REVIEW: KANE OF OLD MARS

By Michael Moorcock

There’s a certain revival of interest in the Sword & Planet genre. For those of you unfamiliar with the term it is the older bother of Sword & Sorcery. Instead of a magical world, the sword-swinging hero is on a planet, generally on littered with the remains of lost super-science-using civilizations. The prototype is Edgar Rice Burrough’s A Princess of Mars, recently adapted for the screen by Disney (a much better film than the moaning about money might have led one to believe). ERB laid out a program for the genre: a daring American hero (John Carter) who relates his adventures including the wooing and loss of a princess (Deja Thoris) to a pseudonymous author (Norman Bean).

Part of the revival is Michael Moorcock’s three-volume series featuring Michael Kane on Old Mars. Paizo has recently re-printed those, though the earlier paperbacks can still be found. Kane is a scientist who builds a device to transport himself to an alternate universe where Mars is verdant world of adventure filled with danger, secrets, lost cites, and beautiful women. The stories are unabashed love-letters to ERB & John Carter. Moorcock even follows the route by interposing a fictional author, Edward Powys Bradbury, as the transmitter of Kane’s derring-do. Although the stories were written in the mid-‘60s, Kane has another parallel to John Carter, they are veterans of Lost Causes. Carter is a Virginian who fought under Robert E. Lee while Kane served in Vietnam, a cause that wasn’t even officially lost. The Kane series is about naïve, romantic adventure, not the world-weary doom-journey of Elric or the philosophical abstractionism of later Moorcock Fantasy novels.

Another classic Sword & Planet hero from Moorock’s pen is Sojan the Swordsman. Sojan occupied a place somewhat in between S&P and S&S, though the distinction is often slight. Sojan is an early creation, and the work seems less a naïve, retro-fantasy than, well the work of a young writer back before that stuff was retro. Sojan has been re-printed many times. I met him in Elric at the End of Time. The title story is a wicked mash-up of  ultra-decadent and ultra-violent Elric with the ultra-decadent and ultra-bored Dancers at the End of Time. I’d advise reading An Alien Heat as well as some Elric stories before reading “Elric at the End of Time” if only to get a feel for the characters in their original state. It makes the party that much better. End of Time also has some essays by Moorcock on the artistic and business stories behind some of his better known characters. The anthology winds up with “The Stone Thing” one of the better Sword & Sorcery parodies I’ve ever read.

-Dave Hardy

 

REVIEW: THE MAN IN THE YELLOW RAFT

By C.S. Forester

Better known for his Horatio Hornblower tales, Forester also wrote this series of short stories about the US destroyer Boon set in the Pacific during WWII. Forester is an odd sort of adventure writer, he always seems more at home with the unassuming fellow who does his duty quietly in a very decent, English sort of way. I am particularly fascinated by Forester’s attention to the role of supply and the men who get supplies where they need to be. It’s a subject close to me, for my mother served as a supply clerk in the WAVES in 1944-45 and later worked as a civilian employee of the navy in the supply department.

Quite frankly supply departments are not terribly dramatic. Supply issues get rather more interesting when they involve unloading thousands of gallons of gasoline while being bombed by the Japanese. But that is really Forester’s drawback. While he’s excellent at depicting the quiet, unassuming fellows, who keep the machine running even in the midst of disaster, one seeks in vain for a sense that sometimes things just won’t work. I occasionally found myself yearning for a character to snap under pressure. Or a hint that landing the gasoline is not enough. That war is about pointless death and waste. But that is antithetical to the style of heroism Forester strives to depict, the quiet, unassuming execution of the plan, until the job is done. It’s not a bad sort of heroism, I think a lot of people got through the war that way. God bless ‘em.

-Dave Hardy

REVIEW : BLACK ALIBI

By Cornell Woolrich

Cornell Woolrich was the undisputed master of noir. His tales were less about crime than explorations of the human heart, the twisting byways of trust, betrayal, and the deeply irrational side of fear. Black Alibi fits squarely in that tradition. The mcguffin is an escaped black panther, a dangerous “pet” belonging to an American movie star, on the loose in a South American city. The actress’s manger is honor bound to retrieve the creature. What Woolrich tells is only partly the tale of the pursuit of the panther, but a series of sketches of prospective victims, with the reader never knowing if they will pass through safe, or die under the fangs of the beast.

It’s not your usual crime novel.

Woolrich lived for part of  his youth in Mexico City. Black Alibi is infused with the poetry and rhythm of life in Latin America, the joys and sorrows heightened. No Black Alibi isn’t a crime novel, it’s a romance, a love story, a story about life in its glory and misery. It’s a fantasy, an idyll, it’s noir.

