The Breath of Horror in Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction
Posted by David C Smith on Jun 15, 2011 in News | 53 commentsA line in Robert E. Howard’s “The Queen of the Black Coast” has stayed with me ever since I first read this story more than forty years ago in the old Lancer paperback series. Conan and Bêlit are in conversation, and Bêlit asks, “Conan, do you fear the gods?” He replies, “I would not tread on their shadow.”
Their discussion soon turns philosophical, as Conan tells her, “If life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content” — as succinct an iteration of life as a dream as anything in Plato or the Vedanta. But Conan’s statement — “I would not tread on their shadow” — clarifies, for me, an element that can serve an extremely important function in making sword-and-sorcery a unique genre.
This is the element of horror. Morgan Holmes considers it essential to a definition of sword-and-sorcery fiction, or at least to a certain type of sword-and-sorcery fiction. I agree. We know the elements that converge to define sword-and-sorcery as a genre: the outsider hero, alienated, antiheroic, frequently defined by Fortuna rather than a grand destiny, and less a character of fantasy fiction per se than the more elemental denizen of hardboiled fiction, film noir, the Western frontier or any frontier where cultures clash. The genre has its origin in the male adventure fiction of the 1920s and 1930s, with plenty of swashbuckling and (again, as Dr. Holmes has pointed out) lots of lost-race and lost-world embellishments. The environment is pre-Enlightenment and pre-gunpowder, typically set in a situation that could be anything from the Neolithic era to the late Middle Ages (and not the Middle Ages of Tennyson and Douglas Fairbanks, which is the province of high fantasy, but more like the vicious Scotland of Macbeth). Sorcery and magic exist and are actual, of course, because this is an enchanted world — enchanted in the large sense of its being as much a character as the story characters themselves are. This vital and volatile component of enchantment invites the element of horror — the enchanted world is full of imps and demons, ghosts and magic, the intrusions of gods and of tricksters and monsters.
The function that the element of horror serves is to wake us up. It shakes us out of the lethargy of merely being alive to being aware. It is a zen koan, a car crash, a diagnosis of cancer. Our sense of order, and of purpose, and our trust in the world are all betrayed. The emotional content of the horror element invests us in the hero’s predicament — instead of merely observing what is occurring in the story, we live it. No longer a performance, the story now includes us. And when the element of horror is such that it touches on the cosmic, so that it pushes us to look into the abyss, it can in fact return us to a stage of primeval enlightenment, a primitive hyperawareness that cuts through all pretense and threatens us with a universe that is not merely arbitrary and cold but actually malignant. When that occurs, we truly are emotionally invested in the hero and in what becomes of him or her. Whatever is there, we are not to tread on its shadow.
Howard’s early sword-and-sorcery stories (“The Serpent Kingdom,” “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune,” “The Phoenix on the Sword,” “The Tower of the Elephant”) make it clear that this expression of cosmic weirdness or horror provides a singular strength to the sword-and-sorcery genre. It is not particularly easy to pull off; he could do it, of course, and some other writers whose work I am familiar with achieve it, as well. Richard L. Tierney can do it. Karl Wagner did it, and Charles Saunders does it. I have come close in a couple of my stories and maybe have hit the mark. Read just about any Simon of Gitta story and you will see how masterfully Dick Tierney manages it. The same with Imaro; I think that this element is as essential to Charles’s Imaro stories as it is to Howard’s Conan stories. Joe Bonadonna has done it; look at the scene in “Vale of the Black Diamond” (in the recent collection Mad Shadows) in which Pwill is about to die. He prays. He is one of us. “All my life, I live for Thodar. All I have, I give to Thodar.” And then he tries to escape. But the nightmare — that is, reality — takes him before he gets very far.
Of course, the horror element is not the only thing that can wake us up and invest us in the hero’s troubles. Anything personal will serve — any loss, for example, or powerful emotion, such as the desire for vengeance (or even high-minded justice). But when the loss or the desire is magnified by a horror and is set in an enchanted, fantastic, forceful environment that elaborates how we sense the world truly is — then the intimate, tough, paranoic, life-or-death, personal challenge in a sword-and-sorcery story becomes very personal indeed. As one example, look at how Chitendu displays Keteke to Imaro at the end of “The Place of Stones.” All of the elements are there, and we plainly feel every emotion that Imaro feels.
I tend to think of stories — and no doubt their authors, as well — as being either warm or cool, akin to Marshall McLuhan’s famously delineating media as either hot or cold. It comes down to the presentation and tone of the story: is it largely ironic, dispassionate, mentative? (If that is not the adjective form, then I have just made up a word. Perhaps “mentational”?) If so, then the story is cool. Is it literal, nonironic, passionately intense, emotional? Then, of course, it is warm. Lovecraft is cool; Howard is warm. Dick Tierney is cool; I am warm. Perhaps that’s why our collaborations worked so well! Wagner is cool as is, I think, Ted Rypel’s fiction. Saunders and Bonadonna — warm. I have read only a few current short stories now being written by the present generation, and many of them seem cool to me. This might be another avenue of discussion worth getting into. Is this the effect of postmodernism, which has been around for 30-plus years now and is the dominant expression of our time? Is it the effect of board-gaming, with its emphasis on strategy? Or am I flat out wrong? The latter is likely true; I am only now just getting back into the genre and reacquainting myself with it.
We know what our genre is about, and we know what we require of the so-called heroic characters in them, whether they be of a stained past or a sainted one. As we follow them down the trail of a story into a swamp or across a desert, into some realm of nightmare or adventure — if we as artists add an element of horror, of gut-level malignancy for our readers — then I submit that we have intimated that there are, in our stories and in life, shadows upon which we will not tread.
