Merry Christmas

A Little Something for the Season: "Roads" by Seabury Quinn

Roads
Seabury Quinn
Battered Silicon Dispatch Box
hardcover $25 Cn
paperback $15 Cn

So I was wanting to post something in the spirit of the season.  I thought about The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum.  Way too long.  Then I read a couple of passages.  Waaayyyy too much saccharine.

Instead, I chose "Roads".  Back in the 1930s, when Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith were writing many of the tales that would one day make them famous, there was only one person who gave them any competition in popularity in Weird Tales.  That person was Seabury Quinn.  Today he's mostly forgotten except by fans of The Unique Magazine and historians of fantasy and the weird tale.  If he's remembered at all, it's usually for his occult detective, Jules de Grandin.

But Quinn was also a versatile writer who could pen a good tale that wasn't part of a series.  "Roads" made its appearance in the January 1938 issue of Weird Tales.  It tells the story of a gladiator in the arena of Herod the Great.  Known as Claudius by the Romans, Klaus (you can see right away where this is going) has finished his contract and is wanting to go home to the northern climes he calls home. 

The story is divided into three sections, "The Road to Bethlem", "The Road to Calvary", and "The Long, Long Road".  The story opens with Klaus being attacked by bandits.  In the next scene, he comes to the rescue of a family on the road.  It turns out the family (father, mother, and infant) are heading to Egypt after the father had been warned in a dream to go there.  The men attacking them are soldiers, who are seeking to kill the child.  Herod, having met the Magi, is trying to eliminate what he sees as a threat to his power by killing all male children under two years of age.

The action is well described and the fights detailed to the point that I wondered if I was really reading a Christmas story.  As a reward for his actions, Klaus hears a voice in his head telling him that his name will one day be blessed by children everywhere.  Klaus asks that instead he may die in battle, and is told that is not to be his fate.  So what we have here is a sword swinging, axe weilding Santa Claus.  My kinda Santa.

In the next section, Klaus is back in Jerusalem a number of years later, not as a gladiator, but as a centurion.  He happens to be stationed in the service of Pontius Pilate when a certain religious teacher is brought before Pilate by the Jewish religious leaders.  This section I had a little problem with.  Quinn seems to have done his historical research, yet he shortens the trial considerably.  The Gospel accounts of Jesus' trial tell that He was sent back and forth between Pilate and Herod (different Herod than the one who slaughtered the infants) and that Pilate's wife told him she had had a dream telling her that Pilate should have nothing to do with Jesus.  All of this was left out, and I have to assume it was in the interest of moving the story more quickly since it is about Klaus more than Jesus.  Klaus ends up at the Crucifixion, and in the earthquake that follows, he rescues a young girl who will become his wife Unna.

The third section describes the wanderings of Klaus and Unna, who are immortal due to their service to Christ.  Eventually Klaus becomes Santa Klaus.  Along the way, Quinn makes a number of pointed comments about how Christ's followers, especially the religious leaders, fail to live up to His teachings.  The most powerful of these is when Unna is condemned as a heretic by priests during one of the Crusades after she describes the path Jesus where carried his cross to a group of pilgrims.  Seems her account differed from the "official" account of the priests.

This is a good story, and one that will appeal to readers of heroic fantasy.  It's certainly more appealing than anything on the Hallmark Channel.  The action is well described.  Klaus makes observations about religion and service to God and how they differ that are hard to argue with. 

That's not to say "Roads" is without its flaws.  The writing is a bit formal and overdone for modern tastses, especially the dialogue, which has a lot of "thee" and "thou" in it.  I suspect this might be an affectation on Quinn's part, although I haven't read any of his work in years, so I can't say for sure.  It wasn't bad enough that it interferred with my enjoyment.

The thing that I found most appealing was that even though "Roads" is about Santa, the religious aspect of Christmas wasn't dropped but was central to the story.  Christmas is ultimately a religious holiday, but these days the Nazis of Political Correctness have taken so much of the religious aspect out of the public observance and replaced it with an emphasis on making the annual sales quota that Chirstmas has in many ways become my least favority holiday.  I'm so sick of Frosty and Rudolph and Jingle Bells, I could scream.  "Roads" combined the secular and the sacred in a respectful way, reminding me of why I loved the holiday as a child while also reminding me of what it means to me as an adult.

