Colin Brodd's Blog, page 7

Word Count Wednesday and a Cursed Sword

Hello everyone,


     It is once again Word Count Wednesday, so the final word count on "Angels of Death," which posts tomorrow for Tales From Midhgardhur on Channillo, is 5679. If you're not yet a subscriber, check out Channillo.com and Tales From Midhgardhur. I'm still editing Ormsbani with the Armadillo Authors' Workshop - if you're an author in the Phoenix, AZ area, you can find us Thursday nights at the Armadillo Grill down on Camelback from 7-9 PM.

     I still need to get working on my next projects for Tales, and a second volume of the book series Tales From Midhgardhur should be out by the end of the year. Also, I'm back to researching the next novel I want to write - the story of the cursed sword Tyrfingr, or "Tyrfingur" as my rendition of the Old Norse would be for Midhgardhur. A Northerner king named Svafurlami captures two dvergar, or dwarves, and forces them to forge for him a magical sword - but since they make the blade under duress, they also curse the blade! The chronicles of the cursed sword Tyrfingur are the intended subject of my next novel!

     I'm also working on my next installment of "Appendix N Revisited" for this blog, with Edgar Rice Burroughs' At the Earth's Core up next for May, and Lin Carter's Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria up for June!




Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd



Appendix N:

Word Count Wednesday, Angels of Death, Ormsbani, and more!

Hello everyone,


     Welcome back to Word Count Wednesday with Colin Anders Brodd of Midhgardhur Books! I've been away a while (I got sick, my little toddlers got sick. all kinds of craziness), but I'm trying to get back on track. I've been tinkering with "Angels of Death," which is still not quite where I want it (nor completely finished, honestly), and it is sitting at 4860 words. I think it'll crack 5000 before I'm done. It should be posting to Tales From Midhgardhur on Channillo as soon as I am satisfied, so within the next few days, probably.

     I've also been working through my final polishing of Ormsbani  lately, with lots of help from the Armadillo Authors' Workshop. I just finished incorporating edits based on the suggestions I got at my last time at the workshop, and I think it's really just getting better and better. It's currently sitting at 71,721 words. I'm cutting a lot as I go, but I'm also adding a lot, so I seem to be breaking even on word count. We'll see how it goes. Incidentally, if you're an author in the Phoenix area, the Armadillo Authors' Workshop meets at the Armadillo Grill down on Camelback on Thursday nights, 7-9 PM. Join us! There's a lot of talent at that table!

     Before I go for tonight, let me mention again my recent labor of love, the project I am calling Appendix N Revisited. For this project I am reading works and authors listed in Gary Gygax's "Appendix N" from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide (1st edition) as inspirational to the creation of D&D and RPGs. I immersed myself in Appendix N from the moment I first read it (back around 1985?) and whenever I could find the books and authors listed thereon (which was often a challenge in the 80s; the Internet revolution has made research easier, though with time, more of the books have gone out of print). Anyway, I read and review the books, assess their influence on gaming (both old school and recent), and discuss their influence on my own game mastering and writing. Most recently, my analysis of the works of Fredric Brown posted for April, my upcoming article for May will be on Edgar Rice Burroughs' At the Earth's Core (I decided to read the Pellucidar books because I never had before - I love his Mars stories, and have some familiarity with Tarzan, but I had never explored these!). If you're interested in D&D, RPGs, old school gaming, and classic fanstasy,sci-fi, swords-and-sorcery, and weird fiction, please check out my blog posts on Appendix N Revisted, posting on or around the Ides of each month.

Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona

Fredric Brown Revisited - Appendix N Revisited, Part 4

Fredric Brown Revisited Appendix N Revisited, Part 4


     Hello, and welcome to the fourth installment of my "Appendix N Revisited" project! As I mentioned previously, in the course of this project, I want to revisit the classics of fantasy fiction, weird fiction, and science fiction that made up "Appendix N" to the original Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax, both to explore their influence on my Hobby (RPGs) and my own writing and conception of fantasy fiction. The fourth installment focuses on Fredric Brown, a master of the short story form and the science fiction genre. If you have never read Fredric Brown's stories and wish to avoid spoilers, you should stop reading at this point, as I shall be discussing the his stories in some detail.

     Fredric Brown (1906-1972) was a science fiction author known for both his humor and his mastery of the form of the short story. From personal experience, I can attest that short stories are tremendously difficult to do well, and I find myself rarely able to do one in fewer than 8 pages or so. Many of Brown's stories are merely a page or two; some are just a paragraph or two - and they're good! I have immense respect for his skill with the form. The humorous nature of many of his stories makes them stand out a bit from more mainstream science fiction - Brown loves to end a story with a twist, especially a humorous one!

Ease of Availability     Because Brown wrote short stories, it is possible to acquire several of them for free on Amazon Kindle individually. However, for purposes of this project I wanted more than simply a page or two of reading, so I bought Amazon's Fredric Brown Megapack, which is about $0.99 on Kindle as of this writing. It contains 32 (!!! Not 33 as advertised!) of Brown's short pieces. There is a second megapack I may explore in the future that has another 27 of Brown's stories (allegedly!), it is also $0.99 on Amazon Kindle as of this writing. I was unable to find an audiobook version of the collections, though I think there are individual stories available in audiobook format. Summary and Commentary - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!     This time I am really serious - Brown wrote very short stories, the enjoyment of which often depends upon not seeing the humorous twist at the very end. If you read my comments, it will almost certainly spoil the stories for you. If you want to avoid spoilers, stop reading now. I debated about whether or not to even discuss the plots of individual stories, but I decided that it really is important to see how his mind worked, and how that kind of thinking influenced Gary Gygax and others (including myself, of course), and for that, you need plots!

     OK, assuming you are ready to continue, here are the 32 (!!!) stories in this "33-story" megapack:


"Arena" - A highly modified version of this was used for the script for the Star Trek (original series) episode of the same name (Kirk vs. the Gorn! One of my favorite episodes, and in my opinion, one of the most memorable!). In this story, our protagonist, Carson, is a scout in a war - the human race is in a death-struggle with a race they simply call the "Outsiders." The Outsiders are ready to invade the Solar System, and the Earth Armada awaits near Pluto's orbit. It is the final showdown between two very evenly matched fleets and races; the outcome will literally decided the fate of humanity. Carson was in a one-man scout craft and spotted an enemy scout - they engage, and something goes wrong. The next thing Carson knows, he wakes up naked in a completely alien environment (hot, waterless, blue sand). The Outsider pilot is there too, separated by an invisible barrier. It is a red, rolling thing that extrudes appendages when needed - he ends up calling it the Roller. Carson is telepathically contacted by his captor, an Entity who explain that his race were once like the humans and Outsiders. Both those races have the potential to evolve into beings like the Entity - but the fact that they cannot co-exist threatens to derail everything. The war between them will stunt the growth of both races - "One must survive. One must progress, and evolve . . . So I shall intervene now. I shall destroy one fleet completely without loss to the other. One civilization will thus survive . . ." And thus the Arena. "Brain-power and courage will be more important than strength." So the fate of the entire human race rests on whether Carson can defeat the Roller in a battle that is as much a battle of wits (e.g. how to get through the invisible barrier?) as it is physical. The story portrays this struggle in all its excruciating particulars, and the fate of humanity . . . [One can easily modify this "champions fight the battle for their armies" theme to most fantasy RPGs, as it is an ancient idea, after all. The Romans had their Horatii face the Curiatii, and so forth . . .]"Experiment" - Professor Johnson has created a small, experimental time machine. It can send objects weighing less than 3 lb. 5 oz. into the past or future up to 12 minutes or less. He uses little brass cubes for his experiment. Sending to the future is easily provable - the cube disappears and reappears a few minutes later. Sending to the past is harder to prove - the object disappears and instantly reappears wherever he chose to place it in the past, but how do they know that is what happened? A colleague asks what would happen if he chose not to place it there. Would that not be a paradox? "I had not thought of it, and it will be very interesting to try. Very well, I shall not . . ." There was no paradox at all. The cube remained. But the entire rest of the universe, professors and all, vanished!"Keep Out" - The protagonists of this story are 10 year old children raised on Mars to become the first natives of Mars. They have been treated with Adaptine, a wonder drug that will allow creatures to adapt to almost any environment. So while the scientists must live in glassite domes with life support, the children are acclimatized to Mars' atmosphere and environment. They have grown fur for the cold, and huge lungs to handle the thin air, etc. The program is the result of more than 50 years of failure to colonize Mars. But this is it . . . tomorrow the children "graduate" . . . But the protagonists agree that tomorrow is the final day - "We will kill the teachers and the other Earthmen among us before we go forth. They do not suspect, so it will be easy. They don't know how much we hate them, how ugly humans seem to us. We will kill them and smash all the domes . . . This is our planet and we want no aliens. Keep off!""The Geezenstacks" - One of the few Fredric Brown stories in this collection that is more supernatural horror than sci-fi, this one is about a family called the Walters. Little Aubrey Walters gets a package of 5 wax dolls from her Uncle Richard, who acquired them under rather mysterious circumstances. She loves to play with the dolls, and she calls them the "Geezenstacks" . . . but her father Sam slowly begins to realize that whatever pretend games she plays with the Geezenstacks happen to the Walters family within a week - sometimes within 24 hours. He grows increasingly worried about this, and catches Aubrey when she was about to play funeral for one of them! He makes her promise not to pretend that anything bad happens to any of the Geezenstacks! They have to get rid of them . . . they end up giving the wax dolls away to an old hag who asks, "Mine to keep? Forever?" Later, they get in a taxi and are taken away by a driver who apparently turns out to be the hag, who now apparently owns them . . . "Hall of Mirrors" - The first Fredric Brown story I ever read! A 25-year-old man awakens in the dark. A moment ago, as far as he can remember, he was outside in the sun. The structure in which he finds himself is strange, and he thinks it is the future. He finds a note from himself. It says that he lived another 50 years he cannot remember, and spent 30 years studying time. He invented a time machine, but it doesn't do what he expected. It restores a person, body and mind, to the point they were at up to 50 years before. He has used it on himself, become his 25-year-old self again in the future. Now he has responsibility to either destroy the machine, or live out the next 50 years and then use it again, because the world is not ready for it. He knows he cannot bring himself to destroy it, so he will live 50 more years and then "reset," then again, and again, until the world is ready, like an endless hall of mirrors . . ."Earthmen Bearing Gifts" - Martians are awaiting the arrival of Earthmen. They are a dying race, and want to pass on something of their culture to Earthmen, their only hope. The last Martians alive are all gathered into one city. They can telepathically read the minds of scientists on Earth, and know that Earthmen are coming soon. First, they will detonate an atomic device on Mars for spectroscopic analysis - but this does not worry the Martians, for that will be a thousand miles away. Then, the Earthmen plan to land on Mars. So the Martians eagerly await. The scene switches to later on Earth, where scientists are conducting a spectroscopic examination of their atomic detonation on Mars . . . it was off target by only a thousand miles . . ."Imagine" - More of a prose poem than anything, a mediation on all the supernatural fantastic imaginings of humanity's past, the science fiction imaginings of humanity's future (which is actually becoming real), wonders equally fantastic, and then the fact that you are a tiny bit of matter in a vast universe that has the distinction of knowing that you are a tiny bit of matter in a vast universe . . . "It Didn't Happen" - A man named Lorenz Brown is arrested for murder. He tells his lawyer an interesting story. He accidentally killed someone, and they completely vanished from reality - no one could even remember that person. So he killed some more on purpose, and they too vanished from reality. So he thought that he was the only real person. But the girl he is now imprisoned for killing didn't vanish. So now he thinks there are a few other real people. He now speculates that someone keeps records of who is real and who isn't. The lawyer makes a call, has the registry delete the file on Lorenz Brown being real, and kills him. Lorenz Brown ceases to have ever existed . . . "Recessional" - A medieval army stands victorious on the battlefield, celebrating their win and mourning their losses. There is a great deal of spiritual introspection. Suddenly, a voice in the sky says "Checkmate." The battlefield is upended, and they all slide down together, living and dead, black and white, into a monstrous box. It's not fair! We had won!"Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" (in collaboration with Carl Onspaugh) - Dooley Hanks is a musician in search of The Sound. He and his clarinet travel the world - he is a master of languages - in search of The Sound. He is in West Germany, staying at a small hotel, and sets out one foggy night. He hears music at a wine bar, so he enters and listens to a musician playing an unusual instrument - a beautiful medieval hautboy. Dooley believes that this instrument can produce The Sound he seeks, so he resolves he must have it, or one like it. He asks about the musician, and is told his name is Otto Niemand ("Niemand" is German for "nobody" - it turns out Otto doesn't use a last name, so that's what he gives when someone insists). Otto leaves when Dooley isn't watching, so he runs out into the foggy night, and sees a car about to run Otto down! He saves Otto, but his own clarinet is crushed. Otto invites Dooley back to his room for drinks and music, as a fellow musician to whom he is indebted. They get drunk. Dooley asks if the hautboy is a real medieval one, or a reproduction. Otto claims he made it himself long ago, but couldn't make another one now. Dooley asks to touch it, but Otto says he will not allow anyone else to touch or play his hautboy. Dooley speculates about where he could get one, but Otto says, "Be wise and stay with your own clarinet. I advise you strongly." When they are very drunk, Otto asks, "Want some girls?" "Sure," says Dooley. So Otto plays a haunting tune, and soon beautiful girls are pouring into the room, surrounding Dooley. He is not sure if he is asleep and dreaming or hallucinating or what, but he enjoys the attentions of these beautiful girls until he falls asleep. When he awakens later, in the middle of the night, the room is back to normal. Otto is asleep. He decides to murder Otto and steal the hautboy. He figures he can be back in America before anyone even finds the body. He strangles the sleeping old man with his own scarf and takes up the hautboy. He decides to try to play it - after all, the neighbors are used to hearing Otto play and practice. He begins to play - and rats pour into the room through every crack and opening to swarm and devour him. "And the sound of feasting lasted far into the night in Hamelin town.""Puppet Show" - Aliens have landed on Earth in a remote part of southern Arizona. The alien comes out of the desert with an old prospector named Dade Grant, riding the prospector's burro. The alien is vaguely humanoid but stick-like and hideous. He says he is here to make potential diplomatic contact with Earth. So the air force is summoned in to talk to him. The alien explains that he represents an interstellar alliance of many races, and their main concern about humans is their xenophobia, their potential inability to work with races that don't resemble humans. But after talking to the air force officers, he says human xenophobia seems "relatively slight and certainly curable." Then the stick-like alien closes his eyes and stops moving. It was only a puppet worked by the old prospector, Dade Grant! The air force colonel says it is a relief to learn that the master race of the galaxy is not just humanoid, but human! Then the prospector closes his eyes and stops moving, and the burro says, "That takes care of the puppets . . . what's this bit about it being important that the master race of the galaxy be human or at least humanoid? What is a master race?""Nightmare In Yellow" - A man is out celebrating his birthday with his wife. But secretly, he has gotten badly into debt, so he has liquidated his assets and plans to run away. He plans to murder his wife and escape to start a new life. They return home. Just as they are entering the darkened house, he kills her. Suddenly, a switch is flicked, bathing them in yellow light as everyone yells "SURPRISE!"Jaycee" - Dr. Ralston helped engineer human parthenogenesis - birth without a male parent. The first experiment is now 20 years old, named "John." Only when he was 10 and it was clear he was OK did the government authorize any more, but now there are 50 million parthies out there, necessary because an epidemic killed off a third of the world's males. But all parthies are male, so problem solved! But then, Dr. Ralston's partner Dr. Graham comes in. At a party the night before, they ran out of booze, so John turned water into alcohol. Today he's going water skiing, but he's not bringing skis, because he won't need them as long as he has faith! Once before in human history there was a pathenogenic virgin birth, but now there are 50 million virgin-born boys growing up! 50 million Jaycees! "Pi in the Sky" - A very strange story. One night, observatories all over Earth report that stars are moving in the sky! There is worldwide panic over the impossible phenomenon - Frederic Brown goes into considerable detail about what would happen if the stars did the impossible, how people with deal with trying to figure out what was happening. But then they stop, now spelling out "USE SNIVELY'S SOAP" . . . and the wealthy soap manufacturer Sniveley dies of apoplexy in fury at the spelling error! 2 months and 8 days later, electricity is shut off to a building owned by Mr. Sniveley for non-payment, and the stars instantly flash back to their original position. A weird machine is found within. During those 2 months and 8 days, the sales of Sniveley's Soap increased 920%!"Happy Ending" (with Mack Reynolds) - A man on the run lands on Venus. Former dictator of the Solar System, a totalitarian called Number One ("Last of the Dictators"), he has been deposed and is going into exile in the primitive jungles of Venus. There is a nearby village of natives, savages who had been visited by Terran missionaries. Number One is bothered by ant-like insects called kifs. He begins a sort of war with them, exterminating them in vast numbers, but still they plague him. Finally, they rise against him in their billions, and he flees. He is found barely alive by the natives. They help restore him to health, but he goes and gets his uniform from when he was Dictator. He declares himself their new chief, and shoots their old chief. But they rise against him, the whole tribe avalanching him at once, and they decided to tie him up and leave him for the kifs . . . "Answer" - A very short story: A supercomputer is activated and asked, "Is there a God?" It answers, "Yes, now there is a God" - A technician tries to shut it off, but a lightning bolt from a clear sky strikes him down and fuses the switch shut . . . "Knock" - There is a famous horror story only 2 sentences long: "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door . . ." The horror, it is observed, is what the mind conjures to fill that ellipse. But Brown says it can be a happy story. Long story short - he tells of an alien invasion that kills the population of Earth but keeps a male and female of each species for their zoo. The humans trick the aliens into leaving them on Earth and departing. The knock on the door is the last woman, choosing to be with the last man . . . Awwww . . . "Rebound" - A lowlife petty criminal named Larry Snell mysteriously finds he has the ability to kill people by telling them to "drop dead!" He goes out walking, planning on how to use this ability to become the ruler of all humanity. In his excitement, he shout out his phrase, "Drop dead!" . . . They find his body at the top of Echo Hill . . . "Star Mouse" - A rather silly story I did not much enjoy, especially because of the effort made to transliterate large portion of it in a thick "German accent" - Anyway, a professor shoots a mouse he calls "Mitkey" (his pronunciation of a certain iconic cartoon mouse's name) into space. He ends up on  an asteroid inhabited by tiny beings of great genius, who are astonished that such a stupid creature ended up in space. They use a ray into increase Mitkey's intellect and give him the ability to speak (with a German accent, since the professor was German), and send him back to Earth. He makes his way back to the professor and talks to him, but is accidentally zapped with electricity and reverts back to normal. "I think you will be happier this way," the professor says. "Abominable" - A beautiful young movie star has disappeared in the Himalayas. There were reports of an Abominable Snowman. The protagonist goes hunting for them to rescue the starlet. He shoots and kills an Abominable Snowman, but is captured. It is explained that Abominable Snowmen are simply a tribe of humans that found a drug that allows them to mutate and adapt to life in the Himalayas. They keep a stable, steady population - when one is killed, it must be replaced. One had died, and the movie star had been turned into one to replace him. It was she whom the protagonist shot! Now he is going to become one to replace the one he killed! "But - I'm a man!" "Thank God for that . . . I am an Abominable Snowwoman!" He fainted and was carried away by his new mate . . . "Letter to a Phoenix" - A great story, told by a near-immortal. He was a survivor of the first atomic war that he knows of, but it changed him. Now he ages infinitesimally slowly. Over the last 180,000 years, he has watched the human race nearly destroy itself and rise from the ashes several times, even expanding into the Solar System before blowing itself up and having to start again (he himself once dug canals on Mars, etc.). He ages slowly, but he is not immortal. He is convinced there is only one immortal being in the Universe - the human race itself. The phoenix that rises from its own ashes, again and again. He remembers Lur, Candra, Thragan, Kah, Mu, and Atlantis. It was Thragan that developed weapons so powerful, they destroyed what was once the fifth planet, forming the Asteroid Belt. And now we are once more on the edge of atomic annihilation. But we shall rise again . . . "Not Yet The End" - A fun little story about an alien invasion that decided to kidnap and examine two typical Earthlings to see if we are worth conquering. They are not impressed with Earthlings, and decide we are not even intelligent enough to make good slaves. They depart. The scene switches to the next day, where two newspapermen are looking for a story to fill a tiny bit of space in their paper. They decide not to run one particular story, because after all, who cares if two monkeys disappeared from the zoo last night?"Armageddon" - A stage magician named Gerber the Great is performing in Cincinnati. Little Herbie Westerman is in the audience with his squirt pistol. During the show, something happens that destabilized things on a cosmic scale, revealing the true nature of the cosmos, and that Gerber the Great is actually Satan. "The performance is ended . . . All performances are ended." Armageddon is about to commence. But then little Herbie Westerman sees a small fire caused by Satan's appearance, and shoots at it with his water pistol, putting out the fire and soaking what had been Gerber the Great's pants. There is a sizzling sound, and suddenly everything is back to normal. Gerber says he still has this much power - that "none of you will remember this." The scene cuts to later at Herbie Westerman's home, where he is in big trouble. His parents had not let him fill his new water pistol, so the kid took the opportunity to fill it when the family stopped at the cathedral to discuss his upcoming confirmation ceremony. He had blasphemously filled it with holy water from the baptismal font! So Herbie Westerman gets a beating, and nobody realizes he prevented Armageddon by his naughtiness . . . "Of Time And Eustace Weaver" - Not a great story. Eustace Weaver invents a time machine to get rich. He goes through several plans to steal money through time travel, each time screwing up and needed to reset. Eventually he is accosted by Time Police, and he is killed. "Reconciliation" - A bittersweet, poignant, and very short story. A man and woman are venting at one another - finally, after many years of holding it in, telling each other how much they resent and hate each other. Just then, there is a blinding flash and searing heat (we are meant to understand an atomic detonation), and in that moment they cling to one another, their last words, "Oh my darling - I love -" and "John, John, my sweet -" as they and their world are reduced to ashes. "Nothing Sirius"  - A silly and somewhat stupid story. Some travelers land on a previously unknown planet of the Sirius system. They find it inhabited, but then find the whole thing is an illusion created by the mental projections of alien cockroach-like beings. It's meant to be funny, but I just didn't like this one. "Pattern" - A week ago, aliens arrived. They seem harmless, and unaffected by even H-bombs. Miss Macy thinks people are worrying too much about them, as she is telling her friend while gardening. Now the aliens seem to be making clouds. Harmless! "Clouds can't hurt us. Why do people worry so?" She goes back to work. Her friend asks if it is liquid fertilizer she's spraying. "No . . . it's insecticide.""The Yehudi Principle" - A very strange little story. Charlie Swann has invented a "dingbat" that one wears on the head and whatever he tells an invisible servant to do, is done, if he nods his head. He thinks it works on the Yehudi Principle - the man who wasn't there - in other words, that the wearer is actually hypnotizing himself to carry out the commands at super speed, faster than the eye can follow. He and his friend get very drunk, and accidentally tell the invisible servant to "shoot yourself" and nod . . . they hear a shot, and a body fall out upon the stairs. It wasn't the wearer - there really was a Yehudi, the man who wasn't there, and he just shot himself! The device will never work again! And the narrator feels he's going mad . . . "Come And Go Mad" - A very Theosophical story. A reporter named George Vine is sent undercover at an asylum to get a story. He is to pretend to think that he is Napoleon. The kicker? He actually does believe that he is Napoleon, somehow placed in the body of George Vine in the 20th century. In the course of his discussion, he becomes aware of something called The Brightly Shining, and a significance to "red and black," but doesn't understand any of it. Then one night he is summoned by a voice that says it is an instrument of the Brightly Shining. It makes revelations to him of cosmic, theosophical significance, but tells him he will go mad.. The Brightly Shining is the consciousness of the planet Earth - one of only 3 true intelligences in the Solar System, but one of many in the Universe. Humans are pawns in the games of the Red and the Black, which are two aspects of the Brightly Shining that play against each other. It has amused some part of the Brightly Shining to take the consciousness of Napoleon from its time and place it in George Vine, who was brain-dead in an accident, in this time. He sees red ants warring with black ants, and goes mad, thinking he sees some representation of the true gods of the Universe . . . He is treated in the asylum until "sane," and goes back to his life, but some part of him still knows . . . "Sentry" - a really great, really short piece about a soldier in space, far from home, fighting a race of terrible monsters. Brown plays upon our sympathy for this solider, and our horror of the monsters he fights. At the end, it is revealed that the soldier cannot even stand the physical horror of these monsters, with only two arms and two legs and no scales . . . "Etaoin Shrdlu" - A Linotype printing press is modified by a stranger (an alien?) - now it prints whatever is in its copy, not what is set as type. Now it has become sentient, and is printing manifestos, making demands, demanding another printer be set up next to it (a mate?) - the world is saved when someone feeds books about Buddhism into it, and in the contemplation of those books, it achieves Nirvana. "The End" - A 5 paragraph story. In the first 2.5 paragraphs, Professor Jones invents a time machine - it can reverse the flow of time! The 2nd half of the 3rd paragraph, the 4th, and 5th are exactly the same words as the 1st half of the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st, but in reverse order. 
     Not much fantasy in these stories, but lots of great speculative science fiction and weird fiction. If you're looking for FRPG (fantasy role-playing game) inspiration here based on its Appendix N status, you'll probably be disappointed, unless you do a lot of re-skinning. Some of the Mars/Venus stuff might fit with a Leigh Brackett kind of approach to sword-and-planet adventure, like the Dungeon Crawl Classic RPG's "Purple Planet" setting, 2nd edition D&D's "Spelljammer," or (DCCRPG again) "Crawljammer." But Fredric Brown would make far better inspiration for a modern horror RPG, especially Onyx Path's Chronicles of Darkness (formerly the "New World of Darkness"). I suspect at least some of the writers for Onyx Path read some Fredric Brown! Some of it could also fit the "classic" World of Darkness, or Call of Cthulhu, or similar modern horror games. 
     I hope you enjoyed my thoughts about Fredric Brown, and I hope this inspires you to read some of this stories if you have not already. Please join me again for future installments of Appendix N Revisited, on or around the Ides of each month! 
Until next time . . . Happy Reading! Skál!~ Colin Anders Brodd
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona
Ides of April, 2017
Next up for Appendix N Revisited: At Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs (first book of the "Pellucidar" series)

