Bruce Dickinson What Does This Button Do? A review

There aren’t too many men for whom I would admit to possessing a genuine man-crush. Bruce Dickinson is one of them.

Iron Maiden’s lead singer is a true Renaissance Man in every sense of the phrase. Perhaps polymath is a better descriptor. Licensed airplane pilot who flies 757s and other large aircraft for commercial airlines. Author. Former world-class fencer. Beer brewer. Motivational speaker. Solo artist. Songwriter. He is far more than just a man blessed with an incredible voice, though of course he hasn’t earned the nickname “the human air-raid siren” for nothing.

After reading Dickinson’s biography What Does This Button Do? I have if possible even more respect for the man.

There’s a lot of lessons to take from this book. It’s a story of courage to pursue difficult and uncommon pursuits. Of seizing opportunities when they arise, and working your ass off to achieve your goals (I was stunned to discover how much fencing and flying Bruce did, and continues to do, while in the midst of worldwide tours). And wringing as much out of the marrow of existence as you can in this one life you have been given.

Bruce was not handed any of his fortune and fame. He endured a tough upbringing. For the first five years of his life he was raised by his grandparents, and later by British boarding schools, until he was able to earn a living from music. His biological parents were alcoholics and rather neglectful of their son. His grandfather, a miner, did not make much money and the young Bruce lived a very frugal existence (he describes not possessing a telephone, refrigerator, central heater, car, or inside toilet in those early years). In boarding school he endured a fair bit of bullying and had to learn to defend himself. Eventually Dickinson fell in love with rock after hearing Deep Purple and discovered he had a talent for singing. By the time he entered Queen Mary College, University of London, he had decided he would pursue a career in music. In Samson he was a one man enterprise booking a 20-date UK headline tour when a lazy, useless agent couldn’t find the band any work. He kicked around for a few years playing experimental unpopular material in front of sparse crowds before his talent won out, leading to his audition for Iron Maiden. The rest of history.

I learned a lot about Bruce. Much of the information on his early years was new to me: His first singing days in bands like Shots, and the details of his recruitment into Samson in 1979 at the age of 20. Bruce absolutely loves flying, perhaps at this stage of his life even more than Maiden and music. The last 40% of the book contains many stories and anecdotes about Bruce’s obsession with aviation, harrowing episodes in the cockpit of various aircraft, and eventually his purchase of a replica of the Red Barron’s legendary Fokker triplane. It also covers the band’s outfitting of Ed Force One, a custom Boeing 747 that carted the band around on their Book of Souls world tour.

The book is full of interesting anecdotes and details. I loved a story of his personal maturation and anger management breakthrough while on the Powerslave tour in 1985, told in the context of fencing and switching the foil from his right hand to his left hand:

I started again, but left-handed. I was slow and my coordination painful; the muscle memory was all wrong and had to be reprogrammed. My left arm tired quickly and my neck ached—it was twisted on the side from the headbanging injury. Various small muscles in my forearm had atrophied because of the disc problem. This was the rehab for my body, but it was like a revelation for my brain. The anger was gone. The will to win and the passion remained, but the pressure cooker had disappeared.

Also illuminating and was his harrowing account of the benefit concert he delivered during his solo career in war-torn Sarajevo, which I admit to missing at the time (hey, it was the mid-90s man. There was no internet and metal was not being covered on MTV or any other mainstream outlets). Dickinson took no pay for the concert, which several other major metal bands passed on. He witnessed live fire in the distance and saw bullet pocked cars, buildings reduced to rubble, and orphaned children by the score.

Bruce does not take himself very seriously, and is someone who prefers to plunge deeply into hobbies and master difficult skills and take on business ventures rather than dwell on his mistakes and failures, or engage in maudlin bouts of “why me”? self-pity, even during a rather harrowing bout of throat and neck cancer.

I do agree with some of the criticisms of the book. One is that it’s not comprehensive. Bruce provides insight on the art and skill of fencing, flying, and singing, and the details of how he was diagnosed with and ultimately beat cancer. But other important events (his departure and return to Maiden, his process of writing songs, his deeply held beliefs religious or otherwise, political views, etc.) are all either skimmed over or left out entirely. What Does This Button Do? offers very little in the way of Bruce’s personal life. There is no mention of his wife or children or other relationships, other than a brief note of why he left them out in an afterword. There is very little details of behind the scenes band drama, save for some early clashes with Steve Harris over positioning on the stage and songwriting differences. Some 360-odd pages later there is still much more about Bruce I’d like to know. What Does this Button Do? Is a humorous, fun, and impressive recollection of what Dickinson did for the first 58 or so years of his life, but not a particularly illuminating look under the hood of who he is, and what makes him tick.

In fairness, however, I believe the absence of these elements is in fact a telling characteristic of Dickinson, who loves living life, and doing things, and acting, rather than reacting and deep reflection. We see enough emotion in his deep respect for the military and of the innocent victims of the siege of Sarajevo to know there is a real heart beating beneath the acerbic wit and Python-esque comedic optimism with which he seems to view the world and himself. Dickinson always looks on the bright side of life.

My rating: 8 out of 10 Eddies. A must-read for any Maiden fan, and of interest to rock and metal fans in general.

Iron Maiden!

Phantom of the Opera! Probably in my top 10-15 favorites.

In one week’s time I’ll be making my way over to Great Woods (I still call it that, not the Tweeter or

Xfinity or Comcast Center or whatever the fuck it is currently being called) in Mansfield MA to watch the greatest heavy metal band in history.

I’m talking of course about Iron Maiden.

I’ve had the fortune of seeing Maiden 10 times prior, on the following dates and at the following venues:

• Jan. 1991: Providence (RI) Civic Center
• July 1999: Orpheum Theatre, Boston
• August 2000: Tweeter Center, Mansfield
• July 2003: Worcester Centrum
• July 2005: Tweeter Center (on Ozzfest Tour, where they proceeded to destroy Ozzy)
• Oct. 2006: Agganis Arena, Boston University
• March 2008: Izod Center, East Rutherford NJ
• June 2008: Tweeter Center, Mansfield
• June 2012: Comcast Center, Mansfield
• July 2017: Xfinity Center, Mansfield

So many good memories in that list above. I saw them the first time in 1991 on the “No Prayer on the Road” tour, and my 17-year-old self was so fanboy-ed out that I bought a tour poster and tour book (which I still have). My mouth was hung open in joy when they hit the stage playing Tailgunner. No one does war songs and history like Maiden.

You’ll notice the major gap from 1992 to 1998, which was when Bruce Dickinson took a break from the band and went solo, and Blaze Bayley stepped in. I realize now I made a mistake by choosing to not attend Maiden shows during Blaze’s tenure, as I really like several songs off the X Factor and Virtual XI (Judgement of Heaven, Sign of the Cross, Futureal, Man on the Edge, The Clansman).

