Joseph’s Comments (group member since Oct 24, 2012)

Joseph’s comments from the Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" group.

I'm about half a dozen stories into Martian Quest: The Early Brackett by Leigh Brackett -- I'm loving it although, to be honest, there's lots of planet but so far not much sword.

OK, time to read me some Leigh Brackett -- Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, to be specific.

Mary wrote: "On A Princess of Mars

You know, the old "explain how you came to be able to tell us this story" trope does not do much for a reader who's used to the notion that writers will tell us ..."

Yeah, 'twas the style of the times. (Along with wearing an onion on one's belt.)

Interestingly, when the John Carter movie was in theaters Disney put out a three-volume omnibus edition of the entire Barsoom series, but they actually left out the forewords, which made the beginnings of the individual volumes kind of jarring.

(It was obviously something being done by someone who wasn't actually reading the books, but was just removing anything labeled "FOREWORD" or the like -- if the framing story was embedded in Chapter 1, it stayed, but if had a heading that looked like it wasn't part of the text, it was dropped. I was bummed about it because it meant I couldn't get those editions; also, I'm afraid they may have editorially corrupted the series for all time now.)

I have a couple from Roy G. Krenkel that I quite like: Swordsmen and Saurians and Cities & Scenes From The Ancient World.

Charles wrote: "the first three Barsoom books are definitely the cream of the crop"

The Gods of Mars is probably the best of the bunch. But I'm also particularly partial to The Chessmen of Mars and A Fighting Man of Mars. (I reread the entire series a couple of years back when the movie was coming out.)

Mary wrote: "Yeah. He was wiser with Barsoom than with Tarzan: he shifted heroes and heroines. But there he lost his wisdom."

All of his series seemed to kind of run out of steam somewhere at the 60-75% mark.

Charles wrote: "Mary wrote: "I think I may re-read some John Carter books."

Hard to go wrong there."

As long as you steer clear of John Carter of Mars (although it does have a great cover) and maybe Synthetic Men of Mars.

Greg wrote: "Due to GR's post-outage email verification and related issues, I'm not currently able to add another, undated, edition of The Gods of Mars that I've had for many years. I'm not sure w..."

Interesting ... I was going to complain about John Carter's hair color but then remembered he was probably wearing a Thern wig at the time. That's certainly not how I ever would've envisioned the Black Pirates of Mars, though.

The airship design is interesting but they don't really show enough of it to let me evaluate; I have to say that while I liked the designs in the John Carter movie well enough in the abstract, they were nothing like I envision when I read the book -- I always imagined something more like a floating WWI-era battleship but with really baroque upper works kind of like War Rocket Ajax in the Flash Gordon movie.

Charles wrote: "I saw the Gor movie years and years ago. It was pretty bad. I also liked the recent John Carter. There was another adaptation just before that came out with Tracy Lords as Dejah Thoris. I thought i..."

Big thumbs up for Flash Gordon here also. And there was an animated cartoon series back around 1980 that was surprisingly good. Well, the first season was surprisingly good. The second season, not so much.

Would Krull count?

Yep, great article!

Howard wrote: "Well, The Sword of Rhiannon is a slim book and pretty easy to come by in used paperback form. Sea Kings of Mars is its original magazine title, actually, but is also the title of a really grand omn..."

And Sea-Kings has a map!

http://www.theonion.com/articles/grow...

I'll just put this out here:

http://www.baenebooks.com/s-139-leigh...

Howard wrote: "The Sword of Rhiannon is one of my favorite of all Brackett's. A really nice "best-of" is Sea-Kings of Mars, which collects ALMOST all of her best short fiction. I'd have only traded out one or two..."

Gollancz put out some really great collections in that Fantasy Masterworks imprint.

Mary wrote: "Did Poul Anderson do any actual planetary romances? He did full-blown fantasy, and a lot of space opera, but on planet adventure?"

I don't think he did anything novel-length, but did at least one or two shorter works -- "Swordsman of Lost Terra" is the story in the anthology I mentioned. And there was a piece in an anthology I read a couple of years back -- Swords Against Tomorrow. The story was "Demon Journey". At least one of the stories (Demon Journey) was originally published under a pseudonym.

Poul AndersonI reread the entire Barsoom series a couple years ago (around the time the movie came out) -- still some of my favorite books ever (well, the first eight or so, but out of eleven that's not a bad track record), and it's hard to believe that A Princess of Mars is more than a hundred years old.

Swordsmen in the Sky is an anthology that might be worth tracking down -- stories from Poul Anderson, Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, Otis Adelbert Kline and Edmond Hamilton.

(Speaking of Kline -- I really wish someone would publish restored versions of his Mars and Venus books -- Planet Stories did a couple of them, but not the entire set.)

Just finished Steles of the Sky by Elizabeth Bear which isn't S&S but certainly has swords and sorcerers aplenty (and about which I cannot say enough good things), and started The Hum and the Shiver, which also isn't S&S, but is by Alex Bledsoe, who's written other books that are, so it counts, right?

Howard wrote: "How strict are we going to be with the Sword & Planet definition? I was thinking about revisiting some Leigh Brackett, and she's also sort of space opera. Sometimes she's one, sometimes she's the o..."

I'd say we're pretty relaxed. And I was also thinking this would be a good excuse to finally crack open one of my Haffner Brackett collections.

S.E. wrote: "Joseph, I didn't know the series continued. Thx. Given my toread pile is growing faster than I can contain it, I think I will try to claim the next one is Sword and Planet (one of next group read..."

It's set on a planet! It has swords! Your logic is impeccable. (And I know exactly what you mean about your to-read pile.)

S.E. wrote: "Finally read Gate of Ivrel. Great stuff. I am glad this group revealed that I missed a good heroine. Actually, this is my first C.J. Cherryh novel and I was impresse..."

Great stuff indeed! I'll be curious to hear what you think of the subsequent volumes. There was also a fourth book, Exile's Gate, that came quite a few years after the initial trilogy.

And now I'm going back to the roots with The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories by Lord Dunsany.