NPR releases survey results for Top 100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Books

The results are in for NPR's Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy Books survey. You can view the complete list over on the NPR website, but here are the top 10 as selected by 60,000 readers:

The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The Dune Chronicles, Frank Herbert
A Song of Ice and Fire series, George RR Martin
1984, George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
American Gods, Neil Gaiman

I've read all the books in the top 10, though with one caveat--I've only read the first Dune book, as I've heard the sequels aren't very good. (I've got to think that most of the votes were for Dune itself). All in all it's a pretty good list, although I think it's very premature to put A Song of Ice and Fire--which isn't even finished yet--on such a list.

Here's my personal top 10 and where they ended up:

The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (no. 1)
The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien (no. 46, a surprise as I didn't think it would make the cut)
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut (no. 19)
1984, George Orwell (no. 6)
The Once and Future King, T.H. White (no. 47)
Watership Down, Richard Adams (no. 32)
The Conan series, Robert E. Howard (no. 68)
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury (no. 27)
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (no. 20)
The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison (did not make the cut)

Imaro by Charles Saunders, a review

Charles Saunders once stated that the impetus behind Imaro (the eponymous protagonist of his 1980 novel Imaro) was a simple urge to create a character who could kick Tarzan’s ass.

I’m not so sure he succeeded.

First, I’m not entirely convinced Imaro could kick Tarzan’s ass. Second (and more to the point), this bout isn't fought with the same rules and doesn't share a common ring. Imaro is a very different type of work than Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tales of the jungle hero, or Robert E. Howard’s Conan, the other character with whom he is frequently compared. While Imaro is a collection of short stories originally published in magazines like Night Voyages and Dragonbane, Saunders attempts something quite different than Howard’s picaresque tales of Conan, or the unending Tarzan sequels Burroughs would go on to write. Imaro provides a clear origin story that Howard never penned for Conan. It also contains the first rumbles of a coming clash of ancient gods, and drops hints that Imaro will be a key player in a world-shaking series of future events. As a result, Imaro straddles the two opposing camps of swords and sorcery and epic fantasy. While it clearly has more in common with the former, in Imaro you can see the beginnings of a mythic tale spanning several books. Saunders continues Imaro’s story in works like Imaro II: The Quest for Cush and Imaro III: The Trail of Bohu, and in 2009 he wrote the concluding volume The Naama War.

By combining swords and sorcery with epic fantasy and placing in the action in the relatively unexplored territory of (an alternate) Africa, with Imaro Saunders created something unique, fun, and well-worth reading. In the rarefied air at the top of the swords and sorcery genre you’ll find writers like Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber. These guys were so good they spawned legions of barbaric imitators—your Braks and your Thongors, and Amalric the Mangod. Based on my early exposure to the series I would say that Imaro falls somewhere in the middle or upper-third of this pack. Imaro is certainly better written and far more original than Carter’s Amalric and a lot of other short S&S works I’ve read over the years. Though it’s not at the level of a Howard or a Leiber, how many other works are, frankly? If you like swords and sorcery, you’ll like Imaro. I did.

Imaro is a collection of five short stories including “Turkhana Knives,” “The Place of Stones,” “Slaves of the Giant Kings,” “Horror in the Black Hills,” and “The City of Madness.” Saunders borrows a Hyborian Age conceit and sets the action in an alternate Africa named Nyumbani. By placing the stories on a fictitious yet familiar continent Saunders can indulge his fantastic side and do some culture building, introducing us to peoples and landscapes at once familiar and alien (as Saunders says on his blog, Nyumbani was constructed in the appropriate Howardian manner: take the best and most interesting of a variety of cultures and civilizations, mix ‘em together, full speed ahead, and damn the chronological contractions!)

Saunders does a fine job building Nyumbani and its cultures, including the proud warrior tribe of Ilyassai among which Imaro is raised. Saunders provides a glossary at the back so we can reference terms like arem, a six to seven foot spear of half wood, half edged iron, and olmaiyo, the ritual lion hunt that marks the final test of manhood for Ilyassai youth. Imaro mostly mixes it up with human warriors and wild animals but also encounters magic, battling sorcerers and a handful of monsters.

My copy of Imaro is marred by a rather unfortunate cover which de-emphasizes Imaro as black (the guy on the cover could pass as a tan Tarzan) and depicts him fighting some ridiculous hippo-man. I’d like to point out to my buddy Scott (who spent most of last weekend ribbing me with ridiculous questions about the breeding habits of hippo-men, and so on) as well as any other potential readers who might be turned off by the cover that Imaro is entirely hippo-man free. Imaro does fight a creature described as having vaguely hippo-like jaws, but that’s it.

It’s impossible not to get behind Imaro. He’s the offspring of his mother, Katisa, and a unknown stranger from the outside the tribe, a mating which the Ilyassai consider taboo. Katisa accepts exile for breaking tribal law in exchange for the promise that the rest of the Ilyassai will raise Imaro as one of their own. They renege. From his earliest days Imaro is labeled an outcast, an “other” who is bullied and betrayed at every turn. As a result he rarely laughs or expresses affection, even as he matures into a muscled warrior and the mightiest man among the Ilyassai. Fueled by hate and suspicion of his fellow man, Imaro is like a volcano, apt to erupt into violence at the slightest provocation.

But there is more to Imaro than just a bloodthirsty warrior. I was deeply moved by a scene at the end of book two (“The Place of Stones”) in which Imaro rejects a sincere offer to rejoin his old tribe. Saunders skillfully walks a tightrope with Imaro: Will he tread the path of isolation and darkness, forever looking over his shoulder at the awful events of his childhood, or will he accept friendship and companionship and overcome his dark past to become a man? I won’t reveal the answer here, though I will say that Imaro does not have a clear resolution to the question, although it can be enjoyed as a standalone novel.

So back to the most important question: Could Imaro kick Tarzan (and Conan’s) asses? From what I’ve read he’s certainly their equal physically and perhaps is even their superior. Imaro has prodigious strength and speed. He also has an iron constitution and is capable of calling on an inner reserve that allows him to fight when bloodied and exhausted. The Navy Seals complete hell week to allow them to push their bodies equal or beyond any stresses they’ll see in the field; Imaro is able to draw upon mafundishu-ya-muran, a period of warrior training lasting from age five to late adolescence in which Ilyassai boys are taken from their families to undergo a course of brutal Spartan-like training that transforms them into warriors.

So yeah, Imaro is badass, though not invincible. While he’d probably whip up on Tarzan, Conan armed with a sword would cut Saunders’ hero to ribbons, in my opinion (Imaro's fighting style is savage, but rather unskilled). But that said, Imaro is pretty kick ass and I’m looking forward to tracking down a copy of The Quest for Cush.

Get out the vote: NPR poll on top 100 SF/F titles of all time

If you haven't already heard, NPR has an open poll on the top 100 science fiction/fantasy titles of all time. To participate in the poll (you get to pick your top 1o, from which they'll compile the top 100), click here: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138894873/vote-for-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-titles. The results will be announced August 11.

NPR is getting a lot of flack for co-mingling fantasy and SF, not including children's literature (so no Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Hobbit, or Narnia) as well as including a few too many modern authors to the exclusion of some classic titles. I don't mind the first two criticisms so much, but I agree with the latter (four China Mieville titles? Give me a break. And no Poul Anderson--WTF?)