If I had to pick a favorite show from all of the above it would be the ’99 show at the Orpheum Theatre. A small venue, sold out, ridiculously hot, but HUGE energy with Bruce just back in the band. “Transylvania” opened the set and my pulse rate doubled, and they came tearing out like Gods of Old. Metal was back after taking a hiatus during the grunge era. And so was Maiden.

Watching Maiden play the entirety of A Matter of Life and Death in 2006 at the Agganis Arena was amazing. What band with this much history and pressure to play just the hits, cranks through an entire new album? It’s a great album, and I loved it.

Maiden probably sounded their best at the 2008 show in East Rutherford, NJ. Watching them do a full rendition of “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner” with Bruce in a full cloak, wreathed in fog, was amazing. Pure art, worthy of broadway.

Right now I’ve got a copy of Dickinson’s autobiography What Does this Button Do? waiting to be read. Can’t wait to dig into that.

If anyone reading this is a Maiden fan and hasn’t yet discovered Talking Maiden: The Podcast of the Beast, correct that right now. The co-hosts are not only passionate but put in huge amounts of research and show prep, often breaking down single albums over 4 or more episodes. I’ve learned a ton about Maiden’s early years from this show. Plus they have good taste in beer.

Up the Irons. I’m sure I’ll post a review of the August 1 show here.

Rest in Peace, Rutger Hauer

Man, this one hurts: Blade Runner Star Rutger Hauer Has Passed Away.

Hopefully he's facing his creator right now, with a scowl, and a demand:

I want more life...fucker.

Here's a link to one of my oldest SK posts about Blade Runner, one of my all-time favorite films.


Perhaps we'll meet at the Tannhäuser Gate some day.

Just backed Tales from the Magician's Skull kickstarter

I support sword-and-sorcery! Looking forward to what is next from these guys.

I recommend you do the same. Kickstarter closes on July 25.

Haakon: The Golden Ax, a review

No man could defeat him.
No woman could resist him.

Alas, I had high hopes for this one, being a sucker for all things Viking fantasy (is this a subgenre? If not, time to coin one. Broad-and-battleaxe? Skald-and-shieldwall? Leave your suggestion below). It sounded great. From the back cover:

Warrior, leader, lover, conqueror… HAAKON.

OUT OF A VIOLENT AGE, when longships and broadswords rule the earth, comes the mightiest Viking warrior of them all—Haakon the Dark.

I'm in.

Haakon started out with a bang, a desperate ship-to-ship battle in the North sea. This was the best sequence in the book. I don’t know if there was anything quite like these old longboat battles, with crews of desperate Vikings leaping over the rails and murdering each other, with drownings and maimings and mayhem miles from shore.

A spear drove down toward Haakon. His shield rose to meet it. The spearhead pierced the leather-covered wood, nearly skewering Haakon as it flashed by his ear. He swung the shield, and the shaft of the embedded spear lashed through the ranks of the enemy. A man screamed and clapped his hand to his face, where jaw and cheek and one eye were bloody wreckage. One of Haakon’s men closed in and struck with an ax. The man’s screams died as his head lolled on his shoulders. The thud of the falling body was lost in the swelling uproar of clashing weapons and cries of panting men.

Outrageous that these wild combats actually occurred. Not a bad start.

After the initial carnage the battle scenes are not as well-depicted or as plentiful as I’d hoped. I guess I’ve been spoiled by the likes of Bernard Cornwell, who does the desperate, fear and sweat drenched press of shield wall combat better than anyone. Author Eric Neilson’s prose is workmanlike.

Haakon flags terribly in its second half, once Haakon returns home to Norway with his booty and the willing English maid Rosamund under his arm. Like Arnold in Conan the Destroyer, my prevailing thought plowing through interminable dialogue and dickering was, “enough talk!” There’s too much Haakon lounging around his deceased father’s steading, pondering whether to launch a pre-emptive strike on Ivar Egbertsson who has designs on his lands and his lady. Politics and perception stays Haakon’s hand, but he’s forced to take action when Ivar’s men steal his beloved Rosamund.

Haakon could almost be classified as sword-and-sorcery, with its action-oriented central hero, gritty historical setting, and light touches of magic, which possess a bit of the weird unpredictability that makes for good S&S fiction. But the feel isn’t quite right to me. I’d place it in the category of historical fantasy. Haakon the Good was a historical figure and served as king of Norway circa 920-961, but nothing in the first book bears any resemblance to the events of his life.

Spoiler alert: Haakon culminates with the rescue of Haakon’s beloved Rosamund following a pitched final battle and the promise of more adventure in Book 2: The Viking’s Revenge. I may read it yet, sucker as I am this kind of fiction. But overall Haakon: The Golden Ax is sadly well outside the rarefied air occupied by the likes of The Broken Sword, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, and Eric Brighteyes. 

Perhaps worth a read if you enjoy the Northern Thing.

Paying tribute: The Priest and AD/HD

Some day in the not too-distant future my favorite heavy metal bands will be retired, the big concert halls silent, and only memories remaining of the glory days of Iron Maiden, Megadeth, and their ilk. And I will be reduced to watching tribute bands.

Frankly, I’m very much OK with this, if they are anything like the caliber of The Priest and AD/HD.

I would be happy until the end of my rocking days watching good tribute bands perform. I don’t feel any need, whatsoever, to seek out new music. That’s not to say there are no new good bands on the scene. Far from that. Nor do I actively dismiss new music. I have had a few finds over the years that I find enjoyable.

But the fact of the matter is, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, KISS, AC/DC (and throw in Rush for good measure), have massive and varied catalogs of studio and live albums that are more than enough for my limited listening time. I don’t feel the need to seek out new bands. And now, if I want the experience of listening to live music—and there is nothing like live music—I have the tributes.

This past Saturday I got the opportunity to check out two tributes playing locally. I live some 20-odd minutes from the venue, Uncle Eddie’s in Salisbury MA. It was an absolutely beautiful summer evening. I pulled out of my driveway, alone, around 8 p.m., rolled the windows down, and started blasting Unleashed in the East. Route 110 in Amesbury passed too quickly as I drove the two-lane blacktop, wishing I was on Desert Plains to some far-flung destination. I wish that drive was long enough to get me through the album, and a few other discs besides. It was a divine experience. 

Ahead was the knowledge I’d be meeting up with an old friend of mine and his wife, for some conversation and cold beers. And then a full evening—three-plus hours—of some of the best hard rock and heavy metal ever written. Yes, played not by the original artists, but by bands of talented performers who dedicated countless hours to perfecting their craft, and paying homage to a pair of rock and metal greats.

