BLOOD IS NOT ENOUGH

Edited by Ellen Datlow

This collection of vampire tales was issued by Berkley in 1990 and edited by Ellen Datlow. The goal here seems to be to cast as wide a net as possible and sample every possible variation on the vampire tale one can find. There are blood drinking vampires and emotion drinking vampires and time wasting vampires and kids who think they are vampires, etc…

Some of these tales just misfire for me. Tanith Lee’s “The Janitha Tree” is a good example of her subtle and enigmatic style of weird tale that is so subtle and enigmatic I’m not too sure what happened. Other tales here just aren’t my cup of tea, “A Child of Darkness” by Susan Casper is a decent portrait of a young woman who believes she is a vampire, but ultimately the character comes across as more a pathetic loony than someone interesting in her own right.  

On the other hand there are some true standouts. Fritz Leiber’s tale of blood-sucking advertising “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” appears here. It is subtle and enigmatic, but not too subtle. The best in the collection is Scott Baker’s “Varicose Worms”. This is a tale full of surprises! It tells of a Romanian immigrant in Paris who discovers the secret magic world of Shamanism and his epic battle to hold his place in it. Along the way Baker satirizes psychiatrists, politicians, Mircea Eliade, and homeless beggars, not necessarily in that order. I finished that one and was left begging for more, though I daresay Mr. Baker knows how to wrap up a yarn. If you ever run across this book, read “Varicose Worms”!

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE BLACK MASS OF BROTHER SPRINGER

By Charles Willeford

Charles Willeford was the king of Florida noir. He wrote taut novels of odd loners who just couldn’t stay alone and draw others to their ruin.

Sam Springer is a dry-as-dust accountant who decides he’s a writer because he sold a novel. Broke and in search of new material to write about he visits a monastery in the Florida backwoods. The abbot and sole occupant is a career soldier who’s forgotten more about doing nothing while getting paid than most men ever learn. He helps Springer skip out on his wife and life by dispatching him to be pastor of an all-Black church in Jacksonville. But preaching actually takes some work and Jax is in the throes of a civil rights conflict. Rev. Deuteronomy Springer is a long way from a saint and so is Merita, the very beautiful wife of one of his deacons.

Black Mass is a sardonic send-up of bigots, zealots, preachers, and believers. Even more than that it is a story about how wanting is quite different from having. If you like good, dark comedy, you should want to read this one. Having done so will be satisfying.

-Dave Hardy

THE BIG TIME

By Fritz Leiber

The Big Time is a masterpiece of contradiction. It is set in a dazzling science fiction universe of limitless possibility, yet the tale itself is one of claustrophobic confinement. The fate of all time and space itself hangs in the balance, armies battle on all fronts, yet the characters are the most minor of rear-rank spearholders. And they are all the more fascinating for it. 

If you are unfamiliar with the premise, The Big Time tells of the Changewar between the Spiders and the Snakes, two mysterious factions battling for control of space and time. Their mode of battle is to change history, their foot-soldiers are agents recruited from all of history and every planet in the universe.

But forget all that, Leiber never tells you what any of the missions mean, only that faceless, nameless commanders say it’s important. And if they order a British WWI vet to help the Nazis win WWII, he just has to assume they know what they're doing. The central character is not a soldier, but an entertainer at a trans-tempoal USO station. Tangled webs of love, jealousy, and mutiny swirl through the lives of the entertainers and the time-soldiers they care for.

The Big Time is all Fritz Leiber, starting with his love of the theater. In fact The Big Time is written much like a play, with a very rigorous observance of Aristotle’s unities (I’m not being very original in noting that). Indeed, the one place, one time approach is perhaps the only way to make sense of a concept as big as the Changewar. Leiber’s love of word-play and his interest in Germans and Shakespeare are very much in evidence.

The Big Time is a science fiction novel you can recommend to people who don’t read science fiction.

