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The Hero’s Struggle

The Hero’s Struggle

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The Swords of Lankhmar-smallConan the Barbarian. Elric of Melnibone. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Gilgamesh. Hercules. Hector of Troy.

These giants of heroic fantasy (and the mythology from whence it springs) strode across the landscape of my imagination as a young man. They were my guiding stars when I started to write my own stories. But what were they teaching me?

When I think about these heroes, one thing that comes through is their incredible lust for life. Even when they lapse into melancholy, they never stop striving, never stop fighting, and that struggle is the essence of life. Whether it’s Conan carving out a place for himself in the kingdoms of Hyborea, or Elric fighting to keep his fragile body alive with potions and sorcery, or Hector facing the dread Achilles to protect his home, these heroes confront the challenges of their ages.

Their struggles say a lot about humanity. How far would we go to protect our own? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? Is violence ever warranted?

So when it came time to create the heroes for my own stories, I didn’t set out to emulate these characters, but time and time again I noticed certain parallels. For instance, Caim (the main character of my Shadow Saga) has many of the physical traits of the Gray Mouser, but married to a personality more like Conan. Caim is direct in his sneakiness, deliberate in his dealings, and he possesses a code of honor that, although rather bleak and brutal to most people, elevates him above his peers.

Heroes often fight. They tend to love and mourn with superhuman passion. But first and foremost, they struggle. With their enemies, with their societies, with the gods, and oftentimes even with themselves. They struggle, and so must our contemporary heroes who wish to tread in their titan-sized footsteps.

Passive vs Active Heroes

Passive vs Active Heroes

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Ask any established actor, and s/he will always say something along the lines of, “it’s much more fun to play a villain than a hero.” It’s no wonder: villains tend to get the best lines (“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”), certainly their share of the trophy companions, have a higher standard of living, enjoy life more, and many go to their eventual demise laughing.

There’s another difference, though, that strikes at the very core of the hero/villain dynamic. The villains get to be pro-active. That means that traditional heroes are always re-acting.

It’s in the nature of heroes to simply sit around and wait to be needed. The most vivid example of that is in Batman Returns, when Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) is shown sitting alone in the dark until the bat signal calls to his alter ego. Superman can’t act until Lex Luthor unveils his nefarious plan. Philip Marlowe has to wait for a client to walk in the door.

Just chillin' wit my batz waiting for yur signal.
Just chillin’ wit my batz waiting for yur signal.

And this goes against one of the great Rules of Writing, which is to never let your hero be passive. But it’s in the very nature of heroes to be passive, to wait until the villain makes a move, to respond to a threat. After all, how do you act like a hero pro-actively?

Well…ask Conan.

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CONAN: “Caveman Battle Doom”

CONAN: “Caveman Battle Doom”

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Conan-SnailriderCLR
Cover to CONAN’s split release “Conan Vs. Slomatics” (2011)

What is the sound of Sword and Sorcery?

It probably sounds a lot like CONAN. This U.K.-based power trio gives a whole new meaning to the word heavy. But these guys aren’t hampered by “Cookie Monster” vocals or the demonic noise-worship that often plagues today’s heaviest acts.

CONAN have coined their own genre, calling themselves “caveman battle doom.” For hardcore fans, this is simply a new sub-category of the “Doom Rock” scene. For the rest of us, it’s an amusingly accurate description of CONAN’s unique sound.

As the band’s own bio puts it: “CONAN are as heavy as interplanetary thunder amplified through the roaring black hole anus of Azathoth.” TheObelisk.net christened them “Europe’s heaviest battle-sloths…” It doesn’t get much cooler than that.

After releasing an indie debut EP in 2010 entitled “Horseback Battle Hammer,” the trio signed to Burning World Records and released their critically acclaimed magnum opus, “Monnos.”

Both albums are perfect for headbanging, slow-grooving, couch-tripping, or simply cranking up loud enough to vibrate the walls of your apartment. And your skull. They are super sludgy brilliance in the vein of early BLACK SABBATH, KYUSS, MELVINS, and TOOL. Call it “stoner rock” if you will, but absolutely no drugs are necessary.

