Pulp Fantasy Library: The Cat and the Skull

Of all of Robert E. Howard's characters, I would argue that Kull is perhaps his most misunderstood – and not without reason. Though Howard wrote more than a dozen stories featuring the Atlantean king of Valusia, only three of them were published during his lifetime. Compared to, say, Conan or Solomon Kane, who appeared in many more stories, Kull seems almost like an afterthought, a character Howard discarded after the publication of "Kings of the Night" in November 1930. 

Conan, who first appeared twenty-five months after Kull's published swan song, plays a huge role in explaining why Kull is largely unknown today. Even among those aware of Kull, there's often a false sense that he's little more than a "rough draft" of the Cimmerian, an impression that isn't helped by the knowledge that Howard re-purposed a rejected Kull story, "By This Axe I Rule!," for Conan's debut, "The Phoenix on the Sword." 

This is a great shame in my opinion. As characters, Kull and Conan have similarities, to be sure, but they also have differences. These differences are much more apparent when one reads the various unpublished Kull stories that Glenn Lord found in REH's famous storage trunk. Lord, a fan and fellow Texan, tracked down "the Trunk," as it is sometimes known, in 1965, finding that it contained about half of everything Howard had ever written, most of which had never been published in any form – including numerous Kull stories in various stages of completion.

Two years after the discovery of the Trunk, the anthology King Kull was released by Lancer, who'd already found great success with its line of Conan paperbacks. And just like those Conan paperbacks, this volume included posthumous "collaborations" between Robert E. Howard and editor Lin Carter. In this case, Carter finished three incomplete tales of Kull to varying degrees of success. Among the wholly Howardian stories presented for the first time in King Kull is one entitled "Delcardes' Cat" therein but whose proper title is "The Cat and the Skull."

The start of the tale is compelling.

King Kull went with Tu, chief councillor of the throne, to see the talking cat of Delcardes, for though a cat may look at a king, it is not given every king to look at a cat like Delcardes'. So Kull forgot the death-threat of Thulsa Doom the necromancer and went to Delcardes.

Thulsa Doom! Now, there's a name to seize the imagination. Though generations know him as the antagonist in John Milius' Conan the Barbarian, he is, in fact, the archnemesis of Kull and this story marks his first ever mention (and, as it later turns out, appearance) in fiction.

Kull is no fool and is thus skeptical of the existence of a talking cat. Tu is even more "wary and suspicious" in part because "years of counter-plot and intrigue had soured him." Indeed, he suspected that the supposed talking cat "was a snare and a fraud, a swindle and a delusion," not to mention "a direct insult to the gods, who ordained that only man should enjoy the power of speech." Does this sound at all like the opening of a Conan story? The yarn begins almost whimsically and I cannot deny that I was immediately seized with interest in seeing where Howard took things.

The cat, whose name is Saremes, is the companion – not pet! – of Delcardes, a Valusian noblewoman, who is herself described as "like a great beautiful feline," whose "lips were full and red and usually, as at present, curved in a faint enigmatical smile." She has come to the court of Kull to crave a boon from the king. The boon in question is marriage to Kulra Thoom of Zarfhaana, a match that would be forbidden, because "it is against the custom of Valusia that royal women should marry foreigners of lower rank." Delcardes knows this and argues that "the king can rule otherwise," much to the consternation of Tu, who reminds Kull that such a breach of tradition "is like to cause war and rebellion and discord for the next hundred years."

Kull will have none of this.

"Valka and Hotath! Am I an old woman or a priest to be bedevilled by such affairs? Settle it between yourselves and vex me no more with questions of mating! By Valka, in Atlantis men and women marry whom they please and none else."

Delcardes sees this as the perfect opportunity to remind Kull of the cat who accompanied her. The cat 

lolled on a silk cushion, on a couch of her own and surveyed the king with inscrutable eyes ... she had a slave who stood behind her, ready to do her bidding, a lanky man who kept the lower part of his face concealed with a thin veil which fell to his chest. 

The noblewoman explains that Saremes was "a cat of the Old Race who lived to be thousands of years old." She then asks him to ask the cat her age.

