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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 10, 2017 23:30:47 GMT
Cromagnon said: The sheer volume of opportunistic crud they produced during the 1960s and 70s has had a pernicious influence upon the way sword and sorcery is viewed ever since
I don't know if this is still the case. S&S is limited as a genre. Of course you could say the same of every other genre out there, just take a look at todays crime thriller. It is always the same formula. But you could argue that S&S is particulary limited. While elements of it are incorporated in the flood of fantasy still published in trilogies, the Conan character alone can't sustain 600 pages. Which has become the norm.
Frankly I miss the times when critical dispute was about the content and the literary merits and not about sexual politics or parroting soundbytes. Praise by your peers is not objective criticism, neither is tv commentary about Games of Thrones. Movies, TV and D&D have done more to cement the views on S&S then any writing could have ever done.
I have also struggled with Leiber's later fantasy tales. I never did finish his saga. I don't need action, but this was even too slow for me. I think I stopped with "Swords and Ice Magic".
Of course there is always the question of taste. I am not a fan of writers like Tierney or Offutt. Especially Offutt's Howard pastiches are terrible dull, and I have read better Red Sonya comic stories then Tierney's series.
Sword and sorcery has its limits certainly - what genre hasn't, as you rightly point out - but what I see as being the success of the 70s small press guys was that they viewed these limits as challenges rather than constraints as the mainstream paperback publishers had. The real problems for any genre arise when parameters are extended so far beyond their natural extent that the results are utterly removed from their original intent. This is what befell sword and sorcery from the 1980s onwards I think, when over ambition in conjunction with publishers demands ballooned s&s stories beyond their allotted boundaries into the realm of bloated fantasy trilogies instead. And these are beasts of an altogether different stripe. Its open to debate if the Conan type character is able to sustain formats of this kind but its a moot point in any case. Fact is it was never intended that he should even try. Sword and sorcery has always worked best in the short story and novelette length. Howard's sole Conan novel THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON is a towering achievement but it is something he only undertook on commission rather than inclination. And even he was only able to make it work by cannibalizing earlier stories he'd published about the character and structuring the novel so that it ran as a resume of all the stories in the series written up to that point. At the end of the day it does all boil down to personal taste, as you say. I wouldn't hold up Offutt's Howard pastiches as triumphs of the genre either or any other pastiche come to that. If you want to read Howard's characters then read the cracking stories he himself wrote about them and not the diluted imitations of others. For what its worth I personally cannot abide Fafhrd and the Mouser. Yep, I know, heresy. But then they were products of Campbell's Unknown with its smug, self-aware, cynical, smart alec philosophy which has never appealed to me. Fantasy of the white collar variety I always think of it as. Give me Howard's blue collar earnestness any day of the week.
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Post by helrunar on Jun 10, 2017 23:41:07 GMT
Thanks, James, for those gorgeous scans!
I heard L. Sprague de Camp give a talk about Lovecraft at some point in the mid 1970s. I think it was one of the last fannish events I attended before my life disappeared into the devouring maw of academe for a couple of decades (an exaggerated statement perhaps, but not by much).
I've always remembered how de Camp pronounced the word "dilettante." He must have been an Italian speaker.
H.
