Zardoz by John Boorman and Bill Stair

I first heard about the movie Zardoz on some internet forum or other where a running joke was to put up disguised links that would lead you to a still from the movie, showing Sean Connery in his bizarre costume from the film (hip boots, red diaper, bandoliers of bullets, beard and ponytail).  It’s not an image you rally want to dwell on but it’s hardly an atrocity like the old goat.se linkbomb on B3ta.

Anyway the more I read about the movie, the more interested in it I become.  First and foremost, it was written & directed by John Boorman.  Deliverance is a widely-recognized classic, and Excalibur is one of my all-time favorite films despite its flaws.  The other details I picked up from synopses and reviews (the flying stone head, the psychedelic tone, the gratuitous violence and nudity) only made it more intriguing.  Joesky’s review and the endorsements from a variety of bloggers whose aesthetics are interesting made me finally break down and watch in on cable a few months ago.  I watched it late at night, possibly with chemical enhancement like Nyquil or something (when I get a cold or flu I sleep downstairs and watch too much TV), and I found it a little confusing, but watchable.  (Caution: I managed to watch Children shouldn’t play with dead things all the way through so my threshold for what is ‘watchable’ may be abnormally low.)

Anyway, when I came across the ‘novelization’ of the film, which was credited to Boorman and Bill Stair, I grabbed it and figured I’d read it some time — it is a very slim book, as you might expect from a movie tie-in novel.  In fact I read it over the course of a week or so at the gym.  (I try to read something slightly trashy or pulpy so that I don’t have to think too hard but which is still good enough that I look forward to reading it, as motivation to get to on the stationary bike.)

The co-writer, Bill Stair, worked in some design capacity on the film as well, and also co-wrote the script for another Boorman film (Leo the last), but I have not been able to find out much more about him apart form the fact that wrote & drew a comic or graphic novel called Superslave which appears to be fairly rare, and involves some kind of reluctant messiah.  It sounds interesting but is priced way beyond what I’d pay for a graphic novel (currently over $60 on Abebooks and close to that on Amazon).

The Zardoz novel, at just under 130 pages, is a quick read, and gives a few details that weren’t in the film, as well as a fair amount of explanation of what is going on inside Zed’s head, which I didn’t really get from the movie. It also suggests that the ‘brutals’ are not just peasants but frequently mutants, which is not clear in the film. The ‘message’ is much more explicit, and the awkward narration at the beginning of the film is not reproduced, which is a plus.  I can’t say it made me want to re-watch the movie, but if I ever do, I’ll have a much better idea of what is going on.  On it’s own merits, it is a decent science fiction adventure, written in a fairly unique voice, that compares favorably to other pulps but doesn’t really achieve “greatness.”  As a source of gaming ideas, the flying heads, the vortex, and the pyramid are all interesting locations, and the immortals, brutals, and exterminators might make an interesting population dynamic for Gamma World or a similar post-apocalyptic game; for D&D, they are equally usable, especially if you veer towards science fantasy.

The Swords Trilogy by Michael Moorcock

After the Gotrek & Felix omnibus, I read a collection of three of Moorcock’s “Corum” novels (apparently he wrote another trilogy later as a sequel).  This trilogy consists of The Knight of swords, The Queen of swords, and The King of swords.  I’ve had the paperback for a while, and though I enjoyed the first three Elric books, I hadn’t really sought out anything else by Moorcock because of my thing about series.  I decided to give the Corum books a chance though for a number of reasons, some of them good ones.  First, the summary on the back of the book made it sound like it might be a retelling of Celtic myths about Ireland — the elf-like Vadhagh, living in secluded castles, are caught unawares by an onslaught of barbaric Mabden (humans).  I was also some intrigued by the illustration and description of the protagonist, Corum Jhaelen Irsei, that I saw in Wayne Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy, a great if slightly less well-known companion to his Guide to Aliens.  Third, the crazy book covers by Patrick Woodruffe that I saw last month reminded me that I’d been meaning to read this.  Now that I spend 20 or 30 minutes most mornings doing the lazy man’s exercise (recumbent stationary bike), I have a lot of time to read, especially when I bring the same book to work to read at lunch. In fact I am still a books behind in these reviews.  Coming soon: The novelization of Zardoz, The mountains of madness, and more!

Anyway, the Corum books are set in collection of planes that are much closer to, and possibly include, our own Earth — unlike the Elric saga, I think…which is set in a different collection of planes, or perhaps just a different period of time.  Corum and his people had the ability to travel among a few of these planes (a power which humans attributed to sorcery, but which the Vadhagh considered a science), but over the course of the book many more planes are revealed to exist and as you might have guessed, Corum’s universe is a part of Moorcock’s ‘mulitverse’ and (minor spoiler) Corum is another incarnation of the Eternal Champion.

