STAR WINDS
By Barrington Bayley

So you’re an SF fan. You want all the crazy, swashbuckling action of Dan Dare and the Intergalactic Squid Invasion but the intellectual challenge of A Canticle for St. Squidbert. Oh yeah, and the outlandish fantasy of The Unicorn Chronicles Part XLIV. Whatcha gonna do, read The Economist? How about you try Barrington Bayley, the best-kept secret of SF.

Bayley writes thinking man’s Space Opera. Instead of dryly extrapolating quantum physics, Bayley boldly posits a futuristic world where the archaic art of alchemy rules and faster-than-light travel depends on the ether wind.

Star Winds begins on a decayed Earth where the technology to travel the “Star Winds”, the solar wind that blows through space, is being lost. Rachad, a young apprentice alchemist, makes an alliance with a washed up space-captain Zhorga. Together they will travel the old trade route to Mars before it’s too late to leave the Earth. It’s a desperate gamble to re-open Earth’s trade with the stars.

They find the space lanes strewn with forgotten weapons and strange dangers. Their destination is even more peculiar. Humanity exists in scattered feudal realms under attack from an invading alien race that absorbs people into their collective mind. Rachad is tasked with infiltrating a bizarre stronghold in order to wrest away its secret alchemy for the benefit of mankind.

Alchemy? Feudal kingdoms? Sailing ships? Is this an SF story or High Fantasy? I daresay Bayley realized that SF has its roots, not in the technical reports of engineers, but the fantastic dreams of a society where magic is found in the future. But his stories aren’t simply wish-fulfillment or power-fantasies. Bayley’s characters are well-rounded and his world is vivid with amazing wonders and terrible dangers. Bayley lets us stop every so often to wonder what its all about too. He’s not content to let the scurrying lives of merchant-adventurers, ambitious princes, and mercenary captains to be their own justification. He has the ability to show us the folly of our mad scramble to our demise. Like a good alchemist, Bayley knows that the thing to be transmuted is the metal of the soul.

-Dave Hardy

COLLISION COURSE
By Barrington Bayley

Imagine an Earth ruled by a Fascist regime whose primary goal is racial purity. Now it finds itself being invaded from the other side of the time-stream. That’s the premise of Barrington Bayley’s novel Collision Course.

Rond Heshke is an archaeologist summoned by the Bureau of Politics to investigate mysterious ancient ruins that seem to be getting less ancient. This is a crisis because the Titans, the totalitarian party that rules the world, is based on exclusive supremacy for the whitest of whites and genocide for all “devs”. Devs are defined as sub-species of mankind that “deviate” from the Nordic ideal of “True Man”. The ruins are associated with something worse than devs, aliens from the future.

Heshke is a somewhat reluctant defender of racial purity. He has connections with folks who traffic with devs. The survivors have been penned on reservations, but their existence is more than precarious.

Meanwhile the Titans have made contact with Retort City, one of Bayley’s deliciously imagined city-states. This one is a space station, or perhaps a time station, formed in the shape of two pods joined at the center. The people of Retort have solved the problems of class warfare by separating their folk into work and management classes in the two pods. To ensure that feelings of rivalry don’t develop alternate generations of families are split and sent to the opposite pod. The folk are sympathetic to the Titans’ problems. Unfortunately they are devs from the sub-class the Titans call Chinks.

Collision Course is satire of the blackest sort. The “ideal” societies built by Titans and Retort City dwellers are coming apart form their inherent contradictions. The politics of liberals come in for a thumping as well. The radical underground is composed more of talkers than actors, and though professing love for devs, they don’t actually want to have any around. In a grimly hilarious scene a True Man and his mixed-race lover bemoan the fate of the devs, except for a group called the Lorenes. Apparently they were such bastards they pretty much deserved genocide.

Collision Course is a gem of New Wave SF, one that engages with the social possibilities of futuristic technology without turning into turgid propaganda. It also has that most old-fashioned requirement of SF, a sense of wonder.

-Dave Hardy

THE ZEN GUN

By Barrington Bayley

Barrington Bayley’s SF is the kind of writing that would appeal to both a taste for old-fashioned action-oriented Space Opera and New Wave mind-trips that border on the surreal. The Zen Gun is a tale of galactic rebellion with Luke, Leia, and Darth Vader replaced by eccentric hippies and talking animals. They are living in a universe where there are lots of Forces, not all of them benign.

The galactic empire ruled by planet Diadem has grown decadent. Admiral Archier of the elite Ten-Fleet is a mere youth because of the declining birth-rate, children age fast because adults are scarce. The robots have been on strike for a few centuries, so genetically modified animals and human-animal hybrids have stepped in to fill the gap. The colonies are taxed of scientists and artists to help prop up imperial culture. Both the animals and the colonies have their own agendas, which makes for interesting times.

If that isn’t complex enough, a mentally defective hybrid called Pout has escaped from a secret lab and stolen an ancient weapon of mysterious, but immense power. He crosses paths with a futuristic samurai and Hesper, a shipwrecked rebel. And the universe is coming apart at the seams.

