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I spent a large chunk of the evenings this weekend watching two films in 70 mm prints on the large screens of grand old Los Angeles cinemas. The timing was right for the prodigious L.A. revival screening community to drag out the mega-sized celluloid for enjoyment in Gargantua-Vision: it was Oscar weekend and everybody was talking and joking about Avatar, even if they knew Hurt Locker was going to win Best Picture. Which it did. (I think District 9 should have won, but didn’t delude myself for a moment that this would happen. But Jeff Bridges, huh? Pretty cool. Kevin Flynn has an Oscar.)

The term “game changer” was kicked around a lot regarding Avatar when it first premiered. Then a massive backlash set in even as the movie steamrollered box office records toward a $750 million domestic gross. Avatar most certainly is a game changer as far as 3D is concerned; we’re going to drown in the format for the next two years, and the huge opening of Alice in Wonderland, which was rigged for 3D in post-production, will only prolong this. But Avatar as a big-screen visceral experience is not so much the New Reality as it is a Throwback to the widescreen explosion of the 1950s that carried into the 1960s. Plenty of rotten films got spectacular treatment in Cinemascope, Vista Vision, Technirama, Todd-AO, Super Panavision 70, etc. Plenty of very good films as well. And handful of masterpieces that still define “pure cinema,” the art form of the enormous moving image.

I watched two of those ‘60s classics this weekend, both shot in Super Panavision 70, a competitor to the Todd-AO 70 mm process. The first movie was at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, and the second at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, two blocks from the Kodak Theater where the Oscars were to be held in less than twenty-four hours. (And let me tell you, parking and even crossing the street was insane, even for Hollywood and Highland.) Both theaters run under the aegis of the American Cinematheque, a non-profit organization promoting the art of film. I’d seen both movies before, and one previously in a 70 mm screening. But at a time when I was already a’weary of Oscar 2010 talk, I wanted to immerse myself in some awesome hugeness of the 1960s. I wanted to ride through the Arabian sads to attack Aqaba, and travel to Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.

You can probably guess now which movies I saw.

I’ll start with the second movie I saw first, since it’s not as personally important to me, although this was the first time I had watched it in a theater.

When people quip that “They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” I’m certain they’re talking about Lawrence of Arabia. They can’t mean anything else. This film is the epitome of that old saw.

I had never seen Lawrence of Arabia in a theater before, which makes me wonder if I can say that I’d seen Lawrence of Arabia at all. I first watched it in the ‘80s, cropped on TV, and wondered why anybody thought it was a big deal. I saw a widescreen laserdisc of the 1989 restoration, and that improved my appraisal, but I still didn’t get why people like Martin Scorsese would seemingly throw themselves on a scimitar in the cause of this movie.

I get it now. Astonishing film. Television, even widescreen ones, simply murder this movie.

Swords and guns in the desert . . . even if Lawrence of Arabia was mere spectacle about the Arab revolt in World War I with no interesting characterization, great performances, or genius scripting, it would still grab at the imagination for its panorama of the desert and charging camels and horses. The long pan of the Arab tribes smashing into Aqaba, the slow rise of the sun over the knife edge of the sands, Omar Sharif gradually emerging from the waves of heat, the single-take destruction of the al-Hejaz railway—all visual marvels. But there were many other widescreen spectacles of the same scope that haven’t survived as well. Lawrence of Arabia has the “everything else” to go with looking great.

Lawrence of Arabia was a smash hit in 1962, and picked up the Oscar for Best Picture. But star Peter O’Toole was bizarrely snubbed in favor of Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird. I like Gregory Peck in that picture, but now that I’ve seen Lawrence in all its Super Panavision “oh wow” glory, I can’t understand how O’Toole got passed over.

That is what really struck me about seeing David Lean’s telling of T. E. Lawrence’s involvement in the revolt: the performance of Peter O’Toole. Given an enormous screen, the actor’s embodiment of this complex figure is spellbinding. The tics, the silences, the stares, the grandiose gestures, the body language. None of this came through to me before like it did when O’Toole loomed over me on a sixty-foot screen. When Lawrence announces “Nothing is written” as he rides back from the remarkable rescue of Gasim from the Anvil of the Sun, I felt a shudder like nothing the movie had ever given me before. When the broken Lawrence begs General Allenby “for a job any man can do,” I felt devastated to see this man who had shoved himself to godlike heights brought down to a quivering mess. O’Toole’s T. E. Lawrence finally spoke to me . . . the therefore, the film did as well.

