November Hiatus, Brand Zero, and a Gauntlet

Lately things have been getting busy in real life (not bad, mind you, just busy, like visiting Texas for a wedding. Not mine.) and a lot of stuff has ground to a halt for various reasons. In an effort to get some things back on track, I'll be taking a hiatus from most online spaces in November to try and get a draft done. Its absolutely doable from the outline I have, and should've been done in early October if a text file hadn't gotten corrupted on me, and a break will do me good. I was planning on a "Noirvember" thing again, but oh well. Maybe next year.

But before that, a couple of thoughts regarding a recent discussion in PulpRev circles.

Brand Zero is an idea posited by Rawle Nyanzi that bounces off of what Jon Del Arroz discusses here. In short, if you're convinced that the corporations that own and control all of the major entertainment franchises actively hate their established audiences, then don't give them attention. At All. About anything.

Brand Zero is a strong move, and a manifestation of “Just Don't Look.” Starve the beasts for money, but also starve them for attention. The last good Terminator movie was in 1991. Its dead, and the people who own it keep jolting the corpse to make the legs move so they can squeeze out some more dollars out of fans of the good old days.

Over the last couple of years, a cottage industry has arisen for commentary explaining why and how these once dominant franchise have screwed the pooch, and it was insightful stuff.

For a while.

Explaining how The Last Jedi is an abject failure of story structuring and insulting to an audience that has built up over 40 years is fine once. But there's only so many ways that you can say “Star Wars Sucks Now” without offering a practical solution or alternative before it gets old.

Star Wars could be saved, if ownership at the very top of Disney changed and the new boss fired everybody in a decision making capacity at Disney-Lucasfilm, apologized for how badly everything's been handled, put a hold on on live action movies for a time, produced a 2D animated version of the Heir to the Empire/Dark Force Rising/Last Command trilogy, then did a massive time skip forward or backwards for the next live-action installment.

I have a better chance of growing a third arm than Star Wars getting fixed. What George Lucas built up over 37 years only took Disney five years to destroy. Five.

Its dead. Might as well treat it that way.

Does that mean I'm going Brand Zero? Probably not fully. Star Wars was such an influence on my life, especially creatively, that I don't think I can ever fully shake it loose, but even so, I'll probably limit those discussions to the Legends Never Die side project, because for whatever flaws the Expanded Universe had, it was never as bad as what is out there now. I've already said my piece about Disney Star Wars on the blog, and outside of cruising Wookieepedia every now and then, I don't even consume NuCanon products anymore. I don't have anything else to say about it at this point (aside from this post, natch'). The same goes for all of the other major franchises. If I talk about Marvel or DC, it'll be about the old stuff that was made by competent storytellers. I didn't even bother to see Endgame. I don't care about the new stuff, so I'll probably just drift into Brand Zero by default.

The flipside of Brand Zero is promoting New Hotness instead of the Old & Busted. After the hiatus, I'll get on that, as well as doing some more classic pulp stuff in the pipeline.

But here's the thing: Positioning your work as a counterbalance to converged dinosaur franchises isn't enough. #StarWarsNotStarWars made sense a couple of years ago, but right now it doesn't. That old gif of a dog staring blankly ascupcakes are pulled away is more entertaining than Star Wars is nowadays. Its not a high bar to clear.

I don't care if its a sweeping space opera that's “like Star Wars, but Good.” I don't care if its an epic fantasy that reads like a mashup of Beowulf and Harry Dresden. I don't care if the book is explicitly written to piss off the SJW Death Cult. (If its a good book, it will automatically piss them off).

Oppositional marketing isn't going to get me to buy something. Give me a character I can give a shit about who faces obstacles that I want to see them overcome. The PulpRev and related indie fiction scenes have been making tremendous strides in the last 3-4 years, but the next step is cranking out characters that you fall in love with enough that you want to talk about them with complete strangers.

Everything. Boils. Down. To. Characters.

It doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, it shouldn't be. One or two sentences should be enough to tickle the amygdala.  “Farmboy dreams of leaving the farm and learns he's the lost son of mighty warrior and is swept up in a galactic civil war.” "Grim Puritan wanders the earth, driven by a burning desire to hunt injustice." "World War I veteran leverages a network of agents in a crusade against crime."

Just to prove I'm serious about this, here's what I've got: "Air Force washout awakens in the far future to find a Solar System ruled by a tyrannical empire, and his only hope for survival lies with a band of space pirates led by a mysterious masked woman with crimson hair."

2019: Moving Forward by Looking Back

Look at that smile!

Since everyone in my writing circle seems to be doing a “welcome to 2019” thing, I figured I might as well do the same. And its a way to do some dusting around here.