Bayley’s novels, the Zen Gun in particular are difficult to describe, thanks to the complex multi-sided struggles, the swiftly moving and varied crises, and the large cast of characters. What is wonderful to see is how colorfully the characters stand out, how deftly Bayley keeps his plot moving, and how vivid are the settings. Even more astonishing is that the whole thing runs about 160 pages. There is not an ounce of fat in the novel, nor does Bayley pull punches when it comes to looking at the underside of a decadent culture.

The Zen Gun is a mind-boggling little tour de force. If we could still get SF this well written in the 21^st century, the future of the genre would be assured.

-Dave Hardy

THE PILLARS OF ETERNITY
By Barrington J. Bayley

I was trolling about the internet one day when I should have been working and I came across the Cheap Truth summary of Barrington J. Bayley’s science fiction. I thought anything described as the “literary equivalent of psilocybin” by the “Zen master of space opera” can’t be all bad.

Actually it’s a lot better! Comparisons with William S. Burroughs aside, this is space opera of a high order. The Pillars of Eternity is grand, fast paced, full of high adventure, and high ideas. Try to imagine Seneca the Stoic starring in a cross between The Maltese Falcon and The DaVinci Code crafted by Doc Smith and you might get the idea.

The hero, Joachim Boaz, starts life as a crippled street-urchin. He encounters a sect of philosophers who rebuild him into a cybernetic superman. But when Boaz is crippled in an alchemy lab accident, he is rebuilt again as a symbiote with his spaceship, literally a cybernetic organism (κυβερνητης means shipmaster). He is also emotionally crippled. There’s a little matter of a lost planet with the galaxy’s most powerful treasure, government assassins who leave calling cards, a computerized version of the Kray twins, and a fad for getting killed as a kinky thrill. All that in 160 pages.

Pillars of Eternity is what they meant when they coined the phrase “new baroque space opera”. I just call it exciting, thought-provoking, and adventurous.

-Dave Hardy

I'M BACK!

My long overdue re-appearance on the F&S blog has finally come. At present I am reduced to a single laptop and use of an ISP that I think actually uses camels to deliver e-mail. It’s not a pretty picture, but I have to return to the fray.

First up: BLACK SAILS!

Straight from Sam & Josie Hawken of 1018 press comes a tome of tales of piracy and fantasy on the high seas. There are a whopping 16 yarns of sea-dogs, curses, salt, swords, and sorcery.

• "The Ghost Ship," by Charles Edward
• "The Death of Captain Eugene Bloodcake and the Fall of the Horrid Whore," by Joel A. Sutherland
• "Black Curse of the Noose," by David Hardy
• "The Breaking of Hell's Bones," by Christopher Heath
• "The Curse of the Dull Knife," by L. Roger Quilter
• "Sea of Cards," by Scott Almes
• "In the Lesser Southern Isles," by Cat Rambo
• "The Curse of Isla Cura," by George Mann
• "On the Old Dabreau," by Jens Rushing
• "The Siren's Lure," by Jordan Lapp
• "The Call of Kuazataml," by Jonathan Moeller
• "The Wandering Star," by Donna Taylor Burgess
• "His Mother's Son," by Michelle Klein
• "Black Mary's Curse," by Kim Despins
• "The Squall," by Steven Winkelstein
• "La Malédiction de Mort," by Juleigh Howard-Hobson

My own contribution “Black Curse of the Noose” is my first proper horror story. Not that it is without bloodshed and battle, however the focus is on the anti-hero’s peculiar sense of what is and is not a fitting way to die. It’s definitely the most savage tale I’ve written to date. I haven’t yet got my contributor’s copy (I am pretty much holding my breath, I’m so excited!). I’m looking forward to some classy entries by Christopher Heath, Jordan Lapp, and Joel A. Sutherland (he wins for coolest title).

You can order it today by going to http://www.lulu.com/content/883546.

REH DAYS 2007

The annual pilgrimage to Cross Plains for Robert E. Howard Days passed off well. There was much merriment, much blowhardery, and much eating of catfish. And, despite being a gathering of REH fans, no one had a fist-fight, nor died of heart-attack, heat-stroke, nor alcohol poisoning.

We set out on Thursday with the intent of meeting the crew at Enchanted Rock. This is a great dome of rock thrusting up from the Texas Hill country. It has served as the inspiration for Cimmeria, the home of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, as well as Lost Knob, the site of a tragic staff picnic in James Hynes Kings of Infinite Space. I made a point to wear my “Hello, my name is: BOY G” nametag.

Anyway the plan was guys in Cross Plains would drive south to Ft. McKavett and then to Enchanted Rock State Park. We stopped in Frederickburg for a visit to Dooley’s 5& Dime store. It’s part fly-in-amber, part tourist kitsch. The place is way cool and missus finds crazy bargains on hairnets, white gloves, and handkerchiefs. I like the straw hats and the young ‘un likes the toys.

We rolled from there to Enchanted Rock, arriving at 2:45. Given the late time and the uncertainty that we’d actually meet up with the Howardheads (I am the last man in N. America w/out a cell phone), we paused in the parking lot, took a good look and headed north. I’d already made reservations for my room twice (don’t ask) and was frankly a bit antsy. More so since this was a new route for me.

