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By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: A Plethora of Pastiches! In 2 Paragraphs Each

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: A Plethora of Pastiches! In 2 Paragraphs Each

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And we are wrapping up Cimmerian September. Which I think will be an annul thing here at Black Gate. Maybe I’ll do a broader Robert E. Howard month around his birth (January) or death (June). But it’s more Conan this week.

If you’re a regular here, you know that I post almost exclusively positive stuff. You can go anywhere on social media for negative stuff. I like to share things I like – with people who wanna comment on it sometimes. It’s cool.

A notable exception is that festering pile of garbage that was Max Landi’s Dirk Gently TV series. Sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade.

I’m gonna give some thoughts on twenty different Conan pastiches from over the years. And some aren’t good. So, not all happy stuff here. But I think a legitimate opinion is worthwhile. Even mine…

Not ranking them, but listing them in alphabetical order by author. I’ll give some info on the story in the first paragraph, and a very short review in the second. I’ve done in-depth reviews here at Black Gate. These are just light looks at a bunch of Conan stories, to put them on your radar. Hopefully, you’ll find this post useful.

There are others I haven’t read at all,

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By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Arthurian Elements In the Conan Canon – Part II

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Arthurian Elements In the Conan Canon – Part II

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It’s installment three of Cimmerian September, and I’m going back to Spring of 2018 for today’s post. But it’s not a reprint (Hey: I think people should read last week’s essay on “Rogues in the House”!

I took a fantasy template developed by John Teehan, citing Arthurian elements to be found in almost any fantasy work. Well, at least one element can be, anyways. I applied the principles to the first four Conan stories: “Phoenix on the Sword,” “Frost Giant’s Daughter,” “The God in the Bowl,” and “The Tower of the Elephant.” You can click on this link to see that three of the four scored pretty low.

Well, we’re gonna look at the next three Conan stories: “The Scarlet Citadel,” Queen of the Black Coast,” Black Colossus,” and Iron Shadows in the Moon.”

So, let’s see how the stories shape up.

John Teehan, in The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy: Volume One, challenges the reader to think of their favorite contemporary fantasy novels. And we’re talking Tolkien-onwards here, not just the past few years. Then he gives a list and says it would be difficult to think of a book that didn’t have any of the five themes on the list. He is making the point that the Arthurian legend, largely brought to popular culture by Thomas Malory, was an interweaving of those five themes. High fantasy epics like David Eddings’ Belgariad still follow this path.

I immediately thought about Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales and how they didn’t really emulate this pattern. Or so it seemed to me. My friend Deuce Richardson immediately pointed out two stories that did significantly incorporate these elements. So, I decided to start at the beginning and take a good look at “The Phoenix on the Sword”: then, do a less detailed survey of the following stories.

This time around, we’ll give “The Scarlet Citadel extra attention, then move on to the other two.

So, here we go!

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The Sword & Planet of Leigh Brackett

The Sword & Planet of Leigh Brackett

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The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman (Ace Double M-101, 1964). Covers by Ed Emshwiller

Leigh Brackett (1915 – 1978) is my favorite from among the second generation of Sword & Planet writers (S&P). Many people I meet recognize her name from her association with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, for which she wrote the initial script. Or for the script to The Big Sleep, which she also wrote. Or, for several western movies she wrote the scripts for.

Those don’t mean anything to me, though. I know her from her Space Opera and S&P books, particularly the series featuring Eric John Stark.

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By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Rogues in the House

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Rogues in the House

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We’re rolling through Cimmerian September here at Black Gate. Well, on Monday mornings we sure are! I was fortunate enough to be asked to do some Youtube panels for the Robert E. Howard Foundation folks this month. And we had a great time talking about the first Del Rey Conan volume – The Coming of Conan – in the first one.

I got to give my thoughts on “Rogues in the House,” which was my Hither Came Conan title. That had been a mid-level Conan story for me. But it moved up the ranks after I finished my essay project. So, with some tweaks, here’s my take on a pretty cool story. And HOW was this six years ago??

