Flashes of Wonder #3: Sorcerer as Secret-Seeking Protagonist

  

UKA THE UNDYING, the zombie sorcerer, is experimenting with flashes of dark magics to blast the minds of bards! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"Flashes of Wonder" will be posted every week. It will feature a sword and sorcery flash fiction prompt. Share your "flash of wonder" on social media. -JRC

Sorcerer as Secret-Seeking Protagonist: Sorcerers, thaumaturges, and dark-priests are frequently the antagonists in S&S fiction. But what if they were the protagonist? Write a 500 word S&S story that focuses on the sorcerer as the secret-seeking protagonist, an outsider, who desires eld lore rather than blood-stained coin. How does this change the role of the barbarian figure? How does this change the setting focus? What elements of typical S&S take prominence, and which ones take on a more secondary role?(500 words)

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The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 5)

   

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every week. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Book Review: Deep Cuts: The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage (2013) by Stephen D. Korshak & J. David Spurlock. "The Alluring Art of Margaret Brundage is not quite a biography, however. It is primarily a collection of obscure but critical sources and essays on her life and work: memoirs and interviews normally only found in moldering and expensive fanzines, as well as new essays that expand on her life before and after Weird Tales. On top of that, the book includes a full gallery of her pulp art, and numerous photos of her life and art you won’t find anywhere else, all reproduced without the clipping or muddying of color typical of a lot of pulp art books. It is a gorgeous production from start to finish—and an enlightening one, as Brundage herself is a fascinating subject." 

Lexicon: Grognardia: Words Gary Taught Me. "High Gygaxian is the term I coined to refer to the pedantic, archaism-laden, run-for-the-dictionary writing style often employed by Gary Gygax, particularly in his AD&D rulebooks and adventures. I'm on record as adoring this idiosyncratic manner of speech. For me, High Gygaxian establishes the feel of the particular strain of fantasy that I associated with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This is one area where I believe AD&D is superior to OD&D and goes a long way toward explaining the enduring influence of this version of the game, even though it's been twenty years since any currently published RPG bore this title."

Dungeon Synth Album: Amn: Lands of Intrigue. "The Lord of Murder shall perish, / But in his doom he shall spawn a score of mortal progeny / Chaos will be sewn from their passage / So sayeth the wise Alaundo / So sayeth the wise Alaundo."

Digital Gaming Convention: Bride of CyclopsCon in October! "Bride of Cyclops Con will be online everywhere October 16-18, 2020. And this convention will feature not only Dungeon Crawl Classics, but also Dungeons and Dragons, and every other game that you can associate with Goodman Games. We’re talking DCC, MCC, XCC, DCC Lankhmar, D&D, and maybe even some of the others that you don’t think about as much—we’re looking at you, Metamorphosis Alpha, DragonMech, Dinosaur Crawl Classics, and others!"

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Library Lucre: Review of Gunthar, Warrior of the Lost World, by Steve Dilks

SLITHER THE BOOK BURGLAR has raided a lich library for rare scrolls, grimoires, codices, librams, and books, and, having returned to his shadowy winesoak in the seedy part of town, is ready to find a fence! Illustration provided by Gray Moth.

Library Lucre features short reviews of new sword and sorcery (less than 300 words). Contact us if you have a book you want to review or want us to review. -JRC

Gunthar, Warrior of the Lost World, by Steve Dilks (Carnelian Press, 2020), paperback, 300 pages. Reviewed by Jason Ray Carney.

This is great, old school sword and sorcery in the 1970s, Lin Carter and Gardner F. Fox, vein. I was thinking about homebrewing beer while reading this: in homebrew contests, successful beer is judged "to style," i.e. the gold medal beers hew closely to the profile of the style judged, i.e. a gold medal "Dortmunder" lager, has, according to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guidelines, this narrow flavor profile: "Grainy-sweet malt nor floral, spicy, or herbal hops dominate, but both are in good balance with a touch of malty sweetness." The gold medal Dortmunder lager isn't the one that is iconoclastic, that incorporates, say, banana pulp or cardamom pods. Instead, it is the one that the skillful brewer creates to satisfy the judge's very specific flavor expectations. In an analogous way, Gunthar: Warrior of the Lost World is "gold medal" sword and sorcery anthology, an artful execution of the genre's archetypical conventions, tropes, and distinctive diction (a true love letter to the genre). Nevertheless, there are a few compelling innovations, i.e. the prevalence of super science (perhaps a nod to KEW's Bloodstone?) as a kind of foil to sorcery, the incorporation of mutants, and the use of fever dream montage and vivid imagery; however, the joy of this anthology is not how it experiments with the genre but in how it gives a spark of vitality to a specific period of the genre again, i.e. the S&S of the 1970s. A collection of novellas, a standout was Lord of the Black Throne, specifically its phantasmagoric ending, a montage of sword and sorcery images that recalled psychedelic, blacklight-illumined velvet paintings of sorcerers and warriors battling at the end of time in cosmic depths, or the airbrush tableaus of eldritch skullduggery on 1970s custom vans. The cover art painting by Regis Moulton is great, and the rough-edged interior ink illustrations by Steve Lines perfectly harmonize with the stories. If you enjoy Thongor, Brak, and Kyrik, you will enjoy the adventures of Gunthar, Warrior of the Lost World. Available on >Amazon<.