As it turned out, we made good time. Route 16 and 190 skirt Loyal Valley, the epicenter of the Mason County feud that raged in the 1870s. It was a battle between mostly German-Texan ranchers and Anglo-Texans. Bitterness from the Civil War era lynchings, rustling, and some plain, old-fashioned gangsterism contributed to a violent conflict. Passing down 190 I saw places that still bore the family names of prominent feudists. The past often stays close in small towns. We made Cross Plains safely and got our room, which I may add did not seem to have mice.

Friday began my days of panel-going and presentations. At the high school library, fans were treated to a talk by Greg Manchess on his artwork for the third Wandering Star/Del Rey volume of Conan tales. Like Gianni, he’s influenced by the Brandywine artists. I quite like his work, though I’ve a pet peeve about curved swords. Manchess’s vision of Conan manages to have the savagery of Frazetta, with the lushness of Wyeth. A nice combo. He also showed us work from a forthcoming children’s book on Magellan. Manchess’s historical art is truly stellar.

Next I sat in on Duece Richardson’s talk on the geography and history of Kull’s Valusia. Suffice to say it’s a complex subject, but Howard left us some rather good clues as to who lived next to what, and feuded with whom else. Duece had some interesting ideas about how the often conflicting visions of Atlantis, Mu, and Lemuria could have fit together in Howard’s work.

I also got to meet Norris Chambers. Whenhe was a youngster his father worked with Dr. Howard, and Norris knew Bob as a boy. I can’t wait to see what all will come of Leo Grin’s interview with Mr. Chambers.

Dinner involved lots of catfish (my favorite) and more slides from Greg Manchess. I spent quite a bit of time outside playing with my young’un (she’s not much for sitting still and quiet, especially when she’s got Indy Bill Cavalier to make her giggle). The missus got to see the slide show and seconded my opinion on Manchess’s Magellanic manifestations.

On Saturday, I held forth at the library on “Desert Adventurers”, REH’s various American gunslingers who hang out in Afghanistan, the Arabian Peninsula, and other parts of the Wild East. I brought along some scans of artwork that had appeared in Top Notch when the El Borak and Kirby O’Donnell tales first appeared back in 1934/35. No one fell asleep and the audience even laughed out loud at a few points.

I spent a good of the afternoon visiting the Barbarian Days festival. I always enjoy chatting with the guy that brings his Ferret armored car every year. The young’un liked looking at the old autos. She took it in stride when I told here how they started cars with a crank instead of a key. If I’d have let her I think she’d have climbed in and tried to drive one away.

At Caddo Peak in the evening, I climbed the peak with the young’un at my side. She made it all the way under her own power. Not bad for a 5-year old. After a third straight evening of carousing at the pavilion, I crashed for some blissful sleep.

On the morrow, we rose and had a last fling at Jean’s Feedbarn (that and the Staghorn are two of the best little eateries in Texas). I chatted with Don Gosnell, the Cross Plains policeman, about Howard Days, oddball crimes, and little towns to visit. He told me that the catfish came from Cook’s Fish Barn outside of Rising Star. We drove back by way of Rising Star and stopped off in a local thrift store that is a resource center for families in crisis: Women's Christian Ministry Resource Center. We chatted with Iris Ratliff, who runs the place about her work. She’s a very nice lady working in a very good cause.

The run home was uneventful. My ninth straight REH Days was over. I’m putting together my priorities from old projects and new ones and counting the days for number ten.

-Dave Hardy

WARRIORS OF THE STEPPES
By Harold Lamb

Warriors of the Steppes is volume two of Harold Lamb’s tales of Cossacks and other adventurers in 17^th century Asia. Lamb was one of the top writers for Adventure, the premier pulp magazine for swashbuckling tales in the 1920s and ‘30s. Along with Talbot Mundy, Lamb was one of Robert E. Howard’s favorite authors and a major influence on the writer from Cross Plains.

Warriors picks up where Wolf of the Steppe leaves off. The central figure is Khlit the Cossack, a peripatetic and aging warrior possessed of a curved saber that represents the legacy of Ghengis Khan. Although he is a Christian Russian, Khlit has cast his lot among the wild tribes of Asia. He is more at home among Buddhist Mongols or Moslem Afghans than in any city, Russian, Chinese, or Turkish.

Not all of the tales are about Khlit. There is a quintet of stories that form a cycle about Sir Ralph Weyand, an Englishman seeking a trade concession from Jehangir, the Mogul ruler of India. The only problem is that Sir Ralph is aligned with Shirzad Mir, a Tajik chief who has been proclaimed an outlaw and is locked in a deadly feud with his Uzbak rivals. It’s a striking thought, and a testament to Lamb’s deep knowledge of Asian culture and history that this rivalry is a mirror of the battles between Shah Massoud, the Tajik mujahedin leader, and General Rashid Dostam, the Uzbek leader whose allies included the USSR, the Taleban, and eventually Shah Massoud.

Khlit is very well represented in this book. He crosses paths with Abdul Dost, one of Sir Ralph’s comrades-in-arms. Lamb brings the world of Mogul India to life with tales of Rajput honor, corruption at the imperial court, and bloody Afghan rebellions.

