Cimmerian alumnus and REH guerrilla Mark Finn has been fairly quiet of late, but it isn’t through lack of news: far from it. His paradigm-shifting biography Blood & Thunder: The Life & Art of Robert E. Howard, is getting an update.
Underwood Books will publish, in September 1, 2010, a 48-page hardcover, Sword’s Edge –Paintings inspired by the Works of Robert E. Howard, collecting art by Manuel Pérez Clemente, better known as Sanjuliàn.
Cathy and Arnie Fenner –along with Manuel Auad– are the co-editors. It would be an understatement to say that Arnie Fenner’s critical views on Robert E. Howard are not shared here on The Cimmerian blog; a lot of REH fans probably still resent the “Bitter Tree” debacle. The late Steve Tompkins penned these exquisite words back then: “Howard’s poetry is the blood in the veins of his prose; too bad the batteries are dead in Fenner’s lyricism-detector.” Apparently (Mitra be thanked!), Mr. Fenner’s eye for good fantasy art seems more keen than his updated Howardian criticism skills. As a precautionary measure: if he provides an introduction, fans of the Man from Cross Plains should probably better check it out before buying the book.
Author John Pelan, editor of Centipede’s Conversations with the Weird Tales Circle, has included Robert E. Howard “Pigeons from Hell,” H.P. Lovecraft‘s “The Outsider,” C.L. Moore‘s “Shambleau,” Clark Ashton Smith‘s “The Dark Eidolon,” Fritz Leiber‘s “Horrible Imagings,” Lord Dunsany’s “Thirteen at Table,” H. G. Wells “The Valley of the Spiders,” Karl Edward Wagner‘s “Sticks“ and Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” in The Century’s Best Horror Fiction.
This massive (one hundred stories, nearly sixteen hundred pages and over seven hundred thousand words of fiction!) two-volume set anthology by Cemetery Dance Publications is heading to the printer this summer. John Pelan did only one selection per author and has chosen one tale per each year of the twentieth century (1901-2000) as the most notable story of that year. Robert E. Howard’s masterpiece fits right in.
On SF Signal, John DeNardo asked the questions below to ten science-fiction and fantasy writers and editors:
What are some of the best sword and sorcery stories? What makes them so good?
Martha Wells, Steven Brust, Mercedes Lackey, James Enge, Mary Robinette Kowal, Mark Chadbourn, P.C. Hodgell, Gail Z. Martin, Brandon Sanderson and Lou Anders have all replied. Unsurprisingly, tales by our favorite Texan author, Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock are among several authors’ favorites. Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett as well as TC‘s friend –and most excellent writer– Charles R. Saunders‘ stories are cited too.
As John O’Neill put it over at the Black Gate blog, the list is well worth reading since “you’re sure to find more than a few good recommendations, whether you’re new to S&S or an old sword-brother.” That’s true, though one omission made me cringe: the ludicrous absence of the immense Karl Edward Wagner, who wasn’t listed by any writer and is only mentioned in the comments below the blog entry…
A Hasidic Jewish mystic roams the West, battling demons of the astral plane, relentlessly pursuing his renegade teacher. This is the premise of a new set of four novellas by Edward Erdelac, a screenwriter and storyteller who names Robert E. Howard as his “all-time favorite writer.”
The key to spinning a successful weird tale is for the author to “believe” the story he is telling. A hip, ironic, tongue-in-cheek approach might make for good campy fun, but it destroys any sense of the strange, the menacing, the macabre. By rooting his the mystical adventures of The Rider in actual Jewish folklore, Erdelac creates depth and resonance that no mere make-believe demonology an match. And he plays it straight.
The four tales in Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter have a skewed, bizarre Spaghetti Western feel — and that’s when they’re working in the “real” West. Things get really strange when The Rider abandons his body for extraplanar travel. The setting owes more to the Sergio Leone aesthetic than to the authentic West. However, there are a few obscure nuggets that make a Western history aficionado smile — like the True Name of Sadie in “The Nightjar Woman. And in the second novella in the collection, “Dust Devils,” there is a wonderful direct homage to Howard’s “Kelly the Conjure-Man.
After a long delay, the third and final Wandering Star Conan volume has been released.
Well, the wait is finally over! Five long years after it was originally supposed to appear, Conan of Cimmeria, Volume 3 has been released and those who preordered their copies from The Book Palace or Terence McVicker should have them in their hands and on their shelves by now. For those who have been collecting this series of beautiful limited editions by Wandering Star over the years, this is a tremendous relief, as it seemed for a while that the Conan volumes were doomed to suffer the same fate as the incomplete Donald Grant Conan series from the 1970′s. Now, with Wandering Star focusing its efforts fully on the big screen rather the printed page, it is possible to step back and take a look at the most ambitious, most beautifully illustrated, most accurately edited, and certainly the most expensively priced series of Howard’s works ever produced.