But regardless, what's there is pretty good. Here are the ten I voted for:

The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
1984, George Orwell
The Once and Future King, T.H. White
Watership Down, Richard Adams
The Conan series, Robert E. Howard
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison

Breathing Life Into Dead Gods: The Allegory of Love by C.S. Lewis

The old gods, when they ceased to be taken as gods, might so easily have been suppressed as devils: that, we know, is what happened to our incalculable loss in the history of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Only their allegorical use, prepared by slow developments within paganism itself, saved them, as in a temporary tomb, for the day when they could wake again in the beauty of acknowledged myth and thus provide modern Europe with its “third world” of romantic imagining.

–C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love

Tracing the roots of fantasy is a fascinating exercise. From whence did works of pure fancy spring? How far back do we go to find their source? Are its origins to be found in works like The Epic of Gilgamesh, or The Iliad and The Odyssey (for a great series of posts on the subject, look no further than Matthew David Surridge’s four part series Worlds Within Worlds ).

In his landmark study The Allegory of Love (1936), C.S. Lewis implies that fantasy’s roots lie not in the classical period, but the Medieval Age. Medieval poets infused “extinct” pagan gods with new life by employing them as allegory. Venus and Mars, Minerva and Jupiter, died and awoke again as concepts, sewing seeds that would eventually give rise to works like Phantastes or The Well at the World’s End.

Go back to the beginnings of any literature and you will not find works of myth and fancy, Lewis claims. Ancient writers wrote stories based on the probable, or events that they believed actually happened. Or they took the marvellous as fact, writing without irony about hippogriffs and sea-monsters. Purely fantastic fiction was unknown (classical poets employed allegory, but not in this manner). Pagan gods as allegory, and the acknowledgement of myth by medieval poets, marked a cosmic shift in artistic technique, paving the paths for writers like Spenser and Shakespeare and Milton and transitioning us to works of pure fantasy. “It is difficult for the modern man of letters to value this quiet revolution as it deserves,” writes Lewis. “Allegory may seem, at first, to have killed them; but it killed only as the sower kills, for gods, like other creatures, must die to live.”

Revelations and gorgeously turned bits of wisdom like these are only a few of the treasures to be found in The Allegory of Love.

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

My 2011 reading list to date

Here's what I've read so far this year and my ratings for each:

Roots and Branches, Tom Shippey, 4 stars
Legend, David Gemmell, 4 stars
The Sword of Rhiannon, Leigh Brackett, 3.5 stars
Grails: Quests of the Dawn, Richard Gilliam, Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton editors, 3 stars
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens 3.5 stars
The Burning Land, Bernard Cornwell, 3.5 stars
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy 4.5 stars
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, J.R.R. Tolkien, 3.5 stars
Resolute Determination: Napoleon and the French Empire (The Modern Scholar), 3.5 stars
The Company They Keep, Diana Glyer, 4 stars
The Desert of Souls, Howard Andrew Jones, 3.5 stars
The Brothers Bulger, Howie Carr, 3 stars
Phantastes, George MacDonald, 3.5 stars
Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, Jane Chance editor, 3.5 stars
One Who Walked Alone, Novalyne Price Ellis, 4 stars
Damnation Alley, Roger Zelazny, 3 stars
Walden, Henry David Thoreau, 4 stars
Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott, 4 stars
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, John Joseph Adams editor, 3.5 stars
Bridge to Terabithia, Katherine Paterson, 3.5 stars
The Broken Sword, Poul Anderson, 4.5 stars
The Dirt, Motley Crue, 3 stars
Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, 4 stars
Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings, Lin Carter, 3.5 stars
The Dark Tide, Dennis McKiernan, 3 stars
Watership Down, Richard Adams, 5 stars
Shadows of Doom, Dennis McKiernan, 2.5 stars
The Darkest Day, Dennis McKiernan, 3 stars
The Allegory of Love, C.S. Lewis, 4 stars

I set a goal to read at least one book a week in 2011; I'm slightly behind, with 29 titles read through 31 weeks. Still, I'm currently halfway through Imaro and the George R.R. Martin/Gardner Dozois anthology Warriors (I'm listening to the latter on audio), so I hope to regain some lost ground. As I've said before I'm not a particularly fast reader and I also waste too much time idly surfing the internet. Ah well.

If there's anything you want to know about any of the above titles, feel free to ask. The best so far is Watership Down, a re-read. It's a book everyone should read at least once in their lifetime, in my opinion. The worst was Shadows of Doom, the middle third of Dennis McKiernan's Iron Tower trilogy.

Four part Conan movie history on Youtube

Fans (and detractors) of the two 1980s Conan films should find these interesting: A four part history of the movies recently posted to Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pmf3_FXM-M&feature=related (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybT91J73HZU&feature=related (Part 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNhDvkpJaqI&feature=related (Part 3)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ez-g8UQ9w&feature=related (Part 4)

The presenter is Paul Sammon, author of Conan the Phenomenon, who worked on the sets of both Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer (for the record I love the former and despise the latter. Sammon holds roughly the same views, it appears).

I don't own Phenomenon, but I have Sammon's Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, which is a fantastic work and a must-own for fans of BR. Sammon is a smart guy and a good presenter, and coupled with his insider's view these are well worth watching.

There's a lot of good (and fun) information: Who knew that the vulture on the Tree of Woe was the real thing, albeit dead and stuffed, and reeking? Or that the beheading of Conan's mom was originally shown on screen, but was so bloody it earned the film an X rating and had to be removed? Sammon also reveals that Wilt Chamberlain was a Howard fan.

These clips also include some really cool behind the scenes pics (see the hydraulic fully articulated giant snake, sans skin. Ride the snake!). Sammon presented this at the recent Howard Days in Cross Plains, TX. Wish I could have made it.

Hat tip to the Yahoo group REH Innercircle for posting these links.

Encouraging production video of The Hobbit released

I’m officially Much More Encouraged about The Hobbit now that I’ve seen the latest production video released today. You can view it here on Peter Jackson’s Facebook page.

I’ve long believed that The Hobbit is (or was) a risker film to make than The Lord of the Rings. Not now of course—The Hobbit is all but a guaranteed hit, as most LOTR fans would lap up a Jackson-directed four hour Tom Bombadil Lifetime special. But I think it was a smart move to make The Lord of the Rings first. Even though Rings is five times the length of The Hobbit, features far costlier set pieces, and has a much more complex, sprawling narrative, The Hobbit has its own unique movie-making handicap: Namely, that it’s about a hobbit and 13 dwarves. Hunks like Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortensen and chicks like Cate Blanchett and Liv Tyler are nowhere to be found (though most of these guys are getting cameos, it seems. And Kili is the token heartthrob). A troupe of short, bearded, rotund men is a tougher sell for mass audiences used to handsome stars and starlets.

In perhaps the only serious moment of an otherwise fun, lighthearted clip, Jackson admits as much. “Thirteen dwarves is one of the reasons why I dreaded The Hobbit, and why I really didn’t think I was going to make it for such a long time. But the irony is, it turns out to be one of the joys.”

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

Some recent book finds

Courtesy of a recent town fair, I now have in my possession the following books, each purchased for the princely sum of $1:

Bulfinch's Mythology, a modern abridgment by Edmund Fuller (covers mythology from classical Greece and Rome, as well as Northern Mythology, Arthuriana, and legends of Charlemane and the Middle Ages)

The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, as retold by Joseph Bedier (a retelling of the famous story, free of anachronisms)

The Well of the Unicorn, Fletcher Pratt (I've never read anything by Pratt, though I've read much good written about him).

Imaro, Charles Saunders (I've somehow managed to avoid reading Saunder's epic jungle hero novel, despite all the praise heaped on it by my former Cimmerian comrades. I hope to rectify that soon).

