Brian Murphy's Blog, page 31

Old Norse Saga part deux: I missed an opportunity to plug Steve Tompkins

With a few more days of separation from my recent DMR Books blog post, I realize I missed an opportunity to plug this wonderful essay by the late, great Steve Tompkins: An Early, Albeit Pagan, Christmas in the Old North.

Steve's essay is worth reading for many reasons, but I think it sums up well a point I wish I had made better: Old Norse literature has not been mined to death, but rather its surface elements have been too frequently skimmed by subsequent authors. If you want to tap into a rich lode, mine the old, original material. But be wary of the wonders and terrors you will find, or the way they might stir some ancient, ancestral memory.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the likes of Tolkien, Howard, Poul Anderson, Moorcock, and Leiber read the Sagas and the stories of the Elder Edda and Prose Edda and drew inspiration directly from them, rather than second and third-hand re-imaginings.

Quoting Steve's piece:

Despite his occasional fallibility with regard to Robert E. Howard, and his near-lifelong wrongheadedness about J. R. R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock is an extremely perceptive writer, and I don’t believe he’s ever said anything more insightful than this:

To this day I advise people who want to write fantastic fiction for a living to stop reading generic fantasy and to go back to the roots of the genre as deeply as possible, the way anyone might who takes his craft seriously. One avoids becoming a Tolkien clone precisely by returning to the same roots that inspired The Lord of the Rings.

I know thoughtful people who are convinced that “the Northern thing” has been done to death in popular culture. With the best of intentions they urge the fantasy genre, on the page and on the screen, to turn to other climes and other cultures, retiring a stripmined, ransacked iconography wherein the very aurora borealis might now seem as tawdry and insincere as a neon come-on. Christopher Tolkien’s presentation of The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise is not only a fascinating foreshadowing of The History of Middle-earth but a reminder that no matter how many meretricious and mercenary versions of the Ancient North’s mythology have been in our face, for many of us those gods and heroes and dooms, to the extent that the original texts preserve them, are also in our blood.

 

(Not) Lost in Translation: The Influence of Old Norse Saga and Myth on Robert E. Howard and Sword-and-Sorcery

My latest essay has been published on the fine blog of DMR Books. Check it out here.

Norse Saga was hard to access back in the day for obvious reasons (you had to be able to read old Icelandic). But that changed with the first English translations in the late 1700s/early 1800s. By the late 1800s they were pretty widely available, and by the early 20th century many casual readers were encountering them in the likes of the popular Everyman's Library.

Robert E. Howard read them early, and late, in his life, and they influenced his fiction. The Sagas also influenced all of the great names in sword-and-sorcery, including Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Poul Anderson, and others. This essay is my attempt to shed some more light on how that all happened.

Review of KEW special edition Phantasmagoria

Khan!! I mean, Kane!!
I recently finished a special edition of Phantasmagoria dedicated entirely to the life and works of the late, great, Karl Edward Wagner. You can read the review here, at the blog of Tales from the Magician's Skull.

In short, it's excellent. If you love KEW you'll love this. Pick it up. Lots in here to love including many reminisces from friends and colleagues who knew him, KEW stories including the wonderful "In the Pines" and "Sing a Last Song of Valdese," a detailed interview with the makers of the recent documentary The Last Wolf, rare interviews with Wagner himself, scads of cool artwork, and much more.

Whetstone #4 is available (free sword-and-sorcery!), plus Viking Adventures

Free sword-and-sorcery, you say?

Whetstone, a new amateur digital magazine devoted to short works (2,500 words maximum) of sword-and-sorcery, yesterday published issue no. 4. You can download it here, free of charge.

Managing editor Jason Ray Carney asked me pen a short introduction, and I was happy to do so. While I'm behind on my reading of issues 1-3, I wholeheartedly support this effort, and I've derived hours of enjoyment on the Whetstone Discord group. I was glad to kick off the issue and the TOC looks great.

Time to do some reading.

