aged and are fast losing their relevance. While the classics of fantasy remain as fresh today as the day they were written.

That’s because the language of fantasy is unbound by time, or place. It deals with the big issues—conflict within and without, love, sorrow, friendship, the inevitable march of time, pain, decay and death—in poetic abstraction, and in heroic meter and timbre. Modern novels that reference an author’s time and place will confuse the modern reader with surroundings that grow increasingly abstract and impenetrable with the passing years, while the Hyborian Age or Middle-Earth remain eternally familiar and inhabitable even as their authors slip further into the past. They are distanced from the ordinary, but close to the human heart.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, though perhaps never as well as this version by Heart. Because we all grasp its emotional depths, and understand the meaning of the plaintive cries.

The apples turn to brown and black

The tyrant's face is red

Oh war is common cry

Pick up your swords and fly

We’re always trying to bring the balance back. It’s the eternal struggle never won, but once in a while we experience the blessed peace of equilibrium.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, and remain as unspoiled as Lothlorien, because it is the timeless matter of fantasy.

Treasure Island and the powerful call to adventure

It’s been a busy last month or so. Mostly in a good way, with some PTO combined with some busy times at work. But that means my writing has suffered and the blog collecting a bit more dust than usual.

Reading has been OK. I did manage to finish Ursula LeGuin’s Tehanu and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island while on vacation last week, and have since moved on to Beowulf and Other Old English Poems.

Treasure Island was a treat. I hadn’t read this since I was a kid and it holds up extremely well, both from the perspective of an adult reading a book ostensibly for young men (it was first published in serialized fashion for Young Folks, a children’s magazine), but also a work written in 1881. It’s bloody, but relatively bloodless, the violence ample though at a slight remove. The action however never stops, and the atmosphere and plotting are things of beauty. Pure, mainlined adventure from page one.

Treasure Island was published as a standalone novel in 1883, a time when literary realism and literary modernism were in the ascendancy, and so was a bit of an anachronism, a throwback to the historical romances of the likes of Sir Walter Scott. But it nevertheless proved immediately popular with the reading public and even many critics of the age.

I read a 1930 edition (Windsor Press) with a fascinating introduction by Harry Hansen, “How Robert Louis Stevenson Wrote Treasure Island.”  In addition to an interesting story behind the physical writing, publishing history and critical reception, I learned of another chapter waged in the well-grooved war of realistic vs. fantastic fiction. Henry James, perhaps the greatest practitioner of slice-of-life/realistic fiction, enjoyed the book himself—but nevertheless critiqued it during a symposium on the art of fiction in 1884. James was “unable to come to grips with the author because it did not touch his own experience,” Hansen writes. James further stated, “I have been a child, but I have never been on a quest for buried treasure.”

Word reached Stevenson. Though he never claimed Treasure Island was more than an adventurous narrative, Stevenson felt the need to defend his work and expound on the artists’ urge to create fantastic stories full of vicarious experience removed from our own. “The creative artist takes certain characters, incidents, motives out of the vast store of living and arranges them to suit his mind,” he wrote, adding that a creative author “both selects from life and expands the slightest incidents, possibly even more successfully when they relate not to what he has actually done but what he has wished to do.”

Stevenson adds a final beautiful rejoinder to James, quoted verbatim by Hansen:

If he has never been on a quest for buried treasure, it can be demonstrated that he has never been a child. There never was a child (unless Master James) has but hunted gold, and been a pirate, and a military commander, and a bandit of the mountains; but has fought, and suffered shipwreck and prison, and imbrued its little hands in gore, and gallantly retrieved the lost battle and triumphantly protected innocence and beauty.

The only thing missing was the N.C. Wyeth illustrations I remember so vividly from my childhood in whatever edition I first enjoyed, decades ago. This edition had fine black and white illustrations by Lyle Justis, but Wyeth of course is a master.

While I remain on a bit of a reading break from sword-and-sorcery Treasure Island is definitely part of its DNA.

***

Tehanu was a lovely read, LeGuin at the height of her literary powers, and I will probably have more to say about it later. Not as soaring or epic as the original Earthsea trilogy but a stirring coda. And quite a distinct experience from Treasure Island, reserved and reflective. It was sitting on my shelf for years and I finally plucked it off and read it, and am glad I did.

Not all books need be movies

I like movies. I really do. Need I say this? 

I mean, not liking movies is akin to not liking ice cream. It’s un-American. Heck, it’s inhuman.

I’ve posted numerous reviews of my favorite films. I seem to have a sweet spot for the early 80s, the likes of Blade Runner and Terminator and Excalibur and The Road Warrior (throw in Raiders and the Goonies for good measure). But I watch and enjoy new films too.

Now that I’ve paid my homage to celluloid, I’m not particularly fond of the fetishization of film by lovers of classic characters and IP. The incessant cry of, “this is such an awesome character, but when are we ever going to get the movie!”

Let’s take Conan. We have the amazing Robert E. Howard stories. We’ve got shit-tons of terrific comics, including great new material today from Titan. Pastiche novels. Even a loosely adapted but nevertheless magnificent 1982 film. So when I hear the incessant, when are we going to get a real Robert E. Howard film. We need one! It cheapens what has been done already. Just a bit, and IMO.

But you don’t understand Brian, we need a proper Conan film.

Why? Why do we need one?

I just don’t have the same hand-wringing urgency to get a movie made. 

Here’s my question to the people I can feel protesting this post.

When was the last time you said, “that was an AWESOME movie… they really need to write the novelization! Like, now!”

The answer is… never.

Seriously, when was the last time you ever heard ANYONE say, “I love Furiosa… when is George Miller going to get an author to write the novel? That’s what we really need.”

I’ll wait. 

When you always want “the movie” you are signifying an artistic hierarchy, one that places movies at the top and television in the middle (“it needs to be made into a Netflix miniseries!”) and poor old books at the bottom—perhaps just above static paintings or digital art.

Captain obvious incoming, but films and books are different mediums. Which means they do some things better than the other.

Films have many inherent advantages over books. The visuals are obvious. But also, sound. The wonderful dialogue, pregnant pauses and raised voices that convey additional levels of meaning are very hard to replicate in a book. And also, wonderful scores. Seriously, just hearing John Williams’ opening theme from Jaws immediately sends hackles up my spine and makes me nervous even when I’m in the neighbor’s swimming pool.

