Category Archives: Weird Tales

Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis: Dragon Moon

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“Dragon Moon” from Elak of Atlantis
Henry Kuttner
Planet Stories – Paizo Publishing
Trade Paperback, $12.95, 2007

“Dragon Moon” is the last of the Elak stories Henry Kuttner wrote.  It got the cover of the January 1941 issue of Weird Tales.  I was browsing recently on the Dark Worlds site and discovered that all but “Thunder in the Dawn” got the cover.  I shouldn’t say “discovered” so much as I was reminded.  I had seen all three of the covers featuring the Elak stories before and should have remembered them.  Rather than reproduce the rest of them here, I’ll let you view them over at Dark Worlds.  G. W. Thomas has put together an interesting website, and you owe it to yourself to check it out if you haven’t already. 

“Dragon Moon” opens very much like “Thunder in the Dawn”, with Elak and Lycon becoming involved in a brawl over a tavern wench in the port city of Poseidonis.  Once again the druid Dalan saves Elak and tells him his home kingdom of Cyrena is in danger.  At this point, the two tales diverge in their similarities.  An alien presence, not a demon or a spirit, but an alien presence (Dalan is quite clear on this point) called Karkora the Pallid One has taken over the mind of the ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Kiriath.  Karkora had begun to take over the mind of Elak’s brother Orander.  In order to prevent this from happening, Orander has taken his own life.  Elak is now heir to the Dragon Throne and the kingdom of Cyrena.  Kiriath is assembling an army to invade Cyrena.

Elak has no interest in ruling and sends Dalan away.  That night Elak has a strange dream in which he finds himself on a cold mountaintop being assaulted by a presence.  He is only able to escape by calling on the aid of his god.  This is a complete departure from Conan, who is well documented in his practice of not calling on gods and whose deity Crom hates weaklings.  Elak doesn’t give it a second thought.

This is the first dream sequence (or dream-like at least) in the story and is fairly short.  Unable to find Dalan, Elak and Lycon hire a skiff to take them to a boat that is just setting sail for Cyrena.  Upon climbing up the side and over the rail, they discovered the ship is captained by a man named Drezzar.  The same Drezzar Elak was fighting in the opening scene of the story.  He and Lycon are immediately taken captive and put to work at the oars as slaves.

This sequence, in which Elak is captured and eventually leads a slave rebellion, is the part of the story that most reminded me of Conan.  It’s a straight action-adventure sequence which ends with Elak assuming the captaincy of the vessel.

The next truly weird part of the story occurs after Elak has been instructed by Dalan in a dream to leave the ship at a certain location.  He eventually ends up seeking aid from a sorceress named Mayana.  She is the mother of the current Kiriathan king and a descendant of Poseidon.  In reaching her, Elak has to swim across a lake inhabited by the shades of a drowned city.  This is the closest Kuttner comes to including a bizarre otherworldly sequence of the intensity of the ones seen in the earlier stories.

Mayana is by far the most interesting character.  She fell in love with the former king of Kiriath and bore him a son with the aid of a sorcerer named Erykion.  He’s ultimately responsible for the Pallid One possessing the current king of Kiriath, who is Mayana’s son.  She holds the key to stopping her son, but is reluctant to aid Elak because it will mean her son’s death.  Yet, she also realizes that this is the right thing to do.  She withholds her aid but promises to give it to Elak in his hour of greatest need.  Mayana, in spite of being a child of the sea and not human, has fallen in love with the forests and fields of the land and longs to be able to walk them once again.

There’s more, but I won’t spoil it for you, except to say this.  It appears that Kuttner was intentionally ending the series with this installment.  Elak ascends the Dragon Throne and agrees to change his wandering ways, to settle down and rule.  While kings can certainly have adventures, (Kull and Conan did, after all) the tone implies Elak the king will have a more quiet reign than his predecessors in Weird Tales.  The ending of the story is the most bittersweet one of the entire series.

Whatever reasons Kuttner had for terminating Elak’s adventures, he ends the series on a high note.  The writing is probably the most polished of all the Elak stories.  The action flows smoothly.  I found the characters to be better developed, especially Mayana, who is by far the most complex of any of the characters in the series, especially given the amount of time she is actually in the story.