While I'm on the subject of new(ish) sword-and-sorcery(ish), I recently finished Viking Adventures by DMR Books. While it got off to a bit of a slow start, this volume gained serious steam, and I positively could not put down the closing tale, "Vengeance" by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur. This is easily one of the darkest (near black), most intense tales of revenge I've ever read. I was floored to learn it was published nearly a century ago in 1925. It is as dark as the darkest Grimdark fiction, and while the prose is not modern it's highly readable, and beautiful in places.

Henry Kuttner's "Ragnarok" was a magnificent closing note, a fine poem about the twilight of the Northern gods. There are some other great entries in the volume too.

In short, I recommend Viking Adventures. Then again I'll read about anything with a Viking on the cover.

Eternal Champion: Sing a Last Song of Valdese

Can you have metal Friday on a Tuesday night? You can if its Thanksgiving week.
Today I'm highlighting "Sing a Last Song of Valdese" by Eternal Champion, arguably the most sword-and-sorcery heavy metal band of all time (Manowar might have something to say about that...maybe). I mean, lead singer Jason Tarpey writes for DMR Books. 'Nuff said.
I'm about halfway through the Karl Edward Wagner special edition of Phantasmagoria (highly recommended; it's FUN), and came across this quote by Tarpey about the inspiration for this song:
"I love Karl Edward Wagner; I almost made 'Sing a Last Song of Valdese' about another book of his called Dark Crusade, but then it occurred to me that I've already written a song dedicated to his novel Bloodstone, so this time around I wanted to focus on his short stories. There's actually elements of the lyrics in 'Sing a Last Song of Valdese' that are pulled from other stories in his collection called Night Winds, most notably the story 'Raven's Eyrie.' Kane is just an awesome character and I'm always tempted to write more songs in his honour."

Let's hope Tarpey does just that. Have you seen the album cover for their 2020 album Ravening Iron, with artwork by the great Ken Kelly? This image is mainlined S&S; to paraphrase Nigel Tufnel it could be "None more (sword-and-sorcery)." Love it.
You pulled the trigger on my Love Gun, indeed. Thanks Ken Kelly.

Sword-and-sorcery had a BAD reputation in the late 70s/early 80s; here's more evidence

In Flame and Crimson I advanced the claim that one of the principal reasons behind the demise of sword-and-sorcery was its poor reputation. I was mainly referring to critics and academics and cited many which were regularly lampooning the subgenre, but publishing houses were beginning to consider it anathema as well.

I feel pretty confident in that claim, and believe I backed it up pretty well in the book, but here's some more evidence courtesy of James Maliszewski of the Grognardia blog. This post includes some screenshots of an interview conducted with the late, great Greg Stafford in the pages of White Dwarf #17, published in early 1980. Here Stafford relays a story about submitting a sword-and-sorcery story to the editor of a semi-pro 'zine, and meeting with a harsh rejection slip stating that "all S&S is the same hackwork."

Worse, Stafford mostly agreed with the assessment.

The cool bit is that he used that rejection as fuel, and a springboard to create a highly innovative role-playing game, Runequest, which I played the hell out of back in the 80s. 

If it took a kick in the balls to S&S to produce Runequest, that rejection slip was probably worth it. 

But, like a kick in the balls it doesn't hurt any less.

It's an interesting post, and leads to unanswered questions about sword-and-sorcery and whether it can continue as a viable art form. How do we maintain its traditions and archetypes and themes, while not falling into the same repetition and pastiche trap that led to its demise in the mid-1980s?

Signs of a (modest) S&S revival

Look around, you can see the drips. Slow, and few, but persistent.

That's pretty sword-and-sorcery.A new issue of Phantasmagoria dedicated entirely to Karl Edward Wagner.

 

Podcasts and videos popping up, led by Rogues in the House, and now Skull TV.

 

The appearance of new writers with promise (Schuyler Hernstrom), slowly swelling the ranks of the few and the proud (Scott Oden, Howard Andrew Jones, James Enge) who have been working all along.

 

Tales from the Magician’s Skull exceeding its modest kickstarter funding goal of $10,000 more than fourfold.

 

New publishing venues appearing on the scene. The likes of Whetstone. New volumes of Swords and Sorceries, and Savage Realms. An outfit called Flinch Books announcing a forthcoming anthology, Blood on the Blade.