Uncle Eddies is right on the beach, and you can hear the waves of the Atlantic rolling up the sands outside the club. It’s not much to look at inside, with a stained drop ceiling and restrooms with broken mirrors and ill-cleaned graffiti, and a low stage in the back. But it’s got a charm of its own, and the owner works hard to give local music and heavy metal in particular a voice. It’s a hard-working, blue-collar venue.

I paid more to park ($10) then the cover to get in ($5). I would have gladly paid five times that over. The lights of Salisbury beach pizza joints and arcades made for a fun walk to the club. Uncle Eddies was as packed as I’ve ever seen it. Judas Priest, AC/DC, and other various metal T-shirts were ubiquitous (dude with the Kreator T--nice work. This one’s for you). The beer was flowing. Life was great.

As for the show, my words can’t do it justice. The level of musicianship was incredible. Both lead singers were excellent, in particular Ron Finn of The Priest, who not only is Rob Halford reincarnated, but can pull off a very credible David Coverdale, among others. The Priest crushed hits like The Ripper, Beyond the Realms of Death, Devil’s Child, and Victim of Changes. AD/HD was a crowd favorite and packed the dance floor. I was so pumped to hear If You Want Blood (You Got It) and Have a Drink on Me, both in my top 5.

I took a lot of clips with my crappy cell phone, but they don’t do these bands justice. For a better idea of how good these guys are, here’s The Priest playing Devil's Child.

The two Brians.

Afterwards I thanked as many members of each band as I could. I praised The Priest’s Bryan

Shepherd for owning the guitar solo of Beyond the Realms of Death. I hugged Ron Finn and his wife. And I told the hyper-talented AD/HD guitarist “Angus Young” that he was performing an amazing service, keeping alive a breed of rock that is slowly becoming a relic of the past.

And I meant it.

Priest, AD/HD, KISS Forever, and legions of others playing small clubs across the USA and in parts unknown—this post is your tribute. Keep rocking, brothers in metal.

Check out The Priest on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thepriestnh/

Here’s AD/HD’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ADHDNE/. Worth a visit and a like, too.

Revival

It’s official, The Silver Key is coming out of retirement. “Rising from Ruins,” to quote the great Judas Priest.

So where have I been the last six years?

Still reading, still writing. Still thinking about sword-and-sorcery. Still enjoying heavy metal. In short, still living the dream.

There were a few reasons why I stopped writing this blog. I was burning the proverbial candle on both ends, with too many competing responsibilities. Maintaining the blog started to feel like a chore. Along with every other adult on the planet I have many obligations, mainly related to a full-time job, my home, and other responsibilities. Writing for a personal, unpaid, bit of electronic real estate of ruminations on fantasy books and music should not become weekly content churning. It started to feel that way toward the end.

I have not vanished from writing. Former Cimmerian site editor Deuce Richardson had managed to rope me into a few posts over at DMR Blog (publisher of the awesome Swords of Steel, among other sword-and-sorcery related fiction). Here’s a link to one of them here. I wrote a review for Skelos.

But principally I have been working on a book-length non-fiction project, one that has consumed most of my free writing time over the last 4-5 years. The principal writing is complete and I hope to have it published. I will explain in some upcoming posts.

If you enjoyed the material I posted here from roughly 2007-2013, I plan to bring more of the same. It may be weeks or longer in between posts. But I do feel the urge to do some writing again, and this will be the space. Although I’m on Facebook that’s not an option for my ramblings. Too many cat pics and kids’ sporting activities to compete with. I debated blowing this blog up and starting fresh somewhere else, but I think some of my old posts are OK reading. So I’m dusting off the older Blogger site and opening up shop a second time.

I hope this is not a false start. I don’t intend it to be.

Rising from Ruins

Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian: A review

Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian (McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 2013) offers a broad selection of essays on Conan, but not just the Conan of Robert E. Howard’s stories. It covers Conan in all his various forms, from the original Weird Tales barbarian, to the hulking brute of the Schwarzenegger film, to the various computer generated avatars in the Age of Conan computer game. In this way it differs greatly from its predecessors The Dark Barbarian and The Barbaric Triumph, which reserve their analysis for Howard and Howard’s stories alone.

This book will, I suspect, set many Howard fans’ teeth on edge. It opens with an unapologetic defense of the L. Sprague de Camp/Lin Carter-edited Lancer/Ace Conan paperbacks, positing that without these books Conan and Robert E. Howard would be all but forgotten today. Writes editor Jonas Prida, “The problem of de Camp’s decision to re-order the chronology and list himself on Tales of Conan’s cover as one of the authors has been alluded to, but what must also be admitted is that without the controlling hand of de Camp, both Conan and Howard may have gone the way of Kull, relegated to footnote status in investigations into fellow Weird Tales’ contributor H.P. Lovecraft.” Now I personally have no issue with placing the DeCamp/Carter pastiches, or even the Conan films and videogames, under the academic microscope; far from it, I think it’s an interesting and worthy exercise. However Prida seems to think that the root of De Camp-ian resentment is purists defending the Conan canon, but I disagree: What draws the ire of many Howard fans is De Camp’s often mean-spirited assessment of Howard the man in these books’ introductions and elsewhere.

In addition, Conan Meets the Academy: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Enduring Barbarian trumpets itself as a trailblazer in what Prida describes as a limited field of traditional literary analysis (“The first scholarly investigation of Conan,” according to a blurb on the back cover). Though it tips a cap to Mark Finn’s Blood and Thunder and Glenn Lord’s The Last Celt, Prida has apparently either not heard of The Dark Barbarian and The Barbaric Triumph or does not consider them "scholarly," as these fail to garner a mention in the preface.

Ah well, some troubling early signs aside, on to the contents.

Happy birthday to JRR Tolkien; jeers to Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman is another notable fantasy author who, alongside the likes of Michael Moorcock and Richard Morgan, has grossly missed the mark in his appraisal of The Lord of the Rings. Listening to this recent Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast I was dumbfounded not only by Pullman’s ignorance of The Lord of the Rings, but the gall he exhibits throwing around opinions on a work he admittedly read only once—and as a teenager. “I’ve tried to read it since, but I was unsuccessful,” Pullman says in the interview (note: the Tolkien portion starts around the 17:10 mark; its only a two minute segment or so of the interview). Admitting this fact should automatically invalidate any opinions you have on The Lord of the Rings. I was forced to read Moby Dick in high school. Had that been the only time I read it, and 40 years passed, how much would my opinions on the book matter? None, right?

But since Pullman is a big-time successful author, in the eyes of some we must take him seriously. So I’m taking this opportunity on what would be Tolkien’s 121^st birthday to show just much how much he gets wrong.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, a review

Warning: Spoilers follow.