Lamb’s stories have a great deal of swashbuckling action and colorful characters as well as intricate plotting. Khlit is not an invincible killing machine, rather he is an old man who stays alive by using his wits. He’s also a man who shows his age on occasion, but has the grit to keep on going even against overwhelming odds.

Running to over 600 pages, Warriors is a collection of novellas, allowing for a level of story development that lets Lamb showcase his skill in crafting characters and setting a scene, without an ounce of fat. I highly recommend this book for those who have a taste for swashbuckling adventure and exotic settings.

-Dave Hardy

WOLF OF THE STEPPES
By Harold Lamb

When critics talk about writers who influenced Robert E. Howard, along with predictable favorites such as H.P. Lovecraft, Jack London, and Rudyard Kipling, one name always comes up: Harold Lamb.

“Lamb who?” is no doubt the reaction of many readers. Unlike J.K. Rowling or Terry Prachett, Harold Lamb’s name is not a household word. But he was once the darling of the Saturday Evening Post, contributing both fiction and analyses of Middle Eastern politics. Nowadays, he’s just about forgotten.

Fortunately, Howard Andrew Jones has set out to change that. He has teamed up with Bison Books (of the University of Nebraska) to produce a massive four-volume set of Lamb’s Cossack fiction.

“Cossack what?” Stories about the wild Russian frontiersmen of the steppe. They were the Davy Crocketts and Dan’l Boones of the Russian borderlands. Their foes were the wild nomads who had swept down from the steppes of Central Asia (under tribal names such as Huns, Magyars, Tatars, and Mongols) to smash the citified and civilized realms of Rome, Persia, China, and Russia. The Cossacks were essentially Russian Tatars, capable of riding, shooting, and fighting as well as the horse-tribes of the plains. At first the Cossacks were composed mainly of runaways from serfdom as well as footloose mercenaries, outlaws, and renegade Tatars. Later they became self-contained tribes in their own right, until the Soviets smashed them for being loyal to the old order (and for being too independent).

Lamb’s Cossack hero is Khlit. For readers who expect a Slavic Conan, you’ll be in for a surprise. Khlit is an old guy, still a deadly fighter, but a man who has learned to survive by using his wits. Most of the stories follow him on an epic wandering across much of Asia. Khlit experiences all manner of highs and lows in his wanderings. He is both a homeless nobody and a warlord of stupendous significance.

Khlit defies conventions in other ways. Lamb describes him as a confirmed bachelor who suspects women on principle. However, Lamb frequently provides him with a strong willed young lady as a foil. You could call these girls (they are almost always seventeen) damsels in distress if they weren’t so damned headstrong. Sometimes I found myself wondering just who was rescuing whom. There is plenty of action in these tales, but they aren’t simple shoot-‘em-ups. Khlit relies on his ability to look stupid and act smart to load the dice in his favor. Since he inevitably bucks long odds, he needs all the help he can get.

This makes for tales with many characters, intricate plotting, and lots of exotic color. Frankly, this can be a bit demanding, if you don’t like strange names in remote places, go back to watching TV. But if you are willing to pay attention (or are already familiar with the cultures of Asia) you will be richly rewarded with swashbuckling tales of action and intrigue set in locales as varied as the camps of Mongol khans, the court of Imperial China, and the secret fortress of the Order of Assassins.

Nowadays the Cossacks are enjoying a revival in post-Soviet Russia. They are also enjoying a revival in this collection of Harold Lamb’s thrilling tales of adventure.

-Dave Hardy

FYI

To my great dismay, it has been a while since I posted anything. Whether that is to anyone else’s dismay is an open question. Alas, my computer has gone belly-up. I am reduced to using my work computer on my lunch break. Lunch breaks were not meant to be spent at one’s desk (an open invitation to co-workers and supervisors to send work one’s way). They were made to be as far away from anything resembling as possible.

Check out the new design on the REHupa site: http://www.rehupa.com/. That’s the on-line presence of the venerable Robert E. Howard United Press Association, a swell bunch of guys, so long as you keep ‘em away from online discussion groups.

Also of note is a nifty serial running in, wait for it, the New York Times. The world’s most venerable mullet-wrapper has a ripping yarn by Michael Chabon (of Kavalier and Klay fame) called Gentlemen of the Road.

It’s set in Khazaria during the early Middle Ages. What’s a Khazaria, you may ask. It’s the homeland of the Khazars, now known as the Ukraine and Southern Russia. Which of course begs the question, what’s a Khazar? The Khazars were a horde of warlike nomads that split off from the Huns and forged their own empire of merciless, horse-riding, arrow-shooting barbarians. They were also Jewish. Genghis Kahane anyone? Since they were situated between the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Muslim caliphate both of whom were perpetually at war, the Khazars split the difference.

Chabon has done a cracking job so far. Basically you take a pair of footloose adventurers, an exiled prince with a price on his head, and a whole lot of bloodthirsty killers and there you go. There is also Chabon’s dark, ironic humor. It’s a little bit Isaac Bashevis Singer and little bit Harold Lamb. Check out the Q&A where Chabon lists his favorite authors.