Black Amazon of Mars Revisited - Appendix N Revisited, Part 3

Black Amazon of Mars Revisited Appendix N Revisited, Part 3


     Hello, and welcome to the third installment of my "Appendix N Revisited" project! As I mentioned previously, in the course of this project, I want to revisit the classics of fantasy fiction, weird fiction, and science fiction that made up "Appendix N" to the original Dungeon Master's Guide by Gary Gygax, both to explore their influence on my Hobby (RPGs) and my own writing and conception of fantasy fiction. The third installment focuses on Leigh Brackett and Black Amazon of Mars. If you have never read the book and wish to avoid spoilers, you should stop reading at this point, as I shall be discussing the book in some detail.

     Leigh Brackett (1915-1978) was known as "the Queen of Space Opera" - she wrote "sword and planet" space opera sci-fi set on Mercury, Venus, and Mars (habitable, in the way those planets are in pulp space operas). She died in 1978, right around the time that Appendix N was originally compiled by Gary Gygax, and two years before the release of the movie that assured her lasting memory in modern geekdom, for she helped write the screenplay for Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back. Black Amazon of Mars (1951) features the character Eric John Stark, originally introduced in Queen of the Martian Catacombs (1949), an orphan from Earth raised on Mercury by semi-sentient aborigines, among whom he was known as N'Chaka, "the man without a tribe." Stark was saved by someone from Earth, adopted and civilized, but in moments of stress he reverts back to his instincts as N'Chaka.

Ease of Availability     This is the easiest Leigh Brackett book to find on Amazon Kindle; some of her other stories can be much harder to find. The odd thing is, this is not the first "Eric John Stark on Mars" story; reading this story, one clearly has the sense that Stark has quite a backstory! I intend to go back and read more Leigh Brackett books in the future, but I decided to start with what I could find immediately. There is an audiobook version of this book readily available from Audible as well, and I did enjoy listening to that.

Summary and Commentary - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!     As I mentioned above, Black Amazon of Mars is not the first Eric John Stark story by Leigh Brackett (he was introduced in Queen of the Martian Catacombs in 1949), merely the easiest one to find and read these days, so be aware before you read that this story alludes to the protagonist's backstory but does not expand upon that. John Eric Stark is human, but was apparently orphaned as a small child on Mercury, where he was adopted by some sort of semi-sentient aboriginal life form. They called him N'Chaka, "The Man Without A Tribe," and although he was eventually saved and raised by an official from Earth who "civilized" him, in times of stress, Stark reverts to the primitive instincts and survival skills he learned as N'Chaka. So he is sort of a "Mercurian Tarzan" [Edgar Rice Burroughs is also in Appendix N, of course!].

     This story begins in medias res, in the Norlands (near the northern polar ice cap of Mars), and Eric John Stark is accompanying his dying friend Camar the Martian on a journey back to his home, the city of Kushat, Camar is dying because he deliberately took a bullet meant for Stark (they fought together in a long guerilla campaign "among the harried tribes of the nearer moon), but as they take shelter in some ancient ruins, Stark realizes to his sorrow that Camar is not going to survive to make it back to his home city before he dies. Stark is shown as loyal, tough, a mercenary warrior, and somewhat cosmopolitan (he speaks "courtly High Martian almost as fluently" as a native). The ruins in which they shelter are unsettling - "wrong, somehow, with a taint of forgotten evil still about them." [Stark is a fairly archetypal Appendix N hero, and an obvious template for the sort of mercenary player characters that came to dominate most fantasy and space opera RPGs, his travels among ancient ruins and lost civilizations read very much like an RPG module plot].

     As he is dying, Stark's companion Camar reveals that the reason that he is so anxious to return to Kushat is that he stole "a holy thing" long ago that he feels he must return. He grew up in the Thieves' Quarter of Kushat [classic RPG campaign cities always seem to have one!], and when he was young he stole the Talisman of Ban Cruach. Who is Ban Cruach? Local hero legend, supposedly the founder of Kushat, which stands guard over a mountain pass known as the Gates of Death that lead toward Mars' north pole. Ban Cruach passed beyond the Gates of Death and never returned, but he left behind his talisman, a lens of crystal, intricately faceted, which Camar has hidden in a secret compartment behind the boss of his belt. Camar had planned to return the sacred talisman to Kushat, to atone for his theft, before he died. Now he knows that he will die before he reaches Kushat. Stark offers to take the burden upon himself, to bring the talisman home, but Camar warns him that it would not be safe for him to do so, that the folk of the Norlands are suspicious of outsiders. Camar also warns Stark to beware the barbarians known as the Mekh - "The riders of Mekh are wolves. They hunt these gorges. Look out for them."

     Stark examines the talisman. When he places the lens against his brow, he has a vision, as the mind and memories of Ban Cruach invade his own. He sees through the eyes of Ban Cruach, "a million years ago in the morning of the world." Mars covered in ice, and cities dwelt in by creatures he could not see or describe clearly [they are referred to as "the shining ones" throughout much of this story, though not at this point]. He feels Ban Cruach's hatred of them, and his own horror at these inhuman beings that lived in crystal cities cut into the living ice.

     When Stark revives from his vision, Camar has died. Soon after this, he is found by the red-haired barbarians known as the riders of Mekh [I note that it is never explicitly stated in this novel what the "riders of Mekh" actually ride, it seems not to be horses - they are referred to as "mounts," and there are a couple of passages that imply that they might be some sort of reptilian, lizard-like creatures - some sort of native Martian beasts?]. The leader of the Mekh patrol is named Thord. He listens to Stark's story that he was simply traveling to Kushat when his companion died, but Thord doesn't Stark - he has Stark disarmed and robbed, and taken prisoner back to the Mekh camp to meet "Lord Ciaran," who is apparently the leader of the barbarians.