The blog has lain fallow for a couple months, but for good reason. I'm working on a Mech Space Opera taking influence from a lot that I've learned (and also un-learned from my academic indoctrination) and putting into practice. Its going to be big. Its going to be sweeping. Its going to come in at a reasonable page count instead of a doorstopper. Its going to be contrary to every major Science Fiction franchise in the West that's devolved into meaningless goo over the last twenty years. Its going to be four books, to start. I'm about halfway done with the draft of book one, and the few eyes that have laid upon it, are stoked. Its like “Red Dawn” meets “Buck Rogers,” but that's just a starting point.

I'm hyping this up because a) I should probably do that some more when it comes to my own work, and b) I'm legitimately excited to write this story. In a lot of ways its a throwback love letter to the 80s sci-fi that shaped me like Star Wars was a throwback to the 40s sci-fi that shaped George Lucas. Its going to be nuts, and once I have more details hammered out after the first draft, I'll start doing lore posts for it.

As for the broader world of science fiction and fantasy? I probably won't be talking too much about that, because it would be beating a dead horse. Doom has already befallen every major franchise under the sun owned by a massive corporation. The video game industry is barreling toward a major crash for the big publishers, and it looks like Hollywood and Music are also going that way. Barnes & Noble is on its last legs, and when it goes, Big Publishing is going to have a reckoning too.

In short, Hell has come to Frogtown.

So what do I think is actually going to arise this year?

Horror. I think Horror is going to get more experimental and weirder as talent flees the sinking ships of mainstream SF/F. Probably more throwbacks, too, but not failures like the Mummy reboot reboot reboot.

Fantasy. Probably going to see a decline as everyone cringes away from Harry Potter. The interesting stuff is going to be in the short story market.

Science Fiction. This is going to be a battleground, and I'll be there. Both Pulp SF and Hard SF (represented by Star Wars and Star Trek, respectively) are in extremely dire straits, and the spoils are ripe for new blood to take advantage of audiences that are starving for optimistic space adventures. Nick Cole and Jason Anspach are doing a lot of great work with Galaxy's Edge, and I expect that series to grow by leaps and bounds, but its a wide-open galaxy out there, waiting to be conquered.

Westerns. I've noticed Westerns have been quietly coming back to book shelves over the last two years or so. I think it'll stay mostly underground, but I think Westerns are going to slowly keep building momentum, especially as Middle America ponders things like national identity and what it means to be an American.

Yesterday on Twitter, I ragged hard on the Battlestar Galactica reboot as being boring, subversive trash that was the root of modern (visual) SF being needlessly gritty with unlikable characters and no payoff to anything. It was a good convo, with some insightful back-and-forth. Over the course of the rant, I linked to a 2004 essay written by Dirk Benedict, the original Lieutenant Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica in the late 70s.

I suggest reading it because Benedict is quite eloquent in it, and every single observation that he lays out is 100% relevant to the state of entertainment in 2019. And this was written fifteen years ago. 

There's a lot to meditate on there moving forward into the new year.

Appendix N Review: The Warlord of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs returned to Barsoom in 1913 to write The Warlord of Mars. Continuing from the cliffhanger ending of Gods of Mars, the story was serialized in the pages of the All-Story Magazine incarnation of Argosy, and later published as a novel in 1919.

Dejah Thoris and Thuvia of Ptarth are still imprisoned in a strange prison within the bowels of the Temple of the Sun with the treacherous Princess of the Holy Therns, Phaidor.

Not one to simply sit and wait out the year before the door opens again, John tries in vain to find a way in, and comes across a conspiracy between Thurid, a Black Martian of the First Born who bears a deep grudge against Carter since an embarrassing defeat in Gods of Mars and Maitai Sheng, leader of the White Martians and high priest of the cannibalistic Holy Therns.

The conspirators open the prison and spirit the women away, with John Carter and his trusty calot Woola giving chase, first to the equatorial jungle on the other side of the planet where the Red Martian city of Kaol holds sway, and then to the frozen north, where an entire race of Yellow Martians has been locked away from the rest of Barsoom by natural fortifications, and the cruel Salensus Oll rules as Jeddak of Jeddaks.

This feels like a shorter story than the previous two, but that could be the rocket-fast pace of the chase that takes up the bulk of the book, culminating in a titanic battle for the city at the North Pole of Mars, where every ally that John Carter has ever made comes to his aid. Mighty Tars Tarkas of the Greens, Thuvia the Princess of Ptarth who can sooth wild animals with her voice, Thuvan Dihn, Lord of Ptarth who has been searching for his daughter, Xodar the new chief of the Black Martians, Carthoris the son of John Carter and Dejah Thoris, Kantos Kan of Helium, Tardos Mors and Mors Kajak, the lost lords of Helium (and Dejah's father and grandfather), and Talu of the Yellow Martians. There are even some Therns who have allied with the forces of Helium who show up.