Seeing Lawrence of Arabia at the Egyptian, a theater built in 1922 in full Middle Eastern chic, underneath a proscenium of scarabs and serpents and a sunburst of Ra, added an tangible extra dimension to the film that I could never get from 3D.

And the night before I saw Lawrence of Arabia. . . .

I don’t have an official “favorite movie.” I realized about a decade ago that trying to shoehorn a particular film into this spot wouldn’t achieve anything; there are too many that I love, on some days I love one more than another, and it constantly shifts depending on my mood. If I had to narrow down a short list to force a choice, 2001: A Space Odyssey would be one of the obvious and immediate candidate on it. In fact, it would be the earliest film from my life to enter this hypothetical list. I first saw the movie when I was eight years old when it showed on cable. Z Channel, I believe. I didn’t understand anything of what was happening, but I knew I loved it. And this was on a conventional-sized TV, in mono, and cropped. Think of how my opinion grew as I saw it in better formats and my mind matured.

I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in a theater for the first time in the late ‘90s. It was a 70 mm print shown at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, in the days when the dome stood alone in a parking lot on Sunset Blvd. like a great alien intelligence had dropped an enormous golf ball that imbedded itself halfway into the asphalt. Now the dome is part of a large complex called the Arclight, but at least it remains preserved (it was almost demolished—evil! evil!). That screening is still, to this day, my favorite experience in a movie theater. I already loved the film, but this was epiphany. This was, as the original posters proclaimed, “The Ultimate Trip.” And it required no illegal substances to make it, just the price of a ticket.

I’m not going to detour into my interpretation of 2001, which would require a separate blog post all on its own and would be primarily an exercise in self-entertainment as there is no one single way to interpret the film. I’ll step away from analysis of the film’s panorama of human history and its relationship to technology and simply say that no other film gives me the same immersive experience, the same feeling of complete cinema, as 2001: A Space Odyssey. In grosser terms: I love this film so goddamn much it’s far beyond rational thinking. Any time, anywhere, if you asked me, “Would you like to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey?” I would grab an animal bone and smash in your skull, which is my fannish way of saying, “Yes!”

People who love the movie as much as I do—and they surrounded me on Friday night—know exactly what I’m talking about: there’s a rhythm to this primarily visual film, a tonality, that is hypnotic. Even the spoken lines, which are often considered “bland” and “wooden,” are completely perfect for us. I think the dialogue is brilliant. It’s simple, ordinary, bureaucratic, and 100% the right material for the movie, and thus a joy to hear. And the cast is ideally suited to their lines. Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood? Most believable astronauts in history. Douglas Rain? Nine hours in a recording studio and he became the most famous voiceover in history. Daniel Richter? No better ape, ever. William Sylvester? Now there’s a genuine space-age pencil pusher if I ever saw one.

But the visuals are the meat and the bones of the film, and the visual effects are still “how the hell did they do that?” awe-inspiring today. It isn’t merely that the effects were executed with such realistic precision so much as the way they are orchestrated on the screen into complete movements like sections of an opera, a ballet, or an abstract dance performance. On 70 mm, the Stargate sequence will turn your head inside out, even if you have no clue in the multiverse what is going on. My Dad is the proof of this. He loves this film, and when he first saw it with me on the big screen in the 1990s, he turned to me afterwards and said, “That was amazing.” I asked: “Do you understand it?” He smiled and said, “Not one bit.”

You’ve probably guessed that I enjoyed my second 70 mm viewing of the film. Even if the print had some scratches and damage on it.

But I loved 2001 long before I ever saw it in its proper format. I adored the film on VHS, and on a 16 mm projection in college. I can’t say the same about Lawrence of Arabia, which I didn’t truly grasp as a masterpiece until Saturday night. What is it about 2001 that transcends even an awful format that should eviscerate it? Is it the grandness of its non-verbal ideas that provoke thought even if the image is far from grand? Or is it that the film’s uniqueness and controversy (yes, some very intelligent folks really can’t stand the movie) make it stand out no matter how it is presented?

I think it comes down to this:

Lawrence of Arabia: “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

2001: A Space Odyssey: “Even when they made ‘em like this, this didn’t make ‘em like this.”

“Dave, this blog post can serve no purpose any more. Good bye.”

But the Vietnam connection wasn’t what initially attracted me to this novel. Instead, it was the inclusion of Juma, a Kushite who is a fellow recruit with Conan in the Turanian army.

It should be noted that Juma is not a Robert E. Howard-created character. The Kushite was the product of the imaginations of L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter.  Juma first appeared in “The City of Skulls,” a de Camp-Carter story in Lancer Books’ Conan.  Conan and Juma bond because they are both outsiders: physically powerful barbarians at odds with, yet attracted to, the opulent civilization they serve with their swords.  Although Conan is a white man from the northern land of Cimmeria and Juma a black man from the tropics of Kush, that difference in background is of no consequence to their friendship.