Adventures Fantastic Looks at Rogue Blades Entertainment

Earlier this year I'm looking around on the Black Gate website when I find this posting.  Seems some outfit called Rogue Blades Entertainment is running a special promotion in conjunction with Black Gate.  If you buy a subscription to Black Gate, new or renewal, you get your choice of one of three anthologies for only ten bucks (plus tax and shipping).  The ad (reproduced here) showed a gorgeous young thing reading a copy of one of the anthologies.  I'd say this is my kind of woman, but my wife might read this so I'll refrain.

I was needing to renew my subscription anyway, so I took advantage of the offer.  The three anthologies offered were Return of the Sword, Rage of the Behemoth, and Roar of the Crowd.  We'll look at the first two in this post.  Roar of the Crowd is forthcoming.  Since I had picked up a signed copy of Return of the Sword from one of the contributors at a Conestoga a few years ago, I went with Rage of the Behemoth.  I then had a decision to make.  RotB comes with five different covers.  I chose the one with the Gryphon.

Rage of the Behemoth
Jason M. Waltz, ed.
Rogue Blades Entertainment
343 p., $17 paper, $8 PDF

The cover at the left is a composite of all five.  The book is divided into five different geographical regions, each with its own cover illustration. You pick which cover you want when you order the book.  The geographies are Frozen Wastes, Scalding Sands, Depthless Seas, Mysterious Jungles, and Ageless Mountains.

So the book arrives, and I peruse the table of contents.  There are 21 stories.  Most of the authors' names at the time were unfamiliar to me.  Now several of the names are of people whose work I am going to be actively seeking out.  More on them in a minute.  At the time, though, I only saw a few familiar bylines:  Mary Rosenblum, Brian Ruckley, Richard K. Lyon and Andrew J. Offut, Lois Tilton, Bill Ward.  So I figure that the stories by the more well known writers will probably be pretty good and so will some of the others, but that there will be a few dogs thrown into what would probably be a mediocre mix.

I'm glad to say I was wrong.  Boy, was I wrong.  There were no dogs.  Every single story in the book is well told, professionally executed, and worth reading.  Sure, there were some I didn't like as much as others, but with 21 tales, what do you expect?  And no, I'm not going to say which ones I liked least.  Your list will undoubtedly be different from mine.  The point is, I liked them all, something that usually doesn't happen in a volume containing so many selections.  With this many stories, there will be something for everyone. 

The stories range across a variety of landscapes and tones.  Some are serious, some grim, others fun larks.  All are entertaining and feature characters we can care about.  There are few cardboard people here.  The vast majority live and breathe.  The diversity of monsters is amazing.  There are manticores, giant snakes, gryphons, dragons, sea monsters, and unclassifiables.  This was one of the best and most fun anthologies of fantasy adventure I've read in a long time. It set a very high standard for the rest of the publisher's line.

Return of the Sword
Jason M. Watlz, ed.
Rogue Blades Entertainment
329 p., $17 paper, $8 PDF

This was the first anthology Rogue Blades published, before it was even Rogue Blades.  My copy says "Flashing Swords Presents" rather than the 2nd printing's "Rogue Blades Presents".  Again, 21 stories, including a reprint by Harold Lamb.  That alone is reason to buy the book.  Fortunately, that's not the only reason.  There are 20 more.  While I thought RotB was a slightly stronger anthology, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this one at all.  Again, professionally executed stories, characters we care about, exciting adventure.

The focus of this volume is heroes, who they are, what sets them apart, how they come to be heroes, how they stay heroes.  The editorial introductions help set the tone and provide at times some surprisingly thought provoking commentary on the stories while never spoiling any of the details.  If you're looking for action and adventure, especially with some depth, this is the book for you.  Or for someone you know who really likes to sink their teeth (or fangs) into a really good action yarn.  Some of the contributors are in RotB as well, but there are some others that only show up here, such as E. E. Knight and Angeline Hawkes.  James Enge provides an adventure of Morlock the Maker, his only appearance in an RBE volume so far..

Demons
Jason M. Waltz, ed.

Rogue Blades Entertainment
224 p., $13 paper, $6 PDF

This is the most recent anthology by Rogue Blades.  It's a little different from the others.  First of all, some of the stories were originally published in Clash of Steel:  Demons by Carnifax Press.  Rogue Blades, as editor Jason Waltz explains in his introduction, continued the Clash of Steel series and expanded the volume when Carnifax folded.  The layout is a little different than the other books.  Except for the first page of each story, the text is double columned, and the font on the story titles reminds me of the titles of 1950s  horror movies.  Not that I'm complaining; I rather enjoyed that, especially the font used in the titles.  It's just different enough from the other books that it stood out.  If I had any gripe about the layout, it would be the print is a little smaller and my eyes aren't getting any younger.  But that's a minor point.

