Friday, December 31, 2010

New Year's Resolutions

I've never been much for New Year's Resolutions, but I thought I'd try a few this year.  Goal setting being a key to success and all that.

In addition to the usual things like lose all the weight I've put on in the last year, get more sleep and exercise, lower my caffiene intake, laugh more, save more, spend less, here are some dealing with this blog and related matters.

1.  Post here at least twice a week.

2.  Finish at least one short story per month and send it to an editor who might buy it.  Repeat until it sells.

3.  Finish at least two novels this year and send them to editors until they sell.

4.  Promote historical adventure, fantasy, and science fiction as opportunities to do so arise.

Happy New Year everyone!

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Sins of the Pioneers

Sins of the Pioneers
James Pylant
Jacobus Books
Trade paperback, 234 p., $15.95

Since my father-in-law is in both the San Angelo Community Band and a member of the Twin Mountain Tonesmen, the local barbershop group, and since both were performing in the Community Christmas Tree lighting a few weeks ago, it was only natural that I and the Adventures Fantastic Support Staff (Spousal Unit and Offspring) would be in attendance.  We arrived early in order to get seats at the front, and since the Cactus Bookshop was in the middle of the next block, I wandered down to kill some time and see what I could find.

The Cactus Bookshop specializes in Texas and western writing and carries just about everything ever written by Elmer Kelton.  That's not too surprising since Kelton lives in San Angelo.  It's well worth a visit if you happen to be in the area, even if the owner doesn't have any Robert E. Howard in stock.  (I need to discuss that problem with him next time I'm in.)

What I found was Sins of the Pioneers, a history of crime and scandal in Stephenville, Texas.  In addition to being home to one of the Texas A&M University System schools as well as science fiction writer Taylor Anderson, Stephenville seems to have been home to a number of murderers, thieves, scoundrels, grifters, bigamists, and at least one ghost.  Not the sort of folks you would necessarily want to have over for dinner, but probably more interesting after-dinner-conversation companions than the ones who would probably be your dinner guests.  I haven't had much time to do more than peruse the book, but since many of the events are short, it's great reading for those times when you only have a few minutes.

Over at the REH:  Two Gun Raconteur site, Damon C. Sasser has been doing a series of posts about Robert E. Howard's Texas, in which he describes in some detail the events Howard was interested in or places that had an impact on Howard's life and work.  They're great reading.  While I don't want to try to duplicate that here, only one county, Eastland County, separates Cross Plains (in Callahan County) from Stephenville (in Erath County).  I can't help but wonder if Howard was aware of some of the incidents in the book.  Stephenville was, and is, one of the larger population centers in that part of the state.  Given the interest he developed in the history of the area, I find it hard to believe he wasn't aware of at least some of the things in the book.  I'm slowly working my way through Howard's collected correspondence, and if I come across anything in the correspondence relating to Sins of the Pioneers that Damon hasn't already written about, I'll let you know.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The Last Kingdom

The Last Kingdom
Bernard Cornwell
Harper, 333 p., $14.99

I loved this book.  It had it all.  Shield walls, battles, invasions, treachery, betrayal, individual combat, naval battles, storms at sea.  This is the first of the Saxon Novels, and the first book by Cornwell I've read.  It won't be the last. 

The story revolves around a boy named Uhtred, who is the son of an earl on the northern coast of England in the ninth century.  Shortly after his tenth birthday, the Danes decided to settle in England.  All of England.  And they are not invited, nor are they welcome.  After his older brother is killed on a scouting mission, Uhtred becomes the heir, and his father begins to take an interest in him, which means taking him along on military campaigns as part of his education in his noble responsibilities.  After his father is killed in a battle, Uhtred is captured by one of the Danish chieftains, Ragnar.  Ragnar adopts Uhtred as a son.  Meanwhile his uncle, who was left watching the castle, has decided to become the earl and tries to have Uhtred killed. 

Over half the book is devoted to Uhtred's growing up, and in comparison to the latter part of the book, when Uhtred is a grown warrior, this part is slow.  That's not to say it isn't interesting, but a lot of what's happening here is character development and setting up a blood feud that will carry over into the next book and maybe the ones following.  As one character says, and I'm paraphrasing here, feuds go on forever. It's definitely worth investing time in. We get an education along with Uhtred in both English ways and Danish culture.  This makes the book richer and more complex.

There were times when I was reminded of Robert Low's The Whale Road, although the books are quite different in focus and tone.  Both concern a boy growing to manhood in a warrior culture that is at odds with Christianity, who by the end of the book is a respected leader.  But that's about where the similarities end.  The Whale Road read more like a fantasy quest novel than, well, much of the fantasy I've read.  The gods, dragons, Valkyries and  such were all real to the characters in both books, and Low does a masterful job of making that worldview seem real to the reader.  Cornwell on the other hand, while not ignoring the religious differences between the cultures and even stressing them at times, fails to make the gods as real as they are in The Whale Road.  Instead, reading The Last Kingdom made me feel like I was reading history by a witness, which was the intent.