-Dave Hardy

PS. Check out http://joelasutherland.livejournal.com/ , the blog of fellow Black Sails contributor, Joel A. Sutherland (of "The Death of Captain Eugene Bloodcake and the Fall of The Horrid Whore") -dh

COMING SOON!

I have some announcements on exciting writing from yours truly that will be coming to a high-class publication near you soon.

First up my story “The Black Curse of the Noose” will be appearing in Black Sails, and anthology of pirate stories published by 1018 Press. Other tales lined up for the collection include "The Ghost Ship" by Charles Edward, "The Death of Captain Eugene Bloodcake and the Fall of The Horrid Whore" by Joel A. Sutherland (ultra-cool title!), and a special appearance by Washington Irving ("The Storm-Ship"). I’m pretty stoked as this will be my first appearance in an anthology rather than a periodical. “Noose” is a tale of piracy on the high seas and the difficulty of escaping justice when one has committed great crimes. Look for Black Sails in May, 2007.

Also I will have an essay appearing soon in The Cimmerian, the premier magazine of Robert E. Howard scholarship and fandom. It’s a short piece on a gift given to young REH that had a very big impact on his life. It was the Arabian Nights, one of the world’s most influential collections of fairy tales and adventure stories ever written. Robert Irwin (in The Arabian Nights, a Companion) makes the argument that its impact on modern literature is deep and significant. Certainly it influenced top-level Weird Tales writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, as well as noted pulp writers Edmond Hamilton, E. Hoffman Price, and Jack Williamson to name a few.

For news and discussion forums on 1018 Press go to http://www.1018press.com/. You can visit the excellent blog on The Cimmerian’s website at http://www.thecimmerian.com/, where you’ll find lively and informative commentary by writers such as Leo Grin, Steve Tompkins, Rob Rhoem, and Mark Finn.

-Dave Hardy

THE BEST OF HP LOVECRAFT: BLOODCURDLING TALES OF HORROR AND THE MACABRE
By H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft is undoubtedly the most significant writer of horror fiction to come out of the pulps, if not the most significant horror writer of his generation. Even so, the magazines he wrote for rejected many of his best stories. Although he is often imitated, few have been able to create the cosmic fear his literary theory called for.

The Best of H.P. Lovecraft brings together his most developed stories of what is often called “the Mythos”. They range from the very simple and effective “Pickman’s Model” (a story about just where a certain artist derives his inspiration) to the complex and far-reaching implications of “The Call of Cthulhu” where all of the history of life on this planet is called into question.

“The Dunwich Horror” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” bring the nightmare of miscegenation with non-human entities home to the tidy New England countryside with chilling effect. “The Shadow Out of Time” is in some ways less a horror story than a science fiction “secret history” that reaches deep into pre-history to relate the rise and fall of undreamed of star-travelling races. “The Colour Out of Space” is also science fiction, but in a more truly horrific vein. It relates the strange doom that overtakes an isolated farm family when a meteor strikes their farm.

The title is a bit of a misnomer, not that any of these tales are a bit less than the best, it is simly that I think a few of his best works were left out. Only “The Silver Key” represents his Dreamlands tales. I’d put my money of “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath” as not just one of Lovecraft’s best stories, but as one of the best fantasy short stories of all-time.

If you want to see just why Lovecraft is still remembered nearly seventy years after his passing, then read The Best of H.P. Lovecraft.

-Dave Hardy

THE TOMB AND OTHER TALES
By H.P. Lovecraft

This collection provides a look at Lovecraft’s early tales. It is a grab bag of HPL’s work, and shows some of the various directions he went in.

The title tale and “The Festival” are vintage HPL, obsessed with ancestral curses and an unhealthy interest in the past on the part of the young. These themes would later bloom in the form of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. “In the Walls of Eryx” is a straight up science fiction tale, set on an old-school Venus filled with jungles and hostile natives. “Imprisoned with the Pharoahs” is an example of HPL’s ghost-writing, it is an adventure tale featuring none other than Harry Houdini in the starring role.

“He” and “The Horror at Red Hook” come from HPL’s New York phase. In the most ultra-modern of American cities HPL searched for the antique. In “He” he revealed it, giving the settling of America a very dark turn. “The Horror at Red Hook” is a good story, but so pervasive is the loathing of immigrants and Middle-Eastern types that it falls only slightly short of Ann Coulter.

The Tomb and Other Tales is a good set of stories, but probably most of interest to an HPL collector.

-Dave Hardy

THE LURKING FEAR AND OTHER STORIES
By H.P. Lovecraft

While Lovecraft is best known for his tales of Cthulhu and other beings that might have been demons, extra-terrestrials, gods or all three, he wrote many stories that defied genre limits by mixing fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

This collection pulls together quite a few of these. “The Lurking Fear” is classic HPL with a strange race of inbred hill-billies in an even stranger part of New York. “Dagon” and “The Temple” both mix allusions to classical civilization with u-boat warfare in the Great War.