It’s awesome. Books can’t do this.

This combination of gorgeous visuals and stunning sound sweep us up, and make a great movie in an IMAX theater a thing of beauty. An event that I’m glad we have. Did I mention I love movies? I was blown away by Maverick and 1917 and of course The Lord of the Rings (though the book is better).

But books have their own distinct advantages too—advantages even over film. Like character interiority.  This is very hard to do in a film, without awkward voiceovers. 

Unbridled imagination is another. Film budgets and run times reign in possibility. Because budgets are an issue, the sprawling sweep of a book must be a dramatized compression on the screen. And thus worlds feel smaller than in the book. The Lord of the Rings is a prime example. I love the films, but Middle-Earth isn’t as big, or as grand, as Tolkien's vision.

The third is the unknown—HP Lovecraft can describe something awful beyond our imagination by not showing it. In film, which is purely visual, something must be shown. And it’s rarely as good as our imagination.

But the most important is artistic integrity.

Because movies are made by hundreds if not thousands of people, and because they cost so much, many fingers must touch the final product—including studio executives hungry for a return on their big investment, and their shareholders. Which means, compromises are made.

An author with a single artistic vision has inherent advantages, if they are talented and that vision is true and powerful. As a result books tend to have sharper edges and brighter colors.

I mean does anyone think we’d actually get an accurate “Red Nails” or “The Man-Eaters of Zamboula”? I don’t.

Even if homemade movies made on the cheap but well, by some guy in a basement with cutting-edge AI and a computer render some of these arguments invalid, the underlying principle remains: Books do some things better than film. Which means there are novels that will always, from now until the sun turns cold and dark and burns out altogether in the far-flung future, be better than any movie adaptation. 

OK, we do need a Dying Earth movie. 

But if we don’t get one? It’s OK.

The world will keep spinning.

We’ve already got Vance’s book … and the book is better.

Why we need fantasy: Some thoughts from a Blind Guardian concert, May 11, 2024 at the Worcester Palladium

I'm in there! Somewhere back left...

No one ever dares to speak

It's nothing else but fantasy

It's make believe,

Make believe

No one ever dares to speak

It's nothing else but fantasy

But One day it will all come to life

--Blind Guardian, Fly

How did you spend your Saturday night? I was in a hall you might know, called … VALHALLA!

Or maybe it was the Worcester Palladium. 

Either way, I was somewhere else. And that’s a good thing. 

We need fantasy in our lives.

Blind Guardian lead singer Hansi Kuersch screams at the end of “Valhalla,” No, we can’t live without gods! He and his bandmates put to powerful music what many of us who breathe deeply of this type of thing have come to know: 

We can’t live without fantasy. It is indispensable as air or water:

Songs I will sing of tribes and kings

The carrion bird and the hall of the slain

Nothing seems real

You soon will feel

The world we live in is another Skald’s

Dream in the shadows

--Skalds and Shadows

We’re all just telling stories. Reality is what we make of it. 

Blind Guardian knows this, and takes us to other places, fair and perilous lands where magic is real. Lands we once knew, but have forgotten. As we age our fantasies wither. We prioritize work and money, and embrace conformity and dull routine. 

Stranded in the real world

Left in the world

No place for daydreams

Serious life

I fall into

I fall into a dark hole

And I can't come out

Do you know if Merlin did exist

Or Frodo wore the ring

Did Corum kill the gods

Or where's the wonderland

Which young Alice had seen

Or was it just a dream

I knew the answers

Now they're lost for me

--Imaginations From the Other Side

But fantasy calls, from the other side.

We might be lost, but Blind Guardian knows there is another world. Which can break down the walls around your heart. For a short time on Saturday at least.

Blind Guardian delivered on this stop on The God Machine tour. They were great. The setlist is below.

As always it’s a privilege to see a band of their magnitude in a place like The Palladium, which has a listed capacity of 2660. Blind Guardian plays to much larger crowds overseas.

Take a bow, dudes. 

Maybe you don’t need German power metal bands in your life. That’s OK, with a good book or a well-done movie you can get (some) of what Blind Guardian offers. Enchantment, to restore a disenchanted world.

What you don’t get in a book or a movie however is the power of being in a big group of like-minded people, all experiencing the same powerful call. Chanting, “Valhalla, Deliverance!” like Viking warriors of old.

Where was I Saturday night? The lands of Faerie, or Worcester? 

Both my friends.

Setlist

Imaginations from the Other Side

Blood of the Elves

Nightfall

The Script for My Requiem

Violent Shadows

Skalds and Shadows

Deliver us from Evil

Secrets of the American Gods

The Bard’s Song

Majesty

Traveler in Time

Sacred Worlds

Time Stands Still (At the Iron Hill)

Valhalla

Mirror Mirror

Here's a bit of "Nightfall" from my cell phone:

Our modern problems with reading

We don’t have infinite time. The amount of reading attention any new book must compete with is getting progressively smaller. So we have to be selective.

It’s basic math.

Robert E. Howard read Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jack London and H. Rider Haggard (and many, many authors besides, but bear with me as I make this point).

Michael Moorcock read Howard and his contemporaries C.L. Moore and Clark Ashton Smith… but is obligated to read ERB and London and Haggard.

Writers today read Moorcock and his contemporaries Karl Edward Wagner and Jack Vance and Poul Anderson. But also should read Howard and Moore and Smith … and ERB and London and Haggard.

The demands on new generations of readers multiply. What about readers and writers three generations from now?

Oh, and we all must read the classics. Shakespeare and Milton and Homer and Hemingway.

Make sure you read outside your genre. One should read history, too. 

The accumulated reading, generation on generation, cannot continue. The math doesn’t add up. How many books can anyone read in a lifetime?

Some books must fall by the wayside.

This is just the beginning of the problem. We have many more demands on our attention than previous generations. Movies, TV, video games, TTRPGs, YouTube, doom scrolling, etc., all compete for our attention during “free” time. And despite all the breathless predictions of the techno utopians, we don’t seem to be working any fewer hours.

That means we’ve got choices to make. As you get older, you realize you cannot fritter your time away. It’s far too precious.

So, what are we to do?

My advice: Read what you want. Just read, as long as its not Reddit forums or Twitter threads.