When I was pitching this series to folks, I was using the title, The Best of Conan. I didn’t come up with Hither Came Conan for about eight months, I think. Yeah, I know… The idea behind the series came from an essay in my first (and so far, only) Nero Wolfe Newsletter. The plan for 3 Good Reasons is to look at a story and list three reasons why it’s the ‘best’ Wolfe story. And I toss in one ‘bad’ reason why it’s not. And finish it off with some quotes.

So, I’m going to take a somewhat different tack from those who have come before me (I doubt I could have measured up, anyways) and pick out two elements that make this story one of Howard’s best accounts of the mighty-thewed Cimmerian. Then, throw a curveball from the Wolfe approach and highlight a few items worthy of note.

OUR STORY

Obviously, you need to read this story, but here’s a Cliff’s Notes version: Nabonidus, the Red Priest, is the real power in this unnamed Corinthian city. He gives a golden cask to Murilo, a young aristocrat. And inside the cask is a human ear (remind you of Sherlock Holmes? It should.). We learn a little later on that Murillo has been selling state secrets, and the ear is from a clerk he had dealings with. The jig is up!

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The Heroic Fantasy of Mike Sirota

The Heroic Fantasy of Mike Sirota

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Journey to Mesharra, Book 3 of the Ro-Lan series by Mike Sirota (Zebra Books, 1980). Artist uncredited

Mike Sirota (1946-) has written quite a lot of books in SF and Fantasy, including some Sword & Planet novels. He’s still writing and is currently working on a comedy/Sci-fi series.

I first encountered Sirota’s work in a book called Berbora, which I’d call Sword & Sorcery rather than S&P. Somewhat later, I found his five book Dannus series, so named after the main character. They are definitely S&P and are listed below.

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Crafting Sword & Planet: Swords of Talera and Other Tales by Charles Gramlich

Crafting Sword & Planet: Swords of Talera and Other Tales by Charles Gramlich

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Strange Worlds, edited by Jeff Doten, containing the Sword & Planet tale “God’s Dream” by Charles Gramlich (CreateSpace, September 26, 2011). Cover by Jeff Doten

In 1998, my first novel Swords of Talera ran as a four-part serial in Startling Science Stories. It won the “Reader’s Choice” award for each issue it appeared in. The pleasure of having the book first published that way was sweet — the same way that Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, and Robert E. Howard had much of their stuff published.

After I’d finished Swords of Talera in 1983, I’d started a sequel called Wings over Talera but only wrote the first two chapters. My grad school work was intensifying and it seemed silly to write a second book in a series when the first book hadn’t even been submitted to any publishers. After Swords sold, though, I immediately set to work on the sequel. It was published as a four-part serial in Alien Worlds: Beyond Space and Time, a sister mag to Startling Science Stories.

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The Lure of the Basilisk – 80’s Fantasy with a Cool Cover

The Lure of the Basilisk – 80’s Fantasy with a Cool Cover

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Dus_BasiliskI was recently talking online about how in the eighties and nineties we bought fantasy books because we liked the cover. And the pic I included was The Lure of the Basilisk, which kicked off the adventures of Garth the Overman. It’s been ten years since I wrote about that, back in the days of The Public life of Sherlock Holmes. So here’s a revisit of to a pretty cool fantasy series that you should check out, if you never have. 

The eighties was full of epic fantasy series’ by the likes of David Eddings, Raymond Feist, Stephen R. Donaldson, Terry Brooks and Katherine Kurtz, to name a few. While many remain giants in the history of the genre, Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote a largely forgotten series: The Lords of Dus.

Watt-Evans has written quite a bit of fantasy, science fiction and horror and is probably best known for his Ethshar series. Ethshar was created as a role-playing game world and he ended up writing many novels and short stories using the setting. The Misenchanted Sword is my favorite Ethshar novel.