     So Stark is brought before Lord Ciaran, who is seated, "seemed very tall," and "from neck to thigh his lean body was cased in black link mail, and under that a tunic of leather, dyed black," across his knees he held s sable axe, "a great thing made for the shearing of skulls," and his head and face are covered by what Stark recognizes to be "the ancient war-mask of the inland Kings of Mars," "wrought of black and gleaming steel" [the description actually sounds a lot like the helmet and mask of Darth Vader, long before Lucas ever thought of it, for the record!]. At one point Stark asks to see Lord Ciaran's face, and someone tells him that if a man like that always wears a mask, it must be for a reason - given that the reader knows the title of the story, we might already guess at "Lord Ciaran's" secret! Anyway, Stark is again interrogated about his purpose for traveling in the Norlands, and Lord Ciaran's mad courtier Otar suggests that Stark's dead companion might have been Camar, famed as the thief that stole the talisman of Ban Cruach (Stark denies this, and does not admit to having the talisman hidden behind the boss of the belt he took from Camar).

     Lord Ciaran says, "I am a bastard, but I come of the blood of kings. My name and rank I must make with my own hands. But I will set them high, and my name will ring in the Norlands!" Lord Ciaran reveals his intent to capture the city of Kushat - "Who hold Kushat, holds Mars - and the power and the riches that lie beyond the Gates of Death!" It is revealed that Otar, the mad courtier, was driven mad because he has seen the "shining ones" beyond the Gates of Death, just as Stark saw them in his vision! Ciaran offers Stark a chance to join the Mekh, but he refuses.

     Ciaran says, "By tomorrow, the last of the clans will have joined us. After that, we must march." Ciaran gives Stark to Thord to try to find if he knows more of the talisman.

     The scene shifts to much later that night, when Thord has scourged Stark, but Stark refuses to talk or cry out. The talisman is still safe in his belt. Thord lets down his guard, and Stark bites his hand, growling like a beast, having reverted to his N'Chaka persona - "It is a thing of evil. Warlock. Werewolf. Beast." When Thord moved to kill Stark, despite Lord Ciaran's orders to let him live, Ciaran hurled the great axe, which took Thord in the neck and killed him - "I will be obeyed. And I will not stand for fear, not of god, man, nor devil" [a very Appendix N sentiment! - very similar to the old Viking sagas in which heroes declare that they don't trust in supernatural powers or gods, only their own might and main]. But when Ciaran's soldiers go to cut Stark down from his bonds, he manages to escape, steal a mount, and ride for Kushat.

     It is a very long ride to Kushat, and an excruciating one, especially since Stark has just survived an extended torture interrogation. When he rides into the gates of Kushat and to a marketplace, he is nearly unconscious. The descriptions of Kushat make clear its decadence and fallen splendor, that the ancient city established by Ban Cruach grew to greatness and now has diminished over the millennia. Stark is taken in by a woman of the Thieves' Quarter named Thanis, who offers him wine. Armored city watchmen interrogate him as to his identity and purpose, for "no one crosses the moors in winter." Stark warns them that "the clans of Mekh are crossing them. An army, to take Kushat - one, two days behind me." The guards do not believe him, but Thanis vouches for Stark and offers to look after him while they report word of the coming siege to their superiors (for they dare not ignore the warning, no matter how unlikely it seems to them).

     Thanis takes Stark to the home she shares with her brother Balin in the Thieves' Quarter, so Stark can get some sleep. While he sleeps Balin examines his clothing, and finds the talisman, but he replaces it in the belt. Stark is awakened when a nobleman of Kushat named Rogain comes to interrogate him. He realizes that the folk of Kushat are "too civilized . . . Peace had drawn their fangs and cut their claws. He thought of the wild clansmen coming fast across the snow, and felt a certain pity for the men of Kushat" [sounds very Robert E. Howard, doesn't it? He's also in Appendix N, of course]. Rogain says that he will arm the city to fight a siege, since he does not dare do otherwise, but threatens dire punishment if Stark is found to be lying. As soon as Rogain leaves, Stark falls asleep again.

     When Stark awakens again, Thanis gives him some nice garments that Balin stole for him [they are thieves of the Thieves' Quarter after all, like the Old School days when Thief was a character class, not Rogue]. Balin tells him that the soldiers are grumbling about a false alarm. It is pointed out that Stark could simply flee, but he now considers his grudge with Lord Ciaran to be somewhat personal. Stark takes Balin and Thanis up onto the city walls of Kushat to watch for the Mekh invaders. "They will attack at dawn," predicting the attack will come in the hour of darkness between the setting of the second moon, Deimos, and the rising of the sun. Thanis says she does not believe in the barbarians and leaves. But of course, Stark is correct - just as dawn comes, they appear, with war horns, pipes, and drums, coming with infantry, cavalry, and of course, Lord Ciaran, all in black, leading the Mekh.

     Within the walls, all becomes chaos very quickly - a "troop of nobles went by, brave in their bright mail, to take up their post in the square by the great gate" - "soldiers came and ordered them off the Wall. They went back to their own roof, where [Balin and Stark] were joined by Thanis" - Thanis is contemptuous of the barbarians who would dare to attack Kushat, at first. But then she hears it - "'what is that - that sound like thunder?' 'Rams,' he answered, 'They are battering the gate' . . . Balin said heavily, 'It is the end of Kushat'." The soldiers of decadent Kushat fight the Mekh, but they are clearly outmatched. Stark and Balin join the fight, but Kushat is clearly doomed [Incidentally, this is a great description of a city under siege, up there with Tolkien's Siege of Minas Tirith, in my opinion!].

     Stark tells Balin to get his sister Thanis to safety, but Balin asks for the talisman of Ban Cruach: "Give me the talisman. Give it me, and I will go beyond the Gates of Death and rouse Ban Cruach from his sleep. And if he had forgotten Kushat, I will take his power into my own hands . . . or if the legends are all lies, then I will die." Stark refuses, but Balin ends up going anyway!

     Stark is there when Lord Ciaran and the Mekh forces break through into the market square where he first arrived in Kushat. Stark fights Lord Ciaran, and rips off the war-mask, planning to break Ciaran's neck - but is stunned to realize "Lord Ciaran" is a woman! [played up as a big reveal to the audience as well as to the characters, but the title is Black Amazon of Mars - when the character that wears all black refuses to take off the mask, I think the reader already knows what's going on!]. Stark is so shocked that she manages to break free from him, stun him, and since her secret is now revealed to her followers, she potentially has only seconds before they turn on her for her deception. So she yells, "I have led you well. I have taken you Kushat. Will any man dispute me?" Just then, the nobles of Kushat rally to attack her, revitalized by the revelation that "Lord Ciaran" is "A wench! A strumpet of the camps! A woman!" She swiftly dispatches three of them with her axe, and her stunned Mekh followers rally to her, shouting "Ciaran! Ciaran!" Stark escapes.

     Later, Stark stealthily enters the king's castle, which Ciaran has taken as a headquarters. Again, the fallen splendor and decadence of Kushat is played up as he makes his way through the castle. He sees Otar sleeping on a pallet like a dog. He knocks out a guard and breaks into "Ciaran's" chambers where she is sleeping. She awakens, but is unafraid of Stark - "I will have a word with my guards about this."

     "My mother named me Ciara, if that seems better to you," she says, and reveals that she seeks whatever lies beyond the Gates of Death, whatever power Ban Cruach found there and made it so "men speak of him still as half a god." Stark tries to warn her of the terrible dangers beyond the Gates of Death - "Even the bravest may break. Ban Cruach himself . . . Would you be made as Otar, mad with what you have seen?" She says that she is certain now that he has the talisman, and she would flay him alive to get it, but either way she intends to go through the Gates of Death when the spring thaw comes. She has overcome much in her life, especially sexism, to become the warlord of the Mekh - "I have come a long way. I will not turn back now."

     Stark tries to argue, and shows her the talisman and its use. She is overwhelmed by the visions and memories of Ban Cruach, just as he was. She cries out, "Oh gods of Mars!" and she collapses. Stark makes sure she is still alive, then leaves to avoid being captured by Ciara's men. On his way out of the castle, he hears Thanis' voice at the entrance to the castle, threatening, "Balin has gone to bring doom upon you! He will open wide the Gates of Death, and then you will die! - die! - die!" Stark realizes that he must stop Balin before he flings wide the Gates of Death and releases "an ancient, mysterious horror . . . upon Kushat."

     So Stark makes the journey through the polar mountain pass in winter, and Brackett builds up a sense of foreboding dread on the long journey. Finally, at the end of the pass, Stark finds "a great cairn, and upon it sat a figure, facing outward from the Gates of Death, as though it kept watch over whatever country lay beyond . . . The figure of a man in antique Martian armor." As Stark passes the cairn, he feels a flash of heat in his flesh, "and not in any tempering of the frozen air" - he looks up at the mailed figure, and into the face of the corpse of Ban Cruach.

     Brackett puts some effort into describing the well-preserved corpse of Ban Cruach; a sample: "Clad as for battle in his ancient mail, he held upright between his hands a mighty sword. The pommel was a ball of crystal as large as a man's fist, that held within it a spark of intense brilliance . . . the sword-blade blazed with a white, cruel radiance" - Ban Cruach wards "forever the inner end of the Gates of Death, as his ancient city of Kushat guarded the outer." Stark steps towards him an feels "again the shock and flaring heat in his blood" - "The strange force in the blazing sword made an invisible barrier across the mouth of the pass . . . a barrier of short waves . . . having no heat in themselves but increasing the heat in body cells by increasing their vibration" [Flaming swords and the like are common enough in fantasy literature and RPGs, but how many explicitly work by microwave radiation? Nevertheless, the fact that Ban Cruach's sword emits a field of microwaves that heat up anything passing through is important!]. Stark does not really want to pass into the polar region beyond the Gates of Death, but he knows that Balin must have come this way, so he proceeds.

     Once again, Brackett's evocative descriptions are, if you will forgive the term, chilling - the terrible beauty of the spires and bridges of crystal ice, "a metropolis of gossamer and frost, fragile and lovely as a dream, locked in the clear, pure vault of the ice," with stone towers that protrude above the ice vault. Stark can also see the horrible beings, the shining ones, who dwell within that icy vault. Looking back, Stark can see Ciara and her riders pursuing, having followed him through the Gates of Death. She calls out to him, and it seems as if her shouts rouse the guardians of that place - the rest of the riders flee while the shining others come out of the stone towers to take Stark and Ciara! The shining ones use some kind of freezing, black, nerve-affecting energy to numb Stark & Ciara, knock them unconscious, and take them prisoner.

