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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ouch, that drew a little blood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May he rest in peace in a quiet grave.

The scariest movie you've ever seen? Cast your vote

I'm one of those people who compulsively votes on polls when I find them on the internet so I've been throwing a few up here on The Silver Key. The latest is over to the left and is pretty self-explanatory. It's October and Halloween is creeping up, so I'm starting to get the horror film itch again.

If you selected "other," please post the name of your scariest film here in the comments section, and explain the reason why the film scared you or left you unsettled. If I haven't seen it, I'll add it to my Netflix queue.

Cimmerian sighting: Reveling in the slaughter of Agincourt

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

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

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

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

Wherein I win swag, and get to ask Steven Pressfield a question

Now this is cool. Author and overall cool guy Scott Oden of Echoes of a Forgotten Age recently held a contest that involved readers posting a writing-related question for historical fiction novelist Steven Pressfield. Oden selected the three best questions to forward to Pressfield and plans to post his answers on his blog.

How awesome is that? This is Steven-freaking Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire, one of the best pieces of historical fiction I've ever read (if you haven't read this tale of the legendary stand of 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, what the hell are you waiting for?) I'm thrilled to say that my question was one of the three selected!

As if the opportunity to ask Pressfield a question wasn't award enough, I'll also be getting a "bag o' swag" containing a copy of Pressfield's non-fiction treatise on writing, The War of Art, as well as another unnamed goodie. I have been meaning to buy The War of Art for quite some time and I'll certainly be reviewing it here.

Thanks Scott, I tip my horsehair-crested Spartan helmet to you.

A trifecta of links

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

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

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

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

A Prayer for Owen Meany—A review

While my reading tastes are heavily weighted toward fantasy, horror, history, and military non-fiction, one cannot subsist on a diet of magic, mayhem, and combat alone. At least I can’t, which means that I occasionally dip into other genres as well.

John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989, Ballantine Books) had been on my to-read list for some time. Now that I’ve completed it, I’m very glad I made the effort. At first I debated reviewing it here on The Silver Key, which is dedicated to “all things fun and fantastic.” But a few things led me, in the end, to do so: 1) It concerns miracles, so it kind of fits; 2) It’s a great book and worth talking about; and 3) This is my own ill-defined blog and therefore have license to write about what I want to :).

I typically treat the books I’m reading with zealous care. But since my copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany came pre-beat up and creased (I bought it for pennies at a church fair), I took the rare, luxurious, and lazy opportunity to dog-ear those pages that I thought contained a memorable passage or were otherwise worth returning to or writing about. By the end of A Prayer for Owen Meany I had bent the corners of more than a dozen, and could have marred many more, but I started feeling badly about the wanton damage I was inflicting. It really is a great book.

A Prayer for Owen Meany tells the story of two classmates and good friends growing up in the late 1950s/60s in the small New Hampshire town of Gravesend. It’s told from the viewpoint of John Wheelwright, a smart but self-conscious kid struggling with his identity and trying to find his way. Wheelwright grows up not knowing who his father is, and when his mother dies early in the book from a tragic accident he’s left parentless and drifting, in the care of his grandmother and stepfather. He vows to discover his biological dad’s true identity. Both in a literal and spiritual sense, it’s a trip to find his (and the) father.

But the main character of the book is Meany. He’s a precocious, diminutive boy-genius with an oddly high-pitched voice (Irving uses a CAPS LOCK style to convey his dialogue). And he’s not just physically different, but morally and spiritually special as well. Meany is convinced that he is God’s instrument and believes he knows the date and details of his own death. Because of his faith and his precognition, he’s blessed with a wisdom far beyond his years, and he knows that his life has a purpose and a meaning. He does not fear the end. His favorite passage from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me the most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.

Meany’s charisma and ability to unsettle with his spiritual insights invites comparisons with Christ, though in other ways he remains firmly grounded, an out of place kid struggling with odd parents, girls, a demanding job in a granite quarry, and the difficulties of academic life. In short, he’s a wonderfully drawn and memorable character.

Through Meany, Irving explores the nature of religious faith, which ultimately requires that we put ourselves in the hands of a higher power, one we cannot see with our own eyes on this earth. It’s a hard thing to embrace. “Faith based on evidence is no faith at all,” Meany explains. And also: “Faith takes practice.” Wheelwright constantly struggles with his own faith, but Meany makes him a believer.