HPL was a genealogist by avocation and an antiquarian at heart. His own family had had been destroyed by corruption of the blood (literally, his father contracted syphilis and later passed it to his mother). Tainted bloodlines and ancestral degeneracy figure prominently in “Arthur Jermyn”. HPL moved from looking down on the freaks of “The Lurking Fear” to finding them in the most refined company. “The Outsider” takes adolescent angst to a new level, with one of HPL’s most poignant tales and most appealing narrative voice.

The book winds up with a very strong closer: “The Shadow over Innsmouth” surely one of HPL’s all-time best tales, reprising the horror of “The Lurking Fear”, but in a far more advanced and challenging way. It just might have the reader looking at his own family tree.

While few of these stories will make the top ten list of HPL stories, they are all effective in their own ways, little windows on the creative, multi-faceted mind of H.P. Lovecraft.

-Dave Hardy

THE DREAM QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH
By H.P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft’s fantasy is, in my opinion, a greatly underestimated area of his work. Surely if one were listing the best American fantasy stories, Lovecraft’s novelette, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath would surely rank high. Lovecraft’s fantasy was indebted to the work of Lord Dunsany, but Lovecraft sculpted his own vision of wonder and fear.

The tale is part of a cycle concerning Randolf Carter, a dreamy, New England gentleman of distinguished lineage and fantastic imaginings. He accesses the “Dream Lands”, a truly fantastic land that Lovecraft evokes with that overused and seldom merited epithet, dreamlike. Carter is searching for a beautiful city, glimpsed in dream, and now hidden by jealous gods. His quest takes him through the many realms, cities, and haunted ruins of the Dreamlands.

The ways of Ghouls and the nature of the cats of different planets are explored. Carter explores the mountain known as Ngranek and the Plateau of Leng. Strange battles between even stranger creatures are fought. In the process Carter discovers much about the Dreamlands, and somtething about himself.

This volume is ably rounded out by other Dreamlands short stories, “The Silver Key”, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”, “Celephais”, “The White Ship”, and “The Strange High House in the Mist”.

Lovecraft’s output of fantasy (as opposed to his very closely related field of horror) was small compared to Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, or J.R.R. Tolkein. But Lovecraft’s fantasy was something distinct, and seldom imitated. It is all the more valuable for it.

-Dave Hardy

THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH
By H.P. Lovecraft

While H.P. Lovecraft’s name is indissolubly linked with tales of ancient, extraterrestrial races and the strange traces they left in antique New England towns, there was a bit more to his literary corpus. The Doom that Came To Sarnath collects a broad spectrum of Lovecraft tales, prose and poetry.

The title tale is a fantasy set in Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, a world that takes its existence in the dreams of Earth-bound dreamers. But here it pulses with life as Lovecraft ignores the “dream” aspect to bring a slice of Dreamlands history to eldritch life. The Dreamlands tales are well represented: “The Cats of Ulthar”, “The Other Gods”, “Polaris”, “The Quest of Iranon” are present, though some of the best Lovecraft fantasies are to be found in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. “Cats” is a fantasy based on Lovecraft’s feline obsession. “Polaris” travels the borders of dreams to ask what reality truly is.

Many of the others, such as “The Festival”, may be considered as minor “Mythos” stories, with its delicious imagery of wonder and terror from the deeps of time in an old New England town. “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” develops the science fiction element that marked the best-known of Lovecraft’s work.

There is also straight up sf, “In the Walls of Eryx”, a planetary adventure in the vein of early scinetifictioneers like Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, and Clark Ashton Smith. Brief vignettes and poetry round out the collection.

While few of these tales are well-known, they are a broad selection of Lovecraft work, a mosaic of HPL’s moods and interests. The Doom that Came to Sarnath is a must have for any collector of Lovecraft’s work, and worthy addition to the collection of any fan of fantasy and horror.

-Dave Hardy

AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS
By H.P. Lovecraft

At the Mountains of Madness is one of H.P. Lovecraft’s best novellas. It is also the title of this collection of some of his minor masterpieces.

The title tale concerns an expedition to a mysterious region of the Antarctic. When they discover evidence of strange life forms and an unknown civilization, things go terribly wrong. Some readers may find Lovecraft’s pseudo-history overlong, but HPL wasn’t about splatter effects (though “Mountains” has its share of gruesome sights) he was fascinated with man’s place in the universe. The book includes the pre-Cthulhu “The Shunned House” and the later “Dreams in the Witch House”. “Shunned House” shows HPL making very effective use of traditional horror material in creative fashion. “Witch House” comes more form his “cosmic horror” phase when he freely mixed science fiction elements with horror (much as in “Mountains”).

This is a very good small set of novellas. It is essential reading for horror fans and not a bad place to start for newcomers trying to get a handle on the strange appeal of Rhode Island’s master of the weird.

-Dave Hardy

STRANGE GATEWAYS
By E. Hoffman Price

Back in the 1930s and ‘40s, E. Hoffman Price was a regular contributor to Weird Tales as well as “Oriental Adventure” magazines. Though he retired from writing when the pulps were superceeded by paperbacks, in 1967 his old comrade August Derleth at Arkham House produced this collection of Price’s orietales.