-Dave Hardy

REVIEW: THE FALL OF CHRONOPOLIS

By Barrington J. Bayley

Another of Barrington Bayley’s swinging philosophical space operas. This is no less than the decline and fall of an empire that rules not only space, but time. Unlike H. Beam Piper’s Paratime worlds, they don’t simply observe and exploit the past, the people of Chronopolis have gone beyond Fritz Leiber’s Spiders and Snakes, they are not content to infiltrate and alter the time stream. In true imperial fashion, Chronopolis just re-makes it, with vast temporal roadblocks keeping their bubble of time pristine and free of any influence save the empire’s. Time exists in nodes, wave peaks and troughs, always marching onward serenely, never interfering with one another.

But no wave can avoid ripples. Imperial princes may form misalliances between past and future selves. The borders are under attack. Within secretive cults seek to spread chaos and fear. Against the rising tide of temporal decay, a hero arises, Aton, a disgraced time-ship commander on a deadly mission to confront the demonic forces at the heart of time.

This is classic Bayley, part science fiction, part fantasy; sharp, to the point, with a headlong pace that has room to offer wild insights into science, philosophy, and human nature.

-Dave Hardy

 

REVIEW: HIGHROAD TO THE STAKE

By Michael Kunze

This is an extraordinary work of history. Michael Kunze is not the usual sort of historian, he is best known as a translator, but he studied history and wrote his thesis on the trial of the Papenheimer family. In due course he produced this work of one of Europe’s best-documented witch trials.

In the early 1600s Germany was spiraling toward all-out war between Protestants, Catholics, Imperial authority and independent principalities. Munich in the duchy of Bavaria was a center of the Counter Reformation, a place where Catholic intellectuals gathered at the ducal court to lay the groundwork for a new century. Into this came the Papenheimers, a family of itinerant septic-tank cleaners. An accusation by a thief they had some acquaintance with led authorities to arrest them on the charge of witchcraft. What followed was an atrocity of small-scale, yet savage, bestial cruelty. The Papenheimers became the focus of an effort to purge the troubled land of Satan’s influence. They were tortured with inhuman cruelty until they confessed a myriad of crimes. Even more unspeakable was their execution, carried out with demented brutality. Every act was meticulously documented and carefully authorized under the rule of law.

Kunze examines the world of the Papenhimers and their persecutors. His account considers the lives of beggars, thieves, travelling fold, lawyers, and nobles. Kunze does not shy away from the cruelties inflicted on the Papenheimers and others caught up in the withchunt. This is not an easy book to read, it took me well over a decade before I could bring myself to read it to the conclusion.

Kunze sticks closely to the facts, presenting them in a straightforward fashion. One almost senses a subtle message at work here. The 17th century permitted abominations like the Papenheimer trial despite the warnings of men troubled by the flawed logic and evident cruelty of witch hunting. For the most part witch-hunters were honored and rewarded. Indeed, given the seeming collective insanity that perpetrated the Thirty Years War, the witch hunters crimes are at least limited. Indeed, when Kunze wrote this in the early 1980s, the crimes of the Third Reich were living memory. There were yet men willing to shoot and kill people for the crime of crossing the Berlin Wall. Germany was still divided from the last global war and the common wisdom that the next, by no means an unthinkable occurrence, would annihilate mankind. In his own, understated way, Kunze throws a piercing light on the recurring moral questions of mankind.

-Dave Hardy

I'VE GOT A REVIEW

I'm usually the one doing the reviewing, so it's a pleasure when someone reviews one of my works. This one is courtesy of  Keith at Adventures Fantastic blog. It's a review of "The Last Rune" (online at Sorcerous Signals).  Adventures Fantastic is a great blog for fans of SF, Fantasy, and Adventure. Keith is, I should add, a Robert E Howard fan of long-standing and some distinction.

REVIEW: THE RIOT AT BUCKSNORT

By Robert E. Howard

While Robert E. Howard is best known as the guy that came up with Conan, the barbaric, unstoppable killing machine that changed the rules of fantasy forever, he was also the author of many tall-tale Westerns. Breck Elkins is a Conan with a Texas drawl, instead of a broadsword, he has his unstoppable fists. Too good-natured to be homicidal, Breck actually is the lunkhead so many assume Conan is. It’s not so much that Breck’s a bull in a china shop, but the world is too fragile for a lad of his strength. The fact that he doesn’t feel pain makes him a bit careless of regular folks, with their odd manner of reacting badly when a hot stove falls on them. Not that Breck would do that on purpose, but when he’s around he tends to throw stuff such as stoves, barrels of gunpowder, or mountain lions.