Much of the second half of the book is wrapping up story threads and giving satisfying conclusions, but the most satisfying development comes in how Phaidor grows as a character by the end in a touching scene.

Then the final chapter is a victory lap as John Carter makes his way back to Helium with Dejah Thoris where he is then put on trial for his heresy in the Valley Dor. Its a fake out, of course, and the statute of limitations on spoilers is long gone on a story from a century ago, so I'll tell you that John Carter is crowned Jeddak of Jeddaks by a unanimous vote of all the people he's forged together into his alliance over the past three books and it ends with John taking Dejah into his arms and kissing her.

Its about as FLAWLESS VICTORY as you can get in fiction, and it is completely and truly earned. John Carter has gone through hell and back across an entire planet, fighting anything and anyone who would stand in his way. He's been captured, tortured, thrown off of multiple buildings, thrown off of Mars entirely, and always kept coming back. Not for conquest, though he does that and ends centuries of racial hatred along the way, but for love.

Its a deeply satisfying conclusion to the initial trilogy and it hints at future adventures among the next generation of heroes, with Carthoris and Thuvia drawing close to each other. Indeed, there would be 8 more books in the Barsoom series.

Absolutely recommended. If you want to raise good boys, give them Harry Potter. If you want to raise good men, give them John Carter.

Appendix N Review: Black Colossus

Margaret Brundage knew how to sell the hell out of a cover

Returning now to Hyborea, Robert E. Howard's Black Colossus was published in the June 1933 issue of Weird Tales.

It begins, not with Conan, but with Shevatas, master-thief of Zamora (the land where Tower of the Elephant took place) who is exploring a sand-buried ruin of a city called Kuthchemes in the deep deserts south of Koth. By accident he awakens the undead sorcerer-king Thugra Khotan. The Liche-like Thugra, who oversaw horrific blood sacrifices in the name of Set, goes right back to trying to conquer the world. Now assuming the disguise of Natohk, the Veiled One. First on his list of conquests is the small kingdom of Khoraja, and its nubile princess Yasmela.

Tormenting and taunting Yasmela at night through his sorcery, the princess seeks solace in Mitra, the god of her Hyborean ancestors. Guided by a disembodied voice, she is directed to go out into the streets of her city alone at night and put her trust in the first man she meets.

The instructions are bizarre, but desperate for help, Yasmela does so, and so finally Conan of Cimmeria enters the story, who is currently employed as a mercenary.

After a negotiation that was equal parts paranoia and sexual tension, Conan is made commander of Khoraja's army, which then marches forth to meet the hordes of Natohk on the edge of the desert.

What follows is a titanic battle sequence that remarkably fits perfectly within a short story. Its incredible. There is humor, humanizing details for random grunts, and actual tactics that Conan employs to take advantage of the terrain. And rivers of blood, of course, because this is Conan after all.

Through heroic effort, Conan is able to win the field, but Yasmela is taken by Natohk back to Kuthchemes where he intends to take her for himself. Conan gives chase and confronts the sorcerer in his lair, and the way the story ends deserves to be discussed, so here's the recommendation before the SPOILERS start: Its a straightforward story that is deceptive in its simplicity. Its also a rip-roaring good time. Absolutely recommended.

SPOILERS

The fight with Thugra Khotan at the end is hilariously one-sided. The undead sorcerer postures and threatens with a giant black scorpion, but Conan kills him with a single blow by throwing his sword into his chest.

From there, he rescues Yasmela and wants to take her away from this horrid place, but she's the one who initiates the romantic encounter. Thugra had obviously intended to ravish her, but now Yasmela, who has been the actual protagonist of the story who got things moving (Conan has been merely reacting to situations thrown at him), decides that Conan has earned her embrace.

“No!” she gasped, clinging with convulsive strength as barbaric for the instant as he in her fear and passion. “I will not let you go! I am yours, by fire and steel and blood! You are mine! Back there, I belong to others – here I am mine – and yours! You shall not go!”

Here, in this ancient ruin, Yasmela is above any societal obligations befitting her rank and sex. Here, away from civilization, she is able to choose her sexual partners according to her own will, and she chooses Conan. A lot is conveyed about her character in these last few paragraphs when she is freed of the specter of Thugra's unholy lust.

The story caps off with Conan and Yasmela implied to have consensual sex in the chamber of the evil sorcerer-king that Conan just killed to prevent from raping her. That is the most Alpha Chad ending I think I've ever read. Its a wild ride. 

Pulp Review: The Bronze Door

Oil-executive-turned-mystery-writer Raymond Chandler was a master of characterization and prose, and his cynical gumshoe Philip Marlowe stands in the rarefied air of outstanding fictional detective characters alongside Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. He is easily one of my favorite authors.