-Dave Hardy

ALMURIC

By Robert E. Howard

There is a certain sub-genre of science fiction that is sometimes called “sword & planet”. It has its roots in A Princess of Mars and other tales of John Carter on Barsoom by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The hallmarks are an alien world filled with decadent science, barbaric warriors and an outsider from earth who shakes up the scene.

Robert E. Howard of Conan fame made his own foray into the field with Almuric, perhaps his most extended science fiction work. In fact Almuric is one of REH’s few novels (it was serialized in Weird Tales but never issued as a novel until the ‘70s). The hero is Esau Cairn, a man too strong for civilized life. When fate puts him outside the law a kindly scientist helps Cairn out with a dimensional transporter that shoots him to Almuric, a planet remote from earth. The inhabitants are shaggy ape-men and gorgeous barbarian princesses. On Almuric, a fellow is judged by his courage and strength, not his bank account so Esau Ironhand fits right in.

Alas, there is always a hitch. The demonic Yagas, a race of winged fiends, tyrannize over Almuric. When they massacre Cairn’s friends, it means war. 

While not as well developed as the Hyborian Age, Almuric is an entertaining imaginary world. I enjoyed the naïve and romantic story telling of A Princess of Mars. In Almuric we get REH’s take on that style of story telling: bold, direct, and swashbuckling.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

 

BLACK VULMEA’S VENGEANCE

By Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard, though best known for his horror and sword & sorcery, was at heart an adventure writer. He buckled anything that swashed. What better subject for swashbuckling adventure than piracy on the high seas?

Black Terence Vulmea is REH’s pirate hero. He is an Irish sea-rover, a survivor of England’s tyrannous rule over the Emerald Isle. We get two Black Vulmea stories: “Blades of the Red Brotherhood” and “Black Vulmea’s Vengeance”. “Blades” should be familiar to many Conan fans. It was originally a Conan tale and re-written as apirate sotry. L. Sprague de Camp re-re-wrote it as “The Treasure of Tranicos”. It’s a darn fine adventure as Black Vulmea finds himself stranded on a remote shore and involved with an exiled French nobleman, a rival pirate, hostile Indians, and a legendary lost treasure. It’s a festival of sword-play, double-crosses, and thrilling action.

“Vengeance” lets us get much closer to the pirate’s character. Vulmea is captured by Wentworth, a haughty Royal Navy captain. But the pirate is nobody’s fool and soon the tables are turned. This yarn is an interesting one in that REH gives full vent to his feelings on England’s rule of Ireland, and how a strong man deals with a bully. You might be surprised.

“Isle of Pirates Doom” rounds out the book. While it is a pirate tale, Black Vulmea is not present. Instead REH gives us one of his one of his sword-women: Helen Tavrel, the wildest she-pirate afloat. While Helen Tavrel has never gotten the notice that Belit (“Queen of the Black Coast”), Valeria (“Red Nails”), or Dark Agnes (“Sword Woman”) have received, this is an interesting story. Helen Tavrel isn’t just a man in drag or a sex-kitten with a sword. She has her own complex web of relationships and womanly sense of propriety. She’s no man-hater, but don’t take liberties, you’ll regret it.

Sadly out-of-print, Black Vulmea’s Vengeance is as fine a set of pirate yarns as was ever penned by a salty sea dog.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS

ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: MORE STORIES MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME
ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS: STORIES TO BE READ WITH THE DOOR LOCKED
ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S BEHIND THE DEATH BALL

Back when magazines contained stories and not just 893 pages of ads, they used to collect them and publish them in book format. Stories, not ads, that is.

One of the old reliables was the “Alfred Hitchcock” sets. Not that the great director actually selected the stories for these books (or maybe he did), but it tied in with Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and the Alfred Hitchcock Presents tv show.

Don’t look for “locked door” puzzlers or accounts of how Mrs. Gillysquid the elderly librarian showed up Scotland Yard (except maybe as parodies). These collections focus on crime stories, stories told from the point of view of a criminal, a victim, a bystander. The emphasis is less on detecting than the motivation and effects of crime. Mostly the effect on the reader, the more outlandish the better.