 

DMR Books cranking up the volume with new titles and classic reprints.

 

More fans connecting, led by the Discord Whetstone server.

 

More critical awareness and historical perspective of the subgenre’s roots, of which I like to think I played a part. As have the likes of Deuce Richardson, and others.

 

The latest is the new film The Spine of Night. You can find a spoiler-free, good review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeiAswHi790. The reviewer describes it as a cross of Fire and Ice and Heavy Metal, violent and bloody as hell, with rotoscoped animation. I’m all in.

 

So, what can we deduce from this? Maybe nothing. A coincidental confluence, a mild nostalgia-fueled blip. 

 

But maybe, a portent, something larger, brewing at a low simmer. 

 

We’ll see.

Who am I?

Not Jean Valjean. But, maybe not quite who you’d expect, either. 

On this blog I have assumed a certain persona, centered around my various interests, which you can deduce through my posts. A guy who loves sword-and-sorcery, heavy metal, horror. All true, and I will remain a fan of these things until the day I die. A published author, recently, of Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, a book I’m glad I wrote, and that I believe my favorite subgenre needed.

 

But then I realize, from that esoteric online profile you may deduce I’m some long-haired tattooed buff dude, or maybe a basement dwelling nerd trapped in the 80s. For the record, I claim just a little bit from each of those descriptions. But my posts here would likely lead you to an inaccurate perception of the man behind the keyboard.

 

The truth is a lot more prosaic. The truth is, I’m just an average guy.

 

Sword-and-sorcery is maybe 2% of my story. I live a full life as a knowledge worker, a dad, a homeowner, and all the other trappings and commitments typical of a middle-age (48 year old) dude living in 21st century suburbia.

 

So, feel free to stop there, but if you want more, here’s a little about me.

I am a lifelong writer, and reader. My mother claims I was reading birthday cards at age 2 or 3. I’m not sure about that, but I was pronouncing the names of dinosaurs with great faculty in kindergarten. I wrote some fiction back in the day, horror and S&S, awful stuff that upon reflection shall never see the light of day. It was bad, because I found it a chore, even though I wanted to be a writer. Only years later would I discover that my passion for writing lay in non-fiction. I went to college not knowing what I wanted to do and for at least one semester was enrolled in criminal justice, thinking that I might pursue police work like several members of my immediate family. But I ultimately decided on English after realizing I loved the reading and writing assignments we were given. In college I fell in love in with Shakespeare and Keats and Thoreau and Hemingway and Matthew Arnold. I loved going to class, and engaging with teachers. I loved writing critical essays, and went from Bs and Cs to straight As. My junior year I joined the staff of the student newspaper and began covering news and the arts for The Comment. This was a good move. Can you imagine me as a cop? I can’t.

 

I’m a failed teacher. After graduating from Bridgewater State I was still unsure of what I wanted to do, and so enrolled in post-graduate school to obtain my Master’s Degree in education at Tufts University, with the intent of pursuing high school English teaching. I taught a couple of classes—American Lit, and short stories—before deciding academia was definitely not for me. That was a hell of a time, and a difficult, painful source of self-discovery. I could not handle a classroom, and I lacked the self-confidence to manage the various personalities and dramas that have been part of high school since time began. I got married around this time, in August 1996, and spent a year working odd jobs in Burlington, VT, living in a second-story apartment with my new bride, who was enrolled at UVM. The jobs I worked as an insurance salesman and security guard are stories in and of themselves. Maybe another day.

After we moved back to Massachusetts I found work stringing for a local newspaper, covering small town politics, the police blotter, school committee meetings, and the like. As a freelancer I was only getting paid by the story, but met with some luck when a longtime sports editor jumped ship and left the paper. I was offered the job and in 1997 became a full-time sports editor for a small, family-owned, five day a week newspaper, The Daily Times Chronicle. It’s still in operation today, somehow, and up until this past year I was still covering high school football for the DTC.