As Price made no secret of his disdain for “action” stories, it should come as no surprise that while these tales are fantasies, they are rather gentle ones. That is not to say that they are devoid of conflict or even violence. Two tales (“Graven Image” and “Bones for China”) are set in Ming Tien, a Chinese setting for stories of missionaries and Chinese immigrants caught up in the Japanese invasion. Many of the stories are pure romance. “The Fire and Flesh” is a wish-tale of an American planter in Indonesia who finds his goddess in a culture not his own. “The Girl from Samarcand” is about a love affair between a man and a rug (albeit a very special rug) and stems from Price’s deep knowledge of Oriental rugs (he was a collector of note).

Other tales in the collection are more in the macabre vein, such as “The Stranger from Kurdistan” (one of Price’s early devil worship yarns) and “Tarbis of the Lake” (another romance, but an unhappy one). “Strange Gateway” is perhaps the best of the lot, mixing macabre fantasy with romance and tragedy. There is one straight up story of intrigue: “Pale Hands”, a sting-in-the-tail story if double-dealing and broken love.

While Strange Gateways doesn’t have quite the wild inventiveness of Price’s contemporaries, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, or Clark Ashton Smith, it is a solid collection of gentle fantasy from the Golden Era of the pulps.

-Dave Hardy

THE BOOK OF THE DEAD; FRIENDS OF YESTERYEAR: FICTIONEERS AND OTHERS
By E. Hoffman Price

Edgar Hoffman Price started writing more or less on a whim in the 1920s. He built himself into a regular contributor to Weird Tales and eventually made the plunge into writing full time for a wide variety of pulps in 1932. In the process he came to know many of the pulp writers of his day and especially his fellow writers for Weird Tales. He was active as writer until the pulp markets crashed in the late ‘40s.

In Book of the Dead Price gives pen-portraits of many of his friends and colleagues of those days. In addition to Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, Price recounts his memories of Farnsworth Wright, Otis Adelbert Kline, August Derleth, Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Bracket, Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith and many others whose names deserve to be better remembered. Between sharing drinks, stories, money problems, successes, drinks, failures, more drinks, and a fierce camaraderie, these men and women helped create the great groundswell of popular literature in 20th century America.

Price wrote this when he came out of retirement in the ‘70s. He had assuredly earned the right to be a grumpy old man, which what he often sounds like here. Price has only contempt for Thrilling and other Leo Margolies pulps that demanded action above all else. Price is also a confirmed Conan-hater. While he admired Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane and Kull, he found the Conan tales “too dreary to read.”

Often, much too often, Price criticizes Howard’s and Lovecraft’s writing and professional choices. This attitude may seem like sour grapes, but I believe it is really a reaction against the adulation granted these writers by their latter day fans. At the end of his tribute to Kirk Mahsburn, Price urges fans to lay aside the big names (especially their leftover stories) and take a look at the “writings of the Forgotten Men, they’d be richly rewarded in anthologies of the unique.” Amen to that.

Illustrated with photos of Price’s comrades-in-ink and an EHP bibliography, Book of the Dead is a valuable testament of the pulp era.

-Dave Hardy

THE REVENGE OF KALI-RA
By K.K. Beck

The Revenge of Kali-Ra is a mystery novel without the usual corpse. Instead of a know-it-all amateur detective, we have a diverse cast of characters each out to make the most of a long-forgotten pulp writer’s legacy.

The idea is that Nadia Wentworth, a prima-donna Hollywood star, decides she’s going to do a film based on the writings of Valerian Ricardo, the creator of Kali-Ra. Ricardo’s work combines the sinister super villain of Sax Rohmer’s Fu-Manchu with the Theosophism of Talbot Mundy and the tie-‘em-up-and-flog-‘em scenes from REH’s Conan tales (man, this book is so ripe for a Margaret Brundage cover!).

This starts bringing the odd-balls out of the woodwork. There is Dr. Glen Pendergast, an English prof who writes pretentious po-mo lit-crit about Kali-Ra. Nick Iverson is Ricardo’s grand-nephew, and perhaps heir. Ricardo’s loony widow turns up, as does a sleazy lawyer representing an even sleazier swindler who might own the rights to Kali-Ra. And then there’s Callie, a young woman whose relationship with Kali-Ra might be too close. Keeping the whole show moving is Melanie, Nadia’s long-suffering assistant. A drunk screenwriter and an over the hill crooner with ties to the Mob round out the cast.

Naturally, they all end up at Nadia’s Hollywood mansion. Just as naturally, the lights go out and mayhem ensues, albeit a very low-key sort of mayhem.

Kali-Ra is an amusing satire on pulp writers, Hollywood, cranky heirs to literary estates and even crankier fans. Having spent some years in REH fandom, I found myself laughing pretty hard at certain points in this story. While my taste in crime fiction runs more to hard-boiled PIs and serie noir, a good laugh is worthwhile every so often.

-Dave Hardy

BIMBOS OF THE DEATH SUN
By Sharyn McCrumb
THE TRANSFORMATION OF LARRY CROFT OR THREE DAYS OF THE CON-DORKS
By Mark Finn

Since Gather in the Hall of Planets was pseudonymously penned decades ago, there has been remarkably little fiction set in the eccentric world of fandom and cons. Here are reviews of two books who ventured into that perilous land of poor hygiene and worse diets.

