The Shining Wire

They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away. They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy’s warren and paying his price? They found out other marvelous arts to take the place of tricks and old stories. They danced in ceremonious greeting. They sang songs like the birds and made Shapes on the walls; and though these could help them not at all, yet they passed the time and enabled them to tell themselves that they were splendid fellows, the very flower of Rabbitry, cleverer than magpies. They had no Chief Rabbit—no, how could they?—for a Chief Rabbit must be El-ahrairah to his warren and keep them from death: and here there was no death but one, and what Chief Rabbit could have an answer to that? Instead, Frith sent them strange singers, beautiful and sick like oak apples, like robins’ pincushions on the wild rose. And since they could not bear the truth, these singers, who might in some other place have been wise, were squeezed under the terrible weight of the warren’s secret until they gulped out fine folly—about dignity and acquiescence, and anything else that could make believe that the rabbit loved the shining wire.

--Richard Adams, Watership Down

Generative AI = the shining wire.

Still time to escape to a new warren over the hill, if you are willing to brave the journey.

S&S publishing news: Plunder-a-plenty

Lots of swords, lots of sorcery going on.

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

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

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

Digging the Celtitude.

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

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

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

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

More generative AI harm

The result I was anticipating has occurred. A Federal California Judge today ruled in favor of AI giant Anthropic, stating that the company’s training of its large language models on the works of authors without permission constitutes fair use. He did rule that its use of pirated material is theft, but this latter win is quite minor in comparison to the win handed to tech giants.

From 404 Media, “The complex decision is one of the first of its kind in a series of high-profile copyright lawsuits brought by authors and artists against AI companies, and it’s largely a very bad decision for authors, artists, writers, and web developers.”  

It's the precedent for which all the major AI firms were waiting. They can now ingest all your work freely and then sell it back to you for a monthly licensing fee.

 The rich get richer and the rest get ever smaller scraps.

All while gleefully continuing to destroy your jobs and your family’s future. Because, China?

Just a few weeks ago Anthropic’s CEO predicted that their product and its AI ilk will lead to the elimination of 50% of all entry level jobs, and 10-20% unemployment more broadly. 

This is not me playing Boy Who Cried Wolf. The wolf is at your door, and its hungry.

Job losses are already happening. In my work outside of the blogosphere I serve a slice of healthcare. Providence Health Care recently laid off 600 employees amid restructuring and is now heavily investing in AI.

That’s 600 jobs replaced by machines. This trend will grow exponentially.

EVEN IF the end result is something like universal basic income it will be a net loss for humanity. We’re meant to do hard things, not play with ourselves on our fucking computers and lap up the output of machines that have strip-mined humanity’s riches and spoon feed it back to you as slop.

A few other wonderful AI news briefs worth mentioning.

• Unqualified job candidates are flooding inboxes with AI generated resumes tailored to match job descriptions. Companies are using AI to weed out candidates, and in some cases interview candidates with voice AI. AI agents are talking to AI agents. No humans apparently needed. 
• Communication skills are being incredibly degraded. No one can write without a machine, and those that do use machines are getting dumber. Students using ChatGPT to write their papers show vastly lowered brain activity and little to no recall. This is not me blowing gas, it’s an MIT study.

Sometimes progress isn’t. 

I suppose I could just stick my head in the sand and go back to blogging about old books and pulp authors and heavy metal. I’m sure a few of my half-dozen readers would prefer this. No fear, I will blog about these subjects. 

But none of this exists without people. I love looking at works made by people, for other people, not the output of machines. I can’t and won’t stop writing about this issue. 

I continue to maintain that for creative work and deep learning, and possibly our future as a species, gen AI is a cancer.

A little piece of Howard Days wends its way home: God's Blade

One of the cool things you encounter attending Howard Days are many bits of Howard and Howard-adjacent ephemera fans bring to the silent auction or the dealers' tables or just carry as handouts to the one place in the world they know will find an appreciative audience.

One of those pieces made its way back home to Massachusetts where I call home. God's Blade: A Sketchbook by Michael Rollins. Editor Jason Hardy put together this modest but terrific little handmade book and asked me to write a short introductory essay. Which I was proud to do, for a gratis copy. See "Solomon Kane Against Injustice."

The book features some fine poetry by Hardy, Charles Gramlich, Michael Rollins, and Chris L. Adams. At first glance I'm struck by the outstanding artwork by Rollins. Very unique style, dark, lonely, Puritanical in feel. Kane's visage is cast into shadow, suitable for this somewhat complex figure. In the preface to the book Rollins says his art was inspired by the stark trees native to his hometown of Cumbria, England. He notes that when composing these pieces he "rarely began with Solomon, rather placing him in the landscape, which I think accentuated the feeling of his almost hopeless fight against the darkness around him."

Well done.

"Powerslave," Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden is so damned good and has so many damned good songs that I can't listen to them neutrally. I've lost track of the number of times I've found myself sitting next to a friend with a cold beer, and had to stop our conversation mid-sentence.

