The Lord of the Rings Series: Wild Extrapolations

Three Rings for the Elfin-kings unner the sky,

Seiven for the Droich-lairds in thair haws of stane,

Nine for Mortal Men duimit tae dee,

Ane for the Daurk Laird oan his daurk throne

In the Laund of Mordor whaur the Shadaes lig.

Ane Ring tae rowl thaim aw, Ane Ring tae find thaim,

Ane Ring tae bring thaim aw an' in the mirkness bind thaim

In the Laund of Mordor whaur the Shadaes lie. 

 - The Laird of the Rings (in Scots) - I can dream, eh?

I think I got most of my emotional reaction to any new Tolkien adaptation news out of my system a while ago, especially given how franchises operate nowadays. Rather than being excited or dismayed, I feel a strange sense of confidence - that "ah, I've been here before" sensation. It could be good. Or, it might not. We will see.

What do we know about the series? We know next to nothing.

Swords & Sorority

"When I was younger, as well as liking Conan, I was a fan of Red Sonja," says Scott. "so I do firmly believe that if you're writing a fantasy book, if you can't have an axe-wielding barbarian woman in a chainmail bikini - and the chainmail bikini is very important - then there's no point in writing it, really."
 - Christopher Wright, and while I suspect he's being a little facetious, he's being far too subtle about it

I like “pulp” and “Sword and Sorcery” in all its gory, sexist, glory. Big, awesome barbarians, though an occasional wizard or rouge can slip in. Women are to be barmaids, princesses, slave girls, dancers, victims to be rescued, etc. Blacks and MezoAmerican like peoples are either rare “Noble Savages” or hideous cannibals with filed teeth. Orientals are sinister characters, though their women look hot but unless they are “Rescued sacrifice victim” also very sinister. Of course, awesome “Noble Savages” think Kubotai from “Conan the Barbarian”! Mix in lovecraft, westerns, maybe some not too queer Burroughs like stuff…
Really, do women, blacks, orientals, Mexicans, etc. buy “Heroic Fantasy/Sci-Fi” enough that the damage of not sucking sucking sucking up to them will be less than the damage of alienating your base customer market?
 - Green Gestalt on John O'Neill's post on Realms of Fantasy

I don't see posts like this very often, but when I do, they leave a bad taste in my mouth. I'm reminded of the Cross Assault sexual harassment scandal over which the Internet had once again exploded (one wonders how the series of tubes could survive all these conflagrations):

Those are jokes and if you were really a member of the fighting game community, you would know that. This is a community that's, you know, 15 or 20 years old, and the sexual harassment is part of a culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community, it's not the fighting game community — it's StarCraft."
 - Bakhtanians "justifying" the concerted verbal abuse which caused a fellow player to drop out

Sword-and-Sorcery has often been accused of being one of those genres that belongs to the past, a different time when "all men are strong, all women beautiful, all life adventurous, and all problems simple." Sword-and-Sorcery, some might say, is outdated, an embarrassment, relevant in our more enlightened times only to show how far we've come since the bad old days of 1950s advertisements.

Then again...

Is sexism inherent to Sword-and-Sorcery? It's the sort of thing many have wrestled with in print and on the 'Net. Well, I figure the best way to address that is talk about my favourite female Sword-and-Sorcery characters, hopefully showing that not only is Sword-and-Sorcery not the exclusive domain of manly men, but that it never was. And since it's International Women's Day, it seems appropriate to post some of my favourites.

World Book Day 2013

World Book Day 2013 falls on my 29th birthday, which makes me almost as happy as this little chap:



So I'm going to try out something different - tiny capsule reviews of short stories I've read or reread recently.

"The Jewel of Arwen" by Marion Zimmer Bradley
(From The Year's Best Fantasy Stories (1975) edited by Lin Carter )
The best Lord of the Rings fan fiction I've ever read - or, rather, the only good Lord of the Rings fan fiction I've ever read. It was written before The Silmarillion came out, so it relies only on the LotR appendices, and yet it still manages to be more in-tune with Tolkien than any number of Middle-earth pastiches I've experienced.

"The Sword Dyrnwyn" by Lloyd Alexander
(From The Year's Best Fantasy Stories (1975) edited by Lin Carter)
There should be a rule in fantasy fiction: if you encounter a black sword, do not look at it, do not touch it, do not pick it up, just walk away and leave the blasted thing alone. But then, if that was a rule, then we wouldn't have stories like this.

