Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" discussion

Share the books that got you hooked into Sword & Sorcery. Even better, re-read them, and see if they hold-up-to-time or evoke fond memories.

Better yet...review them, since chance are you were not reviewing books as a child/teen!

S.E. wrote: "Share the books that got you hooked into Sword & Sorcery. Even better, re-read them, and see if they hold-up-to-time or evoke fond memories.

Better yet...review them, since chance are you were not..."

When I was about 10 or 11, my parents and I visited friends of theirs for the weekend. In the hallway just outside of my bedroom was a small bookshelf with The Hobbit ('66 "Barrels..." cover) and a bunch of Conan paperbacks. I was already familiar with Tolkien, so I was intrigued to see what else a fan of his would have on their shelves. It was also exciting to find adults who were into fantasy, because I was made to believe up to that point that the genre was purely "kids' stuff".

As a 10 year old boy that was into Metal and D&D, it was those Savage Sword of Conan comics that hooked me. I was a Conan fan, but did not become an REH fan until I was in my 30’s and got my hands on those wonderful Del Reys. I’m now pushing 50 and I am still discovering treasures that are old now, but were not all that old when I was in my reading prime. I read much science fiction and horror, but ignored fantasy as my experience with fantasy was Brooks, Eddings and others that eventually I tired of and left.

Growing up, I'm not sure if I read a whole lot of actual sword & sorcery -- I was aware of Conan, but didn't read any of the books or comics at the time (1970s/1980s) -- John Carter of Mars was much more my jam, or Lord of the Rings. The closest I probably got was stuff like Moorcock (Corum and Elric &c.) and Clark Ashton Smith. And I think I had just the first Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser in paperback.

I enjoy reading these entry-stories into S&S. I hope to reread some of the influential books that exposed me to the Dark Fantasy world...also about 10yrs of age. I snuck these into the banner.

1) The Book of Three: the Horned King and his Cauldron Born (undead zombies...inspiring Disney's movie the Black Cauldron many years after publication) affected me greatly. I am curious how this holds up to the standards of current, old-self.

2) The Warlock of Firetop Mountain: This solo-RPG was made by the creators of Warhammer (Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson) and clearly set the foundation for their style. The antagonist was a necromancer called Zagor.

Actually I had a call out today to this group during the DCC panel for Tales from the Magician's Skull. Fast-forward to min:sec 36:40 to hear me confess having a mid-life crisis in which I had track down all works re: Zagor (i.e. about six books and two board games).

About ten of the best FF books are available on phone App's now. They work pretty well....but you still need pen an paper to get thru Firetop Mountain.

Anyone else here into the old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks? Zagor fans?

@Clint, are you going to reread any comics?

I love the Chronicles of Prydain! I wish I'd actually kept track of things when I was young, but that was one of my first introductions to fantasy. (Red Planet and The White Mountains were my first introductions to SF.)

Joseph, I think you've read just about everything.

Not yet, but not for lack of trying.

I have no clue because the early books blur together. Chronicles of Prydain definitely.

@Seth. I have Conan the Barbarian Omnibus 3, with Roy Thomas’s Barbarian Life volume 2 waiting in the wings.

I've reread The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, via the phone App. It was enjoyable. Interestingly, their in-App map sucks, and 1/3 of the book is a choose-your-own-path riddle [Zagor's maze] requiring the reader make their own map on paper (that is still necessary).

I am also on a personal quest to learn how to deliver information in fantasy fiction better (also trying to improve my writing as most of us are). So I am very impressed with rereading The Book of Three; the pace of delivering key information is super tight. From a nostalgic front, each mini-scene within a chapter is as vivid as I remember (so far).

Masters of the Universe: The Board Game will launch on Kickstarter in 2021.
As a board gamer, I am addicted to buying miniature board games. I plan to pass on CMON's He Man, but later this year some of you may consider it:
https://www.cmon.com/news/cmon-announ...

Due to licensing issues...Europe gets a different version from a different company:
https://archon-studio.com/blog/master...

S.E. wrote: "I've reread The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, via the phone App. It was enjoyable. Interestingly, their in-App map sucks, and 1/3 of the book is a choose-your-own-path riddle [Zagor's ..."

The Kindle version of FIretop creates the map as you go through the dungeon, which is handy for the lazy.

Jason wrote: "S.E. wrote: "I've reread The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, via the phone App. It was enjoyable. Interestingly, their in-App map sucks, and 1/3 of the book is a choose-your-own-path rid..."