I found this volume to be a somewhat weaker than the other two we've talked about.  I'm not sure why that is.  Part of the reason my be that I was trying to read the book during finals week, and as a result I didn't read through it as fast I otherwise would have.  I find not making progress on a book to be one of the most frustrating things I can experience.  Maybe because this was a project started by another publisher, the tone was different or something.  Thematically, this book was less appealing to me than RotB or RotS.  Demons aren't a subject I actively seek to read about, in part because of my religious background, in part because there's only so much that can be done with them before you realize you've read this story before.  Same with vampires.  Or zombies.  Or any other monster/creature/trope that's well defined. 

Anyway, for whatever reason, I didn't find quite the variety I found in the other books.  Several of the stories seemed to be similar in theme or content.  That's not to say I didn't enjoy them.  I did.  Just not as much as I did the other books.  Considering how much I was impressed by RotB or RotS, though, that's not as damning (pardon the pun) as it sounds.  This was still a solid anthology with a lot of good fantasy in it.  Or to put it another way, this book is better than most of the theme anthologies that come out each year, including those of a certain major publisher.  You know the one.

Anyway, to sum up.  Rogue Blades Entertainment is an excellent publisher with a line of consistently high quality product.  One thing exceptionally good is that Jason Waltz is open to new writers.  At the moment, he's not reading for any anthology I'm aware of.  Assassins just closed its reading period.  Discovery and Roar of the Crowd are the next two anthologies to be published and should be coming out soon.  They're the next two volumes in my subscription, so I'll let you know when my copies arrive.

What's that?  I didn't mention the subscriptions?  Oh, I'm terribly sorry.  Let me rectify that error.  Rogue Blades has a subscription program.  There are a couple of different options, a three book and a five book plan.  You can start your subscription with any book, so long as at least one of the books hasn't been published when you order.  Plus there are some good deals that don't involve subscriptions. 

Now, as I was saying before I got sidetracked about the subscriptions.  These anthologies are a potential market for new writers.  That doesn't mean that the writing is poor.  Occasionally, it might be in spots, but Waltz has high standards, and professionalism is the norm.  He cares deeply about the genre, and it shows.  The result is anthologies that are as good or better than what New York is publishing.  Furthermore, I predict that if some of these folks keep writing, they will be major players in the future.  For that to happen, they need markets.

Who are some of these people?  I hesitate a little to answer that question for a couple of reasons.  One, I don't want to try to predict the future.  To do so is a sure fire way to get egg on your face.  Second, I don't want to overlook anyone.  That could happen for three reasons.  The first is a story might not have worked for me when I read it for reasons that don't always have to do with the story, such as fatigue, environment while reading, interruptions, etc.  Under other circumstances, I might have loved it.  The second is my brain, like my eyes, isn't getting any younger, and the memory is starting to go.   I don't remember the third reason.

Anyway, a short list of authors I want to read more of.  This list is, for the record, open to change, mainly in the form of additions.  In no particular order:  Bruce Durham, Frederick Tor, Bill Ward, Jeff Stewart, C. L. Werner, Jonathan Moeller, and Michael Ehart.  Ehart has written two novels, one of which is available from RBE.  I plan to pick it up next year after my cash flow has recovered from the holidays.

There are not enough markets for sword and sorcery.  The ones we have need to be supported, especially the ones that publish good work.  I've mentioned before that sword and sorcery appears to be in the beginning of a renaissance similar to what space opera has gone through.   Rogue Blades is at the forefront of that renaissance.

Kuttner's Elak of Atlantis: Dragon Moon

"Dragon Moon" from Elak of Atlantis
Henry Kuttner
Planet Stories - Paizo Publishing
Trade Paperback, $12.95, 2007

"Dragon Moon" is the last of the Elak stories Henry Kuttner wrote.  It got the cover of the January 1941 issue of Weird Tales.  I was browsing recently on the Dark Worlds site and discovered that all but "Thunder in the Dawn" got the cover.  I shouldn't say "discovered" so much as I was reminded.  I had seen all three of the covers featuring the Elak stories before and should have remembered them.  Rather than reproduce the rest of them here, I'll let you view them over at Dark Worlds.  G. W. Thomas has put together an interesting website, and you owe it to yourself to check it out if you haven't already. 

