Category Archives: Robert E. Howard

Famous Fantasy Writers in a Five-Way

Uh, story that is. A five-way story.Get your minds out the gutter. This isn’t that kind of blog. It’s suitable for the whole family. Yesterday’s post not withstanding.

And you guys in the back knock off the giggling. Geez, what I put up with.

Anyway, the story I’m talking about is “The Challenge from Beyond”, the fantasy version. I don’t have a copy of the science fiction version, which is long out of print.

I first read this story when I was in high school. I was 14 when I discovered C. L. Moore, so I couldn’t have been any younger than that, but I doubt I was older than 15. I found a beat up copy of the anthology Horrors Unkown at a yard sale and picked it up primarily on the strength of a couple of early Ray Bradbury stories I’d never heard of.

Everything else was just bonus, including a Northwest Smith story by C. L. Moore, “Werewoman”, which I’ll discuss in my series on Northwest Smith.

The lead story in the anthology was a round robin fantasy, “The Challenge From Beyond”, in which C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long each wrote a chapter. I’ll discuss it with spoilers below.

The story was published in the September 1935 issue of The Fantasy Magazine, edited by Julius Schwartz. According to the notes in Horrors Unknown written by Sam Moskowitz, who edited the anthology, the two stories titled “The Challenge From Beyond” were written in honor of The Fantasy Magazine‘s third anniversary issue.

The science fiction story was written by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Donald Wandrei, Edward E. Smith, Harl Vincent, and Murray Leinster. I’ve not read it, nor, as I said above, have a copy of it. As a set, the reputations of the fantasy authors have fared better than those of the science fiction writers.

C. L. Moore

C. L. Moore opens the story by putting geologist George Campbell on a camping trip. Awakened by a varmit getting into his supplies, he’s about to throw a stone he picked up in the dark at the animal. He stops when realizes that what he holds in his hand isn’t a normal stone. Shining his flashlight upon it, he discovers it’s a crystal cube. It’s extremely old, with the corners almost rounded. Inside is a small plate with some type of writing on it that seems to briefly glow after he turns off his flashlight. He’s fascinated and speculates on the origin of such an artifact. He decides to wait until morning to examine the object more closely.

A. Merritt takes up the next section of the story. Of all the authors who participated in this project, Merritt is the one whose name is most likely to be unfamiliar to contemporary readers. The irony is that at the time this story was written he was the most well known, the biggest name if you will. Recently Black Gate editor John O’Neill mentioned he had obtained a copy of Merritt’s only short story collection, The Fox Woman, and said he intended to review it at some point. I’ve got a copy on my shelf. Maybe I can beat him to it. (Not likely, given my time constraints.)

Abraham Merritt

Anyway, Merritt picks up the story with Campbell, not being able to get back to sleep, deciding to investigate the crystal with his flashlight. The thing does seem to glow briefly after he shines his light on it. He plays around with the crystal and his light, and suddenly he finds himself being pulled into the crystal. Merritt’s portion of the story ends with Campbell being sucked across the void. Merritt leaves it up to H. P. Lovecraft to tell the reader where he’ll end up.

Of the writers involved in this story, H. P. Lovecraft has grown the most in reputation, although Howard is seeing a resurgence. Lovecraft’s portion of the story is by far the longest. All of the other writers’ contributions are between two and three pages. Lovecraft’s is over seven. Much of it is an info dump describing a race of beings in another galaxy or universe (Lovecraft appears to use the words interchangeably). They resemble giant worm or catepillars, and early in their history they discover the means of space travel. They use this ability to conquer any races they encounter.

H. P. Lovecraft

Their method is to send small crystals into the void, programmed to activate when they land on planets. Any life form which picks up the cube finds itself transported to the home world of the worms, while a member of that race is transported into the body of the life form. The imposter poses as a member of whichever species it has switched bodies with. Some species the worms destroy, some they simply take over the bodies. Of course, Lovecraft adds a great deal of pseudohistorical gobbledygook about occult theories from human history and such.