Not only did I feel like I was reading history, I wanted to go and read history before I was done.  In my mind, this is one of the characteristics of a successful historical novel.  This is a time period I don't know much about.  There were no films for my high school history football coach teacher to show, so we didn't really cover it.

The last kingdom of the title is the kingdom of Alfred the Great, who is the sole English king left long before he appears on stage.  Well, the sole English king who isn't a lackey for the Danes at any rate.  Uhtred ends up in his service after having to leave Danish lands under really bad circumstances.  And I mean really, really bad circumstances.  As in an escalation of that blood feud I mentioned.  The latter part of the book concerns Uhtred becoming a trusted leader in Alfred's army.  You can probably guess that the Danes are still hanging around causing trouble at the end of the book.  Cornwell is taking his time and not rushing through the events that helped shape English history.

I may not know as much as I'd like about this time period, but I'm going to address that before I read the next book.  Which will be soon.

Blogging Kull: Exile of Atlantis

Kull:  Exile of Atlantis
Robert E. Howard
Illustrated by Justin Sweet
Del Rey
Trade Paperback, 319 p., $15.95

It's been a while since I read any of the Kull stories.  I think the last time I read one was when I was an undergraduate, but I may have been in graduate school.  (We've talked about that memory and age thing before.  At least I think we have.  I seem to recall we did.)  Why it's taken me so long to get back to these stories, I'm not entirely sure.  Other demands on my reading time, mostly, including other Robert E. Howard works I hadn't read.

Anyhoo, in the intervening years since I last read Kull, I've grown and (hopefully) matured.  So I thought I'd take a fresh look at these tales.  In some circles, Kull is often thought of as a prototype Conan, an opinion that's only reinforced by the fact that the first Conan story was a rewrite of an unsold Kull tale.  But is that really so?  Howard, in spite of his critics, was quite adept at characterization.  I'm not sure I buy that idea, even though I have to admit that when I was much younger, I did pick up on the similarities between the two characters more than their differences.  It's time to take a fresh look.  Over the next half year or so, I'll be examining them in some detail.  I'm using the Del Rey edition with the story fragments and synopses, even though I own a copy of the Subterranean slipcased edition.  That edition is out of print and probably beyond the budget of many people.  The stories are the same in both volumes.

Oh, and these posts about Kull will contain spoilers.  So if you haven't read the story (or stories) under discussion, you might want to keep that in mind.  You have been notified.

Howard began thirteen Kull stories between 1926 and 1930, and he completed ten of them before moving on to other characters.  Of those ten, only three saw publication in his lifetime, and one of those is a Bran Mak Morn story in which Kull is brought forward in time to play a major role.  The first story in the book is an untitled story that was published under the title "Exile of Atlantis" in 1967 in the Lancer paperback King Kull.  Not counting the full page illustration facing the first page of text, it's only seven pages long, and that includes the illustrations on six pages.

The storyline is simple.  Kull, Gor-na, and his son Am-ra are talking over dinner at their wilderness camp.  What they're doing in the wilderness, we're never told.  The whole discussion centers around Kull's disdain for some of the tribal traditions.  It seems he's been adopted into Gor-na's tribe, which is the Sea Mountain tribe.  Kull doesn't know who his tribe is.  Rather he "was a hairless ape roaming in the woods" who "could not speak the language of men."  If that sounds a little like Mowgli from Kipling's Jungle Books, it shouldn't surprise you that Kipling was one of the writers who influenced Howard.  We aren't given any details of how Kull came to live with the Sea Mountain tribe or how he learned to speak.

The talk then turns to the troubles Atlantis has had with Valusia and the Seven Empires.  Kull isn't as impressed with them as Gor-na is.  He even expresses a desire to one day see Valusia.  Gor-na tells him if he does, it will be as a slave.  There is also mention made of Lemurian pirates causing trouble.  After some further discussion, the men get some sleep.  During the night, Kull has a dream in which he is hailed as a king by a large crowd.

The next morning the men return to the tribe's caves to discover a young woman is to be burned at the stake for the crime of marrying a Lemurian pirate.  The only person who seems to show some sympathy is Am-ra, whose "strange blue eyes were sad and compassionate."  Even the  girl's mother screams for her death.  Kull thinks this punishment is a bit much, but he isn't in a position to rescue her.  The best he can do is offer her a quick death rather than a slow painful one.  He catches her eye and touches the hilt of his flint dagger.  She gives him a small nod, and he throws the dagger, piercing her heart.

The enraged mob, cheated of their vengeance, turns on Kull, who has already begun to climb the cliff next to the village and escape.  He is saved from being hit by an arrow when Am-ra bumps the archer's arm.

And that's all there is to this story.  It might not look like a lot, but it seems to me the point here is to establish a little bit of Kull's backstory and define his character.  In this Howard is successful.  Kull is a man who is not afraid, either of battle or of asking unpopular questions.  He does the right thing as he sees it, even when he's the only one willing to take a stand.  In this story, doing so costs him his home.  We know from the foreshadowing in the dream that Kull will one day see Valusia, not as a traveler but as its king.