“Dragon Moon” was published in the January 1941 issue of Weird Tales.  “Beyond the Phoenix” made its appearance in the October 1938 issue.  That’s a gap of over two years.  All of the preceding Elak stories were published in 1938.  I’m not sure why there was such a long break.  The two Prince Raynor stories were published in Strange Tales during those two years.  It appears as though Kuttner left the character and came back to him, although that’s entirely speculation on my part.  Did Kuttner feel that his writing had matured since the first Elak story (it had) and want to try his hand at a different sword and sorcery setting?  Did Raynor not connect with the readers?  Did Kuttner submit “Dragon Moon”  in late 1938 or early 1939 and Farnsworth Wright delayed in scheduling it so that Kuttner had to create Prince Raynor for another market?  Hard to swallow considering all but one of the Elak stories got covers and Wright published Conan in a number of consecutive issues.  I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they’re interesting to think about.  If anyone out there knows why “Dragon Moon” was published later, I’d like to hear the answer.

So, to sum up the Elak of Atlantis series.  While the first has some definite flaws, the quality improves over the series.  While comparisons to Conan are inevitable, and most of them will probably be unfavorable comparisons, Elak is his own character.  He seeks help from the gods.  He is an adventurer by choice.  You can argue that Conan is as well, but the backgrounds of the two men are vastly different.  Elak turns his back on a throne before ascending it.  Conan, who has no such prospects due to his birth, makes his own opportunity.  This series, while maybe not a major sword and sorcery series, is certainly one worth reading.  Kuttner was expanding the genre, giving it a more weird and bizzare feel through the scenes where Elak goes to another realm, be it extra dimensional or in a dream.  To my knowledge, at this time only C. L. Moore had done that with her Jirel of Joiry adventures.  So, in conclusion, if you haven’t read the Elak stories, check them out, especially the second, third, and final tales.

We’ll look at the Prince Raynor stories next and see how they compare to both Conan and Elak.

Long Looks at Short Fiction: Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard

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Tales of Weird Menace
by Robert E. Howard
The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press
Ordering Information Not Yet Available

The Robert E. Howard Foundation has, in the few short years of its existence, done a number of good things.  Such things as helping maintain the Robert E. Howard House in Cross Plains, Texas, and providing an annual scholarship to a graduating senior from Cross Plains High School.  As part of the Foundation’s mission, a number of works by Howard are being reprinted, including his collected letters (in 3 volumes) and a giant volume of Howard’s collected poetry.  The latter title has gone through three printings and is currently sold out.  Sales of these and other books help fund the philanthropic activities of the Foundation.

Next up on the Foundation’s schedule is the volume you see to the left.  This collection contains Howard’s Weird Menace stories, as you can probably tell from the title.  We’ll look at the best known of them, Skull-Face in this posting.

But first a word about the Weird Menace pulps on the off chance some of you aren’t familiar with them.  These were a blend of horror and super science, with a dash of the hero pulps (think Doc Savage or The Spider) and a good deal of implied or explicit eroticism and gore thrown in.  Often the supernatural aspect of the villain was revealed to be mundane, although you can be sure that won’t be the case with “Skull-Face.”  The weird menace pulps were fairly popular, but censorship and the real horrors of World War II ultimately did them in.

Howard tried his hand at writing some of this type of tale, like he did with most of the pulp genres that weren’t marketed to solely to women, such as romance pulps.  While this isn’t the sort of thing Howard is best remembered for, which would be his fantasy and horror tales, Howard was a diverse writer who was successful in a number of pulp genres, such as serious and humorous westerns, as well as boxing stories, a genre that was prominent at the time but has pretty much disappeared from popular fiction.

What I don’t understand is why “Skull-Face” seems to have fallen on, well, I guess you could call it a time of neglect.  I’m not sure the work has been out of print much since the Howard boom of the 70s when Berkley featured it as the lead in a collection of related tales.  But you don’t hear it talked about much anymore.  At least I haven’t.  It has all the ingredients of a classic pulp adventure:  danger, lots of action, a beautiful and imperiled woman, not one but two heroes, and of course, The Yellow Peril, Robert E. Howard style.