Really, I thought the first several chapters of book one were great, and the gritty realism of Mabden invasion was compelling.  It is a tribute to Moorcock’s skill that I did not throw the book against a wall as additional layers of over-the-top fantasy were added, and Corum interacts with and even battles the gods themselves. Anyway I found Corum to be a fairly sympathetic character, perhaps more so than Elric, because he actually cares about justice and doing the right thing, and repeatedly risks his own life to help others.  There is a bit of a pattern of deus-ex-machina assistance whenever things get really grim for him though, and and I’d have found that more tedious were it not for the final chapter which ‘hidden message’ — perhaps the theme of all Moorcock’s Eternal Champion books, or anyway it ought to be — is revealed, and the relationship between the gods and mortals comes to a surprising but satisfactory conclusion.

Anyway from a gaming standpoint, the Swords Trilogy presents a lot of interesting vistas and worlds that you might steal for use in a game.  The sighing desert, the whispering lake, the vanishing tower, the castle (literally made) of blood, a plain filled with a petrified (but living) army, and many other weird scenes could be lifted for use in planar adventure or as weird locations in your world.  The usual Moorcockian pantheon of gods of Chaos and Law are there, although he adds a few other gods or god-like beings, the most interesting being “the Wading God” — a huge giant who drags a fish net along the ocean floor, often catching creatures, men, and ships and dropping them off somewhere else at random, even in other planes.  I can imagine all sorts of plot hooks and tricks just using that one device.

Another thing that really struck me was just how deep in Moorcock’s debt the Warhammer concept of ‘Chaos’ really is.  The Swords Trilogy eventually shows us all manner of hideously mutated men and beasts corrupted by their service to the gods of Chaos.  The ‘beastmen’ of Warhammer are directly ripped off from here, I think.

Anyway, trilogy or not, the Swords Trilogy was quite worth reading.

Gotrek & Felix, first omnibus by William King

Remember when I said I hate trilogies and series?  Gotrek and Felix get a pass — at least the William King ones do (he wrote the first six of these novels, and others were added to the series by Nathan Long, which I can’t speak for).  My brother who does not read quite as much as I do recommended these to me some time ago, and when I found two omnibuses, containing all six of the King books, I figured I should give them a go.  The first omnibus contains Trollslayer, Skavenslayer, and Daemonslayer.  The characters face the titular monsters, of course, as well as many other standards of the Warhammer world, while traveling widely and delving into several ‘dungeon’ environments.

I really like the Warhammer fantasy world, or at least I did back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was  occasionally playing Warhammer — both the miniatures game and the roleplaying game — and  buying lots of White Dwarfs and Citadel minis.  I’m less familiar with it now, but the original setting was grim and dark, and mixed quasi-historical stuff with gonzo fantasy stuff.  The Gotrek & Felix books really do these themes justice, I think.  There is humor, and extreme violence, and horror; the places and people give a sense of history without ‘information overload’; the characters are interesting without be overwrought; and while the two heroes can’t very well be killed off since it is an ongoing series, you get a sense of dread & doom as they lose friends, lovers, and even body parts.

The Warhammer world is basically a pastiche of R.E. Howard (quasi-historical swords & sorcery), Michael Moorcock (themes of law vs. chaos as forces personified by gods and monsters), and Tolkien-influenced Dungeons & Dragons (elves, dwarves, orcs, etc.), but it is a pastiche that also tries to weave these elements together coherently, and set them in a sort of alternate Earth.

My brother described the Gotrek & Felix books as being like the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, not as well written but with more action and more monsters.  I can see his point.  The characters are a sort of “odd couple,” and much of the humor comes from their interactions, although where Fafhrd and the Mouser tend to be on fairly equal footing as central characters in Leiber’s work, in the Gotrek & Felix books, Felix is really the central character while Gotrek is always described as Felix sees him rather than from his own point of view.  This works quite well, since Felix is the human character and Gotrek is a dour and taciturn dwarf who would rather not talk about his past.  Using Felix as the main point of view also helps allow the author provide background information in small chunks, as he either remembers things he’s learned in university or is told about them by other characters.  Felix is the son of a wealthy merchant family, and studied in a large university until he was expelled for dueling.  Gotrek on the other hand is a dwarf Trollslayer — a disgraced or dishonored dwarf sworn die fighting trolls or other monsters to expunge his crimes.  Many of the adventures the two embark on stem from Gotrek’s search for a worthy foe; they are also outlaws because Felix incited a riot and Gotrek slew Imperial troops, saving Felix’s life.  After that, the two became inseparable as Felix agreed to record Gotrek’s feats and doom.