While the action in the story is not at the level of what many readers expect from Howard, the noble barbarian is there.  Remember, this was years before a certain Cimmerian made his way through the kingdoms of the Hyborian Age.  Howard was beginning to develop the themes he would return to again and which would occupy a great deal of his thoughts.  To return to certain themes over a period of time, developing and perfecting them, is not an uncommon thing for an author to do.

I don't know when this story was written.  I seem to recall someone (I want to say Rusty Burke) had put together a timeline of the known composition dates and best estimates of the rest of Howard's work, but I can't find it online.  Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me.  In his afterward "Atlantean Genesis", Patrice Louinet states it was either between July 1925 and January 1926 or between August and September 1926.  Whether the story was ever submitted for publication is unknown. This would make it one of the earliest stories Howard wrote in his career.

What I did find interesting is that Kull seems to have grown out of an abortive series of stories and poems about Am-ra of the Ta-an.  These consist of two poems (one only five lines long) plus three fragments.  All are included in this book.  In a letter now lost, but quoted by Alvin Earl Perry in A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard (1935), Howard talks about a story in which a minor character takes over.  "Exile of Atlantis" is the only story we know of that fits this description.

None of these things should be surprising.  It has been well documented that Howard would sometimes reuse names from earlier stories, sometimes altering them slightly, sometimes not.  Even a certain Cimmerian was known as Amra for a while in his wanderings.  An interesting side note to this point, Amra of Akbitana appears in "The Frost King's Daughter", which was published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan under the title "Gods of the North" and later rewritten as the Conan story "The Frost-Giant's Daughter", the second in the Conan series. 

Or to put it this way, what we are seeing with "Exile of Atlantis" is Howard stretching himself as a writer.  The events of the story may be dismissed as minor by the casual reader, but to do so would be a mistake.  I maintain that this is an important tale, especially if it was the first Kull story written, which it seems to be.  "Exile of Atlantis"  is an example of Howard beginning to stretch himself and warm up, to use an track analogy, before beginning to sprint and hit his stride with his later works.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Electronic Markets 2

 The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 5
Jonathan Strahan, ed.
Night Shade Books
Trade Paperback, 500 p., $19.99
Publication scheduled for March 2011

A few weeks ago, I looked at the table of contents in Rich Horton's forthcoming Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011.  At the time, I commented on the proportion of selections published in electronic venues as opposed to print venues and speculated as to what the percentage would be in the other annual "Bests".  Since Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year is due out in March, I particularly wondered about that one.  Night Shade Books had posted a page for the anthology but had not (and still hasn't) listed the contents. Oldcharliebrown posted a comment (thank you) informing me Strahan had listed his ToC on his website.  Why I didn't think to look there, I don't know.  Anyway, Strahan, unlike Horton, didn't list the publications for his selections.  Rather than reproduce the list myself, you can find it here.  I spent a little time last night looking them up, and here's what I found.

Strahan selected 29 stories, with 6 duplicating Rich Horton's selections.  Those stories are the ones by Broderick, Hand, Landis, Parker, Swirsky, and Watts.  This isn't surprising, since each year there are a handful of stories that make all, or nearly all, the annual "Best" lists.  The good thing is that there are so few duplicates.  I think that shows a healthy variety in the science fiction and fantasy fields.  What is a little surprising is that four of those were published electronically, with three coming from Subterranean

Anyway, of these 29, 13 were published in electronic format, or 44.5 %.  That's slightly lower than Horton's53.5%, but still a respectable portion from electronic media.  Of those 13, Subterranean was the big winner, with five selections.  Strange Horizons was next with three, and Apex followed with two.  Strahan selected one each from Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and shareable.net.  The electronic venues not represented that were most surprising were Fantasy magazine and Tor.com. Horton chose four stories from Fantasy and one from Tor.  Clearly the editors have different tastes.

Where Strahan's selections really get interesting to me is the print sources for his selections.  He picked one story each from eight different anthologies, plus two from Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio.  One story was published as a chap book, and the remaining five came from magazines, with four from Asimov's and one from F&SF.  As in the Horton anthology, no stories were selected from Analog, nor were any from Interzone, Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, or Postscripts, although Postscripts is now an anthology rather than a print magazine.  I don't remember if they made the change this past year or the previous one; probably the previous.  Time slips away when you start getting older.  And given the problems RoF had this past year, it's not surprising to see that publication's absence.

It seems to me that the print magazines haven't done too well this year in terms of getting tapped for Year's Best anthologies.  While Asimov's appears to be something of an exception, on the whole they seem to be taking a pounding from the electronic and anthology markets.  At least Analog certainly is.  Being a hard science kind of guy, that disturbs me a little, but that's a topic too large for this post.  I'm not sure that's an entirely bad thing from the standpoint of good markets and good fiction being published, whatever the format.  Of course, the Hartwell/Cramer and Dozois volumes are still to come, and I'm sure there will be one or two others that will pop up.  It will be interesting to see where these volumes draw their choices.