And it may well be that last ingredient which has made it less popular; I don’t know.  There is certainly a great deal said about race in the story, from more than one point of view.  And Skull-Face, or The Master, or The Scorpion as he’s also known, doesn’t fit the traditional Yellow Peril mold completely.  For one thing, Skull-Face isn’t actually an oriental, but beyond that I’m not going to spoil the fun.

To most modern readers, The Yellow Peril  might be unfamiliar, and to many would certainly be offensive.  In essence, it was a trope common to much popular fiction in the early 20th century.  Basically western (read white) civilization would be threatened in some way by an oriental menace, often in the form of an evil criminal genius who often had occult or scientific powers that were beyond anything the West was capable of.  The example the casual reader would most likely be familiar with is Sax Rhomer’s Fu Manchu.

Regardless, the whole concept of the Yellow Peril would not be politically correct in this day and age.  Far from it.  As a result it would be offensive to many modern readers.  I, however, hold the opinion that when you’re reading literature from a different historical period, you do yourself and the story a disservice if you try to evaluate aspects of it through contemporary lenses.  Instead, keep in mind the cultural context in which a particular story was written.

That’s just as true in the case of “Skull-Face” as it is for any other work of literature.  However outdated some of Howard’s views on race may seem to be to the reader of the 21st century, they weren’t that far out of the mainstream in the 20s and 30s.  (A topic that won’t be discussed in any detail here.)  And if the racial portrayals in “Skull-Face” are what have caused it to be eclipsed by some of Howard’s other work, then it’s a crying shame.

Because “Skull-Face” is fine story.  It was serialized in three parts in the October, November, and December 1929 issues of Weird Tales.  The first Solomon Kane stories were beginning to see print at this time, and Kull would had made his debut earlier that same year, with Bran Mak Morn appearing the next year.  The coming of Conan was still a few years in the future.  While Robert E. Howard had not yet reached the peak of his output, in both quality and quantity, he was no slouch either.  The prose was much more crisp and less purple than I was expecting.  The pace is the headlong rush with plenty of action we’ve come to expect in a Howard yarn.  Howard doesn’t shy away from violence or the seedy underside of the Chinese ghetto in London where much of the story takes place.  He shows us, through the eyes of Stephen Costigan (not to be confused by the boxing sailor of that name in other Howard stories) what life is like for the addict in an opium den.

And that may be another reason the story isn’t as popular as it once was.  Drugs are a constant fixation of the story (pardon the pun).  Costigan is an opium addict when we first meet him, and the cure of his addiction comes at the price of addiction to a more potent drug.  The fact that drug use plays a prominent role in the tale will make some of today’s readers immediately reject for that reason.  Which is another shame.  Because drug use is in no way gloried or romanticized at any point in the story.  Instead, Costigan at one point curses the weakness in himself that drove him to become addicted in the first place.  And the noble and wealthy patrons who visit Yun Shatu’s Dream Temple are not portrayed positively.  Anyone who gives the story more than a casual reading can’t help but come away with the distinct impression that Howard probably didn’t think much of drug usage.

Costigan is a wounded veteran of the Great War, who has fallen into his addiction in an attempt to ease his pain.  Noticed by the girl Zulieka, herself a slave of The Master as she refers to him, Costigan is given the chance to break free of opium and perform certain tasks for the Master, who at this point remains hidden behind a screen.  Trying to stop Skull-Face is British agent at large John Gordon.  Ultimately, Skull-Face’s demands are more than Costigan is willing to commit to.  He and Gordon join forces.

If you want any more information, you’ll have to read the story yourself.  There are indications that Howard may have been planning to create a series character with Skull-Face.  The Berkley edition has two associated stories plus “Taverel Manor”, an unfinished sequel.  Richard A Lupoff finished “Taverel Manor” for Berkley.  While he’s a good writer, Lupoff is not Howard.  The REH Foundation volume will contain “Taverel Manor”, presumably in its unfinished form, just the way Howard left it.

