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Category: Vintage Treasures

For Want of a Dragon… The Dragon Lord by David Drake

For Want of a Dragon… The Dragon Lord by David Drake

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oie_2323565902PNa1BCOne of the greatest incentives to start blogging about S&S was that it would force me to read more.

For the three or four years before I started my blog, I was reading only a dozen or so books a year, instead of the fifty to sixty I had in the past. If I wanted to have something to write about, I would actually have to read. That part’s worked out very well for me.

Coupled with that was the hope of getting to all those books I’d bought and been meaning to read for years — even decades in a few cases. I would leave used book stores with shopping bags full of books, heady with plans to read them all some day. A lot of the S&S books I hoped to blog about had been in those bags.

One was The Dragon Lord, David Drake’s tale of an Irish adventurer in the days of King Arthur. Last week, after ten or fifteen years, I pulled it from its dusty purgatory on the bookshelf.

According to the ISFDB, Drake has written seventy novels and over a dozen collections of stories. I’ve read my share of his fiction over the years, including the early Hammer’s Slammers stories and the horror collection From the Heart of Darkness. A few years ago, I read and reviewed his stories about Vettius, a legate in the late Roman Empire. While I thoroughly enjoyed those stories, I had no plans to read Drake again any time soon.

For me to choose to read a David Drake book at this point means that something hooked me. It’s nothing against Drake, but at my age I’ve got stacks of other books picked out. I need a reason to pick out a back row book. In the case of The Dragon Lord, the impetus was a picture from Wayne Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy.

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Leigh Brackett, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Leigh Brackett, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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The Galactic Breed-smallAnd so we come to the end of our extended journey through Gygax’s Appendix N, at the hands of our intrepid guides Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode at Tor.com.

We haven’t always agreed with the opinions of Messieurs Callahan and Knode. But that’s okay. More than okay, really… what’s the point of following along with a literary survey if we don’t get to pound the table occasionally and shout “You lunkheads!” Really, the primary pleasure we old-timers get these days is disagreeing with self-proclaimed experts. Loudly, and at length.

But overall I think Callahan and Knode, the Lewis and Clark of Appendix N, have done a fine job. They’ve surveyed every entry in Gary Gygax’s original list of authors who influenced Dungeons and Dragons, just as they promised when they set out nine months ago. Along the way, they’ve shared their opinions — sometimes as informed experts, sometimes as newbies coming to the work of the masters for the first time.

And at every stop, they’ve been honest with us on whether or not the books spoke to them as modern readers. I don’t think we can ask for anything more than that.

I’m going to miss following along with Tim and Mordicai. Whether I agreed with them or not — nodding along with “Yup, yer darn tootin’,” or banging my head on the table and cursing every reader born after 1990 — they were always entertaining, enlightening, and frequently very funny.

But we still have two last articles to examine: Mordicai’s appreciation of the grand old lady of science fantasy, Leigh Brackett, and Mordicai and Tim’s wrap-up of the entire series, their salute to J.R.R. Tolkien. Let’s see if these last two pieces bring more nodding, or table-banging.

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Vintage Treasures: The Trouble With Tycho by Clifford D. Simak / Bring Back Yesterday by A. Bertram Chandler

Vintage Treasures: The Trouble With Tycho by Clifford D. Simak / Bring Back Yesterday by A. Bertram Chandler

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The Trouble with Tycho-smallWhile we’re on the topic of my favorite Ace Doubles (trust me, we were), I should say a thing or two about Clifford D. Simak’s The Trouble With Tycho. Simak is not well remembered today. None of his 28 novels are in print (unless you count low-end Kindle or POD editions from specialty publishers), and he had something of a rep as a SF midlister for much of his career. But he remains one of my all-time favorite SF writers. He won three Hugos: for his 1963 novel Way Station, for the short story “Grotto of the Dancing Deer” (1980), and his 1959 masterpiece “The Big Front Yard,” perhaps the most perfect SF story ever written. He also won a Nebula (for “Grotto”).

