“Worms of the Earth”: Bending the rules of swords and sorcery

“Worms of the earth, back into your holes and burrows! Ye foul the air and leave on the clean earth the slime of the serpents ye have become! Gonar was right—there are shapes too foul to use even against Rome!”

–Robert E. Howard, “Worms of the Earth”

Robert E. Howard has received his fair share of criticism over the years, including the accusation that he wrote shallow, muscle-bound characters that cut their way out of every situation. Violence by strong, self-sufficient swordsmen is the end game for solving all problems in REH’s stories, his detractors argue, not wits or guile or diplomacy. For example, in his audio book survey of fantasy literature Rings, Swords, and Monsters, author Michael Drout declares Conan an uninteresting character who simply “smashes everything in his path.” L. Sprague De Camp, who penned the introductions to the famous (infamous?) Lancer Conan reprints of the 1960s and 70s, wrote that Howard’s heroes are “men of mighty thews, hot passions, and indomitable will, who easily dominate the stories through which they stride.” Howard wrote escape fiction, De Camp continued, wherein “all men are strong…” and “all problems simple.”

These generalizations lead casual readers to conclude that Howard considered violence to be the answer to all of life’s problems. They reduce Howard’s stories to brutish pulp escapism and denude them of subtlety or complexity. Sword and sorcery and its fans are painted with the same broad, clumsy brush by association. “Sword and sorcery novels and stories are tales of power for the powerless,” wrote Stephen King in his overview of horror and fantasy Danse Macabre (1981). “The fellow who is afraid of being rousted by those young punks who hang around his bus stop can go home at night and imagine himself wielding a sword, his pot belly miraculously gone.”

These criticisms aren’t entirely groundless. It’s rather easy to find examples of Howardian heroes hacking their way through a problem. Kull of Valusia butchering a horde of Serpent Men in an orgiastic, cathartic red fury in “The Shadow Kingdom” springs immediately to mind, for instance. Howard was in many ways bound by the conventions of the pulps in which he made his living as a writer. But there are an equal number of examples of Conan using his wits to extricate himself from situations when brute force won’t suffice, his reaver’s instinct restrained by sovereign responsibility. And of course, Howard penned many more characters than his famous Cimmerian.

Howard’s 1932 story “Worms of the Earth” features the Pictish king Bran Mak Morn on an ill-advised mission to enlist supernatural aid to defeat an invading force of Romans. In it Howard substitutes complexity and compromise for crashing swordplay and victory in arms. While “Worms” is a tale of vengeance, it’s of a rather hollow, unfulfilling sort.

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

Iron Maiden's The Final Frontier: Mediocre metal

Regular visitors to The Silver Key know the high esteem in which I hold Iron Maiden. They are, as I’ve said before and never hesitate to repeat, the greatest heavy metal band of all time. Yeah, even better than Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, man. If you don’t think so, I will fight you.

Which is why it pains me to have to admit to this next bit: Maiden’s latest album, The Final Frontier, isn’t that great. If I had to give it a letter grade it’d be a B-, maybe even a C+. That makes it, in my book, Maiden’s worst album since Fear of the Dark (I don’t count the two Blaze Bayley albums, which, a few good songs mixed in, seem to me written by another band entirely).

You can’t imagine how hard it was for me to write the above paragraph. Criticizing Iron Maiden is not fun. The closest analogy I can make is if J.R.R. Tolkien, were he still alive today, decided to write a sequel to The Lord of the Rings in which Frodo came back from Valinor to go on some other, semi-bland quest to destroy a lesser artifact, in which the fate of Middle-Earth did not hang in the balance.

The Final Frontier is of course technically proficient (this is Maiden, after all). It’s not actively bad. It doesn’t contain any outright stinkers like “Weekend Warrior.” There’s just not much there to recommend it.