Once again, Rogue Blades has published another outstanding and informative article on our beloved genre of swords and sorcery. Dave Smith certainly whacked the demon on the skull with a knowledgeable and insightful battle axe. The best of sword and sorcery, at least to my personal preference, has always contained an element of horror: the two go together like Conan and a sword. I mean, when you have sorcery and demons in a story, isn’t that involving the supernatural to some extant? And there are other forms of horror besides the supernatural: thieves and cutthroats, dangerous creatures and nasty human foes. The whole milieu of sword and sorcery contains normal, everyday horrors, like disease and plague, famine and war, accidents and starvation . . . all realistic horrors. Smith’s article is not only a great, fun read — it’s also masterful and scholarly, which is exactly what I expect from him. And I’m not just saying that because he kindly mentions one of my stories! This forum reminds me so much of the legendary Amra — and that is a high compliment.
Kudos to RBE for carrying the torch, the banner, and the sword!
What a great article. One of the best I have read on S&S yet. The idea of ‘warm’ and ‘cool’ intrigues me. I’d love to see a list of fantasy/S&S authors who would be considered ‘warm’ and ‘cool’. It would be purely subjective in some cases, I would suppose, but a conversation-maker, for sure. As one of the ‘present generation’ (putting aside the fact I’m 57), and seeing I was in on the early days of Howard Andrew Jones’ reboot of S&S with ‘Flashing Swords’, I like to think that my work tends to the ‘warm’ side, but I’m kind of biased that way
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@@ Bruce — I just turned 59 in January. I’ve been out of the sword and sorcery loop for many, many years. Though I never totally abandoned my writing of it,I did move on to other genres. But sword and sorcery has a claim on my soul no other genre can boast. This idea of “hot” and “cool” is pretty good, and maybe even a bit controversial. By “hot” I mean more engaging than on the purely physical/action level. Sure, the treasure, the demon, the sorcerer, the damsel in distress can be “hot topics” — but so much of that is surface level only. I’m talking about “hot” on a deeply emotional and psychological level. Tolkien is “hot,” Terry Brooks . . . not so much. Looking back on what I grew up with, I’d say that Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, and Michael Moorcock were “hot,” whereas Lin Carter, John Jakes, Jack Vance, and Gardner Fox were “cool,” just to mention some names of that era. deCamp’s science fiction could be “hot” at times, and some of his own sword and sorcery, too. Other “hot” writers, in my humble opinion, are Rich Tierney, Karl Wagner, Ted Rypel, Howard A. Jones, Charles Saunders, Milton J. Davis, Valjeanne Jeffers, and Jon Sprunk. I’ll never have the time, money or patience to read as much sword and sorcery as I used to, but so much of what I’ve been reading lately in Black Gate and Rogues Blade I can honestly say leans toward “hot.” Yes, I’ve discovered many, many writers I consider “cool,” but I think sword and sorcery is moving in the right direction, as far as my own tastes are concerned. As far as the role-playing influence . . . I was never a gamer, probably due to age, other interests, and friends who weren’t into it — but I don’t mind that influence in sword and sorcery, as long as it serves the story. The Dungeons and Dragons Saturday cartoon series is a perfect example of getting it right, I think. I would love to hear from others about what writers they consider “hot” and “cool.” As the Thing is often quoted . . . “‘Nuff said!”
Bruce, thanks. So you’re 57 and of the present generation of writers? That must give you a very interesting perspective. I’ll be 59 in a couple of months and it amazes me now, when I think of it, how young I was when I started writing this stuff back in the 1970s. The “warm” and “cool” idea seems to have attracted a number of comments, hasn’t it?
David, my perspective was one of rude awakening. I wanted to write Howard and Leiber and the markets wanted plotless, character-driven urban fantasy. Needless to say, submitting my first S&S story was an exercise in pointless frustration. Fortunately Howard Andrew Jones came along at the right moment with ‘Flashing Swords’, and then Rogue Blades was born. Life savers, I say.
I discovered REH back in the Lancer days, then read just about everything else by ACE, Ballantine or whoever else jumped on the re-issue bandwagon. So my reading habits were formed by the likes of Howard, Burroughs, Leiber, Wagner, Mundy, Lamb, CAS and so on. I dabbled in writing in my 20′s, but it went no where and I wandered off into other areas of interest. But I never stopped reading. In fact, I have your ‘Fall of the First World’ trilogy, and it’s one of the few series that still resonate with me–probably because so much happened in it
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I finally tried my hand at writing again after a spinal fusion operation several years back. About this time I began to grow cool to many fantasy and SF authors. The endless, bloated multi-volumes that featured world-changing characters and empowered princesses seemed to be the norm. My reading eventually narrowed to a few select authors, like Glen Cook and David Gemmell.
Joe, like you I could never get into role-playing games because no one I knew was into it. That didn’t stop me from buying the D&D books and wargames from companies like SPI, though. I was essentially a closet gamer. Like playing chess against yourself.
Unlike you, I thought D&D destroyed much of the S&S genre. D&D moved it from the gritty, live-by-day world of Conan and his ilk to the ‘let’s gather a party with elves and dwarves and have a dungeon crawl’ type of nonsense. Personally I think it was ‘that’ which killed much of S&S. My humble opinion, of course.
Bruce!
SPI!
Me, too!
(American) Civil War games mostly. Even tried ‘Battefleet Mars’ and “Star Soldier’ but those were really hard to do solo.
I still have my Avalon Hill ‘Wooden Ships & Iron Men’, though that absolutely requires another player.