Jason, I have a old version on an original e-ink Kindle that seemed to have a better map --perhaps you have that version too. I can't get it to work on my phone's Kindle App.... I may have to recharge my old Kindle to check it out.

Does yours read/play on a Kindle-App?

S.E. wrote: "Jason wrote: "S.E. wrote: "I've reread The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, via the phone App. It was enjoyable. Interestingly, their in-App map sucks, and 1/3 of the book is a choose-you..."

I've never tried the Kindle App. Not a fan of reading on my phone.

I have no nostalgia for my past, and feel little desire to re-read things that I read in my formative years, when there's so much that I haven't yet read. Of course there are a few that I liked very much, and I've forgotten so much that re-reading them would certainly be a new experience for me. Bringing back memories of those early years is the furthest from my goals, but I expect there's a good chance that I would still like the things I liked before, since many of my tastes remain the same, if now spiced with more experience. But the vast majority of my all-time favourite books are ones that I read during adulthood. (Let me mention that I only read Moorcock, Burroughs, Howard, and Lieber for the first time within the past 5 years.)

During my early teens, I read from a rather different collection of books than those mentioned in this thread, it seems. In fact, I'd never even heard of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain until just a few years ago when the video game was released, but I did read several other series of similar solo fantasy game books.

I read a variety of SF, horror, urban fantasy, and fantasy during that time, including things like Wild Cards, The Guardians of the Flame series (beginning with The Sleeping Dragon), three separate fantasy series by Piers Anthony which kept me busy, some Greg Bear, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, some Andre Norton, lots of Anne Rice, a couple of teen occult horror series including authors like Bruce Coville, a great number of anthologies and movie adaptations, and a wide assortment of scattered books by random authors of varying note.

There were certain other authors who were popular at that time, whose work turned me off swiftly and decisively, but I prefer not to say which, because there are others who like them. There were also numerous books that I saw often at the libraries, but never picked them up for one reason or another, but mostly intimidation. One of them, Dune, I intend to finally try this year.

So I can't say that there are any books from my past that I intend to re-read during this group time, but I'd be glad to discuss any of the ones that I remember well enough, or of course ones that I've read recently that were someone else's childhood.

The Joy of Erudition wrote: "I have no nostalgia for my past, and feel little desire to re-read things that I read in my formative years, when there's so much that I haven't yet read. Of course there are a few that I liked ver..."

Don't often get the time to participate here, but I was struck with your comment that you're reluctant to mention writers who haven't appealed to you. As I used to tell my students, that's fine, but actually talking intelligently and politely about the technical reasons why a writer's style/content doesn't work for you is really interesting to others and helps sharpen our own critical facilities. In other words the 'why' of why we react is important. Just a thought...

Phil wrote: "I was struck with your comment that you're reluctant to mention writers who haven't appealed to you. As I used to tell my students, that's fine, but actually talking intelligently..."

Ah, well, I have my reasons for it, and I suppose that deserves some explanation, but let me start a new topic on the subject so as not to distract from the group read discussion. I'll link it here when I do.

The Joy of Erudition wrote: "Phil wrote: "I was struck with your comment that you're reluctant to mention writers who haven't appealed to you. As I used to tell my students, that's fine, but actually talking intelligently..."
..."

Hey Joy. Nice reflections. Perhaps instead of nostalgia proper...you could revisit book(s) that served as a gateway into S&S for you [ie regardless of how old you were...or how long ago that was in time]. I think that is the spirit here of remembering.

[question for anyone]
So did you have a book that steered you down the S&S path?

Myself, I kind of started with sword & planet, when Dad gave me a copy of A Princess Of Mars back when I was in junior high. (I think that would've been after I was introduced to Tolkien, to say nothing of Narnia and Prydain.)

And also Dungeons & Dragons played a huge role -- not so much with Appendix N per se, but D&D led me to Dragon Magazine, which back then actually had an excellent book review column, plus character write-ups of classic literary figures.

Sadly, I didn't write down the names & dates of EVERY SINGLE BOOK I EVER READ. Seriously -- I regret that. But some of my first "real" sword & sorcery would've probably been Michael Moorcock (the Elric and Corum books initially) and Fritz Leiber (I had a copy of Swords and Deviltry but that was my only Fafhrd & Gray Mouser until I got the SFBC omnibus editions years later.)

As I think I've said elsewhere, I didn't come to Robert E. Howard until relatively late -- I knew about Conan, but didn't pick up any of the books until I was in college.

S.E. wrote: "So did you have a book that steered you down the S&S path?"