Before I go any further, I’d like to make it clear that I’m not one of those guys with a mullet and denim jacket still living in 1985 who thinks that Iron Maiden’s last good album was Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (or perhaps 1984’s Powerslave--there are some internet whackjobs who do hold this opinion, clutching onto it possessively like their vinyl, shrinkwrapped collector copies of Live After Death). I was a fan back in the 80’s and I’m just as big a fan now. Maiden in my opinion did some of their best work during the last decade. Brave New World (2000) was a remarkable return to form for Dickinson and the boys after seven years of separation (Dickinson left the band to pursue a solo career in 1993). Dance of Death (2003) was in my opinion even better. “Paschendale” is brilliant, and “Montségur” and the title track are incredible, too.

Maiden followed up those two releases with 2006’s A Matter of Life and Death, which many fans call their best record since Seventh Son. I got to see them play the whole album live a couple years back and was blown away by war-themed songs like “These Colours Don’t Run,” “For the Greater Good of God,” and “The Longest Day.” All amazing stuff.

But so far I’ve been rather unimpressed with The Final Frontier. It’s not actively bad, and listening to it in my car hasn’t been painful. It’s just—there, like some good background music. It’s lacking any strong, memorable hooks. There’s no killer riffs, no edge.

Maiden has always kicked off its albums with a throat-grabbing, fast-driving hit. Even 1990’s rather poor No Prayer for the Dying led off with the kick-ass “Tailgunner.” “Satellite 15…The Final Frontier” is four and half minutes of bland instrumentation and sound effects, followed by the four minute “The Final Frontier,” which is … merely workmanlike. If “El Dorado” is supposed to be the big single from the album, and I suspect it is, it’s only okay, too. “El Dorado” also isn’t helped by the fact that Bruce’s voice sounds a little strained.

I do like a few songs on The Final Frontier. “Isle of Avalon” is a nice long song, moody, with some great lyrics, and it holds a high standard throughout. But it just doesn’t deliver the shattering chorus I was hoping for. “The Man Who Would Be King” has an epic two minute buildup to … more mediocrity. I feel the same about “When the Wild Wind Blows.” With its apocalyptic lyrics and a terrific bass line by Steve Harris, it has the potential for serious epic—but falls just short. These are great songs to listen to as background music but not to bang my head or weep over, as I have done for “Paschendale” and “These Colours Don’t Run.” Something just seems missing.

The thoughtful, personal lyrics of “Coming Home” make it a decent enough song (it seems like it would make a nice fit on one of Dickinson’s underrated solo albums). “The Alchemist” is a fine, hard-driving little song. But a couple of other tracks are rather painful. I find the chorus of “Mother of Mercy” so repetitive as to be unbearable. “Starblind” and “The Talisman” are just there, and encapsulate a lot of the problems I have with this album. Some good material stretched out too far.

I do want to conclude with a whimpering, suck-up statement and say that I haven’t given up on The Final Frontier yet. I’m still holding out hope that it will be a deep and slow grower, an album that takes multiple listens to get into (I’ve been tied up with some audio books and Blind Guardian’s At the Edge of Time and haven’t given The Final Frontier as many listens as it deserves). But so far, I haven’t been blown away, and I’m sad to report that Maiden seems to be merely mortal on this one. But that’s okay—no one, not even the great Iron Maiden, can bat 1.000.

The end of Realms of Fantasy begs the question: Too much fantasy on the market?

This post over on the Cyclopeatron blog closely mirrors my own thoughts on why I think Realms of Fantasy and other magazines in the short fiction market are largely a dying or endangered breed.

It’s not necessarily the bad economy (though I don’t doubt this is a contributing factor). And it’s not necessarily the changing face of publishing, which is moving from print periodicals to PDF and/or web delivery (though this likely is a contributing factor, since publishers of all stripes have struggled with monetizing content delivered on the web).

Rather, like Cyclopeatron, I’ve long believed that there’s simply too much fantasy fiction on the market, and that magazines have gotten the squeeze as a result.