As I left an IMAX 3D showing of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey early Saturday evening, I struggled at first to determine why I experienced such ambivalence about the film. Then I hit on it: Director Peter Jackson has taken what is a tightly-plotted, 300-page novel and turned it into the equivalent of a multi-volume fantasy epic, with all the good and the bad that change entails.

My short review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey deserves the mixed ratings it has received (65% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing). It was a qualified success, with some high points and some low points. It’s good, but not as good as The Lord of the Rings films, in my opinion. And in places it’s downright annoying.

Just where is this guy?

Readers the world round are surely wondering what happened to that guy who writes The Silver Key blog? I wish I had something really cool to report, for example that I've been called in as an emergency consultant on The Hobbit, but alas, no. The answer to my lack of posting these days is: Life, covering high school football, and a side writing project. These things have consumed much of my limited free time and prevented me from posting to the blog. So rather than banging out half-hearted posts I've decided to take an extended break.

Am I burning with the news about Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his role as Conan, or the muck Hollywood is making out of World War Z? You betcha. Have I been reading genre fiction worthy of critical review? Yes, that too. I just finished up the latest in Bernard Cornwell's ongoing Saxon Stories, Death of Kings, for instance. And a fair bit of swords and sorcery. I've been watching and enjoying The Walking Dead, too (alas, poor T-Dog, we hardly knew ye). I just don't have the time to write about these things with the blowhard attitude and half-baked analysis readers of this blog have come to appreciate and love.

I do plan on coming back and blogging again, but not now, and likely not anytime soon. So for now, a semi- apropos snatch of poetry from the great REH:

I could not bide in the feasting-hall

Where the great fires light the rooms—

For the winds are walking the night for me

And I must follow where gaunt lands be,

Seeking, beyond some nameless sea,

The dooms beyond the dooms.

The Zombie Survival Guide, a review

The next time a Class 2 zombie outbreak occurs in my neighborhood, I’ll be well-prepared to deal with the shambling corpses of hungry undead now that I’ve read Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead.

The Zombie Survival Guide dispels exaggerated myths and legends of the undead and instead presents the reader with unvarnished “truths” about zombies. You’ll find information on zombies’ physical strength, sight, hearing, and rate of decay, and the pros and cons of various weaponry for battling the undead (everything from medieval maces and claymores, to M-16s and flamethrowers). It describes various scenarios for identifying early signs of localized (Class 1) outbreaks, to full-blown widespread undead infestation (Class 3). You’ll find best practices for battling zombies in urban settings, in harsh desert and swamp environments, even under the sea. The Zombie Survival Guide tells you how to defend your home by stocking up with key food and supplies, moving to your second floor and destroying all staircases (recommended for Class 2), or how to survive on the run as you move to the most remote and therefore safest parts of the planet in a world-wide zombie apocalypse in which mankind is overrun (Class 4). The best vehicle should an outbreak occur? You might not guess it, but it’s a bicycle. On a bike you can easily outrun the slow, slouching pace of zombies, it will never run out of gas, you can carry a bicycle over rough terrain, and you can maneuver a bike through the inevitable traffic jams that accompany a full-on panic. Motorcycles are very good too, though their noise attracts the undead. Boats are also a secure means of travel, says Brooks, but watch your anchor line—zombies walking on the ocean floor can use it to climb up to your boat. “Hundreds” of hapless victims have died this way, Brooks tells us.

Last Call by Tim Powers, a review

Scott Crane abandoned his career as a professional poker player twenty years ago and hasn’t returned to Las Vegas, or held a hand of cards, in ten years. But troubling nightmares about a strange poker game he once attended on a houseboat on Lake Mead are drawing him back to the magical city. For the mythic game he believed he won did not end that night in 1969—and the price of his winnings was his soul. Now, a pot far more strange and perilous than he ever could imagine depends on the turning of a card. Enchantingly dark and compellingly real, this World Fantasy Award–winning novel is a masterpiece of magic realism set in the gritty, dazzling underworld known as Las Vegas. 

Tim Powers’ Last Call (1992 William Morrow and Co.; 2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.) is studded with references to old myths, snatches of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” the art of poker playing, and the unique culture and atmosphere of old and new Las Vegas. It contains numerous major and minor characters, overarching themes and subplots, and digressions into probability theory. In other words, it demands close reading and attention to detail. Listening to it in half-hour chunks as I did while driving to work was probably not the best idea, and may have affected my review of the book, but what follows is an honest appraisal.

Plethora of Howard Days Panels on Youtube

If you didn’t make it out to Cross Plains Texas for Robert E. Howard Days this past June (I didn’t, and have not yet made the trip, though it is on my bucket list), despair not: You can experience the panels, vicariously, through the magic of Youtube. Videographer Ben Friberg filmed several of the panels and generously posted them for up for public consumption. They’re all incredibly interesting and fun, if you like this sort of thing. Here’s a quick list of links.

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

Some thoughts on the purpose of fantasy fiction

The author of another blog I discovered recently, Everything is Nice, recently chose to describe a quote by George R.R. Martin as representative of everything wrong with commercial fantasy fiction. I happen to like the quote quite a bit (you can find Martin reading it aloud in its entirety here), and asked why he felt that way.

Martin (who happens to be the author of the blog, not the actual George RR Martin) responded that:

It plays into the artificial and embarrassing Us versus Them divide that is sadly all too common within the genre community. Beyond the stupidity of jamming his thumb on the scales and simply assigning high status words to the thing Martin likes, however, is the amusing contradiction that those high status words have to come from reality. As Sam says, you certainly couldn't get a bloody steak in reality, could you? At the most basic level, if Martin can't write movingly or beautifully about the strip malls of Burbank (and I'm certainly prepared to believe he can't) then he has no business writing anything. He is basically saying he has no eye, no ear, no empathy. And that is why it is speaks to the problem of commercial fantasy in general.

To which I replied:

I understand what you mean, Martin. Fantasy can certainly be applicable to reality, as Tolkien once wrote. But I guess I would differ with you that Martin’s quote represents everything wrong with commercial fantasy.

What if the “them” in your “us vs. them” comparison is our world, not some particular piece of it? Martin is creating through his imagination another world that never was and never could be, but I would argue that this exercise is nevertheless of worth as it demonstrates our ability as humans to dream and to create. Imagination is something we as humans do, and its fruits (even the otherworldly ones) are thus part of the “real” human condition.

Do you think there is ever a place for other worlds, or must all fiction, even heroic fantasy, engage with our own world? Much of reality does suck, unfortunately; are we ever allowed even brief escape in the pages of a book?

I think Martin’s quote highlights something fantasy can do and strives to do, even if much of it is pedestrian and falls short in the attempt.

