Hit the used bookstore again, and found some Howard books! I figured I'd ask Ron (and the other pulp fans) about the validity of these, because (like Lovecraft fiction) you can get burned when someone "posthumously collaborates."
So, The People of the Black Circle, pub. Berkley Putnam, edited by Karl Edward Wagner. I figured I can't go wrong with something edited by Wagner. This one's pure Howard, right? It also smells slightly of perfume.
Solomon Kane, "The Robert E. Howard Library Vol. III", pub. Baen Fantasy. In Ramsey Campbell's introduction tells of his rewriting some of the stories, but he then lists which stories and what he changes/adds, so credibility is maintained. Are the Solomon Kane stories a good source for Sorcerer & Sword?
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Other books, perhaps of interest to anyone doing a S&Sword-style game:
Edgar Cayce on Atlantis by Edgar Evans Cayce. Edgar Cayce was a famous psychic, so I had to pick this one up.
The Lost Continent of Mu by James Churchward. This one's filled with pictures and ties together every ancient culture (it seems) to Mu as the source of civilization. I'm anticipating some great inspiration here.
China and Japan, Myths and Legends by Donald A. Mackenzie. It's thick! Should be a good source for Tomoe Gozen-style gaming.
Hi Zak,
The Wagner collections are gold - snap'em up. Also, the Soloman Kane stories vary a bit, but not as much as the Conan stories do, and the character is outstanding. It's among the grimmest stuff around.
Solomon Kane is such a strange guy ... especially in the African stories, in which the only person he ever befriends (in any story) is the wizened old shaman, and from that point on he carries, along with his rapier and his musket, the carved "ju-ju stick" which proves useful on many occasions. It's an awesome solid presentation of the hero-as-outsider, especially for a white male protagonist.
I'm proud of my 60s Panther editions of all the Solomon Kane stories, not a peep of posthumous tinkering and brilliantly illustrated with these freaky, scary line drawings (have to check to see who the artist is).
Best,
Ron
Hey Zak. If you're looking for untouched Howard stuff, as well as titles by C.L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, and others, you might try turning to the Fantasy Masterworkshttp://sfsite.com/lists/orion05.htm series put out by Millennium, which is an imprint of UK publisher Orion Publishing Group.
They have put out Howard's stories in a two volume set:
The Conan Chronicles Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle
and
The Conan Chronicles Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon
Neither is available in the U.S., but you can order through Amazon.co.uk. Just dig out the ISBNs from the site above and you can get them. With shipping, a single volume will probably run you about $17.
Awesome. Time to fill out my Christmas list early. Thanks, Thor.
And Ron, I've just started reading those Kane stories and they ARE weird. It's pulp fantasy writing with a dark, Puritan hero who is not courageous, nor honorable, but fanatic. Awesome.
Hi Zak,
My call is that Solomon Kane, along with Kull, embodies Howard's most disturbing ability as a writer - to show the reader the Void. Lovecraft never did it, I think; he'd point to it, and talk about it, and in fact, he even made it semi-fun, in most cases. But these two "heroes" fuckin' stare at it, they have that 1000-yard stare of a foxhole soldier even as they engage in swordfights or rescue damsels or plumb otherworldly places.
There's a kind of desperation in Kull's "King of Valusia" status, or Kane's religious orientation - they have "it," i.e., something to be proud of or to care about, but it's not enough. Conan's happy with "it," and he takes pride in and understands the responsibilities of his kingship (I especially like his map-making in The Phoenix on the Sword; it's one of the finest refutations of the Ah-nold Conan image available.). Kull and Kane say, moodily, "Ah, so what. Look over there."
And you look and it's pretty awful. The sound-without-sound that Kull faces twice, the cross-continental understanding Kane develops of all the horrid beings he encounters ... "God grant all our deaths be so easy," he says of one man he has killed. And the way that all the demon-beings they meet treat them as one of themselves ... brrr.
Best,
Ron
P.S. edited to capitalize my name - don't know why it somehow became e.e. cummings-ized all of a sudden.
I've never read any of the Kane stories... if I went looking for them, what would be my best shot at getting a fairly un-monkeyed version for cheap?
-Ben
My version explicitly declares where it was monkeyed (you could go in and mark it with a pencil, then). It was (used) a three-dollar paperback. Baen fantasy. Here's the cover (http://members.aol.com/astadvqtrl/kane.htm).
On the other end of pricing, I just found this: http://www.solomonkane.com. Holy moly.
Ron,
I have yet to read any Solomon Kane, but I know what you mean about Kull.
The story The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune blew me away. I even felt disappointed when Kull pulled himself away from the mirror (as I'm sure Kull was supposed to feel) and Tuzun Thune was killed.