Lovecraft ends his portion of the story with Campbell discovering he inhabits the body of one of the worms, which Lovecraft is now describing as a centipede.

Robert E. Howard

If Lovecraft essentially inserted a Lovecraft story into the tale, Robert E. Howard did the same with his portion. Campbell decides that the pleasures of humanity have bored him. He wants to live a life filled with new sensations. So he does what any Howard hero would do. He grabs a sharp instrument which the scientist in the room with him only thinks of as a scientific instrument, not a weapon, kills the scientist, and goes on a rampage.

The god worshipped by these worms/caterpillars/centipedes/whatever is a sphere. Campbell locates the room where the god is held, kills the priests, and holds the god captive until he’s made emperor.

And so it falls to Frank Belknap Long to resolve the story. He takes an interesting approach. Alternating paragraphs, he tells how the worm inhabiting Campbell’s body dies (It seems nothing can control the animal urges of a human being except a human being) and how Campbell, with the god’s aid, rules the world as a benevolent dictator.

Frank Belknap Long

As a story, “The Challenge From Beyond” doesn’t work especially well. Moore and Merritt’s portions fit together rather seamlessly. The problem comes in with Lovecraft and Howard. Each takes the story in an entirely different direction. Not that there’s anything wrong with this in principle, but it can be rather jarring. Especially if the character of the protagonist seems to change. Howard’s portrayal of Campbell seems at odds to that presented by Moore and Merritt.

Lovecraft really doesn’t do much with Campbell, instead using his portion of the story as an infodump. Campbell learns the history Lovecraft presents by absorbing it from the brain of the body he finds himself inhabiting. The only real problem I have with Lovecraft’s portion is the length. I think he could have left out some of his material and still had a strong, if not stronger, contribution.

I suspect the contributions of Lovecraft and Howard seem a little jarring to me because both writers had such strong personalities and distinct visions and authorial voices. When writing alone these qualities are assets. In collaboration, they can cause problems. Still part of the fun of this type of writing is to try to leave an impossible situation for the next guy to try to resolve.

Long does a good job of tying everything together except that after Campbell has gone on a killing rampage, I find him being a good and benevolent ruler a little hard to swallow. I will say that Long’s prose is strong.

Overall, this isn’t the greatest or best work of any of these authors. That’s not surprising since Moore and Merritt don’t write enough to really establish a story, and Lovecraft, Howard, and Long have to deal with what the other have left them. Still, this is a fun piece, and while definitely a product of its time, a small gem simply for who the contributors are.

“The Challenge From Beyond” is currently available in Adventures in Science Fantasy by Robert E. Howard and published by the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press.

Blogging Northwest Smith: Scarlet Dream

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“Scarlet Dream”
C. L. Moore

This post contains content of an adult nature and is not suitable for younger readers. You have been warned.

“Scarlet Dream” is the third Northwest Smith story. In terms of sexually charged imagery, it’s the most explicit of the ones so far, hence the warning above. (My discussions of “Shambleau” and “Black Thirst” can be found here andhere.) There will be spoilers, as well. You’ve been doubly warned.

When the story opens, Smith is wandering through the Lakkmanda Market on Mars. The name has a decidedly Leigh Brackett feel to it. “Scarlet Dream” was published in 1934, predating Brackett’s Mars by a few years, but still I can’t help wondering if Brackett was influenced a bit by the name.

Smith spies a shawl with an intricate pattern consisting of a scarlet thread woven in a blue and green background. The Martian vendor displaying tells Smith the thing gives him a headache, and he sells it to Smith for a good price.

After he returns to his quarters, Smith tries to trace the pattern on the shawl, gives up, covers himself with it, and goes to sleep. Sometime in the night he begins dreaming that he’s walking up a mist enshrouded stair. He soon loses sight of the bottom.

Eventually he is nearly run over by a young girl with long orange hair, wearing a short shift, and covered in blood. She babbles something about some type of monster killing her sister. Smith manages to calm her enough to carry her to the top of the stairs. Once there he takes her into a side room, sets her on a stone bench, and gets a little more explanation from her.