Read new sword-and-sorcery or read the classics. Read comic books, or graphic novels. Just make sure it’s something someone has created, with care. 

Don’t listen to what other people think. I don’t. Because I’ve read enough to spot illogic and ad hominem and the rest. 

Just because a book is old, published 60 or 80 or 400 years ago, does not render it out of date. C.S. Lewis tells us to rid yourself of “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find out why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood.”

And our age is prone to its own illusions.

Anything still in print 60 years after it was published is probably worth your time. Because it survived the test of time. The books that influenced your favorite author(s) are probably worth reading too, even if out of print. 

But don’t feel obligated to plow through classics that are going to kill your love of reading, either. 

Read what interests you, and carry that fire against public opinion. Which is often shit.

That’s another benefit of reading widely and deeply—read enough good stuff and you’ll develop a sensitive and accurate bullshit detection meter.

Ruminations on subversive and restorative impulses, and conservative and liberal modes of fantasy fiction

Two towers, old and new.

Liberalism seeks to make anew. Conservatism desires to preserve the time-tested. 

The former represents the creative forces of chaos. The latter the ordered forces of law.

It’s a very yin-yang, or Moorcockian, way of looking at things. 

The older I get I see the need for both. For tradition, and for change. Both in life, and in art. Perhaps you’ll find this a milquetoast viewpoint, and want more sturm un drang. But not today. I’m feeling reflective.

Defenders of the old see what the masters have done and want that to stand, immobile and fixed, like some mountain. It was great, it still is, why change it?

Proponents of the new see old art and admire some aspects of it, but believe that it no longer reflects present realities. And wish to carve new stone out of the existing material, or make something else alongside it.

I see a lot of angst over this divide, but believe these seemingly opposing forces can be reconciled. Because we need both.

I believe our present culture is entirely too much focused on the new and shiny. And not enough on learning from the brilliant minds who have come before us and did some things better than we do. There is so much to be gleaned from history. Much of what we think of as new has been done before. So don’t confuse looking backwards with a backwards mindset. 

But I also recognize change as inevitable, and often results in forward progress. Doing the same thing over and over again results in staleness and conformity. S&S grew moribund in the latter 70s and collapsed in the 80s. The New Wave of SF and its dangerous visions broke away from the hard SF that was itself popular and groundbreaking in the early 20th century, but had become fixed and rigid. And the 60s and 70s saw amazing new works created.

Change is inevitable. It’s always been with us. If you don’t believe so, you might look at H.P. Lovecraft, who broke from the old gothics and ghost stories with his radical new extradimensional horror, or Steven King, who added a blue-collar pop sensibility and more humanity to Lovecraft.

Of course, merely because something is new or subversive doesn’t make it good. Nor does critique of your subversive project mean a bunch of old farts “just can’t handle it.” It just might mean the art was poorly executed. There was a lot of bad old art in the past that was once new, but has been forgotten and discarded. No one remembers most of the authors working in Weird Tales. But those that have lasted have much to teach us.

It’s cool to make new stuff by recombining old things.

It’s OK to love old school stuff, even to repeat or pastiche its forms. 

We can have it all. No one is getting hurt by the conservative impulse to preserve, or the liberal urge to subvert. 

Where do I fall, preferentially, on this spectrum?

To no one’s surprise I’m a small c conservative when it comes to art. I enjoy some subversive art, and admire the creators who challenge the status quo with potent new visions. Though I find myself preferring subversive material that is old enough to have passed into acceptable territory again. See Elric, or bits of The Once and Future King. 

But my deepest sympathies lie with old fiction. Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien remain two of my literary lodestars, and always will. I don’t see them as old. I still see them as innovators who broke new ground from old sources, who had their influences but took them and made something wholly original. Powerful enough to spawn imitators, and genres. 

In “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” Tolkien chided the literary critics who sought to study Beowulf by reducing it to its component parts, and in so doing, broke it. Pulled down the old tower turning over stones, not realizing from the top you could see the sea.

But if Tolkien had only looked at and admired the past we wouldn’t have The Lord of the Rings. He also made something new from old legends, and broke new ground, though his own powerful creative impulse.

Are we in a new sword-and-sorcery renaissance? Not yet. At least commercially.

Some corners of the internet are speculating whether we’re in a third sword-and-sorcery wave. This assumes a first, unnamed wave in which S&S was invented (roughly 1929-36—thanks REH), and a second in which it rose to commercial prominence (roughly 1965-75).

Following a collapse in the early 1980s S&S lay moribund for decades, with a few authors soldiering on and a couple outlets toiling in corners of the internet. This was the general state of the genre until the last few years. 

Today there is a new interest in this old, weird, gritty, sword-slinging alternative to epic fantasy. A non-exhaustive, top of mind list of publications and publishers includes:

• Tales from the Magician’s Skull
• New Edge
• Whetstone
• Savage Realms
• DMR Books
• Swords and Sorceries
• Heroic Fantasy Quarterly
• Rogues in the House
• The Cromcast
• Old Moon Quarterly
• Baen
• Swords and Sorcery Magazine

Recently we’ve had a few successfully funded kickstarters: New Edge magazine, which landed Michael Moorcock for issue no. 1, and now Swords in the Shadows, which features authors like Joe Lansdale, Stephen Graham Jones, and Brian Keene.

Conan is the closest thing we have to a sure thing in S&S and new Conan material is out. Titan Books published a new Conan novel, Blood of the Serpent, with more titles to come. Rogue Blades Foundation has just published Hither Came Conan.

In short, there is quite a bit of contemporary S&S to sink your teeth into, sample, and enjoy. At all levels, from amateur and free, to traditionally published mass-market paperbacks and hardcovers.

But what is actually going on, commercially?

Despite all this output, much of which I have backed and all of which I am grateful for, we are nowhere near a commercial renaissance. While great enthusiasm exists in many quarters, and some good authors and artists serve this space, the simple fact remains: there isn’t enough readers. 

Publishing is a winner-take-all enterprise, existing on what marketing guru Seth Godin and others have described as the long tail theory. One on side, a few huge winners, making millions due to their mass appeal. Think Stephen King, GRRM, J.K. Rowling, Brandon Sanderson. As the tail stretches rightward, we find more writers able to make a living writing, some comfortably, but not as many as you’d think. And then a LONG tail of authors selling hundreds or perhaps tens of copies of books, laboring in obscurity. The same theory applies to publishers. 

