The Mighty Sword & Sorcery Anthologies of Hans Stefan Santesson
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The Mighty Barbarians: Great Sword and Sorcery Heroes, edited by
Hans Stefan Santesson (Lancer Books, 1969). Cover by Jim Steranko
Hans Stefan Santesson (1914 – 1975) was born in France and lived in Sweden with his parents until 1923 when his mother immigrated to the US. She was a commercial artist and he soon became an editor for various mystery publications.
I likely would never have heard of him if not for two books of Sword & Sorcery he edited for Lancer Books. These were The Mighty Barbarians (1969) and The Mighty Swordsmen (1970), both with evocative covers by Jim Steranko.
[Click the images for mighty versions.]
1. The Mighty Barbarians contains an Introduction by Santesson, and then the following stories.
“When the Sea-King’s Away by Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd/Gray Mouser)
“The Stronger Spell” by L. Sprague de Camp
“Dragon Moon by Henry Kuttner (Elak of Atlantis)
“Thieves of Zangabal” by Lin Carter (Thongor)
“A Witch Shall be Born” by Robert E. Howard (Conan)The intro shows that Santesson was familiar with the history of heroic fantasy. He cites some of Carter’s nonfiction so he may have gotten it from there. All the stories are good and generally full of action.
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The Mighty Swordsmen, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson (Lancer Books, December 1970). Cover by Jim Steranko
2. The Mighty Swordsmen contains a shorter intro by Santesson and ends with “Beyond the Black River” by REH, one of the best Conan stories. It also contains tales by Moorcock, Brunner, Zelazny and a Conan pastiche by Bjorn Nyberg called “The People of the Summit,” which suffers by comparison with “Beyond the Black River.”
The Moorcock tale is “The Flame Bringers” (Elric). It’s quite good. Zelazny’s story is one of his Dilvish the Damned pieces, “The Bells of Shoredan.” Lin Carter’s “The Keeper of the Emerald Flame” is one of the best of his Thongor stories. Brunner’s story has the best title, “Break the Doors of Hell,” but doesn’t quite seem to fit with the others. It’s one of his Traveler in Black pieces.
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Rulers of Men, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson (Pyramid Books, 1965). Cover by Jack Gaughan
Santesson edited plenty of other works and even wrote a few stories himself under pseudonyms, none of which I’ve heard of. I did discover another edited collection by him that I’m going to try to get. You can see the cover above, by Jack Gaughan. Some star names there.
Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was a review of the 1970 anthology Dark of the Soul, edited by Don Ward. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.
I know of Santesson from The Fantastic Universe Omnibus, an anthology of stories from Fantastic Universe, a minor science fiction magazine that he edited. I remember best a story about a man whose father was a talking cat and a story set in a future where science fiction fans had rebuilt civilization after an apocalypse, creating much of the technology described in classic stories, and thought of science fiction fans as a community of visionaries.
I haven’t read that anthology. Sounds like a good one. I’ll have to have a look for it
Of his, I’ve only read the two Mighty anthologies, but they were both pretty great.
Yep, I have both those and they’re excellent
Thanks, Charles, I recall enjoying both of these S&S anthologies when they were first published. I took a look on Amz for ‘Rulers of Men’ with no luck, but discovered it for $3.00 (plus shipping) from Space Age Books in Conroe, TX…fwiw.
Good find there. Cool
I know of Santesson mainly for his editorship of Fantastic Universe. It was a step — but a smallish step — above the bottom tier of late ’50s SF magazine, but I kind of think he did a solid job with a presumably small budget. He did publish one of Isaac Asimov’s very worst stories, though.
I think Rulers of Men is a pretty good anthology, and Gentle Invaders is very good.
I’m amused that the cover copy for The Mighty Barbarians seems to imply that the Gray Mouser must be both mightier and more barbarian than Fafhrd!
yes, I always preferred Fafhrd to the Gray Mouser, although he has his moments. But not quite the barbarian
Cool! I got the first two!
Excellent!