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Author: Charles Gramlich

The Purple Prose of Robert E. Howard

The Purple Prose of Robert E. Howard

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The Sowers of the Thunder, a collection by Robert E. Howard (Zebra Books,
March 1975, and Ace Books, July 1979). Covers by Jeff Jones and Esteban Maroto

A personal rant this morning on the issue of: Purple Prose.

A criticism often leveled at Heroic Fantasy, particularly sword & sorcery and sword & planet, is that it’s full of purple prose. Purple prose is flowery and ornate, overloaded with metaphor and melodrama, and full of cliché.

We’ve all seen examples, but bad writing can be found anywhere, in any genre. It irritates me to see all writers in a genre lumped together. For example, I’ve heard Robert E. Howard called a purple prose writer. I probably turned purple in anger in response. Most of REH’s mature writing is remarkably lean, with seldom more than one, and often no qualifying adjectives for his nouns.

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The Heroes of Fantasy Quiz

The Heroes of Fantasy Quiz

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Art for Carson of Venus by Frank Frazetta

They slice. They dice. They bash their way through hordes of foes. They are the heroes of fantasy and just below is a list of some of the greatest. Can you pick out the hero on the right who goes with the author on the left?

Twelve to fifteen correct means you know your bloodthirsty authors like Conan knows ale. Eight to eleven correct is pretty good but you’re not as bloodthirsty as you might like others to believe. Four to seven correct definitely means you’re squeamish at the sight of crimson gore. Below four correct? I’m afraid you’re just not an “army of one.”

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The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Four: The High Crusade, Three Hearts and Three Lions, and The Queen of Air and Darkness

The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Four: The High Crusade, Three Hearts and Three Lions, and The Queen of Air and Darkness

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The High Crusade (Berkley Medallion, March 1978). Cover artist unknown

Two other good novels by Anderson are The High Crusade (SF), a humorous look at 14th Century humans getting loose in the universe with a captured spaceship, and Three Hearts and Three Lions (Fantasy), which follows a modern (1950s) Earthman who is cast onto a parallel Earth where fantasy and magic are real.

The High Crusade (Doubleday  1960) was first published in three parts in John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction, July – September 1960. It starts when an alien spaceship lands in England in 1345 just as an English army is being formed to fight in France. The ship belongs to the Wersgorix, who have conquered many planets. This time their plans go awry and the English capture the ship. And now they’re about to take the war to the aliens. My copy is Berkley, 1978, with the cover artist uncredited (see above).

Three Hearts and Three Lions would be categorized as “High Fantasy” and was first published serially in 1953 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was published in book form in 1961. My copy is Berkley, 1978 with a cover by Wayne Barlowe (see below, midway down).

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The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Three: The Broken Sword, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, and Conan

The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Three: The Broken Sword, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, and Conan

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The Broken Sword (Ballantine Adult Fantasy #24, January 1971). Cover by George Barr

Read Part One and Part Two of this article here at Black Gate.

The Broken Sword is arguably the best book Anderson ever wrote, and it was the “first” novel length fantasy he published. It mixes High Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery. The High Fantasy comes because of its setting in the land of Faerie, which is part of our world but invisible to most humans, and the fact that most major characters are elves and trolls. However, there is also a lot of the good bloody action that characterizes S&S.

The Broken Sword is set in the Ninth century A.D., in Alfred the Great’s time (849-899). It was published in 1954 and revised in 1971. The story is of Skafloc, a human child stolen and raised by elves, and of Valgard, the half-elf/half-troll who replaces Skafloc as a changeling. It also involves Skafloc’s sister, who unknowingly falls in love with Skafloc, which, of course, ends in tragedy.

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The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Two: Flandry of Terra and 7 Conquests

The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Two: Flandry of Terra and 7 Conquests

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The Ace Flandry editions by Poul Anderson: Ensign Flandry, Agent of the Terran Empire, and
Flandry of Terra (Ace Books, February 1979, January 1980, July 1979). Covers by Michael Whelan

Read Part One of this article here.