Each book is more or less a self-contained adventure, and is broken into chapters which at least for the first two books could easily be read as independent short stories, which might be another reason my brother thought of the Nehwon stories.  The plots, adversaries, and minor characters all provide decent inspiration for gaming, and the books made me want to revisit the Warhammer Fantasy world, which of course was the publisher’s intent.  However I think William King rises above the formulaic genre of “game tie-in fiction” for the most part.  Perhaps he has to name-check various Warhammer characters and places, but he uses them to drive the story and, dare I say, the character development of Felix and Gotrek.  It would be easy enough to have a pair of cardboard characters travel the Warhammer world making pit stops at places and events tied to Games Workshop products; to his credit William King really lets the Warhammer world serve the stories, rather than the reverse.  Although the Warhammer world was created by Games Workshop as ‘fluff’ to sell miniatures, books, and games of casual violence, in King’s hands the Warhammer world seems interesting and even compelling on its own merit.  The casual violence and sense of doom (which made the setting so appealing to teenage boys, the customer base of GW) are treated in a surprisingly adult and humane manner by King.  There are very few ‘redshirts’ who exist just to be killed by monsters; each character and casualty is given a bit of personality, aspirations, or relationships that make their ends tragic, and Felix often feels regret after killing even the most hideous mutants.  As genre fiction goes, the Gotrek and Felix novels (so far) are excellent.  Frankly I’d put them on the same shelf as R.E. Howard or Michael Moorcock without a twinge of guilt.

The complete traveler in black by John Brunner

I have not read any of Brunner’s other books (which seem to be mostly sci-fi) but I based on “Traveler in Black” stories I will. This ‘novel’ is really a fix-up of several long short stories.  The first version was published as The traveler in black; The complete traveler in black adds one more story as a coda to the series.

Brunner’s style is rather literary, but no too flowery.  The setting reminds me a bit of The Dying Earth stories of Jack Vance, with grotesque places and people, living in a world where magic is a fact of life.  The writing reminds me a bit of Lord Dunsany, with evocative names and titles that suggest a lot of unspoken history and significance. In some ways the stories read like an homage to both Dunsany and Vance, but with a much less ironic or detached viewpoint.  The protagonist, the titular traveler “with many names but one nature,” is no Vancian rogue or venial Dunsanian adventurer.  He is a man (apparently immortal) on a mission — to root out the forces of chaos, to bind the elemental creatures of chaos so they may not interact with or corrupt the world, and to grant the wishes of mortals.

The force of “chaos” in these stories is left vague.  I would not necessarily associate it with the more specific senses of the term you find in Poul Anderson, Michael Moorcock, or the Warhammer game, but it has some resemblances to all three, probably having more to do with the mythic idea of ‘primordial chaos’ and such than any direct influence.  It seems to be a force of change, and destruction, and in some cases seems to be equated with magic and time; it is largely hostile to order and justice.  Whether the alternative is any better in human terms of morality and happiness is a theme of the stories, and it is no spoiler to say Brunner tends to side more with Anderson than Moorcock in this debate.

The traveler’s ‘single nature’, which is never explicitly explained, grants him certain powers and restrictions on what he can and can’t do.  There are some lines of thought, and some sentences even, that he can’t complete, and some questions he can’t answer.  But whenever someone states some wish, the traveler grants it (indeed, must grant it) — usually with wildly unanticipated consequences that mete out justice, sometimes brutally, sometimes  subtly.  The traveler usually plays a small role in each story, although his powers generally serve as the impetus of major plot events.

The setting changes a good deal, as each story takes place decades or centuries after the last.  The traveler’s work progresses as well and in each story the powers of chaos are receding, and magic and the supernatural become less and less potent, and the world more mundane. The magicians in the world are slowly revealed to be rather sinister — the first ones we encounter are merely ‘merchant wizards’ who use magic to import luxury goods and increase their city’s prosperity; by the end it is clear that magic involves dealings with demonic powers and the rituals, which are suggested than explicitly described, could be right out of Carcosa or The book of Ebon Bindings.  There is quite a bit a DM might want to steal from the setting for D&D, although the specific plots and characters would not really work so well (I think it’s a bad idea to take plots or characters from books for gaming anyway, though).

Brunner also seems to have some philosophical axes to grind, or at least to explore, and at times reminds me a little of Borges in that regard. I don’t think Brunner is quite as good as Vance, Dunsany, or Borges, but who is?

Still — The complete traveler in black invites comparison to Vance, Dunsany, and Borges!  What are you waiting for, read this!

The Coramonde duology

I have a policy of not reading anything in a series.  It’s not absolute, and I make exceptions, but if a book has sequels, or forms part of a trilogy or larger series, I am very unlikely to read it for a few reasons.