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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 11, 2017 0:37:23 GMT
This is the last one I've got - still good, but not as good as the earlier ones: About the whole Swords and Sorcery thing, here's an interesting inscribed paperback from Graeme Flanagan's collection, de Camp's Swords and Sorcery from 1963: Here's another from 1967: These came out in 1969 and 1970: Ah, dear old Sprague. But how uncharacteristically diffident of him to insert that cautionary "may". His marvellous little book, along with THE FANTASTIC SWORDSMEN and THE SPELL OF SEVEN, undoubtedly did kickstart the 60s fantasy boom. Far be it from me to point out that he had a vested interest in initiating such a boom, what with the milch cow of the Conan saga acquired by him under questionable circumstances and which he was looking for an opportunity to milk for all it was worth. Just love that Steranko cover. Here it is again in all its full wraparound glory:
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 11, 2017 12:07:06 GMT
The "earlier", ... does that mean the ones in Swords and Deviltry, Swords Against Death, and Swords in the Mist? Less? Or more? I have read Swords Against Death. It was excellent. Beautifully crafted, intelligent imagination, ... although not quite as strong-willed and grounded as those of R. E. Howard. By the earlier stories I mean the four collections encompassed within The First Book of Lankhmar (2001, with the appallingly bad cover): i.e. Swords and Deviltry, Swords Against Death, Swords in the Mist and Swords Against Wizardry. The Second Book of Lankhmar, with the later stories, I didn’t keep. Apart from the aforementioned "Bazaar of the Bizarre" from the second collection, my favourite story has to be "Lean Times in Lankhmar" with Fafhyrd mistaken for "Issek of the Jug". It's almost Pratchett-funny (and just as satirical as Pratchett on religion). Incidentally, my first encounter with Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, in "Bazaar of the Bizarre", was in a 1965 De Camp collection called The Spell of Seven. I still remember that volume with huge affection (there's probably a bigger image of the cover somewhere here already!)
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Post by andydecker on Jun 11, 2017 19:15:38 GMT
If you want to read Howard's characters then read the cracking stories he himself wrote about them and not the diluted imitations of others. For what its worth I personally cannot abide Fafhrd and the Mouser. Yep, I know, heresy. But then they were products of Campbell's Unknown with its smug, self-aware, cynical, smart alec philosophy which has never appealed to me. Fantasy of the white collar variety I always think of it as. Give me Howard's blue collar earnestness any day of the week.
I am with you here. I read Howard since I bought the first translation in 1976. Over the years he impressed me ever more. Hour of the Dragon is a fine example of the limits of the subgenre. It is - or was - better suited for the short story. Maybe fantasy in the Howard vein could only be produced before the war. It lacked exactly the philosophy you mention.
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 11, 2017 20:20:02 GMT
Hour of the Dragon, also called Conan the Conqueror. Is this, and other Conan books acceptable in the editions edited by L. Sprague de Camp? De Camp willingly admits in the introductions to these books that he has made "small editorial changes". I hope he didn't corrupt the texts overly much, or arbitrarily?
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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 12, 2017 11:46:20 GMT
Hour of the Dragon, also called Conan the Conqueror. Is this, and other Conan books acceptable in the editions edited by L. Sprague de Camp? De Camp willingly admits in the introductions to these books that he has made "small editorial changes". I hope he didn't corrupt the texts overly much, or arbitrarily? Regrettably de Camp was a pernickety, condescending, self-interested and wholly unsympathetic editor. As often as not the changes he effected were done not out of textual need so much as a venal desire to bolster his own claims to copyright ownership. He was obsessed too with the notion - wholly alien to Howard himself - of the "Conan Saga" and altered things to make Howard's stories conform to his own opinion of what that entailed. The entire Lancer/Sphere series constitutes his attempt to make a coherent whole out of something which Howard never intended should fit seemlessly together. Even more invidiously he actively worked to saboutage any competing edition of the stories which he himself did not personally profit by. For these, and a whole number of other reasons, you are better advised to have no truck with any Conan book that has his name attached to it. Happily, in the years since he died, things have improved considerably. There have been a number of increasingly impressive editions of Howard's original work and better versions of the Conan stories are now more widely available than at any time since the original Weird Tales printings. Best of all is the three volume Ballantine/Del Rey trade paperbacks which collect every single word Howard himself ever wrote about Conan. These reprint in full the Wandering Star deluxe hardbacks which were compiled with the sort of diligence, care and committment usually reserved for the preservation of Sumerian cunieform tablets. But if you just want the stories that Howard published in his lifetime then the Wildside Weird Works of REH series is a good bet along with the paperback versions of such published by Cosmos. The Gollancz COMPLETE CHRONICLES OF CONAN is also an easily available and competitively priced source The cheap and cheerful Prion edition can be recommended too although it doesn't include THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 12, 2017 12:11:33 GMT
But if you just want the stories that Howard published in his lifetime then the Wildside Weird Works of REH series is a good bet along with the paperback versions of such published by Cosmos. Those books contain only the stories published in Weird Tales.
