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Taking in the Trash: Paul Cantor’s Pop Culture Trilogy

Taking in the Trash: Paul Cantor’s Pop Culture Trilogy

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Having just finished a very lively and thought-provoking book, I did something I almost never do — I decided to write the author a fan letter. Naturally, I hopped on Google to get his contact information, only to discover that he died almost three years ago, in February of 2022. Why do these things always happen to me?

The book I just finished, Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream: Con Men, Gangsters, Drug Lords, and Zombies was published in 2019, and is the third book in a loose cultural criticism trilogy written by Paul A. Cantor, a well-known Shakespearian scholar (Shakespeare and Rome: Republic and Empire) who was for many years a professor of English at the University of Virginia. The other volumes in the “trilogy” are Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization (2001) and The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV (2012).

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A Very Fine YA Novel: Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

A Very Fine YA Novel: Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

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Impossible Creatures (Knopf Books for Young Readers, September 10, 2024). Cover by Ashley Mackenzie

Katherine Rundell is a British writer who has been publishing YA novels for some time now, though I was unaware of her. Last year she published the first novel of a prospective series in the UK: Impossible Creatures. This became a big hit, and has now been published in the US. The book is quite good, fun to read, clever, also serious and quite moving, with real consequences to the characters.

There are two protagonists, Christopher Forester and Mal Arvorian. They are children of roughly the same age (early adolescence or just on the cusp of it, I think … somewhere between 10 and 13, I suppose.) Christopher lives in London, but has been sent to Scotland to stay with his grandfather, while his father is away on business. (His mother is dead.) Mal lives in an island in the Archipelago, with her great aunt. (Her parents are dead. Dead or absent parents, of course, being one of the most common situations in YA novels.) Both Christopher and Mal are special, of course. Animals of all sorts are attracted to Christopher, to an unusual degree. And Mal — Mal can fly (with the help of a magic cape.)

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Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part III: From Zelazny to Infinity

Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part III: From Zelazny to Infinity

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Pawn to Infinity, edited by Fred Saberhagen with Joan Saberhagen (Ace Books,
June 1982), and Unicorn Variations by Roger Zelazny (Timescape Books,
February 1984). Cover artists: unknown, and Gerry Daly

Pawn to Infinity: Ace Books, 1982, cover artist unknown, though this is a very cool cover. Although not Sword & Planet specifically, this is definitely the greatest collection of fantasy and SF stories to involve chess or a chess like game ever published.

There are many great stories in here, and at least two masterpieces: “The Immortal Game” by Poul Anderson, and “Unicorn Variation” by Roger Zelazny. There are other fine stories by Fritz Leiber, Fred Saberhagen (who also edited the collection) and George R. R. Martin. There’s a great old Ambrose Bierce story in it called “Moxon’s Master.”

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Romancing the Planet: The 23rd Hero by Rebecca Anne Nguyen

Romancing the Planet: The 23rd Hero by Rebecca Anne Nguyen

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The 23rd Hero (Castle Bridge Media, August 13, 2024)

Hybrids are hardly unknown in the long history of fantasy and science fiction literature. It could easily be argued that the genre itself is a hybrid. In the case of Rebecca Anne Nguyen’s The 23rd Hero, this mixing of literary media is an essential element, baked in from the ground up.

The story begins by wearing its dystopian stripes firmly on its sleeve. The characters we meet in near-future Vancouver, including our hero, Sloane Burrows, live in a world of ecological collapse. Outdoors, everyone wears a filtration mask, and the last working farm in Canada closed just months before when the last of its livestock died from drinking tainted water. The handbaskets of hell, if I may mix a metaphor, have most definitely come home to roost.

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Besting the Beast and Other Fantasy Tales: Scott Forbes Crawford’s Weirdly Accessible Adventure

Besting the Beast and Other Fantasy Tales: Scott Forbes Crawford’s Weirdly Accessible Adventure

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Besting the Beast by Scott Forbes Crawford
(2024, Kindle); Cover art by Ben Greaves

Besting the Beast is Grimm-like tales for Grimdark readers

Fantasy readers often seek escapism and encounters with the unknown, but those adventures can become too weird to be accessible. Shorter forms help. Incorporating some grounding in history or reality helps too. One of the most accessible styles is the fairy tale, and Scott Forbes Crawford delivers five remarkable fun, and easy-to-read, adventures bridging the short story and fairy tale form in Besting the Beast (Aug 2024). All are rooted in Asian history/myth and feature relatable human protagonists to lead the way.

The cover art by Ben Greaves is appropriately derived from “Recovering the Stolen Jewel from the Palace of the Dragon King” (1853) by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861). Don’t let the friendly style fool you. The beasts herein are pleasantly weird and gory. Excerpts from all the stories are below so you can get a flavor of the horrific creatures and antagonists you’ll experience. Sword & Sorcery and Grimdark fiction fans will enjoy these (indeed, Besting the Beast is Grimm-like fairy tales for Grimdark readers).

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A Land Two Stars to the Left of Middle-Earth: Breath Warmth & Dream by Zig Zag Claybourne

A Land Two Stars to the Left of Middle-Earth: Breath Warmth & Dream by Zig Zag Claybourne

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Breath, Warmth, and Dream (Obsidian Sky Books, May 17, 2024). Cover uncredited

In the land of Eurola, an ancient evil preyed on the people of Waterfall. Then along came Khumalo, Amnandi, and Bog – a mother daughter pair of witches and their warrior companion – to set things right. Plotwise, it’s damn near a western. If someone were to tell you that this was the whole story of Breath Warmth & Dream, that someone would be a thief. They tried to give you a penny while palming the mountain of gold.