What might surprise you is how successful they were. REH never got Conan into a hard-cover collection in his lifetime, Breck Elkins was picked up by Herbert Jenkins, a British publisher eager to offer up Texan humor to the reading public of the UK. The resulting collection was titled A Gent from Bear Creek and fit a number of stories into a running storyline.

The Riot at Bucksnort takes a looser approach to Breck’s adventures. This set includes “Meet Cap’n Kidd,” perhaps the funniest of them all, detailing Breck’s encounter with a wild stallion, about the only creature that can match Breck in strength, and by far his superior in orneriness. The only ones that get the best of Breck and his ilk are the ladies, Glory McGraw in particular. Breck’s wooing of Glory formed the basis for A Gent from Bear Creek. Not that romance ever causes Breck to settle down.

Riot also contains a couple of tales featuring Pike Bearfield and Buckner J. Grimes, characters in a similar vein to Breck Elkins, though with their own quirks. All of the stories are mirthful yarns of Western slapstick, where gigantic hill-billies blunder their way across the landscape.

Perhaps the best way to convey what these stories are like is to give a little taste of fatherly advice on Bear Creek:

“Be keerful how you spend that dollar I give you,” he said. “Don’t gamble. Drink in Reason; half a gallon of corn juice is enough for any man. Don’t be techy—but don’t forget yore pap was once the rough-and-tumble champeen of Gonzales County. Texas. And whilst yo’re feelin’ for the other feller’s eye, don’t be keerless and let him chaw yore ear off.”

Words to live by.

-Dave Hardy

RUNES AND EDITORS!

My short-story, “The Last Rune,” is online now on Sorcerous Signals. This tale features Ulf Blood-eye, meeting Starkad the Betrayer yet again in battle. For more on the bloody feud of Ulf and Starkad, check out Mystic Signals 9, for “Vikar’s Doom.”

I have been fascinated with Vikings and Norse legends since I was a kid, reading a book from the 1890s (it must have belonged to my grandmother, I can’t recall its name). But it had re-tellings of the Prose Edda and other Norse myth. My favorite was the story of the giant  Utgarth-Loki and how the Aesir slept in his glove and thought it was a house with five rooms (really long, narrow rooms). Edith Hamilton, Magnus Magnusson, Poul Anderson, and yes, Marvel Comics’ Thor played a big role in keeping me interested in the gritty and violent details of the Viking Age without losing touch with the glorious fantasy that so captured my imagination.

Also, please take a look at this lovely blog post by Alisa Carter. She is an editor with Urania, the spec-fic imprint of Musa Publishing. I worked with her on Crazy Greta, it was a privilege to work with someone who cared as much about my vision for the story as I did. I think she may be better able to explain Crazy Greta than I can, as evidenced below.

I always say, the best books are the ones that answer a question. For example, “What if vampires could actually have sex and form relationships?” How many books can you think of that answer that question? Well, Crazy Greta is the only book you will ever read that answers the question, “What if those paintings that show skeletons fighting humans in the 16th-century Netherlands depict something that really happened?”

Yep, that was a good bit of my thought process.

BTW, I will have another e-book coming from Urania this July, Tales of Phalerus the Achaean, a pair of Sword & Sorcery stories set in the mythic past of Bronze Age Greece.

-Dave Hardy

REVIEW OF: THE CAVE GIRL

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

If there was one theme that drew Edgar Rice Burroughs in like a flame does a moth, it was the confrontation of flabby civilization with muscular primitivism. The Cave Girl explores a belated Tarzan finding his inner ape.

Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones is a stuffed-shirt’s stuffed-shirt. He’s a Bostonian (perhaps Midwesterner ERB’s dig at the Eastern elite) from a family that has raised being effete to an art form. Consequently it comes as a shock to Waldo when he’s washed ashore on a desert island. But Waldo finds just the right motivation to get primitive when he meets a comely cave-girl. Facing successive threats from panthers, cannibals, rival ape-men, and pirates, Waldo must unite the sound mind and the sound body or perish.

For readers who like the more light-hearted aspects of ERB’s tales, this is a good one. Despite the lighter moments there are plenty of ferocious battles and hair-raising peril. If you’re not an ERB fan, it may come across as unbearably corny. But if that’s the case you should try swinging on a vine sometime.