Coming onto the Detective pulp scene in 1933 with a string of stories for Black Mask and similar publications, he would switch gears to novels in 1939 with his breakout The Big Sleep, but right before that he published a short story in the ninth issue of John W. Campbell's nascent fantasy magazine Unknown. Published in November of the very same year as The Big Sleep, The Bronze Door is a marked departure from Chandler's murky California streets in that its a piece of fantasy (close in tone to a Weird Tales story) set in foggy ol' London.

I became aware of this story about a year ago thanks to Nathan over at The Pulp Archivist who digs up all kinds of interesting pulp-era information and analysis.

We open with the unhappy marriage of James and Louella Sutton-Cornish. James is something of a run-down aristocrat who likes to drink while his wife is an unpleasant battleaxe with a spiteful Pomeranian named Teddy, who torments Mr. Sutton-Cornish whenever he can.

After an argument that causes Mrs. Sutton-Cornish to storm out of the house, James goes out into the night and takes an outdated style of horse-drawn cab to Soho, where he finds an auction house and a mysterious bronze door that he supposes belonged to a harem thanks to the Arabic writing on it.

By chance he discovers that things that pass through the doorway simply disappear without any fuss or muss. Discussing the door with the auctioneer, the little man hops through and vanishes like everything else.

Now the proud owner of a magical bronze door that can apparently disintegrate anything that passes through it, he has it delivered to his home, and then the wife returns, demanding a divorce...

From there the crime story elements rise to the surface since several people have simply disappeared and the police are beginning to take notice. The prose is of Chandler's usual top quality, with the mood and setting well-established. The little dog Teddy is wonderfully realized as a hateful little bastard, but then he becomes sympathetic when Mr. Sutton-Cornish chases him around the room trying to goad him into the door. That's a hard switch to pull, and Chandler does it excellently.

The Sutton-Cornishes are both terrible people, and a there's really nobody in the story to root for aside from Detective-sergeant Thomas Lloyd, who's really only in two scenes and isn't given a whole lot of spotlight, so that's a flaw.

The horse-drawn cab that is seemingly from another time/place? That's never developed. Its just a weird moment for its own sake. Its a shame too, since its a neat little scene.

The centerpiece of the story is the door itself, which manages to be sinister and corrupting while still being an inanimate object. The manner in which it disappears things is great, too. No fancy special effects, no messy piles of ash, no noisy sounds. Just...nothing, which is even more unsettling.

The Bronze Door is a curio of a story. Something to read once for the novelty of Raymond Chandler stretching his wings into unfamiliar territory. You read it, go “huh, that was interesting,” and then largely forget about it, except you steal the idea of the bronze door itself for your D&D campaign because you want to troll the hell out of your players.

It would be interesting to see more Chandler fantasy stories, but with the success of his Marlowe books, I can't blame him for following the money. 

Appendix N Review: The Guns of Avalon

Released two years after Nine Princes in Amber, 1972's The Guns of Avalon (which is a stellar title, by the way) picks up where the first book left off. Corwin, recently escaped from brutal captivity in the dungeons of Amber, travels through shadow worlds to find his lost domain, Avalon. Or at least something close enough to it. Corwing needs two things to conquer Amber: an army, and guns that will work in Amber's magical environment.

He arrives in the land of Lorraine, a medieval kingdom close to Avalon and once ruled by a shadow of Corwin (just go with it, it can get complicated). He rescues a version of Lancelot from weird cat demons, and then finds a castle run by Ganelon, a man who used to be one of Corwin's chief lieutenants in Avalon until he betrayed his lord and was exiled. Recovering his strength in Lorraine, he meets and forms a relationship with a woman named Lorraine, earns Ganelon's trust, and helps lead their armies against hideous demons who are pouring out of an expanding zone of Chaos. This is Corwin's fault, because of the heavy curse he laid on his brother Eric in the first book.

Lorraine (the realm) is saved, but Lorraine (the woman) is lost, and Corwin avenges her in a brief but moving scene, then he and Ganelon travel to Avalon, only to find Corwin's long-lost and presumed dead brother Benedict acting as its protector against a Chaos incursion. The brothers are cordial, but Benedict wants no upheaval in Amber, so Corwin watches what he says around him. Corwin also meets Dara, a beautiful young woman who identifies herself as Benedict's granddaughter who takes an intimate interest in Corwin.

Corwin gets his army and his arsenal, and travels back to Amber, only to find it under siege from the forces of Chaos.

The book starts out extremely strong by dialing things back to Corwin getting involved in a smaller-scale conflict. It helps his conscience grow more and gives the reader glimpses into his more tyrannical past. Ganelon did him wrong, but his punishment was enormously petty. The doomed relationship with the camp follower/seer Lorraine is also touching, and Corwin swinging his silver sword Grayswandir against weird goat-headed demons never gets old.