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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 12, 2017 12:53:09 GMT
But if you just want the stories that Howard published in his lifetime then the Wildside Weird Works of REH series is a good bet along with the paperback versions of such published by Cosmos. Those books contain only the stories published in Weird Tales. Howard didn't publish Conan stories anywhere else.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 12, 2017 12:58:23 GMT
Those books contain only the stories published in Weird Tales. Howard didn't publish Conan stories anywhere else. This is true! I did not realize we were talking only about the Conan stories.
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Post by cromagnonman on Jun 12, 2017 13:48:15 GMT
Howard didn't publish Conan stories anywhere else. This is true! I did not realize we were talking only about the Conan stories. That's ok Jojo. But the Weird Works series does also include the stories Howard published in Strange Tales, Oriental Stories, and Marvel Tales too, and even posthumously printed stuff from Avon Fantasy Reader. And all sequenced in publication date order also which casts an instructive light over the development of Howard's evolving interests as a writer. Put the Weird Works series together with the companion volumes of GATES OF EMPIRE, WATERFRONT FISTS, GRAVEYARD RATS, A GENT FROM BEAR CREEK, TREASURES OF TARTARY and THE COMPLETE ACTION STORIES and you have a pretty comprehensive library of everything Howard published in his own lifetime, and more besides. Its a decent resource to have on the shelf.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jun 14, 2017 13:30:08 GMT
... I agree with you too on preferring the earlier ones - in fact I haven't bothered to keep the later ones. The "earlier ones", ... and how about the novel The Swords of Lankhmar? Here a Norwegian edition. Judging by the cover, this novel seems to include a daemon plant - one of my favorite subjects. I tried to read The Swords of Lankhmar twice and gave up twice. I was not compelled to finish it. I had the same experience with Len Deighton's The Ipcress File. I can't get into espionage fiction either.
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 15, 2017 16:52:05 GMT
I tried to read The Swords of Lankhmar twice and gave up twice. I was not compelled to finish it. ... I wanted a tightly selected group of Leiber books, and have only collected the first three in this series, and also The Swords of Lankhmar instead of the fourth book. The Swords of Lankhmar is highly regarded, and his only novel set in Lankhmar, ... but I have not read it yet. I opened it somewhere in the middle, and glimpsed some very evocative descriptions, ... so at least I know there is something good in it.
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 17, 2017 15:22:43 GMT
...I personally cannot abide Fafhrd and the Mouser. ... products of ... smug, self-aware, cynical, smart alec philosophy which has never appealed to me. Fantasy of the white collar variety I always think of it as. Give me Howard's blue collar earnestness any day of the week. And then we have He who dwells beyond white collar and blue collar. He who stands apart from class. The One who rules them all! Tolkien! Master of swords & sorcery! With Gandalf! Aragon! Frodo! Sauron! Melkor! ... And Galadriel of the elves! (Not big breasted, but fair!)
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Post by Knygathin on Jun 22, 2017 17:45:08 GMT
... Incidentally, my first encounter with Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, in "Bazaar of the Bizarre", was in a 1965 De Camp collection called The Spell of Seven. I still remember that volume with huge affection (there's probably a bigger image of the cover somewhere here already!) I was surprized that cover is by Virgil Finlay. Often his illustrations have an overweight on being "pretty". This one has got to be one of his most raw and powerful. It is quintessential Swords & Sorcery - perhaps not in subject, but in its energy.
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