"Dragon Moon" opens very much like "Thunder in the Dawn", with Elak and Lycon becoming involved in a brawl over a tavern wench in the port city of Poseidonis.  Once again the druid Dalan saves Elak and tells him his home kingdom of Cyrena is in danger.  At this point, the two tales diverge in their similarities.  An alien presence, not a demon or a spirit, but an alien presence (Dalan is quite clear on this point) called Karkora the Pallid One has taken over the mind of the ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Kiriath.  Karkora had begun to take over the mind of Elak's brother Orander.  In order to prevent this from happening, Orander has taken his own life.  Elak is now heir to the Dragon Throne and the kingdom of Cyrena.  Kiriath is assembling an army to invade Cyrena.

Elak has no interest in ruling and sends Dalan away.  That night Elak has a strange dream in which he finds himself on a cold mountaintop being assaulted by a presence.  He is only able to escape by calling on the aid of his god.  This is a complete departure from Conan, who is well documented in his practice of not calling on gods and whose deity Crom hates weaklings.  Elak doesn't give it a second thought.

This is the first dream sequence (or dream-like at least) in the story and is fairly short.  Unable to find Dalan, Elak and Lycon hire a skiff to take them to a boat that is just setting sail for Cyrena.  Upon climbing up the side and over the rail, they discovered the ship is captained by a man named Drezzar.  The same Drezzar Elak was fighting in the opening scene of the story.  He and Lycon are immediately taken captive and put to work at the oars as slaves.

This sequence, in which Elak is captured and eventually leads a slave rebellion, is the part of the story that most reminded me of Conan.  It's a straight action-adventure sequence which ends with Elak assuming the captaincy of the vessel.

The next truly weird part of the story occurs after Elak has been instructed by Dalan in a dream to leave the ship at a certain location.  He eventually ends up seeking aid from a sorceress named Mayana.  She is the mother of the current Kiriathan king and a descendant of Poseidon.  In reaching her, Elak has to swim across a lake inhabited by the shades of a drowned city.  This is the closest Kuttner comes to including a bizarre otherworldly sequence of the intensity of the ones seen in the earlier stories.

Mayana is by far the most interesting character.  She fell in love with the former king of Kiriath and bore him a son with the aid of a sorcerer named Erykion.  He's ultimately responsible for the Pallid One possessing the current king of Kiriath, who is Mayana's son.  She holds the key to stopping her son, but is reluctant to aid Elak because it will mean her son's death.  Yet, she also realizes that this is the right thing to do.  She withholds her aid but promises to give it to Elak in his hour of greatest need.  Mayana, in spite of being a child of the sea and not human, has fallen in love with the forests and fields of the land and longs to be able to walk them once again.

There's more, but I won't spoil it for you, except to say this.  It appears that Kuttner was intentionally ending the series with this installment.  Elak ascends the Dragon Throne and agrees to change his wandering ways, to settle down and rule.  While kings can certainly have adventures, (Kull and Conan did, after all) the tone implies Elak the king will have a more quiet reign than his predecessors in Weird Tales.  The ending of the story is the most bittersweet one of the entire series.

Whatever reasons Kuttner had for terminating Elak's adventures, he ends the series on a high note.  The writing is probably the most polished of all the Elak stories.  The action flows smoothly.  I found the characters to be better developed, especially Mayana, who is by far the most complex of any of the characters in the series, especially given the amount of time she is actually in the story.

"Dragon Moon" was published in the January 1941 issue of Weird Tales.  "Beyond the Phoenix" made its appearance in the October 1938 issue.  That's a gap of over two years.  All of the preceding Elak stories were published in 1938.  I'm not sure why there was such a long break.  The two Prince Raynor stories were published in Strange Tales during those two years.  It appears as though Kuttner left the character and came back to him, although that's entirely speculation on my part.  Did Kuttner feel that his writing had matured since the first Elak story (it had) and want to try his hand at a different sword and sorcery setting?  Did Raynor not connect with the readers?  Did Kuttner submit "Dragon Moon"  in late 1938 or early 1939 and Farnsworth Wright delayed in scheduling it so that Kuttner had to create Prince Raynor for another market?  Hard to swallow considering all but one of the Elak stories got covers and Wright published Conan in a number of consecutive issues.  I don't know the answers to these questions, but they're interesting to think about.  If anyone out there knows why "Dragon Moon" was published later, I'd like to hear the answer.