At first this may seem like a ridiculous notion. Realms of Fantasy, one of the few remaining print fantasy magazines in the market, goes under, and it’s because there’s too much fantasy for it to complete against? Yes, at least in my opinion. Here’s why.

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

Bruce Dickinson gives Liverpool a lift

Not that we all didn't know this already, but Bruce Dickinson is arguably the coolest, most accomplished dude on earth. Iron Maiden singer. Amazing solo artist. Former world-class fencer. Author. His latest love is flying, and today Dickinson, a licensed airline pilot, agreed to fly the Liverpool soccer team to Napoli for a Europa League match.

Here's the story as reported by ESPN and the British newspaper The Guardian.

Rock on Bruce.

That reminds me, I've got to do a review of Maiden's latest album The Final Frontier.

Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto

We expect responsibility and accountability on your part. We are not interested in your grand pronouncement on a subject which has yet to be settled by people who have spent decades studying the issue at hand. We expect you to do your homework. There are a number of websites and literally stacks of new books that likely cover or answer most of your questions regarding Robert E. Howard. To not utilize those sources when doing your research smacks of willful ignorance and will not be tolerated by the fans of Robert E. Howard.

--Mark Finn, "Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto"

Mark Finn, author of Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, has written an essay entitled "Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto." It's currently making the rounds on the internet. You can read in its entirety at Al Harron's The Blog That Time Forgot http://theblogthattimeforgot.blogspot.com/2010/10/robert-e-howard-new-manifesto.html#more.

While I'm a little uncomfortable endorsing a manifesto in total and disagree with a few of its details, I am completely in agreement with the spirit of Finn's essay. One of the great things about the internet is that it allows anyone to post anything they want. Conversely, one of the awful things about the internet is that allows anyone to post anything they want. What the Manifesto says is that, if you introduce Robert E. Howard's life into a blog post or essay or argument, please take the added step of actually doing some homework (what a concept!). Read his biographies. Seek out his letters. Examine the many journals and works of criticism dedicated to his life and works. And if you insist on making outrageous, unfounded statements, be prepared to be called on it.

Finn's Manifesto is tough stuff and some may find it abrasive, but frankly wakeup calls are sometimes necessary. After some of the unfounded accusations, wacky theories, and uninformed, inflammatory, contextless arguments I've read around the internet recently, "Robert E. Howard: A New Manifesto" is a welcome wake-up call.

Shields up!

Zombieland: Bringing the fun, and a few rules to live by

Like most horror fans, I love zombie movies because they’re fun, gory, and suspenseful. I find the survivalist angle intriguing, too (I often find myself wondering if and how I could survive an initial outbreak of the walking dead. Equipped with my copy of The Zombie Survival Guide I’d like to think at least I’d have a fighting chance. But probably not).

But in the end the zombie films I like best are those that aspire to more than just empty action. Like all good movies, the best zombie films contain underlying social and/or political messages that give them an added dimension and another level on which they can be enjoyed.

I’m not a horror historian, but as far as I can tell the zombie film as social commentary started with George Romero. Broadly, zombies have always been a metaphor for death, but it wasn’t until 1978’s Dawn of the Dead that the walking dead were used to critique concepts like capitalism and unchecked consumer culture (as a sidenote this is why I didn’t like the new Dawn of the Dead as much as the original—the 2004 version is not only too nihilistic, but it removes all the subtext in favor of high-speed, sprinting zombie carnage).

Since Dawn other zombie films have hopped on the bandwagon of zombie apocalypse as societal/cultural critique. The most recent example is the comedic zombie horror of Zombieland (2009). Zombieland tells the story of a group of survivors trying to find their way in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse. These include 20-something “Columbus” (played by Jesse Eisenburg), a nerdy, World of Warcraft playing recluse; “Tallahassee” (Woody Harrelson), a modern cowboy with an apparent death wish, a sardonic sense of humor and a mean streak a mile wide when it comes to zombies; “Wichita” (Emma Stone), a beautiful, guarded, hard-bitten realist, and “Little Rock” (Abigail Breslin), Wichita’s younger sister and resourceful partner in crime.