 

I had a very interesting career at the Daily Times, where I literally bridged two completely different worlds. When I started full time in the spring of 1997 we were still laying out the newspaper using X-Acto knives, cutting news stories into columns, running them through a waxer, then affixing these strips of paper and hot wax to blue boards. We had black-and-white print photographs dropped off on our desks, that we would get sized, shot in a camera room to print-ready screen, then also lay out on the blue board. We used rolls of fine black tape to box off sidebars. It was a weird art form, a sort of throw-back to the medieval, hyper-local, small-scale artisan labor so favored by the likes of William Morris.

 

But, within three years we were being introduced to electronic layout, doing all of the same work on a computer screen with imported digital photos and digital layout. Sports stringers who once had to come into the newsroom to write their copy on computers could now “email” their stories remotely. It was a total sea change, and a few old timers who didn’t know how to turn on a computer failed to make the transition. I saw the internet come of age as a business tool in my lifetime, and later saw it tear the heart out of journalism as we’ve come to know it, in many respects. I love my internet, but to paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien, progress often comes with a cost. 

 

I saw the writing on the wall. I was a new dad with one daughter and a second on the way, and our retirement plan was cut and wages frozen, as online news changed the newspaper business paradigm. In 2004 I applied for a job at a healthcare publishing company, and in June of that year embarked on a new career writing newsletters in the esoteric world of medical coding and billing. Later I transitioned to audio seminars and webinars.

 

Today I lead a specialized healthcare association for the same company, albeit one that has been acquired and looks very little like it did 17 years ago. We provide digital and live training, resources, and community, for a niche healthcare profession called clinical documentation integrity (CDI). I run this association with a small staff of editors and product developers that report to me. My job is a huge time commitment, and dominates much of my waking hours. I am a salaried 40 hour a week employee, but I work probably closer to 50 hours/week, and come 5:30 or so I’m drained from making a multitude of decisions during the average day, or getting on camera to record programs and run meetings. I run a diverse advisory board that includes nurses and MDs, help plan large events, and deliver conference speeches in front of crowds as large as 1900 attendees. Which is nuts, as I’m a confirmed introvert, who recharges his battery in solitude, typically in the pages of books. As my part of my job I still get to write, and I host a podcast. I have traveled to most of the major cities of the United States, including Vegas, San Diego, Nashville, Orlando, Chicago, D.C., Baltimore, St. Louis, New Orleans, Seattle, Austin, San Antonio,  on and on. I’ve endured panic attacks and disappointments and layoffs, and unending drama. I get paid pretty well to do this. It’s not so bad.

I am a dad. I have been married, largely happily I’m pleased to report, for 25 years. I have two daughters, ages 16 and 19. My oldest is a sophomore at Colby-Sawyer in New London NH, a small, quintessential New England college specializing in liberal arts and nursing. Colby-Sawyer is only a few miles from our family’s lake house, which my grandfather built after his WWII service, and so it feels a lot like home when we go to visit. My youngest daughter runs cross country and is AP student with a bent toward math and chemistry. They’re both unbelievable, and raising them is my greatest achievement. I am already sensing the empty nest in my future.

 

I am an ex-gamer, who got tired of D&D after a first stretch through early high school and a second run of a dozen years (2000-2012). My longtime GM passed away from cancer, far too young, and I have faded from the scene. Maybe I’ll sling the dice again some day.

 

I lift weights. I’m too soft around the middle and need to drop 30 pounds, but I’m stronger in the weight room than most people you will meet, and can deadlift north of 500 and bench press more than 400 pounds. I don’t brag about this, I would probably be better off running on a treadmill or taking up jogging, and I’m never going to need to press 400 pounds off my chest, but it’s what I like to do. I got hooked on weight lifting while playing high school football and it never left my blood. I love sports, the purity of competition, and believe they remain a rare refuge where there is a clear winner and loser, and lessons are won, and life lessons forged through hardships. I’ve got an arthritic hip likely from my high school and college playing days, but like the slight hearing loss I’ve suffered from too many loud metal shows, it’s been Totally Worth It. We all accumulate scars over our lives, and you should—or you haven’t really lived.

 

I like craft beer (which largely explains the spare 30 pounds), and hanging out with friends, when I can. Combine the two, season with heavy metal music, and it’s a great night.

