Robert E. Howard: Anatomy of a Creative Crisis
“Beyond the Sunrise” is the unofficial title afforded an unfinished Kull story that did not see print until over forty years after the author’s death. Its significance is due largely to the fact that it was the first of four widely differing attempts to continue the Kull series following the publication of both “The Shadow Kingdom” and “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” in Weird Tales in 1929.
Robert E. Howard starts the story off with a bored Kull sitting on his throne listening to a rather dull tale of the Valusian noblewoman, Lala-ah who has run off with her foreign lover leaving the nobleman she was promised to waiting at the altar. The barbarian king’s pride is piqued once he learns the foreigner insulted him behind his back. He then readily agrees to lead a posse to retrieve the noblewoman and restore his and his nation’s honor.
I was about as enthusiastic as Kull when I first started the story and thought the Atlantean was acting like a childish oaf for getting his nose out of joint just because a foreigner called him a sissy when he wasn’t around to defend himself.
Because this series about riding about the dragon called Publishing is geared at writers just starting out writing fantasy stories and novels, I thought I’d pull together
Anyone who has been reading these entries with any regularity knows that the word “minimalist” will never be used in the same sentence with my name. I seem to be visually starved, needing to be perpetually surrounded by interesting if not strange things to look at. This can easily be proven by the fact I cohabitate with a voodoo doll collection and three German Shepherds.
SF author Bud Webster informs us that his book Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies, is now available from The Merry Blacksmith Press. Bud tells us:
Night of the Necromancer
In Part Two of his blog series on the Publishing Death Spiral (read Part One
Sixteen of your US dollars. That’s what the latest (monster) issue of Black Gate has cost you in these days of fear and crumbling factories. It’s strange, isn’t it? You’ll spend all that money on a collection of fiction and game reviews when the internet is bursting with so much free content. If you go looking right now, you can find a million Sword & Sorcery stories out there that you wouldn’t even need to pirate: the authors, overcome in a delirium of generosity, are only too thrilled to supply them for free.
Prague-based artist Matej Kren has created a room made almost entirely of books. It is part of the city gallery of Bratislava.