S.E.’s Comments (group member since Nov 01, 2012)

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

David, wow. Epic reply! Glad you stopped by. The opportunity to have a dialogue with you is incredible. I am about to jump into Tales of Attluma and will certainly take advantage of your presence. Thank you!

Lyndon may have inspired a Cat groupread

Joe! Glad you chimed in. You and David have a neat partnership. you both rock too.

Lyndon, yes! Actually I remember Lloyd Alexander made good use of a giant cat in his Pyrdain Chronicles. Cats may be ok.

Clint, I like what you started discussing.... would be good to get a Oron publication list detailed, esp if short stories occur outside Attluma and the four books.

Welcome Lyndon! The magical cat cozies are a bit concerning... but that's ok. Lots of RBE fans here, including Jason M Waltz.

Ok, I loved Lost Worlds, but it was huge! 400+pages of CAS's awesome (but dense) writing.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I wrote an epic review...hopefully that will help me remember each tale...and maybe lure a few new readers his way.

I thanked the group again. If it wasn't for the groupread I probably would have let this one sit on my shelf even longer, despite me adoring CAS's writing.

My favorite of the bunch? That would be The Hunters From Beyond.... which complements HPL's Pickman's Model,

note that David C. Smith caught wind of this and plans to stop by sometime.

Is Haggard's bday common knowledge? Why would you know that? lol.

Thx Joseph. Whelan has a rich depth of colors and nice compositions. Frazetta's Barsoom images also screamed to be highlighted.... but they got the banner 6yrs ago for S&P.

Sword & Sorcery folk,
The July-Aug groupread folders are set up and ready for you!

(A) Sword & Planet Folder Link

(B) David C. Smith's Oron and Attluma- Folder Link


Cover Art credits for groupread banner:

Edgar Rice Burroughs books:
Barsoom #11John Carter of Mars - artist Michael Whelan
Barsoom #3 The Warlord of Mars -artist Michael Whelan

David C. Smith books:
Tales of Attluma artist Tom Barber
Oron- arist Clyde Caldwell

Sword and Planet topics go here!

My goto guy for S&P is Charles Allen Gramlich, whom I invited to help host this area once we get going.

We've had a few threads over the years on this
2013 discussion thread

2014 S&P Groupread topic

2017 S&P Groupread topic

2014 Image Banner turned out pretty well:

Any David C. Smith book (Red Sonja, for instance), but with the recent release (April 2020) of Tales of Attluma there is renewed interest in his Oron series of the same universe.

Weird Tales of Modernity: The Ephemerality of the Ordinary in the Stories of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft by Jason Ray Carney was just highlighted on Blackgate.com by David C. Smith

Blackgate.com Link

The Kindle preview is very telling. It dissects the heck out of REH, CAS, and HPL's artistic approach to crafting stories and poems.


Book Blurb:
Serious literary artists such as T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf loom large in most accounts of the literary art of the first half of the 20th century. And yet, working in the shadows cast by these modernists were science fiction, horror and fantasy writers like the "Weird Tales Three" : H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard.
They did not publish in artistically ambitious magazines like Dial, The Smart Set and The Little Review but instead in commercial pulp magazines like Weird Tales. Contrary to the stereotypes about pulp fiction and those who wrote it, these three were serious literary artists who used their fiction to speculate about such philosophical questions as the function of art and the brevity of life.

@LD.... lol. I enjoyed the Dark Crystal because it gave me nightmares as a kid.

Check out this epic interview of Scott Oden by member Greg Mele on BlackGate.com.

Neverwhens, Where History and Fantasy Collide: Of Orks and Orkney

Learn more about Oden and his talent for meshing history with fantasy.

my favorite excerpt: "I’m looking for color, texture, sound, and smell. I employ a technique called parallel research, by which I fill in the sensory blanks of the past with similar information from a related source.

For example, When writing Men of Bronze, I relied heavily on Gustave Flaubert’s journal of his trip to Egypt (Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour, 1979) for local color. It was more than a travel journal, though… it was Egypt through the eyes of a poet, and it told me everything from the color of the Nile on a sunny afternoon to the way the sun looks as it sets through a dust storm; the sounds and smells of Cairo’s streets found their way into my descriptions of ancient Memphis.

It’s these little details that sell the fiction..."

@Jack! hi. I enjoyed the Warcraft movie. It had a few interesting elements to it (empathetic orcs stories). i didn't know there was a novelization

Richard wrote: "I think I'm gonna join in now with:

The Dark Crystal"

Richard, have you seen the Netflix series of the Dark Crystal? I enjoyed it. Also got the Soundtrack by Daniel Pemberton.

Sword & Sorcery group reads:

We have LOST WORLDS and MOVIE ADAPTATIONS going strong now...

But what about July and August? Time to vote! Most topics were pulled from discussions from this group.
July-Aug 2020 Sword & Sorcery groupread topic poll.

Not even Willow?