Brak vs. the Sorceress, John Jakes (it will probably suck, but I couldn't resist)

At the Earth's Core, Edgar Rice Burroughs (a recent read of Tarzan fueled this purchase)

Conan the Rebel, Poul Anderson (I'm not much for Conan pastiches, but "woot" because it's Anderson!)

The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman (now I get to see what all the fuss is about...)

The Works of Sir Walter Scott, Vol. IX, Ivanhoe (I have a tattered paperback copy of Ivanhoe; this is a nice hardcover, old but date unknown)

Sir Thomas Malory, Tales of King Arthur Illustrated, edited and abridged with an introduction by Michael Senior (I've got the real deal already, but this has some great B&W and full color illustrations).

Now all I need is time...

The day I went a-viking

How many people can say they sailed in a viking ship of their own making?

So what if the mast was made of PVC pipe, and the planking and shields of cardboard. The end product looks pretty good, and it netted us another First Place entry in the Highland Lake Boat Parade in Andover, NH, this past 4th of July weekend.

This was probably our most ambitious pontoon boat project yet. The mast and sail were a pain in the ass. That's a 10 foot piece of 3-inch diameter PVC pipe, seated in a toilet flange, screwed to a piece of thick wood, and spray painted brown. We drilled a hole at the top to accommodate an eight-foot long crossbeam made of 1 1/2 inch PVC. A few guy wires gave it stability. The sail is an old bedsheet. Red spraypaint for the vertical stripes.

I set the wife and kids to work making shields--a total of 13, including 6 per side and one for the mast. They did some awesome work. The shield bosses are tinfoil. They probably wouldn't stop a longsword or spear thrust, but they look the part.

The coup-de-grace came courtesy of my uncle. My original plan was to have the cardboard at the front taper to a whimpy point; he suggested constructing a huge prow to give our very square pontoon boat more of a sweeping longship appearance. We nailed together a few pieces of wood to frame the prow, ran a rope from the sail to the point to give it a little more lift, and voila! My uncle is a (literal) engineer, I couldn't have done it myself.

For those wondering (I know you are), the dragon head/tail are built using two pieces of styrofoam packing from an empty TV box. The head is an empty 18-pack of Coors Light. We spray painted the whole thing green. A styrofoam ball cut in half serves as the eyes and a pair of styrofoam cones are the horns.

At the conclusion of the parade we gave our ship a proper viking funeral: All but the styrofoam was burned in a pyre on the beach as the fireworks burst overhead. Much beer was consumed.

All in all it was an awesome event. My plastic axe was hungry and I was sorely tempted to pillage and plunder a few shoreside cottages but my wife had her hand on the tiller. And my 86-year-old grandmother would have none of it.

Those dwarf pictures…

…I must say my reaction is a mixed bag, a fair bit of “meh,” to be honest.

First what I like.

The proportions seem great. The faces, excellent. The hair and beards, well done (if a little too neat and/or wind-swept).

Now what I don’t like.

The 3E D&D straps and buckles/black leathery appearance of their gauntlets and armor. This is radically different from what we see in the books, which are cloaks and brightly colored belts and hoods. And later, coats of fine, shining mail studded with bright gems from Smaug’s horde. Also, their weapons are rather too bulky and built for style and appearance, not war.

A (very) guilty pleasure: Dennis McKiernan’s The Iron Tower Trilogy

The publication of Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara in 1977 was a watershed moment in fantasy literature. The success of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings left fans clamoring for more epic, secondary world fantasy with maps, and with The Sword of Shannara Brooks delivered. Its publication began a trend of Tolkien-inspired fantasy that deeply marked (marred, others might say) the genre thereafter.

But the ensuing years haven’t been kind to Brooks. Lin Carter, editor of the acclaimed Ballantine Adult fantasy series, said of The Sword of Shannara ,” [it’s]the single most cold-blooded, complete rip-off of another book that I have ever read”. Despite the commercial success of Shannara and its sequels, its now widely considered to be the poster child for Biggest Tolkien Ripoff.

But, prevailing claims to the contrary, The Sword of Shannara is not even close to that moniker. The championship belt for most slavish LOTR imitation (that I have read, at least) hangs proudly about the waist of Dennis McKiernan’s The Iron Tower Trilogy. In comparison to The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day, Shannara is a veritable bastion of originality sprung whole and entire from the forehead of Zeus. The Iron Tower Trilogy is, in fact, The Lord of the Rings with the serial numbers filed off. Crudely. Anyone who possesses even a passing familiarity with Tolkien’s masterwork should stand aghast at the “similarities.”

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

Johann Hari—hypocrite

The same brilliant award-winning young journalist who once demonized J.R.R. Tolkien for daring to oppose unbridled modernity has since turned his attention to writing pieces like these:

How to survive the age of distraction

Has the internet brought us together or driven us apart

The deal we dare not turn down

2010--The year zombies came for our brains

In these pieces you’ll find him railing against internet culture and the accompanying rise of pornography and short attention spans in the age of Facebook and Twitter; bemoaning the decline and impending death of paper books and sustained, deep reading; expressing bitterness at omnipresent advertising and consumer culture, and lecturing us soberly on the decay of the environment.

Symptoms of unbridled modernity.

Which Tolkien warned us about.

In The Lord of the Rings.

I guess the message here is that the progress wrought by modernity is all good--when it’s Hari’s kind of progress, like the cosmopolitan city. But when it results in consequences with which he doesn’t align himself--like teh evil internets--it’s bad.

Rich, isn’t it?

What a fucking hypocrite. Not to mention a slack-jawed reader of Tolkien.

---

Yes, I'm back from vacation! More light-hearted stuff to come soon.

A Short Rest

For anyone following The Silver Key, I'll be heading to our family's equivalent of Rivendell (a place that's internet free) and won't be posting here until after July 4. Cheers!

(Closing in on) 100 years of Tarzan of the Apes

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes was first published in All-Story Magazine in 1912, which means that we’re closing in on 100 years of the iconic jungle hero (wow!). Tarzan of the Apes proved so popular among All-Story’s readers that it spawned two dozen sequels, several movies, and stacks of comic books.

Yet somehow I’ve managed to avoid reading the original story that started it all—until now.

Shame on me, because was I missing out. Tarzan of the Apes is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. It’s a lean novel but packs a big story into its 245 pages (paperback—I own the Ballantine Books authorized edition, pictured here). It’s chock-full of action and violence, the clash of animal vs. animal, man vs. animal, and man vs. man in the savage jungles of darkest Africa. There’s some really manly, barbaric stuff going on in here, like Tarzan’s battle with the great ape Kerchak for possession of Jane in a clash with prehistoric echoes:

Jane—her lithe, young form flattened against the trunk of a great tree, her hands tight pressed against her rising and falling bosom, and her eyes wide with mingled horror, fascination, fear, and admiration—watched the primordial ape battle with the primeval man for possession of a woman—for her.

As the great muscles of the man’s back and shoulders knotted beneath the tension of his efforts, and the huge biceps and forearm held at bay those mighty tusks, the veil of centuries of civilization and culture was swept from the blurred vision of the Baltimore girl.

Although I hadn’t read Tarzan of the Apes previously I knew the story well enough through exposure to movies and the comics. Aristocratic English couple John and Alice Clayton, the Lord and Lady Greystoke, are marooned in western Africa following a violent mutiny aboard their ship. Alice’s delicate constitution can’t handle the shock of the jungle and its terrible denizens and she dies after giving birth to a son. Her husband is mauled to death by a great ape shortly thereafter. A female member of the ape tribe, Kala, takes the then six-month old infant John to her breast and raises him as a member of the tribe.