Then it slows down a lot after the reunion with Benedict. Dara is interesting and mysterious, but its mostly talking, then Corwin walking through shadows until he gets to a couple places he needs to go. Shadow walking is cool, but it doesn't need to be described in detail every single time.

Then it picks right back up again when Corwin and Ganelon leave Avalon and are chased by a righteously furious Benedict. Benedict is the Master of Arms of Amber, and even with an amputated hand, he's still the best swordsman in the family and Corwin is absolutely terrified of having to fight him. From there, its a rocket ride to the finish, where Corwin's feud with Eric takes an abrupt turn and Dara turns out to be more than just a granddaughter.

The prose remains solid, but I felt the middle of the book dragged itself down. However, the beginning and ending are as strong as anything in Nine Princes, maybe even more so with the climax. If you've read the first book, I recommend the second.

Appendix N Review: The Face in the Frost

On a world dominated by a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom divided by a large river, a late spring day brings surprises to an eccentric home near the village of Brakespeare. Inside lives an old wizard named Prospero (expressly stated to NOT be the one you're thinking of). He gets a sense that something would very much like to kill him but isn't strong enough. His friend Roger Bacon (yes, THAT one, the monk who made a talking bronze head) arrives to pay a friendly call and the two get caught up in a magical mystery of who is trying to kill Prospero and why.

1969's The Face in the Frost is a curious book from John Bellairs, a fantasist who mainly wrote young adult gothic mysteries about young heroes overcoming some supernatural threat to the world. Those all came after this novel, however. Here, two old men have to solve a supernatural threat that might threaten the world, or at the least throw two kingdoms into chaos and war.

It is a short book, but very dense in descriptions. The two kingdoms are lushly described as they are visited, and Prospero's house is a marvel of whimsical engineering. The overall level of whimsy in the story is incredibly high, as is the comedy, such as when Prospero and Roger visit King Gorm the Wonderworker, a hobbyist wizard who spends his days happily tinkering away with a cosmic pinball machine that uses miniature galaxies as pieces. Prospero has a passive-aggressive magic mirror that likes to show him baseball games of the Cubs losing. Christianity is woven into the fabric of this world, as are other assorted mystical traditions, and there's even what's very obviously a Jewish wizard who helps out later on with the powers of the Kabbalah.

If this kind of free-flowing kitchen sink approach to worldbuilding annoys you, you're probably going to have a bad time. Especially since Bellairs is able to smoothly transition from whimsical charm to supernatural horror. This is not Lovecraftian horror, but much more like unvarnished fairy tale horror. Creepy, but in a different, much more chaotic way.

The two biggest standout scenes are the false village of Five Dials (named after its clocktower), and the haunted forest where an evil wizard and former colleague of Prospero's named Melichus was supposed to have been killed in.

   A voice breathed in Prospero's ear with a wet-leaf smell, and 

   what that voice said, Prospero has never told anyone. He turned, 

   and he grasped an arm, but his hand sank into mud—mud with a

   center like bone.

Descriptions like this abound, and therin lies the strength, and weakness of the book. Details are lovingly described, filling out what is in actuality a thin plotline. The bulk of the book is made up of episodic subplots full of magic that lead toward a final confrontation (that's a little bit anticlimactic). The descriptions are dense, and the paragraphs are too, and often quite long. Its not really pulp in that it frequently takes the time to stop and smell the roses, but it also describes the roses in excellent and entertaining detail.

Bellairs writes the pretty words good, is what I'm saying.

While it may not be to everyone's taste, I do recommend the book. (Don't let the “Ursula Le Guin loved it!” put you off. Stuff actually does happen in this story.) The wizards are suitably wizardly and solve their problems in a way that makes sense (by not making sense, this is magic, after all). Come for the charming setting and stay for the supernatural horror. Its a fun little palette cleanser between TALES OF TWO-FISTED ADVENTURE!

Appendix N Review: The Tower of the Elephant

In a rowdy section of the “City of Thieves” in sweltering Zamoria, a young Conan stalks the streets seeking adventure. In a tavern, he hears a Kothian slaver talking about a fabulously valuable jewel: the Heart of the Elephant, which sits in the mysterious Tower of the Elephant in the heart of the city. It is the treasure of the sorcerer Yara, and all who have tried to enter the tower have met with horrible death.

Desiring to be the first to succeed, Conan gets the information he desires from the fat slaver, tensions flare and in a brief tavern brawl, the slaver from Koth lies dead on the floor and the Cimmerian stalks toward the tower.

Sneaking into the tower, Conan finds another intruder, Taurus, the self-proclaimed “King of Thieves.” Deciding that two heads are better than one, the two join forces and infiltrate the sinister tower.