Straight up fantasy is not neglected either. Theodore Sturgeon’s classic tale "Shottle Bop" is featured in Stories to be Read with the Door Locked, and there is a fine homage to Lord Dunsany in More Stories My Mother Never Told Me, titled "The Man Who sold Rope to the Gnoles" by Idris Seabright. And of course one must read John Keefauver’s How Henry J. Littlefinger Licked the Hippies’ Scheme to Take Over the Country by Tossing Pot in Postage Stamp Glue because it has such a cool title, if nothing else.

Should you come across an Alfred Hitchcock collection, it’s worthwhile to take some time to peruse. 

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE BUCCANEERS OF AMERICA

By Alexander Exquemelin

No it’s not about an NFL team from Tampa, it’s about swaggering, cut-throat desperadoes who terrorized all in their path. No, I don’t mean the creative team that brought you Gigli either, I mean real pirates.

Alexander Exquemelin was a young Dutchman who went to the West Indies as an indentured servant, a slave with a contract that is. Finding the life of  a servant brutal, he went off to join the buccaneers, roving bands that hunted wild cattle in the interior of Hispaniola (nowadays Haiti & the Dominican Republic). These men were in constant conflict with the Spanish and many had taken to the sea to rob passing ships. In Exquemelin’s day they had grown strong enough that under leaders like L’Ollonais, Rock Brasiliano, Bartholomew the Portuguese, and Captain Henry Morgan, that they could form powerful fleets capable of seizing major cities and pillaging extensively.

Exquemelin gives us a unique first hand account of the hardships of frontier life in the West Indies. He is concise but there is a wealth of detail about the plants and animals, daily life among the colonists, and the trades they engaged in (besides armed robbery). Above all this is an account of the most notorious buccaneer chiefs and their war against the Spanish Main. The portraits of L’Ollonais and Morgan dominate the book. L’Ollonais is shown as a sociopath, practicing savage cruelty as matter of routine, but possessed of reckless personal courage in battle. Morgan comes across as a smooth, cozening rogue, but also as a man capable of using his abilities to unite disparate outlaw crews to undertake military campaigns of surprising strategic finesse and daring.

If you have any interest in piracy in the days of sail, you MUST read this book.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

BRAN MAK MORN: THE LAST KING

By Robert E. Howard

This is Wandering Star's comprehensive collection of Bran Mak Morn tales and it’s a stunner [Note: While WS has moved on, Del Rey still publishes this book as a trade paperback]. It is very thorough and includes all the Bran Mak Morn tales (“Men of the Shadows”, “Kings of the Night”, and “Worms of the Earth”) and the Turlough Dubh yarn, “The Dark Man”. It also has another Pictish tale, “The Lost Race” as well as poetry, fragments, an early draft of “Worms” and a whole chronology (including excerpts from REH letters) of REH and the Picts. Even so it is still not a complete Pictology when you consider the import of Pictish supporting characters and foes in the James Allison stories, the Conan series and the Cormac MacArt tales. To get all that in there you’d need another volume.

For those readers unfamiliar with Bran Mak Morn and the Picts these were some of Robert E. Howard’s favorite themes. The historic Picts were the inhabitants of Northern Britain outside of Roman control. Historians and archaeologists believe their culture was a mix of Celtic and indigenous, pre-Indo-European peoples. For Howard they represented the old-people, the precursors of his beloved Celts. They were his Big Other, playing Indians to the Celtic cowboys. Bran Mak Morn is their last hope as Rome’s power grows. He knows his people’s time on the stage of history is just about up, but they ain’t going quietly.