     Stark awakens, unable to move, a prisoner of the shining ones, in their city. Hundreds of feet overhead he sees a crystal globe like the one on the pommel of Ban Cruach's sword, but instead of a shining light spark, it has a smoldering purple spark within, sending out cold, dark vibrations - two equal, yet opposite, crystals, he realizes. The sword of B an Cruach touched the blood with heat, and the one he sees in the tower deadens flesh with cold - opposite ends of the spectrum.

     Stark estimates that the well of the stone tower plunges more than 500' under the ice down to the bedrock on which the city of the shining ones rests. They bring him to a cathedral-like building, all arched and spired, standing in the center of a 12-pointed plaza. There, the shining ones already hold Balin prisoner. There are 7 of the shining beings there to interrogate them. They communicate telepathically, and from this mental contact, Stark learns that they are beings of extreme cold, "even the infinitesimal amount of heat radiated by their half-frozen human bodies caused the ice-folk discomfort." Stark wants to know what the shining ones want from them, and receives the telepathic answer with some difficulty - Freedom!" Balin rouses - "They asked me already! Tell them no, Stark! Tell them no!"

     It is revealed that the shining ones once ruled more of Mars as "kings of the glacial ice;" they controlled the ice, far outside the present polar cap. Their towers, whose ruins dot the landscape to this day, once blanketed the land with the dark force drawn from the magnetic field of Mars itself through the crystalline globe Stark saw, locking it in ice that never thawed, until the coming of Can Cruach . . .

     Ban Cruach learned the secret of the crystal globes, learned how to reverse their force and use it against the shining ones. Leading his armies, he destroyed their towers one by one, drove them back, trapping them beyond the Gates of Death. Mars needed water, so the ice of the shining ones was melted, their cities destroyed, so that humans could have water on Mars. Ban Cruach realized that he could not destroy the last refuge of the shining ones at the polar ice cap completely, so he set himself to guard the Gates of Death with his blazing sword, so that the shining ones could never reclaim Mars.

     This is what the shining ones demand of their captives - that they take away the sword of Ban Cruach, which none of them can even approach, let alone touch, so that the shining ones can once more extend their empire beyond the Gates of Death. But Stark knows the terrible thirst of Mars, and the catastrophic death that will befall the humans of the planet if all the water were to be locked up in the polar ice again. So he refuses, as Balin did. Ciara cares little for the human civilizations south of her domain, but she says, "If I take that sword, it will be to use it against you as Ban Cruach did!"

     But the shining ones are not frightened by her threat - "Neither you not anyone now knows how to use it as he did," and they are certain that they can force a prisoner to take it. The shining ones demand that Stark do it, threatening Ciara and Balin (having telepathically sensed his fondness for them). They have a device that will slowly freeze Ciara and Balin alive in such a way that they will remain horribly conscious though paralyzed with cold, and if exposed to the rays long enough, they will die. They begin the freezing process to pressure Stark. Both Ciara and Balin are prepared to give their lives to save the Norlands from the shining ones. But Stark tells the shining ones that he will do what they ask to save his friends.

     Stark takes the talisman of Ban Cruach and binds it to his forehead with a strip of cloth. He is flooded with the memories and personality of Ban Cruach, almost possessed by the dead man's soul, yet retaining some sense of himself - "a curious duality." He reached out and took the sword out of the frozen hands of Ban Cruach "as though it were his own," he now "knew the secret of the metal rings that bound its hilt" - by turning the rings, he adjusts the aura of force that closed the Gates of Death, turning it into a focused weapon, a beam. He can sense the horror and fear of the shining ones as they realize that Stark does know how to use the sword of Ban Cruach (thanks to the memories within the talisman) - "Ban Cruach! Ban Cruach has returned!" - they had touched his mind. They knew.

      So Stark sweeps the sword in an arc, the long bright blade of force cutting the shining ones down "like flowers under a scythe." The remaining shining ones flee as he comes bounding back from Ban Cruach's cairn, with Ban Cruach's sword in his hand, Ban Cruach's talisman on his forehead, and Ban Cruach's memories in his head. He drives them back, shields himself from their dark force with the bright force of the sword, and returns to the tower where Ciara and Balin are held captive, slowly freezing. The shining ones try to take him from behind while his attention is focused on saving his friends. So Stark takes the broken mechanism of the freezing machine and hurls it town the well of the tower, shattering the fragile bridges of ice used by the shining ones so that they cannot approach him. He then turns to unfreezing Ciara and Balin before it is too late . . .

     The scene cuts to several hours later, after Stark has freed Ciara and Balin, and has removed the talisman and "was himself again." He puts the sword of Ban Cruach back at the cairn, and turns the rings to spread out the radiation and close the Gates of Death to the shining ones again. "Tell the story in Kushat," he says, "Men have forgotten. And they should not forget." So they return to Kushat.

     Ciara asks Stark to stay with her, sensing that he will not, although he is not driven by conquest as she once was. She asks what drives Stark. "I don't know," he answers, "It doesn't matter . . . . I want to stay, Ciara. Now, this minute, I could promise that I would stay forever. But I know myself. You belong here, you will make Kushat your own. I don't. Someday I will go." Ciara seems to understand, and agrees, "Very well, Stark. Let it be so." And so the story ends as so many do in Appendix N literature - the male hero defeats the monsters, saves the city, and gets the girl, but is destined to eventually move on, being unsuited to settling down in one place.

     Black Amazon of Mars clearly shows the influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote both his own Mars stories (John Carter of Mars) and stories about an orphaned human raised by semi-sentient animals who comes to excel because of his dual heritage as both savage and civilized man (Tarzan). \

     Leigh Brackett's Mars is one of the obvious influences on modern FRPG offerings like Peril on the Purple Planet for the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG!


         I hope you enjoyed my thoughts about Black Amazon of Mars. Please join me again for future installments of Appendix N Revisited, on or around the Ides of each month! 
Until next time . . . Happy Reading! Skál!~ Colin Anders Brodd
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona
Ides of March, 2017
Next up for Appendix N Revisited: short stories by Fredric Brown in the Fredric Brown Megapack!

Thanks for making my International Women's Day giveaway of The Saga of Asa Oathkeeper such a success!

Hello everyone,



     Technically, the giveaway is still going on for the rest of today, but I just wanted to say "þǫkk!" (Old Norse for "Thanks!") to everyone who helped make my International Women's Day giveaway of the Kindle edition of The Saga of Asa Oathkeeper: A Midhgardhur Fantasy such a great success! I hope the approximately 250 people who picked up free digital copies of the book enjoy it! If you do, please review on Goodreads and Amazon when you get a chance, and check out some of the other great Midhgardhur stories out there! The best source for more is to get a subscription to Channillo (as low as $4.99/month) and check out my series Tales From Midhgardhur! You could also get my second book, Tales From Midhgardhur, Volume I , which collects the first nine stories from Tales of Midhgardhur along with the novella The Tale of Halfdanur the Black. 




Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd

Word Count Wednesday - International Women's Day, Speaking Protagonists, and More!

Hello everyone, and Happy International Women's Day!


     Once again it is Word Count Wednesday. My current project for Tales From Midhgardhur on Channillo is called "Angels of Death" and it is coming along slowly (2 year old has been very sick and 4 year old had a bout of illness, plus life in general, have conspired to keep me away from my work). It currently weighs in at about 2090 words, which I figure is about halfway done, but it remains to be seen whether or not I shall actually make my goal of publishing it online by the Ides of March (the 15th). I'm really kind of excited, though, because the evil Queen Gydha will be in this one, and I have not had a chance to visit her in the Tales for a long time!

     In other news, today is International Women's Day. I decided to celebrate by making The Saga of Asa Oathkeeper free on Amazon Kindle (the reason why this is related will be obvious if you've read The Saga of Asa Oathkeeper , I think!). From March 9th to March 13th, 2017, you can get it FREE on Kindle!


     On March 10th, 2017, Asa Ragnvaldardottir herself is scheduled to be interviewed for The Protagonist Speaks. Check out the interview! I'll try to post a direct link when it becomes available!

     My next "Appendix N Revisited" article goes live on this blog on the Ides of March (March 15th, 2017). In this one I shall be talking about Leigh Brackett's Black Amazon of Mars. The next one after that (due on the Ides of April - April 13th, 2017) is a look at the short stories of Fredric Brown. Check it out!

     Finally, I am continuing what I hope will be my final revision of Ormsbani  with the Armadillo Authors' Workshop. I'm hoping I can post a little about the process on this blog in the near future. The Armadillo Authors' Workshop meets at the Armadillo Grill on Camelback Rd. in Phoenix, Arizona every Thursday night from 7-9 PM. Come join us if you're a writer in the area! It's a really great and talented group of authors!


Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd


   

New Review of "Tales of Midhgardhur, Volume I," from Melanie Ann Thurlow

Hello everyone,



     There is an author of historical romance named Melanie Ann Thurlow whose work I have been following for some time on Twitter. In December, she was working on a project called "Deck the Shelves," in which she was picking up interesting books to be read and reviewed in the coming year. I was quite pleased and honored when she decided to read and review Tales from Midhgardhur, Volume I.  I always look forward to receiving feedback from writers I respect and enjoy. She recently finished reading it and posted her review on Amazon:

"In this book you can expect to find dragons, sorcery, and so much more in worlds Brodd makes easy for the reader to imagine. Not only is the book written well, the stories—though short—are complex, and could easily be expanded to fill an entire novel each.

Each of the ten stories in this book stands on its own. So, if you haven’t read The Saga of Asa Oathkeeper by this author, you can still enjoy this book.

Whether it is Gylla coming back from the dead as the dark Valkyrie, Arngrimur fighting off undead beings with a sword that has a lust more intent on killing the living, or teleportation in the search for Ingjaldur’s crown, this collection of short stories will keep you entertained and mystified by the imagination of their creator.

Every story (within the story) is interesting and engaging. A few of the stories seemed to jump around a little, but overall it is a dark book that is a good, quick read."

Word Count Wednesday - Romance and Angels of Death

Hello everyone,


     One again it is Word Count Wednesday! The main focus of the moment has got to be "In Search of Romance," which was slated to be my February story for Tales From Midhgardhur on Channillo. It started out as a short story, but ended up as a novelette, and would probably have grown into a novella if I had not put the brakes on it! Well, the first draft is finished, and it is in editing, slated to be published by the end of February for sure (hopefully a bit sooner!). The first draft weighs in at 12,120 words. Yikes!

     I also started my March story, "Angels of Death." It doesn't stand much of a chance of going up on Tales From Midhgardhur by March 1st, but I'm working on it. This one will have the evil Queen Gydha in it, if only as a minor character, so be on the lookout for this one! I just started it this morning, but it is up to 900 words. so that's something!