And Lupoff is probably right.  Howard may very well have been trying to develop a series character.  Weird Tales published at least two that I know of, Dr. Satan (whose adventures as far as I know have never been reprinted) and Jules deGrandin, whose adventures have.   Lupoff holds the opinion that editor Farnsworth Wright didn’t think much of “Skull-Face” and gave it only one cover.  He may well be correct in this as well.  Howard knew from experience that series characters were what sold, especially if they were popular.  His attempts to find a sustainable series character can be seen in Kane, Kull, and Morn, as well as his sailor Steve Costigan series, not to be confused with the Costigan who is the protagonist of “Skull-Face.”  And these aren’t the only series characters Howard created.  Why Howard didn’t develop this series further is a matter of speculation.  Howard’s most successful character would be, of course, Conan the Cimmerian.  It’s fun to speculate on what a “Skull-Face” series would have been like.  Too bad we’ll never know.

One of the names of Skull-Face is Kathulos.  Astute readers will immediately wonder about a connection to H. P. Lovecraft’s C’thulhu.  Considering how Howard and Lovecraft corresponded with each other to the point that their correspondence fills two volumes, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was a deliberate reference here.  However, I haven’t had the time to do the research, so I won’t speculate further.

I’m just glad “Skull-Face” is getting some attention again.  Wildside Press has collected the fantasy/weird stories of Howard in a 10 volume set, and “Skull-Face” was the lead story in volume 2.  The first time “Skull-Face” made hardcovers was in 1946, a decade after Howard’s death, in Skull-Face and Others.  This was the first volume of Howard’s works published by Arkham House and the first published by an American publisher after his death.  Previously, only A Gent From Bear Creek had seen hardcover, and from a British publisher if memory serves.   Conan wasn’t collected until years later.  It’s good to see “Skull-Face” collected again.

This is one worth reading folks, especially if you like adventure, peril, and fast paced action.  Check it out.

Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis: Beyond the Phoenix

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“Beyond the Phoenix” from Elak of Atlantis
Henry Kuttner
Planet Stories – Paizo Publishing
Trade Paperback, $12.95, 2007

Kuttner’s version of Atlantis seems to be a rather large place, with a number of kingdoms on the continent.  When this story opens, we find Elak and Lycon working as sell-swords for Phrygior, ruler of the small kingdom of Sarhaddon in western Atlantis.  All is not well in Sarhaddon, for the high priest Xandar is plotting againt Phrygion, and has arranged for Elak and Lycon to be sent on a diversionary errand to the kitchen while his henchmen do away with Phrygion.

Elak figures out they’ve been duped in time to return to the king’s chambers, but not before the king is mortally wounded.  When Elak kills the guards who are assassinating the king, a battle ensues between Elak and Xandar, with Elak driving Xandar off but not defeating him.  The dying monarch warns Elad that Xandar is in the service of Baal-Yagoth, a god of evil.  He also charges Elak with protecting his daughter Esarra and places a bracelet about Elak’s arm that can only be removed by the Phoenix.

The rulers of Sarhaddon claim to be descended from the phoenix and to have come from another realm, one not of this world.  Upon their deaths, all monarchs and their children are sent on a bier along the river and through the Phoenix Gate to be returned to their homeworld.

Fleeing Xandar and his forces, Elak, Lycon, and Esarra take Phrygion’s body to the underground cavern where the funeral barge lies waiting.  They manage to evade their pursuers when the Phoenix Gate opens, but it’s a case of from the frying pan into the fire.  There are factions beyond the Phoenix Gate, some of whom are in league with Xandar.

This is the second shortest story in the Elak series, just slightly longer than “The Spawn of Dagon.”  But of the ones we’ve examined so far, this is in many ways the best.  None of the characters have much depth, but that’s not surprising, considering the length of the tale; neither are they completely cardboard cutouts, either.  Esarra is not the warrior Velia becomes in “Thunder in the Dawn,” but without her aid Elak and Lycon would have died before leaving the castle.  The final battle, in which Elak has to use sorcery as well as sword to win was a departure from the stock ending of hero trouncing villain by means of the hero’s brawn.