The stories range from the ok (“The Lost Race”) to the outstanding (“Worms of the Earth”). Quite frankly, “Worms of the Earth” is one of REH’s best yarns. Don’t expect tons of blazing action, this is the story where REH displayed his talent as a creator of mood and atmosphere. The feel is closer to Lovecraftian horror than Conan-style sword-and-sorcery. It is also a good example of REH at his most thoughtful as Bran must repeatedly confront the question: how far would you go to strike at a foe?

The illustrations by Gary Gianni are magnificent. Gianni depicts bloody hand-to-hand struggle as deftly as he captures the moody, fog-bound feel of the Celtic twilight.  True some have criticized the cover art as making the Picts look too much like dwarves. Well, how the hell do you depict people regularly described as stunted giants?

As for the historical Picts, their kingdom survived into the Dark Ages. Finally, racked by internal wars and Viking invasions, the Picts succumbed to a take-over by the Scots of Dal Riada. The kingdom of the Picts became the home of the Gaelic Highlanders.

-Dave Hardy

BARBARIAN DAYS: THE TRAILER

I just recently saw the trailer for "Barbarian Days" a documentary from the fellows at Goodspeed Productions about the annual gathering of Howard Heads in Cross Plains, Texas and the people who make it special. The film follows Rusty Burke, Mark Finn, Chris Gruber, all super REH scholars and, I am proud to add, good friends of mine. Watch the trailer for special appearances from Paul Herman, Lee Breakiron, & Mrs. Dave. Not to mention a very special guest!

You can find it on FaceBook at: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/video/video.php?v=434270614084&ref=mf

SORCEROUS SIGNALS

A quick note that I have a new story online at Sorcerous Signals an amazing Fantasy 'zine edited by Carol Hightshoe. My yarn is "Prisoners of the Glittering Plain." It's a tale of Vikings, curses, and monsters in the frozen North. Enjoy! -Dave

THE BIG SLEEP

By Raymond Chandler

“I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn’t care who knew it.”

Raymond Chandler could make his words stalk off the page and into your life like a gimlet-eyed dame with a .45 in her purse and too many white nights in her past.

Anyway, before I start to sound like Robert Parker writing a pastiche with a WAY too short deadline, let me just say that The Big Sleep is deservedly one of Chandler’s best known works. He paints LA red with a lurid tale of high society, low company, depraved kicks, and noble intentions gone wrong.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the story, it is narrated by Philip Marlowe, Chandler’s fictional PI. Marlowe’s job, taken as much for a loopy sense of honor as for green semolians, is to look into the disappearance of Rusty Regan, General Sternwood’s son-in-law. Chaos abounds as the General’s daughters, Vivian and Carmen, do their best to muddy the waters.

The plot is a complex one, pulled together from short stories Chandler had sold to Black Mask. Honestly, sometimes the stitching shows. But the characters just pull you into their loony world and hold on until the tale is done. Along the way you find gems like “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts,” and, “using his strength like an out-of-work show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings.” Above all it’s Marlowe, the dogged PI, going back again to uncover, or bury, the truth as he must in the service of his odd sense of duty.

-Dave Hardy

THE ANGEL OF THE WEST WINDOW

By Gustav Meyrink

Gustav Meyrink evoked the brooding spirit of Prague in novels rich with mystical symbolism, novels that might be coded with kabalistic messages themselves and capable of working a strange alchemy in their readers. Meyrink was a banker and man-about-town in fin de siecle Prague until series of duels and a false accusation of mishandling bank funds smashed the manacles of respectability that held him back. Thereafter he penned his odd novels mixing his Judeo-Buddhist mysticism with zestful fantasy yarns.

The Angel of the West Window relates the mystic quest of John Dee, the Elizabethan alchemist and secret agent, in parallel with the story of his modern descendant who finds his own life drawn onto the strange path his ancestor once trod. But the path to illumination is perilous and those who would pervert it to their own ends wait for the unwary.