This is the first year I've looked closely at the publication sources for any of the Year's Best collections, at least from a pseudo-statistical standpoint.  I have both the Horton and Strahan titles going back to their inceptions, so I could take a closer look (if I can find the time).  It would be fun to look at just when the electronic venues began to make such inroads on the print media.

And for those you haven't seen it but might be interested, Lois Tilton summarized the short fiction markets at Locus Online recently.  I'll not comment on what she says because she reads far more widely than I have time to, and I don't see the point in potentially starting an argument that I'm not well enough informed on.  I'll just say she brings up some good points about the same venues producing the best quality.

Thursday, December 23, 2010

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.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

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.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

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.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

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.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

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.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

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.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Smorgasbord

As the Christmas season is fast approaching, and has been for the last eleven months or at least feels like it anyway, people are beginning to think about parties.  And one of the things you often find at parties is a smorgasbord of delectable goodies.  Since I can't serve you any food, I thought I'd offer up a different kind of smorgasbord, or a more literary nature.

So here's a little list of a few items for your Christmas lists you may or may not be aware of.  This list is in no way intended to be inclusive.  Some deal with fantasy and some with pulp in general.  I offer the list with brief descriptions but no detailed comments since I haven't had time to read more than one or two stories, if that, from any of these.

The Last Hieroglyph, The Collected Fantasies v. 5
Clark Ashton Smith
Night Shade Books
376 p. $39.99

A few years back, like say in 2004 or so, when I preordered my set, Night Shade announced they were doing a multi-volume collection of the fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith.  This is the final volume, which was just released a few weeks ago.  The stories are in the order of their composition rather than order of publication or by theme or setting as some earlier collections have, such as those edited by Lin Carter for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in the 1960s and 1970s.


Strange Wonders
Fritz Leiber
Subterranean Press
280 p. $40 (trade edition)
This is the book for the Fritz Leiber fan in your life, even if that fan is you.  Especially if that fan is you.  This is a collection of drafts, early stories, and poems by one of the greatest practitioners of sword and sorcery, science fiction, and horror who ever lived.  There was a limited edition of the book, but it is out of print.



The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010
Paula Guran, ed.
Prime Books
575 p., $19.95
Unlike the much missed Datlow-Windling (later Datlow-Grant-Link) annual collections of fantasy and horror, this one limits itself to dark fantasy, with none of the more upbeat subgenres represented in those volumes.  I'm not familiar with Paula Guran, but having read the introduction and the afterwards to the few stories I've managed to ssteal time to read, I'm going to be watching for her name on a cover. (The books skips the traditional editor's introductions and replaces them with afterwards.)


Best American Noir of the Century
James Ellroy and Otto Penzler, eds
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
731 p. $30 list price.

Ellroy and Penzler have killed a lot of trees to bring you this book.  Which happens to have a few killings in it.  While there isn't a story for every year of the 20th century, there's a lot to go around.  Penzler's introduction about how noir is the antithesis of the private detective story points out some differences between the two types of story.

The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories
Otto Penzler, ed.
Vintage
1136 p. $25 list price

Proving he's just a good an editor at disreputable pulp as he is at respectable noir, Penzler has put together a collection of stories from the legendary pulp Black Mask.  With over a thousand pages, this is the largest collection of tales from Black Mask.  The stories are reproduced exactly as they appeared including illustrations.  Add a cover showing a moll with a grimace, a tommy gun, and a blazing roscoe, and what's not to love?

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Thanksgiving Greeting

I just wanted to wish everyone who checks in here over the next few days a Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels if you're going to be away from home for the holiday.  I'd also like to issue my followers an additional thank you for your support.

I'll be traveling, so my opportunities to post anything will be limited.  My dayjobbery consists of academia, so as the old Andy Williams song says, "It's the most hap-happiest time of the year."  Not! Time will be quite limited over the next few weeks.  I've got exams to grade over Thanksgiving and finals coming up after that.  I'll try to post as much as possible, but most things that go up will be short.  I'll be doing an intermittent series of in-depth looks at various small presses and other venues for heroic fiction over the next year.  The first one will be Rogue Blades Entertainment.  I should have it up by the end of the year.  Heroic Fantasy Quarterly will probably follow.  I also intend to examine some more historical adventure novels, including a trilogy that as far as I know hasn't appeared in the States, look at some fantasy that was well known in its day but hasn't been in print for a while, showcase some of the collections in what is starting to look like a Henry Kuttner renaissance, and of course, review any new volumes of Robert E. Howard.  So stick around.  It's gonna be good!

Saturday, November 20, 2010

A Song Worth Singing

Winter Song
by Colin Harvey
Angry Robot
mass market, 407 p., $7.99

In Britain, the robots are angry.  I'm not sure why they're angry, but they are.  So angry, in fact, that they are planning world domination.  They say so, right there in their books. 