Juma also appears in the de Camp-Carter novel Conan the Buccaneer.  After years of separation, the friends are reunited, with Conan now a pirate and Juma king of a burgeoning tribal nation.  Juma helps Conan in a quest for an artifact called the Cobra Crown.  But the Kushite’s reappearance is just one of many incidents in the novel.

In Conan the Hero, however, Juma is one of the main characters, as the action in the novel occurs during the two barbarians’ stint in the Turanian military.  They become enmeshed in multiple skeins of political and sorcerous intrigue,  with several sub-plots reflecting Carpenter’s Vietnam motif.

The stand-in country for Vietnam is a tropical land called Venjipur.  The distant empire of Turan seeks to impose its rule on the equivalent of Southeast Asia; the Venji are not amenable.  Under their leader, a wizard named Mojurna, a group of insurgents called the Hwong make life difficult for the occupying force.

Reviewer “raif10″ accuses Carpenter of loading Conan the Hero with “every Vietnam cliche in the book.”  Well, one reviewer’s “cliche” is another reviewer’s “trope.”  All I’ll say is that the Vietnam references are far from subtle, beginning with Venjipur’s endless acres of rice paddies.

The Red Garrottes are an unflattering analogue to the Green Berets.  Elephants take the place of tanks.  Like the Viet Cong, the Hwong blend seamlessly with the local peasant population.  The Americans called the Viet Cong “gooks”; the Turanians refer to the Hwong as “monkeys.”  A drug trade undermines the Turanian forces.  The Turanian House of Seers, a sorcerous counterpart to the Pentagon and Defense Department, devises elaborate spells that fail to function as planned.  Political intrigue abounds in the court of Emperor Yildiz in Aghrapur as an anti-war movement gains momentum …

Conan and Juma

So, where do Conan and Juma  fit in this maelstrom of machinations? It seems Yildiz has gotten the notion that he can boost public acceptance of the Venji War by extolling a heroic figure who would embody the valor of all Turanian troops fighting in a far-off land.  Even though Conan is a foreigner, and only 19 years old, Yildiz picks the young warrior because of his proven prowess on the jungle battleground.

But other Turanians, in both the capital and Venjipur, aren’t all that happy with the Emperor’s plan.  So Conan, with Juma watching his back, must beware not only the Hwong, but also some of his fellow troops, including certain officers who are more jealous than zealous.

The storyline alternates between Turan and Venjipur.  In one strange sequence, Conan, suffering from a serious leg wound, is trapped in the palace of Phang Loon, the Warlord of Venjipur.  In a drugged daze, Conan apparently sees Juma lying dead from torture; a Turanian friend named Babrak hopelessly addicted to the black lotus; and his Venji love interest Sariya held captive and crazed with abject fear.

With the aid of an elephant, Conan escapes Phang Loon’s grasp.  In the next chapter, we see that Juma, Babrak and Sariya are alive and well even as Conan recovers from the effects of his wound and the drugs, which must have been a Hyborian-age equivalent of LSD and magic mushrooms.

Therefore, what Conan saw in Phang Loon’s palace had to have been a series of hallucinations — the mother of bad trips.  But neither Conan nor his friends make any reference to his belief that they were dead and captured, and the reader is left to cling to unconfirmed assumptions.

Venjipur-nam rice paddy

Ultimately, Conan and Juma end up in Aghrapur, along with a mysterious gift from the Venji.  An attempted coup against Yildiz fails, thanks to Conan.  And the “gift” is not what it appears to be.

Shaken but still secure on his throne, the Emperor decides to stop the Venji War.  Conan and Juma are rewarded for their heroics, but the end of the story proves bittersweet for the Cimmerian.

The friendship between Conan and Juma comes across as realistic, unlike certain contrived “interracial-buddy” movies.  Conan is the more impetuous of the pair.  Although Juma enjoys carousing, he has a prudent streak that sometimes irks the Cimmerian.  Their ambience is similar to that between the late Robert B. Parker’s Spenser and Hawk, minus the racial bantering.

Conan the Hero shows Carpenter’s strengths in writing action and detail.  But sometimes, the plot of the novel hangs by the slenderest of threads.  Were it not for the Conan-Juma element and the Vietnam allegory, this book would not stand out in the crowd of Conan pastiches.  As it is, it only rises about half-a-head above that crowd.

