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Post by cromagnonman on Aug 10, 2020 16:26:27 GMT
So as not to further hijack other threads with discussion about this stuff, and in deference to Steve, Andy and others who have expressed an interest in it, I thought I'd start a thread devoted to all the various sword & sorcery/fantasy fanzines of the 1970s that I've accumulated over the years. As its been quite a while now since I last went through a lot of this material it should be a voyage of discovery for everyone. Artwork by Tim Hammell Of all the amateur periodicals produced during the fanzines' 1970s heyday few ever rivalled Dark Fantasy in terms of quality. None even approached it in terms of importance. And the reason for that can be summed up very succinctly in two words: Gene Day. Not only was Day a supremely gifted artist and generous mentor to aspiring luminaries like Dave Sim but also a discerning and inventive dynamo whose enthusiasm invigorated and energised the entire fanzine culture. He was tirelessly supportive of a wide range of competing fanzines even whilst drawing himself to death working 16 hour days for a - by all accounts utterly unappreciative - Marvel Comics. Between 1973 and 1980 Day produced and published 23 issues of Dark Fantasy which he subtitled "The Magazine of Underground Creators". However issues 12 and 13 were both lost by the printer (an occupational hazard of fanzine production in those days). Issue 12 was eventually reconstructed and issued in 1979 but Day died before being able to effect similar repairs to M.I.A # 13. In 1984 David and Dan Day issued a final double issue as a tribute and testament to their brother. In concert with most fanzines of this period issues of Dark Fantasy can be difficult to come by these days and the earliest issues hardest of all to acquire. I do have a couple of numbers prior to this one but issue 8 seems more representative to me of the title's strengths and qualities. Published in the May of 1976 this issue consists of 44 pages and features four stories and two poems (one of these latter the work of Gale Jack, Day's fiancee and later wife). Each story is accompanied by at least one piece of specially created artwork and I'm reproducing Day's own illustration for William Bitner's story below as I consider it the best example of such in the issue. Artwork by Gene Day "An Evening in the Wood" is the story of a war weary knight (and his even wearier horse) who both discover a renewed zest for life during a night-time sojourn in an enchanted glade. "Scriptures" by Neal Wilgus is about a monk living on an alien world who is tormented by guilt about a sacrilege he once inflicted on a holy book and haunted by the inferences which his crime suggests to him. "Grass" by David Madison tells the tale of a little girl who picnics in a cursed meadow where the vegetation is animated by the dreams of sleeping aliens. Each of these tales is very short and the writers are to be applauded for achieving the impact they do in the limited space available. Fanzines were workshops for tyro creators and performed inestimable services in helping writers and artists to develop professional disciplines. Madison is one of my favourite writers to have published in fanzines although I don't think this effort displays his tormented genius to best effect. I preferred Bitner's effort which is a different take on old sword and sorcery tropes and displays a maturity surprising in someone who was only 19 at the time. Artwork by Gene Day The lion's share of the issue is given over to "The Moon Pool" by Charles R Saunders. This is the third of five stories Saunders contributed to Dark Fantasy about his black barbarian hero Imaro. Imaro became something of a signature character for the fanzine and remains probably the most significant artistic legacy of the entire fanzine culture of that period. Imaro is a character of Conan-like proportions adventuring in a fantasy Africa called Nyumbani. In "The Moon Pool" Imaro and a magnificently haughty amazon called Nakulla take refuge in a cliffside cave unaware that it is the domain of a monster called a Kyaggath, a hideous frog-like thing with octopus tentacles. After the requisite bout of barbarian bonking Nakulla is lured away by the monster's siren summons. Her fate is to be consumed piecemeal by the monster according to the phases of the moon unless the mighty Imaro can rescue her. Its a great tale, splendidly written, and culminates in one of those titanic tests of raw strength between man and monster that is so timelessly appealing about the best s&s. Lin Carter was so taken with it that he took it for Year's Best Fantasy vol 3. Whatever else you might say about Carter the man had taste.
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Post by andydecker on Aug 10, 2020 18:18:13 GMT
Thank you, Richard! This is all news to me. Like I wrote, Day was just another artist for me. Someone who burst with his fully developed style on the scene. But that did a lot of people at the time.
Dark Fantasy looks like a professional magazine. The cover, the line-up, the illustrations.