The conquest has already started.  First Britain, then earlier this year, America.  Walk into any decent bookstore and you'll find a number of books from Angry Robot on the shelves.  I first heard of this imprint earlier this year.  The only name I recognized on their list was Lavie Tidhar, although I've since learned that Chris Roberson and Tim Waggoner have been added to the lineup.  Roberson I like, a lot, and will feature here at some future point.  The only thing I read by Waggoner (a horror writer) I didn't care for; too sick and twisted for my taste.

I'm going to be looking for more of Angry Robot's stuff.  And not just because I liked this book.  On the back of every one of Angry Robot's books I've picked up, there is a list of books you might enjoy if you enjoyed that one.  On the back of Winter Song we find the following volumes:  Seeker by Jack McDevitt, Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, and Helix by Eric Brown.  Now McDevitt is one of my all time favorites, as is Wilson, and Brown is rapidly becoming so.  I haven't read Spin yet, but only because I missed it in hardcover.  The thing  that impresses me about Angry Robot providing these lists is that the books aren't just by them.  The McDevitt was published by Eos, the Wilson by Tor, and the Brown by Solaris, if memory is correct.  To recommend your competitor's books takes a lot of class.

Anyway, the story here is old fashioned science fiction adventure.  Karl Allman is cutting through what he believes to be an empty star system on a delivery run when his ship is attacked.  The ship's AI, callled Ship, manages to eject Allman on a trajectory towards a planet on which Ship's records show a partially terraformed colony was abandoned centuries before at the beginning of the Long Night.  The Long Night was a conflict between the Terraformers (name self explanatory) and the Pantropists, who wanted to reshape humanity.  Just why there are ships in this system is a question that is never answered.

This particular system is the Mizar system, a multiple star system.  It was colonized by a group from Iceland wanting to maintain their culture.  All of the planets have Icelandic names.  The planet, Isheimur, which is Icelandic for ice world, lies just outside the habitable zone.  Any survivors will be struggling to maintain that designation, as opposed to the title deceased.

Karl Allman manages to survive reentry, but not without damage.  Before Ship was destroyed, it downloaded into Allman's brain a portion of a backup AI.  Unfortunately, the download wasn't completed, and it is the personality that is in control when Karl wakes up.  If yo imagine a superintelligent child with no social skills, you probably have a good idea of the AI's personality.  There's a reason the colonists who find Karl name him Loki.

The chapters in the first part of the book alternate viewpoint characters.  The other two viewpoint characters are Ragnar, the chieftain of a settlement, and Bera, a young woman who was taken in by Ragnar as a young girl.  Ragnar to a large degree is a product of his environment, harsh and unfeeling in many ways.  Bera is treated like chattel by most of the members of Ragnar's household, especially by his daughter Hilda.  Bera has recently given birth to a child out of wedlock and refused to name the father, for reasons we eventually learn are sound.  Because of her silence, she is denounced as a whore and the child left outside to freeze on Ragnar's orders.  I told you he was harsh, but then so is the law of survival on this planet.  Ragnar's actions are completely legal.

Karl lands shortly after Bera's son has died, and she is given the chore of restoring him to health.  By rescuing Karl, Ragnar has placed on him a debt of repayment.  It doesn't help matters that Karl and Loki, unaware of each other at first, switch back and forth as the dominant personality.  And Loki has all of Karl's desires, but none of his socialization or self control.  Can you say "sexual tension"?

Ship had sent off a distress call just before being destroyed, and Karl wants to find a population center so he can send a followup message.  He doesn't realize he is in a population center.  I won't say too much more, because I recommend this book and don't want to spoil all the surprises for you.  Needless to say, there's more to the history of Isheimur than any of the settlers suspect.  The Winter Song of the title plays into this history. 

Harvey does a good job of showing the problems inherent in a small population struggling to stay alive in a harsh environment in which it has no long term prospects. He shows how the climate has influenced the culture that has developed as well as the internal politics, both strength based and sexual, that arise in a small group of people with what essentially amounts to an elected dictator as leader.  He also does a masterful job in one portion of the book of giving a tour of the environment on the planet, including the fauna.  There are some surprises here.  MAJOR SPOILER:  I especially liked that the other colonists, you know, the ones the Icelanders don't realize are there, were from Kazakhstan.

Not all the questions are answered.  For one thing, as one of the characters points out, there's an awful lot of activity in a supposedly abandoned star system.  Why?  The book ends on something of a cliff-hanger.  Harvey gives us a glimpse of the wider universe, but only a glimpse.  I want to know more.  His latest book just hit the shelves a few weeks ago.  Damage Time is a near future thriller.  I plan on picking it up.  But I want to know more about Karl Allman's wider universe.  Hopefully Colin Harvey will show us some in a future book (or books, hint, hint, Colin).

In the meantime I'm going to await the coming of our robot overlords.  I should probably find something appropriate to read.  Maybe Lavie Tidhar's The Bookman, or Kell's Legend by Andy Remic.  Hmm....which to choose?