Here’s how Henry of the Friday Challenge describes it:  “[T]here is serious speculation that Cameron lifted large chunks of the story in Avatar from an eight-issue British comic book series titled Firekind. The comic book series features a lush, wild planet with an atmosphere that is toxic to humans, blue-skinned aliens, flying dragons on which the aliens ride, a planet-wide psychic connection, floating rocks, humans bent on wiping out the natives to get their hands on something available only on this planet and a human who joins the blue-skinned aliens to fight against his own race. The human is even responsible for psychically summoning the planet to help defeat the humans.”

I don’t know what the facts are, but as a writer who is presently under contract to deliver a script for an animated film, I have absolutely zero desire to support what, according to the case for the prosecution, looks very much like an ironic case of James Cameron blatantly stealing both the story and the creative credit from those who rightly deserve the blame for the nonsense.  I’m not sure which is ultimately more depressing, the fact that a film costing $300 million couldn’t set aside the price of a novel advance for a decent story or the related fact that a decent story is obviously superfluous to requirements for the filmgoing audiences of today.

As for the novellas, the late Kage Baker may be a sentimental favorite, but the only one I’ve read is Shambling Towards Hiroshima. Not his strongest work, but you can’t go wrong with anything by Morrow.

SHORT STORY

“Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela,” Saladin Ahmed
“I Remember the Future,” Michael A. Burstein
“Non-Zero Probabilities,” N. K. Jemisin
“Spar,” Kij Johnson
“Going Deep”, James Patrick Kelly
“Bridesicle,” Will McIntosh

NOVELETTE

“The Gambler,” Paolo Bacigalupi
“Vinegar Peace, or the Wrong-Way Used-Adult Orphanage,” Michael Bishop
“I Needs Must Part, The Policeman Said,” Richard Bowes
“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast,” Eugie Foster
“Divining Light,” Ted Kosmatka
“A Memory of Wind,” Rachel Swirsky

NOVELLA

“The Women of Nell Gwynne’s,” Kage Baker
“Arkfall,” Carolyn Ives Gilman
“Act One,” Nancy Kress
“Shambling Towards Hiroshima,” James Morrow
“Sublimation Angels,” Jason Sanford
“The God Engines,” John Scalzi

It’s been more or less an open secret that Rome was headed for a big screen follow-up for some time (Knight’s review is from June of last year, and a commenter mentions just this fact), but a recent article from Entertainment Weekly has brought the rumors back to life and appears to indicate that Bruno Heller has finished the script for the film, and regulars Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson will be back. EW erroneously goes on to say this is a surprise, since both Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo appear to be dead at the end of the show. This was picked up by nearly every other reporting agency running this story — apparently not many of these entertainment reporters have bothered to watch the entertainment they report on, as a living, breathing Pullo is walking down the street at the close of Rome, and the off-screen death of Vorenus is ambiguous enough to suggest he lives on in hiding.

Anyway, whether or not this item is strictly news is open to debate, but it is ‘good news’ regardless, and it gets me interested to see how the film will develop. Now, if only they’d do the same for Deadwood, a show that met the same ignoble fate as Wild Bill Hickok in the Number 10 Saloon . . .

This is the event around which my entire calendar revolves, and it usually requires a full ten-hour day to visit all of the exhibitors. I actually have a countdown clock on my computer ticking away the days to this most anticipated of events.

However, in their first year back after a two-year run in Vegas, this year’s show was less than 50% of the size of previous years. Gone was “The Dark Zone,” my most favorite area, which used to take up the entire upper floor of the convention center, and where Hollywood’s finest special effect magicians from the horror genre showcased their latest wares.

The exhibition hall itself was spread thinly across two rooms instead of three, and was heavily dominated by been-there-seen-that costumes and drug store decorations.

Even the “party” part of the IHCPS seemed to be missing. In the past, yet another hall was occupied by general party items, not Halloween themed. Though a little tame for my taste, I always found one or two cool things to share with you, as well as for my own future use. All in all the IHCPS consumed the entire convention center in prior years.

And sacrilege of sacrilege, this year my beloved “Dark Zone” space was occupied by…I can barely write it…a GOLF show. Oh the humanity!

Apparently TransWorld, the company that puts on the IHCPS, is holding another show at the end of March in St. Louis, the 15th Annual Halloween & Attractions Show, where several of the missing elements from the Chicago events will be set up.

I’ve been trying to find out if everything will be moved back to Chicago in 2011, or if this sad showing is the last gasp and the entire event will be only in St. Louie next year.

If so, ROAD TRIP!

And yet, there were still several gems to be found amidst the mediocrity. So the least I can do, considering the drastically lower show attendance, is to bring these particular stand-outs to your attention.