In addition to its spiritual themes, A Prayer for Owen Meany is firmly a “baby boomer” novel. Irving uses it to explore the grand events of that generation, including the sweeping optimism surrounding the election of John F. Kennedy, JFK’s subsequent fall from grace (his rumored affair with Marilyn Monroe), and his eventual assassination. Of central importance to the novel is the Vietnam War. Wheelwright is a bitter, dyed-in-the-wool liberal who loses his faith in America due to the war and eventually flees to Canada to evade the draft. Though Meany is also skeptical of our ultimate objective, he accepts his duty to his country and enlists, much to the dismay of his anti-war friends. Later in his life (Owen Meany is told through a series of flashbacks), Wheelwright voices a similar disgust for the presidency of Ronald Regan and that administration’s involvement in the Iran-Contra affair.

The carnage of Vietnam and Kennedy’s unfortunate fall represented a loss of innocence for the U.S. Framed by these larger events, Wheelwright and Meany suffer the smaller but equally poignant losses of their childhood, including the death of loved ones, and the revelation that their idols and role-models—parents, teachers, priests, even Presidents—are deeply flawed, weak, fraudulent, and all too human. But the miracle of Meany’s life gives us hope that something better awaits in the hereafter.

A Red Dawn retrospective

When I was a kid I wanted to be a Wolverine and kill Russians. That’s what happens when you watch Red Dawn about 45 times in a year, as I did circa 1984-85.

Last week I revisited Red Dawn after many, many years and found it surprisingly … watchable. I admit that some scenes are pretty awful and cringe-inducing, and nostalgia may be obscuring some of its warts, but in general Red Dawn has held up as an entertaining action film with a great premise that, sadly, fails to live up to its heady potential.

I’ve often seen Red Dawn labeled around the internet as a) jingoistic and b) junk. While a) is mostly true, I will say this: Red Dawn is in every way a product of its time. In the mid-80s its premise seemed plausible. With films like The Terminator, Wargames, and The Day After on television and in our consciousness, World War III was a doomsday scenario to consider, not some fantasy to laugh at. The media likes to call the 1980s a decade of innocent excess and consumerism, but beneath the MTV veneer lurked the fear of instant annihilation. In some respects these were scary times, and Red Dawn represented our fears writ large. Given the enemy we were facing, albeit in a “cold war” standoff situation, national pride was nothing to scoff at. Cynicism was not as rampant as it is now.

As for b), no, I don’t consider Red Dawn junk, just very, very far-fetched. But once you commit to divorcing it from realism, I think it’s pretty entertaining. Put another way: If I want to watch a realistic war film which depicts the terrible reality of bullets meeting flesh, I’ll pop in Saving Private Ryan or an episode of Band of Brothers. If I want bloodless action masquerading as real war, Red Dawn fits the bill.

There are of course several things wrong with the film that I simply cannot gloss over. For example:

• Why are the Central Americans and Russians bothering with a shithole town in the middle of Colorado with no apparent military value?

• How is a limited nuclear exchange in any way possible? What, did the Soviet Union and the United States realize that mutually assured destruction wouldn’t make for a good film? If I was the U.S. and being overrun, I’d give the Soviets six hours to reverse course, or the nukes would be flying … at their country. There’s some discussion early in the film about “selective nuke strikes” wiping out silos in Omaha, Washington, the Dakotas, and Kansas City, but how they hit the U.S. with no advance warning is never satisfactorily explained.

• Why do the enemy forces that the Wolverines ambush a) lack any accuracy; b) not use grenades, artillery, heavy machine guns, etc. to just wipe these kids out as soon as they start firing from their “concealed positions” by the side of the road?

• Why is C. Thomas Howell’s death scene so bad? The suicidal last stand, his gun blazing, accompanied by cheesy, swelling music, his final cry of “Wolverines” as 23 mm helicopter cannon take him down—this is so bad as to defy description.

But now that these not insubstantial complaints are out of the way, on to the good.

• John Milius’ writing. Milius is a good screenwriter and has a particular talent for crafting memorable dialogue. If you like the sparse but memorable lines of Conan the Barbarian, Dirty Harry, and Quint’s famous Indianapolis speech from Jaws, you’ll also love his work in Red Dawn.

• The pacing. Red Dawn doesn’t waste any time with exposition or character development. It opens with some stark subtitles about political crises and food shortages in Europe and the Soviet Union, and bare minutes into the movie we’re hit with...

