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The Sword & Planet Fiction of Robert Moore Williams: Zanthar

The Sword & Planet Fiction of Robert Moore Williams: Zanthar

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Jongor Fights Back (Popular Library, 1970). Cover by Frank Frazetta

Robert Moore Williams (1907 – 1977) wrote a lot of books, over 100. I’ve read two of them and that means there’s a 100 or so more books out there I won’t need to read before I die, including the ones he wrote under pseudonyms such as John Browning, H. H. Harmon, E. K. Jarvis, and Russell Storm. He also wrote an autobiography called Love is Forever – We Are for Tonight.

As a writer myself, I hesitate to be too critical of other writers. I know how difficult it is to finish a novel. But I don’t know how else to say it other than that — in my opinion — Moore was not a good one. The first book I found by him was Jongor Fights Back, a Tarzanesque effort featuring Jongor in a lost land. It was readable, but just barely. The cover, by Frank Frazetta, was a million times better.

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The Best of Bob: 2024

The Best of Bob: 2024

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Happy 2025! Let’s kick butt for another year. Or at least, limp to the finish 52 weeks. from now. I take what I can get. I started a Best of Bob feature last year. And while it may seem I’m constantly finding folks to write my column for me (hey – it’s a gift!), some of you Black Gaters may be surprised that I occasionally actually write my own essays for the Monday morning slot. John O’Neill is too savvy an editor for me to completely fool him for over decade.

So here are what I thought were ten of my better efforts in 2024. Hopefully you saw them back when I first posted them. But if not, maybe you’ll check out a few now. Ranking them seemed a bit egotistical, so they’re in chronological order. Let’s go!

1) Roaming the Old West, with Holmes on the Range (February 5, 2024)

It might look like I just throw something together every week (and looks aren’t always deceptive). But when I can find the time, I love putting together something special. And after reading/re-reading the entire series, I really nailed a three-part series on Steve Hockensmith’s Sherlock Holmes influenced, Old West mysteries about cowboy brothers Old Red and Big Red.

I followed up a pretty solid series overview, with the first-ever comprehensive chronology! And then, we rounded it out with a great Q&A from Steve himself. This is a terrific series: a great read, and solid on audiobook. Late in the year, the first two novels in a spin-off series that’s more Old West adventure than Holmes-flavored, came out. I’m looking forward to more of all aspects of the Double-A Western Detective Agency.

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A to Z Review: Once There Was a Way, by Bryce Zabel

A to Z Review: Once There Was a Way, by Bryce Zabel

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A to Z Reviews

The Beatles were one of the most important bands of the twentieth century, but at the same time, and despite the massive Beatlemania the accompanied them, they only really existed in the public consciousness for eight years and 12 albums. Their breakup in 1970 when they apparently had so much to offer has meant that fans have long wondered what would have happened if they had remained together, had a reunion, anything.

Among those fans are several authors who have written alternative histories in which the Beatles’ story had played out differently. Stephen Baxter tackled the topic in the short story “The Twelfth Album,” Ian R. MacLeod explored a John Lennon who quit the Beatles before they made it in “Snodgrass,” the Beatles went their separate ways during the “Please, Please Me” sessions in Larry Kirwan’s Liverpool Fantasy, and Michael A. Ventrella and Randee Dawn edited an entire anthology of alternate Beatles stories in Across the Universe.  Films, such as Yesterday have also tackled the idea of the Beatles not existing.

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Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part IV: Lin Carter’s Callisto

Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part IV: Lin Carter’s Callisto

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The 8-volume Callisto series by Lin Carter (Dell, 1972-1978). Covers by Vincent DiFate and Ken Kelly

After Burroughs worked chess — in its Martian version of Jetan — into his John Carter series with Chessmen of Mars, it practically became a rule that all later writers of Sword & Planet fiction had to do the same. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, John Norman did it in the Gor series and Ken Bulmer (writing as Alan Burt Akers) did it in the long running Dray Prescot series. I did it too in my 5 book Talera series.

It would be surprising then if Lin Carter didn’t do it. Carter made almost his entire fiction career off following the leads of ERB and REH (Robert E. Howard). And indeed, Carter did invent his own version of chess.