"How many years have you seen, Saremes?" asked Kull idly.

"Valusia was young when I was old," the cat answered in a clear though curiously timbered voice.

Kull started violently.

"Valka and Hotath!" he swore. "She talks!"

Delcardes laughed softly in pure enjoyment but the expression of the cat never altered.

"I talk, I think, I know, I am," she said. "I have been the ally of queens and the councillor of kings ages before even the white beaches of Atlantis knew your feet, Kull of Valusia. I saw the ancestors of the Valusians ride out of the fear east to trample down the Old Race and I was here when the Old Race came up out of the oceans many eons ago that the mind of man reels when seeking to measure them. Older am I than Thulsa Doom, whom few men have ever seen.

"I have seen empires rise and kingdoms fall and kings ride in on their steeds and out on their shields. Aye, I have been a goddess in my time and strange were the neophytes who bowed before me and terrible were the rites which were performed in my worship to pleasure me. For od eld beings exalted my kind; beings as strange as their deeds."

This is great stuff in my opinion. Apparently, Kull thought so too, because his interest is greatly piqued, so much so that he then asks the cat.

"Can you read the stars and foretell events?" Kull's barbarian mind leaped at once to material ideas.

"Aye; the books of the past and the future are open to me and I tell man what is good for him to know." 

It's at this point that Kull's skepticism of the existence of a talking cat – a skepticism that Tu still holds – gives way to hope, hope that Serames might possess knowledge that will enable him to make the right decisions as he ponders how to rule Valusia and meet the challenge of Thulsa Doom the necromancer. 

What follows is an odd pulp fantasy tale, one in which the barbarian king of a civilized land spends much time discussing fate, prophecy, and free will with a talking cat. I ask once again, does this sound like a Conan story? "The Cat and the Skill" is a fun story, one that nicely balances thoughtfulness with action, honesty with intrigue. That – and I hope no will be surprised to learn this – Serames is revealed to be a fraud, just as Tu warned, in no way takes away from my enjoyment of the story. What transpires before this revelation is thoroughly captivating and a much-needed reminder that Kull is no "rough draft" of anyone, but rather a uniquely engaging character in his own right.   

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Screaming Skull of Silence

Among the creations of Robert E. Howard, Kull of Atlantis occupies a strange place. On the one hand, he might reasonably be called a "first draft" of the vastly more famous Conan the Cimmerian. Both are crafty barbarians who rise to the rulership of a civilized, if decadent, kingdoms, for example. On the other hand, Kull, when he is remembered at all, is thought of primarily as King Kull, ruler of Valusia, whereas Conan's reign as king of Aquilonia is less celebrated than his time as a wandering warrior (and occasional thief). This is somewhat ironic, given that Conan's first published appearance, "The Phoenix on the Sword," features Conan as king and is in fact a rewrite of another, unpublished story, "By This Axe I Rule!," whose protagonist is Kull. 

The relative obscurity of Kull, at least in popular culture, can to some extent be ascribed to the fact that only three of Howard's stories of him were published during his lifetime. The other were largely unknown until the 1967, when Lancer published King Kull. As you can see from the cover accompanying this post, the book's editor, Lin Carter, shares authorship with Robert E. Howard, thanks to Carter's having "completed" three fragmentary stories originally penned by Howard in the 1930s. Like most so-called "posthumous collaborations," I don't think much of Carter's efforts, but there's no question that King Kull was an important publication for appreciating Howard's broader literary legacy. If nothing else, it gave fantasy fans a fuller picture of Kull and his world so as to distinguish them from Conan and the Hyborian Age.

"The Screaming Skull of Silence" is one of the stories first appearing in the 1967 collection, where it's simply titled "The Skull of Silence" (the longer title being given later after an examination of Howard's papers). After his success with "The Shadow Kingdom" and "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune," he submitted this yarn to Weird Tales for publication but the capricious Farnsworth Wright rejected it and I can see why. "The Screaming Skull of Silence" is quite short in length and filled with philosophical musings about the nature of reality and our place within it – hardly the stuff of thrilling pulp adventure. But then Kull, moreso than Conan, is prone to such musings; it's an important part of his character and why I find him every bit as compelling as the storied Cimmerian. 