Named Tarzan (which means “White Skin” in the language of the apes), the young Lord Greystoke attains near-superhuman levels of agility and strength through his rough upbringing among the great apes. Though he never attains the full strength the bull males possess, Tarzan is more agile, smarter, and equipped with a hunting knife and rope which he uses as an accurately thrown noose from the treetops. Soon he becomes the fiercest beast in the jungle, rising to the top of his tribe. Eventually Tarzan finds his parents’ abandoned cottage and manages to teach himself to read. Through the printed word and encounters with civilized visitors he discovers his humanity and his ancestry and finally returns to England.

Like A Princess of Mars which I recently re-read after a span of many years Tarzan of the Apes is not without its flaws. Edgar Rice Burroughs has been described as a great writer of ideas, but not necessarily great in the execution of said ideas. I tend to agree. A more patient, careful writer than Burroughs might have turned the transformation of savage into man into something even more powerful and beautiful than we see in Tarzan of the Apes, and ultimately, in a more believable fashion (in the novel Tarzan transforms from savage ape-man to courteous, timid love interest in a span of a few pages, which I found hard to swallow). Burroughs is a writer of boundless imagination and energy but I think he suffered from turning out his stories at a white-hot pace.

But these criticisms are ultimately minor. As I said before I enjoyed Tarzan of the Apes a lot, even more than A Princess of Mars. More than just action, Tarzan of the Apes offers a thoughtful, multi-faceted view on the nature of civilization. In general it’s roughly equivalent though slightly more positive than we find in Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. Howard wrote in “Beyond the Black River” that “Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.” Likewise, in Burroughs’ universe being raised among the animals in the wild seems to trump city life. Tarzan is not only far physically superior to civilized men, but he’s morally and spiritually superior as well. Tarzan views black cannibals and white murdering pirates with an equal degree of disgust. Back in England he’s able to see through the schemes of the gentleman Robert Canler, who is little more than a finely mannered animal. He judges with clarity man’s capacity for not just sub-human, but sub-animal behavior (“for it has remained for man alone among all creatures to kill senselessly and wantonly for the pleasure of inflicting suffering and death.”)

But again the novel is not that black and white. Too much city life may make us weak and dissolute, but living in the jungle isn’t fit for a man. Education and civility are a good thing and man (or more accurately, cultured, aristocratic man) is more than animal, a superior creation. Though he’s lived among brutes and feasted on raw flesh, Tarzan still treats Jane with a natural sense of chivalry. But unlike a gentleman his attitude is unfeigned and not a scheme to maneuver her into bed.

Yet Jane, though attracted to Tarzan’s vitality and stunningly good looks, is simultaneously repelled by this man-ape. She’s reluctant to marry him and risk severing her place in the social order. I found the Tarzan-Jane dynamic to be one of the book’s chief strengths.

“Could she find anything in common with a husband whose life had been spent in the treetops of an African wilderness, frolicking and fighting with fierce anthropoids; tearing food from the quivering flank of fresh-killed prey, sinking his strong teeth into raw flesh, and tearing away his portion while his mates growled and fought about him for their share?

Could he ever rise to her social sphere? Could she bear to think of sinking to his? Would either be happy in such a horrible misalliance?

Read Tarzan of the Apes to find out.

First official photos of The Hobbit released

From Entertainment Weekly.

So far so good, though I can’t say I’m surprised, given the precedent set by the wonderful scenery and set-pieces of The Lord of the Rings films. Martin Freeman couldn’t have been a better casting choice, visually, for the part of Bilbo (though I picture Mr. Baggins as slightly more rotund).

As I’m sure it was for many others The Hobbit was my gateway to fantasy and, largely, to reading in general. As such I have very high expectations for this film (or more accurately, films). I have little doubt The Hobbit is going to look great, but my hopes and fears are pinned to the faithfulness of the script. And the amount of screen time allotted to Beorn kicking ass at the Battle of Five Armies.

Cross-posted from Black Gate.

The Broken Sword, an (audio) review

Note: This post also appears on SFFaudio.com.

The Viking Age of England offers fertile ground for storytelling. It was a time of strong men, beautiful fair-haired women, and bloody raids for plunder. Christianity was the new religion on the block, striving to make inroads on the old pagan beliefs—and often at the point of a sword. Gods were said to mingle with men and the world lay poised on the edge of Ragnarok, a final battle and fiery conflagration that would end the world.

Poul Anderson drew on the best of this wild and poetic age, stirred it up with myth and fantasy, and the result was his 1954 novel The Broken Sword. Its like has rarely been matched in the annals of fantasy literature.

I’ve read The Broken Sword previously and knew what a wonderful book it was, but TV and film actor Bronson Pinchot’s narration in this new Blackstone Audio, Inc. production added a new dimension to the novel. I had first heard Pinchot in a reading of Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon. While he was wonderful there he ups his game in The Broken Sword, reading with a spite and fury in his voice that perfectly matches the book’s unrelenting grimness and battle fury. Pinchot breathes life into beautiful maidens and proud warriors, deep-throated trolls, and ancient elven warrior-kings whose voices are like winds sighing through treeless leaves.

Oddly enough there is exactly one sound effect in the entire recording—an echo effect used to convey the cold, cruel laughter of Odin—and it’s on the final disc. It was cool but rather jarring, considering it’s on the last disc and there’s no precursor. But on to the tale.

In The Broken Sword the land of Faerie exists alongside the lands of men, invisible save to those with the witch sight. Faerie is a land of bright castles and achingly lovely elves, of the gods of Odin and Tyr, the giants of Jotunheim, black-eyed trolls, and other, fouler monsters.

Pride and ambition touches off the events of The Broken Sword. Orm the Strong is the fifth son of Ketil Asmundsson and thus low in the totem pole of inheritance. Rather than accept a smaller share of wealth Orm seeks his own fortune by going a–viking. On one of his raids he kills a husband and his sons, burning their hall to the ground. The man’s mother, a witch, escapes and swears revenge: She bestows a curse that Orm’s eldest son will be fostered beyond the world of men, while he in turn will foster a wolf that will one day rend him.

The elf-earl Imric travels to the lands of men and sets the witch’s curse in motion. Imric takes Orm’s unbaptized infant son Skafloc and replaces him with Valgard, a changeling, whom Imric himself has fathered by raping a captive troll woman. Valgard’s dark ancestry is evident when he bites his unknowing mother’s breast and grows restless and violent in Orm’s care. Skafloc, raised among the elves, is fair haired and fair of spirit, though equally mighty and otherwise a mirror image of his dark changeling “brother.”

After he discovers his true half troll, half-elf heritage, Valgard embarks on a mission of revenge, killing several members of his foster family. Aided with an army of trolls he then launches a war of annihilation on the elven lands of Alfheim. Skafloc and the elves are beaten back by the initial assaults and all seems lost. Only by going on a quest to reforge a powerful ancient weapon—the eponymous broken sword, a weapon of terrible demonic power that demands blood each time it is drawn and ultimately turns on its wielder—can Skafloc save Alfheim and avenge his family.

Though The Broken Sword seems largely forgotten these days it remains influential. The elf Imric for example reveals the clear stylistic (and thematic) influence The Broken Sword had on subsequent authors like Michael Moorcock. Moorcock (a big fan of the book, who once wrote that The Broken Sword “knocked The Lord of the Rings into a cocked hat”) based his Melniboneans heavily on Anderson’s elves. Imric is (largely) Elric of Melnibone, not only in similarity of name, but in appearance and even character. Anderson’s Elves are darker than those in The Lord of the Rings (though I would point out that Tolkien’s elves closely resembled Anderson’s in his source material; see the prideful warrior Feanor from The Silmarillion). They are haughty, prideful, shun the sunlight, and if not malicious are certainly mischievous. These traits have their roots in Norse myth, which both Tolkien and Anderson drew upon.