"The Double Shadow" by Clark Ashton Smith
(From The Year's Best Fantasy Stories (1975) edited by Lin Carter )
This is one of those Smith stories like "Empire of the Necromancers" that is told almost like a parable, and manages to achieve a sort of timelessness. It's also a perfect example of Smith's use of the exact perfect word for the situation, no matter how esoteric: it isn't purple prose, this is Tyrian loquaciousness. It also has a sapient snake as the protagonist, which is brilliant.

"The City of Madness" by Charles R. Saunders
(From The Year's Best Fantasy Stories (1975) edited by Lin Carter)

Who's the black Ngombe's pal
That's a sex machine to all the gals?
(Imaro!)
You're damn right!

Who's the barbarian
That would risk his neck for his brother man?
(Imaro!)
Can ya dig it?

Who's the chui that won't cop out
When there's mchawi all about?
(Imaro!)
Right on!

You see this chui Imaro is a bad mother -
(Shut your mouth!)
But I'm talkin' about Imaro!
(Then we can dig it!)

He's a complicated man
But no one understands him but his pompous pygmy priest friend...
(Imaro!)

(also read The Wasp's review)

"The Small Assassin" by Ray Bradbury
(A Chamber of Horrors unlocked by John Hadfield)
This is one of Bradbury's most evil stories when you think about it: what's most unsettling is the outcome is horrific whether the protagonist is right or wrong. It's one of those amazing stories where even the possibility of the protagonist imagining everything is just as monstrous as if the supernatural/uncanny aspect was actual - perhaps more so. Gave me the shivers, so it did.

"More Spinned Against" by John Wyndham
(A Chamber of Horrors unlocked by John Hadfield)
People love calling Wyndham's work "cosy catastrophe," as if comfortable surroundings or circumstances mitigate or even remove horror and terror, but as with Bradbury and others, I find that it can multiply that sense of unease and threat. "More Spinned Against" is a delightfully grim tale that has Wyndham's typically pointed critique of social mores and hypocrisies, while throwing you a lovely (if, in retrospect, clearly signposted) final twist.

"The Abyss" by Leonid Andreyev
(A Chamber of Horrors unlocked by John Hadfield)
A deeply unpleasant and malevolent story that doesn't have any overt supernatural elements, but is pregnant with supernatural subtext, if you will. It's not a happy story at all.

"The Monk" by M. G. Lewis
(A Chamber of Horrors unlocked by John Hadfield)
Another very horrible story in the sense that it left me feeling nauseous, but in this case it has a certain spiritual power and resonance by virtue of the protagonist's occupation and the setting.

"The Yellow Wall-Paper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(A Chamber of Horrors unlocked by John Hadfield)
Required reading for psychological horror aficionados. One of the most beautifully conceived, poignant and eloquent meditations on frustration, anxiety and perception degradation I've read.

"The Things" by Peter Watts
(Online)
If you've ever seen John Carpenter's adaptation of John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" (or the short story for that matter), then this is a simply magnificent perspective switch.

 "... All You Zombies..." by Robert A. Heinlein
(Online)
Heinlein is fascinating as much due to his choice of subject as to his approach, and "... All You Zombies..." may well take the biscuit in terms of "What in Jove's Name Were You Thinking!?!" This approached Vonnegut levels - even Palahniuk levels - of Why Science Fiction Is Frightening As All Get Out. For the man who brought the word "grok" into popular usage, I don't think it's possible for any human being to grok Heinlein. He's... ungrokkable.

So, hope you all had as happy a World Book Day as I had a good birthday!

Bite-Sized Blog: Adventure Author News

Preview of "Kalina & the Baba Yaga," which goes on sale from Black Hearted Press on Hallowe'en 2012, with a launch party at 55 Parnie Street, Glasgow at 7pm.

Another round-up of links and musings before Hallowe'en, featuring Conan novelisations, Howard reviews, Howard-inspired poetry, Machen, Lovecraft, Lewis, Saunders and Smith.

Charles Saunders on the Heimdall Hullaballoo

You'll probably notice by my Facebook picture that my skin colour is in the single digits of the Von Luschan chromatic scale, and so my recent comments about Idris Elba as Heimdall are, obviously enough, from the perspective of a white dude.  How could they not be?  I can't exactly get a melanin transfusion, can I?  Even though I'd like to think I have some knowledge and experience of black culture, mythology, and history through contact with my aunt and a few other acquaintances, the fact of the matter is a white dude talking about a black dude playing a white dude is a very specific perspective on a subject with very different perspectives.