The story opens with Kull, seated upon the throne of Valusia, "listening idly to the conversation of Tu, chief councillor, Ka-nu, ambassador from Pictdom, Brule, Ka-nu's right-hand man, and Kuthulos, the slave, who was yet the greatest scholar in the Seven Empires." 

"All is illusion," Kathulos was saying, "all outward manifestations of the underlying Reality, which is beyond human comprehension, since there are no relative things by which the finite mind may measure the infinite. The One may underlie all, or each natural illusion may possess a basic entity. All these things were known to Raama, the greatest mind of all ages, who eons ago freed humanity from the grasp of unknown demons and raised the race to its heights."

The idea that the world we inhabit is actually an illusion of some kind is an old one and one Howard has pondered elsewhere. In this tale, though, it serves as the starting point for a larger discussion that, in turn, ties into its plot. In any case, Ka-nu, the Pictish ambassador, recognizes the name of Raama and dubs him "a mighty necromancer." Kuthulos objects to this simple characterization of him.

"He was no wizard," said Kuthulos, "no chanting, mumbling conjurer, divining from snakes' livers. There was naught of mummery about Raama. He had grasped the First Principles, he knew the Elements and he understood natural forces, acted upon by natural causes, producing natural results. He accomplished his apparent miracles by the exercise of his powers in natural ways, which were as simple in their manners to him, as lighting a fire is to us, and as much beyond our ken as our fire would have been to our ape-ancestors."

From this description, Raama would seem to be a scientist of some sort. The councillor, Tu, seems to understand this as well as asks Kuthulos why Raama did not "give all his secrets" to mankind, to which the slave replies, 

"He knew it would not be good for man to know too much. Some villain would subjugate the whole race, nay the whole universe, if he knew as much as Raama knew. Man must learn by himself and expand in soul as he learns."

Hearing this leads to more objections from Kuthulos' interlocutors, leading to further discussion of the nature of things and whether sight or sound have an essence of their own, apart from our perceptions of them. Kuthulos acknowledges that, yes, somewhere, there exists the essence of such things. Ka-nu pipes up saying that the essence of silence – its "spectre" – does indeed exist and that had long ago been shut up in a great castle by none other than the very Raama they had discussed earlier. Brule agrees.

"I have seen the castle – a great black thing on a lone hill, in a wild region of Valusia. Since time immemorial it has been known as the Skull of Silence."

"Ha!" Kull was interested now. "My friends, I would like to look upon this thing!"

Needless to say, Kuthulos tries to discourage Kull from this path, telling him "it is not good to tamper with what Raama made fast," but the Atlantean is undeterred. He then sets off with his companions to find the Skull of Silence and see for himself if the legends of what it contains are true.

"The Screaming Skull of Silence" is short, as I said. Yet, within the span of a few pages, it contains several engaging ideas that I think elevate it above many similar pulp fantasies. I can't completely disagree with Farnsworth Wright's rejection of the story, as it's not the most exciting sword-and-sorcery yarn ever written, nor is it even Howard's most genuinely thought-provoking one. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it and found myself inspired by some of the ideas it plays with. Given its length, I think it well worth a read.

Retrospective: Flash Gordon & the Warriors of Mongo

Flash Gordon & the Warriors of Mongo is an unusual game. Released in 1977 by Fantasy Games Unlimited, it was written by Scott Bizar and Lin Carter, editor of the acclaimed (and influential) Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, author of the Callisto and Green Star series (among many others), and L. Sprague de Camp's longtime partner in crime. That alone places the game in rare – though not exclusive – company. 

Mind you, I have no idea of the extent to which Carter was actually involved in the design of this game. My guess is his prefatory "note" at the front of the 52-page rulebook is his biggest contribution, though I cannot prove that. Like De Camp, Carter was good at self-promotion and finding new ways to wring a few bucks out of his name and status within the fantasy and science fiction world at the time. I suspect this is the case here, though I should stress again that I have no direct evidence one way or the other and may be demonstrating a lack of charity toward Carter. 