The girl, who is never named, tells Smith that he’s dreaming but that he’s entered a dream world that can only be exited by death or by a fate worse than dying. Most of Smith’s questions are answered along the lines of “We find it best not to think/ask/do that.” This includes trying to leave or learn new things. Indeed, it’s only when Smith eventually decides to leave that the monster shows up and attacks him. But that comes later.

One of the things she tells him is that no one has ever gone down the stairs he came up. She only went down the stairs in a panic. Why Smith doesn’t at some point try to retrace his steps is never explained. But if he did, then there would be no story.

Smith and the girl are in giant temple, and she leads him outside to a lake and a small shrine containing two cots, two blankets, and a few clothes. It’s completely open to the air, but since the temperature never changes, that’s not a problem.

The trees seem to bend towards them, and the grass certainly does. Smith eventually learns that if a person stands barefoot in the grass for long, it will begin sucking blood through the feet. The trees are implied to be flesh eating.

Smith sits with the girl beside the lake, drifts off, and comes to as night is falling. Moore implies that at this point Smith engages the girl in sex. Regular sex between them is implied, with the word “kiss” and its variations being a euphemism for more than a kiss. In spite of the raciness of the covers Farnsworth Wright selected for Weird Tales, the contents tended to be squeaky clean. One of Robert E. Howard’s early Conan stories was rejected because Wright felt Conan took too many liberties with a young lady. (My opinion of that can be found here.)

Where Moore engages in some serious sexual imagery is when the girl shows Smith the only source of food. She takes him to a hall in the temple in which there are people “eating”. That there are other people present is mentioned more than once, but this is the only time we see them. Smith has no interaction with them. In fact, they’re only mentioned in a few sentences, basically as backdrop.

The way people eat is they kneel before spigots in the wall, spigots that curve upwards. What they drink from the spigots is blood, with the hint that it contains some addictive substance. Once Smith realizes what he’s drinking, he’s repulsed but finds himself returning the next day. Moore goes into details describing how pleasant and yet repulsive feeding is, dwelling on the taste.

Now I don’t know what mental picture you get, but what comes to my mind now is the same thing that came to mind when I was 15. Fellatio, although I had not encountered that word at the time. It’s hard to escape that image. The posture of kneeling, along with Moore deliberately stating that the spigots curve upward from the wall, leave little room for any other conclusion. What I have to wonder is what Wright thought about this imagery, or if he even noticed it. I doubt we’ll ever know. Smith comes to enjoy the feeding more than the girl, although he never completely overcomes his revulsion of it.

Smith eventually spies mountains through the surrounding mist, attempts to leave, is attacked by the monster, and drives it off with his blaster. It’s at this point that the girl tells Smith she would rather lose him to the fate worse than death than through death at the hand of the monster. She helps him get home, although he doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late.

Smith awakens to find his partner Yarol and a doctor leaning over him. Smith has been in a coma for a week. Seems Smith can’t be left alone to wander about on Mars without getting into trouble. Yarol gave the shawl away while Smith was out. The pattern was giving him a headache.

This is the third Northwest Smith story, and other than “Shambleau”, it’s the one that has stuck out the most in my mind since I first read the series nearly 30 years ago. Again, I’m struck by how graphic the sexual imagery is in these stories. If my parents had known what I was reading….

Moore seems to have a theme of vampirism going as well. In the first story, the vampire fed on life essence, in the second beauty, and now the grass actually drinks blood.

I’m going to continue this series. The post on “Black Thirst” is in the top 10 most viewed posts I’ve done. Stay tuned. There’s more to come. Or should that be Moore to come?

Blogging Northwest Smith: Shambleau

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“Shambleau” is the first of the Northwest Smith adventures, and the first published story by C. L. Moore. According to Lester del Rey, in his introduction to The Best of C. L. Moore (1975), she had been writing for 15 years before she submitted anything for publication. I’d like to know where he got that information, but I’m not questioning it. Since he’d known Moore personally for decades, I’m inclined to believe him. Of course, what I’d like even more is to get my hands on some of those unpublished stories. I suspect they’ve long since ceased to exist.