This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the long tail is also to serve the needs of niche consumers with obscure interests in a manner that The Big Five (now four) cannot.

The problem is that S&S is way out on the end of that tail, a highly specialized subgenre that appeals to a small subset of readers. How small?

I feel like there could be as few as 1000 hard core S&S fans keeping this enterprise afloat. Some evidence to support that claim:

• Swords in the Shadows: About 600 backers (as of April 11), pledged $16,400 to launch the project.
• Tales from the Magician’s Skull: 640 backers pledged $68,975 to help bring this project to life.
• New Edge: 479 backers pledged CA$ 22,846 to help bring this project to life.
• Whetstone: 755 followers on Facebook
• Contemporary S&S: 743 followers on Facebook
• The Cromcast: 1,000 followers on Facebook
• Rogues in the House: 1.3K followers on Facebook

Pulp Sword and Sorcery is an outlier with 5,200 members on Facebook. But are they just nostalgia-seekers? Nothing wrong with nostalgia, I dwell in it daily. But the numbers don’t support more than 5,000 buying new product.

DMR Books has 2,800 followers and is a publisher that offers its readers old and new material. Perhaps this is our most accurate number.

Admittedly I’m an old fart with so many blind spots I should have my license revoked. I’m not on Instagram and I don’t have much of a handle on Twitter. There are comics to consider, and S&S inspired video games. Both of these have fanbases that might be tapped for the prose fiction S&S I’m speaking about here.

But I’m skeptical, and based on my limited data set these are not big numbers.

A lot closer to home, as of Feb. 1 of this year, Flame and Crimson sold 842 copies. Frankly, better than I had hoped when Pulp Hero Press published the book in Jan. 2020. But, if you add up what I made, and divide by hours worked, its pennies on the hour. 

It is still much too early to say anything definitive. Baen has just published a new book by Larry Correia, Son of the Black Sword, which could be a hit. I have read and enjoyed Correia’s Monster Hunter International. Later this year we’ll see two Hanuvar books by Howard Andrew Jones, whose stuff I enjoy, also from Baen. 

We need just one series to catch a little fire, garner some good press, and attract new blood to this thing we enjoy. That might be enough to build some momentum and lift additional boats.

S&S is undoubtedly going through a spiritual renaissance. People are talking about it again, enjoying the old stuff, and celebrating the new. Exploring what it’s all about, the aesthetic itch it scratches. I will be participating in an informal S&S panel at Howard Days and will do my small part to keep spreading the word. I've read a few really good stories by the likes of Schuyler Hernstrom, John Fultz, and others. This is all a good thing, regardless of whether we see commercial sales the likes the Lancer Conan Saga enjoyed.

But if S&S is ever going to approach what we saw circa 1962-82, we need the type of commercial successes that allow talented writers and artists to do their best work. We’re not there yet and the jury remains out if we will. 

Heroes behaving badly: The wondrous and bastardly creations of Jack Vance

S&S protagonists: Occasionally lovable scumbags.

Cugel the Clever probably isn’t a guy you want to invite to dinner.

You’d be guaranteed belly laughs and an unforgettable night’s entertainment … until later, when the check comes due. And you discover he made off with the priceless silverware set you inherited from your grandmother, and tried to make time with your wife.

Bastard!

Cugel is a loveable rogue, nicknamed “the Clever” for good reason; he consistently escapes harrowing scrapes and near-death through pluck and quick-thinking, which makes him and his adventures entertaining for the reader, even when he’s behaving badly. Which is quite often.

Read the rest on Tales from the Magician's Skull. My latest essay for Goodman Games. Had fun writing this one and revisiting a couple of Vance stories while doing so.

The big Excalibur post

Up on the blog of DMR Books is the big Excalibur post I've been meaning to write for years. 2K words about not just one of my favorite fantasy films of all time, but top 10 favorite films of any genre. It's also my attempt to analyze what director John Boorman's vision and objective was with this film, why the King Arthur myth endures, and what it can still teach us today. Why we need the old stories, and our inherited mythologies, which we abandon at our peril.

I think many viewers get hung up on Excalibur's sometimes stilted and declarative dialogue, the historical anachronisms, etc., and are too quick to dismiss what I believe is a masterpiece (YMMV). I've watched many subsequent King Arthur films that embrace more traditional filmmaking techniques, but none have managed to do what Excalibur did, which is render myth on screen for a modern audience.

Check it out here. 

Fellow DMR blogger Deuce Richardson has pointed me in the direction of a "making of" documentary on Excalibur, "Behind the Sword in the Stone," which I shall view next: https://www.tvguide.com/movies/behind-the-sword-in-the-stone/2030331927/.

Finally, I'm glad Excalibur has resisted remakes some 42 years after its debut. I welcome new King Arthur films, but not a remake.

Raging against Twitter and the dying of the written word

“Does anyone go sit down and read an entire blog post anymore? Most people aren’t going to go read an entire 500 word blog.”

These sentences were posted, unironically, on LinkedIn by a VP of Marketing (B2B, SaaS, and other fancy business acronyms). Just yesterday. He seems to have quite a following too. This post got many “likes.”

As the young kids say, “I’m shook.”

We’re now officially at the point where information must fit into a Tweet, or a 60-second TikTok video, if it is to be read or consumed. No one has longer than that to spend on learning, apparently.

Makes sense, we’re all too “busy” these days to possibly read something 500 words long. Not quite 2 pages in a book.

“Too busy.”

Too busy doing … what?

We’re not too busy. We’ve been hijacked into thinking we are. By our devices, by sensory overload, and the accompanying mental fatigue that comes with consuming a cacophony of shit.

We’ve been trained by the limitations of the platforms on which we’re consuming surface-level content. By Twitter. And when these get old, we switch to the next platform to keep consuming. Gotta get on Mastodon, on Discord, while still juggling Facebook and YouTube. “My project will be a success once I figure out how to optimize Instagram.”

Sure it will man.

Take a look at what you’re actually doing. Scrolling your phone. That’s not busy. That’s an addiction.

You’re not making progress, or creating. You’ve become a consumer of the shallow.

Fuck that.

I’m holding the line, and you should too. On my side of the line is immersion, and an attention span. And comprehension. That’s one of the reasons why I steadfastly keep blogging, even though I’m writing to an audience so small it could comfortably fit in my living room. 