1. Tolkienitis. Just because the Lord of the Rings got split into a trilogy by the publishers does not mean every freaking fantasy novel has to be part of a trilogy.  It is offensive, on the face of it, to set to write a series just because ‘fantasy comes in trilogies’.
2. If you can’t produce a complete book, I am unlikely to buy it. I don’t want to have to hunt around for a copy for “Book I” or wait three years to find “Book III”.  I read a lot of older stuff anyway and buy used, so this is a pretty big issue for me.
3. Too many crap series.  From the early 1980s onward, publishers seem to have decided that anything that is apart of a series must be a cash cow.  A lot of authors have one good book in them, and then churn out an avalanche of crap.  No thanks.

So only 1 & 3 are aesthetic judgements; 2 is purely practical.

My biases are not blind prejudice.  I tried to read The sword of Shanarra, Drangonlance, and other series, and never get past the first book.  Granted those two read like crapulous rehashes of Tolkien anyway, but I’ve looked at a lot of series before realizing that it was the very fact that they formed part of a series that was off-putting.  I think there must be something about the form that attracts bad writers.  At this point I’m probably never going to bother with anything written by, say, Raymond Feist, Robert Jordan, or any of a host of popular fantasy series writers.  I did read some of the “Xanth” books as a child, so I did get sucked into some bad series, but those are exceptions.

Having said that there are some series I’ve really liked.  Some were not really intended to form a series of books, but are collections of stories (like Lieber’s Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser books).  Others are placed in a single setting by the author, and perhaps follow some of the same characters, like Vance’s Dying Earth books (one collection of short stories, two books about Cugel written many years apart, and a book of short stories/novellas about another character).  I’ll read a series if I like the author already.  If you’re Poul Anderson, Tanith Lee, Jack Vance, or someone like that who has also written stand-alone books or stories that I like, you get a pass.  You don’t have to be a great writer either, just interesting.  I made my way through the first three Black Company books (but can’t be bothered to seek out more); I’ll read Moorcock in omnibuses, and just picked up two omnibuses of William King’s “Gotrek and Felix” novels.

And in some cases I’ll give a series a try if it comes highly recommended.  I read the first Dying Sun book by Gene Wolfe, and it was pretty good, but not good enough to make me want to keep at it, especially after reading synopses of the story develops.  I’m much more tolerant of historical novels that form a series too.  Bernard Cornwall’s Winter king, stuff like that.  Also series where the order of reading doesn’t matter, like the Flashman books, get a pass.

So the latest ‘series’ I’ve finished is the ‘duology’ by Brian Daley, Doomfarers of Coramonde and Starfarers of  Coramonde.   Daley is dead, so no danger that he’ll add to the series, and two books seems reasonable.  In fact I was prepared to read only the first, but I stumbled upon the sequel a few months after reading the first and decided to give it a chance.

Unfortunately I read the first one more than a year ago, and I got to the second earlier this year, so the first was not completely fresh when I began the sequel.  I would say the first book is better than the sequel (it always is, isn’t it?) but the sequel manages to put in a few good ideas.  The story suffers a bit from the “all major characters are awesome superheroes” syndrome you see in a lot of fantasy novels, but fortunately the characters who get the most time have a lot of foibles.

The plot synopsis would be: To fight a cabal of evil wizards, some good wizards summon help from another dimension — ours.  To give more detail, the help arrives in the form of a patrol of American GIs plucked out of Vietnam.  The ‘planetary romance’ plot line gives the author plenty of leeway to have characters spend a lot of time in exposition, but for the most part Daley restrains himself and you are not overwhelmed with pointless details.  The protagonist, Gil MacDonald, is a bit of a loner who has leadership thrust upon him first in Vietnam and then in Coramonde, the fantasy world he’s drawn to.

My biggest gripe with the novels would have to be that Daley goes to great pains to make the ‘good guys’ country egalitarian and almost democratic.  There is no real king, only princes or lords, most of whom are very ‘down-to-earth’ and spent some time living among the commoners or among noble savage barbarians.  To some extent this goes along with the ‘all major characters are awesome’ syndrome.  No matter how heavy the odds or losses, the nobility always seem to pull through every fight.  It creates an impression that characters are never really in that much peril.  To counterbalance this, we do see one of the nobles killed very early in the story, but it feels a bit like a bait-and-switch to have a gritty, dangerous plot swept away to make room for dashing heroes and heroines.

The second book manages to keep things interesting by focusing more on  characters who appeared in the first book in less central roles.  In fact Gil MacDonald spends a fair amount of the second book ‘off screen’.

The cultures and characters are mostly interesting, despite being idealized.  I am not sure I’d find the second book as interesting without having read the first, but the first stands on its own with very little need for a sequel.