Fantasy and sword-and-sorcery themes are essential to CONAN’s lyrical cosmology, which makes perfect sense for a band named after Robert E. Howard’s famous barbarian. 

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“How Many Psychiatrists Does it Take to Change a Genre?” Karl Edward Wagner in Fantasy 55

“How Many Psychiatrists Does it Take to Change a Genre?” Karl Edward Wagner in Fantasy 55

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Fantasy Newsletter 55-smallI need to spend less time on eBay. A few weeks ago, I stumbled on a collector selling significant lots of vintage fanzines and critical journals from the 70s and 80s — things like Science Fiction Review, The Alien Critic, Fantasy Review, SF Collector, Fantasy, and others.

Hard-to-find-stuff, as I later told my wife Alice, trying to explain why the postman had delivered a 16-pound package and why we were out over two-hundred bucks.

So now I’m in the doghouse. But keeping me company are 87 beautiful magazines packed with news, reviews, artwork, and opinion on the state of fantasy three decades ago, so really, things aren’t so bad. That was probably the height of my book collecting, so there’s lots here that’s of interest. The first one I opened was Fantasy 55, from January 1983, a Locus-like genre news magazine edited by Robert A. Collins. I’d never even heard of Fantasy, so it’s a little humbling to discover it’s clearly a major magazine (which published over 60 issues, apparently). It’s professionally laid out and designed, with lots of art and photos.

Two things I notice right off the bat. First, the cover verges on pornography, with a nude woman sprawled on a bed, getting pretty worked up while some guy with horns drools saliva on her. Eeeugh. Man, the 80s. What can  I tell you.

(A lot of these fanzines feature naked women on the covers. Naked women piloting starships. Naked women battling monsters. Naked women in dungeons. This was the era when a lot of young women avoided conventions due to routine sexual harassment. Think there’s a connection?)

The second thing I notice is the fabulous line-up of contributors, including Fritz Leiber, Darrell Schweitzer, Mike Ashley, John Morressy, Somtow Sucharitkul, and many others. I still haven’t read a third of the articles, but the thing that really opened my eyes was Collins’s editorial, in which he quotes contributor Karl Edward Wagner’s thoughts on the expected fantasy boom following the release of Conan the Barbarian and the genesis of his Kane collection, Night Winds:

Last month… Wagner again attacked fantasy fans, writers, and publishers for their apparent inability to evolve intellectually and/or artistically, for constantly rewarming “the same simple plots and conflicts that were boring Robert Bloch back during Conan’s heyday in 1934.” Both writers and fans, he said, eventually “turn their backs on heroic fantasy,” leaving the field to a new crowd of adolescents. “One would hope for a new sophistication among the readers, and one may grow old hoping.”

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My Favorite Fantasy Movies

My Favorite Fantasy Movies

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conan-the-barbarian-poster2-smallI love a good fantasy movie, and love to goof on bad ones, too. Fantasy is a genre that didn’t always translate well to the big screen, until the recent advances in CGI technology allowed studios to capture creatures such as dragons and Balrogs in all their glory.

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

Classic Schwarzenegger. Although this adaptation departs from the style (and story) of Robert E. Howard’s books, it retains the grit and raw muscular power of Conan in a way that the newer incarnation (sorry, Jason Momoa) couldn’t begin to match.

James Earl Jones was a masterstroke of casting as the villainous wizard Thulsa Doom. This film contains some unforgettable scenes: Conan growing up pushing that big mill wheel, the witch who had sex with Conan and then tried to kill him, breaking into the Temple of Set, the Tree of Woe, and of course the awesomely bloody climax where Conan cuts his way through legions of fanatics to eventually take the head of his enemy.

Conan, you taught us the riddle of steel, and for that we thank you.

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Adventure in a Place of Unholy Shadows: A Review of Crypts and Things

Adventure in a Place of Unholy Shadows: A Review of Crypts and Things

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Screen Shot 2013-09-25 at 10.39.17 Back in the 70s, when I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), I spent a long time wanting a ruleset that would let me recreate the sort of sword and sorcery that I was reading back then.