Its principle. And the people who I serve here are the ones I value. By the way, these folks have gone on to buy my book, Flame and Crimson, and I hope they choose to buy my next book too.

Not because I need the money. Because I like producing things of value, that might last, after I shed my mortal coil. You won’t find anything of lasting value on Facebook.

The “content” this VP of Marketing is talking about is not actually meant to inform, or enlighten. Its sole purpose is to grab the attention of the attention-less. It’s the equivalent of shooting colorful fireworks into the sky, a pop, a “wow.” Then … gone. It’s the type of content we consume by scrolling on our phones, skim with the eyeballs, and shed in seconds. No thought rendered, just a few seconds of time stolen from you in this “attention economy.”

But that shit doesn’t last. It's ephemera, like so much of the garbage we’re getting online. You’ve learned nothing by consuming it. In fact, you not only haven’t learned a thing, but your mind has been weakened, atrophied.

If you want to understand anything at more than a surface level, sometimes you have to … read more than a Tweet.

Finally, its not even good for the person producing it, the junior marketer who at heart wants to be a better writer. The only way to do that is to put in the work and write something with some substance and length to it. Every day.

If you want to be a good soccer player, you’ve got to put in long hours on the pitch, improving your footwork, conditioning your body.

If you want to be a good guitar player, you’ve got to learn your chords, learn how to read music, how to hear a note and replicate it with your fingers on the strings. This takes thousands of hours.

And if you want to be a good writer, you’ve got to read and write. A lot. 

There are no substitutes, I’m afraid. But that’s how it should be.

A question for the skeptics: Do you think you will learn more about fantasy fiction reading Wizardry and Wild Romance, or spending the same amount of time scrolling r/fantasy? 

An attention span is a muscle that you must cultivate, practice, and strengthen, or it will atrophy. We’re losing it, thanks to enlightened “VPs of marketing” who spread the kind of nonsense above. Who themselves think they are being “productive” by rapidly skimming their social feed on LinkedIn and liking memed photos. 

Imagine if instead of “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” Ursula LeGuin boiled down her magnificent essay into an infographic. No one would remember the fantastic advice that she herself followed to write the timeless A Wizard of Earthsea and Tombs of Utuan.

Imagine Tolkien trying to fit “On Fairy Stories” into a TikTok video. I’m sure someone has done this; I’m sure no one who has consumed that video remembers it. They certainly have no comprehension of what Tolkien actually wrote. They’re too busy looking at a single bone, instead of enjoying the complex soup.

I’m not immune to this. I dumped Facebook, but I’m a LinkedIn user, heavy, for work. I like some of what I see on the platform but am also dismayed by the inevitable dumbing down going on. I do too much scrolling.

To play nice for a moment, there is a place for infographics, short videos, and chopped up Twitter-esque posting. But this blanket “does anyone even read 500 word blogs” is not a sign of enlightened sophistication by a marketing pro. It’s a sign of rot. It’s the words of the athlete who no longer thinks he has to practice. Who thinks he can just show up on Sunday and win football games.

I know that guy. His name is Ryan Leaf.

Innovation is real, but you have to learn how to block and tackle. Master your craft, before you can tell others how to do it better.

A truth about writing: It’s hard. The blank page is a fearsome opponent. It challenges us with its blank stare: Better blankness than your drivel, it seems to say.

But when you beat the resistance and really get rolling the process of writing is generative. It activates parts of your brain that are numbed by scrolling, snow-blinded from the flash of images and video and sound.

We’ve got to hold the line, each in our own way, against the decline of writing and reading, and comprehension over consumption. I’m holding the line on this one. In the voice of Aragorn at the Black Gate: 

For Long Form Content! 

(Or at least, 500 words. Max).

If you want to fight this battle yourself here are some practical tips.

1. Write every morning. A good word count to aim for is 500 (yeah, that same mark no one has time to read). I'm a morning person and my mind is freshest then; write at night if you are a night-owl and/or have no other options.
2. Read every night. Opt for paper if you can get your hands on it. If not, make sure your tablet is disconnected from easy internet access. Place your phone out of reach.
3. Limit your phone usage. Instead, observe the world with your eyes. Take a walk and think. Listen to people, and see how they behave.

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You’ve read more than 1,000 words in a sitting and proved that VP of marketing wrong. 

An observation about heavy metal and sword-and-sorcery

Blue Cheer and Deep Purple = Lord Dunsany and James Branch Cabell

Black Sabbath = Robert E. Howard

Judas Priest and Iron Maiden = Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance

Metallica and Megadeth = Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock

Queensryche and Danzig = Karl Edward Wagner and Charles Saunders

Slayer, Sepultura, Pantera = Ramsay Campbell, David Gemmell, Glen Cook

Warrant, Poison, Def Leppard = Gardner Fox, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp

Black metal, death metal with cookie monster lyrics = Any Grimdark writer

Obviously meant as fun, not some profound observation.

Every art form probably goes through the same evolution, of early experimentation/breakthrough/pinnacle/steady state/commercialization and exploitation, collapse, followed by further cycles of experimentation.

I don’t have enough expertise in other types of art to say that for sure, but horror comes to mind, going through a similar arc.

If I missed your favorite author or band, no offense meant.

Of Jack London, Earle Labor, and William Dean Howells

I was listening to a recent Art of Manliness podcast in which host Brett McKay replayed “Jack London’s Literary Code,” an episode originally broadcast in January 2020. His guest, Dr. Earle Labor, died on Sept. 15 at the age of 94, leading to the rebroadcast. Labor was one of the world’s foremost London scholars, which makes him a man worthy of respect.

What caught my ear was a comment early in the program about why it took so long for London to be recognized as a major American author worthy of study. Labor cast the blame on William Dean Howells, a shady character I first heard about from Deuce Richardson over at DMR books, years ago. See a more recent piece, "The Dead Hand of William Dean Howells."

From the interview (about the 8 minute mark of the podcast):

Brett McKay: For your PhD you did the first major study on Jack London as a true literary artist, and you were really breaking new ground because for a long time the literary establishment didn’t take London’s work seriously, and very few scholars had studied his craftsmanship. Why was that and what is the status of London today in literature, particularly in terms of scholarship?