For me, despite being a true bookworm, the first exposure to sword and sorcery was through movies and games. The first actual books that pointed the way came later, in high school, and those would have been Piers Anthony's work. I didn't know it at the time, of course, but whatever he later became, Anthony was, in fact, an actual pulp fiction magazine writer, getting his start in the magazine Fantastic in 1963, and wrote frequently for the magazines until he started writing novels. As such, the novels of his that I read contained certain elements and specific references to true pulp sword & sorcery that I only came to recognise many years later for what they were. But despite those elements, I wouldn't recommend those books for someone looking specifically for sword and sorcery.

For that, there was one book that truly led the way for me. This was by an author that I'd never heard of, and I've never seen the book mentioned by anyone else in all these years. Keep in mind, at that time I had not yet read any of the foundational writers, nor even any Conan pastiches, and so this was my first major exposure to the genre. I haven't read it in decades, and have no idea how it would strike someone with more grounding in the genre's foundations, including my current self. But I loved it at the time, and would highly recommend it on that strength. My brother, who later took possession of it, also loved it, so there are two endorsements. That is Morlac, Quest of the Green Magician, by Gary Alan Ruse.

The blurb from the back of the book, sadly missing from the book's info page: "A man called Morlac, a sword called Shark! Conjured from a storm-rent sea, a thing called Morlac staggers beneath a mist-shrouded sun on an alien beach. Sworn to link his destiny forever with the man who gave him human form, and charged with the defense of of a sun-drenched realm held jealously by the Green Magician, Morlac is a being caught. He must follow the sorcerer through distant realms and undreamt dangers, through all the perils a wizard can conjure, both seen and unseen, both living and dead, before he can win his freedom and live as human -- or return at last to the water, a sea creature once more..."

It has a mere 29 ratings here (including my own), and only 4 reviews.

I reflected earlier that I came to S&S from a love of Conan comics; however, I too came to REH actual late in life. I read a good bakers dozen of pastiche Conan books (Tornans) in high school and college, but I didn’t get into the pure REH Conan until I saw the Del Rey copy of The Coming of Conan in late in life.

That book, particularly “The Tower of the Elephant” made me seek out more in the same vein. I was aware of S&S prior to that, but hadn’t fully experienced it. Since then, I haunted used book stores (which are sadly down to a precious few in Anchorage AK) and Abe Books seeking out more S&S. I think the second S&S story to make my socks roll up and down was “Black God’s Kiss”, by C.L. Moore.

Thumbs way up on "Black God's Kiss". My current favourite pure Howard Conan is "Xuthal of the Dusk", from the same volume you mention.

My first S&S was the Jirel of Joiry collection published by Ace books from the SFBC.

My favorite S&S has few swords in it. I label it as S&S, but others may not. Heavy on the darkness/horror and sorcery. My favorite S&S is Mask of the Sorcerer by Darrell Schweitzer.

I am a very, very recent convert to S&S (read: February 2020). The book that got me into the genre was William King's Trollslayer.

King helped me understand that fantasy could be fun, as most of my false-starts had me running into tomes and doorstops that were, it seemed to me, Very Serious Literature(TM).

Richard wrote: "My first S&S was the Jirel of Joiry collection published by Ace books from the SFBC.

My favorite S&S has few swords in it. I label it as S&S, but others may not. Heavy on the darkness/horror and ..."

Mask of the Sorcerer? That is a fantastic work. Whether it is S&S, it is definitely right from the heart of old school Weird fiction.

Yeah, that's a favorite that I need to revisit one of these years.

Decided my nostalgia read would be Michael Moorcock's second Corum trilogy, beginning with The Bull and the Spear.

(Although my original copies of both Corum trilogies were single-volume paperback omnibus editions -- the individual installments were tiny.)

@Greg, Re: The Mask of the Sorcerer and whether it is S&S....I interviewed Darrell Schweizter (Black Gate link =https://www.blackgate.com/2018/09/03/...)

Even though "Mask" itself is not classis S&S, it evolved from his never published Conan pastiche "Conan the Deliverer" (not the midwife type, Darrell jokes in an essay). See the Unpublished Conan and Inspiration section in the interview.

Finished Moorcock's Corum trilogy and it might be my favorite thing of his. And I was today (well, yesterday) years old when I realized that in the third book, the inhabitants of Ynys Scaith, the last survivors of the Empire of Malibann, are, in fact, Melniboneans (or possibly versions of Melniboneans from a slightly different reality).