In the last of his 8-book Callisto series, called Renegade of Callisto, Carter pens his own version of ERB’s Chessman of Mars. Although Carter’s main hero in this series is an earthman named Jonathan Dark (Jandar), Dark has — like John Carter before him — recruited and befriended various allies on the moon of Callisto (called Thanator by its natives).

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A Singular Success: Fat City

A Singular Success: Fat City

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I hold people who write novels in awe. Because writing an entire book-length story is something that I could never do in a million years, I even have a measure of admiration and respect for people who write mediocre novels, so you can imagine how I feel about someone who writes a beautiful novel, a brilliant novel, a great novel; you can imagine how I feel about Leonard Gardner.

“Leonard Gardner — who’s that? I’ve never heard of him.” Well, I’m here to tell you that Leonard Gardner should be a household name, because he wrote one of the finest, most moving novels that has appeared during my lifetime; Leonard Gardner wrote Fat City.

Fat City is set in the waning days of 1959, in Stockton, California, and it chronicles the lives of two small-time boxers. Billy Tully is at the end of his career, newly divorced, washed-up and drifting into alcoholism as he moves from one seedy hotel to another, filling his days with melancholy reverie and back-breaking farm jobs. Ernie Munger is just starting out, working at a gas station during the day and fighting in four round prelims at night to support his new wife, whom he married because he’d gotten her pregnant. Billy and Ernie both dream of glory, but there is no big time here, no Fat City of wealth, fame, and success — just limited young men who win or lose for a few dollars and piss blood for weeks afterward. Ernie, still fresh and hopeful, feels “the potent allegiance of fate,” but his arc will inevitably be the same as Billy’s; the time and place and his own lack of internal resources guarantee it.

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Dark Fiction at its Best: This Haunted Heaven by Reggie Oliver

Dark Fiction at its Best: This Haunted Heaven by Reggie Oliver

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This Haunted Heaven (Tartarus Press, October 24, 2024). Cover artist unknown

Reggie Oliver is a British actor, playwright, illustrator and dark fiction author. He has published several short story collections and a few novels. As a matter of fact he’s also my favorite writer.

His latest collection, published once again by the excellent imprint Tartarus Press, includes ten stories, some of which are previously unpublished. As my favorite author it’s a bit difficult for me to produce an unbiased review but I’ll try my best, by choosing the more outstanding among the stories featured in the book.

“South Riding” an atmospheric, subtly disturbing piece depicting the unusual experience of an old actor temporarily moved into a secluded small town, while “ Grey Glass” is a superb supernatural tale revolving around a famous actor’s hand mirror.

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Ladybug Private Detectives, Living Ponds, and Robot Owls: The Owlstone Crown by X. J. Kennedy

Ladybug Private Detectives, Living Ponds, and Robot Owls: The Owlstone Crown by X. J. Kennedy

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The Owlstone Crown (Margaret K. McElderry/Atheneum, October 1983). Illustrated by Michele Chessare

The latest in my series of reviews of mostly forgotten SF/F from the 1970s and 1980s is a fairly obscure YA fantasy. X. J. Kennedy was the name used for his writing by Joseph Charles Kennedy. He was known as Joe Kennedy but started using the X. J. pseudonym to avoid confusion with Joseph Kennedy, the father of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was born in 1929, and is still alive, aged 95. This makes him a candidate for oldest living SF/F writer.

He was a prominent SF fan from the mid ’40s to early ’50s, publishing the fanzine Vampire, and co-founding an APA, the Spectator Amateur Press Association, that is (according to Wikipedia) still active. He also sold two stories to prozines in 1951 — “No More Pencils, No More Books” (not to be confused with the John Morressy story) to Science Fiction Quarterly and “Music From Down Under” to Other Worlds; both as by “Joquel Kennedy.”

By then he had received his B.A. from Seton Hall, and his M.A. from Columbia, and he went into the Navy as a journalist for four years. After his service, he studied at the Sorbonne and at Michigan, then went into academia as a professor at UNC Greensboro and at Tufts. The bulk of his writing from the early ’50s on was poetry — much of it light verse, and much of it for children — and college textbooks. He was also an editor, and with his wife Dorothy he founded a magazine devoted to New Formalist poetry, Counter/Measures. He wrote the occasional short story, and two YA fantasy novels, of which The Owlstone Crown, from 1983, was the first.