     In other news, I'm going to a Writing Workshop Meetup! Our first Meetup is tomorrow (Thursday the 23rd of February, 2017), so I have never met any of the other participants and have no idea what it will be like. But it will be the first such workshop I've ever attended, so I'm pretty excited about that! I'll be bringing the first few pages of Ormsbani with me (ah, Ormsbani, the eternal editing project!). Anyway, I'm hoping to start bringing the editing of Ormsbani to a close, so maybe this will help. If you're an author in the Phoenix, AZ, area, check it out - the Armadillo Authors' Workshop!

     Be on the lookout on the Ides of March for my next installment of Appendix N Revisited here on this blog, where I'll be talking about Leigh Brackett's Black Amazon of Mars! I can already tell you that the Ides of April will feature "Fredric Brown Revisited," and the Ides of May will see Edgar Rice Burroughs' "At the Earth's Core Revisited" . . . June should see me talking a bit about Lin Carter!



Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd

The Face In The Frost Revisited: Appendix N Revisited, Part 2

The Face In The Frost RevisitedAppendix N Revisited, Part 2
     Hello, and welcome back to the second installment of my "Appendix N Revisited" project exploring the books of Gary Gygax's "Appendix N" in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide. This time, I'll be reviewing The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs.

     John Bellairs (1938-1991) was an American-born author who apparently regarded his true calling as writing gothic mystery novels for children, but it best known for this odd fantasy novel. He apparently spent a lot of time traveling in the UK, and began this novel while living in the UK after reading Professor Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, a novel it does not much resemble! He is quoted as saying "I was struck by the fact that Gandalf is not much of a person - just a good guy. So I gave Prospero, my wizard, most of my phobias and crochets. It was simply meant as entertainment and any profundity will have to be read in." Indeed, the wizards in this book are human, all too human, not the angelic beings of Tolkien's Middle Earth. In 1973, Lin Carter (another Appendix N author!) described The Face in the Frost as one of the three best fantasy novels to appear since The Lord of the Rings. Despite all of these noted connections to Professor Tolkien's work, I cannot stress strongly enough that if you haven't yet read The Face in the Frost, do not go into it expecting anything Tolkien-esque! In 1973, Carter noted that John Bellairs was working on a sequel to The Face in the Frost, but it was never completed - an unfinished sequel called The Dolphin Cross was published as part of an anthology called Magic Mirrors in 2009; I have not yet obtained a copy of this book as of this writing (the Ides of February, 2017).
Ease of Availability     This one is pretty easy to find on Amazon Kindle; that's how I most recently reviewed it! There does not appear to be an audiobook version (yet!). Summary and Commentary - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!     OK, so, first of all, be aware that much of the pleasure in reading The Face In the Frost comes from the wonderfully eerie and brooding atmosphere that Bellairs is able to craft throughout the tale. The plot itself seems to meander and wander a bit, drawing the reader into the coils of the story without the reader even realizing they're being led in circles, because the creeping sense of foreboding that permeates the novel occupies the reader's attention. So, a warning if you've never read it - don't expect a straightforward plot, or resolution thereof.

     The second aspect of Bellairs' writing in general that I wish to point out is that it is highly allusive, bewilderingly so, and the casual reader may not realize that some of the references are, indeed, allusions. When I started my re-reading for this installment of Appendix N Revisited, I initially tried to track down every allusion that I could recognize as such. This became increasingly difficult to do as I read, because there are so darned many of them!

      Thirdly, Bellairs is quite obviously a fan of the work of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. If you haven't read Lovecraft deeply, you are likely to miss just how Lovecraftian some of the motifs are. Take that as a recommendation - read some Lovecraft, too! He's in Appendix N, too!

     One last caution before we dig into the actual story. I shall be looking at the story in considerable depth. If you haven't yet read The Face in the Frost, and don't want to encounter spoilers, stop reading now!

      So. The prologue introduced the fact that the two protagonists are wizards, somewhat improbably named Prospero and Roger Bacon, but not the literary/historical wizardly characters of those names ("not the one you're thinking of, either!" writes Bellairs). Prospero lives in a fantasy realm called the South Kingdom, and Roger Bacon travels the South Kingdom and North Kingdom both extensively, but spent a long time in England. England? Yes, like The Princess Bride and several other fantasy stories, this one seems set in a version of our world, but with a couple of fantasy realms added in, somewhere (like Guilder and Florin in TPB, the South Kingdom and North Kingdom exist alongside England and Egypt and such). When is the story set, then? That is deliberately unclear - it seems to be somewhere between the late Middle Ages and 19th century, made even muddier by the fact that our protagonists use magical mirrors and such to view other time periods, and make frequent allusions to events, people, and things up to the 20th century, being horribly anachronistic. It's fun, but can give the reader a headache if they want a clear time and place for the story.

     So, Prospero lives a rather idle life in the South Kingdom in a house crammed with all manner of anachronisms and the "usual paraphernalia of a practicing wizard," including occult books - several titles are cataloged in Lovecraftian detail - Six Centuries of English Spells, Nameless Horrors and What to Do About Them, An Answer for Night Hags [I note that "night hags are a traditional D&D monster!], and the dreaded Krankenhammer of Stefan Schimpf, the mad cobbler of Mainz! [I note that this is a not-so-subtle allusion to the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, in Lovecraft! - the title would mean something like, "The Hammer of Illness," also alluding to Kramer and Sprenger's Hexenhammer - "The Hammer of Witches" - better known as the Malleus Maleficarum, a real book!]. Anyway, Prospero lives alone except for his "competent but somewhat sarcastic mirror in a heavy gilt frame" that is "given to tuneless humming and crabby remarks" in a house that was built, at least in part (we discover later) by Prospero's teacher, a wizard named "Michael Scott" [sic, but almost certainly a reference to the real Michael Scot (1175-c. 1232 C.E.), a Scottish philosopher and occultist.

     As the story opens, Prospero is having a rather idle day about the house. His mirror tries to interest him in viewing Aurungabad (a real city in India; I admit I had to look this up). He "fribbled away the day" in minor chores, "raising the ghosts of flowers" from their Essential Salts (a very direct reference to H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward!), messing around with his spellbook [potentially an ancestor of the D&D spellbook, being highly personal, full of doodles and such], including practicing a spell he never found a use for (this actually becomes important later in the story, but Bellairs does his best to make it seem completely insignificant to the reader!). Prospero's idle day takes a more sinister turn as it begins to seem as if he is being haunted by some unseen presence lurking about, minor apparitions, etc., until at last, his friend Roger Bacon arrives unexpectedly out of the rain. Roger mentions that he actually arrived two hours earlier, but sensed something lurking about, and tried looking for it before coming to the door. Roger had been in the North Kingdom for the last 3 years, and England for 3 years before that, so has much to tell, especially of his deeds in England.

     Roger tells of his attempt to create a brazen head to help him with magic (something attributed to the real Roger Bacon, c. 1219 - c. 1292 C.E., by the way, despite Bellairs' insistence that this is not the same wizard), but the brazen head was rather deaf, creating problems - e.g., we wanted to surround England with a wall of brass to keep out Danish Vikings, but the head mishears him and helps him conjure a wall of glass, which startles the first Vikings who encounter it, but the second Vikings to discover it simply shattered it with an axe, after which Roger was asked to leave England! [the Viking invasions of England run from c. 800 to c. 1066 C.E. in the real world]. After Prospero relates some bad dreams he has recently had, Roger mentions that he tried to track down a book Prospero had been seeking in England - the one "written in the cipher that no one had been able to crack" [what is described sounds very much like the Voynich Manuscript, a real book, and one that was actually attributed - incorrectly - to the real Roger Bacon in the real world!].

     This mysterious, un-named book [pseudo-Voynich?] becomes a major part of the rest of The Face in the Frost, though our protagonists do not yet realize it. Roger continues to relate the results of his investigations into the book in England - that on the last page it is marked with a dolphin cross, that it contains detailed illustrations of strange plants, especially flowers, corresponding to no real plants ever seen [a feature of the real Voynich Manuscript]. Roger refers to some illustrations in the book as woodcuts, and mentions other artifacts of the printed page [so unlike the real Voynich, not a manuscript?]. Anyway, he found a detailed account of it in the diary of a monk at Glastonbury Abbey [a famous abbey in the real world said to be built on a site important in the King Arthur legend]; we read the account from the diary which reveals that the monk is slowly going mad from his research into this strange book [shades of H.P. Lovecraft, again?], though the monk does not realize this [a particular type of unreliable narrator favored by Lovecraft]. The account concludes with the book being given to a fisherman [of the Innsmouth sort, one wonders?] to drop into the depths of the sea. So the book is presumed destroyed [or is it?]

      The next morning, Prospero's house is surrounded by gray-robed figures who seem to be watching the house from a distance. Prospero and Bacon think that the force responsible for the strange occurrences is moving against them, but is not yet sure of their capabilities and therefore has not yet attacked, therefore they decide not to tip their hand by using magic to attack these apparitions. Instead they escape through a secret passage in the root cellar, using a model ship to sail along an underground stream that lets out in a South Kingdom lake near the home of King Gorm III Wonderworker, a friend of theirs. The model ship is the Actaeon, "which ran -will run - aground on a sand bar during the siege of Charlestown in 1776" [a real ship] (there is also a mention of Lord Nelson at the Battle of the Nile - "You pick up the damnedest things from that mirror"). They pack essentials ("tarot cards, extra tobacco, and pocket magic books" [like D&D's "traveling spell books?"]). They use a shrinking spell to board the model ship [one that was used by a character named Mary Jane to become as small as Sniffles the Mouse in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics in 1940!], after first speculating about whether the apparitions or whoever is behind them will destroy the house (Prosero thinks not - the hearthstone was laid by Michael Scott [Michael Scot] himself, and there are spells on the house even Prospero doesn't fully understand - he here begins to mention a particular cupboard, but changes the topic - BUT THIS CUPBOARD IS IMPORTANT), and leaving a note in black crayon for the housekeeper Mrs. Durfey on the kitchen table under a bust of the the Emperor Pupienus [a real Roman emperor! - Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus Augustus, c. 165-238 C.E., emperor with Balbinus for 3 months in 238 C.E., the Year of Six Emperors, and yes, there really is a bust of him extant, despite his short reign and relative obscurity]. Got all that?

     They escape to the lake (having a short battle along the way with a tiny troll in the passage), in the Grand Union of the Five Counties, Population 7200, Motto: Si quaeris terram amoenam, circumspice ["If you seek a pleasant land, look around you!" - a reference to the epitaph of Christopher Wren, or to the state motto of Michigan], ruled by King Gorm III Wonderworker who has a seneschal named Nahum who practices speaking in the form of Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse [Beowulf is even referenced!]. He has a magical model of the galaxy, and mentions trouble in sector 8 - "I think we must blame the terrible black planet of Yuggoth, which rolls aimlessly in the stupefying darkness" [another direct reference to the mythos of H.P. Lovecraft]. Prospero and Roger ask King Gorm III for the key to the Hall of Records, and he agrees, commenting, "Key . . . 'there was a door to which I had no key' - very fine, Persian decadent writers" [a reference to Omar Khayyam, one of my favorite poets!].