"So man I've always wanted to tell you something. And never had the courage. It's just that..."

"Wait, hold that thought--you need to hear this. Wait for it..."

And then I launch into how awesome this bit of Maiden-ness is.

The guitar solo in "Powerslave" is one of those moments. Stops me cold every time. Easily in my top 5 Maiden solos, and that's saying something. I'm proud of the work I did capturing the fantastic work of Nikki Stringfield of the Iron Maidens absolutely killing it at Wallys on Hampton Beach. 

I mean, just beautiful. So is the guitar solo.

"Powerslave" brings dry and dessicated ancient Egypt to vivid visceral life through the power of heavy metal. When Bruce Dickinson dons his owl Horus mask (as I saw him do in 2008) the effect is complete. We're hearing the words of an ancient Pharoah, believing he is a god but finding out he is all too mortal, subject to the eternal law of death.

Tell me why I had to be a Powerslave

I don't wanna die, I'm a God, why can't I live on?

When the Life Giver dies, all around is laid waste

And in my last hour, I'm a slave to the Power of Death.

Have a very metal weekend.

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

Pumped for this delivery.

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

Until now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, a review

Lady Gaga would appreciate this romance....

I don’t read much romance. But when I do, I read The Romance of Tristan and Iseult. It’s an old romance, a medieval romance. Definitely not a bad romance.

There is something to old.

Many of today's fantasy authors attempt to replicate the medieval age by slapping armor on a modern talking dude operating within a modern moral framework. Which is not wrong (it’s fantasy; they can do what they will), but it’s also not the past; it’s a contemporary novel draped in the outwear of the archaic. 

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult is old, and feels it. It traces back to the 12th century and likely older Celtic legends. Its soul is medieval. Modern politics are as out of place here as a 9mm pistol. Women are married off to mollify tension between kingdoms; children are taken as chattel slaves; men risk everything to ride to the defense of other lords. Kings make the rules … and they are not all good.

The story is a basic tale of star-crossed lovers. Iseult, an Irish princess, is promised as a bride to King Mark of Cornwall. But she and Mark’s young nephew Tristan fall in love and begin an affair. Conflict ensues. 

What makes it “new” is the deeply medieval moral framework in which the story exists. All the same petty jealousies and betrayals that we recognize today are here but with medieval twists. When Mark discovers the affair he’s pissed and orders the lovers … burned at the stake. No trial, no one riding to their defense. This is pre-bill of rights, pre-courts. I feel like the Old Norse Thing settled disputes far more equitably. We experience a terrible/wonderful tension of illicit love at conflict with fidelity to lord/honor and obligation, each side fairly represented in a classic courtly love which fueled so many medieval romances. Other modern dissonances: Tristan decides for Iseult that she shall marry King Mark (she has no say). Tristan falls for another Iseult, Iseult of the White Hand, marries her, and then leaves her hanging, marriage unconsummated, when he realizes he still loves the OG Iseult. Iseult of the White Hand returns the ill favor a hundredfold in a stunning end that I won’t spoil here (can 1000 year old stories be spoiled)? There is deference to God; Iseult takes a test of purity to prove her innocence, submitting her flesh to a hot brand. 

You don’t see this type of thing being written today. Maybe we do and I’ve missed it.

Tristan and Iseult is part of the Arthurian cycle, occupying the same shared universe, but only peripherally. Arthur and his knights are mentioned in the story but play no significant role. The tale serves as likely inspiration for the Launcelot-Guinevere-Arthur love triangle. There are small incursions of magic, including a magic dog with a bell that distracts its owner from grief, a gift from the mystic isle of Avalon. Most notably it includes a love potion whose accidental ingestion causes Tristan and Iseult to fall madly in love. The potion has been the subject of much debate; was it placed here to remove some of the responsibility for the affair, or evoke our sympathy? Far be it from me to criticize timeless works but it did not feel wholly necessary and may have made more sense to a medieval audience.

I read an accessible modern-ish retelling assembled by French medievalist Joseph Bediere in 1900, translated into English in 1945. It is told with the reference point of a Celtic bard talking to an audience of nobles, breaking of the fourth wall with direct references to the reader. We are a listener in this hall of fire. This device allows the tale to cover a lot of ground but without the detail we’d expect in a modern novel. For example, battles are relayed as events that occurred minus the up-close cut and thrust of Joe Abercrombie. But some are desperate and memorable, including Tristan’s one-on-battle duel on a small island vs. the massive and intimating Irish champion the Morholt (what a menacing name; a possible precursor to The Mountain?) Speaking of the Mountain the combat and the broader story features a liberal use of poison. 

I was moved by the incredibly touching end image, a persistent vine that even when cut continues growing to connect the two graves. Love endures all.

Recommended of course.

Notes

• The tale endures the ages, adapted by Richard Wagner and others. 

• This seems to be the kind of thing Old Moon is reviving and I backed their recent Arthurian/dark fantasy kickstarter here.

• No need to find old books; you can read Tristan and Iseult right now on Project Gutenberg.