All that aside, the game's structure is quite fascinating. Its introduction begins as follows:

It is the intention of these rules to provide a simple and schematic system for recreating the adventures of Flash Gordon on the planet Mongo. These adventures are free-wheeling and widely varied with the final goal of overthrowing the evil government of the Emperor Ming the Merciless.

I find this short paragraph noteworthy. First, it states upfront that the game will be "simple and schematic." Second, and more important, I think, is that the characters' actions are placed within a larger context, namely the defeat of Ming the Merciless. In this way, the game offers a greater context for all those "free-wheeling and widely varied" adventures to take place. Flash Gorden & the Warriors of Mongo is thus a campaign game.

The introduction continues:

Our schematic or representational outlook simplifies the situation to make a game playable without the extremes of paperwork necessary in most roleplaying games. For those who enjoy the full detail of role playing campaigns, we provide enough detail and flavor to provide a backdrop to which can be added simple modifications of existing role playing systems. Try the rules as they stand, a simple and understandable system. Additional complexity in role play can be added without harming the basic structure of the game.

I find it amusing that, even in 1977, three years after the release of OD&D, we see talk of "the extremes of paperwork," suggesting that there was already a sense in some quarters that RPGs were becoming unduly complex. More interesting to me is that the game's explicit encouragement to add to and modify the rules. 

More:

The game requires from two to twenty player adventures and a referee … The basic idea is that teams of players will begin on the outer sections of the schematic map and attempt to gain the support of all nations they pass through. To do so they must defeat monsters, overcome obstacles, deal with traitors, and go to any efforts to enlist the support and aid of the rulers of the countries they pass through on the way to Mingo City.

While the large number of potential players might raise eyebrows from the vantage point of today, it was commonplace for RPGs at the time and reflective of a focus on the campaign, something that's evident in Flash Gordon as well. 

Characters possess four characteristics (Physical Strength/Stamina, Combat Skill, Charisma/Attractiveness, and Scientific Aptitude), each generated by rolling three "ordinary dice." Three of the four characteristics map to a "role," warrior, leader, and scientist. Players make use of the aforementioned "schematic map," which consists of several rings of zones, with Ming's capital city in the center, to move their characters about. Each zone is a kingdom of Mongo and the bulk of the gamebook consists of descriptions of these kingdoms, their inhabitants, and hazards. The descriptions detail how large the kingdom is (and thus how many game turns it takes to traverse them) and, in many cases, the kinds of adventures that might be had there.

The game's rules are indeed simple – so simple that it's often difficult to see much evidence of them! The hazards and enemies of each kingdom generally have write-ups that specify how to overcome them. In some instances, this involves dice rolls, modified by high or low characteristics. For example, fighting the Dactyl-Bats of the Domain of the Cliff Dwellers requires a character to roll one die and add the result to his Combat Skill. If it exceeds 14, the Dactyl-Bats are defeated. The rest of the "rules" are like this: ad hoc and very simple. Whether one likes this or not depends, I imagine, on what one wishes to get out of the game. I would likely find it insufficiently detailed and engaging but tastes vary.

Like many early RPGs, Flash Gordon & the Warriors of Mongo comes across more as a sketch of a roleplaying game rather than a finished package. As a gazetteer of Mongo, it's excellent, far better than, say, the roughly contemporaneous Warriors of Mars. At the same time, I can't help but appreciate its focus on the overall arc of the campaign. The goal of overthrowing Ming by enlisting the aid of the various kingdoms of Mongo is a good one, as is the notion that said aid might be gained through adventures within each kingdom. This is not only true to the Flash Gordon comic strips of old but provides a terrific structure for a campaign. Had I come across this game in my youth, I doubt I would have thought much of it. Now, though, I can see what it was trying to do, even if it might have fallen short of its goal. 

Thongor!

In my post yesterday about Lin Carter and his involvement with the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, I mentioned that eight Marvel comics featured Carter's Conan knock-off Thongor of Lemuria. The first of these appeared in March 1973 and, along with another published in May of the same year, partially adapted the story "Thieves of Zangabal." Purely from a historical perspective, these issues are worthy of mention because George Alec Effinger wrote the scripts for them. 