Just as a sidenote, I think it’s rather ironic that Martin of all fantasy writers would have chosen this quote, given that by far and away his most popular creation, A Song of Ice and Fire, is quite grim and dark and shares much more common with gritty historical reality (the bloody War of the Roses) than fantasy.

I'm hoping that there will be more debate to come, but what do you think? What function does fantasy serve,  if it isn't set in or applicable to our own world?

A Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore Score

Brick and mortar bookstores are as rare as hen’s teeth these days, it seems, and that’s a shame. I enjoy the instantaneous convenience and enormous selection of Amazon and Abebooks, but there’s something about musty old bookstores that online shopping cannot replace. The tactile sensation of picking up books, the joy of utterly unexpected finds, and the atmosphere of a shop devoted to reading and book-selling, are experiences that online delivery mechanisms cannot replicate.

Yesterday I found a wonderful bookstore that reminded me of the unique advantages and pleasures of the real over the virtual: Mansfield’s Books and More in Tilton, New Hampshire. Tilton is a town I had driven through numerous times without a cause to stop, outside of filling a gas tank and the like. But yesterday while playing chauffer on a back-to-school shopping trip with my wife and kids I caught a glimpse of a storefront window in Tilton center that I had previously overlooked. In a brief glance I took in a display of hardcover books in the front window and a few cartons of paperbacks placed outside with a sign indicating a sidewalk sale. My attention piqued, I managed to free myself from the clutches of clothes and shoe shopping with little difficulty and quickly backtracked to Mansfield’s.

Mansfield’s occupies what appears to be a former office building. The main room has a fireplace in one wall with a few overstuffed chairs. A narrow hallway at the back opens up on left and right to six rooms that were presumably individual offices at one time. Most of these smaller rooms were still hung with old, ornate doors with frosted glass panes and other such details, though one clearly served as a small kitchen at one point, complete with a sink. Each room—the main room in the front and the half-dozen at the back—was overflowing, floor to ceiling, with used books, as well as a scattering of other items (the “More” refers to some old movie posters, knickknacks, and used DVDs and CDs).

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

Three Hobbit Films for the LOTR Fans = Trouble

Fans of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings should be thrilled that The Hobbit, originally planned as two feature films, is now slated for three. More Tolkien on screen is a good thing, right?

Surely yes, if what we are getting is indeed more Tolkien. But Jackson’s “bridge” film is not going to be more Tolkien, but more Jackson. And that is not necessarily an encouraging thought.

Due to contractual issues with the Tolkien estate—Jackson is unable to use material from The Silmarillion, The History of Middle-Earth, or Unfinished Tales—this “bridge” film will come from the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. Wrote Jackson on his Facebook page:

 “We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance. The richness of the story of The Hobbit, as well as some of the related material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, allows us to tell the full story of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the part he played in the sometimes dangerous, but at all times exciting, history of Middle-earth.” 

The appendices are certainly a mine of information, but the stories they tell are scattered, patchy in places, and not written as straightforward narrative. To bridge the events of The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings in a film that neatly connects a series of disparate dots, Jackson must fill in gaps, construct dialogue from scratch, and so on. And that could spell trouble.

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

The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On, a review

The 1977 publication of The Silmarillion was a singular event in fantasy fiction. I’m happy to stand corrected, but I can’t think of another book of foundational myths and legends about a fictional, secondary world published prior. But as I mentioned in my introduction to my series Blogging the Silmarillion it also left most critics puzzled, even put-out or angry. Expecting another The Lord of the Rings, many acted with bafflement, others with harsh criticism.

But in the subsequent 35 years opinion seems to be shifting. While it will never be as popular as The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, most fans of Middle-Earth view The Silmarillion as absolutely indispensable. Other genre fans do too, it seems. For example, in a recent vote of over 60,000 genre fans to determine the Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy books The Silmarillion checked in at no. 46, proving that it’s more than just a book for the JRRT fanboy.

As for Tolkien scholars The Silmarillion is a goldmine, bringing to life ancient ages of Middle-Earth that were previously only hinted at in poems and appendices to The Lord of the Rings, or in Tolkien’s personal correspondence. The Silmarillion provides us a startlingly new perspective on the workings of free will and fate in Middle-Earth, of the nature of evil, and the problem of death. It showed how Tolkien forged his world from Christian and Pagan influences, including the Old Testament, Celtic myth, and Norse legends. The Silmarillion introduced readers to the eldest days of Middle-Earth, including the “hows” of its creation and the “who” of its chief creator, along with its wide-ranging geography, both pre and post-cataclysm. It also opened a new window into Tolkien’s creative process, including his ingenious method of creating depth by layering “forgotten” texts and “historical” events and myths on top of each other, a technique that produced a three-dimensional world that feels real, and lived in. Soon the debates began about how much of the work was Tolkien’s own vs. that of his son Christopher, who finished and published The Silmarillion after his father’s death with the aid of fantasy fiction author Guy Gavriel Kay.

The incredible significance of The Silmarillion and the exciting new avenues it opened up are summed up in The Silmarillion: Thirty Years On (Walking Tree Publishers, 2007). This collection of six essays includes one previously published piece by Rhona Beare in a now out-of-print introduction to The Silmarillion, but it is completely rewritten for this book. The other five pieces are original scholarship.

Six Sought Adventure: A Half-Dozen Swords And Sorcery Short Stories Worth Your Summer Reading Time

I’ve always enjoyed fantasy fiction in the short form. In an age when a typical series stretches seven-plus doorstopper sized volumes without the guarantee of an actual ending, it’s refreshing to take a quick dip into the pool of the fantastic rather than committing to a read akin to a trans-Atlantic journey in the age of sail.

 If you are new to the heroic fantasy/swords and sorcery genres the following six stories are fine stepping stones for further exploration, at least in my opinion. I’ve deliberately chosen stories written by authors not named Howard or Leiber; REH and Fritz are the best these genres have ever produced but there’s already plenty of ink spilled about them. I obviously have nothing but praise for “Worms of the Earth” or “Bazaar of the Bizarre” but I’m sure most of Black Gate's readers have very likely already read these stories, so I present these six instead.

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

A holy grail (of sorts) for fans of Tolkien and King Arthur

Sorry for the lack of posts of late, I sincerely hope to get back on a more regular schedule. But here is a bit of news worth sharing: According to this rather sparse, cryptic entry on Amazon.com France, Tolkien's previously unpublished poem "The Fall of Arthur" is planned for a May 2013 release.

