Jason Waltz’s Reviews > Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery > Status Update

Pages 78-79, 'Rage against the Machine,' is an excellently written section exploring Howard's view on industrialization and how that influenced his creation of Sword-and-Sorcery.

Just read a very thorough comparison of Howard and H.P.Lovecraft through their letters. While a nice summation of the letters collection and a decent way to showcase REH's beliefs, not really sure why a history of S&S needed so much of that...I nodded off 3 or 4 times in these pages.

Just finished chapter 2. Very informative and offers much of the foundation of S&S and REH's influences. I liked the sidebar examination of which story is the truest progenitor of the S&S attitude. Lots of source material shared and numerous authors to explore for adventurous readers.

Words matter and this bothers me: "...S&S is about red-handed barbarians overrunning the walls, a literature of decay, entropy, and violent overthrow."

'A literature of' entropy sure, overthrow certainly, barbarians of course. Decay? I neither understand nor appreciate the word choice.

And finally, I simply love de Camp's declaration quoted on page 11 that S&S heroes are NOT antiheroes, for he uses the term as intended.

Quibble 2: while the author and I agree Solomon Kane is not an S&S character, our reasons differ. He attributes this to armature; I attribute it to attitude. I observe this because thus far my reading would make me think the author also believed S&S to be an attitude, so for him solely to base his argument upon the weaponry (and a bit of setting) surprised me.

S&S reveled in forging higher with a passionate will to dominate. That's the rub: popular entertainment is the product of its environment and society. Grimdark is our reflection today. We'd rather claw our heroes down, rend the flesh from their bones to justify our degraded choices and hide our own despair rather than attempt to claw our way up to them. Grimdark is a downward-facing genre; S&S is upward facing.

...all else, believing it better and more desirable to bring down, to yank down by desperate fingernails, everyone/thing else into the muck and degradation for that self to stand upon, choosing to remain in the quagmire simply atop others rather than to pull oneself free or die in the struggle to do so as the S&S protagonist. There's our simple difference: grimdark seeks to justify or revel in remaining where one is.

...till it sticks. GRRM's famous series is no more grimdark than history and to try and leverage it otherwise is laughable.

If one insists on declaring grimdark kin to S&S, it is a devolved bastard child with only appearances in overlap. S&S actually sought and provided an elevated hope and promoted perseverance and a will of survival. Grimdark seeks only to revel in its filthy nihilism and promote the self over

I disagree that 'grimdark' is an extension or next morphing of S&S. Using such terms, one can just as easily say that it's morphed from high/epic fantasy. There are very few standalone grimdark stories after all, most of them rivaling any of the more epic multi-tome series, and don't we all declare S&S is the better the tighter and shorter it is written? Half the bluster of grimdark is throwing its name at anything