I have a whole hockey sock full of those games, as well as the Strategy & Tactics titles. The only one on your list I never bought was Wooden Ships… However, I have Kingmaker, and love it. One of my favourite SPI titles was ‘The Conquerors’, about Alexander the Great and the Diadochi, as well as Wellington’s victory and Atlantic Wall. Fortunately I had a friend who didn’t mind playing those. The drawback? Those were monster games that took months to complete. The good old days…
Bruce, that’s quite a crown of thorns to hang on D&D. You could very well be right, but there is a lot to consider. I played AD&D, and the writers were well aware of historical mythology as well as the history of S&S. The first edition of Deities and Demigods included the Cthulu Mythos, Newhon Mythos, and the Elric Mythos. It was struck from later printings (aside from the Newhon) Another example would be that in our youths my gaming group was baffled by the “girdle of giant strength” and many jokes ensued until we found out it was actually a belt, and it’s likely the impetus was The People of the Black Circle, in which Conan wears a magic girdle. Red Nails and Tower of the Elephant could have easily been a gaming adventure. Leiber’s Bazaar of the Bizarre gave us the basis for the AD&D staple of “true seeing”. The artifacts and relics brief descriptive history is written quite well and evokes the sensibilities of Sword and Sorcery on many occasions–still a blast to read, Koss betraying Vecna, Wind Dukes, Recorder of Ye Cind, Invulnerable Coat of Arnd, etc. The Dungeon Master’s Guide also contained a list of suggested reading, that included some of the masters of S&S. I think AD&D made an attempt to steer players toward S&S, and in that regard they did the genre a favor. If many of the players chose to write about elves and dwarves and adventuring parties, perhaps that was merely their sensibilities at work, and they chose that facet over the grimmer material presented in the books. Every DnD experience is different, because the books are only a guideline. Every time I see DnD depicted on television it is a travesty, and gives a false impression of the game (the recent episode of Community was awesome, however, accurately depicting a group of NOVICE players, loved it!)There is no doubt D&D resulted in a ton of new fantasy writers, most of whom made the personal choice to ape Tolkien via a dungeon crawl, but I think they just weren’t writing Sword and Sorcery, rather than destroying it. But, I can see your point as well–a generation of writers, most of whom turn their back on a genre, certainly do aid its demise. I was recently thinking of getting back to writing a dungeon crawl…it’s in my blood as much as Sword and Sorcery.
I saw somewhere else a comment about getting off topic. I’m probably an instigator, and I meant no disrespect to David or his article. This is the liveliest discussion I’ve had regarding fantasy and more specifically S&S in quite awhile (since the old SFReader Forums were going strong), and I’m enjoying all aspects, and the informed posts of everyone involved.
Wow, wish I could edit these posts (trying to get it written quickly, kids were on me to take them out to eat so I had to hurry). Anyway, I can’t believe I misused “its” and some of my sentences are choppy from rearranging them and failing to edit. Elric Mythos…not sure what they called it in Deities and Demigods, maybe Young Kingdoms. I forgot to mention for those who don’t know, the Cthulu and Elric portions were struck due to copyright infringement, but I guess they worked something out with Fritz.
@@ Bruce — wow! Dave’s article is sure generating comments! More than simple memoir did, LOL! I bought a few issues of Dragon Magazine (D&D) and learned quite a lot. Dave Smith’s boss used to be the editor of the D & D magazine, as well as having designed some games.
Insightful analysis, Dave. The dark, despairing, existential element best evoked by horrific vectors in s&s fiction is arguably a hallmark of the fantasy sub-genre, as we have been attempting to define it (largely in futility) for years: “It’s not enough that I’ll likely be forced to die with this blood-crusted blade in my hand. NOW here comes some slithering obscenity, and there goes my bladder—’Come on, you ugly sonofabitch! If I have a soul, then I pledge it to your undoing!’”
But I take minor issue with your characterizing my fiction as “cool.” I would claim just the opposite. If there is a single aim in all my fiction—certainly most of all in the Gonji series—it’s the replication of human emotional responses to imaginary circumstances, usually of the direst sort. Everywhere in those books people rage and weep and lust and suffer and lose at love; they rise above their own understanding of the limits of their valor; they cower and rationalize and cut-and-run when the chips are down.
Gonji broods and rants and spews drunken venom in shameful lost composure; he pines for (more than one) lost or squandered love; he butchers the disloyal in a hot moment and then regrets bitterly, only to repeat prior mistakes. He prepares to commit seppuku in his shame, then allows himself to be argued out of it in the name of continued duty (then lives to regret THAT decisoon). His companion, Simon Sardonis, roars and sobs and claws at himself to try to get at the energumen that is the soul of the werewolf within. He hates humankind but risks his life and soul to save it; despises the notion of being enslaved by the love of a woman, but teeth-gnashingly submits to the shackles when his time comes…
“Hot” moments, indicative of raging spirits in an oppressive universe, one and all. Don’t confuse Gonji’s penchant for philosophizing, in those schizophrenic interior-monologue arguments of his, with a desire to detach from the material world. Part of the winking conceit of the Gonji character is that he is the most self-deluded and Occidentally compromised of Zen adherents.
Emotional immediacy has always been my paramount concern in my fiction. Have I failed utterly? (Or am I, more likely, completely misunderstanding your argument? I’ve done THAT before!)
Great article, David! I’m not a big fan of the horror genre in general, but I do find it very effective in Sword and Sorcery. Been awhile since I read The Sorcerer’s Shadow, but I remember you used horror quite well.
As far as “warm” or “cool” writer, interesting analysis. I think it’s also important to note that to stray too far into the cool or warm is to invite disaster. If readers rarely connect with your characters emotionally, you’ve got a problem. If you spend too much time describing emotions to the point where it effects pacing, you also have a problem (I personally get irritated very quickly when I have to read at long length a character reaction that is already perfectly understandable). Obviously, the writers you named write “cool” or “warm” well, and don’t go to extremes. We don’t need in-depth emotional outpourings and analyses of many characters throughout the tale, but selectively used it is obviously a very powerful tool.
