MAY 31 - Classic
Covers: More Roger Zelazny
Multiple-award-winning and best-selling author Roger
Zelazny’s popularity wasn’t just confined to his native United States. Winner
of France’s Prix Apollo, translated into dozens of languages, Zelazny’s reach
was international and his appeal universal. While many of us will only ever
appreciate him in one language, the multitude of artistic interpretations of
his highly imaginative stories is something we can all enjoy with yet more
Classic Covers.
JUN 3 - A
Look at Caveman Stories by Fletcher Vredenburgh
That Robert E. Howard’s first professionally published
story, “Spear and Fang,” was a caveman story should mean something to the
history of heroic fiction and sword & sorcery itself. Perhaps, because it’s
not a very good story, it never had the effect a better one might have. But I’m
not totally sure; teenage Robert E. Howard already had a sure grasp of the
elements that hook a reader craving action and adventure in their stories.
There’s not very much to “Spear and Fang” (1925). Pretty
Cro-Magnon girl A-aea is forcefully accompanied into the woods by the haughty
and threatening warrior Ka-nanu. Very quickly, they’re set upon by a ferocious,
animalistic Neandertal who proceeds to dismantle Ka-nanu. Later, A-aea is saved
by the object of her affections, the brave (and artistically inclined) Ga-nor.
All ends well and love will bloom in the savage dawn of mankind.
JUN 7 - Dehumanizing
Violence and Compassion in Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails” by Jason
Ray Carney
Robert E. Howard’s sword and sorcery tale “Red Nails,”
published as a three-part serial in Weird Tales in 1936, tells
the story of the city of Xuchotl, the enduring, blood-soaked war between the
Tecuhltli and the Xotalanc, and the dehumanizing effect of sustained hatred and
violence. “Red Nails” engages with several ancient literary tropes, but the one
that centers “Red Nails” is what I term “the stalemate war.” By focusing on the
stalemate war between the murderous Tecuhltli and insane Xotalanc, I hope to
bring into focus a surprising facet of Robert E. Howard’s most famous sword and
sorcery character, Conan of Cimmeria: the way the barbarian maintains his
humanity through compassion.
First, let me briefly clarify what I mean by the literary trope of “the stalemate war.” Identifying tropes and patterns in literature and popular culture is more an art than a science, but it’s fun and often reveals surprising dimensions to works. Why storytellers hew to these enduring patterns, who knows? Some speculate that these mythic patterns are evolutionary residues, instinctual psychological narratives that unconsciously narrate the crucible of our evolution. Their origins notwithstanding, there are undeniable recurring structures of story that resonate with us, and so storytellers return to them over and over, hone them, and reinvent for their own purposes. Robert E. Howard did this with “Red Nails,” and he did this masterfully.
JUN 10 - Classic
Covers: Frank Frazetta’s Lancer/Ace Conans
Second only to Robert E. Howard in importance in the development
of the perception of Conan, Frank Frazetta’s explosively elemental take on the
Cimmerian achieved instant cultural cache and has become the defining image not
only of Howard’s most famous creation, but of the barbaric hinterlands of
fantasy fiction itself. Frazetta’s frenzied depictions of havoc and battle, his
iron-muscled killers taut with violent fury, his churning vistas of bodies in
conflict beneath rust-red skies, presented a gritty, dynamic vision of the
bloody world of sword-and-sorcery fiction — a graphical apotheosis for a
sub-genre that was no longer tucked away in moldering pulps, but instead
enthusiastically smashing through the doors of mass culture.
The long-running Conan series helmed by de Camp and Carter
was the entry point for a generation of readers newly discovering the original
tales of Robert E. Howard’s barbarian adventurer—along with a mixed bag of
pastiche and repurposed stories from other Howard heroes.
JUN 14 - Classic
Covers: Ken Kelly
The world of fantasy illustrators has lost one of its most
prolific and long-running practitioners, Ken Kelly (May 19, 1946 – June 3,
2022). From the classic Berkley Medallion line of collected Robert E. Howard to
the modern Baen reissues, Tor Conan pastiches, and Wildside/Dorchester Weird
Works of REH — and the thousands of fantasy and science fiction books from
every major publisher in between — Kelly’s art was a ubiquitous presence on the
paperback rack for half a century. Tutored by “Uncle Frank” Frazetta, the
undisputed master of brooding sword-and-sorcery illustration, Kelly
incorporated Frazetta’s high-contrast interplay of light and dark and sinuous,
dynamic character modeling into his own brand of frenetic, physical, and
fantastically explosive art.
While many remember Kelly for his work on album covers for
bands like Kiss and Manowar, or his equally dynamic covers for horror and film
magazines, comics, and even toy advertisements, for those of us at Tales From
the Magician’s Skull he will forever be honored as one of the major voices in
sword-and-sorcery illustration, a direct connection between our contemporary
age and the era in which rediscovered pulps boomed across the collective
consciousness and sparked a revolution in fantasy story-telling — both in print
and in art.
JUN 17 - Lin
Carter: Enthusiast of the Fantastic by Brian Murphy
Born this month 92 years ago, the late Lin Carter
(1930-1988) was, perhaps more than anything else, an enthusiast. He heard the
Horns of Elfland, and they called to him like few fans of the sacred genre
before or since.
Author of Thongor. Creator of worlds. Self-mythologizer.
Awards organizer of the Gandalf, for whose statuettes he paid out of his own
modest pocket. Founder of the (mostly fictitious) Swordsmen and Sorcerer’s
Guild of America, or S.A.G.A. Generous with his praise, both for the fantasy
GOATS, and his peers and contemporaries. Editor of the esteemed Ballantine
Adult Fantasy Series (BAFS), which breathed new life into old classics and helped codify the
fantasy genre. Frequent contributor to Amra. Capable steward of multiple
anthologies including Year’s Best Fantasy, Flashing Swords, Kingdoms
of Wizardry, Realms of Wizardry, the Zebra Weird Tales paperback
revival, and many others.
Carter wrote lots of fiction. Most of it was of mediocre
pastiche quality, with a few sparkles amidst the detritus. But what he never
lacked was a boundless enthusiasm for it all.