There was something disquieting about those mirrors...something the reader wanted to understand as much as Kull did. I don't know if I can explain it any better than that.
At the same time, for pure joy of story, I really prefer Conan. As for breaking the Ah-nold stereotype, what about the Teeth of Gwalhur? It's not his best work, of course, but Conan discovers the scroll of the long-dead sage and is able to decipher it because he's picked up dozens of languages in his journeys.
Hi Thor,
Just a couple of months ago, I read The Teeth of Gwahlur out loud to my girlfriend, with the proviso that it was kind of a Hollywood adventure romp unlike the others I'd read to her (People of the Black Circle, Beyond the Black River). I was surprised that it was a ... well, a good Hollywood adventure romp, better than I'd remembered. Conan is as enthusiastic and subtle a schemer and counter-plotter as any of his rivals in the treasure-hunt, and he's the only one who figures out the back-story well enough to avoid getting butchered. Definitely a "brains" story (counter to Howard's over-quoted claim that he avoided writing smart characters).
My only objection to it is that Muriela is a thoroughly objectionable romantic interest, especially compared with a knockout like Yasmina. That's probably where my distasteful memories of the story came from.
Best,
Ron
As someone who has much less taste than Ron (yes, one might wonder just how that's possible), I would say that one should not be that picky.
))Heresy Alert((
I like the L. Sprague de Camp stuff. If in the course of buying, you "accidentally" purchase some of the "bad" S&S, I think that it's unlikely that you'll get hurt. At least if you do like I do and buy at rummages, and used book stores. What's the worst thing that could happen for twenty-five cents? You decide for yourself that Gor isn't good? No biggie. You might even get one good idea from it for your game (they almost all have one good idea).
What I'm saying is that I woudn't sweat it too much, people. Just my $.02.
Mike "Tarnsman of Gor" Holmes
Has anyone read much of Henry Kuttner's work? (Some actualy written in collaboration with C. L. Moore- his wife- under the names 'Lewis Padgett' and 'Lawrence O'Donnell'). I've only read one of his short novels/novels called The Dark World (in an issue of Amberzine actualy) and have only just remembered it... I'll have to dig through some boxes to find the old issue, but if memory serves it was really good S&S stuff with some cool twists and introspective character stuff more akin to the Sci-fi of the period. It was published in 1946- putting it smack in the 'origins' period of S&S fiction, but I'll to reread it.
Kuttner has a fairly impressive collection of work:
http://www.sfsite.com/isfdb-bin/exact_author.cgi?Henry_Kuttner
He was also known to have corresponded with Lovecraft and Howard.
Hi Ben,
If it was introspective and moody, then I strongly suspect it was C. L. Moore's actual writing. The two of them frequently traded writing assignments, sometimes in the middle of a story and sometimes not.
Moore's character Northwest Smith, a kind of space rogue dude (but grim and sad, not happy and roguish), is right on the same shelf as Kull and Solomon Kane.
In one of the issues of Conan the Barbarian, when Roy Thomas was still writing it, he adapted the Northwest Smith story "Shambleau" to a Conan adventure and it fit like a glove.
Best,
Ron
Very cool. Thanks Ron... I think I'll tap Athens awesome used book market fairly soon.
But a question to all concerned- do you know of any good sites for Sword and Swocery stories online? I know about the Lovecraft library (http://www.gizmology.net/lovecraft/) where you can download just about his entire cannon, and I've found tons of classic and some good pulp here and there (Edgar Rice Burroughs at http://www.literature.org/authors/burroughs-edgar-rice/).
But I can't find any Sword and Sorcery. Looks like with all that was written in the 30's through the 60's, there should be tons of stuff on which can be considered public... does anyone know where to look for them?
Thanks
-Ben
Ben,
You can find a fair bit of Clark Ashton Smith's work here: http://www.eldritchdark.com/
For a group of folks trying to keep the spirit of the pulps alive and well (with mixed results), check out the Pulp & Dagger Webzine: http://www.pulpanddagger.com/pulpmag/contents.html.
Yowza! Thanks Thor...this is just what I've been looking for. Now, of all the sotries I've just downloaded via the .zip archive, which are the best to read, and in which order...?
hi, all. I just ordered Sorcerer & Sword through my local game store, so I've been skimming through the forums for Sorcerer and &Sword-related posts. I decided this thread wasn't
that old...