Daley is otherwise known for his Star Wars novels about Han Solo’s adventures, which were as far as I know the first official sanctioned ones to follow the movies.  I have heard very good things about those books, but not read them. After that he wrote a lot of “Robotech” books, which don’t interest me, and he also wrote a third fantasy novel, A Tapestry of Magics, which apparently advertised a sequel of its own, but he did not live to publish it, if it was completed (I have read though that excerpts of the sequel appeared in later editions of the book.

The worm Ouroboros (review)

Lately I’ve been trying to read as much ‘classic’ fantasy as I can.  My main criteria for counting a work as a classic has been (1) the work or author is prominent in Gygax’s Appendix N; or (2) it was written before the resurgence of epic fantasy in the early 1980s (which I, rightly or wrongly, attribute largely to the success of D&D and the renewed interest in the Lord of the Rings due to the film, television specials, and general fantasy revival of the period), or (3) it is mentioned in the wargame Hordes of the Things.

The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison certainly meets criteria (2), and for some reason I thought I’d seen it listed in BOTH the DMG and HOTT, but somehow neither mention it.  I must have just run into repeated references to it in other sources…otherwise I’m not sure why I held it in such esteem, sight unseen.  I suppose I’ve seen it mentioned positively in various blogs and surveys of fantasy literature, but however I first heard of it,  I’m glad I did.  It is magnificent.  I agree with a lot of other readers who comment that the ‘induction,’ which introduces the story as taking place on the planet Mercury, visited by an Earthling after a dream-like journey, is very odd; the more so because the Earthling disappears from the story around chapter two, without ever being of any import to the plot.  Odd but not a fatal flaw by any means.

You can download a reading of it here, or get a text version here (it is out of copyright).  I read the Dover reprint, but will have to check out the reading some time.

There are reviews and synopses aplenty all around the internet, so I there is not much for me to add, except to say I found much, much better than I expected.  I had read some criticism of the goofy names and place-names (apparently Eddison had created the characters and story as a child, and returned to it as an adult to actually write it, but did not have the stomach to change the names), and I was a little put off at first by the extremely antiquated prose, although as I read on, I grew to like it more and more, and savored it.  The Elizabethan prose is really beautiful, even when the narration describes death and dismemberment.  It is not a book you can tear through in one night, but why would you want to?  The story line is interesting, the characters are vivid (although you want to keep notes to keep some of the names straight), and world draws you in.

The world of the book is called “Mercury” although really it is an alternate Earth; in fact the Greek gods are invoked by the characters and the world is inhabited predominantly by humans, although they call themselves Demons, Witches, Ghouls, Imps, Pixies, Foliots, and Goblins.  An early chapter mentions that the Demons are horned, but this is never mentioned again and it may be a reference to their helmets.

The story tells of a war between the Demons and Witches, which involves several pitched battles, and an expedition to recover a Demon lord who is magically kidnapped to a surreal ‘underworld’ (which is actually atop a mountain).  His brother eventually reaches the mountain-prison, after battling a manticore and taming a hippogriff.  Part of his journey is obstructed by various hellish visions, including one of his trapped brother:

Darker grew the mist, and heavier the brooding dread which seemed elemental of the airs about that mountain. Pausing well nigh exhausted on a small stance of snow Juss beheld the appearance of a man armed who rolled prostrate in the way, tearing with his nails at the hard rock and frozen snow, and the snow was all one gore of blood beneath the man; and the man besought him in a stifled voice to go no further but raise him up and bring him down the mountain. And when Juss, after an instant’s doubt betwixt pity and his resolve, would have passed by, the man cried and said, “Hold, for I am thy very brother thou seekest, albeit the King hath by his art framed me to another likeness, hoping so to delude thee. For thy love sake be not deluded!” Now the voice was like to the voice of his brother Goldry, howbeit weak.

But the Lord Juss bethought him again of the words of Sophonisba the Queen, that he should see his brother in his own shape and nought else must he trust; and he thought, “It is an illusion, this also.” So he said, “If that thou be truly my dear brother, take thy shape.” But the man cried as with the voice of the Lord Goldry Bluszco, “I may not, till that I be brought down from the mountain. Bring me down, or my curse be upon thee for ever.”

The Lord Juss was torn with pity and doubt and wonder, to hear that voice again of his dear brother so beseeching him. Yet he answered and said, “Brother, if that it be thou indeed, then bide till I have won to this mountain top and the citadel of brass which in a dream I saw, that I may know truly thou art not there, but here. Then will I turn again and succour thee. But until I see thee in thine own shape I will mistrust all. For hither I came from the ends of the earth to deliver thee, and I will set my good on no doubtful cast, having spent so much and put so much in danger for thy dear sake.”