You made an interesting observation regarding writers being more cool these days. The number one reason is probably because leather jackets are cheaper, but I think small press limiting word counts (to as little as 3k in some instances) may have a huge impact on that development. The short story market today wants it short and sweet, and if you spend 500 words describing emotional depth of one character in one scene, your story may suffer elsewhere. Some markets let you push 7k or so, which is great, but I’ve seen a lot of markets wanting far less, and the general atmosphere is that shorter stories sell easier so a lot of writers try to hit those low word counts. I could be wrong on this, but this is my impression of today’s markets. That could translate to novels as wells, insofar as many of today’s writers who dabble in the short fiction market learn to write cool due to the market, then when they transfer to long fiction, it’s just the style to hit upon emotion quickly and move on. That’s my take on it, anyway. I’m sure there are many intertwining facets; you mentioned board gaming, but I think role playing may have a greater effect; I used to be a gamer, so strategy and plot are usually high on my list in storytelling, but I’m not sure how many others it effects in such a way. Very likely, that could be a huge influence.
Again, great article!
Christopher, thanks for the comment. I promise “not” to “note” the typos in your paragraph. Az proan as I am to making typoes, myself, I can harddly point fingerz! You mention a couple of very interesting things. First, yes, I’m sure that getting too literal about warm and cool writers would be a dead end. I mentioned that as an aside in my essay because, frankly, that distinction (or something like it…call it what you will…sweet and sour?) comes to me frequently as I read different kinds of fiction and listen to the author’s voice. Your remark about the limitation on word limits seems very pertinent to me; I had no idea that word limis were so strict in online publishing. Clearly this would have an effect on the writer’s approach. Role playing, yes…. I guess board gaming is passe, now. I have never done any of this myself but I’m intrigued by what it might bring to character development. I do wonder if a lot of experience or facility in that area tends to emphasize certain things in story building that contrast with how old school writers start crafting a yarn. Maybe there is less distinction there, though, than I assume. Thanks for the food for thought.
David,
It is very interesting how we listen to a writer’s voice and develop a basic impression. And although the audience is reading the same story, upon each, it conveys a different impression. If you know you’re reading a specific sub-genre, I think warm or cool would be a perfect place to start when forming a notion about what you are reading, so what you presented was as an aside is very relevant. In today’s fantasy market, you don’t always know what you’re getting into, as the term is fantasy takes on a broad meaning, and some editors/publishers aren’t specific. In such case, when reading secondary world fantasy, the most overt aspect to me (even early in the story), is whether this story is going to be heroic fantasy or literary fantasy–and this is a huge distinction. I find literary fantasy really, quite frankly, bores me–and this is coming from a guy that loves fantasy. I’ve read enough, and enough from highly acclaimed writers, to know I’m just not that into it. Usually, about three pages into literary fantasy, I’m ready to give up. This stems from the incessant character introspection that fills the beginning of the story based on some tragedy learned about second-hand, the resulting conflicts that ensue (usually conveyed second-hand as well, to the effect of more boredom), and the internal character resolution which is supposed to be a satisfying ending, but rarely is. All that would be fine if it coincided with an adventurous or interesting plot, with an actual plot resolution–but it rarely does. Though I guess if it did, that would make it heroic fantasy. I really can’t understand why that form of fantasy is so popular, because for me it’s an instant turn off.
On the role playing front, I think when it comes to sword and sorcery specifically, perhaps writers with role playing backgrounds are more apt to inject the stories with increased levels of magic. That’s probably it’s greatest effect on me. If I had to label what I write, I would just call it dark fantasy. I’ve written sword and sorcery, high fantasy, dark fantasy, horror fantasy, etc. I don’t really set out to write a story under a specific banner, so I guess I owe no allegiance to a sub-genre of fantasy. I think there are a lot of us that feel that way.
Like you and your board games (Risk is awesome, I built a reputation around it back in the day), me and my role playing games are passe as well. Now it’s video games all around. I’m sure that’s having a definite effect on the younger generation of writers and maybe we’ll start see the results in a few years.
Good point Christopher. In fact we are seeing the influence of video games on the younger generation or writers already. When I was reading slush at Raygun Revival, so many submissions seemed more like schematics for video games than actual stories. I don’t know how many stories I gave thumbs down to that consisted merely of some android-type character crawling, running, jumping and shooting his way through some technological maze. No character development beyond comic book level, no real plot but some real cool graphic-type images. This disturbing trend may be more prevalent among youong science fiction writers than fantasy. Or maybe not. That may ultimately be the direction (dead end) fantasy and sf fiction will take. I hope not.
John,
That really scares me. Glad you were there to help stamp it out!
@@ John — your Comment prompts me to Reply that, for the very reasons you stated, I ceased to read science fiction and any sort of fantasy for many, many years. Lack of character development, lack of human drama and tragedy, the cyberpunk craze, the splatterpunk phase –these turned me off, and turned to to other genres: mysteries, hard-boiled crime, and WWII thrillers. So many of the writers I enjoyed had either ceased writing fantasy and science fiction, got lost writing a veritable endless series of multi-volume sagas, or had stopped writing altogether. Many of them had died, too, like Dave Mason, David Madison, and Karl Edward Wagner. I’ve returned to sword and sorcery because I heard there was a revolution taking place, a revolution that I wanted to take some part in. I’m very, very picky about that I read these days, and books have to meet a certain criteria for me. I don’t really go in for epic, multi-volume stuff — a trilogy (or at most 5 volumes) is good enough for me.) I never finished Barsoom, Gor, Laurell Hamilton, and others. I just grew bored. So much of traditional publishing seems to pander to the elements you mentioned. With so many friends writing novels, I’d rather buy their books and support their cause, than purchase a vampire, zombie, werewolf or robot bestseller. That’s why I’m involved with Rogue Blades (I even named a band of mercenaries after RB in my stories), and why I subscribe to Black Gate. Thanks!!!!