Everything about the book is wonderfully northern. Characters mingle soaring verse with common speech in conversation. Anderson weaves old northern vocabulary into the tale, evocative words like “Fetch,” “Fey,” and “Weird” (the latter is a fate from which no man escapes), which lend The Broken Sword a hard northern ethos to match its flavor. In this pagan hierarchy the Norns are higher than the towering Jotuns or even the Aesir. Even the gods will die in the fires of Ragnarok at their appointed time. That grimness bleeds through into The Broken Sword as its protagonists are slowly crushed beneath the merciless wheel of fate.

"Throw not your life away for a lost love," pleaded Mananaan. "You are young yet."

"All men are born fey," said Skafloc, and there the matter stood.

This is hard stuff and an unforgiving outlook on life, though not incompatible with that other somewhat famous work that debuted in 1954—Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. No matter what Moorcock—he of the tin ear when it comes to Tolkien analysis—may tell you.

The writing in The Broken Sword is top-notch, really and truly great stuff. A small sample of dialogue uttered by the troll-woman Gora:

“The world is flesh dissolving off a dead skull,” mumbled the troll-woman. She clanked her chain and lay back, shuddering. “Birth is but the breeding of maggots in the crumbling flesh. Already the skull’s teeth leer forth and black crows have left its eye sockets empty. Soon a barren wind will blow through its bare white bones.”



One final, important note about the Blackstone recording: The text is Anderson’s original from the 1954 version of the book, which Anderson updated in 1971 for republication in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. This is not immediately apparent from the description on the Blackstone website. I’ve only read the 1971 version, so for those who haven’t had the chance to experience The Broken Sword in its earliest and rawest incarnation you now have another chance.

Any other Edguy fans out there?

German power metal band Edguy is hard to pin down. On one album you're likely to hear medieval fantasy flavored songs in the vein of Iron Maiden or Blind Guardian alongside hair metal inspired hits like "Lavoratory Love Machine" and "King of Fools." They've been known to branch out into loud and proud power ballad material. Their material ranges from soaring bombast that sends chills down your spine, to goofy head-scratching attempts at humor that generally don't come off too well.

A common thread (if there is one) is that Edguy really, really seems to be enjoying themselves and doing whatever the hell they want.

I've gotta give credit to my friend Falze for turning me on to these guys. If you haven't heard of Edguy before (and most people in the States haven't, it seems), they're definitely worth checking out. Though their first full studio album is 1997's Kingdom of Madness, they sound like they picked up where 1988 left off and kept on playing. Their sound on songs like "Theatre of Salvation" (which incorporates an all-male church choir to great effect) is borderline divine. They're not afraid to do it big and epic, which is what I want when I listen to metal.

Some of their lyrics are ... puzzling, though I might chalk that up to a translation issue (Edguy is German but their songs are written in English). Others are grinningly good, like they've been taken from the pages of a purple swords and sorcery tale:

Prayers have been spoken
May the gods be on my side
May they join my way to bring me victory
seven at one stroke
my triumph and my pride
will be history

As I've stated on numerous occasions what draws me to certain metal acts is the singing, and Edguy shines in this regard. Tobias Sammet is a pretty awe-inspiring lead singer. He's got tremendous range and a great sound, which is why I have him in my top 10 metal vocalists of all time.

Some of my favorite Edguy songs include:

Jerusalem

Theater of Salvation

Vain Glory Opera

The Piper Never Dies

Babylon

Rise of the Morning Glory

Hallowed

If I had to pick a favorite album, it would probably be Hellfire Club by a hair, though Mandrake and Theater of Salvation are in the running, too. Their last couple albums have been a letdown but I'm hoping they return to form with Age of the Joker, due out in August.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, a review

John Joseph Adams has a well-earned reputation as The Man Who Delivers Anthologies. Barnes & Noble.com has dubbed him “the reigning king of the anthology world.” By my count he’s published at least nine of them. I own one, The Living Dead, which contained enough zombie goodness (along with a few stiffs) to prompt me to buy his Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse.

To be honest, I probably would have bought Wastelands regardless of its editor. I’m a big fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, from novels like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, to films like Escape from New York or Mad Max. Why? As an inhabitant of the northeastern seaboard of the United States I’m not often confronted with existential issues. I know that I’m going to die one day and suffer separation from all that I know and love, but because civilization affords me everything I need—and much of what I want, too—I tend not to think about these issues much. The panaceas of electricity and refrigeration, and healthcare and schools, and television and the internet and books, masks the skull beneath the skin. I’m effectively insulated from the hard life and death struggle that’s woven into so much of human history. But what if it was all stripped away, and life was reduced to its essentials? That’s the question post-apocalyptic fiction asks, and one I occasionally like to ponder. With my feet up on the couch of my air-conditioned living room, of course.

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

Books: This is Exactly How They Work

An arresting image making the rounds: http://a.yfrog.com/img13/8364/21063920857041414761211.jpg

I'm not sure who the credit for this piece of art goes to so I'm including the link rather than posting the image.

Some might argue with the squalid depiction of life, but I like the sentiment that books can elevate our worldview and take us out of the mundane crap of day-to-day living. True, that.

On a less serious note: It's a reminder of another reason why physical books still beat e-readers.

Shamelessly lifted news items: Agincourt, The Hobbit, and Styrbiorn

A few news items of interest, lifted shamelessly from other blogs and/or newsgroups I subscribe to:

Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt headed to the big screen. I enjoyed Cornwell's take on this legendary battle from the Hundred Years' War a lot (if you're interested, my full review can be found here at The Cimmerian), if not as much as The Warlord Trilogy or The Saxon Stories. I'm already giddy with the thought of seeing French knights charging English longbowmen and the ensuing slaughter in the mud. And Henry's pre-battle speech, of course.

E.R. Eddison's Styrbiorn the Strong to be reissued. I plucked this bit of news off a new blog I recently added to my roll, Tolkien and Fantasy. Styrbiorn the Strong is a book I've long had on my "to be read list" but haven't yet obtained, as it's been long out of print. This new edition by the author of the incomparable The Worm Ouroboros is due out in August and I'll be purchasing it with glee. How can you go wrong with Eddison's style combined with a rousing viking tale?

Hobbit titles, dates revealed. So we've got the dates--December 14, 2012, and December 13, 2013--and the respective names of the two-part film: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. Sounds promising! The associated news that Orlando Bloom is reprising his role as Legolas is decidedly less so. I actually don't mind this deviation, provided that it's a minor role and doesn't involve Bloom single-handedly slaying Mumakil (or wargs, or the entire Bodyguard of Bolg) at the Battle of Five Armies. This is Beorn's turn to shine, and he had better not be upstaged by an uber-elf.

Entering the Lists in Defense of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe

There’s a school of thought that views the Middle Ages as a dark gulf between the Classical Age and the rebirth of reason known as the Renaissance. The Middle Ages were, to paraphrase science fiction author David Brin, an unhappy time of small-mindedness and fear, marked by the squabbles of petty nobles, ignorance, superstition, and religious persecution.

Thus, any historical fiction that dares emit a whiff of romanticism of the age is viewed by some as anathema, a whitewashed but corrupted view of “reality”.