Treat them well as there is something for everyone in my 2010 “Best Of” picks, and all are available directly to you via phone or web site.

Here goes:

Midnight Syndicate’s new movie, The Dead Matter

(www.midnightsyndicate.com)

Call me biased and I won’t argue, but I’ve had about a ten-year love affair with the music of Midnight Syndicate which has been the backdrop to many a Goth Chick event.

However for a bunch of guys who got into the business to pick up girls, the new trailer for their upcoming movie The Dead Matter proves this talented team has way more going for them than just creating eerie soundtracks.

And from what I’ve seen, they’re breaking into indy film making with much-anticipated, scream fest.

It’s coming to a theater near you in July but Ed Douglas and the guys have promised me a screener. So as soon as I get over myself on that account, I’ll be sure to give you all the gory details.

Until then, check out the serious creepiness here.

Blood

(www.livingwithbloodlust.com)

This gets my vote for the coolest new product of the show, by far.

Harcos LLC has not only created a blood-like drink which comes in hospital-like bags, but they’ve created literature to explain the condition of “blood lust” which can only be satisfied by the consumption of “Blood.”

The stuff even looks grossly viscous when poured but, much like real blood, it is chock full of protein and iron, making it a true “energy drink.”

And somewhere beneath the very pleasing berry flavor is the ever-so-faint metallic taste you get if you stick a cut finger in your mouth.

“Blood” was apparently handed out to attendees of the Daybreakers” premier, which is marketing genius, and though it was originally released after Halloween last year, the initial batches sold out in a matter of weeks.

Obviously those crazy Twighlighters are making sure Hot Topics is always in short supply, but the rest of us can just go to the web to get it, four bags per case.

The site is hysterical, by the way. It looks like a medical information site with the tag line “Being dead doesn’t mean you have to stop living.”

I’ve already got “Blood” on order so I can have a few bags stacked up nonchalantly in the fridge for my next party.

Minion’s Web Cobweb Gun

(www.minionsweb.com)

It seems like only yesterday that Mr. Goth Chick and I were out combing the temporary Halloween stores in our area, looking for a spray can of cobwebs. I didn’t want the cheesy cotton stuff we generally spread on our bushes outside, but realistic looking spider webs I could spray onto our chandeliers and lampshades.

Alas, nothing was to be found that wasn’t a risk for choking my dogs or catching fire. But this year it’s the Minion Company to the rescue with their Cob Web Gun.

Looking like an oversized glue gun into which you load oversized “glue sticks,” this gadget hooks to a small, air compressor like the one you’d use for an airbrush; then just aim into the air and pull the trigger.

What comes out looks a little like cotton candy filament, but when it starts attaching to something and building up, a spider couldn’t tell the difference. The “web” is non-sticky, non-toxic and flame resistant, making it perfect for giving your house that abandoned, uninviting look. Plus if you ever decide to clean it up, you can do so in seconds with a vacuum cleaner hose.

I have one on order. Why wait for October?

WoWindow Posters

(www.wowindows.com)

Robert Schott from New Jersey came up with this ingenious idea while decorating his house at Halloween and decided to make a business out of it.

Originally, he had covered his upstairs windows with plywood and painted giant eyeballs on them, making the old house look like it was staring ominously down at the neighbor kids. When this was so successful it drove away some of his younger visitors he knew he was onto something, and WoWindows was born.

Various designs are printed on light conductive vinyl, which attach easily to your window frames with the included adhesive. Then turn on a lamp in the room and voila; instant haunted house!

Several designs are coordinating so you can put the same theme up in several windows. For instance, my personal favorite was the zombie theme, which makes it look like zombies are eating your family members in every room of the house (ask for the new “Ghoulies” design when you order as its not yet up on the web site).

Robert has even recreated his own staring eyeball design which is a best seller in this new form and I was thrilled to pick up yet another addition to my annual attempt at putting the neighborhood kids into life-long therapy.

Big Pirate

(www.treasuresofthehighseas.com)

I couldn’t help but go a little pirate-crazy with the rest of the world (give me a break, its Johnny Depp after all) but the folks at Big Pirate have done so with an ominous twist.

They have created a line of tankards and treasure boxes that are more “Dead Man’s Chest” than Disney, and all are display-quality works of art.

Their skull designs are truly disturbing, as in: imagine drinking your grog out of someone’s upturned head.

In addition, they have commissioned a line of pirate-themed glass ornaments that are stunning and put unusual conversation pieces in everyone’s financial reach.

The Treasures of the High Seas web site is still under construction, but should be operational in March. Until then, you can contact the company directly at 612-275-9638.