Earle Labor: It’s on the rise for sure, and has been for the past generation or so… but for a long time he was dismissed as little more than a hack writer for adventure stories and what have you. Fortunately there have been a number of breakthroughs just in the last two or three decades… I have a lecture I give sometimes on the politics of literary reputation, and I explain to my students, look, the books you read, the ones you read in high school and many that you read in college, were not handed to Moses on that tablet, they were selected by a certain group, and those are the so-called elite. They decided what you were going to read. They decide for example that you are going to read Shakespeare and maybe Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, which is fine, but they should be also assigned Jack London’s The Sea Wolf or something in addition to Call of the Wild. 

London was not part of the group that makes those decisions. For one thing London was a western writer. They were not part of the eastern establishment that pretty well dictated the literary selections at the time in the 19th/even 20th century. Eric Miles Williamson uses the term the “Ivy Mafia”… that may not be quite fair but I think it’s kind of fun. Anyhow, the ideas that it’s those easterners, back in the 19th century, even the early 20th century centered around Boston/New York. William Dean Howells was the leader of that group for a generation. Interesting that he encouraged writers like Hamlin Garland, Stephen Crane, even Emily Dickinson, and here’s London at the time, the most popular of all of them, and virtually ignored by William Dean Howells. Now that’s got to have been deliberate I think. All of that ties in to what I call the politics of literary reputation, which has impeded the reputation of Jack for a number of years, but finally we’re getting that recognition. 

Howells dismissal of London strikes me as the same attitude met by Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft in their writing days, and in the decades after their death: “Pulp hacks” ignored, or certainly not worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Hemingway or Fitzgerald, or more recently the likes of Updike or Irving. Such elitist attitudes persisted well into the late 20th century, and possibly still do in some circles.

I think (or I’d like to think) that the portrayal of fantasy/speculative fiction as something categorically lesser than realistic novels is now a thing of the past. I’ll admit I don’t keep up with academia or current literary theory. But it does seem like fantasy has moved from its former place in mom’s basement to the adult’s table.

Or, it might be that there is no more literary establishment/intelligentsia, what with the reshuffling of the western canon and the death of Harold Bloom and others of his ilk.

Regardless, adieu Dr. Labor, and thanks for your lifelong work illuminating the contributions of London, a forefather of sword-and-sorcery and one of the great authors of our time.

Apropos, a link to an old piece I wrote for The Cimmerian on Jack London's The Call of the Wild.

Fantastic! And thoughts on pastiches

More witches! Art by Jones.

Recently I picked up seven issues of Fantastic. This former digest-sized magazine ran from 1952-1980 before folding. During that time it published many fine stories and authors, covering a wide, eclectic swath of fantasy, science fiction, and horror—including sword-and-sorcery. A lot of the history I covered in Flame and Crimson appeared in the pages of this now defunct publication.

Anyway, I got to reading these old back issues and that led me where my reading inevitably does—to thinking, and writing. I sent a lengthy article about S&S in Fantastic, including the four L. Sprague de Camp/Lin Carter Conan pastiches that appeared between 1972-75, over to Dave Ritzlin at DMR Books the other day. I expect that to appear on his website next week.

Speaking of pastiches, I recently started reading The Goddess of Ganymede (excellent thus far) and author Michael D. Resnick leads off the volume with this:

To Edgar Rice Burroughs Fans Everywhere

I hope you enjoy reading this Burroughs pastiche as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Finally, I see that we now have a cover of the new Conan novel by S.M. Stirling, Blood of the Serpent. I join a chorus of others in wishing the cover was more classic S&S, a Frazetta-esque painting of the Cimmerian perhaps, but hey, it’s clean, it works, there is a sword on it, and a snake. Two S’s, now that I think of it (too clever by half)? But now this new and latest Conan pastiche feels a lot more tangible.

I tie all of these experiences with pastiches into Deuce Richardson’s recent piece over at DMR Books and it’s got me thinking about this practice as well. 

I have mixed feelings on pastiches, and likewise think we need some better-defined terms. Resnick is here using “pastiche” in its original definition, as Deuce lays out “A literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work.” The Goddess of Ganymede is the story of American soldier of fortune, Adam Thane, on a mission to Jupiter. His spacecraft loses contact with earth and is forced to land on its satellite moon, Ganymede, where Thane is embroiled in swashbuckling adventure. Thane finds he can take huge jumps due to the weaker gravitational pull of the planet, encounters red-skinned inhabitants of the planet, etc. In other words, a transparent Burroughs homage/imitation/pastiche.

De Camp meanwhile used “pastiche” as the continued stories of an established literary character by a new author. That term became synonymous with what he and Carter did with the likes of the Conan story “The Witch of the Mists” (August 1972 Fantastic). This is sort of how we all think of “pastiche” today.

My current stance on (De Campian-style) pastiche is: I enjoy them (when done well) and have no problem with others continuing to write new stories of beloved characters. I do think fidelity to the original character/world/lore should be a very high priority. And I’m also of the belief that pastiches should contain a short introduction to the original series or other clear indicator that these are imitations, not the real McCoy, to prevent any confusion with new readers and point them in the direction of the source material. But if you want to write them (and have the rights), have at it. If it's good, I might read it.

Getting political in fantasy fiction

A good idea? Or, should politics be avoided? Can it ever be avoided, when authors are humans and presumably possessed of some political bent, lightly or tightly held?

I think politics can be de-emphasized, and unless you’re setting out to write something like Gulliver’s Travels, think it usually should. Good writers show, not tell, which means showing life in all its richness and complexity, including the non-political sphere (it exists). But shorn of anything remotely considered political your writing runs the risk of being bland. Or becoming the Weird, otherworldly variety of Clark Ashton Smith’s wildest stories.

Getting political cuts both ways. For the liberal who’d like to see something closer to socialism implemented, punching up at corporate overlords through their fiction has understandable appeal. The bad guys can be Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. But the perceived war on white men, capitalism, and the embrace of identity politics, has brought with it authorial counter-reaction from conservative authors.

Doing this type of work requires sophistication and a deft hand, or else it comes across as crass, activist screed. I don’t like reading painful, on the nose allegory. If you choose to write about the politics of the day, within a few years when the next leader is elected, you will find that your stories have aged, fast. Your clever references to political figures and hot-button issues will be rapidly outdated, obscure. Which is why I generally recommend either avoiding overt political messages, or better yet, focusing on reality—life as it actually exists, in all its forms, across the political spectrum and in the non-political sphere.