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Flashes of Wonder #2: The Barbarian and Nature

 

UKA THE UNDYING, the zombie sorcerer, is experimenting with flashes of dark magics to blast the minds of bards! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"Flashes of Wonder" will be posted every week. It will feature a sword and sorcery flash fiction prompt. Share your "flash of wonder" on social media. -JRC

The Barbarian and Nature. One of the most common plots is man against nature. Consider the figure of the barbarian in sword and sorcery. How does this figure relate to nature? When may the figure work with nature, and when may the figure work against it? In 500 words, create a sword and sorcery flash fiction with just two characters: a barbarian and some aspect of nature. Begin the action with the barbarian fighting against nature but then allow the barbarian to find a way to come together with nature at the end. (500 words)

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The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 4)

  

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every week. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Blog Post: The Ten Greatest Sword-and-Sorcery Stories by Robert E. Howard, by D.M. Ritzlin. "I asked a panel of wizened experts (disclaimer: said panel consists solely of myself) to select the ten greatest sword-and-sorcery stories by Robert E. Howard. All of Howard’s most notable characters are represented here: Kull, the Atlantean who became King of Valusia, the Puritan avenger Solomon Kane, and of course, Conan the Cimmerian. If you’re mostly familiar with Howard’s work through the Conan the Barbarian films or comic books, this should prove to be a helpful reading guide." 

Digital Gaming Convention: Bride of CyclopsCon in October! "Bride of Cyclops Con will be online everywhere October 16-18, 2020. And this convention will feature not only Dungeon Crawl Classics, but also Dungeons and Dragons, and every other game that you can associate with Goodman Games. We’re talking DCC, MCC, XCC, DCC Lankhmar, D&D, and maybe even some of the others that you don’t think about as much—we’re looking at you, Metamorphosis Alpha, DragonMech, Dinosaur Crawl Classics, and others!"

Academic Blog: The Weird Tales Three and Verbal Black Magic, by Chase A. Folmar. "While reading any of the Weird Tales Three, there’s a certain quote by Clark Ashton Smith that always springs to mind: "My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation."

Dungeon Synth Album: Eldritch Wizardry: Where None Dare Venture. "Far over the treacherous waters of the western sea, there is an island shrouded in an unearthly fog. Upon it stands an ancient fortress, once the dwelling place of a merciless warlord whose defenses were unmatched by any kingdom. Until one day, a curse was brought upon the island, when an old sorcerer was burned alive by the warlord's men. A curse that swallowed them all in the earth and roots beneath them. The fortress still stands upon the forsaken isle, surrounded by the very roots that conquered the once-mighty warlord; as a warning to all who dare enter and attempt to claim the treasures left behind by the condemned."

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Flashes of Wonder #1: The Undead Monster and the Return of the Past

UKA THE UNDYING, the zombie sorcerer, is experimenting with flashes of dark magics to blast the minds of bards! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"Flashes of Wonder" will be posted every week. It will feature a sword and sorcery flash fiction prompt. Share your "flash of wonder" on social media. -JRC

The Undead Monster and the Return of the Past. In the Gothic literary tradition, the undead and undying--e.g. ghosts, zombies, vampires, and other spectral forms--often represent haunted memories that should have been forgotten, horrible sins that should have been punished, taboo traumas that should have been confronted. For this flash fiction, write a sword and sorcery story that features a protagonist who encounters a hostile undead monster... but charge this encounter with the weight of a sin unpunished, a trauma returned, a weregild yet to be paid. In Gothic horror, the typical protagonist might flee this ambush of horrible revelation. How does sword and sorcery proceed differently? Is it fair to say that the blades at hand steel the nerves? Perhaps foolishly? (500 words)

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The Familiar's Four Gems, a Miscellany (Issue 3)

 

SPITTLEDRUM, the Four-eyed Demon, has scoured the internet for new eyes: four sword-and-sorcery gems! Illustration provided by Mustafa Bekir.

"The Familiar's Four Gems will be posted every week. It is a curated list of old and new digital resources for amateur sword and sorcery writers and readers; it will occasionally provide short reviews where appropriate. If you have something you would like to include, contact us. -JRC

Blog Post: The Silvery Key: Masculinity in S&S: It's Complicated. "Make no mistake: I love this stuff. I was drawn to it as a kid, and inspired to pick up weights to try to look like my heroes of the comics and silver screen. Today I continue to champion and defend it. I push back, hard, against censorious critics who want this type of fiction memory-holed. You can pry my sword-and-sorcery from my cold, dead fingers." 

Blog Aggregate: The DMRtian Chronicles, 9/6/202. This is DMR Books weekly aggregate of sword and sorcery and pulp-related and blog posts and news articles. 

Academic Blog: The Pavilion Blog: Conan the Barbarian and the Collapse of Civil Discourse. "Make no mistake: this is still a very fun movie and its classic soundtrack works with its visuals and campy, committed performances to create a shockingly thrilling experience. But what I want to focus on here is how the film’s politics map so neatly upon our own in 2020."

Goodreads Review: Howard Andrew Jones, The Desert of Souls, reviewed by Jason Ray Carney. "If my descriptions give the impression that this is an over-artful/overwrought novel, let me conclude by assuring you... it is not: to the contrary, it is an enthralling and joyful tale of mystery, daring, wonder, and adventure."

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