I’ve never read a Poul Anderson book or story I didn’t like, although certainly I have my favorites. The first book I remember reading by him was 7 Conquests (cover art by Emanuel Schongut; see below), a collection of 7 short stories. I was about 14 and in awe of his language, and there’s still a scene in one story that titillates my daydreams even now.

Next, I started reading Anderson’s Flandry of Terra series, about an intelligence officer for the Terran Empire named Dominic Flandry. Flandry is very much a James Bond kind of character, with a fair amount of anti-hero in his makeup, but I loved these tales, which I’d primarily categorize as Space Opera.

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The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part One: The Last Viking Trilogy

The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part One: The Last Viking Trilogy

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The Last Viking trilogy: The Golden Horn, The Road of the Sea Horse, and The Sign of the Raven (Zebra Books, April-June 1980). Cover artist uncredited

As a teenager reading SF and Fantasy, I had two go-to authors whose work never let me down. One was Andre Norton, who I’ve talked about a lot. The other was Poul Anderson (1926-2001), who I’ve barely mentioned so far. I’ve got a number of posts planned about him.

Anderson wrote excellent heroic fantasy and SF with equal ease, although I slightly prefer his fantasy. The series I want to talk about first is his Last Viking trilogy, consisting of The Golden Horn, The Road of the Seahorse, and The Sign of the Raven, all published in 1980 by Zebra. They blur the line between fantasy and heroic historical. The cover artist is uncredited but my best guess is Don Maitz, who did the cover for another Anderson Viking book called Hrolf Kraki’s Saga (see below). I could be wrong; if so, someone will surely tell me.

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The Dark Fantasy of Karl Edward Wagner, Part Two

The Dark Fantasy of Karl Edward Wagner, Part Two

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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.

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The Dark Fantasy of Karl Edward Wagner, Part One: Kane

The Dark Fantasy of Karl Edward Wagner, Part One: Kane

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Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane paperback editions

Karl Edward Wagner (1945 – 1994) is one writer I make a concerted effort to collect. I think I have almost his entire output, which is — unfortunately—not extensive. The man was a genius and I wish it was more. I met him briefly at a conference and corresponded with him some. He was only 48 when he died and that’s way too young.

The first work I found by Wagner (KEW) were his Sword & Sorcery stories of Kane, sometimes called “The Mystic Swordsman.” In my opinion, Kane is the most outstanding character creation in heroic fantasy, for he is Cain of the Bible, of Cain and Abel fame, although in later years Wagner seemed to be reinventing the character.

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Tales of Fantasy Rome: The Eternal City, edited by David Drake, Martin Greenberg, and Charles Waugh

Tales of Fantasy Rome: The Eternal City, edited by David Drake, Martin Greenberg, and Charles Waugh

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The Eternal City, edited by David Drake, Martin Greenberg, and Charles
G. Waugh (Baen Books, January 1990). Cover by John Rheaume

The main reason I bought this collection was for the Howard story, “Kings of the Night.” This was back when I was striving to be a Howard completist. All in all, an entertaining collection.

It was published by Baen in 1990, and Drake did a pretty good job of selecting the stories. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Lin Carter’s Year’s Best Fantasy Stories

Lin Carter’s Year’s Best Fantasy Stories

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The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories, volumes 1-9, edited by Lin Carter and Arthur Saha (DAW Books, 1975-1983)

While people disagree on the quality of Lin Carter’s writing, most people agree he was a fine editor and tireless supporter of the fantasy field. Volumes edited by Carter brought quite a few new authors to my attention, as well as feeding me a steady diet of works by writers I already loved.

From 1975 to 1988, DAW books presented a yearly anthology called The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories. Lin Carter edited the first six and I own and have read all but #3, which I ordered recently but was sent the wrong book.

Arthur W. Saha took over as editor after that. I only have one of his volumes. I don’t know why the editorial switch, but Carter may have been suffering from ill health around that time. He died in 1988. I first read the three with Robert E. Howard content, but later read a couple of others. Here are my thoughts.

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