Karl Edward Wagner

December 12 (today as I write this) is the birthday of Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994). I had intended to read and review one of his stories for this post, but today is not that day. Too much other stuff has gotten in the way.

One thing you should be aware of is a new documentary was just released about Karl entitled The Last Wolf. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet.

I do want to take some time to discuss  various aspects of his too short career. I’ll start with his writing, since that is most likely to be familiar to most people.

If you want to read Wagner these days, his Kane stories are available in ebook. Kane is an immortal antihero who makes Conan look like a Boy Scout. These are the works Wagner is best remembered for. They are very dark sword and sorcery. And they are very good.

Then there’s his horror fiction. These stories are going to be harder to find. My understanding is that they are currently out of print. There are a few volumes listed on Amazon, but the ones I looked at all started in triple figures. I’ve managed to get my hands on all of his short fiction (I think) that isn’t about Kane, but it’s because I have spent my life haunting used books stores, and I got lucky years ago. Wagner wrote good horror. Start with “Sticks” if you haven’t read it. It should be easy to get your hands on a copy since it has been reprinted many times.

Now let’s talk about Wagner as an editor. Each of these could have its own post, or series of posts, so I’m only going to hit the highlights here.

Wagner was one of the founders of Carcosa, which published two collections of Manly Wade Wellman, and one each of E. Hoffman Price and Hugh B. Cave.

In these days of the Del Rey volumes of Robert E. Howard’s work, it’s easy to forget that until the 1970s, pure Howard was hard to find, especially Conan. Wagner edited three volumes of Conan stories for Berkeley books.

Wagner did something similar for Tor in the 1980s, with the Echoes of Valor series. These anthologies contained S&S stories, mostly but not exclusively, from Weird Tales. These are worth tracking down, but they may not be easy to find.

Wagner’s greatest achievement as an editor was for DAW books. He took over the Year’s Best Horror Stories beginning with Volume VIII (1980). The series continued until Volume XXII (1994), when Wagner died. If you want to get a good education in horror writing, reading these volumes and Wagner’s introductions to the stories would not be a bad place to start.

Finally, in the June 1983 issue of Twilight Zone magazine, Wagner published a list of what he considered the best 39 horror novels. There were three lists of 13: Best Supernatural Horror, Best Science Fiction Horror, and Best Non-Supernatural Horror.  This would be another good education in horror writing. You can find the list here.