I don’t remember if “Shambleau” was the first story I read by C. L. Moore, but it certainly made the strongest impact on me. Here’s a synopsis of what happens (spoiler alert):

A young woman is being chased by a mob down a street in a spaceport town on Mars. The mob is closing in on her when she runs into Northwest Smith, a notorious criminal. He intervenes on her behalf to the bafflement of the crowd. Smith takes her back to his room, tells her she’s welcome to stay for the few days until he gives up the room and leaves. This girl isn’t human, and Smith doesn’t recognize her race. She’s dressed only in a shift and a turban. Smith assumes she’s bald. He realizes later she’s not when he sees her tuck what he thinks is a lock of hair under her turban. He’s sure he saw the lock move on its own. But he must be mistaken…

While Moore points out that sexual temptations don’t have much hold on Smith, he does find her attractive enough to make advances. At least until he takes in his arms, at which point he finds her repulsive. He doesn’t really understand why that is, only that the repulsion he feels is almost primal in nature.

Smith is in town setting up some type of criminal venture. We’re not ever told what. Over the next few days, Smith experiences a back and forth attraction and repulsion. He struggles with it, but ultimately he succumbs. Only when Smith’s partner Yarol shows up does Smith have a chance of escape, and even then it’s not easy.

Moore is playing with the concept of a gorgon, and goes so far as to state that the ancient Greeks had some knowledge of the Shambleau, which is the name of the race rather than of the girl. She even takes her resolution from that myth.

One of the things that’s so interesting about this story is that for all its length (~30 pages), not much actually happens. Other than the initial confrontation, which takes less than 5 pages, and Yarol’s rescue of Smith and the conversation that follows, about half of the story revolves around the Shambleau’s seduction of Smith. Yet Moore’s prose is so rich that you hardly notice that that many pages have passed.

Caedmon Records recording of “Shambleau”

And it’s the seduction that is the heart and soul of the story. Moore makes it very clear that Smith’s fall into the Shambelau’s clutches is a very bad thing, but she also makes it clear that it’s also an intensely pleasurable thing. And it’s described as the Shambleau caressing and touching Smith’s soul more than his body. It’s how she feeds, essentially a type of psychic vampire.

Moore also stresses Smith’s internal conflict, attracted by the pleasure and repulsed by the unnaturalness of it. It’s a struggle he ultimately loses, giving in to the temptation while the whole time being repulsed by his actions. It’s a struggle that on some level most people can probably relate to. The desire for something that you know is wrong or harmful, the momentary pleasure of something that will ultimately destroy you.

The imagery is definitely sexual in nature. While tame by today’s standards, I suspect this was pretty potent stuff back then. It was certainly powerful to the teenage boy I was when I first read it. Awash as I was in hormones, this story had a major impact on me. It was almost like Moore was reading my mind at times as I struggled to understand and contain the natural changes I was undergoing and the accompanying urges. And while the emotional impact when I reread the story the other night wasn’t nearly that intense, echoes were still there.

The reason “Shambleau” had such an impact on me, and why its popularity and acclaim has endured for over 75 years, is simple. What Moore deals with here, as I mentioned in a previous paragraph, is something that most people can relate to on some level. She’s dealing with what it means to be human, what it means to struggle with what’s right and what’s convenient. Unlike many writers obsessed with their own self-importance, she does it by telling a compelling story, and telling it well.right up to the end.

Much has been made of Moore’s introduction of emotion and sexuality into the science fiction and fantasy fields in the 1930s. I’m not going to rehash that here. I have neither the time nor the patience for the literature search. And I’m certainly not going to get into amateur psychoanalysis, a la L. Sprague de Camp with Robert E. Howard, and try to interpret Moore’s emotional and mental state. I have too much respect for her to ever do that.

One last bit of trivia. At one point in the story, Smith hums the tune of a song, “The Green Hills of Earth.” Robert Heinlein has gone on record saying this was the inspiration of his classic story by that name.