Starting in July 1973, Marvel produced six more issues of Creatures on the Loose featuring Thongor. These issues adapt stories from the 1965 collection, The Wizard of Lemuria and feature script work by Gardner Fox and Steve Gerber. 

Even more intriguing than these eight comics is the unrealized Thongor movie(s) that could have happened during the 1970s. This page contains a great of information on the subject about which I knew nothing until now. Chief among the remarkable details revealed there is that none other than David Prowse, Darth Vader himself, would have played Thongor – a fascinating alternate universe indeed!

The Marvelous Work of Lin Carter

"Spins a web, any size."

The Internet is the world's largest rabbit hole. Sometimes, while looking into some topic or other, I find a link that leads me elsewhere, resulting in the discovery of another link – and then another and another – until, before long, I have wandered far from my original intention, assuming I even remember what it was. This happened to me the other day, when I was reminded of the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon that I inexplicably loved as a child. I vaguely recalled that Ralph Bakshi was involved in the second and third seasons of the show and wanted to confirm this fact. In doing so, I stumbled across something I'd never know or, if I had, my age-addled brain had forgotten it: L. Sprague de Camp's frequent partner in crime, Lin Carter, is credited as a writer for 52 episodes of the series. 

The extent of Carter's writing on these episodes is unclear, as there are multiple writers credited for them. Furthermore, many episodes consisted of two stories, so it's possible, perhaps even likely, that his contributions were small. Nonetheless, the idea that Carter, whose skills as a writer paled in comparison to his as an editor (and that's being kind, despite my fondness for some of his output) was in any way involved in this train wreck of a show makes me grin. About the only thing I can charitably say about the cartoon, which I should again stress I loved as a kid, is its theme song, memorably covered by the Ramones in 1995.

Carter's association with Marvel didn't end there, of course. Apparently, before Roy Thomas successfully licensed Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian – a milestone in the history of the character's mass media popularity – he approached Carter about using his Thongor of Lemuria as the basis for a comic book. Carter balked at the low licensing fee that Marvel offered and Thomas sought out Conan instead, eventually leading to one the most successful comics of the 1970s. Carter later changed his mind and a story featuring Thongor would appear over eight issues of Creatures on the Loose! between March 1973 and May 1974. 

Plans to produce more comics featuring Thongor were announced but they never materialized, probably due to poor sales. Unlike DC, which had to make due with an ever-changing rogues gallery of knock-offs, Marvel had the real deal in Howard's Conan. There was understandably little interest in Carter's pastiche work, no matter how enthusiastic he was in writing it. The same fate likely befell plans to adapt Jandar of Callisto (Marvel would, a few years later, go on to produce a comic starring John Carter of Mars). Some of the Conan stories written by De Camp and Carter would eventually be used in the pages of Conan the Barbarian and The Savage Sword of Conan, a testament to the need for new material featuring the Cimmerian, no matter how uninspired it was. 

The '70s were a hell of a ride.

Spinner Rack Memories

The most magical place I've ever visited was the Middle River Public Library in suburban Baltimore, Maryland. As a child, I must have gone to the library every couple of days, looking for new books on dinosaurs and planets and frogs, three subjects very near and dear to my heart. I learned to write my name – no mean feat! – specifically so that I could get my very own library card. Though small, the Middle River Library had a surprisingly good collection of books that appealed to me. It was here, for example, that I first came across EC Comics and H.P. Lovecraft and these early experiences left me with a lifelong love of horror in all its forms.

Because the library was small and thus had limited space for shelves, there were spinner racks all over the place. Generally, the racks were used for small and light volumes, like magazines, comics, and paperback books. In the 1970s, when I was a child, fantasy and science fiction were much more likely to be published as paperbacks than as hardcovers. Consequently, these spinner racks abounded in books of this sort, a significant portion of which were originally printed in the 1960s, during the explosion in interest in these genres. I spent a great deal of time at those spinner racks, turning them slowly to admire their covers and sometimes grabbing a few books to take home with me.