Watt-Evans had flunked out of Princeton’s architectural school and had to wait a year before he could re-apply. He had heard (the possibly apocryphal story) that Larry Niven started his career by deciding to write for one year and if he sold something, continue on: if he didn’t, he’d give it up. Watt-Evans decided to do the same and wrote a slew of short stories, selling one.

He did go back to school, but he wrote a novel (The Cyborg and the Sorcerer) on a summer break and after two years of college, gave it up to make a living with the typewriter (as a writer, not a typewriter salesman).

Influenced by Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock and Lin Carter’s anthologies (Flashing Swords, anyone?), he was ready to spin a fantasy saga featuring a non-human (but less effete than a Melnibonian) hero. Thus, the race of overmen.

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The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part V: Lin Carter

The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part V: Lin Carter

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Lin Carter’s Under the Green Sun series (DAW Books)

I consider Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline to be the first generation of Sword & Planet authors. Probably most widely known among the second generation — whether rightly or wrongly — is Lin Carter. Carter was an enthusiastic fellow who loved all things fantasy, including S&P and Sword & Sorcery. He promoted the genres, edited many collections of fantasy stories, and was a tremendously prolific author himself.

I’ve read 41 books by him and still have about a dozen on my TBR shelves. And that’s NOT counting the Conan books he was associated with. He was everywhere when I was growing up and our small town library had more books by him than by ERB himself.

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The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part IV: Dray Prescot by Alan Burt Akers

The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part IV: Dray Prescot by Alan Burt Akers

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Dray Prescot #17-24, all from DAW: Captive Scorpio (1978), Golden Scorpio (1978),  A Life for Kregen (1979), A Sword for Kregen (1979), A Fortune for Kregen (1979), A Victory for Kregen (1980), Beasts of Antares (1980), and Rebel of Antares (1980). Covers by Josh Kirby (#17-18), Richard Hescox (#19-23), and Ken Kelly (#24)

Not only is the Dray Prescot series the longest running Sword & Planet series ever published in English, but it’s also consistently of a high quality. There are quite a few volumes that — for me—rival any of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Barsoom books. Certainly, these two series are my all-time favorites, and together make up the primary influence on my own Sword & Planet series, the five books of the Talera series by Charles Allen Gramlich (Gotta get those “three” names in there.) I’ve posted about the Talera books before, but back to Kenneth Bulmer (who wrote the Prescot series as ‘Alan Burt Akers’) and Dray Prescot now.

I’ve never been one to put a lot of emphasis on covers, but the Bladud books, all five compendiums containing the last fifteen novels, have the same cover image with just a change in the color of the dust jacket. This made me long for the original DAW publications where each vibrant cover was tied directly to the book it illustrated.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Kirby O’Donnell and The Bloodstained God (REH)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Kirby O’Donnell and The Bloodstained God (REH)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

 

It can’t be a Summer of Pulp without some Robert E. Howard now, can it? Heck no!!! The looong shadow cast by my buddy Dave Hardy, with his two terrific essays on El Borak, still prevents me from tackling ‘The Swift.’

However, I am comfortable continuing to blaze my own trail regarding the similar, but different, Kirby O’Donnell.

I wrote about “Gold from Tartary,” and “Swords of Shahrazar,” in prior summers. Which just leaves the third, long-unpublished, “The Trail of the Bloodstained God.” Now having tackled this one, I’m sure there’s a Steve Clarney post (“The Fire of Asshurbanipal”) somewhere down the road.

In my first two essays, I explained how the second O’Donnell story, “Swords of Shahrazar,” found print first, in the October, 1934 issue of Top-Notch magazine. It was a direct sequel to “Gold from Tartary,” which appeared four months later in the January, 1935 issue of Thrilling Adventures. It’s quite likely that many people did not read “Swords,” then “Gold” shortly thereafter. But it certainly would seem odd to do so.

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