Simak penned many fine SF adventure-mysteries. One of the first I came across was The Trouble With Tycho, the tale of a haunted crater on the moon and the desperate space miners who try to plumb its secrets. It was part of a 1961 Ace Double, with a cover by John Schoenherr and paired with A. Bertram Chandler’s Bring Back Yesterday. Here’s the blurb from the first page.

No Second Chance on the Moon

Prospecting on the Moon was pretty grim and un-rewarding. With no water, no oxygen, and almost no valuable ores, it was one helluva place to try and get rich quick. Only most of the would-be prospectors didn’t find this out until after they’d gotten there.

And Chris Jackson was no exception. He’d gotten the syndicate back home to put up the money for a moon rig and the passage out, and now he had to make good their faith in him. Had to make it on the Moon, even if it meant going into Tycho!

For Tycho was the one place on Luna where there were positive riches to be found — in salvage. The remains of three expeditions that had disappeared in Tycho would be perfectly preserved in that airless atmosphere, and the man who could get to them — and get out again alive — would have his fortune made.

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Basic Dungeons and Dragons is Still Kicking: An Interview with Module Writer Geoff Gander

Basic Dungeons and Dragons is Still Kicking: An Interview with Module Writer Geoff Gander

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To_End_the_Rising_Web_CoverGeoff Gander is a dark fantasy writer and D&D module-creator living in Ottawa, Canada. Geoff and I met over early morning coffee to talk gaming.

Derek: So, you write Basic D&D modules. You’ve had 2 modules printed by Expeditious Retreat Press. Even when I was a small town teenager, I could still get my hands on a variety of role playing games, especially AD&D, making Basic seem like yesterday’s news. Now, twenty-five years later, people are paying you money to write modules for Basic. Where’s that market coming from?

Geoff: We’re seeing the rise of old school gaming in classic pen-and-paper RPGs as well as computers. Many old schoolers who played D&D and similar games in the 80s are now introducing the games to their children, or they may have followed the general flow of gaming culture towards the latest products on the market, and have grown nostalgic for what got them into the hobby in the first place.

There are also people like me, who grew dissatisfied with the quality of mainstream gaming products and stayed with the systems they enjoyed, long after they went out of print.

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The Madness of True Detective

The Madness of True Detective

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HBO True Detective-smallSo everyone in my office has been talking about the new HBO show True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.

They talk in hushed whispers. “Hey, did you watch last night?” Suddenly, the volume drops and all I hear is a low buzz over the cube wall. I hear enough to know they’re taking about McConaughey and that new HBO show — and they’re obviously riveted.

I haven’t seen it. Did see the cool ad and noticed how vastly different McConaughey looked, all gaunt in a suit. He’s really turned into an Actor’s Actor, what with terrific recent performances in Mud and Dallas Buyers Club. Although my favorite McConaughey film is probably Sahara. Man, my kids still spout quotes from that movie. Every day I hear, “Sit down… I’ll get the check.” (And, “Of course I brought the dynamite!”)

Anyway. I’ve been seeing a strange flurry of articles about Robert W. Chambers’s brilliant collection The King in Yellow crop up on Facebook recently, and I saw the headline of that io9 piece, “The One Literary Reference You Must Know to Appreciate True Detective.” But I didn’t really make the connection until I saw this article at The Daily Beast, “Read The King in Yellow, the True Detective Reference That’s the Key to the Show.”

The key to understanding HBO’s enthralling series True Detective might be the references to the Yellow King and Carcosa, which the killer Reggie Ledoux talks about and the show hints at to be figures and symbols of a satanic cult of some sort. But the Yellow King is an allusion to The King in Yellow, an 1895 book of horror and supernatural short stories by the writer Robert W. Chambers…

Holy cow… True Detective is based on The King in Yellow?