Even now, more than four decades later, I can remember vividly the covers of some of the books I saw there, so long ago. Perhaps the most memorable were the Lancer/Ace Conan collections edited by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. With one exception, these collections were all published between 1967 and 1971 and contained a mix of Robert E. Howard's original stories – mostly in altered form, unfortunately – and pastiches by other authors intended to fill in the "gaps" in the chronology of Conan's life. Frank Frazetta provided the cover illustrations for most of these collections, some of which are forever burned into my memory.

I know I grabbed a few of them, like Conan of Cimmeria and Conan the Adventurer, solely on the strength of their covers alone. I have only dim recollections of the actual contents of these collections; I must confess that it took me several more years before I developed a fondness for Conan or REH. Even so, it was a beginning, a first foray into the world of sword-and-sorcery, and it probably contributed to my eventual deep dive into the genre during my teen years. There's a lot to criticize about the Lancer collections on the editorial side – my feelings about De Camp in particular are not positive – but there's no denying that, along with Marvel's comics, they introduced a lot of people, myself included, to the Hyborian Age. I'm very grateful for that introduction

Pulp Fantasy Library: Jandar of Callisto

It's been the tedious refrain of this blog over the last nearly four years that originality is overrated. Given that, it's probably no surprise that, despite his complicity in L. Sprague de Camp's crimes against the Hyborian Age, I still have a fondness for Lin Carter's fiction. Some might surmise that this fondness is in fact a carryover from my appreciation of Carter's editorship of the influential Ballantine Adult Fantasy series launched in May 1969. There may be some truth to that surmise, but the simple fact is I do enjoy Carter's fiction. I make no claim that it's timeless or insightful, never mind original, but it is fun -- fun in the way that only shameless pastiche can be.

And Jandar of Callisto is pretty shameless. Published in 1972, this novel tells the story of Jonathan Dark, who, while exploring the ruined city of Arangkhôr in Cambodia, is transported to Callisto, the moon of Jupiter, known to its inhabitants as Thanator. If this sounds familiar, it should and not just because it mimics Edgar Rice Burroughs's stories of Barsoom. Also in 1972, Carter wrote another novel, Under the Green Star, which tells the story of a different Westerner who travels to the Far East and uncovers the means to travel to another world. Like both Burroughs and Under the Green Star, Jandar of Callisto is told in the first person by its protagonist, supposedly by means of a manuscript that came into Carter's hands and that he has dutifully transcribed and published so that the world may learn of Dark's remarkable adventures beyond the Earth:

That the most far-reaching and momentous historical events often spring from minute and seemingly inconsequential accidents is a fact which I can attest from my own experience.

For the past four months now-insofar as I have been able to measure the passage of time-I have dwelt on an alien world, surrounded by a thousand foes, struggling and battling my way through innumerable perils to win a place beside the most beautiful woman in two worlds.

...

As I sit, painfully and slowly setting down these words with a quill pen and homemade ink on a sheet of rough parchment, I cannot help but wonder at the obscure vanity which prompts me to record the tale of my incredible adventures-a tale which began in a lost city deep in the impenetrable jungles of southeast Asia and which ventures from there across the incredible distance of three hundred and ninety million miles of infinite space to the surface of a weird and alien planet. A tale, furthermore, which I deem it most unlikely any other human eye will ever read.

Yet I write on, driven by some inexplicable urge to set down an account of the marvels and mysteries which I alone of all men ever born on earth have experienced. And when at last this narrative is completed, I will set it within the Gate in the hopes that, being composed entirely of organic matter, paper and ink as well, it may somehow be transported across the immeasurable gulf of interplanetary space to the distant world of my birth, to which I shall never return.

In the night sky, at certain seasons when the Inner Moons are on the other side of our primary and the starry skies are clear, I can (I fancy) see the earth. A remote and insignificant spark of blue fire it seems from this distance; a tiny point of light lost amid the blackness of the infinite void. Can it truly be that I was born and lived my first twenty-four years on that blue spark-or was that life but a dream, and have I spent all of my days upon this weird world of Thanator? It is a question for the philosophers to settle, and I am but a simple warrior.