"The Fall of Arthur" is a lengthy (954 lines), alliterative, and unfinished work. Tolkien loved reading the Arthurian myths as a boy and in the early 1930s began to write "The Fall," but ultimately abandoned it, though various outlines and drafts survive in addition to the final unfinished text (source: The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide, Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond, p. 56). Ultimately Tolkien fell away from the Arthurian stories, which he regarded as too mixed with other elements and influences and lacking enough of Britain's character; the stories were "associated with the soil of Britain but not with English," according to Tolkien. Hence his reason for writing The Lord of the Rings and its supporting legendarium as told in The Silmarillion and elsewhere, which serve as an alternative mythic history of England.

Like "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun" I fully expect that this will come and go without huge fanfare or sales. But for hardcore fans of Tolkien and Tolkien scholars, it's huge. Maybe not quite as huge as say, the discovery of Excalibur, or Arthur returning over the sea from Avalon to set our darkening world aright again, but huge nonetheless. And it just might prove to be a cracking good read; again quoting from Scull and Hammond:

Humphrey Carpenter comments in Biography that in his work 'Tolkien did not touch on the Grail but began an individual rendering of the Morte d'Arthur, in which the king and Gawain go to war in "Saxon lands" but are summoned home by news of Mordred's treachery .... It is one of the few pieces of writing in which Tolkien deals explicitly with sexual passion, describing Mordred's unsated lust for Guinever (which is how Tolkien chooses to spell her name .... ' But here Guinever 'is not the tragic heroine beloved by most Arthurian writers'; rather, she is a 'lady ruthless / fair as fay-woman and fell-minded, / in the world walking for the woe of men.'

Hat tip to the Mythsoc listserv for the news.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, a review

Warning: Spoilers ahead; I’m attempting to keep them minor

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them.

--Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

There are days when I feel rather ambivalent about the internet. When I was growing up back in the early-mid 80s the concept of lore still existed. No one I knew could tell you what the symbols on Led Zeppelin 4 really meant; it was all speculation. If you wanted to find out you had to ask a guardian at the gates, perhaps a burnout with a subscription to Rolling Stone or Kerrang who could (sort of) give you the straight dope. Knowledge was concentrated among the few and you had to work hard to earn it.

Of course even back then you had public education and public libraries; the information was still there, just slightly less accessible than today. Now all you have to do is punch everything into Google (buyer beware about the quality of information returned, but you’ll find something). And though much is gained in this process, something is lost.

But most of the time I’m glad I live in the information age. It’s hard to imagine a time in which books were incalculably precious items, patiently copied and illustrated by monks in a painstaking manual process. This is the setting of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1980), which takes place in a 14^th century Medieval monastery, home to a group of monks and a library of old tomes and scrolls. When a monk dies under mysterious circumstances new visitor William of Baskerville is tasked by the abbot to investigate. Over the next seven days a different monk is murdered according to precepts laid out in Revelations, heightening the mystery and the urgency.

Back from vacation with a Black Gate post on WWZ

Well, I'm back from our annual family vacation in New Hampshire, a small slice of fun and relaxation that is almost entirely internet free, even in this day and age of satellites and cell phone towers. So obviously it's been a while since my last post. Time to dust things off and get started again.

If you're interested, I wrote a brief blurb about the sad state of the World War Z film over on Black Gate (nothing too revelatory; I owe them a post every other Thursday and so had to dash something off last night. Gee, I'm really selling it well.) You can read the post here. WWZ is a great book that deserves a great film but I'm not liking what I'm reading about the project so far...

A review of Iron Maiden at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA

My apologies for the delay in posting a review of Iron Maiden at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA. The morning after the show, groggy from too little sleep and too much beer and loud music, I left for our annual vacation to our family's summer cottage in NH where internet access wavers between extremely spotty and utterly non-existent. By some miracle I have a decent connection so here goes...

It seems that more and more I appreciate the pre-game warmup to concerts as much as the event itself. That was the case with Maiden, as I attended the show with four other friends and Maiden fans. None of them knew each other (I was the common thread connecting them all) but we had a great time nonetheless. Four of us piled into my Chevy Cobalt and drove to Mansfield where we met the other dude (Falze), who had a 3 1/2 hour ride up from NY. The drive and meet-up proved to be an adventure, as after a longer than expected, traffic-snarled ride we found ourselves parked a mile away from Falze in Mansfield's enormous parking lot. And we had a large cooler packed to the gills with ice, beer, water, and half a cherry chocolate cake to carry. But, walking the heavy cooler in two at a time shifts, stopping to reorient ourselves with our cell phones over the din of blasting radios, we made it across the battle-torn, pot-smoke obscured, heavy metal parking lot to Falze.

June 26 also happened to be my birthday and as we stood on the Comcast Center asphalt I remarked that there was no other place I'd rather be for the first day of the 39th year of my life than at an Iron Maiden concert with a cold beer. I don't require much from life, you see, which is the secret to staying happy, incidentally. I had a blast bullshitting and chit-chatting with my friends, and accosting passers-by with concert T-shirts or tattoos that caught my eye. Falze packed us some subs from a place called DiBellas and man, they hit the spot. You were right Falze, they were worth it.

Inside the show I did something I hadn't done in probably 15 years--purchased an Iron Maiden concert t-shirt. It was my favorite Derek Riggs image, Eddie in cowboy hat at a card table from the Stranger in a Strange Land single. I used to buy a concert T at almost every show I attended "back in the day," but that was a different era when they cost $15-20 and I had ample opportunity to wear them. This shirt was--cough $40 cough--but arguably was worth it, as I will undoubtedly be wearing it to any and all future concerts, Iron Maiden or no.

Alice Cooper was the opening act and old Alice was very good. Even in his heyday he had a raspy, scary sounding voice and I detected no difference in his singing style. He played all the usual hits you'd expect ("School's Out," "I'm 18", "Hey Stupid," etc.). "Poison" made an appearance, a song that holds powerful nostalgia for me (Cooper's Trash tour back in 89 or so was the first concert I ever attended). Good stuff.

Maiden was great. Really my only complaint was that Bruce's mike was a bit low in the mix and the guitars too loud. But they played an exceptional setlist, blasting out of the gates with "Moonchild" and never letting up. Some highlights for me included "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son," "The Evil that Men Do," "Wasted Years,"  "Run to the Hills," "Fear of the Dark" and "Aces High." I was really pumped to hear "The Phantom of the Opera" which works exceptionally well in concert. The only headscratcher (and it was a complete puzzle why they played it) was "Afraid to Shoot Strangers," an obscure song off one of their lesser-regarded albums (Fear of the Dark). Dickinson dedicated the song to the late Charlton Heston. I scooted out and grabbed a beer during "Afraid," returning just as the band kicked it back into high gear with "The Trooper." During the beer break I attempted to get the Comcast Center employee to admit that $9.25 was very expensive for a single 16 oz. Coors Light. She smiled, and almost caved, but she had to toe the company line. She wished me happy birthday and my mouth sagged open in surprise as I asked her by what brand of evil sorcery she knew that fact--until my buddy Scott dope-slapped me.