Quote from: Ron Edwards
My call is that Solomon Kane, along with Kull, embodies Howard's most disturbing ability as a writer - to show the reader the Void. Lovecraft never did it, I think; he'd point to it, and talk about it, and in fact, he even made it semi-fun, in most cases. But these two "heroes" fuckin' stare at it, they have that 1000-yard stare of a foxhole soldier even as they engage in swordfights or rescue damsels or plumb otherworldly places.
ah, solomon kane. I based a couple of my RPG characters on him... I haven't read the kull stories, but I think this description of kane is pretty dead-on. I was always impressed by howard's description of kane as having this sort of "manic-depressive fanaticism"; he would periodically latch onto some injustice and would pursue it, seemingly oblivious to whether he was becoming worse than the scum he's pursuing... and when he was finished, he became empty and restless.
I especially liked how, in "Red Shadows", he decides to avenge a complete stranger, a woman who died at his feet. he has no personal connection to the woman, wasn't asked to avenge her death, doesn't know squat about the gang of bandits that killed her -- and yet he pursues them with an intensity that makes psycho killers from the movies look like children.
no wonder le loup ran to africa.
I would also like to suggest another character as a good source for inspiration: roger zelazney's "dilvish the damned". the early stories were collected in a book by the same name, followed by a dilvish novel, "the changing land". when most people talk about zelazney, they talk about the amber books, but tend to overlook dilvish, which has a much better character concept, in my opinion. dilvish is a nobleman warrior who dares to defy a powerful wizard and is sent to Hell. a few centuries later, dilvish mysteriously returns, with three things:
a demonic talking horse made of steel,
knowledge of all the Awful Sayings of Hell, and
a thirst for vengeance.
[/list:u]
dilvish seems to work especially well in a Sorcerer context. the steel horse named black is obviously his bound demon and the relationship is obviously Not Quite Good in the beginning, but end the end, they seem to have become friends instead of sorcerer-and-demon.
Hi John,
I agree with you about Dilvish in terms of ... well, "in-game concept," if you will. I'm not so sure about it thematically. Despite some pretty good atmospheric stuff in some of the short stories, Dilvish was pretty lightweight - more Brak than Elric, if you will. It included a lot of insider jokes for role-players, especially in the novel.
One thing I really, really liked about the short stories, though, was only the barest hint of setting and context beyond the character's personal situation, and only the barest hint of continuity among the stories themselves.
Best,
Ron
Way outside the style and plush prose of the pulp books, J. Gregory Keyes's Waterborn and Blackgod novels present a pretty damned interesting set of demon (god) concepts that port very nicely to Sorcerer terms. They're great reads, too, if you can resist the impulse to strangle Perkar.
Best,
Blake
Ah Dilvish! The stories were VASTLY better than the novel (which seemed... sort of half-hearted). Black was an excelent demon in the heroic fantasy style... and those Awful Sayings...coooool. Magic so powerful it proved useless in most situations. The disjointed chronology and indistinct geography was, as Ron says, very good S&S stuff. Zelazny also seems to capture the feel of early S&S fiction quite well.
Oddly enough, I recently began thinking about Amber again (I've got my fiance reading the chronicles)... one could consider the Pattern to be a vast and terrible demon collectively bound to all those who share the Blood of Amber. It can Spawn parasites which then inhabit initiates, granting them Travel and Transport abilities... And this got me thinking about something else... follow me over to the new thread I'm about to start... gods as demons & collective bindings.
Quote from: Ron EdwardsI agree with you about Dilvish in terms of ... well, "in-game concept," if you will. I'm not so sure about it thematically. Despite some pretty good atmospheric stuff in some of the short stories, Dilvish was pretty lightweight - more Brak than Elric, if you will. It included a lot of insider jokes for role-players, especially in the novel.
One thing I really, really liked about the short stories, though, was only the barest hint of setting and context beyond the character's personal situation, and only the barest hint of continuity among the stories themselves.
I can agree with that. I was mostly comparing dilvish to zelazney's other books, rather than to other authors. dilvish seemed to have more going on inside him than corwin or whoever-the-main-character-was in the wizardworld novels. but in terms of larger themes, amber beats the sparse world dilvish lives in, certainly.
Quote from: BailywolfAh Dilvish! The stories were VASTLY better than the novel (which seemed... sort of half-hearted). Black was an excelent demon in the heroic fantasy style... and those Awful Sayings...coooool. Magic so powerful it proved useless in most situations. The disjointed chronology and indistinct geography was, as Ron says, very good S&S stuff. Zelazny also seems to capture the feel of early S&S fiction quite well.
my impression was that the dilvish stories were written early in his career. I'm pretty sure the novel came years later. I remember reading my first dilvish story (I believe it was "the bells of shoredan") in a swords-and-sorcery anthology, along with jack brunner's story about a wandering mage with a compulsion to bind demons and grant wishes (what was his name?) a thongor story about a liche (passable, but nothing special,) michael moorcock's "the flame bringers", and a few other examples of the genre. I think this was about '72 or '73, although I bought the anthology in a used book store, so the publication date would have been earlier.