What Joe and John said.
And I think Chris makes a great point about word count, too. My latest short story, over at the Lovecraft eZine, was limited to around 5000 words. That forced me to tone back the second act so it became strictly an adventure and jettisoned plans to reintroduce a certain Sherlock Holmes and a healthy dose of clue-gathering. Just didn’t have enough space to work with…
Since I can’t edit my post, I will not that the above should read “novels as well” and facets really don’t intertwine, so strike “intertwine”. Thank you.
“I will NOTE”. Grrr!
@@ Christopher Heath — You also hit on a good point. q:~)
Christopher Heath mentions the board game Risk! above. Apropos of nothing relevant to this discussion, I’m compelled (embarrassingly, as usual) to mention the odd fact that the game was developed by Albert Lamorisse, who in the ’50s directed two award-winning films that are film-school perennials: THE RED BALLOON and WHITE MANE.
Carry on, chaps…
Wow, there’s some random knowledge!
I haven’t seen either film, and wasn’t even aware of Albert Lamorisse. Always cool to learn something new, though.
I was a Risk! fiend growing up. I actually modified the board after years of play. I thought it’d be pretty easy to add Antartica, which I did. Then we added an extra die for both attacker and defender to speed up play. Then I made the island of Atlantis that had three countries and floated around the board (moved every three turns and attached to other countries at random). Then I developed a blue deck of cards that you drew at the beginning of your turn. These had such names as: Attacker (flip lowest die roll to a six), Defender (flip lowest die roll to a six), Air Raid (take up to six armies and fly over a country to attack an adjacent one behind or next to it), Fortification (gives player an extra fortification move at the end of the turn), Nuclear Attack (killed 15 armies automatically and the country became stagnant (radiation) for the next three turns), Spy (look at the cards of one opponent), All-Seeing Eye of Odin (look at every players’ cards, Reinforcements (extra armies in different denominations depending on the card to play at the beginning of your turn), Underground Resistance (extra armies in different denomination depending on the card to be played at any time during your turn or even while you’re being attacked), Alien Technology (destroys one army off every enemy country on the board, no defense), Excalibur (add one to any die roll per attack, lasts entire turn), Aegis Shield (add one to any defense roll per attack, lasts entire turn), Lightning Warfare (I forget what that does), Plague and Famine (automatically kills 15 enemy armies), Spear of Destiny (I forget the ability, but it was a powerful card), Clean Sweep (when using this card, whenever you get six to one odds on an enemy country you take it automatically), Seven Wonders of the World (as you collect more of these cards, you get more extra armies at the beginning of every turn), Divine Ascension (every player gets an army with a general that we painted white, I think once per turn a general could turn one die roll to a six, I forget what the other powers through Divine Ascension were, but they were pretty badass), Moon Shuttle Cards (did I mention I added another board that had the moon on it, I also added Asgard with a rainbow bridge that connected to random countries ala Atlantis, and one country per continent had a moongate you could travel through to get to the moon). I’m sure I’m forgetting some of the cards and other aspects, but it was a blast to play. There were multiples of a lot of these cards, so you could hold back, save up a lot, and go on a destructive rampage, slamming someone with three nukes, a plague and famine, alien technology, and then plow into them wielding Excalibur! It was a great game, I think my wife threw it out. If I could do it all again I’d add Hitler’s missing testicle as an artifact.
@@Chris — I was the Risk! chapion of my group of hippy friends back in the Summer of 71. But we played it straight — er, without creative license, I mean.
Sounds like you actually invented role-playing games!
I wish, this was long after role playing games came about. I was born in ’71 if that tells you anything.
@@ Chris — you were born while I was playing and winning at Risk. How funny! (that should be “champion” and not “chapion,” in my prevous post.) Needless to say, my winning streak ended by the close of summer. Never played again.
JoBo—
“…a trilogy (or at most 5 volumes)…”
Does that mean that if I can land a publisher for the completion of the 11-book Gonji saga you won’t be on board, since you’ve already read the 5 published books?! Just jiving you, amigo!
Some poignant observations above, by Christopher Heath, Bruce Durham and the aforementioned Jo(e) Bo(nadonna). Having broken into the field in the late-’70s/early-’80s, I’ve experienced a creeping revulsion, over the years, of certain of the grotesque evolutions of the fantasy field. I, too, never cared much for literary fantasy, beyond Tolkien’s obvious achievements. At least he told a story with passion and a palpable heart. Urban fantasy leaves me as cold as an arctic bloodsucker. But that’s what they’re screaming for in the publishing boardrooms. My own agent of many years won’t rep my traditional fantasy (small bucks and midlist hell), forever haranguing me about going with the flow and learning to love instead those glittering fantasy lands where the wealth runs like madcap, youthful lust.
And this business of tight word-length guidelines on the fantasy cyber-sites is less a challenge to prose discipline than a constriction on a story’s natural development; Gonji might characterize it as a geisha binding her feet, against the life-affirming dictates of nature. Sure, you can manage it. But I don’t like working with a digital counter clicking in my head as I churn out the words. There’s a fundamental difference between writing a living story and crafting a pithy editorial statement in a specified number of column-inches.
Hey, Dave—tell me this doesn’t resemble countless angsty-young-man rants we participated in during the flower of our sword-slinging youth?!
Speaking of the constraints on word length caused by digital publishing, I wrote a futuristic story for Raygun Revival some time ago in which whole novels had been digitized down to one word, which could be read on the screen of a hand-held electronic device. The device had a head set attached to it, which sent an electronic impression of an entire novel-length story to the brain without actually having to read it. For example, a romance novel would consist of one word: LUST! and with the push of a button the whole story, in fact the whole sensation of having lived it, was sent rushing to your brain. It’s coming, friends. I promise you.