"She's holding your driver's license, you dummy."

Hey, what can I say, I was riding a buzz.

So yeah, fun night, and if you can get out and catch a stop on the Maiden England tour I recommend it quite highly.

Metal Friday Special Edition: Maiden Countdown, "Killers"

Imagine it's 1981 and you're a member of Iron Maiden. Your lead singer, Paul Di'Anno, has just left/been kicked out of the band, and although you've got two well-received albums under your belt, your future is very much in question. In comes a shortish dude with a mullet, Bruce Dickinson, front man for Sampson, to audition for the vacancy.

He launches into a Maiden hallmark, "Killers." The rest is history, as was Di'Anno.

I hope to post a review of tomorrow's show at some point this week. Until then, Up the Irons!

The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories 11, a review

From 1975 to 1988 Daw books published The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories, an anthology edited initially by Lin Carter and later by Arthur W. Saha. I own only Vol. 11 but after reading it I’m now inclined to seek out more in the series.

Vol. 11 was published in 1985 and by then Carter’s reign as editor had given way to Saha. Saha has a rather interesting and wide-ranging background; according to Wikipedia he served in the Merchant Marine during WWII, is credited with the patent for fire-resistant paint used on early space satellites, hung around Beat poets, was a member of Mensa, and in 1967 was credited with coining the term “Trekkie”. Matching his experiences and personality Saha here put together an eclectic combo of stories that mostly works.

My primary complaint with Vol. 11 is again one of unfulfilled expectations. When you’ve got a cover like that pictured at right I was expecting more of a swords and sorcery bent. There are certainly a few S&S stories inside, but Vol. 11 is equal parts horror and magical realism, with a dash of romance and humor. Yet you’ve got a cover featuring a jacked, axe-wielding dude on the back of a giant snake, about to battle a giant owl-riding knight in plate armor, all taking place beneath the gaze of a half-naked lass lashed to a pole (for the record, there is no story featuring dueling snakes and owls, unfortunately—though there is a fair maiden lashed to a pole). So … yeah. Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that.

Metal Friday Special Edition: Maiden Countdown, "The Clairvoyant"

Continuing my countdown to the Maiden England tour (holy shit--it's only four days away), today I pause to recognize and celebrate the greatness that is "The Clairvoyant," again off Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.


Here's a great live version from the Seventh Tour of a Seventh Tour, circa 1988 or 89, I imagine.

Whenever I hear Steve Harris' bassline something akin to an electric shock courses through my body, then my heart starts to race when Dave Murray plays that familiar riff. That's how much I freaking love this song. It exalts the spirit.

Four days away. I can "Feel the sweat break on my brow" in anticipation.

Q&A With Tolkien and the Great War Author John Garth on Michael Martinez’ Middle-earth website

As a subscriber to the Mythsoc listserv I was very grateful to find a link from Michael Martinez—proprietor of the fine Middle-earth.xenite.org website—to a recent interview conducted with J.R.R. Tolkien scholar John Garth, author of Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003). It’s a fascinating read and worth checking out; you can find it here.

Some reviewers have dubbed Tolkien and the Great War the best book on Tolkien that has yet been written. I wouldn’t go that far (for the record that book is Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-earth) but it is arguably the best book on Tolkien in the last decade. While Humphrey Carpenter’s biography is still the seminal work on the life and times of Tolkien, it brushes only lightly over his military service. Tolkien’s experiences with the Lancaster Fusiliers are stamped all over The Lord of the Rings, as Garth ably demonstrates in Tolkien and the Great War, and so any complete understanding of the influences of Tolkien’s works must account for his World War I experiences.

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

Metal Friday Special Edition: Maiden Countdown. "The Evil That Men Do"

Wow, it's hard to believe that it's only 11 days until Iron Maiden plays the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA. Look for a heavy rotation of my favorite Maiden songs in the coming days as I gear up for my favorite band of all time.

Since this tour is an homage to Maiden England and reportedly features the same stage set and props from the Seventh Son tour, I'll start with one of my favorites from that album, "The Evil that Men Do."

As a man, I can definitively say that we do have an evil streak (typically surfacing during heavy drinking) and it almost always comes back to bite us in the ass, hence it does live on and on. Bruce, you were right.

Optimistic literature vs. GrimDark

Presented without comment:

He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. He was beginning to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow. No one in front of him was moving. He said, "This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land--there's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me, we're worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I'd die for, but I'm not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other."

—Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels 

 “Who cares who’s buried where?” muttered Craw, thinking about all the men he’d seen buried. “Once a man’s in the ground he’s just mud. Mud and stories. And the stories and the men don’t often have much in common.”

 —Joe Abercrombie, The Heroes

Audio zombies: A review of We’re Alive: A Story of Survival, season one

As a lover of all things zombie I leapt at the chance to review the first season of We're Alive: A Story of Survival, the first season for SFFaudio.com. Following is the text of that review.

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Uneven and slightly amateurish, but also fun, mildly addictive and highly listenable, We’re Alive: A Story of Survival, the first season (Modern Myth Productions, LLC) should appeal to fans of the zombie/post-apocalyptic/survivalist genres.

Unlike most audio books, which typically feature a single narrator reading text in unadorned style, We’re Alive is an audio drama. It employs a large cast, incorporates a wide range of sound effects, and is scripted in a way that caters to the ear, emphasizing dialogue and interpersonal relationships over lengthy descriptive narrative. Our minds are left to fill in the gory details, and it works. It’s simultaneously fresh and retro, reminding me of what the old radio shows of yesteryear must have been like. We’re Alive was launched and remains an ongoing podcast (check it out here: http://www.zombiepodcast.com/The_Zombie_Podcast/Main.html) but you can obtain the entire first two seasons from Blackstone Audio, Inc.

The storyline is about what you’d expect: A zombie apocalypse strikes without warning, quickly overwhelming most of the population. Three young Army reservists (Michael, Angel, and Saul) commandeer a humvee and seek out survivors in downtown Los Angeles. After rescuing a couple civilians they find an apartment building, clear it of zombies, and begin to fortify it, rigging it up with a generator and stocking up on food, water, and ammunition. More survivors eventually trickle in and/or are rescued by the group, including Burt, an aging Vietnam veteran who acts and sounds a lot like Clint Eastwood. Soon there’s a small but thriving community holed up in the apartment building.

What I've read this year

Here's the list of books I've read to date in 2012. Note that a couple are audiobooks, so I use the term "read" loosely here. Links provided to any titles for which I've written a review.