It starts with the characters. Read Breath Warmth & Dream and your understanding of the word “witch” will be forever changed. Mother Khumalo and her daughter Amnandi are the kinds of people you want to grow up to be, even if growing up means becoming a child again. They aren’t perfect by any means because that would be boring and Zig Zag simply doesn’t do boring. It’s an imperfect and dangerous world and they make decisions without the foresight of plot armor.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Bob’s Books – Shelfie #11 (Dashiell Hammett)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Bob’s Books – Shelfie #11 (Dashiell Hammett)

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It’s a new shelfie and we’re up to number eleven. And this one is my Dashiell Hammett collection. His face is the first one on my Hardboiled Mt. Rushmore. So, he’s got a solid shelf in my Hardboiled collection.

William T. Nolan’s bio on the far left has some good info, but he’s a bit of a hack. He doesn’t miss an opportunity to run down Carroll John Daly to make Hammett look better. It’s juvenile, and Hammett doesn’t need the help. Reminds me of L. Sprague deCamp putting down Robert E. Howard to elevate his own Conan stuff.

Diane Johnson’s’ biography was written with Lillian Hellman’s permission (Hammett’s long-time mistress/girlfriend controlled his Estate). It’s pretty clear Hellman had approval authority, and it’s not the most objective book.

Richard Layman may be THE authority on Hammett, and his book Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade is a mish-mash of stuff related to Hammett and that book. Fun read for fans of The Black Bird.

I’m a big Continental Op fan, and Otto Penzler’s Big Book series has all the stories, plus some very good essays for each of the editors Hammett wrote them for. These are the original Black Mask versions. It includes the two serialized novels, and is a good book for Op fans.

My favorite PI book, and my favorite PI novel: The Maltese Falcon. This version has some cool black and white photos related to the novel. I wrote an essay on the book and the three movie versions that is pretty good.

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Enter the Prince of Darkness:Dracula by Bram Stoker

Enter the Prince of Darkness:Dracula by Bram Stoker

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“Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!”

Dracula to Jonathan Harker

I’ve heard tell my generation had nightmares about nuclear war, worried someone was going to press the big red button and trigger the annihilation of the world.

Not me. I was scared of vampires.

Heck, some nights I didn’t even have nightmares because I was too scared to sleep, convinced they were hiding behind the mottled sycamore trees that lined my block. I’m not sure where it came from. Probably from watching The Night Stalker TV movie (1972, dir. John Llewellyn Moxley) in which vampire Janos Skorzeny ravages sleazy seventies Las Vegas. It introduced the world to monster-hunter, Carl Kolchak and I saw it when I was seven or eight (thanks, Mom!). That fear disappeared quickly enough, but I was left with a taste for vampire stories.

I must have read some vampire stories in the various horror anthologies I bought regularly, though none spring to mind. I saw tons of movies and read stacks of horror comics featuring the bloodsucking fiends. It was two novels, though, that cemented my taste for the Central European monsters: Salem’s Lot (1975, Stephen King) and They Thirst (1981, Robert McCammon). They’re both big books, packed with characters and inventive takes on the idea of a master vampire trying to take over somewhere, a misbegotten Maine town in the first book and all of Los Angeles in the second.

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G.W. Thomas on Science Fiction of the 30s by Damon Knight

G.W. Thomas on Science Fiction of the 30s by Damon Knight

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Conan the Barbarian: Archie Style! From Everything Archie
#111 (May 1984). Art by Stan Goldberg and Larry Lapick.

G.W. Thomas has gradually become my favorite genre blogger. Not just because of his constant stream of content — he posts every two days at Dark Worlds Quarterly, and has been doing so for nearly a decade — but because of his endlessly zany topics. In the past few months he’s covered Haunted Houses in 50s comics, the Top Ten Ghostbreakers from Weird Tales, Werewolves of EC Comics, Space Heroes of the Golden Age, Fearless Vampire Killers of the pulps, Top Ten Fantasy Fight Scenes from 1980-1985 sword & sorcery flicks, Plant Monsters, Conan in Archie Comics, and so, so much more. For pulp and comic enthusiasts of a Certain Age, G.W. has tapped a nostalgic mother lode.

He also delves pretty deep into more serious topics of real interest, like that time he wrote a one-sentence review of every story in Damon Knight’s classic anthology Science Fiction of the 30s, complete with the original pulp illustrations.

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Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part II: Dray Prescot and Gor

Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part II: Dray Prescot and Gor

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Dray Prescot 20: A Sword for Kregen (DAW, August 1979) and Players of Gor
(DAW Books, March 1984). Covers by Richard Hescox and Ken Kelly

My second exposure to Sword & Planet chess came in one of my favorite Sword & Planet books, which I’ve mentioned in this series already a couple of times. This was A Sword for Kregen, by Alan Burt Akers (aka Ken Bulmer). In this book, Dray Prescot, our earthman hero, becomes a living Jikaida piece in a battle to the death.

Jikaida is war game similar to chess, although considerably more complicated. There are several different variations played across the world of Kregen. It’s usually played on a board of much more than 100 squares of either black and white or blue and yellow. There are typically 36 pieces to a side, arranged in three ranks. I never tried to play Jikaida, though the rules are available. Here’s a link to an online description of the game.

John Norman also introduced an S&P version of chess in his Gor series. He called it Kaissa, which is clearly a nod to the Goddess of chess — Caissa — who first appeared in a 1527 poem by Hieronymus Vida telling the story of a chess game between the Gods Apollo and Mercury.

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