-Dave Hardy

CRAZY GRETA

My first novel, Crazy Greta, is on the market. It is published by Urania, an imprint of Musa as an e-book.

Crazy Greta's titular protagonist is a 16th century Netherlandish tavern-keeper, living in a time of religious and political warfare. Having rival armies rampage across your homeland is bad enough, but things get really bad when the dead rise from their graves and begin slaying the living. Greta's adventures take her to Hell and Heaven. She meets mercenaries, playwrights, widows, fools, pirates, saints, devils, and angels and generally has a brawl with all of them.

I drew my imagery from the art of Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch, along with a rather broad swath of pop culture stored up in my brain: Night of the Living Dead, Sam Peckinpah, and lots of Sword & Sorcery stories.

Here's a little excerpt:


Someone was banging at the door. Gert stopped singing and the others looked up. The banging continued and Greta hustled forward. “Come in already,” she called. The door flew open as if of its own accord. Framed in it stood a small, wizened figure. It was dressed in a yellow tabard and wore a mask, as if at some mummer’s play. But the limbs were deathly thin and the skin seemed to have rotted in a grave. It capered in and the revelers drew back. The little dancer knocked the backgammon board from the table. Then it reached for the basin with the wine jugs and tipped them over.

“You damned little fiend!” Greta shrieked “I’ll teach you to spill my …”

Then another figure appeared at the door. The pot-boy screamed from the kitchen. Greta’s eyes widened in horror and shock, for there was no mistaking the newcomer. It was a skeleton, draped in rags of withered skin. Jan drew his sword but stood as if paralyzed. More dead poured into the room.

Greta fell back, shrinking into a corner. A skeleton seized Anneke, whirling her in a dance filled with lustful kisses from dead lips. Another skeleton seized Gert’s lute and serenaded the lovers with a dirge. Greta fled to the kitchen.

The back door was open. A figure in a green fools-coat stood with its back to her. Greta said nothing, but she saw the pot-boy crumpled in a pool of blood, red as Rhenish wine. The green fool turned and presented a serving tray, its skull face grinning in triumph. The pot-boy’s head was garnished with fresh cress.

Greta screamed in abject terror. God’s judgment was upon her and all the world. The crucifix she once had was long smashed, with all the other false images. She reached for the iron skillet.

~ ~ ~ ~

That's a little taste of the novel,  hope you enjoy it!

 -Dave Hardy

Musa Publishing: Meet Crazy Greta.

My first ever use of the "blog this" feature, is quite happily, for an interview with no less than Greta van Vlissingen, Crazy Greta herself (shhhh, don't tell her I called her that), sword-swinging heroine of Crazy Greta available now from Urania, an imprint of Musa Publishing.

Musa Publishing: Meet Crazy Greta.:   Thank you for coming to chat with us today. Why do you think David Hardy choose you to represent her/him? In truth I do not know, sav...

GLENN LORD 1931-2011

I heard the very sad news that Glenn Lord passed away yesterday, December 31, 2011. If you don't know who Glenn Lord is, he was the literary agent for the Robert E. Howard estate for many years starting back in the 1950s. Though he left that role long ago, what he did as agent had a huge and wonderful effect on REH fandom. Glenn worked hard to see all of REH's work met publication, not just Conan.

Glenn collected and published REH's poetry, his boxing stories, the tales of El Borak, REH's horror tales & Westerns, REH's tall-tale Westerns, tales of Breckenridge Elkins, Dennis Dorgan, Black Vulmea, Dark Agnes, Cormac MacArt, Kirby O'Donnell, Bran Mak Morn, Skull-Face, Black Turlough, Steve Allison, and more. Some of the stories Glenn shepherded to publication are among REH's bes: "Worms of the Earth," "Pigeons from Hell," "Marchers of Valhalla," "Gods of Bal-Sagoth," and the controversial "Black Canaan." Glenn edited the long-running 'zine The Howard Collector. Some of the best (only some, for "best" is relative amid such an opulence of riches as was assembled in the Collector) was collected in paperbacks such as The Book of Robert E. Howard and the The Second Book of Robert E. Howard.

This was the lifeblood of REH fandom. Robert E. Howard is a major inspiration for my writing, and Glenn enriched my enjoyment and understanding of REH's achievements incalculably. He was gracious and helpful to fans and researchers.