So with a heavy heart he set hand again to those black rocks, iced and slippery to the touch. Therewith up rose an eldritch cry, “Rejoice, for this earth-born is mad! Rejoice, for that was not perfect friend, that relinquished his brother at his need!” But Juss climbed on, and by and by looking back beheld how in that seeming man’s place writhed a grisful serpent. And he was glad, so much as gladness might be in that mountain of affliction and despair.

Eddison clear has read his Arthurian romances, Norse sagas, and Greek myths, and the heroes of his story tend to be much more like Nietzschean ’blond beasts’ than the sort of characters that populate modern fantasy novels.  In fact there is another scene on the mountain where Lord Juss is ‘tempted’ by a vision of despair at the ‘meaninglessness’ of his struggle, but he eventually overcomes it by sheer force of will.  I understand Tolkien disliked this work’s ‘morality’ while praising the world-invention and writing.  Like Tolkien and many other readers, I found Lord Gro — the Goblin traitor — to be the most likeable character, and probably this is because he is the one character least at home in the book’s world.

I wish I’d found this map and printed it out while I was reading this book, but as usual I did most of my research after finishing it.

One of the most interesting aspects of the invented world to me is the number of proverbs and sayings Eddison has his characters recite. I think that on my next reading* I might even try to extract all the “Mercurial proverbs” into a future post.  They are very colorful and would help bring alive an alien, archaic world for a RPG.  I am guessing that some or most are actually drawn from literature, just as the songs and poems in the story are (Eddison even provides a list of sources for these in an appendix, as well as a chronology, including many ‘off-screen’ events).

Another clever stylistic device is the use of even more archaic English when letters or books are read. Here is an example from a letter:

Unto the right high mighti and doubtid Prynsace the Quen of Implande, one that was your Servaunt but now beinge both a Traitor and a manifiald parjured Traitor, which Heaven above doth abhorre, the erth below detest, the sun moone and starres be eschamed of, and all Creatures doo curse and ajudge unworthy of breth and life, do wish onelie to die your Penytent. In hevye sorrowe doo send you these advisoes which I requyre your Mageste in umblest manner to pondur wel, seeinge ells your manyfest Overthrowe and Rwyn att hand. And albeit in Carcee you reste in securitie, it is serten you are there as saife as he that hingeth by the Leves of a Tree in the end of Autumpne when as the Leves begin to fall. For in this late Battaile in Mellicafhaz Sea hath the whole powre of Wychlande on the sea been beat downe and ruwyned, and the highe Admirall of our whole Navie loste and ded and the names of the great men of accownte that were slayen at the battaile I may not numbre nor the common sorte much lesse by reaisoun that the more part were dround in the sea which came not to Syght. But of Daemounlande not ij schips companies were lossit, but with great puissaunce they doo buske them for Carsee. Havinge with them this Gowldri Bleusco, strangely reskewed from his preassoun-house beyond the toombe, and a great Armey of the moste strangg and fell folke that ever I saw or herd speke of. Such is the Die of Warre.

Even some of Eddison’s characters stumble over written documents, and while it does add another level of difficulty to an already difficult book, it certainly increases the feeling that you  are observing a real, if strange, world.

I was tempted to look for a ‘meaning’ to the story, despite Eddison’s straightforward rejection of such in his dedication:

It is neither allegory nor fable but a Story to be read for its own sake.

This reminded me immediately of Tolkien’s statement that LotR is not an allegory either, not that anyone believes him.  Taking Eddison at his word, The worm Ouroboros is a great story, capturing a strange but believable world inhabited by the kinds of heroes we find in Viking or Celtic legend: a world at war, and with heroes who live for war.  It is not surprising that Tolkien would find the unabashedly pagan heroes and their love of battle distasteful, but taken as a story, and not a morality play, there is much to enjoy in the doings and sayings of these barbaric nobles.

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*Yes, this ranks with The well of the unicorn, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, and Lord of the rings as something I’ll be re-reading.

Phantom islands of the Atlantic (book report)

Hoping to find some inspiration for the island-hopping “5DM campaign,” I read Phantom islands of the Atlantic by Donald S. Johnson.  The book is written by an historian and sailor, and discusses seven legendary islands (or groups of islands) that have appeared, for varying terms, on maps of the Atlantic.  Links go to the Wikipedia pages on them so you don’t have to read the book too.  (It’s not a bad read but I skipped a fair amount of the geography and seamanship heavy discussions of where the islands might have been located and which real islands or phenomena might have inspired the stories.)  The maps included in the book include both some reproductions of the originals and some simplified line drawings, which could be useful.