Monday, November 15, 2010

Further Thoughts on Story

Recently I posted my thoughts on why story is important, especially in short fiction.  Earlier today I came across this column from Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in which she discusses the importance of story and why it needs to be first in fiction.  Kris, in addition to being the former editor of F&SF, wrote a column for Jim Baen's Universe until that venue closed.  The powers-that-be at Baen moved the column over to The Grantville Gazette, the online magazine for the 1632 universe.  Her columns don't necessarily related directly to 1632, but they're worth checking out.  Anyway, Kris has the credentials to know whereof she speaks and does so eloquently.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

The Fantasy Fan

Over at the REHupa and REH:  Two Gun Racontuer sites, Damon Sasser recently made an announcement about Lance Thingmaker's publication of the entire run of The Fantasy Fan in facsimile.  This was one of the earliest fanzines, running for 18 issues from September 1933 to February 1935.  The list of contributors reads like a Who's Who of fantasy from the heydey of Weird Tales.  People like Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Forrest J. Ackerman.  The editor, Charles D. Hornig was a high school student at the time.  His work on The Fantasy Fan caught the attention of Hugo Gernsback, who hired him to edit the pulp Wonder Stories.  Eric Lief Davin published two interviews with Hornig in Pioneers of Wonder (Prometheus Books,1999 ).

Damon quotes from Lance's introduction, so I won't repeat that here.  My copy came a couple of days ago, so instead I'll talk about the book itself.  Original copies of the zine were scanned and have been reprinted as they appeared, with only minor touch-ups to improve legibility.  All the typos and errors are still in place.  The binding is hand-sewn.  This is clearly a labor of love. 

It's a common practice of libraries to collect runs of periodicals and have them bound in hardcover.  The bindings are usually plain, with simple lettering.  That's the effect here, except the result looks much better than the typical library binding.  I know partly because I'm looking at two examples on the shelf as I'm writing this:  Unknown October 1941-April 1943 and Astounding Stories January-November 1932.  (Yes, some of the old pulps did manage to make it into library bindings.)

So, what's it like to read old copies of one of the most influential fanzines of all time?  Well, I can't rightly say because I haven't read the thing.  It just arrived a couple of days ago, and I've been swamped this week.  I have perused it, however.  This is not a book I'm going to rush through.  It's one I'm going to savor.  Robert E. Howard's "God's of the North" was first published here.  (This was a rewrite of "The Frost Giant's Daughter", an early Conan storied that had been rejected by Farnsworth Wright.).  Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature is here as well.  Poetry by Lovecraft and Smith.  Fueds in the letter columns by names you would recognize, such as Ackerman.  Columns by Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger.  A cornucopia of great stuff.

If you're interested in Robert E. Howard, or H. P. Lovecraft, or Clark Ashton Smith, or Robert Bloch, or the history of early fandom, then this is probably the must-have book of the year.  The book is limited to 200 copies and only costs fifty-five bucks, including shipping.  A bargain at twice the price (no, Lance, that doesn't mean I'm going to send you more money), I can't imagine this one staying in stock long. If I were you, I wouldn't wait for Santa to bring one.  That might be too late.

There's no web page for The Fantasy Fan, but you can order it directly from Lance Thingmaker.  Just send him a email.  You'll be glad you did.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Long Looks at Short Fiction: Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard

Tales of Weird Menace
by Robert E. Howard
The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press
Ordering Information Not Yet Available

The Robert E. Howard Foundation has, in the few short years of its existence, done a number of good things.  Such things as helping maintain the Robert E. Howard House in Cross Plains, Texas, and providing an annual scholarship to a graduating senior from Cross Plains High School.  As part of the Foundation's mission, a number of works by Howard are being reprinted, including his collected letters (in 3 volumes) and a giant volume of Howard's collected poetry.  The latter title has gone through three printings and is currently sold out.  Sales of these and other books help fund the philanthropic activities of the Foundation.

Next up on the Foundation's schedule is the volume you see to the left.  This collection contains Howard's Weird Menace stories, as you can probably tell from the title.  We'll look at the best known of them, Skull-Face in this posting.

But first a word about the Weird Menace pulps on the off chance some of you aren't familiar with them.  These were a blend of horror and super science, with a dash of the hero pulps (think Doc Savage or The Spider) and a good deal of implied or explicit eroticism and gore thrown in.  Often the supernatural aspect of the villain was revealed to be mundane, although you can be sure that won't be the case with "Skull-Face."  The weird menace pulps were fairly popular, but censorship and the real horrors of World War II ultimately did them in.

Howard tried his hand at writing some of this type of tale, like he did with most of the pulp genres that weren't marketed to solely to women, such as romance pulps.  While this isn't the sort of thing Howard is best remembered for, which would be his fantasy and horror tales, Howard was a diverse writer who was successful in a number of pulp genres, such as serious and humorous westerns, as well as boxing stories, a genre that was prominent at the time but has pretty much disappeared from popular fiction.

What I don't understand is why "Skull-Face" seems to have fallen on, well, I guess you could call it a time of neglect.  I'm not sure the work has been out of print much since the Howard boom of the 70s when Berkley featured it as the lead in a collection of related tales.  But you don't hear it talked about much anymore.  At least I haven't.  It has all the ingredients of a classic pulp adventure:  danger, lots of action, a beautiful and imperiled woman, not one but two heroes, and of course, The Yellow Peril, Robert E. Howard style.