But as time marches on and new discoveries and scholarship come to light, we’ve realized that these times weren’t quite as dark and backwards as we once believed. And that allows us to revisit old works of art like Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe with a fresh perspective. My recent re-read of Scott’s 1819 classic of historical fiction reminded me of the following reasons why it’s still relevant and worth re-reading.

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

Celebrating ten years of slaying dragons

This past weekend we celebrated the tenth anniversary of our current D&D group. As anticipated we did something really crazy on our 10th anniversary and ... played a game of D&D!

The hostess prepared an awesome diorama: A green dragon cake on top of a hoard of golden (candy) treasure, surrounded by crumbling columns. You can't see them in this photo but a horde of treasure-hungry heroes advance on the monster. Other nasty creatures stand lurking on the perimeter. There's another dragon in the foreground whose mouth contains the party's halfling thief, Shem.

In the photo below, I strike the killing below, beheading the beast with one swipe of a +3 butter knife. That's me on the left, with Chris, our DM, at right.


Here's to 10 more years of slaying dragons.

Thor kicks ass!

I rarely get to see “big person” movies these days. Thanks to my two young daughters, my most recent movie experiences include Tangled, Yogi Bear, and Toy Story 3 (the first and last are recommended. Yogi Bear... not so much). So naturally when the chance to see a grown up movie with a friend of mine finally rolled around, we saw … Thor.

…okay, so Thor is suitable for most kids, too. But let’s face it—these recent Marvel movies are geared just as much for current/former comic book fans in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who want to see spectacle and experience nostalgia for the heroes of their youth. That described my anticipation for this film. And Thor delivers!

I’ve always liked the character of Thor. I was never a big collector of the comic back in the day (Captain America and Savage Sword of Conan were my favorites), but for a time I did collect The Avengers, and next to Cap, Thor was always a favorite. I was (and still am) interested in Vikings and Norse mythology so I felt a natural attraction. I also liked the fact that Thor provided some much needed muscle on the Avengers and could fight guys like Goliath and Ultron in toe-to-toe battles that tore up city streets and knocked over buildings.

Overall, Thor was a very good film and I enjoyed myself immensely. I haven’t seen all the super hero films, but I enjoyed this one more than Spiderman and Batman. It felt bigger and more otherworldly and suffused with glorious comic-book eye candy (Asgard, and in particular the Bifrost Bridge, looked great). I liked the big, bold, dramatic acting, which plainly had a Kenneth Branagh influence. Heimdall was very cool character.

Given that Thor is a God of Thunder from another plane there are naturally going to be cultural clashes when he comes to earth. These made for some of the funniest and best scenes in the movie. My favorite bit was a scene in which Thor is eating in a diner and has his first cup of coffee. Enjoying it, he slams the empty mug down on the floor, shattering it into a thousand pieces as he shouts, “Another!”, as if he were in some great mead hall in Asgard. I laughed out loud. I also loved the scenes in which Thor loses his powers and is a mortal man but doesn’t realize it until he’s overpowered by a group of scientists, or finds himself at the wrong end of a stun-gun.

The best thing about the movie is the actors, which I wasn’t expecting. Chris Hemsworth was very charismatic and played an entirely convincing Thor. I had never heard of him previously but can see him blossoming into a big time action star. Anthony Hopkins was good as Odin, bringing the gravitas to the role one would expect. The guy who played Loki was great (though not quite as buff as the Loki I remember from the comics), both scheming and sympathetic. And the love interest between Natalie Portman’s character and Thor worked for me. It was done simply and sincerely and left you feeling the pang of separation.

I thought Thor had some problems. S.H.I.E.L.D. struck me as far too inept/gullible. There was a fight between Thor and a steel-encased guardian that ended in anti-climactic fashion, given the big build-up of the guardian’s powers. Thor is exiled to earth and loses his powers, and when they are restored I wanted to see more of him in action, flying and exhibiting great feats of strength and skill with Mjolnir. Alas, he was whisked off far too quickly to Asgard at film’s end for the final climactic show-down with Loki.

Also, I never really understood (or cared) what Portman’s character was trying to do with her pseudo-scientific project. And I would have liked to have seen a little more of the culture shock that would naturally result when you get an alien God walking the streets of earth. By film’s end Thor seems pretty comfortable in jeans and a flannel shirt, which seemed entirely too quick and convenient.

But in the end Thor left me both saying “wow” and wanting more of this character—which is probably exactly what the film makers intended, given that Thor, Iron Man, and the forthcoming Captain America are all coordinated build ups to 2012’s The Avengers, which is now pretty much a must-see for me.

ST Joshi on Lovecraft

Courtesy of The Lovecraft Ezine, a fascinating audio interview with H.P. Lovecraft biographer S.T. Joshi. One of the many interesting bits:

My belief is that what Lovecraft was doing here was what one Lovecraft scholar David E. Schultz has called an "anti-mythology." By that I mean this: The purpose of most mythologies and religions is, as it were, to reconcile humanity with the universe. That is, to say, to explain the place of humanity within the confines of space and time. Lovecraft reverses that, by saying, whereas religion says, "yes, human beings are at the center of the universe, and are the special product of the benevolence of an all-powerful god," Lovecraft says, "no, human beings are completely insignificant. They are at the mercy of these titanic forces that really care nothing about them, and that can brush them aside and destroy them without a moment's thought."

That reminds me: One of these days I need to buy a copy of the massive I Am Providence. If it wasn't so darned expensive...

The Top 100 Fantasy Books of all time … or not

Confession: I’m a top 10/top 100/top whatever list addict. If I find an article on a subject about which I’m even remotely interested, and written in the form of a numbered list, I’ll generally stop to read it. That chance increases when said list is arranged in ascending or descending order of quality.

I fully admit that many top 10/ top 100/top whatever lists are contrived hit count fodder (slugging something a “top 10” anything is guaranteed to increase the number of visits to your web site–you’re welcome Black Gate editors!), but occasionally these lists serve a worthy function. For example, if I’ve just finished The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or Flags of Our Fathers and am looking for another good World War II title, I’ll Google “top 10 world war 2 histories.” This practice typically generates a good suggestion or two–and another “top 10″ article to read.

Top 10/top 100 lists are also flashpoints for debate, often stirring up vigorous agreement or righteous anger and indignity. I generated an angry response with my Top 10 Fantasy Fiction Battles of All-Time, in which former Cimmerian blogger Al Harron took me to task for excluding Robert E. Howard, and also for including some borderline “fantasy” choices. Hey Al, let’s still be friends, okay?

Which leads me to the point of this post. Have you ever typed “top 100 fantasy novels,” or “top 10 fantasy books,” into your search bar? If not, I’ll save you the work. You get this site, the “Top 100 Fantasy Books”.

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

Damnation Alley by Roger Zelazny, a review

I count the first two Mad Max films among my all-time favorites. I’m a sucker for anything post-apocalyptic, but more importantly, they’re tense, well-made, well-plotted, and reasonably well-acted films. (I liked the premise and some of the ideas in Beyond Thunderdome, but it falls short of the first two). In addition, the car chase/crash sequences are among the best ever put to celluloid, even since the advent of CGI.

So it was with great anticipation that I began Roger Zelazny’s 1969 novel Damnation Alley, which combines post-apocalypse, and tricked-out battlecars, and a tough ex-biker with nothing to lose.

