First, I want to thank everyone who made suggestions on my post about what anthology series to read. There were a number of good suggestions.
Here’s what I decided: Continue reading
Update on Anthology Reading
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Category Archives: Andrew J. Offutt
Manly Wade Wellman’s Kardios of Atlantis
“Straggler From Atlantis”
Swords Against Darkness
Andrew J. Offutt, ed.
mmpb, Zebra Books, 1977, $1.95
In the late 1970s, Manly Wade Wellman began a series of novelettes about the last survivor of Atlantis, a warrior bard named Kardios. Or at least he began publishing them in the late 1970s. In his introduction to “Straggler from Atlantis”, Adrew Offutt says that Wellman tried to publish them in the 1930s, but some other chap was writing about an Atlantean named Kull at the time and no editor was buying.
Be that at it may, the Kardios stories were published, although to the best of my knowledge, they’ve never been collected in book form. The ISFDB shows a total of five, with the first four appearing in the first four volumes of Swords Against Darkness and the final one in an anthology from DAW books with the generic title of Heroic Fantasy. Continue reading
More Bookstore Closing Acquisitions
I posted recently about one of the local used bookstores (currently there are 4: 2 good, 1 decent, 1 not worth bothering with) closing and some of the titles I picked up.
You know I went back. The store will be open for a little while yet. Here’s what I picked up this time.
I couldn’t resist the cover of the Howard pastiche by Offutt, even though I doubt I’ll read it. The People of the Mist is an upgrade of my existing copy. The Starfollowers of Coramonde is a later edition, but the Darrell K. Sweet cover matches the one on the first novel in the series.
I loved Sean Stewart’s Galveston some years back, but I haven’t read any of his other books. The Tanith Lee speaks for itself. The third row contains the first 3 of 4 in Lawrence Watt-Evans Lords of Dus series.
The last row is a reading copy of one of Evangeline Walton’s books that was part of the BAF series. The Zahn is part of a series that looks like a lot of fun. And the Paul Preuss because I wanted some solid science fiction in the old style.
But the gem of this little collection is the volume in the upper left of the picture. It’s Whispers, edited by Stuart David Schiff. It’s a collection of stories published in his groundbreaking small press magazine of the same title. I’ve got a copy of this already, but I couldn’t pass this one up. The contents include “Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner, “The Barrow Troll” by David Drake, “The Dakwa” by Manly Wade Wellman, plus stories by Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, William F. Nolan, Hugh B. Cave, Dennis Etchison, Joseph Payne Brennan, Ramsey Campbell, Richard Christian Matheson, Brian Lumley, and many others.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go reread “Sticks”.
RIP, Andrew J. Offutt
Locus is reporting that Andrew J. Offutt passed away earlier today. No cause of death was listed. He wrote a number of erotic novels, many of them science fiction, as well as fantasy. Included in his fantasy works are pastiches of the Robert E. Howard characters Conan and Cormac Mac Art.
As Charles Rutledge points out in his tribute, his greatest contribution to the field was as an editor rather than an author. He was the editor of the 5 volume Swords Against Darkness series of original sword and sorcery anthologies. I’ve got all but volume 3 (with duplicates of 2 and 5). I was considering doing a series of posts looking at each one when I track down volume 3. That plan hasn’t changed with Mr. Offutt’s passing. I’ve also got one or two of his novels around here somewhere I intend to read at some point.
Even though he hasn’t been active in sword and sorcery circles for a number of years (at least not that I know of), we’ve lost one of the major players from the sword and sorcery boom from the 70s.