Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Beyond Captain Blood: Three by Sabatini

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Beyond Captain Blood: Three by Sabatini

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The Sea Hawk-poster

The Sea Hawk (Warner Bros, 1940)

We’ve already covered Errol Flynn’s breakthrough swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935) in this series, and you’ve probably seen and savored it, but you might not be familiar with Rafael Sabatini, the author who wrote the novel it was so memorably adapted from. In the Nineteenth Century Alexandre Dumas père was the king of historical adventure, but in the Twentieth Century that crown passed to Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950). Born in Italy, Sabatini was raised and schooled in Britain, Italy, and Switzerland, and was fluent in at least five languages. He settled in England in the early 1890s and in 1902 published The Suitors of Yvonne, the first of thirty-one historical novels, pretty much all of which can be classified as swashbucklers. In fact, in the early twentieth century the name Sabatini practically defined the genre. (He’s the only author who’s included twice in my Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure anthology.)

Sabatini’s novels were perfect film fodder; a half-dozen of them made it to the screen in the silent era, and after the success of Flynn’s Captain Blood Hollywood revisited Sabatini’s backlist for another round in the forties and fifties. The three covered below are the best of the lot — and two of them are as good as it gets!

The Sea Hawk

Rating: ***** (Essential)
Origin: USA, 1940
Director: Michael Curtiz
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

Shortly after the success of Captain Blood (1935), Warner Bros. optioned Blood author Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk as a follow-up vehicle for Errol Flynn; but production was postponed, partly because the plot of Hawk was too similar to that of Blood. Several years passed, war between Britain and Germany began to appear inevitable, and the British production of Fire Over England (1937) provided a model for an American approach to the same historical events.

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Samuel R. Delany on The Shores Beneath, edited by James Sallis

Samuel R. Delany on The Shores Beneath, edited by James Sallis

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The Shores Beneath (Avon, August 1971). Cover by Ron Walotsky

It’s been a good few weeks for obscure SF anthologies. Sunday I talked about the 50-year old Swords & Sorcery anthology Swords Against Tomorrow, which Alan Brown at Tor.com unexpectedly reviewed recently. And two weeks ago the great Samuel R. Delany posted this on Facebook, about James Sallis’ long-forgotten 1971 anthology The Shores Beneath, which collected four tales by Delany, Thomas M. Disch, John Sladek, and Roger Zelazny.

This 1971 collection of four long stories is a collection that made me very happy to be in — though all the stories have been reprinted, it never got the introduction that the editor had promised when he first sold the idea of the book to Avon. I wonder if that has anything to do with why the book was never reprinted.

“The Asian Shore” [by Disch] is an upsetting tale about racism again Muslims. [Zelazny’s] “The Graveyard Heart” is an SF vampire tale. To flip through [John Sladek’s] “Masterson and the Clerks” is to encounter a text that looks just like Aeolus chapter in Ulysses — and to read it is to realize it presents the same theme. The extra information about my own story is actually on the back — it won a Hugo Award (and a Nebula) which is probably why it also got the wonderful Walotsky cover. But might it have [helped] to add that it was a fairly early tale about same-sex desire…? Might even that much extra information have kept the collection itself in print for more than the year it was widely available?

The book dates from the time when Zelazny and I had the same agent — and when Avon was doing some of the most literary books in English. (I assume the in-house editor on the book was George Ernsberger, if not Peter Mayer himself.)

The saddest words of tongue or pen
Are the words “it might have been.”

The Shores Beneath was published by Avon Books in August 1971. It is 192 pages, priced at $0.75. The cover is by Ron Walotsky. It has never been reprinted, and there is no digital edition. See all our recent Vintage Treasures here.

Return to the World of The Three Musketeers in Blood Royal by Alexandre Dumas

Return to the World of The Three Musketeers in Blood Royal by Alexandre Dumas

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Blood Royal Alexandre Dumas-smallNeed a break from obsessively following US election results tonight? I have just the thing: Blood Royal, the latest entry in the acclaimed series of new translations of the Musketeer novels by our very own Lawrence Ellsworth, is on sale today.

I’ve really been enjoying Lawrence’s Cinema of Swords series here at Black Gate. But his day job is even cooler: he’s been bringing Alexandre Dumas’s classic novels of swashbuckling intrigue back into print in exciting and handsome new editions, complete with modern translations.

The latest, Blood Royal, continues the adventures of the valiant d’Artagnan and his three loyal friends. It follows The Red Sphinx and the newly translated The Three Musketeers; here’s what Lawrence told us about it last week.

Blood Royal is the second volume of Dumas’s Twenty Years After; there hadn’t been a significant new English translation of this novel in over a century, which was reason enough to take on the challenge, but the truth is I did it because it was so much fun.