PS: Archie Peltier from whose imagination all of this stuff sprung, let me in on an advanced secret; he’s working on a line of Steam Punk-themed glass ornaments! I asked him to step on it, Christmas isn’t that far off.

Dolls Gone Wrong & Wicked; Steam Punk Clothing

(Beverly at 505-603-2412)

Normally my rule here is to only include merchandise you can order directly from a web site, but I needed to make an exception for Beverly and her amazing, one-of-a-kind clothing line.

If there is such a thing as “high end Steam Punk” then Beverly has captured it. Her designs are like Mad Max meets Pirates of the Caribbean where you choose the fabric and combination of accessories, and the whole get-up is made to your specifications.

Though I wish there were a web site so you could see the amazing array of movie-set-worthy designs, I grabbed a couple of pictures to give you an idea.

Plus I love the fact that Beverly wasn’t passing out glossy literature on her clothing. She was instead handing out photocopies of a hand-written menu of items she hastily threw together at the local Kinkos.

She, like her clothing, is true anti-establishment artistry, so just ring her up to chat about your own design ideas.

I was particularly taken with the bullet belt and the brass flight goggles. I hope Mr. Goth Chick was paying attention.

Heritage Lace

(www.heritagelace.com)

Last but not least are the decorative touches for those of you not quite willing to make the full Goth commitment, but still want to give your home that “Motel Hell” feel for special occasions.

It is to get this unique perspective on the show that I invited Mr. and Mrs. Disney to be my guests as I waded through the “Midnight Syndicate” and “Blood” booths.

After being friends with them for over ten years, I constantly have to look for new ways to up the shock value to even get a reaction these days. And when Mrs. Disney actually uttered the words “Oh THAT’s cute!” more than once during the show, I knew for sure that this year’s IHCPS was way off its stride.

However, that being said, I credit the Disney’s for pointing out Heritage and their black, Victorian lace for throwing over your lamps and draping across your fireplace mantle.

It’s what I call “old lady creepy” and certainly adds a distinct feel of funerary mourning to any room without going so far as to bring in a coffin.

I was especially fond of the damask curtains with a subtle skull design that will most certainly be gracing my library as soon as the first autumn leave takes a dive.

And finally, in past years when I have attended the IHCPS, I am especially excited to bring you a genre-specific celebrity encounter.

I had the pleasure of having coffee with Dee Snyder the year he was there promoting his rock opera VanHelsing’s Curse, and hanging out with Butch Patrick, the kid who played Eddie Munster in the TV series The Munsters. Yes, it might be stretching to call that a celebrity encounter, but he was a really nice guy with a good sense of humor as you can imagine.

So as final proof that the TransWorld Company was obviously still hung over from their two year stint in Vegas, this year’s celebrity encounter was… Bridget from the E! Channel’s Girls Next Door reality show.

If you aren’t familiar, the show followed Hugh Hefner, of Playboy fame, as he dated three girls young enough to be his granddaughters. One of them was Bridget.

I’m not knocking her personally, since she too was a really nice person, as well as being extremely blonde, scantily clad and a Playboy centerfold model. Yes, I indeed stood in line to meet her to try and figure out the connection (Playboy – scary stuff???)

I even asked her outright as Mr. Disney and Mr. Goth Chick tried hard not to drool on themselves. Turns out she really, REALLY loves Halloween.

Well, at least we had that in common.

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I have a personal link to any Solomon Kane film project, and not just because Howard’s puritan adventurer is my favorite of his characters and also the one most suited for the silver screen. It’s mainly because I actually wrote a Solomon Kane screenplay in the mid-‘90s, when I was just out of college, working as an apprentice editor in Warner-Hollywood Studios, and flush with the desire to become a great screenwriter.

Those were such innocent years. . . . I’ve abandoned the film business entirely, and once I wrote my first novel I knew that I never wanted to return to the screenplay format again: it wasn’t my type of storytelling, and I’d much rather have someone else tell me a story through a completed film. I now want to write novels, and if they ever sell as film properties, that’s wonderful—but even if I were offered the opportunity to do a first pass on the screenplay version, I’d still prefer someone else do it. Someone with some distance from the material.

Only back in those neophyte days could I have dared something like a Solomon Kane screenplay. I almost never write pastiche or fan fiction; my Solomon Kane script was my second pastiche work and is so far my last. (The first was a James Bond novelette written in 10th grade as an angry reaction to the terrible John Gardner novels of the day.) I never feel comfortable writing about classic characters, and Howard is an especially frightening and intimidating fellow to follow.

