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Author: Charles Gramlich

A Halloween Reading List

A Halloween Reading List


Ace Double #42900: Tower of the Medusa by Lin Carter, and Kar Kaballa by
George H. Smith (Ace Books, November 1969). Cover art by Jeff Jones and John Schoenherr

I’m working on a Halloween entry for the Swords & Planet League, and on a couple of posts about Jack Vance. In the meantime, I thought I’d run a few covers of books I’ve got in the house here but haven’t actually read yet.

First up are three doubles featuring Lin Carter, two from Belmont and one from Ace. The Tower of Medusa is from Ace, with the backing book being Kar Kaballa by George H. Smith. Some reviews call it S&P but a quick scan suggests more Space Opera to me. After I read it, if it’s S&P, I’ll discuss it further. Cover artist is listed as Kelly Freas but I saw someone claim it has a signature reading “Jones” and that it was Jeffrey Jones. This does not look like a Jones to me and I can’t find any signature on my book.

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The Heroic Fantasy of C.L. Moore

The Heroic Fantasy of C.L. Moore

Jirel of Joiry (Ace Books, November 1982). Cover by Stephen Hickman

While Edmond Hamilton introduced me to Space Opera, his wife, Leigh Brackett, and another woman writer, Catherine Lucille Moore (1911 – 1987), showed me the kind of emotional power these stories could wield. Moore was an influence on Brackett, and both of these writers wrote beautiful and poetic prose, which is something I always look for in the books I take home with me, although it’s not something I often find. (Robert E. Howard was another writer who could create that kind of prose, and both Moore and Brackett acknowledged him as an influence.)

Moore is known today for two genres that she did stellar work in. Neither of those is Sword and Planet, but one of them is Sword & Sorcery. Her Jirel of Joiry stories are exotic and luminescent. Jirel is one of the earliest flame-tressed female warriors in fantasy fiction. Depending on how far afield I eventually travel with this series, we may well come back to Jirel.

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The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part II

The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part II


The Star Kings by Edmond Hamilton (Paperback Library, November 1970). Cover artist unknown

See Part I of The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton here.

Edmond Hamilton’s Kaldar tales seem very much an homage to ERB’s Barsoom stories. An Earthman adventurer named Stuart Merrick is sent to Kaldar by a group of scientists. He finds himself a princess to love and becomes that world’s greatest warrior, and at the end of the first tale is drawn back toEearth by those same scientists. When asked what he found, he says, “My world.”

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The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part I

The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part I


Crashing Suns by Edmond Hamilton (Ace Books, 1965). Cover by Ed Valigursky

Edmond Hamilton, who I’ve mentioned here before as Leigh Brackett’s husband, wrote mostly Science fiction and I consider him one of the first generation of Space Opera writers. And one of the best of the bunch. You might wonder what Space Opera is and how it differs from Sword & Planet fiction, as well as from more mainstream SF. Well, let me explain.

Space Opera was coined to be used pejoratively, to denigrate a certain type of SF in which action and drama were king. This type of story supposedly only used the trappings of SF to tell an adventure tale rather than engaging with futuristic ideas. And the trappings included such things as ray guns, faster-than-light travel, and space battles.

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Space Opera vs Sword & Planet: Flash Gordon

Space Opera vs Sword & Planet: Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon is sometimes labeled Sword & Planet fiction. It meets quite a few of the characteristics. It has an Earthman, Flash, ending up on a strange world where he engages in battles with strange monsters and weird humanoid aliens, including winged men, bird riders, lion men, and others. However, it fails the S&P test on one major feature, the primary weapon used. When Flash is first challenged, if at all possible, he reaches for a ray gun rather than a sword.

John Carter, Dray Prescot, Jandar of Callisto, and Ruenn Maclang of Talera reach for a sword. For this reason, since “sword” is the very first word in Sword & Planet, I tend to classify the Flash Gordon stories as Space Opera and put them in a category of S&P adjacent. It’s a matter of taste, of course. I tend to be a splitter rather than a lumper, which means I tend to separate genres along narrower lines than some other folks. The images I’ve posted today, downloaded as public domain or as stills from the movie, illustrate this feature of the Flash stories.

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The Sword & Planet of Leigh Brackett

The Sword & Planet of Leigh Brackett


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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Sword & Planet from DMR Books: Henry Kuttner and Howie K. Bentley

Sword & Planet from DMR Books: Henry Kuttner and Howie K. Bentley


Startling Stories, May 1947; and Lands of the Earthquake by Henry Kuttner
(DMR Books, June 2017). Cover art by Earle Bergey and Logon Saton

Lands of the Earthquake/Under a Dim Blue Sun is a “Double” novel, in the tradition of the old Ace Doubles. It contains a long novella by Henry Kuttner called Lands of the Earthquake, and a shorter novella by Howie K. Bentley called Under a Dim Blue Sun. Both fit the Sword & Planet mold (S&P).

The publisher here is DMR books, and it’s printed in the old paperback size that I like. You can find DMR Books online or on Amazon. The cover art on the Kuttner piece is Logon Saton.

The Kuttner piece was first published in 1947 in Startling Stories but has not been reprinted until now. It involves a modern Earthman, William Boyce, being transported to a fantasy land where time stands still but physical space moves. This temporarily brings different lands close enough to each other to interact.

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The Heroic Fantasy of Mike Sirota

The Heroic Fantasy of Mike Sirota


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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Manly Wade Wellman, Part II: Hok the Mighty

Manly Wade Wellman, Part II: Hok the Mighty


Planet Stories #30: Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, by
Manly Wade Wellman (Paizo Publishing, March 2011). Cover by Kieran Yanner

Wellman created his character Hok the Mighty in 1939 and wrote several follow up stories with the character. In 2011, Planet Stories released a “complete” Hok the Mighty collection called Battle in the Dawn, with a cover by Kieran Yanner. The character as Yanner imagined it is shown here and makes me think of Brak the Barbarian.

Despite that image, the stories are not sword & sorcery but what I call “Caveman” fiction. Hok is a Cro-Magnon, an early Homo sapiens. He is wandering north in search of new hunting grounds and comes into contact with the Neanderthals (beast-men) living there. The result is a war between true humans and the sub humans, and Hok leads the way.

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The Sword and Planet of Manly Wade Wellman

The Sword and Planet of Manly Wade Wellman

Sojarr of Titan (Crestwood Publishing Co, 1949). Cover by Herman Vestal

One of the more unusual items in my Sword & Planet collection is Sojarr of Titan, written by Manly Wade Wellman (1903 – 1986) and published by Crestwood Publishing Company. This is a first edition, I believe, printed in 1949. The story originally appeared in the March 1941 issue of Startling Stories, published by Better Publishing, Inc.

The inside cover of the paperback edition bears a gold tag reading “Ackerman Agency,” with an address. This would be Forest J. Ackerman, of course, though whether Forry actually handled this copy I couldn’t know. There’s also the handwritten list of France, Belgium, Holland, Spain, with a red X across them. Don’t know what that means.

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