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Before and After

Before and After

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The Door Into SummerOver the last few weeks, I’ve been talking about apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic Fantasy and SF, and something that’s come up a couple of times in the comments is the idea of a “precursor” civilization. On the one hand, we’ve more or less agreed that the existence of one doesn’t automatically mean that the present story is post-apocalyptic. On the other hand, unless we’re writing about Neanderthals, we’re pretty much always dealing with a pre-existing civilization, aren’t we?

In SF, the precursor society is easy to figure out. It’s us. SF is the fiction of change, and the social/scientific/technological world that it changes from is the one the writer/reader is living in. There seem to be two basic approaches to this concept, one in which the story is set in the near future, and one in which today’s society lies somewhere in the distant past.

With the exception of people like Isaac Asimov, and works like his Foundation Trilogy, most of the early SF writers were using the near future premise. Heinlein’s The Door into Summer, for example, written in the 1950’s, was set in the 1970’s. The movie Blade Runner is set in 2017.

I know. As SF fans have been saying for years, “Where’s my flying car?” This gives you a hint as to why the near future premise isn’t used much anymore. The future got here a lot faster, and in many ways differently, than anticipated. We might have microwave ovens, but we’re not colonizing the moons of Jupiter.

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Vintage Treasures: The Spell of Seven, edited by L. Sprague de Camp

Vintage Treasures: The Spell of Seven, edited by L. Sprague de Camp

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The Spell of Seven-smallIt takes real effort to keep on top of even a fraction of the exciting new work in the fantasy genre every week. Between the print magazines, online outlets like Subterranean and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, paperbacks, hardcovers, and self-published and independent work from talented folks just outside mainstream publishing, it’s exhausting. Luckily, it’s also extremely rewarding, and I feel fortunate indeed to be part of such a lively and vibrant branch of literature.

Of course, there are also weeks when I say, “The hell with it,” and settle in with a great vintage paperback.

This was one of those weeks. And the book that lured me away from the latest crop of promising new writers clamoring for my attention was L. Sprague de Camp’s The Spell of Seven, a slender sword & sorcery anthology from 1965.

I’ll admit up front that I thought that The Spell of Seven was a standalone title. I’m a child of the late 20th Century; when a book is part of a series, I expect the publisher to sell me on that up front. (It’s easier to mug me for more money that way.)

Fortunately, I have the collective hive-mind of Black Gate to call upon. One of the great lobes of that mind is Brian Murphy, who pointed out that the book was a follow-up to De Camp’s seminal S&S anthology Swords and Sorcery, and part of a successful series that would eventually evolve into a four volume survey from Pyramid Books covering the most important heroic fantasy of the time.

Here are Brian’s comments, taken from his 2011 review of The Fantastic Swordsmen.

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A Certain Charm Marred by an Air of the Horrible: Count Bohemond by Alfred Duggan

A Certain Charm Marred by an Air of the Horrible: Count Bohemond by Alfred Duggan

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oie_174413CCNNRiqmHistory provides us with real life characters who seem to have stepped straight out of myth. The scale of their ambition or power seems beyond the reach of mortals. Their successes verge on the unbelievable. And yet they are real. Bohemond de Hauteville, Prince of Taranto, was one of those people.

Alfred Duggan’s posthumous 1965 novel Count Bohemond presents the first half of Bohemond’s life: his rise to fame and victory set against the background of the faltering Byzantine Empire and culminating with the near miraculous victories of the First Crusade. This dense and captivating book covers the thirty-five years from Bohemond’s childhood to the height of his success and the capture of the fortified city of Antioch in 1098.