A brief synopsis of Damnation Alley is as follows: Ex biker gang leader Hell Tanner (yes, that is his name) is offered a full pardon from L.A. officials if he agrees to deliver a vaccine to plague-stricken Boston. Sounds easy enough, but this is a North America post-nuclear war, and the heartland of America is now known as Damnation Alley, a vast wasteland of mutated monsters, roving biker gangs, lethal hail and lightning storms, and pockets of deadly radiation. Flying is impossible as the sky is torn by hurricane-force winds and deadly storms, and full of swarms of oversized bats and other monstrosities. They only way to cross this stretch is by car. Armored, eight-wheeled vehicles armed with rocket launchers, machine guns, and flame throwers are used for this purpose.

This is all cool stuff, and Damnation Alley isn’t bad, but based on the premise it should have been better. It reads like a short story artificially stretched to novel length (192 pages, paperback), and it wasn’t until after I read it that I found out that’s actually the case. Damnation Alley was published as a short story in 1967 and expanded into a novel two years later. It felt padded to me, like Zelazny tacked on a repetitive series of encounters with various monsters to increase the page count. I wanted to learn more about the collapse of society, the problems faced by the survivors in a massively depopulated country, more about the gangs and their motivation, etc, but was disappointed with its lack of depth. Zelazny also introduces a couple of bizarre nouveau writing sequences that jar with the rest of the novel (for example, he describes a radiation-driven storm with a three-page run-on sentence. Odd).

But there is much to like about Damnation Alley. Hell Tanner is the best thing about the book. If you’ve ever seen Escape from New York, think Snake Plissken, mix with Max Rockatansky, and you’re 95% there. In fact, I’d be surprised if Escape director John Carpenter and Mad Max writer/director George Miller hadn’t read Damnation Alley at some point. Like Rockatansky in The Road Warrior, Tanner starts Damnation Alley as 100% hard-bitten mercenary, seemingly caring for no one but himself. But as the story progresses he comes to realize the innocent suffering and catastrophic waste of the plague and the mission becomes personal.

Zelazny keeps the action moving with some fun sequences, a few memorable minor characters (including a tough biker chick and a mad scientist) and bits of unexpected, brutal violence. If you can get past some of the head-scratching bits (why does nuclear war cause gila monsters and snakes to grow to 20 times their normal size? Why would a nuclear exchange target mid-America, and leave the big coastal cities unscathed?) it’s a fast, enjoyable read.

Digging Battle Beast

Heavy metal has always been my favorite genre of music. My listening tastes do include other genres, from country to the oldies to mainstream pop/rock, but in the end I always find myself circling back to metal (at one time I wondered if the psychologists/ sociologists who view metal as a symptom of adolescent rebellion were right and that I’d “grow out of” it, but at the ripe old age of 37 I’m proud to say I don’t ever see that happening. Rock on, whimps and posers leave the hall!)

And yet there are times when my enthusiasm for metal wanes. It usually involves events around the aging and mortality of the metal legends that I grew up with. For example, Judas Priest announcing their farewell tour and KK Downing hanging up his axe, Iron Maiden sounding tired on their new album, and of course, the worst news of all, Ronnie James Dio dying from stomach cancer. On my worst days, I think metal will go the way of grunge, leaving fans like me with naught but memories of leather-clad lead singers and a lingering case of tinnitus.

New metal acts are hitting the scene every day of course, particularly out of Europe, but I don’t like most of them. I actively despise nu metal acts like Korn and Limp Bizkit (I had to force myself to actually type “nu metal”), while black metal/death metal and its growling, cookie-monster style vocals just don’t cut it for me. That’s why for all the praise I’ve seen heaped on them I can’t get into Children of Bodom, for example.

But once in a while a new band emerges that gives me hope, bringing new blood into the genre while preserving the old “classic metal” or “power metal” sound that I enjoy. Bands like Blind Guardian and Edguy. The latest is a band called Battle Beast, a group of young Finns who just put out their first album, Steel. I also found out that they’ll be at the Wacken Open Air festival in August, a major event which not just any old metal band gets invited to play.

Here’s my favorite Battle Beast track, "Armageddon Clan". The lyrics are straight out of The Terminator.

"Show Me How to Die" is pretty awesome, too.

One of the things that attracts me to metal is the soaring vocals, which is why Maiden, Priest, and the Dio-fronted Black Sabbath are my favorite bands, and why I’m partial to Blind Guardian and Edguy. That’s also why Battle Beast has grabbed my attention. Should one hear a blood-drenched Valkyrie singing on the fields of some ancient northern battlefield, I would imagine it would sound a lot like Battle Beast’s frontwoman Nitte Valo. She can really belt it out.

I’m not saying these guys are the next coming or anything, but they’ve got a sound I enjoy and an old-school vibe pleasing to the ear. Plus a cool album cover.

Looking for the real Robert E. Howard in One Who Walked Alone

It couldn’t have been easy for Novalyne Price Ellis to write One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard the Final Years (Donald M. Grant Publisher, Inc., 1986). Price Ellis’ memoir of her relationship with Howard (roughly 1934-36) is illuminating in its raw honesty. It’s also painful, at turns disappointing and downright frustrating. We might find escape in Howard’s sword and sorcery tales but there is none to be found here.

But above all, One Who Walked Alone is brave. Price Ellis never sacrifices accuracy to save face. Howard was a successful writer and a free spirit, and told wild, vivid stories, traits that Price Ellis found irresistible. But she was also painfully embarrassed with the Texan, unable to accept his occasionally odd public behavior. She was disappointed that he didn’t conform to her own conception of manliness and began to date other men, including one of his best friends, Truett Vinson, which cut Howard to the quick. While her reactions were understandable, at times I found her to be rather shallow and unlikeable. And yet rather than off-putting I find that uncompromising truthfulness highly admirable.

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

Books I've read in 2011

One of my new year's resolutions was to read more in 2011. I've got an incredible backlog of titles to get through, and more stuff is being published that I have my eye on (like the forthcoming The Art of the Hobbit by Tolkien scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, authors of the highly recommended J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator and The J.R.R Tolkien Companion and Guide) that I despair of ever making any real progress. As I've said before, there's too much to read in the world and not enough time to do it.

I started out averaging a book a week this year, but have fallen off a bit, in part due to a week-long business trip in which I had almost no time to read (See? I'm already making excuses). In truth I'm a slow reader. I'm also prone to fits of stopping and jotting down notes that I later use in my reviews (this creates a very real problem when I'm driving in the car and listening to a book on tape when I'm hit with a flash of inspiration). I also surf the web too damn much, reading everyone else's interesting blogs when I could be reading books.

So here's the meagre list:

Roots and Branches, Tom Shippey
Legend, David Gemmell
The Sword of Rhiannon, Leigh Brackett
Grails: Quests of the Dawn, Richard Gilliam, Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton (editors)
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens
The Burning Land, Bernard Cornwell
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, J.R.R. Tolkien
Resolute Determination: Napoleon and the French Empire (The Modern Scholar)
The Company They Keep, Diana Glyer
The Desert of Souls, Howard Andrew Jones
The Brothers Bulger, Howie Carr
Phantastes, George MacDonald
Tolkien and the Invention of Myth, Jane Chance (editor)

The best one of the bunch so far? No Country for Old Men.

The irony of it all is...

... I don't even have a subscription to HBO, so if you're looking for episode-by-episode reviews of A Game of Thrones, you've come to the wrong place. I have read the books though and I'll be picking up A Dance With Dragons when it's published.

GRRM, Salon respond to negative GOT reviews

Go George!

It seems George R.R. Martin himself has responded to the critical New York Times review referenced in my last post. Cool to see. From his livejournal post:

I am not going to get into it myself, except to say(1) if I am writing "boy fiction," who are all those boys with breasts who keep turning up by the hundreds at my signings and readings?

and(2) thank you, geek girls! I love you all.