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Post by cromagnonman on Aug 10, 2020 22:28:18 GMT
Thank you, Richard! This is all news to me. Like I wrote, Day was just another artist for me. Someone who burst with his fully developed style on the scene. But that did a lot of people at the time. Dark Fantasy looks like a professional magazine. The cover, the line-up, the illustrations. You're very welcome Andy. I find it a fascinating topic personally but its not one which appears to receive a lot of coverage today. The professional looking aspect to Dark Fantasy is a tribute both to Day's punctiliousness and creative ambition really. The fanzine continually evolved over the course of its duration and by the time of Day's last issue (23) was boasting better calibre of card for the wraps, a cleaner typeface, superior printing and even colour on the covers. The transition from fanzine to professional publication could not have been too distant a possibility. But then Day died and any such aspiration died with him. That last issue incidentally features a story by Joe Lansdale which helps convey some idea of where the title was headed. The only fanzine that I'm aware of that did succeed in evolving from a kitchen table paste and staple job to a fully fledged professional magazine is Gordon Linzner's Space & Time which is still going strong today, I believe, more than fifty years after its first issue.
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Post by ropardoe on Aug 11, 2020 8:21:49 GMT
The only fanzine that I'm aware of that did succeed in evolving from a kitchen table paste and staple job to a fully fledged professional magazine is Gordon Linzner's Space & Time which is still going strong today, I believe, more than fifty years after its first issue. Not a fantasy fanzine as such, but certainly originally a fanzine - Fortean Times (or The News as it was back then) started exactly that way, and was a product of SF fandom. Now, of course, it's a newsstand magazine.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 11, 2020 14:04:05 GMT
What a fascinating thread! Gene Day's work is superb. I'm particularly taken with the drawing of Inaro, and I may have to find a copy of that volume of Year's Best Fantasy with the Inaro tale. I'm intrigued.
In case you're interested, here's a listing of the sources for the stories in the 1980 volume of Year's Best Fantasy (edited by Art Saha) that weren't derived from issues of F&SF:
"The George Business" by Roger Zelazny from Dragons of Light
"The Princess and the Bear" by Orson Scott Card from The Berkeley Showcase
"Proteus" by Paul H. Cook from Chrysalis 8
"The Narrow House" by Phillip C. Heath from Gothic
"Kevin Malone" by Gene Wolfe from New Terrors I (I presume this may have been a regular book anthology)
"Lan Lung" by M. Lucie Chin from Ares
"Keeper of the Wood" by Caradoc A. Cador from Dragonfields (which seems to have been co-edited by Charles de Lint and Charles R. Saunders)
I know nothing of these titles--but interesting to see that only a few of the stories came from F&SF.
H.
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Post by cromagnonman on Aug 11, 2020 17:14:33 GMT
Glad you like it Steve. Saunders and Imaro are both well worth investigating. And you'll probably find me returning to both repeatedly as this thread develops. Because unlike Conan, who was restricted to Weird Tales for his original appearances, Saunders farmed Imaro out to multiple fanzines for his adventures. He's to be found in titles as diverse as Phantasy Digest, Fantasy Crossroads, Argonaut and Weirdbook amongst others. Which all contributes to make collecting him so interesting.
I appreciate seeing that contents list. I think it highlights the differences in approach and inclination between Carter and Saha. Some of those sources are unknown to me and the rest look to be professional publications. But Dragonfields is an interesting one because that was the result of an amalgamation between two existing Canadian fanzines both issued by the Triskell Press: Charles Saunders' Dragonbane and De Lint's Beyond the Fields we Know. Both of those titles only lasted one issue and the combined effort merely two.
But I will be covering Dragonbane sooner rather than later.
Addendum: Incidentally Steve, the very first Imaro story "City of Madness", which first appeared in Dark Fantasy #s 4 & 5, can be found in Carter's first Year's Best Fantasy volume.
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Post by andydecker on Aug 11, 2020 19:18:11 GMT
I know nothing of these titles--but interesting to see that only a few of the stories came from F&SF. H. At this time Fantasy was gearing to leave SF as a seller way behind. Writers like Donaldson, Kurtz, Zelazny, Zimmer Bradley were publishing "earnest" novels, while S&S had become the bottom of the barrel. The simple power-fantasies of Carter, Fox, Bulmer and others pastiching Howard, Burroughs and Leiber didn't sell any longer. The same can be said about the remaining few magazines. F&SF was becoming ever more sophisticated and "literary" in its approach. In 1980 you got there the first Dark Tower short stories from Stephen King or Robert Silverberg's Majipoor. The game had changed. You got increasingly Urban Fantasy from writers like De Lint, Tuttle or Yolen, or sophisticated fairy tales or romanticized fantasy like Tanith Lee or Cherryh. No adventerous barbarians and sorcerers any longer. Paradoxically the most traditionally fantasy could be found in the expressivly feminist oriented Zimmer Bradley franchise like the long-running (and IMHO often deathly dull) Sword&Sorceress books.