Cover art by José Ladrönn

Appearing in the March 1933 issue of Weird Tales, The Tower of the Elephant was published two months after The Scarlet Citadel. Here, Robert E. Howard takes a different approach to the first two Conan stories by going back to his barbarian hero's past. Years before taking the throne of Aquilonia, young Conan is a wandering thief in a foreign land that has barely heard of Cimmeria. For his part, Conan doesn't know what an elephant looks like either, aside from knowing it has a tail on its face. The perils within the Tower are suitably perilous, and the solutions are clever and exciting, particularly how Conan and Taurus deal with several deadly lions that guard the garden at the base of the tower.

Its a good story, and short. It hits all of Howard's strengths (action, tension, descriptions of the exotic, dark humor, etc) and while a little more straightforward than The Scarlet Citadel (which I think is a slightly better story) is still absolutely recommended and worth reading.

So go read it, because the next part is going to cover BIG spoilers.

I'm not joking.

Cover by Earl Norem

Still here? Don't say I didn't warn you.

This is the story where Conan meets a space alien. Yeah, that's plenty Weird Tales right there. Trapped inside the tower is an ancient, blind, green-skinned humanoid with a giant elephant's head. Yag-Kosha, or Yogha, as he calls himself (he uses both names), is from the distant planet Yag, and he was part of a group of exiles who flew to Earth on great wings. On Earth, the Yagians slowly died out, their wings atrophied to nothing and unable to leave, with Yag-Kosha the last survivor.

Having watched humans arise over centuries, he was eventually befriended by Yara, whom he taught many powerful secrets. Yara betrayed him, and imprisoned him, and now he sees Conan as a chance at escape. And revenge.

Art by Sanjulián

Naturally Conan is confused as hell, but his solution is to accept the situation as-is. Yag-Kosha is a funny-looking weirdo, but he's a nice guy, and clearly in misery. Conan's sympathy (and dislike of slavery) makes his decision for him. He'll help the elephant-man, even if it means losing out on the jewel.

As in The Scarlet Citadel, this crude kind of virtue is what sets Conan apart from later pastiches. When the chips are down, Conan actually does the right thing, as opposed to the profitable thing, even if the results don't go quite as he intended (doubly so when magic is involved). Conan always gives off the impression of a coiled spring ready to jump, but his decision-making process is what sets him up as a fully heroic character. The weirdness and violence he finds himself surrounded by is just icing on that cake.

Art by John Howe

Appendix N Review: Nine Princes in Amber

A man wakes up in a hospital bed with his legs in a cast and he is repeatedly sedated. He has vague memories of a car accident and nothing else. Discovering his body has healed from whatever injury it sustained, he escapes from the private clinic and seeks out the only lead he has to rediscovering his identity, his sister in New York City.

He is Corwin, son of Oberon, and prince and heir to the fantastic city and kingdom known as Amber. Amber is the city at the heart of all reality, the greatest prize for any conqueror. As Corwin begins to remember his past, he also begins looking to the future. He is a Prince of Amber, and he will fight to claim his birthright.

This is the premise for Roger Zelazny's 1970 novel Nine Princes in Amber. Zelazny used to be a huge name in SF/F during the New Wave era. Winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards (back when that meant something) and was a longtime friend of current SF/F elder statesman George R. R. Martin. Zelazny was hugely talented and popular in his lifetime, but after his death in 1995, he dropped immediately from the public consciousness. In his hometown of Euclid, Ohio, the suburb of Cleveland I live in, he's effectively unknown.

That's a damn shame, because Zelazny is outstanding.

Without getting too deep into spoilers because here especially the journey is as important as the destination, Corwin (and the audience) discovers that he's part of a mostly-immortal dysfunctional family with powers that can affect and shape reality the further away from Amber they get. Each has their area of expertise. Julian is a master huntsman. Bleys is a tactician. Ransom is a rascally gambler. And so on and so on. They're all pretty much arrogant bastards, including Corwin himself before his amnesia, but Eric is the worst, and seizes the throne for himself, despite Corwin's best efforts.

Taken as a whole, the book is very much a product of the early 1970s. Dialogue is snappy and full of slang peppered with Shakespearean references while everyone who matters smokes cigarettes. Its Groovy for lack of a better descriptor.

There's a car ride through different realities that takes Corwin and Ransom to the outskirts of Amber. An undersea reflection of Amber called Rebma (get it?????) where Corwin reclaims his memories by walking the Pattern (a Magical/Mathematical Maze) and has a romantic interlude with its green-haired queen. There's a grand military campaign to take Amber from Eric that nearly ends in disaster multiple times (and with staggering casualties) that also nearly succeeds. There is a coronation sequence that displays Corwin at his most defiantly heroic before several years' tortuous imprisonment.