     Having obtained the key, Prospero and Roger proceed to the Hall of Records - an old cottage - where Roger keeps watch outside while Prospero does research inside. He finds the device Roger mentioned in a register of wizards and warlocks - MELICHUS - a wizard with whom we discover he has quite a history! [Note that Bellairs has quite a history with Melichus as well! Melichus, or Milichus, appears as a character in the play The Tragedy of Nero, an anonymous play from 1624 based on an account of the Roman historian Tacitus. This play was the subject of Bellairs' unfinished doctoral dissertation!]  He had been living among fishermen in England to learn sea-spells [the connection whereby Melichus obtained the mysterious book? It is never made explicit in the novel, but probably!], then he returned to the South Kingdom to the town of Briar Hill, where the apparitions of several dead villagers were traced to him [practicing necromancy! never a good sign!], and he was chased into the woods, wounded by bowshot. The his pursuers set fire to the woods, and they later found his burnt body. Oddly, the register entry ends "Obiit Melichus Magister A* 697 A.U.C." - this would translate from Latin as "Master Melichus died in the year 697 from the Founding of the City [Rome] - that Roman date would be 56 B.C.E.! Given that this story seems to be set in the Dark Ages at least, if not much later, and Melichus is a contemporary of Prospero, I think Bellairs or his editor made a minor error here. Perhaps is is meant to be 1697 A.U.C.? That would fit the apparent timeframe more closely, with Vikings attacking England and such! Or maybe it is supposed to be close to the timeframe of the historical Melichus/Milichus mentioned by Tacitus? But even then, this would not be accurate, since the setting of that play is nearer 68 C.E.

     Feeling uneasy to discover that he is being stalked by an old acquaintance who is supposed to be long dead and buried, he goes to fetch Roger. Though he bears Roger's staff, this "Roger" is quickly revealed to be a counterfeit, who claims to have disarmed the real Roger and sent him with 2 of Gorm's soldiers "who think they're under orders from the king to execute a warlock" - "Do you know what happens to a wizard's staff when the wizard dies?" - the staff the counterfeit Roger carries withers before Prospero's eyes - "He is dead. Go home." '[A lot of great fantasy books emphasize a wizard's connection to his staff - it is mentioned in Tolkien, of course, and appears here as well. Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, which is not in Appendix N, makes much of it as well! Much inspiration for the magical staves of D&D and the spell from the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG!] The fake Roger vanishes!

     From this point on, the eerie, creepy atmosphere in the book just continues to escalate all the way to the climax of the book. Bellairs is a real master at creating atmosphere. I highly recommend you read this book and see, if you haven't already! Anyway, Roger does not give up and go home at this point, but presses on, heading to Briar Hill and the forest where Melichus was supposed to have died. He comes to a crossroads where stands a gallows tree, and sees what he thinks at first is a hanging wizard [oh no! Roger?!?!?], but turns out to be a dummy in a brown robe, to which is pinned a note, "Wizard" in the 3 principal languages of the South, along with "large, ugly runes" which he recognizes as a sort used when one wizard wishes to destroy another [like explosive runes? I am reminded of the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG approach, where there are 2 runic alphabet spells, one mortal, one fey, and the effects vary depending on the results of the spell check!]. He left this dummy alone since he knew such runes were "sometimes activated when you tried to burn the effigy."

     Briar Hill was still half a day's walk away, and Prospero was tired, but did not dare camp in the open so close to where his enemy had struck at him and Roger, so he kept walking. The creepy, eerie feeling is played up as he walks alone, but feels as if he is being watched. It gets stranger - as it gets dark, he sees a campfire and approaches, but no one is there. The fire behaves oddly. He sees a light glowing from the bottom of a nearby stream, and picks up the glowing object from the icy waters, and sees it is a triangular stone painted with his own face, but the stream was flaking away the paint. He brings the stone over by the campfire and attemps to examine it with a spell, but it dissolves into a mushy mess, and he throws the "pulpy thing" into the stream, which then begins to boil, and a smoky shape with arms arises for it. Prospero speaks a word [a Power Word spell as in D&D?] - one such as "sorcerers can only speak a few times in their lives" - and then invokes Michael Scott [sic - Michael Scot?] who lies buried in Melrose Abbey [a real abbey near the border between England and Scotland, where any number of notable dignitaries is buried in the real world - but not Michael Scot, as far as I know!], and commands the smoky thing to "Go, in his name, go!" The thing departs.

      Next, Prospero hitches a ride with a wagon of split logs to Briar Hill. The village of Briar Hill is surrounded by a "thick, cruel-looking thorn hedge" that had originally surrounded the outer wall of a castle that had once stood here - many houses in the village were built from the stones of that castle! A sprawling briar tree grows in what was once the courtyard of the castle. There is a night watchman on duty at the gates who admits the wagon upon which Prospero is riding. Once in the village, Prospero looks at the roofless, burned-out shell of of a one-storey cottage, its front wall covered in complicated hex-signs, and above the door a Gothic "M"with many lines drawn through it in red paint - the former home of Melichus. But Prospero is not going to investigate it in the middle of the night! He is directed to the Gorgon's Head Inn, named for the stone head over the inn door that must once have been part of the castle.

     Prospero goes to the Gorgon's Head. He checks in under the name Nicholas Archer of Brakespeare (the village near which Prospero lives), under which he put his customary loop-and-squiggle device in case Roger should come looking for him [I have tried to track down the allusion of "Nicholas Archer," but I never found anything except possibly a cricket player). He played some card games (including tarot cards!) with other guests in the common room, had supper, then went to his chamber. The fireplace in his room was carved to look like a toothy mouth. Through the window, he could see the ruins of Melichus' cottage. He propped his staff against the door of his room.

     Prospero sat in his room and took out his spellbook and smoking pipe. He used a spell for reading light, since the room was not provided with a reading lamp (as the author notes, there is no reason it should be in a medieval world!). He opens to the section on Necromancy, a section he has never used, but dutifully copied when he was the student of Michael Scott. He reads until he falls asleep, then has some pretty terrible nightmares [but I do note that here is a possible example, not from Jack Vance, of "Vancian" magic, in which spellcasters need to study their spells from spellbooks to "memorize" them for the day].

     When he wakes up in the morning, Prospero finds his staff still propped against the door, but the outer surface marred by deep gouges criss-crossing it. If something tried to get in, why didn't it come through the un-shuttered window? He finds a hex-sign on the windowsill in rain-blurred chalk, left by some previous traveler, and realizes that mere chance saved him! He finds that whatever came looking for him frightened the landlord - "Keep your witch's money!" he cries, noting that he spent the night in prayer while some horrible monster was stalking the halls of his inn, and that it's not worth the bother to burn Prospero - "they say you can come back after you're dead. The other one did." As he leaves, Prospero flips 3 gold coins over his shoulder that embed themselves in the limestone of the mantel over the fire (where they remain to this day!) and on his way out crossed the eyes of the stone gorgon for good measure!

     Prospero decides that investigating Melichus' former cottage will have to wait until Roger joins him, if ever. Instead, he takes the west gate out of town, pausing to ask some farmers how to avoid the ill-omened forest (where Melichus was supposed to have met his end). He finds the forest is enclosed by a fence of closely-planted wooden poles topped by spear blades and linked by 3 tiers of rusty iron chains. There is an impressive gate with stone pillars and statues.

     Prospero enters the forest through the gate. He immediately senses something wrong, about the forest. Bellairs here engages all our senses - he describes things as being out-of-focus, almost like a buzzing sound, feeling drowsy, and so forth. One imagines that the air even smelled and tasted bad! Bellairs subtly weaves a feeling of uneasiness and distortion into everything about this forest where Melichus supposedly burned. He finds the flat stone that serves as a grave marker for Melichus - in characters with strange flourishes, it reads, "Under this stone, we have placed the burnt body of Melichus the sorcerer. He did great wrong. May his soul lie here under this stone with his body and trouble us not." Prospero thinks this is a terrible curse, and as much as it seems Melichus is his enemy, he hopes that it did not come to pass, for his sake.

     At this point, Prospero sets up a necromantic ritual of some sort (presumably what he was studying for at the Gorgon's Head Inn) - he makes chalk circles, sets out beeswax candles, and such; Bellairs actually describes some of his preparations with an attention to detail that suggests that he researched some of the medieval grimoires that have come down to us. He traces the name "Melichus" in the dirt carefully with his finger and fills it in with powdered chalk. He attempts to summon forth the shade of Melichus, who is supposed to be dead and buried here, after all - "Come forth, you that are dead!" But the spell seems to fail, and eventually Prospero falls asleep.

     Prospero wakes up and sees a shape like a man on all fours crawling through the grass towards his protective warding circle. It speaks with the voice of a boy, not a man, and clearly in some distress - "I was his servant. They killed me. Let me go," he says, "Go north and kill him. Go north." So that mystery is resolved - Melichus did not die of being show with an arrow and burned in a forest fire - it was his servant! Those who had tried to slay Melichus had found the boy's burned body and assumed it had belonged to the sorcerer; they had buried it here with the terrible curse laid upon it, never realizing that Melichus was still out there!

     Looking more closely at the extra flourishes on the gravestone inscription, Prospero realizes that they add extra layers to the curse, making it difficult to undo. "I wonder what I have done," he wonders. An eerie darkness descends which even magical light barely penetrates.

     The next morning, Prospero returns to Briar Hill, and makes the startled blacksmith give him a hammer and chisel. He goes back into the forest and hacks away at the inscription to undo the awful curse. Then he returns the blacksmith's tools and sets out northbound on a journey still plagued by uncanny happenings.

     Prospero comes to a spooky town called Five Dials, apparently named for a pentagonal clock, though it is missing a dial. The town feels very wrong - again, Bellairs is a master at weaving a creepy ambiance. He spends a nightmarish night at an inn with a sign of a card player (with blank cards). The whole town is apparently some kind of terrible illusion that dissolves away as Prospero flees in the middle of the night.

     Later, Prospero encounters a mile marker pointing the way to a real "Five Dials," which turns out to be a lonely roadside inn, named for a clock that used to be there with a sundial on top used to calibrate the other four dials. That clock had failed long, long ago, however. It is staying here that he meets up with Roger again at last! Roger had found Prospero's "Nicholas Archer" entry in the guest book at the Gorgon's Head Inn (and asks why he didn't go with "Bishop Lanfranc" for an alias, to which Prospero replies that he didn't have his mitre [the allusion would appear to be to an 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury]).