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Post by cromagnonman on Aug 11, 2020 22:45:42 GMT
Occupying the opposite end of the spectrum from the impressive Dark Fantasy we find Weird Adventures which sustained just the two issues published in the spring and autumn of 1978. Where Dark Fantasy exuded confidence and aplomb Weird Adventures flounders clumsily, displaying its production woes proudly like war wounds. The text is riddled with typos, pages saddled with print smudges and poor reproduction. In one glorious instance an entire page of artwork fails to reproduce at all. It is what it admits to being - the shambolic product of two novices struggling with the complexities of a cantankarous offset press. And is all the more wonderful for it. For my money the joy of fanzines lies not in aesthetics but in content and in this one critical regard Weird Adventures does not disappoint. Artwork by Rod Whigham This first issue contains three stories and one article. The above cover illustrates a scene from Andrew Offutt's "At the Beach"; an extract from his then forthcoming novel THE IRON LORDS. At the time a contribution to a fanzine by a pro such as Offutt would have been considered something of a coup. The passage of years has somewhat robbed it of its cachet. It isn't particularly good. But it remains to Offutt's credit that he didn't disdain fanzines the way some authors and editors would have. In fact he was then in the process of using fanzine material in his quite brilliant series of sword & sorcery anthologies SWORDS AGAINST DARKNESS.
Of far more interest and entertainment value is publisher Bob Fester's own effort "The Bohemian Road". In the spring of 1530 Otto von Hofstadter, a veteran of the recent siege of Vienna, takes refuge from the weather in a lonely roadside inn. There he gets roaring drunk at the expense of a pallid black clad nobleman called Count Vladimir Gurrich. This leaves poor Otto in no state to pursue his interest in the buxom scullery maid who he leaves to enjoy the count's company as he stumbles to his bed. Later on Otto is awakened by the sound of low moans emanating from downstairs. When he investigates he finds himself in battle with a blood crazed vampire: '"Damn your black soul!" snarled Otto, delivering a vicious backhand chop that sent the bloodsucker's head spinning from it's shoulders. Von Hofstadter's eyes bugged from their sockets as the headless fiend scooped up [the] severed skull, and tucked it under one arm. There it spit and slobbered as the vampire resumed its hellish advance." Otto goes on to utterly dismember the thing but continues to be attacked by each amputated part. The fight is gloriously over the top and an absolute hoot. A quieter and more affecting tale is "Sweeter Even Than Honey" by Wayne Hooks. In a drought ravaged land a senile old man suffers abuse and persecution as he travels to the city to buy honey to sustain the dying hives of his beloved bees. When he returns home he is murdered by callous tax collectors. In response to which the few remaining bees enact the dance of death which comes to deliver a terrible retribution upon the city. Its a very well done story which lingers in the memory. Hooks was one of the most prolific and interesting contributors to the fanzines and he rated this story as the best effort he had produced up to that date. Rounding out the contents is a three page piece - accompanied by a page of very poorly reproduced photos - about Robert E Howard's college days at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas. It doesn't really amount to very much, and offers nothing that wasn't already known, but Howard was the spiritual godfather of the entire fanzine culture and most titles tried to ally themselves to him in some way. For all its hamfistedness and slipshod production faults Weird Adventures exudes that innocent enthusiasm and spirit of imaginative enterprise that I find so appealing about fanzines. Fester ended the issue by promising that the aesthetics would improve with the next issue. And to his credit they did.