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

Sipping from a fresh draught of Dandelion Wine

I’ve mentioned before that I find genre categories useful. They help me to frame discussions about books and are a handy tool when I want to make a recommendation. But I also love the fact that there are authors like Ray Bradbury which defy their easy application. Though it may be the subject of a catchy song, to call Bradbury “the greatest sci-fi writer in history” isn’t particularly accurate. Dark fantasy, horror, soft sci-fi—Bradbury has written in them all, and sometimes all at once. He is in many ways genre-defying.

That’s about the only way I can categorize Dandelion Wine, a loosely autobiographical novel about a boy’s coming of age (or rather, his becoming) at age 12 in the summer of 1928. On the first morning of that magical summer Douglas Spaulding realizes that he’s alive. Consequently, he realizes that he will also die one day. The rest of the book is an episodic journey through the summer, with Bradbury switching the focus between Spaulding and a cast of other memorable characters in Green Town, Illinois. Green Town is a pseudonym for Bradbury’s real home of Waukeagan, IL, where one summer as a boy of 12 he made the decision to become a writer.

Bradbury’s books aren’t really about plot as much as they are about places and people and things. I recall an interview with Bradbury in which he described beginning his stories using a process of word-association, thinking of a word or series of words and building a story from that. This technique plays out wonderfully in Dandelion Wine, whose wonderful images become burned into your memory as if you lived them yourself. The old arcade and the coin-operated gypsy fortune teller. The ravine. Mr. Jones’ traveling junk wagon.

Bradbury treats us to several beautiful, stirring vignettes throughout Dandelion Wine. One of my favorites is the story of an unlikely couple: 31-year-old William Forrester and a 95 year old Helen Loomis. It’s not a love story but something just as moving, a genuine melding of two lost souls, which finally find comfort in one another’s company. Mixed with the friendship is the cosmic tragedy that they were born in different ages and so cannot consummate a physical love. Another favorite is the story of Leo Auffman, a man who tries to build a Happiness Machine and is mortified when his wife Lena breaks down in tears after using it:

Sunsets we always liked because they only happen once and go away.

But Lena, that’s sad.

No, if the sunset stayed and we got bored, that would be a real sadness.

Bradbury’s moral? Joy cannot exist without sadness. Without a contrast or a break, joy becomes routine and expected, and therefore paradoxically joyless. Permanent happiness is not our lot in life, but that’s the way things are meant to be.

Douglas’ becoming is not without its hardships, as he experiences death of some friends and relatives and the displacement of his best friend John Huff, who moves away after his father takes a job in Milwaukee. But although Dandelion Wine is tinged with tragedy and even takes us to the edge of despair, Douglas does not take the final leap into the ravine: Bradbury’s message is that life is ultimately worth living, even though we all must leave it and our loved ones someday. Dandelion Wine exalts the simple pleasures we take for granted—good food, wine, and the pleasant rituals of summer, sitting on the porch at night for a smoke and good conversation under the stars (this was before the age of television, of course, reminding us that change does not always equal progress).

But back to genre. One of Dandelion Wine’s central themes is that the world needs magic. When we try to classify and explain and categorize too much, the magic is drained away. Human beings operate in the realms of faith and mystery, not just cold, clinical materialism. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when an unhelpful aunt arrives in the Spaulding household and immediately sets to work “helping” the grandmother, a wondrous cook, by cleaning up her messy kitchen and neatly setting to order all her mysterious, unlabelled spices and ingredients. The result? Lousy food. When the family sends the aunt packing and returns the kitchen to its natural state of disorder and mystique, her cooking is again rendered exquisite.

You can say the same for Dandelion Wine. Experience it, savor its depths and symbolism, but don’t try to vivisect it under a cold, clinical light. Let it sweep you back to one summer of 1928 and enjoy the nostalgia and the journey. It’s a good one.