J.R.R. Tolkien was influenced by the events of his day, his Catholic upbringing, his World War I experiences (and World War II, despite his disavowal)—in addition to great swathes of non-political input including his deep knowledge of languages and medieval literature. But his stuff resists easy analysis. Is The Lord of the Rings conservative? In some respects, yes. A king is restored to his throne at the end. The Scouring of the Shire brushes up to outright critique of socialism. But the story is also about a multicultural fellowship who put aside their differences to beat a dictator. It reveres environmental preservation, critiquing the rapaciousness and industrial pollutions of Saruman. In other words, it depicts life in its richness and complexity. In so doing it presents glimpses of the truth, not a subjective political message of the day, which is one of the reasons why that work endures.

If you’re a writer, getting overtly political is one way to appeal to an audience, find your tribe, sell books. Certainly there is an appetite for all things political today. But it runs a risk. For example, in an anthology your tribe may discover other authors embrace views antithetical to its beliefs. The crudest example of this is the Flashing Swords #6 incident.

I keep going back to Howard for how to do this the right way (or at least the way I prefer my fiction). Are his Conan stories political? In a broad sense, yes. We can read Conan cutting through corrupt judges and monarchs as rebellion against the established order, a counterreaction to the injustices wrought by the Great Depression. But they are not direct critiques of Herbert Hoover (or maybe they are; if someone makes the case I’ll read that essay). They take a much broader, longer view of the course of human history, offering a dark view about the cyclical rise and fall of civilization and the imperfections in human nature, which makes them far more dangerous and memorable than mere of-the-day political commentary. It’s part of what has made Howard’s stories last. As has their non-political elements, like Howard’s incorporation of the literature of the west, and the Texas landscape.

I also think Leiber is instructive. Leiber’s critique of civilization was more subtle than Howard’s, his view of barbarians less romanticized (see “The Snow Women”). Rime Isle, the heroes’ end, was perhaps his statement on the need to break away from gods and cities, religion and politics. Perhaps old Fritz was on to something here, even though I found most of these latter stories wanting. Which maybe tells you something about our inability to ever flee reality.

I have said that my credo is literary freedom, and I stand by it. If getting overtly political in your fiction is what you want, it’s well within your rights, under the First Amendment. It should be this way.

If you want to write about a hero who rips down a wall built by a dictator, and opens the borders to a suffering neighboring community, you might be meet with cheers (from some). Others will boo your effort. How about a story about a barbarian who hacks his way through crime-plagued inner cities, solving violence with violence? Will you/should you accept that story?

Be prepared for criticism, both of the unfair/ugly variety from readers with axes to grind, but also of the thoughtful kind who see things from a different angle. 

Life is lived in the middle. Political theory must meet reality. If you can live with that, have at it. 

Some ruminations on sword-and-sorcery’s slide into Grimdark

Sword-and-sorcery continues to show stirrings, and life. Outlets like Tales from the Magician’s Skull, DMR Books, new projects like Whetstone, New Edge, etc., are publishing new authors and new stories that embrace its old forms and conventions. Obviously the genre ain’t what it used to be circa 1970, but who knows what the future may hold for us aging diehards.

I speculate on some of the reasons why S&S died off in Flame and Crimson (which, by the way, just surpassed 100 ratings on Amazon—thank you to everyone who took the time to rate or review the book, as these help with visibility in some arcane, Amazon protected manner). I won’t rehash them all here, they are available in the book.

What I haven’t written as much about is why Grimdark filled the void, what makes that genre popular with modern readers, and what we might have to learn from this transition.

First, I am of the opinion that Grimdark is the spiritual successor to S&S. One of them, at least. I agree with the main thrust of this article by John Fultz. S&S has many spiritual successors, from heavy metal bands to video games to Dungeons and Dragons. But in terms of literature, the works of Richard Morgan, Joe Abercrombie, and George R.R. Martin, bear some of the hallmarks of S&S, while also being something markedly different. 

I believe this occurred as part of a natural evolution within S&S, with some things gained, others lost. As occurs during the general course of all progress.

First, I think this shift mirrored a broader cultural change. If we accept that Grimdark is marked by graphic depictions of violence, as well as a bleak/everyone is shit/might is right outlook (grossly simplified), then we can see what was acceptable in the 1950s-early 70s was different than what we saw in the popular culture in the 1990s and into today. Heavy metal was born in 1970 with the gloom and doom of Black Sabbath, before Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, then Metallica and Megadeth and Slayer, took the form to 11, giving the hard rock of the late 60s/early 70s a much harder, darker, aggressive edge. Popular westerns went from the tough but heroic John Wayne to the spaghettis of Clint Eastwood, reaching a culmination in Unforgiven that essentially deconstructed the genre and cast the “hero” in a very different light. War films gave us Platoon instead of The Longest Day. Frank depictions of sexuality also became acceptable. Essentially “the culture” decided this shift, artists and directors and musicians needed to break norms and explore new territories to keep their visions fresh and original. It’s a natural process, the way art always evolves. But things are lost, old forms abandoned along the way. S&S was a casualty.

I also think the ascendance of Grimdark mirrored a change in publishing trends. Grimdark borrowed from high/epic fantasy in form and length, and with its emphasis on world-building. This aspect is less appealing to me, for the most part (I love Tolkien, but I think very few if any authors have done the world-building aspect of Tolkien as well). But it seems many fantasy readers love getting lost in worlds and so gravitate toward multi-volume series. I won’t argue with that impulse, though I think a really good writer can accomplish that with few words and deft sketches of detail. Trilogies and stretched-out stories offer a far more reliable and lucrative business model for publishers and authors. But less cynically they also allow for greater character development, a thought which struck me during a recent read of Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself (Glokta and Logen Ninefingers and Jezal all feel very real, and three-dimensional, as we consistently read/hear what they are thinking). Again, some like this aspect of fiction, some don’t. S&S can do this, and has, albeit across multiple stories (see Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser), but it’s not a typical hallmark of the subgenre. But readers seem to want that, hence our fascination with origin stories, identification with characters "like us" rather than larger-than-life or abstract heroes, etc.