Once the adventurers find themselves on the far side of the Gate, things get decidedly weird.  I’m not sure what it is about fantasy written by certain of the Weird Tales writers, but some of the descriptions they wrote were just flat out bizarre in ways that most authors of the past couple of generations don’t come close to.  Kuttner’s descriptions in “Thunder in the Dawn” and here in “Beyond the Phoenix” where he’s describing what Elak encounters upon leaving this world are of that type.  Maybe we’ve had too much of a diet of generic quest fantasy and aren’t seeing that sort of thing written anymore.  Or maybe I just haven’t found it. 

The thing I noticed most, though, was the writing itself.  When a reader notices the writing, it’s often a sign that the writer is failing in some way to draw the reader into the story, or else the writer is doing something experimental in the way he or she is using words.  In this case, I noticed the writing because I wasn’t able to finish the story in one sitting due to interruptions.  When I returned to it, what struck was how much better written this story was than “Thunder in the Dawn.”  Kuttner is one of those writers you can see evolve (and in a few examples later in his career, devolve) as an artist from one work to the next.  The prose in “Thunder” had a purple tint to it.  In “Phoenix” the prose is leaner and crisper than in the two earlier Elak installments.

Overall, this was a good, entertaining piece of sword and sorcery adventure.  While it will never be considered one of the great classics of the field, it’s definitely worth investing the time to read.

Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis: The Spawn of Dagon

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“The Spawn of Dagon”
from Elak of Atlantis
Henry Kuttner
Planet Stories – Paizo Publishing
Trade Paperback, $12.95, 2007

In my first post about Kuttner’s Elak, I stated that the Paizo volume was to my knowledge the first time all the stories had been collected under one set of covers.  I have since discovered that they were collected in 1985 along with the Prince Raynor tales in a volume titled, what else, Elak of Atlantis, with illustrations by none other than Brad Foster.  Unfortunately the link doesn’t have much in the way of publisher information.

This second installment in the Elak series, “The Spawn of Dagon,” is a completely different tale than the first story, “Thunder in the Dawn.”  For one thing, it’s much shorter than Thunder.  In fact, this is the shortest of the Elak stories, although the remaining two aren’t much longer.

For another, this is a straight action adventure tale with none of the otherwordliness of interdimensional travel we saw in the first installment.  The story opens with Elak and Lycon making a grisly bet over the body of a man they’ve just killed in a bar fight to determine who gets his purse.  When they have to flee from the guards summoned by the innkeeper, they are rescued by a man calling Gesti, who enlists Elak’s aid in killing the evil sorcerer Zend, who has been controlling the ruler of the city.  Elak sneaks into his tower, Lycon having passed out from too much drink, and proceeds to discover that some bargains are best left unmade, especially if they involve getting in the middle of a battle between evil wizards..

Needless to say, Gesti has secrets he’s keeping.  Elak, who is rejoined by Lycon, manages to get out of the fix and rescue a beautiful girl from being sacrificed in the process.  Unlike Velia from Thunder, who isn’t mentioned, this girl is merely the obligatory cheesecake, with virtually no character development.  Of course nothing in the story states that its events take place following those of Thunder.  We have no idea where in Elak’s lifetime this story takes place other than after he was banished and began hanging around with Lycon.

In fact, Lycon spends most of his time passed out somewhere.  What little characterization there is centers on Elak, who is presented in, shall we say, a less than heroic light.  Certainly his motives and actions are less noble in this story than they were in Thunder.  This story is much more imitative of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, only without the Cimmerian’s inherent nobility and code of honor.  Sort of a Conan Lite.

Negatives aside, there are some positive things about this second Elak tale.  The prose is more polished and flows more smoothly than in Thunder.  One of the best things about it to my mind is that Dagon contains none of the glaring anachronisms of Thunder.