Meyrink’s vision is a dizzying one. His work has been hidden behind a language barrier too long, and Meyrink deserves to take his place alongside Lovecraft, Tolkein, and Howard as a master of modern fantasy. First published in 1927, Angel and other Meyrink works were newly translated and reprinted by Daedelus in the 1990s.

-Dave Hardy

Strange reviews of the recent past

Since the old Fire & Sword website is defunct (well not defunct, just redirecting to the Fire & Sword blog), I've decied to revive a few reviews from there, because they were so good. OK, because I'm to lazy to write new reviews. In perfect candor, I always intended it to be an archive of reviews and commentary on books that I liked. I still like 'em, so why no post them here. Without further ado, here's my review of All shot Up by Chester Himes.

ALL SHOT UP
By Chester Himes

So you think Shaft was the baddest cat in Harlem? Well long before Richard Roundtree ever donned a black vinyl driving coat, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson were keeping it cool when things got hot.

Chester Himes was an ex-con who took to writing. He penned some well-regarded but very uncomfortable (for honkies) novels about crime and race. Eventually he moved to France in 1953 (except perhaps for Muslims, it seemed relatively less racist than America) and started writing for the local market for romans noir . The French didn’t know that all detectives were white guys who spoke entirely in snappy comebacks so they went for it.

Himes mixed deadpan absurdity with deadpan brutality. All Shot Up opens with a tire thief watching a solid-gold Cadillac driven by a guy in a coonskin cap run over an old lady. She gets up and is promptly sent flying by a coal-black sedan with three cops in it. The thief drops the tire and it keeps on rolling with the novel.

Himes follows up on that opening. The crime here is a pretty complex one, but that’s perhaps of less importance than Grave Digger and Coffin Ed’s rather ruthless methods of getting to the bottom of things.

This is excellent Harlem hard-boiled fiction, not a classical detective story or a police procedural, but an urban adventure tale. If you like tough-guy tales, you should have some of Chester Himes work in your library.

-Dave Hardy

SWORDS OF FIRE NOW AVAILABLE

Swords of Fire is now available from RAGEMachine books. This is a collection of pulse-pounding Sword & Sorcery novellas by C. J. Burch, Jack Mackenzie, G. W. Thomas, and your humble blogger. Artwork is by the amazing MD Jackson. I've been reading the galleys, and this stuff is good if I do say so myself. While you are at it, treat yourself to a copy of GW Thomas's supernatural-mystery anthology No Ghosts Need Apply and his werewolf collection By the Light of the Full Moon. The four issues of Dark Worlds are still available too. You won't regret it.

-Dave Hardy

Coming features

First off what's new:

"Demons of the Dark Sun" is online at Sorcerous Signals. It's by the multi-talented Mitch Allen. I say multi since there are two writers at work here. If you like Pre-Colombian America and Sword & sorcery this is up your alley. Coyotl the Chcihimec is a ttribal warrior who meets the Aztec empire. There are more of Coyotl's adventures waiting to be told.

Next what's ready to order:

El Borak and other Desert Adventures is available from Del Rey. If you don't know about this. El Borak is the nom de guerre of Francis Gordon, a Texas gunslinger who has migrated to the Wild East. Instead of outlaws and Apaches, the stories about Afghans, Central Asian bandits, psycopathic fascists, and Lost Cities in the Hindu Kush. It's not exactly Indiana Jones, these tales more like hard-boiled Westerns in the Near East.




Finally, what's on the horizon:

The Early Adventures of El Borak from the REH Foundation collects the early efforts of Howard to write El Borak Stories. This set of fragments and juvenalia is for collectors and REH scholars. Also collected are the early Sonora Kid fragments, ranging from domestic drama to Westerns.

Enjoy!

-Dave Hardy

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

The original fireandsword.com is no longer with us. In an effort to simplify, everything will be posted on the blog, and the domain forwards to the blog. It is much easier to manage content in this format. We will post the content from the old site as we have time.