The general cultural trend of amplified violence and post-Vietnam war-weariness led to grittier literary material like David Gemmell’s Legend and Glen Cook’s The Black Company. Before Martin gave it full life with A Game of Thrones and his multivolume A Song of Ice and Fire, and Joe Abercrombie picked up the torch with The First Law trilogy. And we have what we have today in Grimdark, a sort of mash-up of S&S and epic fantasy and other influences.

Grimdark’s ascendance doesn’t mean we can’t have S&S too, with its greater emphasis on the short form, wonder and weirdness, and less emphasis on world building and cast of characters stories. But whether it will become commercially viable again remains to be seen. Baen is about to give it a shot with its signing of Howard Andrew Jones, and Titan Books set to publish a new Conan novel. 

Literary freedom: My stance, and an explanation

Literary freedom is my credo. With very few exceptions, I think you should be able to write whatever you want.

What does this look like in practice? It means that 99% of the time, people will use this sacred right to create stories or write essays or draw pictures about rocketships and rayguns, spies and intrigue, or knights and swords, and life is good.

But it also means that, 1% of the time, someone will write a story that someone will object to, and all hell will break loose.

For example, let’s say you want to write a spy story with a protagonist who is a sexist, i.e., an old school James Bond-type who has dalliances with women that later are dropped unceremoniously out of the picture after a night of passion. Something that harkens back to an older age.

Or, let’s say, you want to want to write a sword-and-sorcery story with a powerful, gay, female protagonist who kicks ass, and smashes jerky men’s faces in. Then she gets the girl at the end. Something that defies or upends old genre conventions.

Should you not be allowed to write that character? Some readers may be offended.

My position? Fuck no. Have at it.

Let me provide an analogy for someone who thinks I’m just defending S&S. I am of course, but I have no problem defending other genres that I have no interest in, because literary freedom is my credo.

Romance is a billion dollar industry. 84% of its 29+ million readers are women.

But as I understand it, some romance caters to stereotypes, because that’s what some of its readers want. We know what they are. Shirtless buff dudes, handsome, full set of hair. Great lovers. Flush with cash. Hearts of gold. 

Now, were I more sensitive, I might say, I’m offended by the depiction of men in some of these stories. These are standards I don’t live up to. I wish I were more buff, and wealthy, and my hard heart was softer.

Are these stereotypes harmful to men? Some might say yes.

Personally, I don’t find it harmful, but mostly, I don’t care, and if someone wants to read it, have at it. Moreover, I think reading a book, (almost) any book, is superior than consuming passive entertainment. So please do read your romance novels, if you love them. Even the trashy ones.

I’ll be over here reading my trash S&S, with the barbarian who throws the gal over his shoulder after hacking through hordes of Picts. And we’re all happy.

I do think psychological harm is a thing, but I also think it’s far too subjective to do anything with. Something that you find hurtful will not be hurtful for me, and vice-versa. Rather than seek to eliminate anything potentially offensive, and sacrifice artistic freedoms, or place neutering guardrails on fiction, my preference is, leave it in, and buyer beware. I’m also of the opinion that you shouldn’t deliberately be a dick, and write fiction designed to needlessly provoke people. But again, your definition of a dick or edgelord will always differ from mine. So again, I’m erring on the side of freedom of expression.

To minimize offense, I’m also perfectly OK with warning labels. “Warning: Old Pulp sensibilities” on a cover of a book works for me. I finally got to watching Stranger Things season one (it’s good BTW), and every episode starts with a list of things in it that you might find harmful. Violence, swearing, smoking. I’m fine with this approach. It’s an elegant way around a thorny problem. We can keep in the stuff of that period—yeah smoking was incredibly prevalent in the 1980s—by letting you know in advance that it’s coming. Feel free to turn it off if you have impressionable young kids. Us adults can make up our own minds.

This is where I fall. YMMV--and I respect that, and you.

If you think this stance makes me a closeted bigot defending racism, sexism, etc., or “betraying sword-and-sorcery sensibilities” by not gatekeeping, that’s your prerogative. You don’t know me, or what I believe in, how I vote, etc. I don’t exist to make you, or the world happy. Not my job. I’d rather spend my time following my bliss, wherever that leads me. I am aware that this attitude may not make me welcome in some communities, may keep me out of some anthologies, etc, whatever.

My advice: Follow your heart, read what you love, support what you believe in. Vote with your dollars.

I’m going to answer a few questions that naturally arise with the stance of literary freedom.

Am I saying you can write blatantly, provocatively racist shit? I really wish you wouldn’t, as you’re hurting yourself, other people, and the communities in which you work. Have at it, but if you want to be an asshole, know that the market will decide, the public will have its say, and you’ll be out your commercial career. I also don’t think this is a wholesale problem, in fiction.

Do I think you can write literally whatever you want? The answer to this is no. I draw the line when writing promotes actual, physical/material, in the world harm. For example, a how-to manual for child abduction, or instructions for breeding Anthrax in your basement and shipping it undetected to your local politician. Please don’t write these things. I'd be OK with someone dropping the ban-hammer.

But as for fiction? My tolerance is way higher. 

I’m not interested in adjudicating edge cases or arguing who is the club because of what they write. I’d rather spend my time in a positive manner, for example discussing good stories and why they work. Writing about interesting literary tropes, styles, and historical trends. And yes, even keeping old works of dead authors alive, because the positive things they bring to the table far outweigh the negative. I’m glad to see publishers reprinting old pulp stories. Add a helpful introduction that contextualizes the racism and sexism, or a warning label, and then let the reader decide.

It’s fruitless to codify what every “ism” means and what is acceptable vs. non-acceptable. Any definition that boils down to “whatever I think is racist/sexist/ageist” etc. is untenable, beyond slippery slope. A slope that plunges you off the side of Mount Everest to a fiery doom. Trying to do so kills communities from infighting, ends careers for authors who make inadvertent mistakes. Take a glance at the Hugos and you will see a community eating itself from the inside out.

This is a thorny problem to write about, primarily because it is aligned with political thought, and politics inevitably make their way in. Authorial freedom naturally aligns with the likes of John Locke, and the exaltation of the individual; writing with group unity in mind strikes me as Rousseau-ian, where our rights are indistinguishable from the cohesion of the state. But, because this argument comes up again and again in every community I frequent, I thought it worth clarifying my own thoughts, and produce something I can point to, when the argument inevitably comes up for the 4000th time. 

In summary: Write what you want.