As I'll readily admit, there's scarcely an original idea in Jandar of Callisto. Yet, as you read the above passage, I hope you got some sense of the gusto with which Carter spins his tale. There's an adolescent seriousness to it that creeps up to but never quite crosses the line into parody that I find charming. Others might reasonably disagree and I won't attempt to argue the point, since, at earlier times in my own life, I too might have felt Jandar of Callisto risible rather than delightful. But if you're looking for some light reading (the book is just a little over 200 pages long) that recalls Burroughs and his better imitators, you could do far worse than this novel. If nothing else, Carter ably demonstrates how to do pastiche well and, as such, Jandar of Callisto makes a great study for referees everywhere.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Under the Green Star

Lin Carter is a figure about whom I have a great deal of ambivalence. On the one hand, his working shepherding the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, beginning in 1969, is in my opinion a key factor in the appearance of the hobby of roleplaying as we know it today. On the other hand, his Conan pastiches, which he wrote primarily with L. Sprague de Camp, did an immense disservice to the legacy of Robert E. Howard, contributing to the popular misunderstanding of both the writer and his greatest creation. And then there are Carter's own literary contributions. About these I am probably most ambivalent of all, for they simultaneously reveal both sides of his character -- at once hopelessly derivative and uproariously fun.

A good case in point is 1972's Under the Green Star, the first in what would become an entire series of sword-and-planet novels after the tradition of Burroughs. Like many of its antecedents, this novel presents itself as a real document, written in the first person, by an individual who has, by means of astral projection, transported his soul to another world. This individual, who is never identified by his Earth name, is wealthy but crippled. His ability to send his spirit to a place -- learned at a Tibetan monastery, naturally -- is a great boon to him, as his physical impediments on this planet need not limit him on another. This is a common conceit in sword-and-planet tales: the protagonist's "second chance" to overcome some handicap, whether it be physical, social, or economic, that prevents him from achieving his full potential as a hero. It's a conceit younger people might first have encountered in Stephen Donaldson's various Thomas Covenant novels, but it has deep roots in this sub-genre of pulp fantasy.

The narrator's soul finds itself inhabiting the body of an unfortunately named warrior, Chong the Mighty. Chong had been cursed by a sorcerer a century before the novel begins, his soul torn from his body, which was carefully preserved in expectation of his eventual return. After the obligatory time he must spend acquainting himself with his new world, its culture, and language -- another staple of sword-and-planet yarns -- the narrator become embroiled in its conflicts. He also, as is typical, falls in love with a beautiful young princess. His devotion to her precipitates many of his adventures in the novel and is also instrumental in his eventual forced return to Earth at its end.

I find it difficult to form an objective judgment about this novel and its sequels. On a fundamental level, it's a wretched pastiche, a piece of Burroughsian fan fiction hardly deserving of anyone's attention. But it's fun, or at least I found it so. Carter is not, by any means, a great writer. His prose is often infelicitous and his dialog wooden. His characters are a mixed bag, but tend more toward cut-outs than fully fleshed out human beings. Yet, I can't deny that I enjoyed this book in spite of it all. Or perhaps it was because of all of its failings that I liked it. There's something very primal about this book. There's a reckless spirit of childish fun that I found infectious, even as my adult mind frequently reeled at its lack of originality.

Of course, I sometimes feel that originality is overrated, at least when it comes to pulp fantasy, where tapping into pre-existing archetypes is at least as important as coming up with something genuinely new. Under the Green Star certainly does that in my opinion, which is why I am willing to overlook its many, many flaws. It's not great literature by any definition of the term, but it is a quick, fun read and, from a gaming perspective, provides a good model for creating pastiche settings of one's own.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Flashing Swords! #1

The pulp fantasy revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s is the background against which our hobby arose. It's important to remember this for a number of reasons, chief among them being that the content and style of those pulp fantasies were quite different than the latter-day fantasies that followed in their wake. The historical amnesia of this fact has, in my opinion, made it much harder for gamers not immersed in that culture to understand the early days of the hobby and the RPGs it produced.