COTTON COMES TO HARLEM

By Chester Himes

Cotton Come to Harlem is another off-kilter detective tale from Chester Himes. This is about rival back-to-the-land scams operating in Harlem. Rev. Deke O’Malley is leading the back-to-Africa movement, a mysterious Southern colonel is recruiting for a back-to-the-South movement. A heist of Rev. O’Malley’s money turns violent. The only clue is a bale of cotton that mysteriously appears and disappears throughout the story.

Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed do not so much unravel the mystery as they unravel O’Malley’s duplicitous life. In particular, his multiple lady friends and their mutual antipathy provide a reminder that a man who can’t keep his hand out of the cookie jar risks a great deal.

-Dave Hardy

STRANGE MONSTERS OF THE RECENT PAST

By Howard Waldrop

Howard Waldrop seems to be an expert on everything just so he can write about it. It’s a bit like encountering a strange eclectic encyclopedia where the entries come to life and hold a booze party in the subconscious.

In this case the entries include Monster movies as seen from the point of view of the last survivor of humanity. A pair of travelers journey through a landscape created by Heironymous Bosch. There’s a loving tribute to the publishing empires of Onitsha, Nigeria (I’m not making that up either). The icing on this cake is “A Dozen Tough Jobs” detailing Hercules’ adventures in rural Mississippi. Strange Monsters is about as weird and weird fiction can get and highly enjoyable.

-Dave Hardy

GW THOMAS & DARK WORLDS

It has been a while since I mentioned the talented GW Thomas. Here's a few links to his fiction & poetry online: http://www.gwthomas.org/stories.htm. Mr. Thomas is definitely worth spending some quality time with.

Don't forget that you can still get Dark Worlds #4 not to mention #1, #2, & #3. And of course Dark Worlds Adventures and much more.

Over on Kings of the Night there is a crop of new stories: "The Obsidian City" by James Lecky, "THWACK, the Last Arrow's Tale" by Peter J. Welmerink, "Brock Strangebeard and the Towers of Matterkill" by Robert E. Keller, and "The Crypt of the Cobra" by CL Werner.

Finally Swords of Fire will be coming soon! In the tradition of Lin Carter's Flashing Swords anthologies, Swords of Fire is a quadruple dose of Sword & Sorcery fiction, novellas of heroes and magic, featuring: "The Temple of Rakshasa" by David A. Hardy,"The Deathmaster's Folly" by G. W. Thomas, "Two Fools for The Price of One" by C. J. Burch, "Pieces in the Game" by Jack Mackenzie, and cover art by MD Jackson.

-Dave Hardy

DIES ATER DRACONIS ONLINE

My latest story is now online in the October 2009 edition of Static Movement, it is "Dies Ater Draconis." It's a short-short story in the steampunk manner, but using the Late Roman Empire instead of the Victorian era. I wrote it after seeing a documentary about the rediscovery of a lost work by Aristotle. The story is less about Aristotle than about a world where Hero of Alexandria's steam powered inventions became a force to be reckoned with.

In other news I've been a topic of interest in the British fanzine Ansible. David A. Hardy the space artist is a bit non-plussed to find that I write under the name David A. Hard. From the September Ansible:

Outraged Letters. THE David A. Hardy dissociates himself from a David A Hardy who writes stories for Dark World magazine. 'A fake David A. Hardy? I've had this name for 73 years; who is this pretender? Can any of your readers throw any light upon this travesty?' (Your editor's Cosmic Mind is quite able to imagine a real David A. Hardy II. The net is littered with other David Langfords.)

My reply in the October Ansible:

• David A(llen) Hardy assures us his name is authentic. 'It is true that I've only had it for 42 years (one less than David A. Hardy has been doing freelance art), but I've gotten attached to it in the interval. [...] If it will help prevent confusion, I am prepared to swear that I, the David A. Hardy who writes for Dark Worlds, can't draw anything more complex than stick-figures.'

Good thing my parents didn't name me Harlan Ellison.

-Dave Hardy