"the changing land" definitely came after the amber novels. I think it was from the 1980s, which is why we see RPG and computer programming references in it as well as less strength behind the character; zelazney was just revisiting an old friend, so to speak.
on a side note, I think one of the things that killed swords & sorcery, besides people imitating tolkien (swords of shanara, circle of light...) was robert lynn asprin's "another fine myth". he's the one that took away the danger hidden in demons as well as introducing more humor into stories. AFM appeared about '68 or '69, when moorcock was still writing an occasional elric story; when people started imitating asprin and writing tons of stories about not-quite-competent "everyman" characters dealing with fantastic threats, it flooded out any serious attempts at S&S.
the incompleat enchanter stories were an influence, too, but these didn't have an immediate impact on genre sales.
urgh, I was going to add some other real swords & sorcery favorites, but now I'm so mad at asprin, I can't think of any. maybe later.
Hi John,
You're thinking about John Brunner's stories of The Traveller in Black, which were collected twice, the second time (which found every last possible reference and "ended" the sequence) as The Compleat Traveller in Black. I like those a lot, although they're more like late-19th, early-20th century allegorical fantasy than sword-and-sorcery. Great Sorcerer material for sure.
I thought Another Fine Myth was later than that ... I recall them arriving in the bookstores in the late 70s, although for all I know those were re-issues. As it happens, I thought the initial book was actually pretty good, having rather a sharp and punkish edge and not so liberally sprinkled with stupid puns - more satire than spoof. After that, though, feh. I agree with you about the net negative impact of the series; same goes for the Xanth novels (huck! ptooey! ptooey!) after the first two.
Best,
Ron
Quote from: Ron Edwards
You're thinking about John Brunner's stories of The Traveller in Black, which were collected twice, the second time (which found every last possible reference and "ended" the sequence) as The Compleat Traveller in Black. I like those a lot, although they're more like late-19th, early-20th century allegorical fantasy than sword-and-sorcery. Great Sorcerer material for sure.
yep, that's him, although I think he actually had a name at some point. and yeah, there wasn't really a pulp feel to the stories, although I first encountered them in that anthology labeled "swords & sorcery".
Quote
I thought Another Fine Myth was later than that ... I recall them arriving in the bookstores in the late 70s, although for all I know those were re-issues. As it happens, I thought the initial book was actually pretty good, having rather a sharp and punkish edge and not so liberally sprinkled with stupid puns - more satire than spoof. After that, though, feh. I agree with you about the net negative impact of the series; same goes for the Xanth novels (huck! ptooey! ptooey!) after the first two.
the editions with the much-more-colorful covers are late '70s, which is when aspirin started adding books to the series... but I remember seeing a much earlier edition with a mostly-dark colored traditional swords & sorcery cover, which I believe was '69 but might be as late as '72. isaac bonewitz mentioned this edition in the bibliography to
real magic.
so far, a quick glance at some fan sites hasn't confirmed this, however.
Just got done with Tanith Lee's Night's Master, which I'd been wanting to read for some time, but somehow avoided doing so.
Nice quote selection, Ron. I'd forgotten you'd drawn off this one.
Best,
Blake
I'm a Tanith Lee fan anyway, but Night's Master and Cyrion are hands down my faves.
-Vincent
Hi there,
Vincent - agreed. Those are definitely her strongest, by my tastes anyway, in addition to the stories in Companions on the Road. Some of her other earlier work, like The Birthgrave and the Vazkor/Anackire stuff, puzzles the hell out of me; I cannot for the life of me summarize the plot for any one of them - and I mean the basic plot, at all. A lot of her later work seems to be in this vein.
Best,
Ron
Actually, the first Tanith Lee I read was the Castle of Dark from Dark Castle, White Horse. It was enormously formative. I spent the next like ten years trying to recapture that feeling in gaming. And come to think of it I still want to.
If I'd read the Flat Earth books in high school, I expect I'd've converted. Religiously, I mean. To Azhrarnism, or maybe Uhleme-ism, depending which year in high school.
Yikes.
But no, between Tanith Lee and Jack Vance, my taste in fantasy is pretty much accounted for. I'm having a hell of a time getting my hands on Howard without spending any money, though, sadly. All the original Conan books in our local library system are overdue, billed in March 2000.
-Vincent
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood has this amazing pulp element.
I began reading it last summer and lost it before I could finish it but I've bought it again and will begin re-reading it after I finish the two books I'm reading now.
The story itself isn't pulp but there is a story arc within it where a man and a woman sit in bed and create a pulp fantasy world together. It is really fun and worth reading on many different levels. Atwood is brilliant.
Anyway, there's one that might've flown under the radar.