Here’s the publisher’s description.

The latest translation in Lawrence Ellsworth’s acclaimed new series of Alexandre Dumas’s greatest adventures is Blood Royal, the second half of what Dumas originally published as Twenty Years After. In this volume all the plots and schemes set up in the previous novel come to dramatic fruition in the kind of exciting thrill-ride Dumas is famous for — while at the same time introducing the characters and themes that form the foundation of the rest of the series, leading to its great climax in The Man in the Iron Mask.

In Blood Royal, the Four Musketeers all venture to England on parallel missions to save King Charles I, pursued by the murderous and vengeful Mordaunt, the son of Milady de Winter, the great villain of The Three Musketeers. Despite all his experience, d’Artagnan is repeatedly foiled by the much-younger Mordaunt, who erupts out of the past to embody the strengths of audacity and cunning that were once d’Artagnan’s hallmarks. Mordaunt has corrupted those youthful strengths, and the older d’Artagnan is no match for him until he is able to pull his former team together again. To do this d’Artagnan will have to become a true leader of men, leading not just by example but also by foresight, persuasion, and compromise. Only then can the team of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis be re-formed in all its might to defeat the specter of their past. Blood Royal is unmatched in Dumas’s oeuvre in its depictions of his most famous and beloved characters, and an unforgettable saga of swordplay, suspense, revenge, and ultimate triumph.

Blood Royal was published today by Pegasus Books. It is 496 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $17.99 in digital formats.

See all our recent coverage of the best new releases here.

In Defense of Corum, Elric’s Brother-from-a-Vadhagh-Mother

In Defense of Corum, Elric’s Brother-from-a-Vadhagh-Mother

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The Swords Trilogy by Michael Moorcock (Berkley, 1971). Covers by David McCall Johnston.

Wow, I don’t think I could agree less with a column.

Michael Moorcock is one of the tower giants of sword & sorcery and New Wave SciFi; a member of early Conan fandom who by 16 was a published author and editor, and has spent 64 years writing a vast body of work. Most of this work chronicles snapshots of his Multiverse, and the struggles of the Eternal Champion, the tortured, ever-reincarnating hero of the Cosmic Balance in the struggle between Law and Chaos. And, of course, no aspect of that hero is more famous than Elric, Doomed Prince of Melnibone, wielder of the demonic, soul-stealing rune-sword, Stormbringer. No character has perhaps come to symbolize Sword & Sorcery more, other than Conan himself (*maybe* Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser) than Elric.

Only, as Lin Carter wrote in Flashing Swords! #2:

In 1965 followed an Elric novel called Stormbringer, wherein Moorcock made the tactical error of killing off his hero and terminating the series by the simple method of blowing up the universe. Since then Mike has created many another fantasy hero, but he has recently confessed to me that he is tired of making up carbon copies of Elric: hence this story, and the good news that he is back at work, fitting new Elric tales in among the ones written almost a decade earlier…

And so, Moorcock began writing about other incarnations of the Eternal Champion (and retconning some of his earlier characters to become such). It’s quite a pantheon, but some characters are far better known than others. After our Albino Prince, the most famous must be Dorian Hawkmoon, Jerry/Jhary/jeremiah Cornelius, and Erekosë, who alone of the various incarnations, recalls his past lives, and his dark fate. It’s a mixed pantheon to be sure, with a wildly varying quality of work — I find The Jewel in the Skull, first of the Hawkmoon novels, to be one of the best novels Moorcock wrote, but still can’t get through the Jerry Cornelius tales.

But for me, none of the other incarnations quite work the way Corum Jhaelen Irsei, the Prince in the Scarlet Robe does.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Psych of the Dead

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Psych of the Dead

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Psych_CastEDITEDI could not figure out what to write about today. I re-watched Paul Newman’s Harper, and thought about a post on that – especially since I recently re-read the autobiography of screenwriter William Goldman. And I saw Unholy Partners, a good hardboiled newspaper flick with Edward G. Robinson and Edward Arnold. I re-watched three versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles (Ian Richardson, Peter Cushing, and Jeremy Brett), and Bruce Campbell’s My Name is Bruce. I read Mark Latham’s Sherlock Holmes – Van Helsing novel, Betrayal in Blood. I started Robert E. Howard’s Cormac Mac Art stories, which I’d not read yet. I even started typing about Fortnite, the phenomenon with over 350 MILLION registered accounts – I play as a way to connect with my soon-to-be teenage son. But none of those subjects ‘clicked’ for this week.

I was sitting, looking at the well over a thousand books in my home office drawing a blank. I had a case of writer’s malaise. For Halloween, I watched a couple episodes of Psych, and I’ve decided to write about that. This isn’t one of my in-depth series’ looks, like I wrote for Leverage, and Hell on Wheels. But we’ll still talk about one of my favorite detective shows.

