It is December 12 as I write this. I’m trying to get final exams graded, but I’m taking a break to observe the birthday of Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994). I think it’s that important ot acknowledge his achievements.

Karl Edward Wagner probably needs no introduction to anyone who reads this blog. He was one of the greatest writers of sword and sorcery and dark fantasy/horror of the Twentieth Century. We’ve not seen his like since, in my opinion.

Four fourteen years, he also edited The Year’s Best Horror Stories for DAW books. He took over the reins with volume VIII in 1980. The series ended with volume XXII with Karl’s death. Wagner didn’t limit his selections to top genre publications. He read all sorts of obscure publication to find the best horror stories each year.

If you can find copies, which is getting harder and harder to do, grab them. Not onlyl are they an excellent survey of horror in the eighteis and early nineties, but reading them is a great informal course in how to write effective horror. You’ll recognize many of the authors Wagner included, many before they became famous. Others will be new to you.

Wagner created the immortal and amoral swordsman and sorcerer, Kane. Kane was an enormous man, with a long red beard and flowing red hair. I’m sure the resemblance to his creator was purely coincidental. I would say Kane was a giant except there are giants in his world.

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There are a number of Clonans littering the literary landscape. Kane is not one of them. Wagner said the Kane stories were gothics. I can see that. There are some of the Kane stories I havne’t read yet, but there is definitely a gothic flavor to many of the ones I’ve read. Supposedly Kane was inspired in part by Melmoth the Wanderer. This was a novel from by Charles Mauturin written in the late seventeen hundreds. I wrote about it here.

Electronic editions of at least some of the Kane stories are available. Centipede Press published a nice hardcover set of the Kane stories in five volumes. They are in the process of printing a second edition which is supposed to have material that wasn’t in the first edition. I find that really annoying since I have the first edition and can’t afford the second, certainly not for what little is new.

Wagner was a Robert E. Howard fan. Not happy with the de Camp and Carter editions of Conan, Wagner reprinted the stories in three volumes without any rewrites or pastiche. He ran into trouble with de Camp over this, but for a long time, those Berkely editions were as close to the authorized editions as it was possible to get. This was a couple of decades before Wandering Star and then Del Rey published the definititve editions.

In addition to editing Howard, Karl Edward Wagner wrote two Howard pastiches, one of Bran Mak Morn (Legion From the Shadows) and one of Conan (The Road of Kings).

Wagner edited the thre volumes of Echoes of Valor. The selling point on the first one was that it contained the first appearance of a  Conan story by Robert E. Howard.

Wagner included variations of “The Frost giant’s Daughter” in the second volume of Echoes of Valor. Wagner focused on obscure or alternate versions of sword and sorcery by Howard, Fritz Leiber, C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, Jack Williamson, and Nictzin Dyalis.

I only wish there had been additional volumes of this series. At the time, the Echoes of Valor books were the only place to read some of the stories Wagner included outside of the original pulp appearances themselves. And that wasn’t an option..

There’s more I could write, but I’ve been working on this post off and on all day. I’ll close now, rasie a glass to Wagner’s memory and legacy, and call it a night.