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Author: Charles Gramlich

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

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

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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

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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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Manly Wade Wellman, Part II: Hok the Mighty

Manly Wade Wellman, Part II: Hok the Mighty

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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

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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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The Sword and Planet of Del DowDell

The Sword and Planet of Del DowDell

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Warlord of Ghandor by Del DowDell (DAW, August 1977). Cover by Don Maitz

The genre of Sword & Planet fiction means a lot to me. I read it; I write it; I review it. And sometimes I find a book in the genre I don’t much care for. I have to say so when that happens, and give my reasons. But I always stress that this is my opinion, and I can be influenced by my mood going into a book. I also know how hard it is to write a book so I have to give credit to anyone who finishes one and gets it published.

That brings me to Del DowDell. Somewhere in the 1980s I stumbled on a DowDell book called Warlord of Ghandor. The cover, by Don Maitz, suggested a Sword & Planet kind of tale, and it was published by DAW, which published the Prescot books I loved.

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Planet Stories: Sojan the Swordsman/Under the Warrior Star by Michael Moorcock and Joe R. Lansdale

Planet Stories: Sojan the Swordsman/Under the Warrior Star by Michael Moorcock and Joe R. Lansdale

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Planet Stories #29: Sojan the Swordsman by Michael Moorcock/ Under the Warrior Star
by Joe R. Landsale (Paizo Publishing, October 5, 2010). Cover by Kieran Yanner

When I saw this book, I immediately had to have it. A “Planet Stories Double Feature!” Planet Stories published quite a bit of Sword & Planet fiction back in the day, and of all the pulps, if I could have had a subscription to just one it probably would have been that one.

This “Planet Stories,” however, is a modern effort from Paizo Publishing that started out reprinting old tales from the original magazine, including some great stuff by Leigh Brackett.

This particular work contains two novellas, “Sojan the Swordsman” from Michael Moorcock, and “Under the Warrior Star” by Joe Lansdale. “Sojan” reprints a bunch of old Sojan tales from Michael Moorcock, which were linked together to make something of a longer tale. It was printed first in the collection, probably because he’s the better known of the two authors, but I think they should have done the Lansdale piece first. It’s considerably better.

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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 Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part VI: Charles Nuetzel

The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part VI: Charles Nuetzel

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Warriors of Noomas (Powell, May 1969). Cover by Albert Nuetzel

Back when the internet was young and I was in a group called REHupa, The Robert E. Howard United Press Association, I heard about Charles Nuetzel, who’d written some Howard-like and Burroughs-like tales.

I’d stumbled on his book called Warriors of Noomas. After a search on the net, I found an email address and sent one flying into the void. I wasn’t sure he was even alive, but he answered and we became frequent correspondents and friends. He too was a huge fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs and quite a bit of his writing was ERB inspired. He’d become a pulp writer and book packager for Powell Publications.

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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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