I realized this somewhat back then, which is one reason that I altered the character and disguised him under a different name: Michael Sparrow. (Oh, I had a jolly laugh when the lead character of The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise years later was also given the surname “Sparrow.”) I was also thinking, optimistically, about trying to sell the script, and a “new” character was necessary for this. I had it figured out this way: if I did sell the screenplay, I could try to convince the production company to purchase the rights to Howard’s Solomon Kane, and then I would change the character’s name back to Solomon Kane as well as some other details. For example, I gave my character a magical knife, a gift from an Arab mystic, instead of a juju staff from an African shaman. Simple, quick fix, if necessary.

Ludicrously ambitious thinking. But I was twenty-three, and I needed to give a dream-project a shot.

I soon discovered that when you change a character’s name and a few details about him, you also inevitably start to change other aspects of his story. Michael Sparrow began to develop a different feeling than Solomon Kane, and my own historical interests and extensive research into English Puritanism pushed the story further from Howard’s territory. Honestly, I didn’t really understand Solomon Kane that well in 1996, having only read the Baen paperback collection, and not that deeply.

But what really shifted my whole approach was my choice of backdrop. Zeroing in on events that could have happened near 1600 and Solomon Kane’s career, I picked up on the search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke as the through-story. Not only did it occur in the right time (1587), but it allowed for sea voyages, pirate attacks, and a chance for a supernatural occurrence to account for the vanishing of the first English colony in what would eventually be the United States of America.

So I ended up with a outline for a script more akin to Howard’s “The Black Stranger” than anything Solomon Kane. I even titled the screenplay Black Sparrow, although this was also a nod to Howard’s and Cornell Woolrich’s obsession with sticking the word “black” in many of their titles.

Once I started research on Roanoke, I seriously couldn’t stop. Fascinating stuff. I read just about every piece of primary documentation about the original settlement and the first search for it that was available. Roanoke took over the script as I tried to craft as realistic a background as I could, using historical figures when possible, before I brought on the fantasy elements. John White, the governor of the colony who was returning to try to rescue it, evolved into the co-protagonist with Michael Sparrow, and started becoming much more interesting. I envisioned Patrick Stewart playing the part (Michael Sparrow was played by Christopher Walken), and he really spoke to me as I wrote more than my pseudo-Solomon Kane. I turned John White into the grandfather of Virginia Dare, the first girl born into the colonies, whom I aged up into a teenager. White therefore had an even more desperate and personal reason to find the lost colonists aside from his responsibility as their governor. Captain Spicer, who helmed the main ship on the expedition, was also a major character. Each of the colonists was given the name of one of the actual settlers.

So what is my ersatz Solomon Kane doing here? In a prologue—my pre-credits James Bond sequence—I had Michael Sparrow in the south of France, pursuing a black magician named Christopher Gerard who had killed a young girl to use her blood in one of his ceremonies. In a direct reference—the only reference—to any of Howard’s Solomon Kane stories, I had Sparrow find the girl dying in the woods. She tells him who attacked her and drew her blood, then expires. Sparrow says, “Men shall die for this.” Right from “Red Shadows.” Because that is such a damn cool line.

But the evil sorcerer escapes Sparrow’s vengeance, and Sparrow vows to chase him to the ends of the earth. Gerard manages to get across the Atlantic by joining the original colony that settled at Roanoke. Sparrow pledges his service as a fighter on John White’s expedition so he can track down Gerard. He’s certain Gerard is behind the colony’s strange silence.

And what did happen to the colony? Here I leaped into crazy speculation and pulled out the sword-and-sorcery nuttiness (there was already plenty of action, what with the Spanish wanting to sink any English ship they come across). It turns out that near to Roanoke on the island of Croatoan—the explanation for the the word “Croatoan” carved into a fort post that the historical expedition found—lie the ruins of a city built by ancient Phoenicians who crossed the Atlantic during the Bronze Age. They brought with them the idol of their dark god Baal-Reseph. When the Phoenicians died out, the evil spirit was left imprisoned. Gerard found it, freed it, and controlled it. He then turned its power loose on the colonists and nearby native tribes, turning them into creatures called “Mantoacs,” zombie-like animal-hybrid creatures.

Michael Sparrow and John White’s men round up the few survivors, make a treaty with the natives, and fight a battle against Gerard, his slaves, and the demon Baal-Reseph. Bad guys die. Michael Sparrow has a huge sword-duel with a dastardly Germany mercenary and confronts Baal-Reseph and slays it with his magical knife. Virginia is re-united with her grandfather. The surviving colonists elect to stay with the natives, and the expedition returns to England with the story that “we couldn’t find them.” Michael Sparrow takes a canoe into the North American interior on further adventures that will never be written.