• The initial attack. Who can forget the shock of seeing Soviet Union paratroopers landing in the school yard? Like the silhouette of an annihilated atomic blast victim at ground zero, the image of the teacher walking outside to confront the soldiers before getting mercilessly mowed down is permanently burned into my brain. As is the next scene of the Russkies raking the classroom window with machine gun fire. I always felt bad for that girl lying in the window frame with a bullet in her head. You know the one.

• Great “brother love.” I couldn’t help but be moved by the scene with Patrick Swayze cradling his dead brother (Charlie Sheen) on the park bench in the snow at the end of the film. Red Dawn actually contains an undercurrent of anti-war sentiment (the Central American officer putting down his AK-47 in disgust, Patrick Swayze sobbing at the old pictures of he and his brother Matt’s lost childhood, etc.), although this admittedly feels tacked-on and rather lost amidst the non-stop, kick-ass carnage.

• The downed air force colonel. Powers Boothe has a great turn as Col. Andy Tanner, a downed F-15 fighter pilot who briefly joins the Wolverines. He plays the wise old warrior and Milius gives him most of the best lines in the movie, including:

• The Russians need to take us in one piece, and that's why they're here. That's why they won't use nukes anymore; and we won't either, not on our own soil. The whole damn thing's pretty conventional now. Who knows? Maybe next week will be swords.
• You think you're tough for eating beans every day? There's half a million scarecrows in Denver who'd give anything for one mouthful of what you got. They've been under siege for about three months. They live on rats and sawdust bread and sometimes... on each other. At night, the pyres for the dead light up the sky. It's medieval.

I also love this early exchange with he and the Wolverines around a campfire:

Swayze: Well, who *is* on our side?
Tanner: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.
Darryl Bates (played by Darren Dalton) Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen.
Col. Andy Tanner: There were.

Red Dawn is currently being remade and is on schedule for a 2010 release, according to the Internet Movie Database. I’m not sure how I feel about this: While it’s possible it could be improvement on the original—I always felt that Red Dawn was a great idea for a movie, just under-budgeted and riddled with flaws—I also think, as noted above, that it works as a product of its time. Times have changed, and now terrorism, not conventional war, lurks as our biggest threat.

That said, it would be interesting to see what CGI and a bigger budget could do for this film. I always wanted to see the big engagements in the South, the tactical nuke strikes, and the invasion of Alaska on the screen. Perhaps the remake will deliver.

Cimmerian sighting: Good vs. bad art

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fall is fun--but very busy

I love the fall. It's got my favorite weather, my favorite scenery (New England in autumn is arguably the most beautiful place on earth), and my favorite holiday (Halloween of course, which gives me an excuse to bust out all manner of disgusting horror films). The fall is also the start of football, my favorite sport.

That said, the fall is also the busiest time of year for me. I went from playing football to covering it for a local newspaper, an enjoyable way for me to earn a few extra bucks. But that also means my time to blog is significantly reduced in the fall. One or maybe two posts a week at The Silver Key is probably all I'll be able to manage, I guess. Sorry in advance for the reduced posting.

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Off topic, but thanks to the 17 people who voted on my "Best Robert E. Howard Conan story" poll. Beyond the Black River won with five votes, narrowly edging out Queen of the Black Coast (four votes). I'm not surprised that BtBR won, given that it's a great story. I was pulling for Red Nails, my personal favorite, but this fine, blood-soaked tale of genocidal butchery in the ancient city of Xuchotl garnered only three votes (actually two; one was my own). Ah well, you can't go wrong with any Robert E. Howard.

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

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

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

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

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

Cimmerian sighting: The Tower of the Elephant dazzling on audio

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

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

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

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

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

I never said I had the gift of gab: Podcasting on SFFaudio.com

Didn't get enough of my review of The Steel Remains? Now you can hear more of my thoughts on Richard K. Morgan's new novel over at SFFaudio.com. Site administrators Jesse Willis and Scott Danielson (cool guys both) recently had me, Gregg Margarite (LibriVox.org narrator and book coordinator), and Luke Burrage (host of the Science Fiction Book Review Podcast) on to discuss the book and the J.R.R. Tolkien controversy stirred up by Morgan's essay.

Gregg and Luke (damn his awesome British accent) sound a lot better than I do, and I'm certainly more comfortable behind the keyboard than on an open microphone, but I don't think I entirely embarrassed myself and I certainly had a lot of fun with the podcast. How many times do you get the chance to sit down for an hour-plus and actually talk about books? In my case, that would be ... never.

Here's the link if you're interested: http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=9963. Enjoy!

The Steel Remains: A review

Men were like blades, they would all break sooner or later, you included. But you looked around at the men you led, and in their eyes you saw what kind of steel you had to hand, how it had been forged and tempered, what blows, if any, it would take.