One Hundred Seven Years Ago Today…

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…Robert E. Howard was born. While his popularity has waxed and waned over the years since his premature death, his legacy has endured. Right now, we’re seeing a boom in Howard’s works and in Howardian studies. Maybe soon he’ll take his proper place in the canon of great writers of the early 20th century. We can hope.

But whether that happens in the near future, the far future, or not at all, one thing is certain. We shall not see his like again. While he’s had many imitators over the years, none have matched the power of his writings, the lyricism of his poetry, or the (sometimes) bleakness of his world view. He helped define a genre, something few men or women can boast. As long as there are people who love a good adventure with depth as well as action, he will endure.

So raise a glass with me and toast the birth of Robert E. Howard.

Happy Birthday, Conan.

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I’m a little late getting this post up, but this month marks the 80th anniversary of the first appearance of Conan, the man from Cimmeria. Conan first appeared in “The Phoenix on the Sword”, a rewrite of an unsold Kull story, “By This Axe I Rule!” I blogged about both pieces here. That’s the cover of the issue, December 1932, there on the right. And, no, Conan wasn’t featured on the cover. But he soon would be.

It’s been a while since I last wrote a piece dedicated solely to Conan. No, don’t go looking it up; all you’ll do is embarrass people, namely me. I’m going to look at three more Conan stories, maybe more. The stories I’ll definitely look at are “Rogues in the House”, “Queen of the Black Coast”, and “Red Nails.” There are a few other Conan tales I will try to get to, but those three are, in my mind at least, major stories that every Howard fan should read.

Howard wrote that Conan seemed to spring into his mind as a fully fleshed character. There’s good evidence that wasn’t literally the case. Still, Conan is arguably the most fully fleshed out character Howard put to paper. The world he inhabits is by far the most complex and detailed of any Howard created. Mark Finn argues in his biography, Blood and Thunder (reviewed here), that Conan was the most commercial of Howard’s Weird Tales creations. He makes a good case. Whether or not Finn is correct, it was Conan and the classic tales in which he appeared that gave us those gorgeous Margaret Brundage covers.

Conan was the first Howard I read. As a result, he holds a special place in my heart. I was a freshman in college when I started reading Conan, in the Ace reprints of the de Camp and Carter edited Lancers. I soaked it all in. When I think of sword and sorcery, Conan is usually what comes to mind. A loner who lives by his own code in an exotic world filled with danger, monsters, and magic. Along with a few scantily clad females.

A lot of the appeal for me of the Conan stories are the fact that they are stand-alones. Yes, there are some that obviously take place later in Conan’s life, but for the most part they can be read in any order. Whether you read a whole volume at once or only a single tale, these stories still take me to a land of adventure.

This is the mental template I have for a sword and sorcery character or series. Self contained adventures full of the exotic and wonderful with a dash of horror, where the swords are fast, the magic is dark, and the heroes are both larger than life and flawed. And anything is possible.

These are the qualities I look for in sword and sorcery. Fortunately those qualities are still around. So happy 80th, Conan. Here’s wishing you many more.

Everything Old is Still Old

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My head is still reeling from the announcement that Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to revise his role as Conan. Al Harron has covered this more eloquently than I can, so I’ll defer you to his remarks.

Instead, I want to take a slightly different approach and say this: Really, Hollywood? Really? This is the best you can do? Trot out an actor who is too old for the role, to play a character who was never anywhere near that old in any of the stories Howard wrote.

What you have here, ladies and gentlemen, aliens and Old Ones, is a perfect case of why box office reciets in general are dropping. Hollywood can’t do anything but recycle itself. A more appropriate metaphor would probably be breed with itself. We all know what sort of thing results from that, which is a good description of what Hollywood tends to churn out rather than coming up with something original.

At least take a fresh script (preferably written by someone who will be faithful to more than the “spirit” of Howard’s most famous creation) and keep Jason Mamoa. He fits the description of Conan much better than the Governator does.

I suppose that’s too much to hope for, as is this being a sick (and scary, very scary) Halloween joke.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go burn incense to the gods of Development Hell. Much incense.