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Post by cromagnonman on Aug 13, 2020 20:07:16 GMT
Now Wyrd is a weird one - if you'll pardon the expression. It lead a troubled and convoluted existence, and I don't claim to be conversant with all the ins and outs of its history. But it appears to have begun life as a bog standard xeroxed effort put out in the summer of 1973. But by the time of its second issue, which appeared in the autumn of that same year, it had morphed into a rather nice looking chapbook, generated on an offset press with rather more skill than the creators of Weird Adventures later managed. When the fourth issue appeared in 1975 the founders and original editors, Al Cockrell and Irvin Wagner, had both departed - for reasons for which I have no explanation - and their places taken by former contributor Brian Crist and Greg Stafford, a name which I'm sure is familiar to anyone here with an interest in RPG. Come the fifth issue and the format had morphed again into a hideous large size side stapled abomination. The chapbook dimensions were restored for issues six and seven which were published in the winter of 1976 and the autumn of 1977 respectively. The fanzine then went into hiatus for three full years before fleetingly resurfacing in 1980 with a belated eighth and final issue. The creative personal was once again entirely different for this effort, I believe. So not a great deal of consistency on display here clearly but the fourth issue contains something which I personally believe commends it to posterity. Artwork by Steve Oliff But before we get to that let's briefly deal with the remainder of the contents. "Never Argue with Antique Dealers" is by Darrell Schweitzer, a perseverant presence in the fanzine culture of the time and later an editor of the deadly dull resurrected Weird Tales. It centres on a time machine made by Thomas Edison which the celebrated inventor put aside when "he couldn't think of any practical use for it". Now antiques dealer Lafcadio Smith is using it to acquire stock from source as it were. Circumstances conspire to create a paradox which threatens to obliterate the entire universe. A mediocre effort which might have been more amusing if Schweitzer had developed the narrative strand which saw pencils being dropped in the lap of George Washington. Amos (Jessica) Salmonson, another ubiquitous fixture of the fanzine culture, contributes the singularly dreadful "A Rain of Spiders" which asks one to accept that a man could behead his wife whilst attempting to remove a spider from her neck with a sword. Ye gods! More entertaining is CL Ballentine's "Hotline" in which three volunteers at a crisis centre take a call from a depressed and suicidal vampire. Its a cute idea which suffers from being a bit overwritten. Back Cover artwork by Steve Swenston Most of the fanzines I've accumulated over the years have been acquired in haphazard fashion. But the final story in this issue made the sourcing of it a deliberate and determined priority for me. Because "The Funeral of Thamayris the Warlock" marked the very first appearance in fanzines of David Madison's Marcus & Diana. [Simultaneous with "Tower of Darkness in Space & Time # 28]. I happen to love the M & D stories. Along with Saunders' Imaro I believe them to be the best characters to have emerged out of the culture. A pair of mismatched thieves and sellswords adventuring in a decayed world which Madison describes as a place where; The lands of men consist of a scattering of ill-kept states clustered around the brackish shores of the Sinlle sea, and around the lands of men are the deserts and the other places, ruled by things that either were, or might be, or never will be men." Madison had actually created Marcus & Diana several years previously, and there is a college journal out there someplace which retains their first published adventures. A wonderful unexplored resource if anyone could make the effort to identify it. But Wyrd # 4 marked the first appearance of the pair in the fanzine/prozine marketplace. Their subsequent appearances in the Clingan brothers Diversifier, Linzner's Space & Time and Dragonfields are markedly easier to acquire but this first adventure remains my personal favourite and the one I would choose to represent them in any collection. In the story the titular warlock, Thamayris, has been fatally poisoned by his enemies, the priests of the golden Basilisk. Before he finally succumbs to his lingering death he hires Marcus & Diana to convey his corpse to the tomb of his ancestors and conduct a funeral service according to the instructions written on a scroll of dragon gut in the Glyphs of Camballu. To ensure they aren't tempted to welch on the deal and flog his corpse to the priests of the golden Basilisk they will be accompanied by the warlock's familiar, a huge and intellectual ape-like thing called Thag. This is the basic set up for a story which would be concluded in the next issue. Serialisation was an uncommon occurrence in the uncertain world of the fanzines and was quite a leap of faith with a title as troubled as Wyrd.
This story is a first rate joy. Some of the writing is sublime, the imagery sumptuous and memorable and the ideas the product of a clearly prodigious imagination, be they the poison "wrung from the flower of oleander and the minced brain of an adder" or the assassin's remains, that "flayed, broken thing turning on a hook in the sun, with the yith birds shrieking around it." Amidst the decadence and horror there are also pleasing strands of ribaldry and sardonic humour. Artwork by Steve Swenston and Steve Oliff But like all the very best hero tales it is the charismatic originality of the heroes themselves that delights the most. Diana is a strapping swearing amazon with a thin scar on her face "pulling her right eyelid down a little and giving her a look of sleepy cynicism." Marcus, the brains of the partnership, is a cross-dressing hippy with a cherubic head and a well muscled body. And if this all sounds like the kind of stuff developed by committee to satisfy some modern quota obsessed agenda then it is worth remembering that Madison came up with all this some half a century ago. The characters were a genuine expression of his singular creative genius. He wasn't pandering to any gallery or vociferous interest group. The people who complain about the toxic fossilised culture of sword and sorcery simply haven't read deeply enough into it. The Marcus and Diana stories are tremendous stuff. Which only makes it all the more of a pity that they have never been collected. If anyone wishes to know why then they'd be better advised to ask Salmonson. She was bequeathed all of Madison's manuscripts but after one aborted effort to compile deluxe hardcover editions in the mid 80s has largely sat on them ever since. In these days of CreateSpace and self-publishing there is no reason why they shouldn't be in print. They deserve to be.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 13, 2020 21:44:06 GMT
Richard, the Marcus and Diana stories sound fabulous! What a pity the literary executor/rix is evidently a do-nothing. I hope the manuscripts are safely archived! I get nervous when I hear about unique material being held by somebody who has shown signs of irresponsibility. Please note that I know nothing at all about any of the parties concerned--I am almost literally talking out of my ass, as usual.