I was fortunate enough to meet Glenn at Howard Days in Cross Plains years ago. I was a gushing fan. He was courteous and kind. Later that same weekend we chatted a bit, we didn't talk about Conan or De Camp or the history of REH publishing, but East Texas towns and Houston traffic. Glenn had a life outside of fandom. He served his country in the Korean War, as other generations of the Lord family have served in more recent conflicts.  He was a quiet man, given to brief and occasionally blunt statements, but with warm, good humor.

I count myself lucky to have been able to thank Glenn for all he did for REH fandom. I last saw him at his eightieth birthday party in November, surrounded by generations of his loving family.

Thanks Glenn. I'll miss you.

-Dave Hardy

REVIEW: THE LION OF CAIRO

By Scott Oden

Scott Oden has built a reputation on historical thrillers such as Men of Bronze and Memnon, swashbuckling tales of adventure set in ancient times. In Lion of Cairo, Oden moves the action forward to Medieval Cairo as rival factions vie for power in murderous court intrigues while ambitious warlords oust with zealous Crusaders for supremacy over the Holy Land. All this occurs along with a strange cursed blade and a rather depraved necromantic villain in the mix.

Oden’s protagonist is Assad, the Emir of the Knife, a Hashashin, or an assassin as commonly known. Assad is no hired sword, he is a hitman with a cause, a deadly secret agent for the mysterious Lord of Alamut, the master of a radical sect that stands aloof from the mainstream of Islam. Assad’s mission is not simply murder, but to sway the ruler of Egypt into an alliance.

Oden recreates the Cairo of the caliphs with astonishing skill. I often felt I was gliding down the mean streets and marble palace halls of Cairo along with the beggars, pimps, thieves, spies, fanatics, harem girls, and killers that people this story.

Needless to say, a lot of blood gets spilled along the way. Though Oden acknowledges Robert E. Howard as his model, Lion of Cairo is often closer to film noir. Assad is less a Conan than a homicidal George Smiley, a very patient man who strikes only when ready. The feel of Lion is often closer to a serie noir than a Sword & Sorcery tale. The prevailing mood is paranoia as treachery and deceit are the order of the day.

When it comes down to it, the battles are furious and the heads fall with astonishing speed. Yet there is clearly room for a sequel. I am looking forward to it.

-Dave Hardy

 

It's been an exciting week for me. My novel, Crazy Greta, is going to be published by Musa Publishing! The scheduled release date is March 2012. It will be issued by Urania, an imprint of Musa. In fact, Musa's official opening date is tomorrow, October 1, 2011.

Musa is a new publisher with a focus on e-books in many genres: Romance, Erotica, Mystery, GLBT, Contemporary, Historical, YA, Paranormal & of course SpecFic. Did I forget anybody? Oh yeah, Aurora Regency.

Just to natter about e-books at this point, I am excited about being an e-book author now. It is a growing market, one that is part of many changes that are re-making the landscape of publishing. If you will bear with me a minute, I see a tradition of cheap, mass entertainment from the penny dreadfuls, to dime novels, through the pulps of the '20s & '30s, to the paperback boom of the '50s. These were formats t hat were scorned, deemed dangerous even at times. The subjects were often lurid, violent, in some way unsettling to the rigid conformity of the times. They were often short-form: short stories, novelettes, and shot novels dominated these publishing sub-cultures. But they were also the roots of the popular entertainment we enjoy on TV, movies, and yes books, today. Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Romance, Westerns, all had their origins in these formats. All the cops, robbers, cowboys, aliens, boy wizards, and gals looking to find love you see or read about have models in earlier mass entertainment.

The penny dreadfuls & dime novels are historic artifacts now, pulps are rare as dodos, the mass market paperback is going the way of the buffalo. There is little room for genre short stories, none for novellas. But the e-book is quite amenable to the novella. It is free of the ink & paper cost constraints that burden print. Printing a novella doesn't make economic sense, e-publishing it does. Further, it is a medium that doesn't tie the publisher to a warehouse of product that MUST be moved. An audience can be built. To my untrained and perhaps over-enthusiastic eye, e-books are rising to take the place the demise of the mass-market paperback has opened. This will be the new medium where authors and publishers can experiment, where readers can find inexpensive entertainment, and where new legends will sprout as Howard, Lovecraft, Willeford, Hammett, Woolrich, Buntline, Prest, and many others did before. A lot of carrion will no doubt be left by the wayside, but that's the nature of migration.

Anyway, what about my book? Well, it's an adventure-fantasy set in the 17th century Netherlands, Heaven, and Hell. My protagonist likes brandy, swords, and skating. She dislikes hordes of undead warriors, Satan, and  ichor. I fill y'all in with more detail at a later date! Thanks for listening.

-Dave Hardy