So, to sum up the Elak of Atlantis series.  While the first has some definite flaws, the quality improves over the series.  While comparisons to Conan are inevitable, and most of them will probably be unfavorable comparisons, Elak is his own character.  He seeks help from the gods.  He is an adventurer by choice.  You can argue that Conan is as well, but the backgrounds of the two men are vastly different.  Elak turns his back on a throne before ascending it.  Conan, who has no such prospects due to his birth, makes his own opportunity.  This series, while maybe not a major sword and sorcery series, is certainly one worth reading.  Kuttner was expanding the genre, giving it a more weird and bizzare feel through the scenes where Elak goes to another realm, be it extra dimensional or in a dream.  To my knowledge, at this time only C. L. Moore had done that with her Jirel of Joiry adventures.  So, in conclusion, if you haven't read the Elak stories, check them out, especially the second, third, and final tales.

We'll look at the Prince Raynor stories next and see how they compare to both Conan and Elak.

Status Report

Well, finals are done and the grades are in.  It's all over but the crying (in some cases literally) and the shouting (at me by students enrollees who didn't come to class, do homework, pass tests, or simply make the grade and think they are entitled to an A).  I'm going to get some sleep and try to post tomorrow.  I'll be on the road some for the next few days and then the holiday travel starts.

As for what's up, I'm almost through reading for a post I'm going to do on Rogue Blades Entertainment.  I probably won't get that one up until sometime next week.  I've read the last of the Elak stories by Henry Kuttner and will discuss it, I need to look at Jonathan Strahan's ToC and see if I can determine where all his selections came from, print or electronic sources, and continue that discussion, and I'm going to start reading for a long post about some of the collections of Henry Kuttner that are available.  I've also picked up a fantasy or two by writers who are new to me that I want to read, as well as some historical fiction.  And I want to reread Robert E. Howard's Kull stories.  It's been a while since I last read them, and I want to look at them with (hopefully) wiser eyes.

That should keep me busy for a while.

Electronic Markets

I was browsing the Black Gate website the other day when I came across the post announcing that Matthew David Surridge's "The Word of Azrael" had been selected for inclusion in the forthcoming The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011 edited by Rich Horton.  Congratulations to Mr. Surridge.

The thing that intrigued me, though, was when I followed the link to the table of contents and perused the titles, and more to the point, the sources of these stories.  There are 28 titles listed, along with the venues in which they saw print.  Or rather were published, with that term being defined to include electronic media.  Of the selections Rich Horton chose as the best of the year (always a subjective list, as a perusal of the contents of the respective volumes in any given year will demonstrate), fifteen of them were published in electronic format in seven different venues:  Apex, Clarke's World, Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Subterranean, and Tor.com. Fantasy and Lightspeed each had four stories.  Tor, Apex, and Clarke's World each had one.

Several anthologies were represented with single stories.  Among the big three of the print magazines, F&SF and Asimov's each made the list with 3, while what is the magazine with by far the largest print circulation, Analog, didn't make the list at all.  Neither did Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Postscripts, or Weird Tales.  I find this interesting, especially given the much publicized death and resurrection of RoF last month and the various comments about why  it died posted several places on the web. 

The ToC of Johnathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year hasn't been released yet, even though it has a March release date, nor have the contents of the Dozois or Hartwell and Cramer volumes, which typically hit shelves in the summer (although this year's fantasy volume is still listed as forthcoming on Kathryn Cramer's blog).  It will be very interesting to see where they chose their selections from, mostly print, mostly online, or about an even mix.  It will also be interesting to see whether the heavy- and middle-weights that didn't make Horton's cut make fare much better in the other volumes. 

There's no doubt we are seeing a major change in the publishing of short fantastic fiction.  Not only are there more electronic periodicals out there than ever before, the print magazines may be seeing their first circulation increases in years thanks to Kindle, Nook, and other e-readers.  I for one am not about to try to predict where the trends are heading, for one reason because things are changing so fast that by the time some trends become evident, they've mutated into something else.  I will keep as much of an eye on things as I can, and you can bet I will write about them here.

Blogging the Future

Anyone who has much knowledge of the science fiction field knows the name of Frederik Pohl.  He's been a fan, an agent, an editor, and a writer since before World War II, although not necessarily all at the same time.  This past year he won his seventh Hugo.  Back in the 70s several members of the Futurians, the famous (some would say infamous) fan organization, wrote memoirs.  Fred's was called The Way the Future Was.  Well, that book has been out of print for quite some time.  But in recent years Fred has taken to blogging, with a blog aptly titled The Way the Future Blogs.   He's been more active than usual of late, with some reminiscences of Judith Merrill posted over the last few days.  If you have any interest in the history of science fiction, especially written by someone who not only was there but helped shape much of it, this is one of the blogs you ought to be reading.