 

And of course, I enjoy reading sword-and-sorcery, sword-and-planet, some mainstream fantasy, historical adventure, horror, old pulps, non-fiction, or whatever else happens to cross my transom. And write it about here, and elsewhere. I watch very little TV, save for the occasional football game or classic horror film or evening news. I’d rather read and write, and started this blog in 2007 as an outlet for my interests. From here my stuff has appeared on places like The Cimmerian (RIP), SFF Audio, Black Gate, DMR Books, Tales from the Magician’s Skull, various small print journals and zines, places I’m forgetting.

 

All presented here without comment, just to offer you some context for the man behind the Silver Key.

I backed Tales from the Magician's Skull; you should too

Tales from the Magician's Skull has launched a second kickstarter, More Tales from the Magician's Skull, to fund additional issues beyond no. 6. You can find the kickstarter here.

I backed it today, going with an option that includes five print and digital issues.

If you enjoy sword-and-sorcery and want to see it survive and thrive, you have to support these types of publishing ventures. I'm not trying to shame anyone who doesn't have the cash, but if you do, why not give it a go? You're helping to foster new writers, new stories, and a pretty cool outfit. I love what Goodman Games has done with the magazine and the Skeletor-esque, tongue-in-cheek Skull mascot who immolates interns like a bug zapper. Lots to love here.

The Wolfen, Whitley Strieber

I own this same edition...
Stephen King once said that the release people get from horror is "sort of narcotic," freeing us from our normal day-to-day tensions (Feast of Fear: Conversations with Stephen King). I can identify. I recently after a span of probably 38 years re-read Whitley Streiber's The Wolfen, starting it while airborne, heading to a high-stress business trip to Dallas, TX. I can tell you, this fun novel took my mind off pandemics and presentations and uncertainty and swept me off to 1970s Brooklyn, where a pack of werewolves are terrorizing the city's ghettos.

I have some history with this book. My grandfather, a WWII veteran whose experiences in the Pacific I detailed here on the Silver Key, liked to read--specifically, he favored thrillers, horror, men's adventure, war novels, and other fun potboilers. He kept a few shelves of books in his basement, and a couple more shelves of paperbacks behind his leather easy chair. As a boy of probably 8-10 years of age I remember creeping behind his chair in his living room, reviewing the spines of books he had on his shelf, and selecting The Wolfen purely for its evocative title. The menacing eyes on the cover reflecting a woman in terror assured me I had made a good selection.

I still remember reading it, all those years ago, and being absolutely terrified, beset with nightmares in the days after. The book opens with a highly effective scene of two cops assigned to dump duty, marking up abandoned cars in need of crushing at the Fountain Avenue Automobile Pound. The place is typically no threat, with only a few homeless, rats, and stray dogs to contend with. But on this night the two policemen are surrounded, savaged, and eaten by a pack of werewolves in the most savage manner imaginable. These creatures are so fast that the cops aren't able to clear guns from their holsters.

Streiber's great conceit with The Wolfen is that werewolves have been living among us for thousands of years. Only scant, half-forgotten accounts remain. These are not classic Lon Chaney werewolves--men by day which transform into beasts by the light of the full moon--but an advanced series of semi-intelligent predators, wolf-ish but with fearsome paws that can grip like hands and end in razor claws, rudimentary intelligence, and faces that have something of humanity in them. Living stealthily on the edges of society, these incredibly efficient hunters and killers live off humanity, who exist side-by-side with the packs in blissful ignorance. The Wolfen plays on the theme of the threat of urban decay. Recall that New York in the 1970s was in deep crisis, a time when "wholesale disintegration of the largest city in the most powerful nation on earth seemed entirely possible." The wolfen are symbolic of the rot that accompanies urbanization.

I still have my grandfather's same paperback copy, and I loved it almost as much during this recent Halloween inspired re-read as I did as a kid nearly 40 years ago. I know that Streiber has gone off the deep end and is a bit of a pariah in horror circles, but he wrote The Wolfen (1978) very early in his career, and the book throws off sparks. If you like monsters and mayhem and hard-boiled police investigations and gunplay, you'll like The Wolfen.