One last thing must be mentioned.  This story has a Lovecraftian feel to it.  Dagon, in addition to being the principal deity of the Philistines in the Old Testament, is also one of the Elder Gods H. P. Lovecraft included in his Mythos stories, one of the earliest in fact.  Kuttner, while not a major player like Howard or Smith, was one of the Lovecraft Circle, a group of writers who borrowed  from each other and added to each other’s mythologies.  “The Spawn of Dagon” was considered to be lovecraftian enough to be included in The Book of Iod, a now out of print collection of Kuttner’s Mythos stories, and the only Elak story in the book.  While I’ve never really gotten into the whole Lovecraft and Cthulhu thing, Kuttner handles it well.  The influence is clearly present, yet it doesn’t overpower the sword and sorcery aspects of the story.  While some will certainly see that as a shortcoming, I think it’s a good thing.

So, in conclusion.  While the characters aren’t as developed or as honorable as they were in Thunder, the story moves well, has better prose, and lacks the annoying tendency to try to connect Atlantis to known history.  Overall, an enjoyable adventure story worth reading.

Kuttner’s Thunder in the Dawn: A Review

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“Thunder in the Dawn”
from Elak of Atlantis
Henry Kuttner
Planet Stories – Paizo Publishing
Trade Paperback, $12.95, 2007

Following Robert E. Howard’s death in 1936, a number of other writers tried to follow in his footsteps by creating heroic fantasy characters for Weird Tales.  One of these writers was the young Henry Kuttner.  Kuttner created two sword and sorcery series.  The first was Elak of Atlantis, who had four adventures published between 1938 and 1941.  The second was Prince Raynor, published in Strange Stories in 1939, and the subject of a later post on this blog.  All the stories of these two characters are included in this volume from Planet Stories, an imprint of Paizo Publishing.

“Thunder in the Dawn” is the longest of the Elak tales.  The story opens with three men eyeing each other in a tavern in the city of Poseidonis on the southeast coast of the continent of Atlantis.  A fight ensues between Lycon and an unnamed stranger.  Lycon, a habitual drunk who has been waiting on Elak to show up for an appointment, holds his own at first.  When the bartender tries to intervene on behalf of the stranger, Elak shows up just in time to save him.  The stranger calls Elak by name, tells him to wait, then reaches into his tunic and throws a winged snake.  The third stranger gets involved at this point, Dalan, a druid, who saves Elak’s life.  He tells Elak, who we learn is really Prince Zeulas, that his home kingdom of Cyrena has been overrun by Vikings and his brother Orander taken captive by the evil wizard named Elf. 

Throughout the story Kuttner uses a lot of names from history, apparently to lend a sense of verisimilitude to the story.  Unfortunately for me, it mostly shatters the suspension of disbelief.  I’ll discuss this more later.

Since Elak has kept his past life secret from Lycon, Dalan informs Lycon that Elak had to leave Cyrena after he killed his stepfather in a fight.  Orander became king, and one of the things he did was to forbid Elf from practicing his black arts and human sacrifice.  Elf has sought revenge by forming a treaty with the Vikings to overrun Cyrenia, to be followed by the rest of the Atlantean kingdoms.  He has imprisoned Orander and begun to prepare for the next phase of his plans.  The only people standing in his way are Dalan and Elak.

Elak and Lycon agree to help Dalan rescue Orander, defeat Elf, and free Cyrena.  Dalan wants to leave immediately, but first Elak wants to say goodbye to Velia, the young wife of Duke Granicor, with whom he has been having an affair.  Of course, the Duke is waiting for Elak.  After a brief scuffle, Elak flees with Velia.  She isn’t taken as a hostage, but instead insists on going along of her own free will.  Her father had sold her to the Duke, and Velia hates him. 

The geography of Atlantis comes into play in the next part of the story.  A river from a central lake flows to an inland sea and then to the northern ocean, passing through Cyrena.  Dalan has a boat ready, but as they make their way north, Elf uses magic to slow them down and allow Duke Granicor to catch up with them.  Elak is washed overboard in the ensuing battle, and when he awakens, he discovers he is the prisoner of the Pikts, who inhabit an island in the inland sea.  Dalan locates Elak through his crystal ball.  While Dalan, Lycon, and Velia organize the oarsmen for a rescue, Elak has his hands full.  Managing to free himself from his bonds, Elak has to jump into a pool to escape a shadow being worshipped by the Pikts.  What he discovers is a doorway into a shadow dimension.  While there he meets a fawn-like creature named Solonala, who is part deer, part human, and with feline facial features.  She is from a third dimension and was exiled to the shadow world by Elf when he conquered her kingdom.  Pursued by the shadow creature, who is a pawn of Elf, Elak manages to escape with the magical help of Dalan and the physical help of Solonala, but not before she sacrifices herself so he can continue the fight against Elf.