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Two Classic Fantasy Anthologies: Barbarians and Barbarians II, edited by Robert Adams

Two Classic Fantasy Anthologies: Barbarians and Barbarians II, edited by Robert Adams

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Barbarians, edited by Robert Adams and Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, and
Barbarians II, edited by Pamela Crippen Adams, Robert Adams, and Martin H. Greenberg
(Signet New American Library, January 1986 and February 1988). Covers by Ken Kelly

Besides editing the Friends of the Horseclans books (discussed here last week), Robert Adams also edited — along with others — two thick anthologies from Signet entitled Barbarians (1985) and Barbarians II (1988). Covers by Ken Kelly. I bought these when they came out because they each have a Robert E. Howard story, and I was an REH completist at the time. I liked both of these collections, although the concept of “Barbarian” is stretched very broadly.

For example, in the initial volume you have a mostly SF story by Fred Saberhagen and a Witch World fantasy tale by Andre Norton. Both are good stories but have little to do with any concept I might have of barbarians. There’s a Fritz Leiber Fafhrd and Mouser story that fits the concept, and the truly excellent “Swordsman of Lost Terra” by Poul Anderson, which also has a lot of Sword & Planet elements.

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Two New Black Company Novels (Lies Weeping, and They Cry) on the Way!

Two New Black Company Novels (Lies Weeping, and They Cry) on the Way!

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Back in April, as part of an exclusive Q&A with sword and sorcery legend Glen Cook, Black Gate revealed that the author had already completed the next three novels in his seminal The Black Company series. He was working on a fourth, all part of an arc titled A Pitiless Rain – or, The Orphan’s Tale.

For several years now I have been working on A Pitiless Rain – or, The Orphan’s Tale. It’s a family Saga thing mainly revolving around the next generation kids from Glittering Stone, especially Soldiers Live. I have completed the first three volumes: Lies Weeping, They Cry, & Summer Grass. (I am) Halfway through Darkness Knows.

Tor has announced that Lies Weeping is finally coming. No release date yet, though Barnes and Noble is taking pre-orders, with a listed date of November 4, 2025. There is some info on the story (it’s like a cover spoiler – skip if you aren’t current on The Company):

The Black Company has retreated across the plain of glittering stone, toward a shadow gate that would let them trade the dangers of the plain for the questionable safety of the Company’s one-time haven on Hsien, a region in the world known as the Land of Unknown Shadows.

In Hsien, the company returns to their former base, An Abode of Ravens, where the Lady ages backwards in a return to force, shaking off the thrall, one breath at a time. Meanwhile, Croaker, ascended to godlike status as the Steadfast Guardian, has been left behind in the Nameless Fortress.

In their adopted father’s stead, Arkana and Shukrat have taken up the role of annalist for the Black Company. At first, life in Hsien appears quiet, even boring, but it is quickly apparent that strange goings on are more than what they seem, and it’s up to them to discover the truth hidden in the shadows of this strange land.

Glen also told me in an email today, that book two, They Cry, will be out in February of 2026!

No release date for book three, and he is still working on book four.

It’s a new era for The Black Company, and a joyful Christmas season for its fans!
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Lyrical, Mysterious, and Ingenious: The Tales and Poems of Clark Ashton Smith

Lyrical, Mysterious, and Ingenious: The Tales and Poems of Clark Ashton Smith

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The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poems of Clark Ashton Smith (Hippocampus Press, January 13, 2021)

January 13 will mark the 132nd natal anniversary of the great Clark Ashton Smith, accomplished writer of weird fiction, horror, and poetry; visionary illustrator, painter, and sculptor. Smith’s tales of Averoigne, Atlantis, Hyperborea, and Zothique have fascinated me for years. Smith was incredibly gifted, writing tales fantasy, terror, science fiction, and the supernatural.

He also is considered one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. The Last Oblivion contains a wonderful selection of his poetic works. Smith’s exotic language and fertile imagination are unparalleled in these weird, supernatural, and otherworldly poems. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for something different yet evocative.

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