The zine is quite intriguing, and the scans are gorgeous. I wonder if "The Hooded One" is meant to be a portrait of the Norse God Odin.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Aug 14, 2020 9:47:59 GMT
Amos (Jessica) Salmonson, another ubiquitous fixture of the fanzine culture, contributes the singularly dreadful "A Rain of Spiders" which asks one to accept that a man could behead his wife whilst attempting to remove a spider from her neck with a sword. Ye gods! Thought the title sounded Familiar, and sure enough, A Rain of Spiders was reprinted in Dark Dreams #7 where I ... failed to make much sense of it. Very much enjoying this thread, Mr. Crom.
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Post by cromagnonman on Aug 14, 2020 11:47:24 GMT
Amos (Jessica) Salmonson, another ubiquitous fixture of the fanzine culture, contributes the singularly dreadful "A Rain of Spiders" which asks one to accept that a man could behead his wife whilst attempting to remove a spider from her neck with a sword. Ye gods! Thought the title sounded Familiar, and sure enough, A Rain of Spiders was reprinted in Dark Dreams #7 where I ... failed to make much sense of it. Very much enjoying this thread, Mr. Crom. Glad you're enjoying it Dem. And there's plenty more where these came from. I think I derive the same kind of pleasure from these things as you find in football fanzines. Its a window into a more celebratory and less cynical time. A time when, as Michael Moorcock once wrote, "fans did not take themselves quite so seriously as nowadays, and those who made religion from an enthusiasm were generally mocked for it." I really appreciated the link to Dark Dreams which is a title wholly outside of my experience. And I'm now going to have to track down that issue with Ro's "Cambridge Beast" as it sounds rather wonderful. And published three years prior to Westall's "Stones of Muncaster Cathedral" I notice. A case for umbrage surely. But why anyone would want to reprint something as godawful as Salmonson's drivel utterly baffles me.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 14, 2020 14:50:43 GMT
I'd heard the name Jessica Salmonson but knew nothing about her. I looked her up... interesting to learn that her mother, who abandoned her at an early age, was a sword swallower. So perhaps there is a Freudian edge to the story you mention--which might account for why it does not scan well. zagria.blogspot.com/2019/06/jessica-amanda-salmonson-1950-science.html#.XzaiKyMrKRYSalmonson collaborated with Willum Pugmire, and no doubt many others. There's another entry in this thread to which I have not given proper attention. I must remedy that. There was some amazing art, and from your account Richard, extraordinary literature produced from these zines. S.
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Post by helrunar on Aug 14, 2020 19:34:54 GMT
Richard, that's a great memoir of Weird Adventures. I'm quite intrigued by Wayne Hooks' "Sweeter even than honey," but according to ISFDB and another site, this was the tale's only publication. A very respectable roster of stories written by Hooks is listed, all of them evidently published in zines.
cheers, Steve
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Post by dem bones on Aug 15, 2020 11:30:10 GMT
I think I derive the same kind of pleasure from these things as you find in football fanzines. Its a window into a more celebratory and less cynical time. A time when, as Michael Moorcock once wrote, "fans did not take themselves quite so seriously as nowadays, and those who made religion from an enthusiasm were generally mocked for it." I think it is very much the same thing I get not just from the football zines I like, but the vampire/ goth/ music ones, too. Not sure I'd entirely agree with Moorcock. Maybe I'm just lucky, but most of the fans I've met can - and do - love their subject without getting all Moses-just-down-from-the-Mountain-with-the-tablets about it (Having said that, I find it often pays to give the more excitable Lovecraft obsessives a wide berth, just to be on the safe side).
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