The Next Big Thing Blog Chain

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I was chained to this by David J. West, author of Heroes of the Fallen and numerous short stories, including one in the forthcoming Space Eldritch.

What is the working title of your book?

I’m not actively working on any novels at the moment, although I have a couple in different degrees of completion I hope to finish/polish after the first of the year. In addition to some stand-alone short stories (science fiction and fantasy), there are two series I’m working on, both fantasy. The epic fantasy series doesn’t have a working title at the moment. The sword and sorcery series is The Chronicles of Roderik and Prince Balthar. That’s the one getting most of my attention right now.

Where did the idea come from for the ~~book~~ series?

I don’t recall what gave me the initial idea for the characters. There was a comment on the Black Gate blog a couple of years ago in a post about a fantasy magazine that shall remain unnamed. The magazine had folded, and in one of the comments, someone said this particular publication didn’t have enough tomb robbing heroes. Now I really enjoy a good tomb robbing. Somehow I came up with the idea of a prince and his squire who were into a little cemetery burglary. The only reason they would do this (that I could think of) was the prince is under a curse to murder his father, something he desperately wants to avoid doing. So he and his squire are voluntarily exiled from their home until curse can be broken. The court sorcerer is trying to find a way to break the curse, and it often involves having our heroes liberate certain items from their eternal resting places, usually at great risk to themselves. The stories are written from the squire Rodrik’s point of view, and all of the ones I’ve worked on so far start with the words “The Chronicle of” in the title. Rogue Blades Entertainment was accepting some submissions about this time, and I wrote the first story in the series. Jason Waltz liked it enough to buy it for the Assassins anthology. I’ve placed a second story in the series with him, and I’ve got four more I need to finish, plus a two more to plot and write.

What genre does the series fall under?

Sword and sorcery, definitely.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I have no idea. I see so few movies these days, I’m not familiar with many of the younger actors. The characters are both young men, so most of the actors I’m familiar with are too old for those roles.

What is a one-sentence synopsis of your series?

An exiled prince and his faithful squire travel their world seeking to break a family curse while there’s still time.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Self-published. I’m not convinced agents bring enough value to the table in the current publishing climate to justify 15% of the earnings for the number of years they want to receive commissions. Since everything I’ve written in this series so far is either short story or novelette length, I will try to place them in top markets. If I’m not able to, I’ll put them up myself. And of course, I’ll collect them and publish them in bundles.

How long did it take to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first story took a couple of weeks working in the evenings when I didn’t have other commitments. The others have been stop and go, except for the second I finished. It’s been accepted, although I have no idea when it will see print. That one had a deadline and took a week or two once I got past a couple of false starts. The others are longer, so they’ve been start and stop affairs.

What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

Who or what inspired you to write this series?

This may be cheating, but I’m going to combine the answers to the two previous questions since the works to which I would compare these stories are also some of the main inspirations. First, I’m a huge fan of Robert E. Howard’s Hyborean Age. I love how he mixed and matched different historical periods in an imaginary fantasy setting. I also love how the stories are mostly episodic in nature and for the most part can be read in any order. The setting of The Chronicles draws a lot on that template, although the world isn’t a carbon copy of the Hyborean Age. On the other hand, there have been so many imitations that I didn’t want to create another Clonan. I wanted a civilized hero or heroes who were forced to act at times in, if not uncivilized ways, at least ways that wouldn’t meet with civilization’s approval. There’s probably a little Fafherd and the Grey Mouser in the inspiration somewhere, although I’ve not read that series in years, and there are more F&GM stories I haven’t read yet than there are ones I have. I also try to read across multiple genres, so you can see the influence of Arthur Conan Doyle in the structure. Roderik is Watson to Balthar’s Holmes, in that Balthar is supposedly the hero whose exploits are detailed by his faithful companion.

What else about your ~~book~~ series might pique your readers’ interest?

This series is intended to be fun. I’ve griped at times about how many authors seem to be writing with a political or social agenda, at least judging by their blogs and tweets. While I certainly don’t begrudge these authors their right to say whatever they like in their works, I maintain that the primary purpose of fiction is to tell an entertaining story, not convert me to your way of thinking. With that in mind, I want to write some things that people will enjoy reading, hopefully to the point they want to read more.