Though she disliked all Normans, and Bohemond in particular, Anna Komene, daughter of Emperor Alexius described him quite laudably in the Alexiad, a history of the Byzantine Empire in the 11th and 12th centuries:

Now he was such as, to put it briefly, had never before been seen in the land of the Romans (that is, Greeks), be he either of the barbarians or of the Greeks (for he was a marvel for the eyes to behold, and his reputation was terrifying). Let me describe the barbarian’s appearance more particularly — he was so tall in stature that he overtopped the tallest by nearly one cubit, narrow in the waist and loins, with broad shoulders and a deep chest and powerful arms. And in the whole build of the body he was neither too slender nor overweighted with flesh, but perfectly proportioned and, one might say, built in conformity with the canon of Polycleitus… His skin all over his body was very white, and in his face the white was tempered with red. His hair was yellowish, but did not hang down to his waist like that of the other barbarians; for the man was not inordinately vain of his hair, but had it cut short to the ears. Whether his beard was reddish, or any other color I cannot say, for the razor had passed over it very closely and left a surface smoother than chalk…

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Return to Thieves World in Beyond Sanctuary: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris

Return to Thieves World in Beyond Sanctuary: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris

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Microsoft Word - 09 12 24 Sacred Band Cover white horse white foLet me start off here with a quote from my Black Gate review of Janet and Chris Morris’s novel, The Sacred Band:

The Sacred Band is much more than great Heroic Fantasy: it is classic literature, filled with sub-plots, a fine cast of well-drawn characters, insight and wisdom and recurring themes of honor, faith, brotherhood and love. This novel spoke to me on a personal level because it’s a story of pure human drama and powerful emotions. While the characters are larger than life, they are also richly-drawn and written with great depth of insight and humanity. What also rings true with the Sacred Band is their military tradition, their ethos. These characters are soldiers, warriors. They are not only mythic heroes, they are also everyday heroes; real people, everyday people who face extraordinary odds and foes… The Sacred Band has the sharp edge of reality, the harshness, the bitterness and the danger of the real world. Love, loyalty, honor — these are the ideals by which these characters live and die. This novel is epic in scope. It is mythic by heritage. It is positively Homeric.

Janet Morris’s Beyond Sanctuary is the first volume in a trilogy that includes Beyond the Veil and Beyond Wizardwall, and the events in this trilogy take place before The Sacred Band, the magnificent novel by Janet and her husband Chris, which I previously reviewed here for Black Gate.

Beyond Sanctuary is a complex novel and truly literary heroic fantasy. It is textured and layered, subtle at times, and yet always powerful. Like the best of all literary fiction, it has emotional depth and human drama, subtext and a philosophy that is expressed through the thoughts, words, and deeds of its characters, and not through narrative lecture and dissertation that slows the pace of narrative thrust.

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Vintage Treasures: The Last Planet by Andre Norton

Vintage Treasures: The Last Planet by Andre Norton

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The Last Planet-smallAndre Norton’s The Last Planet may have been the first Ace Double I ever saw.

Memory is a tricky thing, so I can’t really be sure. It may have been Daybreak — 2250, which sat enticingly in the spinner racks of the St. Francis Junior High School library in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But The Last Planet was almost certainly the first Ace Double I laid eyes on which I was aware was an Ace Double, with a sister book on the flip side and everything (in this case, Alan E. Nourse’s futuristic thriller A Man Obsessed.)

By then, I had begun to build my own collection of SF paperbacks and this fascinating relic of early SF adventure helped pull me towards the entire Ace Double line, like a shipwrecked sailor drawn towards a desert island. A big, lush desert island with a gorgeous library.

It’s Harry Barton’s classic cover for the 1955 paperback that really did it for me. I’ve never read The Last Planet — it took me years just to track down a copy — but nonetheless it has loomed large in my imagination for decades. Three stalwart space explorers, walking through the ruins of an alien city as their crashed spacecraft cools in the foothills behind them, about to stumble upon a metal robot, hiding in the rubble and clutching a rudimentary weapon.

How could it not? For me, at least, it’s one of the signature works of 20th Century SF artwork.

In the years that I searched for a copy, I imagined the story of those three explorers. Would they shoot the robot? Was it friendly? Could be friendly, with those big google-eyes and curious gaze. Those red-shirted explorers looked awfully trigger happy though, with their steely gazes and twitchy hands on their futuristic sidearms. Lords knows, you can’t blame a redshirt for being trigger-happy on an away mission.

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