The final script wasn’t very good. I was not skilled enough at that age to make Black Sparrow anything but average and often silly. I’m still amazed that I showed it to people. It was a big undertaking, and looking back over it I do think there’s a good fantasy adventure tale to make out of the Lost Colony. But Solomon Kane isn’t supposed to be in it, and I should have waited to write it in prose form.

(I’m proud of one line in the script: when John White tells Sparrow that he was unable to return to the colony earlier because of the Spanish Armada, Sparrow replies, “Catholics never come at a good time.” Not something the real Solomon Kane would speak, but I really couldn’t resist having an English puritan say that.)

I hope that soon I can sit in a theater and say: “Well, the movie wasn’t a genuine Solomon Kane story, but it sure was better than what I wrote fifteen years ago.” Worst case scenario, I say: “Hell, even my story I wrote fifteen years ago was better than that.”

A few years ago I decided it was time to get a replacement. Now, I received a review copy of the imposing new trade paperback edition from Vintage Press a while back, with a big blurry red skyscraper on the cover, but what I wanted was the original 1975  Bantam edition (at left), which captured my imagination 35 years ago.  Before it sank beneath the suds in our kitchen sink while I was supposed to be washing dishes, anyway.

It takes a while to find a pristine, unread copy of a 35-year old paperback, even on eBay.  But before too long I had one, tucked snugly away with my other Samuel R. Delany, and I packed the old one away in the basement.

Except, now I want to read it.  No point looking for the one I’d buried in the basement months ago (you’d understand if you saw my basement) — and anyway, who wants to read a book that’s all lumpy? I could read the new one… but man, I paid handsomely to have a pristine copy.  Dhalgren is 890 pages — not exactly easy to read when you’re trying not to bend the spine. 

So I did what any rational person would do. Back to eBay to find another copy.

This is the kinda thing that drives Alice crazy (Miss “Explain to me why you need a fourth copy??”), but I was very happy when it arrived today.  And then I found this hand-written note on the inside cover:

BCID: 361-4144887

Dear Stranger,

If you read this book, please visit bookcrossing.com and say so. This book is traveling from hand to hand - better to be read by many people than to gather dust on a shelf. BookCrossing tracks it so that we readers know where it goes and what others think of it. Just go to the website, enter the BCID above, and leave a brief journal entry (anonymous, if you prefer). Then leave it somewhere to be read again.

Thank you! 

Apparently, this thing is legit.  The website checks out and everything. I entered my BCID and discovered my new copy of Dhalgren had been read by someone named Vasha and then “released into the wild” in a cafe in Ithaca, New York on August 2, 2006.

It’s hard to describe the delight in Alice’s eyes when she saw this.  “You should pass it along!” she exclaimed.  “Put it on a park bench or something.”  Get it out of her house, she means. My wife’s sanity depends on defending as much square footage as she can from the encroaching book madness. In her fondest dreams, this process involves a flamethrower.

I admit the idea is actually pretty cool (BookCrossing, not the flamethrower).  According to the website, 846,541 people in over 130 countries have registered books at BookCrossing.  And it was neat to know the history of my little paperback. Even if Vashsa admitted she “struggled through a couple chapters of fragmented language and then gave up.” Lightweight.

No, my issue with this whole thing is that I somehow find myself obligated to pass my book along to someone. How did that happen? I just paid six bucks for this thing!

“Better to be read by many people than to gather dust on a shelf,” says the earnest author of my hand-written note (Likely Vasha, and what does she know? She couldn’t even finish it!)

Says who?  My books do just fine gathering dust on my shelf.  They like it there.  No one bothers them, they don’t get rained on, or pulped, or remaindered, or found on a park bench by some homeless guy looking for kindling. I protect my books. I give them a good home (unless you count the ones in the basement).

Oh, I give up.  The whole idea is just too compelling.  At some point I’m going to have to release this book “back into the wild.”  If I don’t, it’ll stare at me from across the room and I’ll get no peace.

But it won’t be a park bench.  I’ll set this book down gently on a table at a con, and then hang around behind a nearby plant until someone picks it up.  And maybe I’ll follow them for a while, to make sure they check out. I’ll be like empty nesters taking their only kid to college, looking under dorm beds for cockroaches.

So if you happen to find a handsome copy of Dhalgren sitting innocently on a table at Capricon, take my advice.  Make sure your fingernails are clean, and your intentions are pure, before you pick it up.

And then enjoy it with my compliments.  In the meantime I’ll be on eBay, hunting up a new copy.