I wanted to play a game that caught the atmosphere of Robert E Howard’s Conan, Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories. I wanted to adventure in a place of unholy shadows, where magic was scary and thrilling and men with swords sought lost treasures in glittering towers where old gods and dark secrets waited.

Clearly, D&D was not quite what I was looking for. The white box contained an unholy mishmash of Tolkien, bits of medieval history, and a weird variation of Vancian magic from the Dying Earth which, while awesomely powerful, was not very scary or, well, magical. Magic items were as common as if they came in cereal boxes. And what was with it with those cleric guys and the undead?

The setting of D&D did not look like any fantasy world I had read about, but it was clearly influenced by a number of them. There were thieves that might have been Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. There was a barbarian character class in an issue of White Dwarf that might, if you squinted, have resembled something like Conan.

But D&D did not quite hit the mark. There were also elves and halflings and dwarves and all manner of other things that did not exist in the S&S universes of my particular dreams. There were echoes of Howard and Leiber and Clark Ashton Smith, but they were smudged over with bits of Tolkien and a kind of high fantasy.

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Understanding Howard’s “The Tower of the Elephant”

Understanding Howard’s “The Tower of the Elephant”

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The Tower of the Elephant-smal

“This is just like Dungeons and Dragons, Daddy.”

It’s New Year’s Eve, 2012. Gamer Dad and I are having a fine old time, drinking beer and wallowing in geek culture, while our families are hanging out to see in 2013 together. We’ve played Red Box D&D in the afternoon with our boys – 7 & 9. Now, it’s storytime for the boys and, going with the theme, he and I are taking it in turns to read Robert E. Howard’s The Tower of the Elephant.

Both Dads jump in.

“No –” I begin. “Dungeons and Dragons –”

“– is like Conan!” completes Gamer Dad.

But the lad has a point. Here’s one of the more iconic Conan yarns and yet, on the face of it, it’s an episodic heist story; pretty much what you’d get if you wrote up a D&D session…

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War – What is it Good For? Violence in Fantasy Literature

War – What is it Good For? Violence in Fantasy Literature

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Swords and Ice Magic-smallI grew up on pulp fantasy, enthralled by the adventures of Conan, John Carter, Elric of Melnibone, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and others of that ilk.

They didn’t shirk from danger, whether it be breaking into a wizard’s lair to purloin a rare jewel, battling hordes of evil minions, or challenging the gods themselves. Violence — the bloody conflict between brawny people with big, pointy weapons — was their meat and mead.

And when it came time to unleash my inner voices and craft my own tales, I drew most heavily upon the works of those old masters. At first, I didn’t delve much into my own motivations for doing so. It was enough that I was writing stories that I enjoyed and that (eventually) others seemed to like as well.

But what was I doing? All this fictional bloodshed and the mountains of imaginary bodies piled up before the altar of reading entertainment — what was it good for? Is it wrong for me to perpetuate a style of literature where problems are so often solved with swords and arrows?

(Okay, I want to pause here and tell you that when I read back that last line, my initial reaction is, “Hell no! I’m doing a public service!” Back to the article.)

When I was planning Shadow’s Son, the first book in my Shadow Saga, the main character Caim was originally going to be a thief by profession. I even played with the idea of portraying him as a pacifist, a sort of anti-Conan. Yet, I eventually came to the conclusion that the story would be more satisfying to… well, to me, for starters… if I changed him to an assassin. Still roguish and anti-establishment, but with a much higher THAC0.

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Sea-Change

Sea-Change

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moldvay-basic1Fantasy literature and Dungeons & Dragons have a long history together. In his foreword to the original edition of the game (dated November 1, 1973), Gary Gygax specifically references several authors’ works, such as “Burroughs’ Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits,” “Howard’s Conan saga,” “the de Camp & Pratt fantasies,” and “Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries.” There are also – or, rather, were – references to Tolkien as well, but these were excised after the Professor’s estate objected (the excisions were not very thorough; even in later printings, one can still find occasional references to ents and balrogs, among other things). My own beloved “Blue Book” edition of D&D (edited by J. Eric Holmes) includes references not only to Tolkien, Howard, and Leiber, but also to Gardner F. Fox, creator of Alan Morgan, Kothar, and Kyrik, as well as to H.P. Lovecraft’s Great Old One, Cthulhu.