And Salon's firing back too. From that piece:

Patterson's Slate review, titled "Quasi-Medieval, Dragon-Ridden Fantasy Crap: Art Thou Prepared to Watch 'Game of Thrones'?" is less a review than a creative writing exercise, penned in the style of....well, it's hard to say what, exactly. It's not a parody of George R.R. Martin's prose, which tends to avoid the turgid, translated-from-the-ancient-Hobbitesese diction that marks inferior sword-and-sorcery novels. It seems more like a goof on what Patterson imagines fantasy fiction to be.

Fantasy fans of the world, unite! Fight the power! Etc. etc. Now if we could only get Tolkien to respond to the likes of David Brin and Michael Moorcock from the great beyond...

Media disgracing itself with A Game of Thrones coverage

When the network ventures away from its instincts for real-world sociology, as it has with the vampire saga “True Blood,” things start to feel cheap, and we feel as though we have been placed in the hands of cheaters. “Game of Thrones” serves up a lot of confusion in the name of no larger or really relevant idea beyond sketchily fleshed-out notions that war is ugly, families are insidious and power is hot. If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary.

-- From “A Fantasy World of Strange Feuding Kingdoms,” Ginia Bellafante, New York Times

I’m probably not the best candidate to come to the defense of A Game of Thrones. Despite the praise heaped on it in some quarters I don’t place George R.R. Martin’s series at the level of The Lord of the Rings, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Once and Future King, The Broken Sword, or any of Robert E. Howard’s best short fiction. I do like it well enough. It’s gripping, unpredictable, gritty fantasy, and pulls together complex plotlines and multiple point of view characters in an impressive feat of sustained storytelling. I give author George R.R. Martin plenty of props for doing something different with the genre and for spinning a well-told tale. But I’ve read better.

But you know what? Martin doesn’t deserve the level of abuse he’s getting in some quarters. If you’re a fan of the fantasy genre you ought to feel insulted by what’s going on. I’m frankly appalled at the “open minded” media outlets that have savaged the series and/or fantasy by association at every turn. I’ve already mentioned one review from The LA Times, riddled with snark and anti-fantasy bias.

The next, courtesy of Slate (hat tip to Dweomera Lagomorpha), ups the vitriol. The title of the article says it all: “Quasi-Medieval, Dragon-Ridden Fantasy Crap.” This particular piece (of shite) is probably the worst of I’ve read (or I should say tried to read—it’s scarcely readable). A rambling, self-referential, near-incoherent opening morphs to a cliché-laden rant about fantasy as a whole. Its quite difficult to even determine the subject of the reviewer's scorn. Overall it’s an all-around poor job by Slate.

This piece from The Atlantic means well, but I think it reveals a problem with traditional media outlets whose reporters are expected to be jack of all trades (but wind up being master of none). When they attempt a deep analysis of a subject they know only on the periphery, it shows. Alyssa Rosenberg posits that fantasy always has a happy ending; this is typical of someone who doesn’t really get the ending of The Lord of the Rings, and hasn’t heard of works like The Broken Sword or Eric Brighteyes. And WTF is up with calling Tolkien “a religious skeptic?” (Having been a former writer for a newspaper, the safe bet in these instances is to just report the facts, and stop trying to pass yourself off as an expert).

Next is The Guardian, which engages in yet more patronizing. It’s not as terrible as the others, but it condemns most fantasy released prior to ASOIAF as for children. Someone better tell Tom Shippey he’s been wasting his time on a children’s book. Here's a cringeworthy statement from this piece:

Fantasy is not a genre you would ever expect to describe as having "grown up", but let's at least say it's moved on since Tolkien's day. If The Lord Of The Rings is like the gateway drug of high fantasy, then today's fans crave something harder.

The latest is from the New York Times, supposedly a bastion of open-minded thought. “A Fantasy World of Strange Feuding Kingdoms” by Ginia Bellafante contains all the standard anti-fantasy bias (escapist, for children, etc.), but ups the criticism by introducing misogyny into the discussion: A Game of Thrones is “boys adventure” with gratuitous sex scenes added in solely to attract a female readership, Bellafante says. Huh?

The Times piece prompted an angry response from Amy Ratcliffe over on Tor.com, who comes to the defense on behalf of female fantasy fans everywhere. Says Ratcliffe: How dare anyone say that Game of Thrones is “boy fiction.” What a crude and useless phrase. I am proof that it is not the case, and I am not alone. Also? I love The Hobbit.

Amen, Amy.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Despite its immense readership and passionate fan base, fantasy continues to be treated like a turd in the punchbowl by most mainstream media. They don’t get it, great swathes of them actively hate it, and many of our “enlightened” 21st century media outlets refuse to treat it as a serious form of art. Martin must be wondering how he’s ever going to get an honest review under these circumstances.

On a side note, is anyone else tired of the ironic, cynical tone of these reviews? I guess this is what passes for hip, young, journalism these days.

A Review of George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

Warning: Some spoilers ahead

Advancing a claim that something is the “first” anything is daring a slippery slope, but saying a book is the “first fantasy” is rather like taking a leap onto a Slip and Slide greased with the gelatin exudate of Cthulhu. George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858) could be the first fantasy story … but then, what about Shakespeare’s The Tempest, or Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, or … you get the picture. I happen to agree with Black Gate's Matthew David Surridge that Phantastes is likely not the first pure fantasy novel, for the fact that, although it involves another world, it “never quite [leaves] the real world behind.” It’s the stuff of dreams, with a clear path back to earth.

Regardless, Phantastes is without question one of the cornerstones of the genre, and stands poised at the cusp of early works containing fantastic elements, to those that feature fully developed, independent secondary worlds.

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

Sale offers proof that J.R.R. Tolkien likely read Robert E. Howard

L. Sprague de Camp is not exactly known as a bastion of credibility among readers of Robert E. Howard. In his 1983 biography Dark Valley Destiny, de Camp combines research and first-person interviews with exaggeration and embellishment, speculation and psychological conjecture, and at times outright fancy to paint what is at best a suspect portrait of the man who brought us Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane and others.

Unfortunately de Camp is the only source (that I know of, at least) linking Howard with J.R.R. Tolkien. This comes via a recount of de Camp hanging out with JRRT in a memorably described encounter, as detailed in his non-fiction review Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy:

"We sat in the garage for a couple of hours, smoking pipes, drinking beer, and talking about a variety of things. Practically anything in English literature, from Beowulf down, Tolkien had read and could talk intelligently about. He indicated that he 'rather liked' Howard's Conan stories."

In J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment by Michael Drout, de Camp adds the following explanation/equivocation of the above quote:

"During our conversation, I said something casual to Tolkien about my involvement with Howard's Conan stories, and he said he 'rather liked them'. That was all: we went on to other subjects. I know he had read Swords and Sorcery because I had sent him a copy. I don't know if he had read any other Conan besides 'Shadows in the Moonlight', but I rather doubt it."

I know I’ve always been hopeful but rather skeptical of the claim that Tolkien actually said he “rather liked” the Conan stories, given that the quote’s source is, well, de Camp.

But this sale which I recently found during a web search seems to provide proof that Tolkien at least read “Shadows in the Moonlight,” aka., “Iron Shadows in the Moon.” At the very least it provides concrete evidence that he owned the book, and that de Camp sent him the copy. Cool stuff. I can't help but wonder what Tolkien thought of this bit:

With a gusty laugh he lifted her to his fierce lips.

"I'll make you Queen of the Blue Sea! Cast off there, dogs! We'll scorch King Yildiz's pantaloons yet, by Crom!"