And it may well be that last ingredient which has made it less popular; I don't know.  There is certainly a great deal said about race in the story, from more than one point of view.  And Skull-Face, or The Master, or The Scorpion as he's also known, doesn't fit the traditional Yellow Peril mold completely.  For one thing, Skull-Face isn't actually an oriental, but beyond that I'm not going to spoil the fun.

To most modern readers, The Yellow Peril  might be unfamiliar, and to many would certainly be offensive.  In essence, it was a trope common to much popular fiction in the early 20th century.  Basically western (read white) civilization would be threatened in some way by an oriental menace, often in the form of an evil criminal genius who often had occult or scientific powers that were beyond anything the West was capable of.  The example the casual reader would most likely be familiar with is Sax Rhomer's Fu Manchu.

Regardless, the whole concept of the Yellow Peril would not be politically correct in this day and age.  Far from it.  As a result it would be offensive to many modern readers.  I, however, hold the opinion that when you're reading literature from a different historical period, you do yourself and the story a disservice if you try to evaluate aspects of it through contemporary lenses.  Instead, keep in mind the cultural context in which a particular story was written.

That's just as true in the case of "Skull-Face" as it is for any other work of literature.  However outdated some of Howard's views on race may seem to be to the reader of the 21st century, they weren't that far out of the mainstream in the 20s and 30s.  (A topic that won't be discussed in any detail here.)  And if the racial portrayals in "Skull-Face" are what have caused it to be eclipsed by some of Howard's other work, then it's a crying shame.

Because "Skull-Face" is fine story.  It was serialized in three parts in the October, November, and December 1929 issues of Weird Tales.  The first Solomon Kane stories were beginning to see print at this time, and Kull would had made his debut earlier that same year, with Bran Mak Morn appearing the next year.  The coming of Conan was still a few years in the future.  While Robert E. Howard had not yet reached the peak of his output, in both quality and quantity, he was no slouch either.  The prose was much more crisp and less purple than I was expecting.  The pace is the headlong rush with plenty of action we've come to expect in a Howard yarn.  Howard doesn't shy away from violence or the seedy underside of the Chinese ghetto in London where much of the story takes place.  He shows us, through the eyes of Stephen Costigan (not to be confused by the boxing sailor of that name in other Howard stories) what life is like for the addict in an opium den.

And that may be another reason the story isn't as popular as it once was.  Drugs are a constant fixation of the story (pardon the pun).  Costigan is an opium addict when we first meet him, and the cure of his addiction comes at the price of addiction to a more potent drug.  The fact that drug use plays a prominent role in the tale will make some of today's readers immediately reject for that reason.  Which is another shame.  Because drug use is in no way gloried or romanticized at any point in the story.  Instead, Costigan at one point curses the weakness in himself that drove him to become addicted in the first place.  And the noble and wealthy patrons who visit Yun Shatu's Dream Temple are not portrayed positively.  Anyone who gives the story more than a casual reading can't help but come away with the distinct impression that Howard probably didn't think much of drug usage.

Costigan is a wounded veteran of the Great War, who has fallen into his addiction in an attempt to ease his pain.  Noticed by the girl Zulieka, herself a slave of The Master as she refers to him, Costigan is given the chance to break free of opium and perform certain tasks for the Master, who at this point remains hidden behind a screen.  Trying to stop Skull-Face is British agent at large John Gordon.  Ultimately, Skull-Face's demands are more than Costigan is willing to commit to.  He and Gordon join forces.

If you want any more information, you'll have to read the story yourself.  There are indications that Howard may have been planning to create a series character with Skull-Face.  The Berkley edition has two associated stories plus "Taverel Manor", an unfinished sequel.  Richard A Lupoff finished "Taverel Manor" for Berkley.  While he's a good writer, Lupoff is not Howard.  The REH Foundation volume will contain "Taverel Manor", presumably in its unfinished form, just the way Howard left it.

And Lupoff is probably right.  Howard may very well have been trying to develop a series character.  Weird Tales published at least two that I know of, Dr. Satan (whose adventures as far as I know have never been reprinted) and Jules deGrandin, whose adventures have.   Lupoff holds the opinion that editor Farnsworth Wright didn't think much of "Skull-Face" and gave it only one cover.  He may well be correct in this as well.  Howard knew from experience that series characters were what sold, especially if they were popular.  His attempts to find a sustainable series character can be seen in Kane, Kull, and Morn, as well as his sailor Steve Costigan series, not to be confused with the Costigan who is the protagonist of "Skull-Face."  And these aren't the only series characters Howard created.  Why Howard didn't develop this series further is a matter of speculation.  Howard's most successful character would be, of course, Conan the Cimmerian.  It's fun to speculate on what a "Skull-Face" series would have been like.  Too bad we'll never know.