—Richard Morgan, The Steel Remains

With his new book The Steel Remains, Richard Morgan sets out to (as main character Ringil Eskiath might say) “prick the bloated arse” of J.R.R. Tolkien and post-Tolkien fantasy. Elsewhere on the web Morgan has expressed a deep dissatisfaction with traditional high fantasy, which often pits stainless forces of good against hordes of irredeemable evil in bloodless, antiseptic sword play. He’s accused Tolkien of the same shortcomings (a flawed analysis with which I vehemently disagree). Against this backdrop, Morgan set out to write The Steel Remains as a deliberately gray, grimy, alternative viewpoint. His book succeeds in sliding cold steel into the lie of childlike fantasy, with which my favorite genre of fiction is admittedly littered.

But when the screaming of gutted men and the skirling of steel dies down, and the full extent of the destruction is laid bare for us to see, The Steel Remains does not have much to offer. The old cliché that it’s easier to tear down and destroy than to build anew applies here. In its falling over itself desire to slice and dice fantasy’s traditional conservatism, The Steel Remains indulges in plenty of its own predictable clichés: Every priest is a religious fanatic and a sex fiend, every leader a morally and ethically corrupt, egotistic blowhard, for example. The book lacks a moral compass; Morgan the author’s world view must be a bleak one, indeed.

The action of The Steel Remains focuses on the converging storylines of three uneven characters—one very well done (Ringil, a sarcastic, war-weary, homosexual master swordsman), one middling (Egar, a brawling, boisterous, randy barbarian from the steppes), and one rather forgettable (Archeth, a black, female half-breed of human and Kiriath, deadly with throwing knives and hooked on drugs). All three are veterans of a recent war against an invading race of “scaly folk,” in which humanity staved off utter destruction at a very high price. Ringil, a war hero but now combat- and world-weary, has retreated from his mercenary lifestyle and is living a slothful, under-the-radar existence, until he’s summoned by an urgent message from his mother: Ringil’s cousin, Sherin, has been sold into slavery to repay a debt, and Ringil’s mother wants her back. Ringil reluctantly agrees.

Soon Ringil finds out that the slavery web in which Sherin has been caught is very dark, wide, and sinister. At its centre are a race of alien beings called the dwenda—tall, attractive, human-like, magic-using creatures that are a combination of Michael Moorcock’s Melniboneans with their cruel and alien immorality, and Poul Anderson’s Nordic-inspired, haughty, and warlike elves (Morgan lists Anderson and Moorcock as two of his sources of inspiration; the third is, unsurprisingly, Karl Edward Wagner). The dwenda are planning to incite a second war on earth and then destroy the victor, taking back their ancestral lands (the dwenda dwelled on earth many years ago). The dwenda require the sacrifice of barren human females to fuel the dark powers that are the source of their sorcery. Sherin is one of these unfortunates.

There’s much to like in The Steel Remains. Morgan’s prose is sharp and highly readable, and he shows a fine eye for detail and realism in his culture and city-building. Trelayne—a nasty, sprawling, brawling city in which whoring, slavery, and public executions are practiced openly—feels real. Egar’s Majak culture is based on pre-colonized North American Indians, and is well-done with its shamans and superstitions, trade in vast herds of buffalo, and armor and weapons suited to a nomadic lifestyle on the plains.

In addition, if you like your battles bloody and realistic, Morgan is your man. His fight scenes are well-done and you get a great sense of Ringil’s skill with his deadly broadsword of Kiriath steel, and Egar’s brutal butcher’s work with his two-bladed Majak lance. Disembowelings, beheadings, and other ghastly wounds are rife.

Much of the book passed under my eyes as well-oiled but heartless machinery producing graphic combat carnage and highly explicit sex (I’ll pause here to state that the blood and semen-soaked pages of The Steel Remains would make George R.R. Martin blanch, and Eric Van Lustbader—author of The Ninja—green with envy). I found the characters rather unlikeable and unengaging, and the plot fair at best. Very little actually clicked with me until the concluding act, in which Ringil, Egar, and Archeth reunite to fight a desperate last stand against the duenda. This was one of the few moving scenes in the book in which I actually felt some measure of concern and identification with our heroes. Ringil’s rousing speech is of the stuff with which great heroic fantasy is made. I wish there was more like this.