I’ve always wished there was a “brain dump” device for writers that you hook to your head, focus your thoughts, and out would pop a rough draft for polishing.
I know – people always say get some voice recognition software like Dragon, but that’s not quite what I am imagining.
Until then, we need to do the footwork.
When one of those voice recognition software programs works like a writer would want it to–let me know!!!! I messed around with one about ten years ago, went through the whole reading process and everything…terrible results, and I speak clearly. Last year I inquired about them on a thread, heard they still weren’t up to snuff.
It does, Griddler, it does! As for our perhaps getting off track, methinks we should follow our passion where it leads. I am learning a lot, reading these comments. Dungeon crawl fiction? It explains some of the stories I’ve seen. As for word length, I recall that, when I started writing, my stories were a few thousand words long, but as I learned to develop characterization and learned how to build stories, the word lengths grew. (You always seemed to come in at novelette length . . . tough to sell!) I do think that s&s fiction works best when it is as disciplined as possible, when every word counts. As for the big world-building fantasies that are so popular now, I’m not so sure that they have much to teach me. I could be wrong. But as I get older, and after all that I have written and all that I have read, I don’t want to be stroked by a writer, or compromised, or taken for granted. I want to be surprised, by life and by stories. Does that make sense?
@@ Tedius Rypelius Rex, Raptor Lariat — I’ll make you a deal: you write those 6 other Gonji novels. I promise to read them. I mean, it’s the least I can do for one of the 2 guys who helped shape MAD SHADOWS into the instant sword and sorcery classic it has become, LOL!!!!
— JoBo q:~)
JoBo—
What’s to LOL about? We knew we were helping to hone a classic. (The secret is to take that vainglorious stance, and then readers are too intimidated to doubt you!)
“Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.”
(Six more Gonji novels, comin’ right up…)
Great article. It’s the finer points – horror, the elemental nature of most S-&-S heroes, etc – that is often missed and the writer will end up with a passable “fantasy” tale, but not a S-&-S tale.
That’s why I think ‘Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery’ missed the mark. They went with established authors who wrote hit & miss stories that were loosely based on S&S, and in some cases, not at all. I would have preferred to see the antho collecting the newer voices. However, I understand ‘names’ sell.
I hated SWORDS AND DARK MAGIC. In fact, I refer to it as SWORDS AND EXCREMENT or SWORDS & SCATOLOGY due to the fecal obsession theme running through the book.
John M. Whalen—
Outrageous, but certainly not unimaginable. The author’s work would thus be trivialized to the point of reductio ad absurdam: We retain so little of what we read now; envision a scenario in which you’d kick back, relax and “impress” a few dozen novels in an hour of spare time. Word counts would diminish drastically. Novels would be reduced to Zen koans of terse dramatic statement—for what would be the worth of crafting rich narratives when only a kernel of story core would be retained in overwrought memory?
The lazy masses would love this. I don’t know why there isn’t already a market for instant-gratification synoptic novels—story treatments: “Minute Masterpieces Presents—!”
Someone also mentioned David Gemmell, above. Curiously, I’ve never read him. But when Bastei Lubbe bought my Gonji series for German translation, they mentioned that I was taking Gemmell’s place in their publishing catalogue after his untimely passing.
That was me. You should really give Gemmell a try. At least read ‘Legend’ and ‘Waylander’. ‘Legend’ is one of those books I feel compelled to break out every so often to revel in the tale of Druss, an aging, arthritic warrior called upon to face one last foe, an overwhelming horde of barbarians.
I think another factor working against good S&S (and good fantasy), is today’s trend toward sparse description. Adverbs and adjectives are suddenly the enemy. Without these the imagination (at least my imagination) refuses to fire. Imagine taking one of Robert E. Howard’s stories and stripping away all of the vivid words that made his tales come to life. Would he just become another forgotten author?
Bruce—
You’ve sharply struck hammer to anvil with this comment about today’s lean, mean, spewed-by-machine prose. I see less individual style and personality in prose fiction these days than ever before. Too many people sound, at least initially, like everyone else. Dave Smith has characterized this, quite accurately, as a product of insecurity-driven writer’s groups and stodgy, overwrought MFA-program principles. They try to carve the distinctiveness out of one’s style by belaboring the need to strip down to the bare narrative minimum. They demonize adjectives and adverbs, no to mention literary effects, as cheap and tawdry, something to be avoided. This obsession with minimalist sleekness has led to a lot of dull, unfocused, desensitized, ungrounded fiction that I see creeping into the best-seller ranks, where it is therefore canonized as holy writ!
THE HUNGER GAMES is a good example. I basically enjoyed it quite a bit. Character arcs seemed fairly strong and convincing. But there was no poetry in the language. No passages or even snatches of phrase that courted me to stop and re-read them for their sheer power and beauty. (And how many times have we done this with Howard and others of the Golden Pulp Era?) Many times I didn’t know where I was, geographically, and didn’t much care because it didn’t sound, look, smell or feel like real environs, to my mind’s sensors. And Collins’ action scenes are pathetic. Any s&s enthusiast would gag at their limp, summary sappiness. And it has nothing to do with the fact that the book was YA: Kai Meyer’s wonderful books are also largely YA, but there’s an old-school pulpish verve to their wild gyrations. (Alas, only two of his series are currently available in English: THE WAVE WALKERS and THE FLOWING QUEEN.)
It’s as if describing people, places and the all-important actions has become passe—”We can see pictures of that kind of stuff. Just tell us what HAPPENS.” As if colorful prose has gradually drifted into the realm of the vulgar and decadent—”We’ve evolved beyond that hyper-real, feverish scribbling. So purply! Anyway, who’s got the time? My reality-TV show is on in ten minutes.”