The first Robert E. Howard book published by Wandering Star was The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane in 1998. Lavishly illustrated by Gary Gianni and edited by Rusty Burke and Patrice Louinet, this beautiful slipcased volume came with a audio CD recording of “Solomon Kane’s Homecoming” and prints of the interior color plates. All the copies were numbered and signed by Gianni and there were three versions created: the standard Limited Edition of one thousand fifty copies, the Publisher’s Edition of one hundred copies with extra illustrations, and the Leatherbound edition of fifty copies which was not sold to the public. The original purpose behind Wandering Star’s production of this book was to have a visual and textual package that could be given to producers, directors, and studio executives in order to help pitch the concept of a Solomon Kane movie. Soon, however, they decided to continue to produce more limited editions, with the lofty goal of eventually publishing all of Howard’s major works in such a format. The series promised to deliver Howard’s verse and prose not only in an aesthetically pleasing presentation, but also in the most textually-pure format possible.
Given my interest in the development of the “Conan” movie (not for the film itself, you know, but mostly because it’s going to be introducing a lot of people to Robert E. Howard, and it’ll be important to know ahead of time what’s coming) I was eager to delve into May 2010′s Empire, a British film magazine of great esteem and popularity. Within was “Conan the Unmade,” a seven-page article on the history of Robert E. Howard “adaptations” on the big screen. However, I was not expecting a pleasant surprise: REH legend Rusty Burke graced the magazine with his presence.
The fourteenth Isue of the Robert E. Howard: Two-Gun Raconteur journal is scheduled for June 10 2010, hopefully in time for Howard Days.
Michael L. Peters’ cover painting for REH: Two-Gun Raconteur #14 features the scene from the long version of “Three-Bladed Doom,” where El Borak/Francis X. Gordon fights against the dreaded “Haunter of the Gulches.” He is also drawing a four plate Solomon Kane portfolio for the issue.
Robert E. Howard onced asked his friend, Tevis Clyde Smith, “What shall a man say when a friend has vanished behind the doors of Death? A mere tangle of barren words, only words.”
All of those who posted today, including myself, never met Steve Tompkins personally, though I got damned close in 2006. None of us would presume to say that Steve was our “friend.” However, without a doubt, we all respect his work and regret his absence.
Are all words spoken in regard to the dearly-departed or much-admired then “barren”? Robert E. Howard seemed to think so when he wrote those lines and sent them to Smith in 1928. Certainly, eulogies and whatnot can never bring back the deceased. All the same, I believe it can be argued that such words keep ones since-passed-on alive in the hearts and minds of those left behind.
In the case of Steve Tompkins, the words he wove with such skill live on here at The Cimmerian and elsewhere. As the tributes below attest, his wit, word-craft and insight are well-remembered. There can be no question that his thoughts on a myriad of subjects have found fertile, not “barren,” ground.
I can’t help but feel redundant in joining the tributes to Steve Tompkins. What can I possibly say that hasn’t already been said? What can I contribute about Tompkins the scholar, editor and critic that hasn’t been covered by those with greater knowledge and erudition than I? Heck, what can I say that I didn’t already say back last May? But then, to suggest that everything that can be said, has been said, is something of a discredit to the impact and importance Tompkins had on Howardom.
His essays have graced journals and magazines. He edited and wrote the forwards to many books, including some of the Del Rey collections, in many ways the definitive Robert E. Howard collections. His opinions and knowledge of all realms of fiction made him preeminently qualified to speak about the merits of one author or another in regards to the great scheme of literature. A criticism often leveled at fans of Howard, Tolkien and other such authors is that we simply haven’t read enough “real literature” to make a reasoned and informed judgment on where they stand against the rest. Such a thing could surely never be said about Steve Tompkins, a man whose knowledge of high literature and history is surely as great as his intimacy with popular culture. Who else could make the link between “Beyond the Black River and Richard Slotkin, or “The Black Stranger” to The Scarlet Letter, so succinct and clear? Who else could note similarities between the characters of an Oscar-nominated, blockbuster movie to a 1930s Sword-and-Sorcery novel? Who else could speak about expectations of the upcoming The Hobbit from the Tolkien fan, the film fan and the fantasy fan within him simultaneously?
I know the ghost of Tompkins is strong, for though he has left this plane of existence, the echoes of his words reverb around all things Howard–not least in my own time on The Cimmerian. My recent “Barbarians of Middle-earth” articles could be considered spiritual sequels, or at least derivatives, of Tompkins’ seminal “The Shortest Distance Between Two Towers“; in particular, his comparison of Howard’s heroes to Aragorn was inspirational. In addition for opening my eyes to the incredible character of Valerius, Steve’s blog “What a Mummer Wild, What an Insane Child” inspired me to keep an eye out for Howardian allusions or applications in films as disparate as Up! and Avatar. Even his delightful children’s tales with a Howardian twist “Night Falls on Whoheim” and “Bumbles Pounce” moved me to contribute my own seasonal story, “Walking in the Air, With Burning Feet of Fire.” I don’t doubt others in the Howard sphere are similarly influenced and inspired by Steve Tompkins.
I like to imagine, in some world beyond man’s reckoning, there is a grand longhouse–perhaps like Beorn’s hall as envisaged by Tolkien–with many hearty men quaffing ale and roaring wild songs with abandon. Among them are great storytellers, like Homer, Tolkien, and Howard, telling tales of old heroes and great deeds to a captivated audience. And, still starstruck even after a year carousing all night and fighting all day, a certain newcomer is having the time of his afterlife.