In summary, we know that life can be dirty and horrible. War is hell, yes, and men are weak and piggish. But Morgan drives the same points home, again and again, over 400 dark, cynical, iconoclastic pages of The Steel Remains, which by the end is too one-note and sacrifices story at the expense of the author’s agenda.

My final verdict: 3 ½ out of 5 stars (recommended, with flaws).

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a few choice offerings.

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

Axis and Allies--the relaunch

One of the highlights of my vacation was getting a game of Axis and Allies together with a couple of guys from my regular D&D group. I used to play A&A quite a bit as a youth and into my teenage years, back when it seemed like everyone had a copy of the game. But after loaning out my copy to a friend and never getting it back, and losing interest over the years, A&A had become a distant, pleasant memory of games past, sort of like Runequest or Top Secret.

A couple years ago I started getting the itch to try A&A again. It came about naturally, as a result of my lifelong interest in World War II and the urge to recreate the great battles of the European and Pacific theaters of war. I did some web-browsing and was pleased to discover that not only was A&A still a viable game, but that it had undergone a fairly substantial revision in 2004 and was reportedly "new and improved." On a whim I added it to my Christmas list, and in addition to the usual sweaters and underwear recieved a copy from my wife. There it sat for two more years, until last Sunday, when I finally had the opportunity to once again wage war on a world-wide scale circa 1942.

The new version of A&A includes two new pieces (destroyers and artillery) and several new twists on old units (tanks defend at a 1-3 on a D6, battleships can take 2 hits, fighters are cheaper, transports can carry more, etc.). Perhaps the biggest change of all, however, is that the new game boasts a newly redrawn map. Sure, WWII still takes place in Europe, Asia, Africa, etc, but the new edition divides the land and sea up into more spaces. Crossing the Atlantic is more difficult, Germany and Russia battle along more fronts, and, in general, movement and positioning are more important and require more decision making than before. In short, it's a lot more difficult for Russia to place mass infantry along its border and play fortress Moscow--the Krauts can affect a breakthrough a lot easier by attacking along a bigger front. In turn, the Russkies can counterattack more effectively and the Eastern front becomes more vulnerable for the Nazis as well. There's also more neutral territories and natural obstacles that block movement (the Sahara desert is now a considerable nuisance, for example).

A&A third edition also includes National Advantages, cool new optional rules that allow for events like the Russian Winter, Kamikaze and Kaiten attacks, U-Boat wolf packs, radar, superfortresses, and more. Since this was our first game with the revised rules we reigned in our enthusiasm and picked only one National Advantage each (Niall was ready to go full-bore with all six for each combatant).

On the surface, the new rules seemed to make for a more robust, realistic, and enjoyable play experience, but we were soon to find out.

On Sunday Niall and Steve and I went at it in a marathon session which lasted from roughly noon until 8:30 p.m (yes, I have a great wife who lets me do these things from time to time--you cannot have her). Niall and I took the Allies (I was Britain, he the U.S. and Russia) while Steve played the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. Steve, while also a newcomer to the new edition, had played A&A extensively a short while ago and thus had the important advantage of recent experience over Niall and I, hence the decision for us to join forces. To add to the ambience of the game, I brought along my authentic WWII army helmet and Japanese bayonet, as well as a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. In hindsight, I should have read the latter before we began.

Alas, the combined years of expertise and WWII knowledge that Niall and I brought to the table were no match for Steve's aggressive Axis stratagems, particularly his brilliant handling of Japan. While Germany fought Russia to a stalemate and maintained enough sea and air power to prevent any U.K. sorties across the English Channel, the Japanese went on a conquest of Asia, taking all of Eastern Russia, Southeast Asia, China, and even India and its neighboring countries. Steve's land grab built the Japanese from a starting 30 IPCs (Industrial Production Certificates, or money) to over 50, which he used to purchase an intimidating submarine fleet that kept the U.S. from crossing the Pacific.

Simultaneously, the Japanese fighters (land and carrier-based), harried my meagre U.K. forces off the coast of Africa while sweeping away the light resistance Russia could manage in the East (being otherwise occupied with surging German tanks, artillery, and infantry).

In hindsight, in addition to Steve's good play, we (the Allies) made some tactical errors. As I see it, they included:

• As the U.K. I should have made all efforts to place and hold an industrial complex in India, which would have allowed me to bring my forces to bear in Southeast Asia and stem the Japanese advance. Instead, I opted to put my complex in South Africa. I eventually wound up holding most of Africa with the help of the U.S., but it was far too little, too late.
  