I’ll add Gemmell to my must-try queue. You’re not the first person who’s shamed me into at least sampling the author I was honored to supplant in Germany after his sad and unexpected passing.
I would say that supplanting Gemmell is an incredible honour. Congrats and a tip of the mead horn are in order.
Thanks, Bruce, though I doubt if I’ve supplanted him in sales, after four Gonji books under the Lubbe imprint. I’ll see that horn of mead and raise you one flagon of Rhine wine!
Thanks for friending me on FB, BTW!
I love Rhine wine. I spent a winter in Germany on a hockey tour back in ’83. My diet subsisted of schnitzel, beer and Rhine wine.
Schnitzel, beer and Rhine wine—those and a keen-edged blade, and what more could a warrior want (well…to quote Hercules from JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, “a woman with a firm leg, a full bosom and a warm heart!”)? Rhine wine has been my favorite guzzler for decades. I always tell Kai Meyer and my esteemed translator, Thomas Schichtel, that I want a case of the authentic stuff when I get to Westphalia, instead of the California version I have to settle for!
We’ve gotten off-subject, as these threads are wont to do. This is a David C. Smith thread—pick up on Dave’s old titles that you might have missed (available used on Amazon)! I love THE SORCERER’S SHADOW (lazily changed to THE SHADOW OF SORCERY by Zebra, something dave’s always hated). Ditto the ORON series. And FALL OF THE FIRST WORLD is a classic. But I’ve always had a fondness for his first novel, the Black Vulmea tale WITCH OF THE INDIES.
And do make room in your queue for the richly imaginative tales of Dorgo the Dowser in MAD SHADOWS, by Joe Bonadonna, a collection I was honored to read in draft.
Guilty as charged for going OT. More so since as Admin of the Conan.com forums it’s part of my job to make sure threads stay on topic…
I mentioned elsewhere here that I’ve read the ‘Fall of the First World’ trilogy and quite enjoyed it. I’ll certainly add some of your other recommendations to my ‘to read’ list, including Joe’s collections and your Gonji books, as well the other Smith titles. So much to read, so little time.
Guys, I’ll take this opportunity to make a shameless plug for my own self: I am now this close, this close, to completing the revision of The Fall of the First World and will be getting it to Wildside Press in a week or two. Had to scan it all in and clean it up, so it gave me the opportunity to improve some word choices, redraft lame sentences, and so on. Fred C. Adams, Jr., PhD, known to some of you from the earlier grand resurgence of this fiction in the 70s, has written a preface for it that puts the trilogy into a nice perspective. I’m grateful to John Betancourt: he’s also going to reprint the five Attluamn books (Oron, The Shadow of Sorcery, etc.) and the two David Trevisan horror novels whose distribution Avon botched in the early 90s. Do buy the used copies if you wish, but I think that the little bit of tweaking and polishing I am doing will be to the stories’ better. End of shameless plug! Forgive me!
Plug away, Sconesy! You know we’ll be promoting the new editions. When you’re hooked up with Betancourt, remind him that I’ve yet to see my contracts (MY shameless plug!).
Looking forward to the revised editions!
Awesome AWESOME discussion going on here folks! I love every comment and absolutely love coming to me email and finding 40 comments here! Amazing, even all the segues
Many titles to read and much thanks to JoBo for the literary mercenary Rogue Blades!
Dave Smith (Davey Scones!)—
The Griddler, here! Glad you’re good-natured about all of us straying from the spoor of the s&s discussion you originated, far above. Some new friendships being hatched here, which is, after all, one of the raisons d’etre of such forums.
Yeah, this sounds like us, decades ago, gnashing our teeth over schizophrenic markets and lazy, dullard agents (probably over a few beers or bottles of wine). Sword & sorcery, once forged and idnetified, has always been misunderstood, never gotten its due. It’s as if the mainstream fears “barbarian takeover,” should the sub-genre be acknowledged, despite the fact that so little of the fictional output truly deals in “barbarians” (and the term is only superficially understood and applied, anyway).
Remember when we were guest speakers at the Cleveland Superman Con in 1988 (alongside Fred Pohl and Jack Williamson, among others!)? I was on a panel with those guys, which was predictably well attended, and I dutifully sat by and contributed little, just listened respectfully to those old pros. The huge fan turnout was all about sf and world-building and such. The “future” mankind was going to short-circuit its darker nature to attain in some big, fanciful leap that I don’t see in the offing.
Then later that weekend, you and I and Rebecca Meluch were doing a panel on Creating Fantasy Worlds, or something, and NOBODY showed up! But we went out into the corridor in disappointment and just started rapping about heroic fantasy and s&s to anybody within earshot, and we wound up gathering a large, enthusiastic, impromptu following—no one knew who we were, initially—who all pledged to track down our books, once they understood that we weren’t about cavemen cracking skulls and making off with one another’s mates!
As for your query about whether you’re being a mainstream fantasy buzzkiller by asking for an occasional break from the determined plod of endless quests after lost royal legacies by enchanted orphans, pursuing rites of passage, from the backs of charmingly articulate, domesticated, feminized, invisible-friend-surrogate dragons—(*breath*)—
I’d say no. You’re just asking, quite reasonably, that fantasy live up to its definition and permit the free reign of fictional imagination some room to roam, outside of cliched medieval realms and wish-fulfillment subtexts.
And don’t get me started on “urban fantasy,” which a certain agent we both know keeps harping about my acting like a professional fiction writer and “maturing” into; that grotesque hybrid of soft-core romance and squishy horror-porn that transports us into a tedious universe of gentrified vampire/werefolk, where we can—*wink-wink*—fantasize about living long and oh-so rad and deliciously wicked. Yum.