Its only 175 pages long, but it spans years and easily outpaces anything from A Song of Ice and Fire in terms of political intrigue, backstabbing family members, outrageous magic, swordfights, and grand conflict. The squabbles of the Princes of Amber are downright Olympian in their scope, and the prose flows beautifully off the pages.

The rulers of Amber are assholes, but they are magnificent ones, and Corwin, who was once one of the biggest assholes of the family, is given a fresh start and the hints of the beginning of a redemption arc for his character.

The only major nitpick I can put down is that they nameless, effectively faceless grunts that get recruited into Corwin's war are glossed over so much that its hard to feel anything about them dying in droves. They don't matter outside of Corwin occasionally feeling sympathy for their purpose in his ambitions.

Other than that, its a wildly imaginative, colorful, and trippy journey though space and time. Zelazny must have had access to the good acid. Absolutely recommended.

Appendix N Review: The Scarlet Citadel

The Phoenix on the Sword was published in December of 1932, and was an immediate success for Robert E. Howard. The following month, January 1933, Weird Tales would publish the next Conan story: The Scarlet Citadel.

Conan, King of Aquilonia, is having a very bad day. His army was drawn into a trap and he himself is captured by a band of would-be usurpers: the traitorous ally Amalrus, the king of Koth, Strabonus, and Kothian sorcerer Tsotha-lanti. The first two want to kill him and be done with it, but Tostha wants to play with him before killing him because that's what evil sorcerers do.

Conan refuses an offer to let him abdicate, and Tsotha has him thrown into the dungeon of his bright red fortress (a scarlet citadel, if you will). Chained to a wall and facing down a giant snake, Conan escapes partly by luck, and wanders the dark recesses of the dungeon, encountering one of the sorcerer's horrific experiments after another.

Eventually he rescues another prisoner from a giant plant monster. The grateful man recovers and reveals himself as another sorcerer: Pelias, and old rival of Tsotha-lanti's who was imprisoned for a decade.

Conan, knowing that Aquilonia would be thrown into chaos, needs to get back in a hurry, but has no way of getting there. Pelias has a solution. He magics up a strange flying beast and tells Conan not to think too hard about where it came from. Conan reluctantly does, and it flies him back to his capital where the beatings commence.

The story segues into the chaos engulfing Aquilonia and how Conan's loyal retainers tried and failed to maintain order against a group of grasping nobles, and then a would-be usurper named Prince Arpello, who turns out to be an instant tyrant. Conan drops down onto a roof ready to go and after a very brief fight, grabs Arpello and throws him off the roof with a mighty heave, causing the usurper to smash on the stones below “like a mangled beetle.”

Sort of like A Song of Ice and Fire, only actually satisfying and not wasting your time with pages and pages of awkward sex and food descriptions.

But we're not done yet. We're going into SPOILER territory because the ending is really worth discussing.

Conan rallies his army for a pitched battle that deals with the mortal usurpers, and he runs down Tsotha-lanti on horseback and beheads the wizard.

Being a sorcerer, this doesn't stop him from trying to re-attach his body, but suddenly an eagle swoops down and carries the head off, laughing with Pelias' voice. The headless body takes off after it, and Conan is left wondering what the hell is wrong with wizards and their feuds and he just wants a drink.

Both here and in The Phoenix on the Sword, there are moments of dark comedy, and Howard delivers them exceptionally well. After the high tension of the entire story and the catharsis of the battles, dipping into screwball comedy doesn't hurt. It has to be deliberate comedy, since Conan's deadpan “I hate wizards” reaction is completely in character with a man used to dealing in concrete situations.

That said, The Scarlet Citadel features a similar plot to Conan's debut: King Conan has to deal with a plot to overthrow him. The solution involves stabbing many men. The execution is different. The fighting is larger scale and the Weirdness factor is ramped up dramatically. Tsotha-lanti's dungeon is a carnival of horrors, from plant monsters, invisible creepy things, a bloated monstrosity that weeps with a woman's voice, and deep pit leading down that feels wrong. The giant snake is mundane by comparison.

The Scarlet Citadel expands the scope of the Hyborean Age in every direction. Conflict is bigger, magic is stranger, and there's a bit of continuity discussing the “Mad Bard” Rinaldo from the first story.

Come for the badass fighting, stay for the weird magic. Its Robert E. Howard. Its Conan. Its a good time.

What Killed Urban Fantasy?

I like Urban Fantasy as a genre quite a lot. I like the blending of fantasy elements with modern trappings. I like the deep diving for weird monsters from around the world. It was booming a decade ago, and now nobody really talks about it. Why?