• The U.S should have been more aggressive. Niall played a very good Russia, beating back German advances with good use of fighter-supported infantry, but Russia cannot hold both fronts. The U.S. was hindered by some hard early blows to its fleet by the aggressive Japanese, but could have nevertheless made greater efforts to establish a beachhead in Asia.

By the end of the game, we were whipped, and Niall and I conceded with German troops at the doorstep of Moscow and Japan holding enough territory to make Alexander the Great green with envy. Still, our ignorance of the rules made it too easy for Steve. Late in the game Germany secured rockets with an industrial breakthough, allowing the Nazis to use their antiaircraft pieces for long range, IPC-draining attacks on London and Moscow. With his large number of artillery, captured and otherwise, Steve rained 3d6 worth of IPC terror on our cities, draining our cash reserves and reinforcements to nil.

The addition of rockets seemed very powerful at the time--game-unbalancingly-powerful--so afterwards I checked the rules, which clearly state that a industrial complex may only suffer one rocket attack per turn, and cannot lose more IPCs than the territory's income value (of which London and Russia each have 8). Our error allowed Steve to make multiple attacks and wreak more financial loss than the rules dictated.

But in all fairness, the handwriting was on the wall and our defeat was inevitable by that point. Steve had us beaten even before Nazi V-2s started raining havoc from the skies.

Still, I'm very much looking forward to the rematch. I can definitely say that a great day was had by all, and that A&A very much holds up as a great game and a nice change of pace from RPGs.

On vacation

I'm off on an internet-free vacation for a little over a week, so as my buddy Scott would say, more posts on "elf books" to resume when I'm back.

Please don't have a hall-burning when I'm gone, kids.

The ultimate D&D collector's item: Yours for $7,995.00

Check it out: Nobleknight.com is now selling an original first edition, first printing, woodgrain D&D box set, signed by both Gygax and Arneson. View the complete description at the Noble Knight Web site. Talk about the holy grail of D&D collectibles.

My question: How the heck would this be shipped? If I had 8G to spare, I'd spring for an armored car to pick that baby up. I don't think I'd want to leave it to the whims of the post office or UPS, no matter how well it was packed.

Cimmerian sighting: Alfred Tennyson at 200

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

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

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

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

Of The Hobbit and level titles in D&D

I was listening to The Hobbit while driving to work the other day when this exchange between Thorin and Gandalf impressed itself on my D&D-addled mind:

"But we none of us liked the idea of the Front Gate. The river runs right out of it through the great cliff at the South of the Mountain, and out of it comes the dragon too--far too often, unless he has changed his habits."

"That would be no good," said the wizard, "not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighborhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found."

Gandalf's lament about the lack of qualified swordsmen in the area immediately got me thinking of level titles in D&D, and why I'm a fan of them. Some people think that level titles are a vestigial organ of an older game and rather silly. Others have remarked that they add color and "fluff," but can be safely dropped. But this exchange proves that level titles are not without a practical function: They allow the relative competency of a PC or NPC to be identified without breaking suspension of disbelief, or resorting to metagame language (e.g., walking into a tavern and inquiring about the services of a 9th level cleric).

To get back to Gandalf's comment, in first edition AD&D a Warrior is a second-level fighter and a Hero is a fourth-level fighter. In AD&D terms, therefore, his comment makes perfect sense, as he implies that an experienced sword-arm (i.e., more than a common, 0-level man-at-arms) is needed if the party has any hopes of entering the front gate of Lonely Mountain. A second-level Warrior would fit the bill. From his comment a reader can also safely deduce a Hero is stronger than a Warrior ("even a Hero," Gandalf says.)

In fact, I would submit that this dialogue may have provided Gary Gygax with the idea of level titles.

Of course, as any D&D player knows, a 2nd level or 4th level fighter is hopelessly overmatched against any dragon, even a younger white dragon, let alone an ancient red such as Smaug (who is presumably of the 11 hit dice, 88 HP variety). But given that Third-Age Middle-Earth is, by D&D standards, low-magic and low-powered, and that an infamous article in the March 1977 issue of The Dragon speculated that Gandalf was only a 5th level magic-user, a 4th level fighter--excuse me, Hero--would be quite a formidable swordsman in Middle-Earth, and a welcome addition to the troupe of dwarves and hobbit.

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

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

–William Shakespeare, Henry V

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

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

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

A review of REH: Two Gun Raconteur #13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hrolf Kraki in the Guardian

As a longtime proponent of Poul Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga, I was pleased today to see a review of this fine but mostly forgotten novel over at the online version of the British newspaper The Guardian, Cracking Poul Anderson's Kraki. The Guardian's Alison Flood is working her way through some of the fantasy genre's classics, including former British Fantasy award winners, which Anderson claimed in 1974 with Hrolf Kraki.

