Ramsey Campbell – Far Away & Never (Necronomicon Press, 1996, 116 pages, this edition DMR Books, 2021, Ebook)
Contents:
Introduction (1996)
The Sustenance of Hoak (1977)
The Changer of Names (1977)
The Pit of Wings (1978)
The Mouths of Light (1979)
The Stages of the God
The Song at the Hub of the Garden (1977)
The Ways of Chaos (1996)
A Madness from the Vaults (1964) – only included in the Ebook versionAs Ramsey Campbell writes in the introduction, these tales date from his brief stint as a writer of pure fantasy. Mostly published in original Fantasy anthologies like
Swords Against Darkness from Zebra. Most of the stories were written after he had published his first collections and novels.
The Sustenance of Hoak – Mercenary Ryre and his mate Glode on the world of Trond travel to the city of Hoak to find treasure. But Glode dies fast and the city is under the spell of a monster living in the ground.
While the heroes character remains sketchy, the atmosphere owes a lot to a Italo-western of the time. The fight under the earth is atmospheric and reminds the informed reader of other later cave-stories by the writer.
The Changer of Names – Ryre comes to the port of Lipe. In the world of Trond names have a serious meaning. A magician sells the names of heroes for wannabees, who are impersonating said fighters to deadly consequences. When Ryre kills Ryre, he goes after the magician.
The Pit of Wings – Ryre comes to Gaxanoi and fights some slavers and a horde of winged monsters.
The Mouths of Light – Ryre fights some treasure hunter who search in a dark cavern for a treasure. Too bad it is inevitably protected by some monster in the darkness.
Again a cave as the setting. Atmospheric in parts and some action.
The Stages of God – Tropos, the king of Topome, gets exiled and fights his way out of the city. After crossing the desert he finds a magical shrine which somehow helps him to kill the last pursuers. This becomes a legend while Topome decays.
The Song at the Hub of the Garden – Warrior Holoth is searching the city of Goam, the city of mages and sages. The town is no more, but one mage has build a garden in the desert. Holoth enters the wondrous magical garden. He meets the magician and something happens. (Holoth gets transformed? I guess.) It is very Moorcockian (if that is the right term.)
The Ways of Chaos – Chapter XIV of Genseric‘s Fifth-Born Son - This short action story was part of a round robin novel based on one of the many fragments left by Robert E. Howard. Participants were Karl Edward Wagner, Joseph Payne Brennan, Richard L. Tierney, Michael Moorcock, Charles R. Saunders, Andrew Offutt, Manly Wade Wellman, Darell Schweitzer, A. E. Van Vogt, Brian Lumley, Frank Belknap Long, Adrian Cole, Ramsey Campbell, H. Warner Munn, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Richard A. Lupoff. First published in Fantasy Crossroads it later was collected by Necronomicon Press.
A Madness from the Vaults – Beneath the city of Derd lies a labyrinth. Tyrann Opojollac who sucks the city dry must fight a monster coming from those vaults. He can only ask the protectors of the world, the Globes of Hakkthu. After a long trek through the desert the Globes instruct him to go into the depth of the vaults and pull a certain lever. He shouldn‘t have done it.
The ending is a kind of sf-thing which you either find amusing or groan-inducing. The story hails from the fanzine days. As that I shouldn't make fun of it as it has a lot of complex ideas other writers of the time had not, but still wrote 400 pages about it.
After all the time it is kind of difficult to rate this work. As a well-read Fantasy reader you recognize a lot of the influences, and every story has at least some parts which are better written than a lot of the average S&S output collected in anthologies of the time like "Swords against Darkness". But the hero remains a bit distant and generic, to be honest.
Still this collection of hard to find stories is an interesting look on the early works of Ramsey Campbell, and the DMR edition is nicely made.
