Being an avid Black Gate reader, you know that we devoted a lot of attention to the various works of Conan’s creator last year with our ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series. I was very much a latecomer to Conan, as well as Howard in general. I’ve made up a lot of ground on Solomon Kane, El Borak and others, but I’ve still got a slew of Tor paperbacks featuring the Cimmerian that I haven’t read yet, among other stuff.
However, one fantasy series that I delved far deeper into at a much younger age was Michael Moorcock’s saga of Elric and the Eternal Champion. To my middle school, Dungeons and Dragons-playing mind, that stuff, with those awesome DAW covers, was pure gold. In fact, White Wolf would have been FAR better served to use one of those instead of the craptacular cover they put on Elric: The Stealer of Souls in 1998. It is beyond awful and I’m not going to include it in this post. You can Google it if you doubt me, but I’d take my word for it.
I was going through some boxes of books that aren’t on my shelves and I came across the Dell paperback of Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords #2. First published in hardback in 1974, it included a new story of the pale Melnibonian, “The Jade Man’s Eyes.” And with a Frank Frazetta cover, it’s miles ahead of the aforementioned White Wolf cover as well.
This collection has an interesting introduction that talks about Howard’s Conan as the birth of sword and sorcery (remember: forty-plus years ago and pre-internet, what we now regard as common knowledge and what’s popular and respected often wasn’t the case then).
Carter tells of the creation of The Swordsmen and Sorceror’s Guild of America, Ltd. (SAGA), including himself, L. Sprague de Camp and John Jakes. Fritz Lieber, Mike Moorcock and Jack Vance were added soon after, followed by Poul Anderson and Andre Norton. I imagine you’ll see a SAGA post here somewhere down the line.
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