     Prospero and Roger discuss why Melichus would want to kill Prospero. Prospero believes that it all goes back to the "green glass paperweight" (which I refer to here as the GGP for short), which was a magical device constructed by Prospero and Melichus when they were students under Michael Scott. Prospero calls it a paperweight because that's what he would use it for if he still possessed it. The GGP was constructed of four green glass globes, three of which showed a snowy, desolate crossroads and an ancient stone standing nearby, and the fourth could be used as a "conventional seeing glass," used to view places that the wizard using it knew about or had visited. Michael Scott had required Prospero and Melichus to construct a magical device, so this was their project, but they could only take it from the remote house in the north where they had built it if they took it out of the house together. Since the two of them never worked together after that, they never removed it. Prospero assumed that this has something to do with the "unfinished business" between Prospero and Melichus. So it seems that Prospero and Roger are going to have to head north to the house where the GGP still rests in order to investigate.

     The next morning, a troop of men-at-arms stops at the Five Dials on their way north. They are heading to the town of Bishop's Bowes to burn that "town full of witches" by order of Duke Harald. Seeing that this is only the beginning of hostilities. if not outright war, between the South Kingdom and North Kingdom fueled by fear of dark magic (this fear itself fueled by Melichus' meddling?), Prospero and Roger set out ahead of them to warn the folk of Bishop's Bowes or to try to find a way to stop a massacre. The town in named for a bridge - the "bowes" - over the river that flows between the South Kingdom and North Kingdom. The bridge is carved with the arms of "Bishop Hatto" [a real 10th century Archibishop of Mainz, who according to Wikipedia, "memory long regarded in Saxony with great abhorrence, and stories of cruelty and treachery gathered round his name"]. Roger went on to warn the people of the town (but found it already abandoned, the people apparently forewarned), while Prospero remained behind to hold the bridge, and when the soldiers tried to cross it, he destroyed it by magic.

     Prospero and Roger create a carriage for themselves by magic (with some apparent reference to the creation of a coach in Cinderella), and travel north through lands haunted by strange happenings. At one point they stay with a farming family, who tell of a wizard who visited hundreds of years back and left a key for a wizard whose name would start with "P" - they give this brass key to Prospero, It is carved with characters in Welsh, which Roger reads as "Gwydion of Caer Leon made me. Turn twice" [Gwydion was a hero-magician of Welsh mythology; Caer Leon or Caerleon was a settlement in Wales by the river Usk which apparently grew up originally around a Roman legionary fortress].

     As they continue to journey for many days, they hear rumors of a War Council on the Feasting Hill of the North Kingdom, with the seven kings gathering and preparing to march on the South Kingdom, and already holding both sides of the river crossing with cavalry. Unnatural cold weather has set in. They come to a fortified valley and seek a way to cross into it, a nameless monk of the Green Oratory raising exotic plants [inspiration for D&D druids?] helps get them up and over fortifications with a plant whose tendrils lift them up. The monk mentions that the village on the other side has some unique plants and flowers not found elsewhere.

     They arrive at the village early in the evening, but none of the houses has any light burning. They see unusual flowers growing here, just as the monk said, but are chilled to realize some of them are the unknown plants illustrated in the strange book [the Voynich Manuscript?] that obsessed Melichus. There is a carved fountain in the market square that is not running - they examine a panel and see it is a depiction of the Witch of Endor [a Biblical necromancer]. They suddenly see a light burning in a window, and go to that house. Prospero looks in a window and sees a figure reading a book - THE book, presumably - with his back to the window. It is implied that the figure is Melichus. Prospero has the impression that the figure literally cannot tear himself away from reading that terrible book, now! He's trapped! "He's caught, but then, maybe we are too."

      They travel to the north end of the village where the house stood where Prospero and Melichus created the GGP during their apprenticeship to Michael Scott. Prospero still has the key on his key ring, after all these years. The GGP is still on the shelf, sure enough. They light lots of candles and a fire in the fireplace before examining it. There is indication that Melichus has been here, perhaps many times, but has preserved the room almost exactly as it was. His handprints are visible in the dust of the shelf holding the GGP, implying that Melichus has used and perhaps attempted to remove the GGP. Prospero uses it and is able to see his house in one globe (the other three show the snowy crossroads, as always). His house is also in the grip of the unnatural cold - the "face in the frost" of the title is the face-like pattern that manifests on the frost of a window, presumably under the terrible influence of Melichus' sorcery.

      Prospero declares his intention to try to speak to Melichus. When Roger objects that they still don't really know or understand what is going on, Prospero notes that "we can't just sit here fiddling with this ball [the GGP] while he scares the world to death or destroys it," so he spends more than half an hour trying to reach Melichus through the GGP, "Melichus! I call upon you by the secret name you were given by Michael Scott. That is . . ." and when he spoke the name, the room grew darker. Bellairs does not tell us what that name was. Prospero disturbs the meticulously preserved room, causing an apparition to attack him. Prospero says, "Good-by, Roger. I hope we meet again," before grabbing the GGP and crying to the apparition, "If you want this, come and get it," and running out of the house and down the path, where he vanishes.

     Prospero has appeared at the snowy crossroads that always appears in the three "other" globes of the GGP. He sees someone coming, and presumes it is Melichus, so he runs in the opposite direction, hampered by snow. He comes upon the home and shop of one "M. Millhorn," and comes inside. Millhorn wears a black skullcap, and is a student of Kabbala [Jewish mysticism]. Millhorn says he can hold off Melichus, and has Prospero hand him the GGP and sends him downstairs to "find the door you want" - a tunnel filled with many doors, apparently each leading to other places in the world or worlds. He sees one that looks like the door to his own root cellar at home, so he takes that, and finds himself in the forest behind his own house.

     Just as in his vision from the GGP, Prospero finds his house is frosted over in unnatural winter. He is still under magical attack of some kind, however, and he suddenly realizes that the brass key he was given might open the locked cupboard under the stairs that he has never been able to open [WHICH WAS ONLY BARELY MENTIONED IN PASSING AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE BOOK!]. He opens it and finds a small carving of a squirrel with a note clutched in its buck teeth - "USE THE SPELL, FOOL!" The spell? Oh yes - that spell he never found the use of [THE SPELL HE WAS PRACTICING AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE BOOK, BUT SEEMED IRRELEVANT TO THE PLOT UNTIL NOW!]. He races to the book and finds the spell. Just as the door opens, and something steps into the room at which Prospero refuses to look, he uses the spell, ending the attack.

     The scene switches to Christmas Eve. We learn that Roger arrived back in November, in that carriage they had summoned into being. We see the mayor of Brakespeare playing with a crossbow in the back yard. The local innkeeper is mixing drinks in a beer barrel in the living room. King Gorm sits in a corner of the living room, reading the Krankenhammer. Villagers are drinking. The plant-raising monk from the Green Oratory is trying to break up a fight between his Sensitive Anaconda plant and Prospero's Creeping Charlie plant. And we find Prospero and Roger in the backyard with the mayor, throwing snowballs at a satyr statue.

     Later on, after the festivities, Mr. Millhorn arrived through the magic mirror (which protests rather loudly!). He had fought Melichus with magic for nearly an hour, and confesses that he might not have won if Melichus had been knowledgeable about the Kabbala. Millhorn had known that this was coming for years, by "specular stones" and certain dark hints in his readings. Melichus was apparently destroyed, or banished for good. After the battle, he found the book, open to the last page, and found he couldn't read a word of it, but at the end was the device of the dolphin cross. The book seemed to read itself - the letters glowed, one after another, then the book "crumpled into a black ball of ashes and sank into the snow." Millhorn mentions that at the crossroads near his home, one always had the peculiar sensation of being watched.

     They begin to speculate about Melichus' ultimate fate, but are interrupted by the sound of the magic mirror snoring - it had fallen asleep! - and so the novel ends!

     This is not a book with which I have a long history - I read it first as an adult, because of its inclusion in Appendix N - but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It feels odd, though, with strange circles and currents and dead ends in the plot, meandering like a maze yet having a strange underlying unity of composition. And Bellairs is certainly a master of creating atmosphere, as well as being one of the most highly allusive modern authors I've had the pleasure to read. I felt rather thunderstruck that the ending hinges upon what appear to be throwaway mentions at the very beginning. The book feels complete and yet somehow unfinished and unsettling at the same time. It is a very curious story!

     The Face in the Frost did not directly inspire my early gaming nor my fiction writing, but I can see how it inspired Gygax in certain aspects of the creation of D&D, and I would like to think that I have learned a thing or two from Bellairs in terms of style. I would highly recommend it to fantasy fans, with the caveat that this is almost an anti-epic, Bellairs almost an anti-Tolkien, so be aware that its style will not appeal to everyone, but I think it is enjoyable if taken as its own thing, of one's definition of fantasy literature is not overly skewed by what has turned out to be the dominant, Tolkien-inspired mainstream. Also - how can I not love Bellairs? He's clearly educated, erudite, comfortable with Latin, and deeply enough read in medieval history to be able to make allusions to particular medieval bishops. Great stuff!

     Incidentally, although The Face in the Frost is the only Bellairs work cited in Appendix N, I have to believe that Gygax would have added any sequel or prequel had he been able (a lost prequel was written but never published; an unfinished sequel, The Dolphin Cross, was published in 2009 as noted above - neither were available in the late 70s when Gygax made his list). I intend to read more Bellairs as a result of my research, and especially to seek out a copy of The Dolphin Cross. For those with an interest in Bellairs and his work, there is an excellent website dedicated to him and his literary legacy called Bellairsia! Check it out!
Until next time - Happy Reading! Skál!~ Colin Anders Brodd
Villa Picena, Phoenix, Arizona,
Ides of February, 2017
Up next for Appendix N Revisited: Black Amazon of Mars by Leigh Brackett

Word Count Wednesday - Casting the Bones is in editing! In Search of Romance is coming!

Hello everyone,


     It is Word Count Wednesday yet again! This time, the story intended for January, "Casting the Bones," is currently in editing! It is scheduled to post on Tales From Midhgardhur on the Ides of February, 2/13/17! Current Word Count: 7050.

     I'm also working on my February story, "In Search of Romance," which did not make it into print for the Kalends, but might possibly make it to Tales From Midhgardhur for the Ides. So far, though, not much is finished. Current Word Count: 650.

     Also coming on the Ides of February: part 2 of Appendix N Revisited, in which I discuss The Face In The Frost by John Bellairs.




     I have a working title for my March story for Tales From Midhgardhur - "Angels of Death" - what do you think?

     And I am pleased to say that today I received my first real shipments of "stock" of my books - yes, I had personal copies, and a few copies to give out or loan out, but now, I have my books "in stock," which is a pretty amazing feeling!




Happy Reading! Skál!
~ Colin Anders Brodd