By now, Appendix N of the Dungeon Masters Guide is well known, both on this site and elsewhere. What many people do not know is that Gygax produced a “rough draft” of that appendix in issue number 4 of Dragon magazine (December 1976). Entitled “Fantasy/Swords & Sorcery: Recommended Reading,” its content is roughly the same as that in Appendix N. It’s primarily noteworthy for including Algernon Blackwood, though Gygax makes no reference to any titles he recommends from this great British writer of ghost tales. Another interesting aspect, at least from my perspective, is that, unlike Appendix N, which is quite clearly presented as a list of the books Gygax himself found “of particular inspiration” (to borrow his own phrase once more), this early version is presented as one of “recommended reading,” as if he were an instructor drawing up a list for an Introduction to Fantasy Literature course.

Fascinatingly enough, the 1981 edition of Dungeons & Dragons, edited by Tom Moldvay, includes an extensive “Inspirational Source Material” section that was drawn up, not by a university professor, but by a children’s librarian at the Lake Geneva Public Library. This librarian, Barbara Davis, is given a “special thanks” citation in the rulebook’s credits for “compiling part of our bibliography.”

Though it’s quite possible, even likely, that many of the titles included in the 1981 list were inspirational to Moldvay or to other members of the editorial team at TSR Hobbies, its presentation is much different than that of Appendix N. Whereas Gygax simply lists his favorite authors in alphabetical order, the later list is divided into several categories in an almost scholarly fashion. The three largest sections are “Fiction: Young Adult Fantasy,” “Non-Fiction: Young Adult,” and “Fiction: Adult Fantasy.” There are also sections for “Short Story Collections” and “Non-Fiction,” as well as a list of “some additional authors of fantasy fiction.”

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Who Took the Flowers Out of my Prose?

Who Took the Flowers Out of my Prose?

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Conan Red Nails-smallOver here in England, we have a shop called ‘Poundland,’ which is pretty much what it says on the tin: a shop where everything costs a single pound, and for a boy of about ten, it was a dream come true. All the flimsy toys, dodgy sweets and budget DVDs my little mind could conjure — there was a book section as well, but it mostly consisted of either absolute rubbish or books about Simon Cowell.

But one particular day, when I was about ten, I happened to spot a diamond hidden amongst the rubbish: an anthology of stories by Robert E Howard. I’d never heard of him at the time, but the book had Conan in the title.

I had heard of Conan. My brief experience with the two movies told me I liked big swords, big monsters, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as much as the next ten-year-old, so I decided to buy it. On the train ride home, I found myself introduced to a new, vivid, and lively world, one of blood and savagery, of death and shadow, of lurking devils and skulking gods. I was exposed to a land of witchcraft, sorcerers, devils and demons, nations torn apart by brooding crusaders kings and swashbuckling puritans. It was the best train ride of my life.

“That’s all well and good, Connor,” you might say, “but what’s this got to do with prose?” Show a little patience; I’m getting to that.

What enchanted me most throughout these adventures was the prose; it just had its own nature and flavor, its own distinguished way of presenting things. I’d never encountered anything like it before; it was poetic, haunting, powerful. It lent every blow a sort of impact, made every monster tangible. Even the heroes — too powerful, too fast, too smart to ever be real — it made them come alive.

And in fantasy, where a key aspect is immersion, this is an impressive achievement. I touched upon this not too long ago with my Fantasy Face-off article; noting that prose dictates the way we see the world on the page and, therefore, how vivid and real it is. Prose overshadows flaws when it’s successful and highlights them when it’s not.

But what I didn’t mention was how prose can amplify the tone of the book. Fritz Leiber’s prose is rather light, reflecting the comic, satirical feel of his books. Howard’s is fast, rip-roaring and powerful, much like the pacing of his books and the characters within them. Tolkien’s prose, though it can sometimes be lacking, feels reminiscent of a fairy tale.

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