I’m also using this series as an opportunity to challenge and stretch myself as a fiction writer. It would be very easy to get stuck in a rut and write formula stories, so I’m trying to do something different with each installment or to work on some technique. For instance, the story I’m trying to finish in time to submit to a market by the end of the year focuses entirely on Roderik. He and Balthar are in serious trouble, and Balthar has been taken out of commission. Getting them out alive is all on Rodrik’s shoulders. He doesn’t have much to work with or much time, either. There’s also a market coming open after the first of the year The story I’ve got in mind for it isn’t told by Roderik (or Balthar), although he and Balthar are central to everything that happens.

Now I have to chain people to this thing, so…I’m going to I’m going to list several authors whose work I enjoy and want to read more of:

Joshua P. Simon
Ty Johnston
J. M Martin
Mark Finn

A Tall Tale Involving the Ghost of Davy Crockett

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Evan Lewis writes mysteries and historical fiction, as well as running the blog Davy Crockett’s Almanac. His most recent work is a little something that should appeal to fans of Robert E. Howard’s Breckenridge Elkins.

One of his series characters is Dave Crockett, grandson of a man with a similar name you might have heard of. It seems Dave is haunted by the ghost of his grandfather, and they don’t see eye to eye. Evan’s latest installment is up for free at Beat to a Pulp. I found the tale to be fun and clever with just the right amount of humor and exaggeration. It wasn’t too serious and was a pleasant diversion from some of the things I’ve been reading lately.

Check it out. It’s not long, so can read it while waiting in the doctor’s office or in line at the DMV. If you like what you read, Evan will be putting out an ebook with five Dave and Davy stories plus an additional bonus story involving other characters.

Report on Fencon IX

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Fencon IX was held in Dallas over the weekend (Sept. 21-23). I thought it was a great success. Of course my definition of success is pretty simple. I had a good time. In spite of some friends and/or regular attendees not being able to make it this year.

I arrived at the hotel on Friday afternoon after a long drive. The first two panels I attended were slideshows by the artist guest of honor, Donato Giancola. In the first slideshow, he discussed how he became interested in art in general and how he came to do paperback covers. The second slideshow was more about how the Old Masters and some of the modern 20th century artists influenced him. There was some overlap between the two programs, but both were worth attending. Some of the paintings he showed were from a series he jokingly called Dead Things on the Beach. Many of these haven’t been published, and they were some of my favorites. One that has been published is the cover of The Golden Rose, by Kathleen Bryan. That’s it on the right. You can see what the original painting looks like here.

Toastmaster Peter David did a great job on the opening ceremonies, throwing toast into the audience. At least until a piece landed inside one of the large bowl light fixtures.

I made a run to Half Price Books later that night with a box of items, mostly duplicates from small presses that I’d gotten in some grab bag sales, but a few things my wife wanted to get rid of. They offered me $30. It was to laugh. I thanked them, kept the books, and got considerably more (much more) than that in trade credit in the dealer’s room for about half of what I had in the box. (Thanks Willie and Zane.)

When I got back to the hotel, I hung out in the hall outside the con suite and listened to astronaut Stanley G. Love tell what all he went through to get into the astronaut program. There were some room parties that night which I visited, then went to bed.

Finn and Simmons, Barbarians Brunching

I bounced around several panels Saturday morning, then at noon attended Brunch with Barbarians, a joint reading between Mark Finn and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly editor Adrian Simmons. The pieces they read were good, and so was the spread.

More panels and signing that afternoon, along with a nap and dinner with Finn and Simmons. The panel on the future of space exploration was packed, with folks (including me) standing at the back. Special guest Karl Schroeder moderated a great panel on what science will look like in the far future. I missed a great deal of GoH C. J. Cherryh‘s address, but what I caught was fascinating. She was speaking on how climate change has affected empires over the historical record. I missed most of the events with the other guests. I usually spend some time listening to the musical guests, but this year I was pretty much otherwise occupied. (That’s one of the things I love most about Fencon, the music track.)