One of the names of Skull-Face is Kathulos.  Astute readers will immediately wonder about a connection to H. P. Lovecraft's C'thulhu.  Considering how Howard and Lovecraft corresponded with each other to the point that their correspondence fills two volumes, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a deliberate reference here.  However, I haven't had the time to do the research, so I won't speculate further.

I'm just glad "Skull-Face" is getting some attention again.  Wildside Press has collected the fantasy/weird stories of Howard in a 10 volume set, and "Skull-Face" was the lead story in volume 2.  The first time "Skull-Face" made hardcovers was in 1946, a decade after Howard's death, in Skull-Face and Others.  This was the first volume of Howard's works published by Arkham House and the first published by an American publisher after his death.  Previously, only A Gent From Bear Creek had seen hardcover, and from a British publisher if memory serves.   Conan wasn't collected until years later.  It's good to see "Skull-Face" collected again.

This is one worth reading folks, especially if you like adventure, peril, and fast paced action.  Check it out.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Back From the Dead

Locus Online, quoiting SF Scope, is reporting tonight that Realms of Fantasy has been sold to Damnation Books, which will bring out the December issue in print as well as electronic form.  Any editorial policy or staff changes have yet to be announced, but the magazine is open for submissions effective immediately.  Let's hope they up the sword and sorcery content.  One way to do that is to send them some.
The new mailing address is
Realms of Fantasy
P.O. Box 1208
Santa Rosa, California 95402 USA

While I'm not familiar with Damnation Books and quick perusal of their website makes me think they won't be my cup of tea, I'm willing to give the new incarnation of RoF a chance and wish the new publishers the best with the magazine.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Kuttner's Elak of Atlantis: Beyond the Phoenix

"Beyond the Phoenix" from Elak of Atlantis
Henry Kuttner
Planet Stories - Paizo Publishing
Trade Paperback, $12.95, 2007

Kuttner's version of Atlantis seems to be a rather large place, with a number of kingdoms on the continent.  When this story opens, we find Elak and Lycon working as sell-swords for Phrygior, ruler of the small kingdom of Sarhaddon in western Atlantis.  All is not well in Sarhaddon, for the high priest Xandar is plotting againt Phrygion, and has arranged for Elak and Lycon to be sent on a diversionary errand to the kitchen while his henchmen do away with Phrygion.

Elak figures out they've been duped in time to return to the king's chambers, but not before the king is mortally wounded.  When Elak kills the guards who are assassinating the king, a battle ensues between Elak and Xandar, with Elak driving Xandar off but not defeating him.  The dying monarch warns Elad that Xandar is in the service of Baal-Yagoth, a god of evil.  He also charges Elak with protecting his daughter Esarra and places a bracelet about Elak's arm that can only be removed by the Phoenix.

The rulers of Sarhaddon claim to be descended from the phoenix and to have come from another realm, one not of this world.  Upon their deaths, all monarchs and their children are sent on a bier along the river and through the Phoenix Gate to be returned to their homeworld.

Fleeing Xandar and his forces, Elak, Lycon, and Esarra take Phrygion's body to the underground cavern where the funeral barge lies waiting.  They manage to evade their pursuers when the Phoenix Gate opens, but it's a case of from the frying pan into the fire.  There are factions beyond the Phoenix Gate, some of whom are in league with Xandar.

This is the second shortest story in the Elak series, just slightly longer than "The Spawn of Dagon."  But of the ones we've examined so far, this is in many ways the best.  None of the characters have much depth, but that's not surprising, considering the length of the tale; neither are they completely cardboard cutouts, either.  Esarra is not the warrior Velia becomes in "Thunder in the Dawn," but without her aid Elak and Lycon would have died before leaving the castle.  The final battle, in which Elak has to use sorcery as well as sword to win was a departure from the stock ending of hero trouncing villain by means of the hero's brawn.

Once the adventurers find themselves on the far side of the Gate, things get decidedly weird.  I'm not sure what it is about fantasy written by certain of the Weird Tales writers, but some of the descriptions they wrote were just flat out bizarre in ways that most authors of the past couple of generations don't come close to.  Kuttner's descriptions in "Thunder in the Dawn" and here in "Beyond the Phoenix" where he's describing what Elak encounters upon leaving this world are of that type.  Maybe we've had too much of a diet of generic quest fantasy and aren't seeing that sort of thing written anymore.  Or maybe I just haven't found it. 

The thing I noticed most, though, was the writing itself.  When a reader notices the writing, it's often a sign that the writer is failing in some way to draw the reader into the story, or else the writer is doing something experimental in the way he or she is using words.  In this case, I noticed the writing because I wasn't able to finish the story in one sitting due to interruptions.  When I returned to it, what struck was how much better written this story was than "Thunder in the Dawn."  Kuttner is one of those writers you can see evolve (and in a few examples later in his career, devolve) as an artist from one work to the next.  The prose in "Thunder" had a purple tint to it.  In "Phoenix" the prose is leaner and crisper than in the two earlier Elak installments.

Overall, this was a good, entertaining piece of sword and sorcery adventure.  While it will never be considered one of the great classics of the field, it's definitely worth investing the time to read.