My introduction was Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Great book. Probably his best that isn't Good Omens. But its a standalone. It doesn't need a sequel or a series. American Gods was okay, but the ideas it played around with were better than the text itself, which tended to wander aimlessly in the heartland for chapters on end. I remember finding Anansi Boys to be much more entertaining, but oddly enough, more forgettable. Still, I wanted more.

From there I moved on to Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. It kicks ass. Can't recommend it enough.

I wish most of the rest of the genre wasn't garbage. Something From the Nightside was pretty terrible (Sorry, Mike!) but that's for another day. Suffice it to say, I drifted away from the genre because it turned into a boom of clones sitting on shelves that all have the same covers of a man or a woman standing in a generic static pose, possibly holding a weapon. If there's a background, its a street at night. I started to write my own (which turned into a trilogy that's not quite ready for prime time, but Soon™)

Today I discovered an essay written in 2008 by Lilith Saintcrow, who's a leading name in that genre. I have not read any of her works, but her name is familiar, and she's a prolific working author with a cool name. I respect that. I've also found out that I'm blocked by her on Twitter without ever having interacted with her, so...I don't feel too bad about critiquing a decade old essay on Urban Fantasy by someone who might be using a blockbot.

This is the essay: 

There are some things I agree with in the essay. Notably that UF carries a lot of heritage from old pulp detective fiction. I agree that the “Literature” and “Mainstream Fiction” genres get too much respectability from people who tell you their opinion on literature is important.

That's kind of it, though.

I disagree that “lowbrow” is something negative. I disagree that Paranormal Romance is considered lowbrow and trashy because it its female. Its considered lowbrow and trashy because it doesn't try to be anything more than simple entertainment. Sci-Fi and Fantasy are usually considered trashy and lowbrow for that same reason. So are old comic books. So are old detective novels. I've come to respect works of fiction that get a reputation for being “trashy and lowbrow” because that's become an accurate code for “doesn't shove the author's message down your throat.”

I have never heard of anyone referring to Tom Clancy novels as “serious” literature before this essay, because the last time I checked, thrillers were in the same “trashy and lowbrow” ghetto with the rest of the fun books. Its all explosions, action and technology porn, which is fine for the audience that consumes it. Just like masturbatory fantasies about humping sexy vampire lords is fine for the audience that consumes it. My mother read a LOT of Harlequin Regency Romance books while I was growing up. The covers and back of the book blurbs were all effectively identical. My mom knew they were simple entertainment that wasn't going to change the world. They served an audience that loved them and kept buying them, respectability be damned.

“Respectable Literature” is a trap for anyone who pursues it.

Its also insulting to female writers and characters of the past that to say Urban Fantasy is socially groundbreaking for making female action leads the protagonists. C. L. Moore's (a female author who absolutely outclasses most modern male authors) Jirel of Joiry armored up and went into Hell so she could take revenge on someone who conquered her kingdom in 1934. Dejah Thoris has been kicking ass and taking names since BEFORE WORLD WAR I.

They keystone of the essay though, and the part that I disagree with the most is that the key to the success of Urban Fantasy back in its 2008-era boom, was Moral Ambiguity.

What does respectable literature have by the bushel? Moral Ambiguity. What does post-modernist thought have in copious amounts? Moral Ambiguity. What does pink slime fantasy and science fiction shove down the throats of people who showed up for magic and spaceships? Moral. Ambiguity.

Guess what rising genre bubble crashed less than a decade after its big boom?

Oh right: Urban Fantasy. In 2016. 

Moral ambiguity drives audiences away, male or female. What makes Harry Dresden work is that he is a flawed but fundamentally good man trying to save people and punish evildoers at great personal cost. The reason I tossed Something from the Nightside aside after reading it was because John Taylor is a smug, selfish, unlikable asshole antihero.

That's what happens when you take an antihero, give them special powers, and then unleash them on a morally ambiguous setting. You have assholes on power trips who don't have to answer to anybody.

Villains, really.

I'm honestly surprised that an essay that lauds Raymond Chandler as an influence would sing the praises of moral ambiguity. Chandler's fiction is set in a dark, gritty urban environment, true, but Philip Marlowe is himself a rigidly moral hero. Not anti-hero. Hero. Sure he drinks and smokes and occasionally sleeps with women, but these are minor flaws. Like his spiritual grandson Harry Dresden, Marlowe is working class hero who's operating in slums he really doesn't belong in, but he crawls through the crime and muck helping people who probably don't deserve it and bringing justice to villains who absolutely do.

“But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” 

Chandler wrote that sentence in his essential essay “The Simple Art of Murder.” Its the core of the noir hero's appeal. Take a dark setting and throw an unflinchingly moral hero into the mix like a grenade.

What killed Urban Fantasy? Moral Ambiguity.

Addendum: Eagle-eyed readers will notice a lot of words in that essay from 2008 that sound awfully familiar in [Current Year]. Make of them what you will.