The maintenance people were working in the room across the hall from me and set off the fire alarms. The entire convention evacuated long enough to get outside and come back in.

At 5:00 that afternoon, there were a launch party for a benefit CD in the con suite. The CD is Cath, and the proceeds go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. It’s Celtic music, probably my favorite genre, and some of my favorite artists perform on it. You can hear samples by clicking the above link. Melissa Tatum did a great job of putting this one together.

That evening I mostly hung at parties and visited with friends. I’m getting way too old to be staying up past midnight, I’m discovering.

(Large) mammals of action: me and Todd Caldwell

Sunday had another full slate. Donato was supposed to do a live portraiture demonstration, but he had to leave early. The two highlights of the day were the Phineas and Ferb panel (yes, yes I did attend) and the panel celebrating 80 years of Conan. If you aren’t familiar with Phineas and Ferb, you’re missing out on some of the most intelligent and creative science fiction cartoons around, one that not only gets geek culture, but treats it respectfully. If you don’t believe me, just watch the episode set in a science fiction convention. Members of the panel and audience displayed great taste in fashion, as you can see in the picture.

The Conan panel was the last one I attended, with good and thought provoking discussion. Mark Finn maintained that Conan was something of an anomaly in Howard’s work in that Conan was created for a specific market, namely Weird Tales. He says that the way women were portrayed in most of the Conan stories (Belit and Valeria being exceptions) was intended to appeal to editor Farnsworth Wright and get on the cover (and thus get paid more). As a counter-example of Howard portraying strong women, he and some of the other panelists pointed out “Sword Woman”. That was a good way to end the convention. Not wanting to leave, I reluctantly drove home.

It was a great convention. I’m looking forward to next year, although I’m not sure how big the convention will be. Worldcon will be held less than a month prior, and it will be in San Antonio.

Sword and Sorcery: Short or Long?

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The recent post on naked slave girls has generated a small but steady stream of traffic. Some of Al Harron’s comments have got me to thinking about some things that I’ll probably address in a follow-up post. In the meantime, I thought I’d ask a different question at the end of this post.

Much of the classic sword and sorcery, the stuff written by the likes of Leiber, Howard, Moorcock, and to a lesser degree Kuttner, Wellman, Anderson, Saunders,Wagner, etc. was in the form of short fiction: short stories, novellettes, and some novellas. Novels were rare in the early days. By the 1980s, though, when I began reading S&S, it was the other way around.

I realize that was in large part driven by the market. When pulps were the primary, if not only, source for S&S, then short fiction was what was written. As the market changed over time, and paperback novels replaced pulps and digests, of course writers would switch to novels. Some of the authors listed in the previous paragraph wrote equally well at all lengths.

What I’m interested in is the question of which fans of S&S prefer. It should come as no surprise that Robert E. Howard is my go-to guy for S&S. He was the first author I read who wrote the stuff. I’d been reading science fiction for a number of years before I read Howard and was familiar with Kuttner, but his S&S wasn’t available at the time. At least not to a teenager in semi-rural Texas. (I started reading Anderson about the same time.) With the exception of The Hour of the Dragon, Howard’s S&S was of the short variety. As a result, I tend to prefer S&S novelettes and novellas to novels.

There are a couple of other reasons as well. One, I can read a story in one sitting, two at the most if it’s a novella. This means if I have a block of time free, I can often read more than one. Novelettes and novellas are, in my not so humble opinion, the ideal form for fiction in general. They allow for character development, multiple plots, and detail in world building without much of the padding that often accompanies novels. Given my time constraints these days, there’s another reason I like shorter works. When it takes me a while to finish something, I tend to get frustrated with it, especially if the delay is due to interruptions or an uncooperative schedule. That rarely happens with novellas and novelettes.

So, just to satisfy my own curiosity, and to hopefully gather some very unscientific data for a future post, do most of you prefer S&S at the shorter lengths or novels? Or do you even care?

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