As a genre, pulp fantasy is distinguished from other types of fantasy by its format as well as its content. The short story, the novelette, and the novella are the preferred forms of pulp fantasy fiction. While there are novels in the genre, they're fewer in number and are often little more than a collection of smaller works strung together by linking material, which is why they often have picaresque qualities that set them apart from the epics many nowadays tend to associate with fantasy. These qualities are the ones that, in my opinion, early gamers seized upon when crafting their own games and campaigns and it's the rejection of the same that led to the decline of the Old Ways.

Whatever his merits as an author in his own right, Lin Carter was one of the most important and influential editors during the pulp fantasy revival. He put together numerous collections of swords-and-sorcery literature, including the Flashing Swords! series, which ran from 1973 to 1981 and ultimately encompassed five volumes. The series included contributions from many of the prominent members of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a literary group dedicated to the promotion and popularization of the S&S genre. During its existence, the Guild presented a Gandalf Award for contributions to "heroic fantasy," which just goes to show that, at the time, the fine distinctions guys like me make weren't recognized and writers like J.R.R. Tolkien were considered as part of "the club," despite the clear difference in their content and style from authors like Leiber or Vance.

Flashing Swords! #1 consists of four novelettes. The first is a story of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser entitled "The Sadness of the Executioner." The story itself concerns Death, his role in Nehwon, and how Lankhmar's most famous pair of adventurers fit into his plans. It's a terrific story that, I think, nicely exemplifies the pulp fantasy ethos, on both a personal and a "cosmic" level. "Morreion" by Jack Vance is a tale from his "Dying Earth" series, which would later re-appear in his 1984 book, Rhialto the Marvellous. "Morreion" is particularly of interest of fantasy gamers looking for one possible way to represent "space" travel. Ioun Stones are also prominently on display here. Poul Anderson's "The Mermaid's Children" is another installment in his fantastic medieval quasi-series that includes books such as Three Hearts and Three Lions and The Broken Sword. It's just as good as its predecessors and as suffused with sadness. Rounding out the book is Lin Carter's own "The Higher Heresies of Oolimar," which is by far the weakest piece in the whole thing. If ever there were any question that Carter had no shame, it's fully on display in this silly piece, which comes across as exceedingly amateurish.

Regardless, Flashing Swords! #1 is well worth a read if you can find it. Its four stories -- yes, including Carter's -- are a very good encapsulation of the pulp fantasy revival: three-quarters genius and one-quarter hack-work. Come to think of it, that description might fit the old school movement too ...

Pulp Fantasy Gallery: Giant of World's End

First published in 1969, Giant of World's End kicks off a series of books describing the adventures of Ganelon Silvermane, an artificially created hero awakened prematurely to save the far future world of Gondwane -- Earth after all the continents have again positioned themselves into a super-mass -- from a variety of threats. These books clearly belong to the "Dying Earth" sub-genre and the influence of Vance is quite clear, which perhaps explains their appeal to Gary Gygax. Though published first, Giant of World's End takes place last in the series and there are some incongruities between its depiction of Ganelon and Gondwane and those of the later books. Still, it's an interesting read and another example of a type of fantasy that was once commonplace and now a curiosity.

I feel compelled, as an aside, to speak briefly about Lin Carter, who frequently catches a lot of flak because of his involvement in posthumous "collaborations" with pulp authors, most notably Robert E. Howard. For these, I do think he deserves criticism and fairly harsh criticism at that. Like August Derleth before him, these efforts of Carter are almost universally amateurish and of limited literary merit. Along with L. Sprague De Camp, Carter did much violence to the Conan saga and many readers of a certain age have a distorted view of the Cimmerian's adventures -- and REH's writing -- because of his work. At the same time, Carter was the driving force behind much of the pulp revival of the late 60s and early 70s, when he promoted numerous formerly-forgotten writers to the general public once more. He was the first editor of Ballantine Books' "Adult Fantsy" series and it was this series that brought authors like Lord Dunsany, Clark Ashton Smith, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, and many others to view again. In a sense, he was a spiritual godfather of Dungeons & Dragons, because Carter's editorial work enabled many to read fantasy tales they otherwise wouldn't have, many of which were very influential on Gary Gygax. Consequently, for all his faults, I still retain a fondness for Lin Carter that I don't for De Camp.