Bimbos of the Death Sun was the freshman effort of Sharyn McCrumb. It was an impressive first effort and won the Poe award for best original paperback in 1988. The story concerns various con organizers, an engineering professor turned sci-fi novelist, the world’s most obnoxious Sword and Sorcery writer, and divers maladjusted fans, gamers, paste-eaters, and ladies of epic proportions. Oh yes, there’s also a murder to be solved, but that’s more-or-less an excuse to traipse through the world of “Rubicon” and its peculiar denizens.

Mark Finn’s Transformation of Larry Croft follows four friends attending a con. As it turns out the hotel’s new manager is a practicing wizard who assumes the fantasy fans are not just nerds, but actual vampires, sorcerers, aliens etc. His confusion is nothing compared to that of Stercutus, the discarded Roman god of feces who is trying to make a comeback in human form. Rabbelaisian humor mingles with and almost pedantic urge to document just how much like Finn and his friends the characters are.

Of the two, Transformation works better. When all is said and done, Bimbos treats its characters not as people, but punchlines. McCrumb occasionally slips some darkly cynically observations that ring painfully true, but by and large takes a condescending view of the pathetic freak show. Finn on the other hand revels in the world of Con-dorks. Every dodge to get money form parents or drive a sharp bargain with a comic-book dealer is matched by a look behind the goofy face these kids show the world. Finn lets his characters’ vulnerability show with almost painful honesty. And in the end he lets his freaks have their moment of redemption without ever dipping the freak flag to the smug and self-satisfied world they face. Long live the Con-dorks!

-Dave Hardy

The Transformation of Lawrence Croft by Mark Finn is part of Gods New and Used and can be found online at: http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.html?id=1827

THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD
Dir. by Dan Ireland

Listen up, this is the first, and I daresay last, time I will enthusiastically recommend a Women’s Entertainment Network movie. Hey, even if I wasn’t friends with the screenwriter, Michael Scott Myers, I’d still love this movie!

It is the true story of the friendship between Novalyne Price (played by Renée Zellweger), a young schoolteacher in Cross Plains, and Robert E. Howard (Vincent D’Onofrio), the greatest pulp writer in The Whole Wide World.

The film is based on One Who Walked Alone, a fictionalized memoir of Novalyne’s friendship with Bob written decades later. Novalyne Price-Ellis taught high school in Louisiana for many years and numbered among her students Michael Scott Myers and Benjamin Mouton who would later bring her story to the screen.

Novalyne met Bob Howard through a mutual friend, Tevis Clyde Smith (Benjamin Mouton), in 1933. She was intrigued by him and when she went to Cross Plains to teach high school, she renewed the acquaintance. What followed was a wonderful friendship and a terribly strained romance. Bob wrote lusty, swashbuckling tales filled with sex and violence. Novalyne was a prim and proper schoolteacher. While the Conan stories are perhaps mild by today’s standards, the utter insistence on Bible Belt respectability (especially by teachers) in the 1930s should not be underestimated. Novalyne was a strong-willed lady, she braved a certain amount of disapproval in seeking out Bob. On the other hand Bob pushed her farther than she was willing to go.

Novalyne was fascinated by Bob’s ability to commit his imagination to paper and hoped to learn from him how to start her own writing career. She got a lot more than she bargained for, and ended up in something of her own debate on civilization and barbarism. She actually came off a better than H.P. Lovecraft did in his famous epistolary duel with REH!

But there was a dark side to Bob. He was a moody man, and his stubborn, argumentative nature sometimes riled Novlayne. His disdain for conventional opinion dismayed and infuriated Novalyne. For a Christmas gift he gave her a book of French erotica, which is about like giving Mother Teresa the DVD of Kill Bill V1&2. It appears Bob had a bit of a chip on his shoulder too. He was aware of the disdain the some, let me emphasize only SOME, of his neighbors felt for him. Bob harshly dismissed her attempts to bring him into her social world. He also emphasized his need for freedom, to not be tied down by a woman.

Then there was Mrs. Howard (played by Anne Wedgeworth), surely one of the most debated literary mothers of all time. Novalyne saw her as plainly hostile, aiming to keep her precious Robert to herself. While that is possible, she was also terminally ill. After Bob and Novalyne drifted apart, Mrs. Howard’s health declined sharply. Strained to the limit by helping to care for her, wounded by his self-inflicted break-up with Novalyne, and too stressed to write (a pulp writer was like a shark, he had to keep moving or die), Bob began behaving erratically. Soon after Novalyne left to attend LSU, Bob shot himself. He had decided not to outlive his mother, and when he was informed she would die shortly he took his life.

Now all of what I’ve written makes for a so-so summary, but a cruddy review. Because this movie is about the wonder of discovering a love that might be, filled with promise and adventure. It is about the uncertainty of seeing an open door, and not being sure if one can step through. It is about the pain of losing someone, and never being able to say goodbye. I watch this movie about once or twice a year. I never get tired of it.

-Dave Hardy