The premise of Psych is that Shawn Spencer (played by James Roday) has Sherlock Holmes-like powers of observation. Growing up, his dad (a terrific co-starring performance by Corbin Bernsen) was a hard-nosed cop who taught his son by locking him in the trunk of the car, challenging him in a restaurant to close his eyes and tell him how many diners are wearing hats, and the like. In the pilot, circumstances force Sean to pretend those observational skills are actually psychic revelations. He has to continue the charade to avoid jail. It sounds ridiculous, but they make it work well enough in the pilot.

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Witches, Sorcerers, and Space Citadels: Alan Brown on Swords Against Tomorrow, edited by Robert Hoskins

Witches, Sorcerers, and Space Citadels: Alan Brown on Swords Against Tomorrow, edited by Robert Hoskins

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Swords Against Tomorrow (Signet / New American Library, August 1970). Cover by Gene Szafran.

I’ve been enjoying Alan Brown’s classic science fiction reviews at Tor.com. In just the last few months he’s looked at Masters of the Vortex by E. E. “Doc” Smith, H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pirates of Venus, Sterling E. Lanier’s Hiero’s Journey, and Murray Leinster’s Med Ship. That’s a pretty satisfying journey through some great 20th Century SF right there (depending on how generously you’re disposed towards “Doc” Smith, I grant you).

But I was especially intrigued by his lengthy review of Robert Hoskins’ 1970 sword & sorcery anthology Swords Against Tomorrow, a long-forgotten volume that contained five long stories by Poul Anderson, Fritz Leiber, Lin Carter, John Jakes, and Leigh Brackett, including a pair of reprints from Planet Stories and an original novelette from Lin Carter. All but one are reprints — including a standalone novella by Anderson, a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser adventure, a Brak the Barbarian story, and a tale in Brackett’s famous Venus series.

This is a fine little paperback that introduced readers to some of the most popular heroic fantasy series of the era in the early 70s, and I certainly didn’t expect to see it featured so prominently at the premier genre site over half a century after it was published.

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Rebuild Civilization on a Savage and Alien Earth in Midnight Legion from Studio 9

Rebuild Civilization on a Savage and Alien Earth in Midnight Legion from Studio 9

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Midnight Legion box set from Studio 9 (2016). Art by C. Aaron Kreader.

It’s been a busy year, between changing jobs in April, managing a fledging writing career as Todd McAulty, running Black Gate, and coping with a pandemic. I don’t get to read as much as I used to, and I definitely don’t get to game as much. I especially regret not having the chance to dig into some of the new generation of solo RPGs, like Four Against Darkness and Into the Dungeon.

But I did spend a few shekels to try Midnight Legion, a very promising post apocalyptic solo gamebook series with a strong Metamorphosis Alpha vibe. Created by writer Aaron J. Emmel and artist C. Aaron Kreader and published by Evanston, Illinois-based Studio 9, Midnight Legion is a three-book series featuring an amnesiac android who awakens on a vastly changed Earth peopled with strange creatures and deadly mutant plants, and must piece together the clues to his original mission. You get everything you need to start in the intro Midnight Legion box set, published in 2016 with this description on the back:

You are an elite, android agent of an ancient, clandestine group who is forced awake after hundreds of years of stasis. Your memory is gone, and you can’t recall your purpose. You will need to solve puzzles and choose whether to use combat, stealth, or sixth sense and diplomacy to unlock your mission and the secrets of the world you knew.

The Midnight Legion is an interactive story where player(s) choose how to respond to what happens next. Created for solo play, with a 2-player option, this three book game series promises hours of gaming. Starting with Book 1: Operation Deep Sleep, everything you need to begin is contained in this boxed set.

The second gamebook, The World Reborn followed in 2017, and the final volume Portal of Life in 2019. Together they form an ambitious and compelling science fiction adventure that I’m anxious to dig into.

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New Treasures: The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson

New Treasures: The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson

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Cover design by Richard Yoo

Way back in early 2017, John DeNardo included Entropy in Bloom: Stories in a Kirkus Reviews article on The Science Fiction & Fantasy Books Everyone Will be Talking About in April. That was my introduction to the work of Jeremy Robert Johnson, a rising star in horror fiction, author of the 2015 novel Skullcrack City and the earlier collection We Live Inside You (2011).