1. Isle of Demons — not mentioned on Wikipedia: this was confused with an island where Marguerite de la Rocque  and her lover were marooned, and which is described in the Heptameron.
2. Frisland — where two adventurers become embroiled in wars of conquest on unknown islands
3. Buss Island – which was thought to be island that sank and occasionally rose again
4. Antillia, the isle of seven cities — supposedly settled by Iberians fleeing the Visigoths
5. Hy-Brazil — (I first heard of this in the wonderful film Erik the Viking!) — this one originated in Celtic mythology
6. St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgin companions — who supposedly sailed from Britain to Roma nad landed on some phantom islands.  Later explorers would name the Virgin Islands after this legendary figure.  St. Ursula was very popular in the middle ages and the modern Order of  Ursulines were founded in her honor, although the Vatican no longer regards her as a real saint.  This chapter has a good reminder about the trade in saintly relics that were big business in the middle ages.  When a mass grave was identified as that of Ursula and her 11,000 martyrs, there was an explosion of shrines built.  1000 skeletons were shipped out to one location. (The skeletons were probably either a Roman era graveyard or late Roman mass grave; there were not really 11,000 bodies there and they were not all women. Still, a cache of relics like that would be an authentic medieval treasure hoard, if you  are bored with gold and silver coins…)
7. The islands of St. Brendan – This is the longest chapter and mentions a number of islands: The Island of Smiths (possibly volcanic); the Island of Strong Men; many mysterious places like an island with food set out but no inhabitants, a rock with Judas stranded on it, a massive crystalline cube that might house New Jerusalem, and many other curiosities and wonders.  Brendan and his companions are also menaced by various monsters and devils, and receive aid from magical birds.  The story is fairly repetitive, in the Medieval manner, but has a lot of details you might steal.

The book also drew my attention to the Ebstorf Map, which I’d never seen before.  Some one needs to redo this in English, or better yet do a version for Greyhawk or some other fantasy world.  This is exactly the sort of map players should have.

How to make friends and oppress people: a quick review

I recently read How to make friends and oppress people, a very funny travel advice book which collects advice from Edwardian and Victorian era British travel guides, interspersed with satirical advice from “Vic Darkwood,” a gentleman traveler.  The original sources are pretty amusing in their own right, but Darkwood’s commentary and the illustrations (which are cleverly derived from period sources but usually manipulated for effect) make this laugh-out-loud funny.  At least to me. A random example from p. 100:

If you are continuing your travels by river, for example, there is no need to assume that a boat is intrinsically different in principle from the snug bar at the Olde Cheshire Cheese, and with a bit of panache it can be made every bit as comfortable:

Fireplaces in boats — In boating excursions, daub a lump of clay on the bottom of the boat, beneath the fireplace — it will secure the timbers from fire. — The art of travel, Francis Galton, 1872.

This passage is accompanied by a picture of two chaps in evening dress sitting in front of an iron fireplace on a small boat, obviously assembled from three different period illustrations.

The humor is pretty dry at times, but some of the original sources are so outrageous it hardly needs Darkwood’s commentary. There are sections such divers topics as:

• Using anthills as ovens
• Hunting elephants and hippos with a javelin
• Sleeping on a billiard table as a means of avoiding vermin
• Digging a well with a pointy stick
• The practical theory of tea-making
• Modes of salutation
• How to treat banditti
• Engaging in gun battles
• Ballooning as a sport
• Revolting food that may save the lives of starving men
• Employing a burly henchman

and so on, all pretty funny in their own right but with Darkwood’s running commentary, it can be hard to put this one down.

Can you use this for gaming? Probably. On the one hand it may provide some inspiration for your own campaign’s travelogues, but if you are running something set in the real world, from about 1800 to 1930, you could incorporate some of the anecdotes, advice, and illustrations into your players’ handouts to inject some humor, whether you are doing steampunk, Call of Cthulhu, a safari, or plain old pulp adventure.  The author (Victor Darkwood) assumes a fairly hilarious persona as “Vic Darkwood,” an oblivious and arrogant English gentleman adventurer, and he’d make a great NPC “guide.”

A curious thing tends to happen eighteen months into an expedition. The endless routine of living under canvas; slaughtering and collecting vast quantities of the local fauna; constructing roads, mines, oil refineries and railways; acquiring lorry-loads of artworks and antiquities; introducing foreigners to the Englishman’s genteel concepts of fair play, queuing, and afternoon tea– all these will suddenly lose their shine and begin to pall. At this point the adventurer must decide if this is nature’s way of telling him that his travels are at an end, or whether it is worth forging on, despite his misgivings, in pursuit of his next goal, such as the lost temple of Phu Kham Chan or some equally enticing prospect. (p 241)

Just so.

The new Death and others by James Hutchings

Regular blog readers have probably heard of James Hutchings, who runs the blog Teleleli (inspirational images and text for adding some fairy-tale elements to your D&D), not to mention the online games Age of Fables , Westward! , and Hunters, and a dungeon-generating tool for LL and T&T.  So James is a busy guy.