1. Unfinished Tales, JRR Tolkien
2. The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
3. The Cold Commands, Richard Morgan
4. Tolkien on Film: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, Janet Brennan Croft ed.
5. Seven Princes, John Fultz
6. Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon, Brian Rosebury
7. The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie
8. Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers, L. Sprague de Camp
9. Styrbiorn the Strong, E.R. Eddison
10. The Well of the Unicorn, Fletcher Pratt
11. The Modern Scholar: Faith and Reason: The Philosophy of Religion, Peter Kreeft
12. Strange Wine, Harlan Ellison
13. Grendel, John Gardner
14. The Hook, Donald Westlake
15. Carnage and Culture, Victor Hanson
16. Conan: Red Nails, Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner ed.
17. The Dark Barbarian, Don Herron ed.
18. Conan, The People of the Black Circle, Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner ed.
19. The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil
20. The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
21. The Children of Odin, Padraic Colum
22. Red Moon and Black Mountain, Joy Chant
23. No Regrets, Ace Frehley
24. Brak vs. the Sorceress, John Jakes
25. The Dragon Lord, David Drake
26. We’re Alive: A Story of Survival, season one

I'm on pace for 56 titles this year, a few more than I read in 2011. Right now I'm about 2/3 of the way through Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, sequel to Ender's Game.

Metal Friday: "Left Hand Black" by Danzig

Yeah, the safe choice here would have been "Mother."

Well, Metal Friday ain't about safe choices, mother f-er (so says the guy who self-edits swears from his blog).

Anyways, I loved this one back in the day, still do. Turn it up, tear off your shirt and pretend you're Glenn Danzig, and enjoy your weekend.

A brief tribute to the stories of Ray Bradbury

I came to Ray Bradbury at what is likely a later age than most. I never had to read Fahrenheit 451 in school; if I read one of his short stories as a student I have no recollection. Several years ago, in a desire to start filling in some gaps I had in classic genre fiction, I gave Fahrenheit 451 a try. It was a powerful read and made a profound impact on me. It prompted me to seek out more Bradbury—and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Since then I’ve marveled in the wonders of Dandelion Wine, The Golden Apples of the Sun, The October Country, The Halloween Tree, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Martian Chronicles. If somehow you haven’t read any Bradbury yet my advice is to pick any of the above titles and dive in. I’d recommend one over the others, but there’s no need: They’re all pretty much brilliant. You won’t be disappointed.

I’ve always been a little leery of science fiction and have read far more deeply of fantasy. Rightly or wrongly, my perception is that SF worships at the altar of technology, and is fixated upon cold, clinical subject matter for which I have little interest. But if the genre contained more books like The Martian Chronicles, I might view it a lot differently (a parenthetical aside: Though it may be the subject of a catchy song, to call Bradbury “the greatest sci-fi writer in history” isn’t accurate. Dark fantasy, horror, soft sci-fi, traditional literary fiction—Bradbury has written in them all, and sometimes all at once. He is in many ways genre-defying). Bradbury’s stories are in tune with our humanity and his fiction is life affirming. They remind us that We’re human, and we’re alive, damn it. Bradbury often said that he loved life and was driven to write not only by his love of libraries and of reading, but of the very act of living itself. And that’s potent fuel for a lifetime of stories.

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

Godspeed, Ray Bradbury

I'll follow up with another post later this week, but in case you haven't heard the news already: Ray Bradbury died at age 91.

Bradbury was probably my favorite living author and an amazing talent. He'll be missed.

The Dragon Lord by David Drake, a review

Some twenty years before TheWarlord Chronicles, a grim and gritty take on the Arthurian mythos by historical fiction author Bernard Cornwell, David Drake’s The Dragon Lord (1978) covered the same war-torn ground, employing a similar historical Dark Ages realism in the telling. Imagine Arthur as a power-hungry, petulant warlord with a clubbed foot; Launcelot as a hulking Roman Gaul, arrogant and bullying; and Merlin a half-crazed sorcerer barely in control of his own overestimated powers of magic, and you have the basic flavor of Drake’s debut novel.

Cornwell’s trilogy is a good deal superior to Drake’s effort, as the latter is marred by flaws perhaps forgivable of a first time novelist, including a choppy, uneven narrative and an abrupt, rather unsatisfying ending. But The Dragon Lord has a curious power of its own, perhaps because it manages to successfully straddle both the historical fiction and fantasy genres; it feels something like the Northern-inspired novels of Poul Anderson. If you like that stuff, you’ll probably like The Dragon Lord.

Metal Friday: "Raining Blood" by Slayer

I have a threshold when it comes to heavy metal. At some indefinable point of heaviness I personally find that the music loses its artistry and appeal. "Cookie Monster" lyrics and a cacophonous wall of thudding, high speed drums and screeching guitars turn me off, thus I personally have no use for bands like Cannibal Corpse and their ilk.

Slayer is about as far on the "heaviness" scale as I like to go, but I do like them a lot. "Raining Blood" is a classic featuring one of the all-time great metal riffs. The sound of rain and those drums kicking in still gives me a chill, decades after I first heard it. In my opinion this is heavy metal at its most brutal and primitive (played live the bit from 2:10 to 2:38 results in an instant mosh pit; I've seen these guys in concert and the reaction is pavlovian). Yes, there are "heavier" bands, but Slayer still remains recognizable as music--a savage and scary brand of music, but one performed by talented musicians. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Turn it up, but not too loud, lest you frighten your household.

Brak vs. the Sorceress: A really bad read

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Metal Friday: "Beyond the Realms of Death" by Judas Priest

All right, I probably could have picked a slightly more upbeat song headed into the much-needed Memorial Day weekend. But I had this one on the brain and could not shake it, perhaps because it's one of the finest heavy metal anthems ever recorded.

The lyrical content of "Beyond the Realms of Death" is downbeat to say the least; I'm not sure why the prosecution in the Vance-Belknap trial  (a tragic but absolutely farcical bit of metal history) spent so much effort digging for subliminal messages in "Better by You, Better than Me" when this song is already on Stained Class. Fishing for suicidal messages is unnecessary in "Beyond the Realms of Death," whose meaning bites deep and chills like the first bitter winds of winter:

I've left the world behind
I am safe here, in my mind
I'm free to speak, with my own kind
This is my life, this is my life,
I'll decide not you


Keep the world, with all its sin
It's not fit for living in


A while back I rated the top 10 heavy metal singers of all time and put Rob Halford at the top of that list. While his is a wavering position, and could easily be usurped by  the likes of Bruce Dickinson or Ronnie James Dio depending on my particular mood that day, "Beyond the Realms of Death" stands as an epic testimony for Halford's greatness as a singer. I mean, he's good on this song, m'kay?

Here's another live version from 1978 that's worth watching--Halford kills this live. Odd outfit though:

Blind Guardian also does a wonderful cover of this song that I recommend seeking out. Turn it up!