His new novel The Loop was released by Saga Press last month to some pretty gonzo acclaim. Kirkus called it a “grotesque teen nightmare that’s pretty much Stranger Things meets Rogue One,” and I have no idea what that even means. Here’s a cut from Sadie Hartmann’s enthusiastic notice at Cemetery Dance:

This book covers a lot of ground and offers something for everyone: A strong, female protagonist named Lucy; witty (hilarious) sidekick besties, Brewer and Bucket; and a rocket-fueled storyline about a biologically engineered virus leaked from a lab and wreaking havoc in a small, rural town in the Pacific Northwest. There’s even a likable radio personality known as the Nightwatchman that gave me strong Pump Up the Volume vibes. Do you remember that movie with Christian Slater? Well I do. One of my favorite aspects of Johnson’s writing is the way everything is stylistically cinematic to read like a cult-classic from a familiar era (definitely the late ‘80s to mid-’90s)…

Folded into this tension is Johnson’s natural-born talent for wit and sarcasm as well as his flair for spot-on pop culture references — a trifecta of storytelling gifts that Johnson’s fanbase has come to expect from his books…. This is a favorite book of 2020 for sure.

The Loop was published by Saga Press on September 29, 2020. It is 306 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover was designed by Richard Yoo. Listen to an audio excerpt or read Chapter One at the Simon & Schuster website.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Read Matthew David Surridge’s Sword & Sorcery Novella “The Great Work” at Patreon

Read Matthew David Surridge’s Sword & Sorcery Novella “The Great Work” at Patreon

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Matthew Surridge The Book of Days

Matthew David Surridge’s novellete “The Word of Azrael” first appeared in Black Gate 14, and was one of the most widely acclaimed stories we ever published. Tangent Online called it “One of the strongest heroic fantasies I have seen in years,” and Rich Horton selected it for the 2011 Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy. In his Locus review Rich said:

Even better is Matthew Surridge’s “The Word of Azrael.” It concerns Isrohim Vey, who sees the Angel of Death on a battlefield and as a result is spared — more a curse than a blessing — to search again for the Angel. His search almost takes the form of a catalog of sword & sorcery tropes, his many adventures told briefly but with style and an ironic edge. Surridge both celebrates and winks at the genre. It’s very entertaining, clever, and even thought-provoking.

Matthew’s name will be familiar to regular readers of this blog; he’s published nearly 500 articles and reviews here over the years, and he’s especially well known for his extensive coverage of Montreal’s Fantasia film festival. He also maintains a Patreon feed, which he’s described as “a way to help me fulfill a long-planned project: writing short stories, across a range of genres, that together will create a vast mosaic of fiction.” Last month Matthew unveiled a major new project he’d recently completed:

I’ve got a new novella-length story at my Patreon. And it’s sword-and-sorcery! It’s a dungeon-crawl carried out by the adventurers’ hirelings. Dark fantasy, maybe; maybe some horror-y elements. And it’s about 20 000 words long.

“The Great Work” is available in its entirety as part of Matthew Patreon, you can join and support him for as little as $1 a month. You’ll also receive access to 31 articles and other works. Check it out, and support one of the most talented fantasy writers at work today!

Rogue Blades Author: A Love Letter to Bear Creek

Rogue Blades Author: A Love Letter to Bear Creek

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The following is an excerpt from Mark Finn’s essay for Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, an upcoming book from the Rogue Blades Foundation.

Howard changed my lifeI’ve spent roughly seventy-five percent of my life thinking about Robert E. Howard, one of his many literary creations, or some combination of the two. It’s common when, in the bloom of one’s youth, a reader decides who their favorite author is and then reads everything they can get their hands on, indiscriminately. I was certainly no exception, and while I was quick to devour all the Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane I could find, I don’t think I learned about Howard’s humor stories until I was a senior in high school.

It was in the problematic pages of Dark Valley Destiny (1983) where L. Sprague de Camp wrote favorably (well, as favorably as he was able, which in this case, was fairly glowing) about Howard’s humor fiction; the fighting sailor of the Asiatics, Steve Costigan, and the lumbering mountain man from Bear Creek, Nevada, Breckinridge Elkins. Given that de Camp’s biography was so full of scant praise for the author’s literary output, these plaudits stood out in sharp relief against the backhanded compliments. As the single biggest fan of Robert E. Howard that I knew, I could not let this omission in my reading stand.

As it turned out, it would have to, at least for a couple of years, until I could get to a better class of used bookstore. I bought both The Iron Man (1976) and A Gent From Bear Creek (1975) at the same time at Austin Books, in (where else?) Austin, Texas. They were the Zebra editions with wonderfully evocative covers by Jeff Jones. I was stunned and a little disheartened to find out that Howard’s humor writing was, in the late ’80s and early ’90s, about 95% unpublished. Sure, A Gent From Bear Creek was available, but it was, at the time, at odds with the rest of Howard’s work in print. Specifically, it was hard to reconcile this picaresque romp of a humor novel, full of hyperbole and exaggerations, with the same author that wrote “The Black Stone” and “Red Nails.” If I’m being completely honest, I didn’t quite get it.

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