I don't agree with some of Flood's criticisms of the novel, including her disdain for Anderson's mythic language and poetry (which I think is part of the novel's unique charm and appeal, as well as a reflection of Anderson's faithfulness to the source material, the fragmentary Hrolf Kraki Saga and other ancient Icelandic sagas). But it's nice to see this mythic tale of a brief, shining period of peace in dark ages Denmark get some public recognition.

Cimmerian sighting: King Arthur film to get 300 treatment

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

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

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

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

Review: How the Irish Saved Civilization

While Rome and its ancient empire faded from memory and a new, illiterate Europe rose on its ruins, a vibrant, literary culture was blooming in secret along its Celtic fringe. It needed only one step more to close the circle, which would reconnect Europe to its own past by way of scribal Ireland.

—Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization

These days I find myself turning more and more toward non-fiction to satisfy my fantasy yearnings. After all, what is more fantastic than real events like the rise of the Roman empire, its conquest of great swathes of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and its decline and eventual overthrow at the hands of teeming barbarian hordes? At times it’s hard to believe that these events and the subsequent Dark Ages actually occurred, but of course they did, and I find their reality every bit as unearthly as most of the fantasy fiction I’ve read. Thinking about the enormity of these great events can take your breath away.

After reading Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization I again experienced a sense of awe regarding history itself. I marveled that the great movers and shakers of that era—Saint Patrick and Saint Columba, among others—actually lived and breathed.

How the Irish Saved Civilization seeks to give the Irish their due in early medieval history. Cahill says that many historians have overlooked the Irish contribution, largely because the Irish helped transition two periods of history—the classical and medieval—without serving as a cultural force in either period. “It is also true that historians are generally expert in one period or the other, so that analysis of the transition falls outside their—and everyone’s?—competence,” he writes.

Cahill’s book directly addresses the country’s role during this critical shift. He argues that a group of Irish monks, newly converted to Christianity, copied and preserved much of the ancient Greek, Roman, and other early Latin literature, saving it from loss and destruction in barbarian-overrun Europe and allowing future generations to learn from these priceless texts (sidenote: I've been to Trinity College in Dublin to see the Book of Kells, and it is pretty impressive). These same monks in the sixth through the ninth centuries emigrated to Dark Ages Europe and helped sew the seeds of learning and Christianity, founding monasteries that would in time become great European cities. Writes Cahill:

Wherever they went the Irish brought with them their books, many unseen in Europe for centuries and tied to their waists as signs of triumph, just as Irish heroes had once tied to their waists their enemies’ heads. Wherever they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe.

And that is how the Irish saved civilization.

Cahill sets the stage for the Irish contribution by reminding us of the glory that was Rome, summarizing in the first chapter much of the existing theories on how it fell. He deftly sums up the state of learning that existed at the time, religion and philosophy and political thought developed by the Greeks and incorporated and expanded upon by the Romans. Much of this knowledge was in danger of eradication after 476 A.D., the year in which Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor, was deposed by the barbarians. It’s also the date after which the western Roman empire generally ceased to exist.

The Irish monks—and thus, much of classical writing—would not have existed were it not for St. Patrick, Cahill argues. Originally a Roman citizen, St. Patrick helped convert Ireland from a warlike, pagan country that still practiced human sacrifice to a more peaceful Christian society, one that fostered learning and the transmission of knowledge. Cahill admits that much of what he has written concerning St. Patrick is conjecture, but the light evidence he does provide of St. Patrick’s pivotal role is convincing.

Unfortunately, How the Irish Saved Civilization overlooks the contributions of other countries and cultures during this era, including the fact that Byzantium in the east housed a great deal of classic literature and was at least as, if not more important, in preserving the Greek and Roman traditions. The book is also rather light (218 pages, plus some footnotes and a pronunciation guide), and feels a bit like an essay or term paper padded out with background, conjecture, and opinion. Many reviewers more history-savvy than I savaged some of its omissions and conclusions over on Amazon.com.

Still, its faults aside, How the Irish Saved Civilization is an engaging introduction to a fascinating (and literally) dark period of history. Cahill is a good writer with a strong, playful voice, and How the Irish Saved Civilization is such an easy read that even those who believe that history and non-fiction are dull subjects will likely enjoy it. In the end, I think it accomplishes what primers in general are supposed to do—get you interested in reading more, and more deeply, on the subject at hand.