The journey continues with more action and fights, on large and small scales, including a return of Duke Granicor.  The final defeat of Elf takes place in still yet another dimension.  Throughout the story is the action is swift, and the pace relentless. 

Kuttner was trying to branch out at this point in his career.  Up until this time he had mostly written in the vein of Lovecraft for Weird Tales as well as a number of tales for the weird menace and spicy pulps.  (Collected in the forthcoming Terror in the House from Haffner Press.)  It would be easy to dismiss this story as a cheap imitation of Howard.  But further consideration is warranted.  Kuttner was a versatile writer, at least as versatile as Howard.  Whereas Howard wrote fantasy and horror, boxing stories, humorous and serious westerns, and historical adventure, Kuttner expanded his skills in different directions.  Mystery, humorous fantasy, and humorous as well as serious science fiction would be what Kuttner would eventually be known for. 

Also, Howard’s most famous fantasy characters were created after he was well established in his career.  Howard sold his first story, “Spear and Fang”, to Weird Tales in 1924.  Solomon Kane and Kull were created in 1927, Bran Mak Morn at about the same time, and Conan’s first adventure was penned in 1932.  Time from acceptance to publication in those days was on the order of a year.  So if Kuttner’ first story was published in 1936, then he had probably been writing professionally (defined as selling on a regular basis) for about two years when he wrote “Thunder in the Dawn”.  While both men never stopped learning their craft, Kuttner was not as far along when this story was written has Howard was when he introduced his more famous heroes, especially Conan.  That Kuttner eventually became one of the best writers of his day is evidenced by the stories that would eventually make his reputation, “Mimsy Were the Borogoves,” “The Twonky,” “A Gnome There Was,” and Fury, just to name a few.  The first was these was still half a decade in the future when “Thunder in the Dawn” saw print. 

Does the first of the Elak stories have flaws?  Certainly.  The anachronistic use of historical names, like I said earlier, jarred me out to the story a number of times.  Howard certainly used historical names in his fiction, but most of the time he altered the names slightly, such as changing India to Vendya, to give a familiar yet exotic flavor to his work.  The prose is a bit purple in places and lacks the power of Howard’s best work.  But to compare Kuttner’s apprentice work to Howard’s best seems, to me at least, a bit unfair.  Kuttner was learning.  A reading of his work in chronological order showed he wasn’t afraid to take chances and grow any more than Howard was.  Kuttner grew to be one of the most highly regard writers of his day and a master of his field.  It’s just that whereas Howard is best remembered for his sword and sorcery, Kuttner made his mark on science fiction.

A final note on the role of women in the story.  Sword and sorcery and similar heroic fiction are often accused by their detractors of using women as little more than sex objects or objects to be rescued by the hero.  While neither Velia nor Solonala are fleshed out to any great depth, they are far from being fragile flowers or screaming women.  Both take active, martial roles in the story.  Kuttner develops their characters about as much as he does any of the male characters.  Elak is only successful in his attempt to defeat Elf because of the assistance the ladies give him at various points in the story, up to and including saving his life.  Howard also wrote his share of strong women.  If Elak was an imitation of Conan, well, this is one area where the imitation should be applauded.

So, while Elak isn’t Conan, and Kuttner wasn’t writing at the level of Howard at this point in his career, the story is still worth reading.  It moves well, has good action scenes, and the descriptions of the other dimensions are truly eerie in places.  Even if it isn’t a major work, “Thunder in the Dawn” is an important story in development of modern sword and sorcery as well as the growth of one of the most versatile writers of fantastic fiction in the mid-twentieth century.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time all the Elak stories have been included in one volume, although they’ve all been reprinted at least once in various anthologies.  In the next installment, I’ll look at the second in the series.