(*swig*)
Gimme my swords, point me toward Mt. Dread, and get outta my way…
“As for your query about whether you’re being a mainstream fantasy buzzkiller by asking for an occasional break from the determined plod of endless quests after lost royal legacies by enchanted orphans, pursuing rites of passage, from the backs of charmingly articulate, domesticated, feminized, invisible-friend-surrogate dragons—(*breath*)—”
Heh-heh! This reminds me so much of my rant a few years back where I was bemoaning the fact that fantasy had devolved into stories of empowered princesses forced to marry some wicked brute against her will for the sake of the kingdom while secretly in love with the stable-boy who happens to be the long lost heir to the throne and the only one who can wield the magic capable of defeating the Evil Knoblord from taking over the world and the known universe. Featuring lots of cats, dragons and unicorns…
Those formulas, variously disguised, have run rampant in fantasy for decades now. I mark it as beginning with Anne McCaffery’s wildly popular Dragonriders series, something I was never able to embrace, even as I can’t get into the Naomi Novik stuff today (though both writers are solid prose-casters).
“Cats, dragons and unicorns” to me represent the softer, gentler, more passive side—call it feminized, as some of us have in discussions; and yes, dragons fit here, as they’ve become more genteel with the passage of fantasy trends—of adventure fantasy, along with magic, in most cases. The clanging edge of righteous, forged steel; the angry barbs topping polearms and clothyard shafts—these obviously typify the harder brutishly “masculine” factors. These elements are the tools wielded in the power struggles represented in the stories. The tools of problem-solving, if you will. It’s been simplistically identified as feminine/masculine, matriarchal/patriarchal. I think that’s too easily labeling a more complex issue.
What seems clear, but only speciously so, I believe, is that society has subtly perceived itself as having evolved beyond entertainments that display brute strength and individual, close-quarter skills as methods of overcoming adversity. Too messy and—ugh—personal.
The belying irony emerges from a quick glance at pop culture in general: The brutishness and barbarism supposedly the milieu of forms like s&s have been supplanted by the sleek and impersonal “equalizing” of modern technology and its myriad weapons and systems.
An offshoot of this modern-is-maturer, bigger-is-better mindset is the dulling of the senses, socially; the much-bandied desensitization of our culture.
As great a film achievement as it is, Jackson’s LORD OF THE RINGS still leaves me a bit numb in its mass-destruction battle scenes:
“Thousand died to the left of me, and to my right!” seems to be the melodramatic battle lament, here and elsewhere. But who were those thousands, as individuals? Did they matter, to the viewer whose breath was swept away by the hyperkinetic action (along with their ephemeral presence and fragile forms)?
I will always prefer a dramatic battle scene with precious, countable numbers: THE SEVEN SAMURAI, with its 30 bandits against 7 professionals and a hundred unreliable, fearful villagers who just want to live (“What the hell am I doing in the middle of this?!”).
We come to know practically every face, count and mourn every single lost struggler, as if grimly eulogizing friends. It’s a lesson I’ve tried to incorporate into my own fantasy fiction:
With big, BIG, BIGGER scenes, always try to embrace as many of those frightened, yearning faces in the crowd as you can. Undifferentiated BIGness creates viewer desensitivity and detachment. And once the audience is emotionally unhooked from the proceedings, you might as well just stomp them flat with colossal KRONOS legs or TRANSFORMERS twisted-metal deluges.
But, hey…that kinda works, too, with modern “gimme-all-you-got-and-then-some” audiences, doesn’t it?
*sigh*
This ties into the reference David made in his article to Marshal McLuhan. In addition to his idea of hot and cold media, his most important concept was “The medium is the message.” In this instance, relating it to the huge blockbuster films with literally thousands of CGI figures in battle scenes, this is mainly due to the technology that’s now available. CGI has become the message of film making today, rather than telling a personal, hits-you-where-you-live story. Films are more the product of technological engineering than story tellomg. It is now possible to film whatever anyone can imagine. Unfortunately this merely leads to pointless imagery. The images are created for their own sake rather than to tell a story. And you really can’t say that anything is “filmed” anymore. It’s all done on computers. Again, the influence of videa games plays into this as well. I wonder what effect playing Call of Duty 10 hours a day will have on my grandkids.
Very valid point, John. I find myself in the ironic position, as a lifetime film fanatic, of almost regretting advances in film technology.
They’ve all lost sight (abetted by uncritical film audiences who keep demanding more-more-more) of one of the tenets of storytelling we all learned early on, as fantasy writers:
“If ANYTHING can happen, who cares what DOES?”
There’s so much going on in every frame of these contemporary CGI blockbusters that I keep resorting to my personal favorite refrain: Modern action films have all the substance and cerebral nutritional value of a candy-coated pinwheel.
Wow. That was an awesome article with tons of great follow-ups.
There’s too much to comment on everything, but I’ll say this:
1.) I consider myself a better horror writer than fantasy writer, though I write much more fantasy (at least over the last couple of years). I’ve never been able to gel the two, to bring a strong horror element into my fantasy. So I’m jealous of those who can.
2.) About D&D and fantasy fiction, I wouldn’t say D&D the game directly brought about a ruination of fantasy fiction. But I would say this: Fantasy changed, at least in the book stores, once the Dragonlance novels came out. And I don’t mean that as a knock against the Dragonlance books, because as a teen when the first series was published, I ate it up. But I do know that before that series appeared, my local book stores were stocked with S&S, Tolkien and the like. After Dragonlance, all I got was more Dragonlance, Tolkien and whatever other fiction there was that was related to some other product, a movie or game or TV show or … something. In my opinion, the media-tie-in phase that kicked off in the early-to-mid-1980s hurt S&S and fantasy fiction in general more than did D&D the game itself, though TSR was obviously one of the companies pushing tie-in products at the time.
And no, I don’t mean to bash those who have written media tie-ins. Plenty of writers have gotten started that way, and many have built a fine career that way.