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

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

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

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

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

A scare from the deep mists of time: Monster Tales

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.

Did anyone else ever read Monster Tales: Vampires, Werewolves & Things? Along with The Hobbit, this is one of those seminal books from my childhood that was responsible for developing my lifelong love of fantasy and horror. Click through the above link and tell me those illustrations aren't darned creepy. I recall the stories as being genuinely scary and containing some surprising scenes of bloodshed--and not much in the way of happy endings. I didn't realize until now that Robert Bloch penned the introduction, and longtime horror writer/reviewer Thomas Monteleone wrote the first (and arguably best) story, Wendigo's Child.

I can't imagine a book like this being released upon unsuspecting children and young adult readers nowadays, but I'm glad I read it. I must own a copy...

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly issue #1 debuts!

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

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

Fiction Contents

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

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

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

Poetry Contents

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

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

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

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

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

Highwayman: With more songs like this, I might be a country fan

I was a highwayman

Along the coach roads I did ride

With sword and pistol by my side

Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade

Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade

The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five

But I am still alive.

--Highwayman

As is well-known by anyone who reads this blog, I'm a heavy metal fan--and I always will be. But I do take forays into other genres of music from time to time. Country typically is not one of them.

I like country in principle, but very often not in execution. I enjoy its trappings: the old west, cowboys, guns, horses, are all cool. But I find the music a)Too similar sounding; and b) Too much concerned with the here and now of lost loves, lost jobs, lost youth, etc. There's too much pining and whining in its lyrics and not enough heroic adventure or imagination. I wish there was more Louis L'Amour and Unforgiven in country music and less Dixie Chicks and George Jones.

But I can't say enough good things about the song Highwayman by the supergroup of the same name (The Highwaymen, which consisted of legends Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash). If more country sounded like and had the lyrics of Highwayman I'd be a raging fan.

The bad-ass lyrics of Highwayman could have been stripped from the pages of a Jack London novel or Robert E. Howard story, or perhaps more accurately a few of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion stories. The song crosses time and history, telling the story of the soul of a wandering spirit who at various times in his life is a coach-robbing highwayman, a sailor on a schooner, a high-risk dam builder, and eventually a starship pilot. The spirit of the rugged individualist and salt of the earth laborer is in each man, reincarnated again and again through history when he dies. You can almost believe in an afterlife when you hear this song.

There's an excellent live version of Highwayman here on Youtube. Check it out and let me know what you think. As much as I like Cash, Jennings steals the performance with his one of a kind pipes.

Cimmerian sighting: Celebrating a pair of milestones in Howard studies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My contribution to The Dark Man: Robert E. Howard as escapist writer

Although I have definite political and social leanings, I'm probably what most would consider a moderate. When I see something I feel passionately about going too far in any one direction, my tendency is to want to pull it back to the center.

This trait is the likely inspiration for my recently published piece in The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies (Volume 4, No. 2). There's been a trend in recent years to classify Howard as a hard-boiled realist, a product of Texas who wrote about his environment and the people he knew. Based on some letters he wrote late in his life, critics and observers have speculated that Howard was ready to abandon the literature of the fantastic entirely for the western.

These opinions are certainly valid and raise many fine points worthy of consideration. Howard's gritty realism infuses even his most fantastic stories of Conan and Kull. This quality is undoubtedly due to his keen powers of observation. Howard wrote about what he knew and used his surroundings and life experiences to lend an air of realism to the Hyborian Age. He also wrote in a broad range of genres, including boxing, historic fiction, and westerns.

However, I feel that this analysis of Howard has gone a bit too far. By focusing on the Howard that might-have-been (had he not taken his own life at age 30), aren't these voices undermining the great works of fantasy that he did leave behind? I think so. Howard was a complicated man who voiced many intentions and beliefs in his too short life, including a profound dissatisfaction with modern life and its banal realities. Through his massive imagination and talent as a writer he found a place to escape in his tales of the fantastic. More than 70 years after Howard's death, legions of loyal readers continue to revisit his tales for the refuge they offer us--and Howard himself.

In short, I believe that there's a reason why Conan and the fantastic Hyborian Age are Howard's most enduring and fully realized creations. I explain these reasons in full in "An Honorable Retreat: Robert E. Howard as Escapist Writer."

I'd like to thank editor Mark Hall and the review board of the Dark Man for the opportunity to publish this opinion piece, my first (and hopefully not last) contribution to this fine journal.