However, Charles Saunders, a man who can comment on racial matters from the black dude's point of view, has decided to leap into the fray regarding black Heimdall on his blog, with a very interesting observation regarding Amazons. I won't spoil it, because it's a revelation I'm somewhat stunned by: suffice to say, racebending was even in effect in the 1980s.

Triangulation: Solomon Kane, Konahn el Destructor, Immortal Fantasy, and Things to Come

Another busy week here, at the REH forums, and at The Cimmerian.

In what is quite possibly my longest Cimmerian article, I delve into the Solomon Kane film. With a week later to ruminate, I think I've settled on "a good enough little film on its own merits, though naturally with many flaws." Interestingly, Paul Berrow liked the review, and said he'd have no reservations circulating it. Paul is one of the producers of the film: wonder if Jim Lad and MJB have read it?

On Thursday, I celebrated the first anniversary of my unofficial Cimmerian debut with El Ingenioso Destructor Rey Konahn de Simaria. I just wish Steve was still alive to read it. Hopefully he's having a good chuckle in Valhalla.

Saturday I chat about Charles R. Saunders' updates and Immortal Fantasy, the fun graphic novel from Winston Blakely. It'd be awesome if Winston and Charles did a comic adaptation of Imaro, or made up a new S&S hero together.

As for the future, Taran over at the Robert E. Howard forum brought a hateful little scribbling from Hans Joachim Alpers to my attention, and he makes a powerful case that this essay could have been a significant factor in setting back scholarship of fantasy for decades. As is tradition for The Cimmerian, I'm planning on giving it a good thrashing too. It's particularly the implication of comparing Conan and The Lord of the Rings to fascism that infuriates me beyond belief, as any fool would know Howard and Tolkien's hatred for the ideology in their letters and interviews.

Triangulation: Saunders and Finn, and other stuff

I'm suffering a hideous case of writer's block. I desperately wanted to get back into the groove, but nothing's working. I have half a dozen unfinished posts wallowing in limbo, and no idea how to complete them. Drat. Anyway, two short posts again.

On Tuesday, there's a link to a cool Charles R. Saunders interview. Thus far, I still haven't read all the Imaro material: it's one of those series I want to savour and enjoy for a while. Luckily, the story format lends itself well to such reading. I'm kind of tempted to do a picture of Imaro standing triumphant over "Fools' Doom."

Saturday, I seriously hit that block. I had a ton of ideas for Valentine's Day to complement Barbara's beautiful article, but nothing clicked. So, I just went with a link to Mark Finn's awesome post on the Robert E. Howard forums. I feel really annoyed at letting the team down: if we don't get back on track, the site's momentum (which has been smashing records since November) might stall or even slide, which would be really disappointing given how we've been doing.

Well, hopefully I'll amend that. I have a few things on the backburner I could fast track: Hyborian Age Gazetteers, Barbarians of Middle-earth, more Almuric, and something special planned for 25th February.

Triangulation: Trifectas, DeCampistas, Reviews, Kush & Almuric

I'm really down about Painbrush's passing, so this'll likely be brief. I really wish the new year got off to a better start. This was going to be the year I finally met Painbrush at Howard Days, and it tears me up knowing I won't. Damn it.

On Monday, I'm a bit late to the table regarding a trifecta of Weird Tales poetry books: I thought I was being a good little reporter with an awesome scoop, but it turns out I was late to the table. Oh well, any excuse for that awesome picture.

On the penultimate day of the year, the DeCampista Awards make their debut. I think Mark's idea is brilliant: I'm sure some will be going "but why even give them an award? You'll just encourage them!" To which I would counter: there is no way anyone would take this as a badge of pride. Except maybe Gary.

So as not to go out on a sour note, I saved the best for the last day of 2009: a review of the year. There are probably a few things I missed, but this is all the stuff I felt most relevant.

Also that day, a quick post about Charles R. Saunders' Kush essay, making a return to public after thirty-odd years. I've been meaning to ask Charles about that essay he did about Kush for Savage Sword.

The Saturday post, and the first of the new year and decade, is devoted to Almuric. I have big plans for this series over the year: chapter analysis, comparison to other stories by Howard and others, as well as a few extra surprises.