In a Lonely Place (Warner Books, March 1983). Cover by Barclay Shaw

Read Part One of this article, focused chiefly on Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane tales, here.

Karl Edward Wagner and I shared certain similarities, which I’m sure meant nothing to him but which do mean something to me.

He had an M.D. as a psychiatrist and worked toward a Ph.D. in neurobiology. I have a Ph.D. in neuropsychology so I’m sure we’d have had many things to talk about in that field. He died October 14, 1994, apparently from liver and heart failure brought on by long-term alcoholism. October 14th is my birthday, though quite a long time before 1994, and I’ve also had a heart attack, though I survived it, and I gave up drinking long before it started to cause major damage.

We also have similar tastes in reading and writing. Karl wrote mostly Sword & Sorcery and horror, and those two genres make up most of my output as well.

[Click the images for darkly fantastic versions.]

It has been said, and I agree, that Robert E. Howard created Sword & Sorcery by taking the fantasy tale and giving it a backbone of horror. Karl Wagner created his S&S in the same way, and his use of horror was far heavier than REH. The Kane stories are rife with it.

The first collection of KEW’s actual horror that I picked up was In a Lonely Place (Cover by Barclay Shaw). I was blown away. Stories like “Sticks,” “.220 Swift,” and “The River of Night’s Dreaming” were beautifully written and powerfully effective. “River” inspired several of my own horror stories.

Why Not You and I? (Tor, September 1987). Cover by J. K. Potter

I later picked up Why Not You and I (cover by J. K. Potter), which was pretty difficult to find. There are some good tales in here, such as “More Sinned Against,” but it is nowhere near as good as In a Lonely Place, which showcased KEW at the height of his powers.

Wagner also showed notable talent as an editor and story selector for DAW’s Year’s Best Horror line of anthologies (see above), which he edited from 1980 all the way to his death in 1994, at which point the series ended too. He also edited the three wonderful Echoes of Valor anthologies, which I discussed here previously, and he did wonderful editorial work in bringing original Robert E. Howard material back into print with only the lightest of editorial touches for Berkley. (I’ll be talking more about that in the future.)

Karl Edward Wagner also wrote two pastiches of Robert E. Howard’s work, including one Conan tale called The Road of Kings, originally published by Bantam in 1979. My copy, shown above, is from Ace (1987) with a cover by Luis Royo. It has a neat dedication to Leigh Brackett. The Road of Kings is a good Conan pastiche but doesn’t — in my opinion — break new ground.

The second REH pastiche that KEW wrote was about Bran Mak Morn and called Legion From The Shadows. It was published by Zebra in 1976 with a cool Jeff Jones cover. It’s dedicated to David Drake, who was a friend of Karl’s and who apparently provided much of the historical detail for the novel.

Legion From The Shadows remains, in my mind, the best Howard pastiche ever put to page. It jumps off from a real historical event that has never been completely explained, the disappearance of the Roman 9th Legion in Britain.

From what I’ve read of the history, the 9th Legion was most likely destroyed in battle by the Celtic Tribes of Britain somewhere around the year 120 AD. That destruction is likely to have been a catalyst in the construction of Hadrian’s Wall in 122 AD. The period is murky and not every scholar agrees, of course.

Some stories claim that Karl actually completed a sequel to Legion from the Shadows called Queen of the Night, but that the manuscript fell between the gaps when Zebra books went bankrupt. I don’t know if that’s true or not but David Drake, who became Karl’s literary executor, was of the opinion that it was never written. I tend to suspect Drake knows, or else we would have seen it by now.

We’ll revisit Karl Edward Wagner more later along the way. The last thing I’ll say for now will be about the hardbacks I have of his work, all of which I bought brand new. I don’t often buy hardbacks so you know it’s something I truly love.

The first one on the pic shown above is a hardback copy of Why Not You and I?, from Dark Harvest, 1987, Trade Hardcover Edition. This has all the stories contained in the paperback (Tor, 1987) and extra. “Lacunae” and “Lost Exits” appear only in the hardback, and “Lacunae” has Kane in it, though he isn’t the primary character. The cover is by Ron and Val Lakey Lindahn, and they also did four interior illustrations. These appear to me to be reworked photographs, although I’m not familiar enough with art techniques to know.

The other stories in Why Not You and I? are horror tales:

“Into Whose Hands”
“Old Loves”
“More Sinned Against”
“Shrapnel”
“The Last Wolf” (which strikes me as partly autobiographical),
“Neither Brute Nor Human”
“Sign of the Salamander”
“Blue Lady Come Back”
“Silted in”

“Sign of the Salamander” deserves special mention. It is credited to “Curtiss Stryker,” with an introduction by Kent Allard. Kent Allard was a pseudonym Karl used, particularly for the one erotic novel he wrote called The Other Woman (Cover shown below). Kent Allard was also the supposed real name of “The Shadow” in the print series. Here, Allard is used to introduce the pulp author Curtiss Stryker, who is—of course—Wagner. Salamander and the following tale “Blue Lady, Come Back” are supposedly written by Stryker and involve him as a character. These tales are “meta” before that was a term.

The other three hardbacks I have are specifically Kane related: The Book of Kane, Gods in Darkness, and Midnight Sun. The Book of Kane is a particular treasure for me. It’s from Donald M. Grant, 1985, and is Copy #53 of a limited print run of 425, only 400 of which were sold. It’s also signed by Karl, and by Jeffrey Jones, who did the cover and four interior illustrations. It contains:

“Reflections for the Winter of My Soul”
“Misericorde”
“The Other One”
“Sing a Last Song of Valdese”
“Raven’s Eyrie”

Gods in Darkness and Midnight Sun are both from Night Shade books and have covers by Ken Kelly. Gods in Darkness contain the Kane novels, Bloodstone, Dark Crusade, and Darkness Weaves. Midnight Sun contains the complete Kane short stories:

“Death Angel’s Shadow”
“Undertow”
“Two Suns Setting”
“The Dark Muse”
“Sing a Last Song of Valdese”
“Misericorde”
“Lynortis Reprise”
“Raven’s Eyrie”
“Reflections for the Winter of My Soul”
“Cold Light”
“Mirage”
“The Other One”
“The Gothic Touch”
Midnight Sun (poem)
“Lacunae”
“Deep in the Depths of the Acme Warehouse”
“At First Just Ghostly”
“The Treasure of Lynortis” (an early version of “Lynortis Reprise”)
“In the Wake of the Night” (a very short fragment of a planned Kane novel)
The Once and Future Kane (an essay by Karl on the genesis and nature of Kane)

Several of these are not included in the paperback Kane collections that I showed you last week. Stephen Jones wrote an introduction to this collection called Raising Kane. They are really nicely packaged.

So, for now at least, I’m finished with Karl Edward Wagner and Kane.

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. His last article for us was Part One of The Dark Fantasy of Karl Edward Wagner. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.