He offered me a free copy of his latest book, The New Death and Others, in exchange for a review.  (Apparently a LOT of folks got the same offer. This is probably a good move on his part from a marketing perspective.)  In all honesty I probably would not have bought the book on my own initiative, since it is in e-book format only.  Even at $.99 (practically free!) I’m not interested in buying e-books, since I don’t use a Kindle or Nook and stare at a screen most of the work day all ready. But if you want to buy it, you can use Amazon or Smashwords. So I printed out the PDF as a digest-sized booklet so I could read it and tore through it at a few breaks and lunches at work.

The book is a collection of short and very short stories, poems, and jokes.  (The jokes may technically be extremely brief stories or poems, but they look like excerpts from some comedian’s routine (maybe Stephen Wright).  Example from “The morning post”:

He turned on the radio. It was the mime hour. He turned down the volume, but that just made the mime clearer.
He looked at his mail. He’d been invited to a bondage party. He couldn’t go: he was tied up. Anyway the last time he went to a swingers’ party some guy accused him of not looking at his girlfriend.
There was an invitation to a family reunion. His great-great grandfather had been kicked out of Ireland for not starving. When he came to America he met up with an Englishman and a Scotsman. They got a job walking into bars to give comedians ideas. During Prohibition they joined the Amish and walked into barns.

Some funny lines in there, but not the book’s strong suit. 

The poems are a mix of completely original verses and adaptations of some classic stories (R.E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany).  These are generally entertaining but read more like song lyrics than poems, in my opinion.  As Scottsz points out in his review , the H.P. Lovecraft piece in particular reads like something Iron Maiden would do, or maybe Nile.  There is a bit of repetition in all the adaptations.  Some of the repetition is effective and some is awkward, making me think he needed some filler for some verses.  For example, near the end of Under the pyramids we have:

I stumbled, howling in the dark
in misery and fear
perhaps for days, perhaps for weeks
or for ten thousand years.

Perhaps for days, perhaps for weeks
beyond all and guilt or shame. (…) 

Hardly a mortal sin, and I’m not really a big poetry fan, so it doesn’t spoil the poems for me but it did break my concentration.

The largest part of the book is the short stories proper, which come in at least three kinds: straight fantastic fiction (for example, “Todd,” “The dragon festival,” and “The city of dust”); fable/fairy tale style shorts which often have a twist, moral, or joke ending (for example, most of the stories of the “gods”, “Monsters,” and “The bird and the two trees”), and lastly a number of pun-filled romps (“Everlasting fire,” “The adventure of the murdered philanthropist”).  Maybe a fourth category, which overlaps the first three, are the satires…at least a fourth or third of the stories including satire (ranging from the juvenile to the really biting).

I enjoyed most of the stories. The ‘twist endings,’ while used in every one, were common enough that by the time I was getting to the end, I was a little annoyed by them.  But some of the stories were really, really good, and perhaps the only ‘failing’ of the collection is its unevenness.  Mr. Hutchings may have done well to have an editor pare this one down to a smaller collection, or perhaps arrange them into sections.  As it stands the shift from humor to horror is mostly at random, and the only organizing principle seems to be to alternate between prose and poetry.  I think a much slimmer volume collecting just the “gods” stories (Love, Fame, Destiny, Death etc.), and another with just the straighter fiction, and perhaps another of just poetry, would be workable, or better yet if the stories and poems that are feel more unfinished or derivative were omitted or revised…

The influence of Lord Dunsany is very strongly evident, and for this reason I will certainly keep the digest I printed on my book shelf and re-read those parts I really liked. (In fact I probably would have been better off reading it in bits, rather than straight through.  The puns and satire probably work better in small doses.) Some readers might also be a little put off by his aggressive moralizing about politics and religion, although in my case I found nothing that offended me…but I’m pretty left wing and irreligious. 

So, if you like fantastic fiction, satire, and fable, you will really like this collection.  If you take literature terribly seriously, you’ll hate a lot of it. If you like Lord Dunsany but wish he was around to satirize reality TV and the digital age, you’ll love it.  Despite all my reservations above, I loved this little collection.

A Search for the King by Gore Vidal

Some time back I read this and I’ve been meaning to write a review, as it is very good book on several levels.

Gore Vidal wrote a number of historical novels — I’ve only read Julian and Creation, being more interested in ancient than Ameircan history — but this is not one of them, although many of the characters are in fact historical people.

 The gist of the sotry is that King Richard the Lionheart has been captured on his way back from the the third crusade and one of his loyal retainers, the troubador Blondel, tries to find and rescue him.  The resulting quest takes Blondel across much of Europe, where he encounters many legendary people and creatures (a giant, werewolves, a vampire, and so forth, not to mention Robin Hood!).  The monsters are mostly startlingly human, although in a few cases there is some ambiguity.  Along the way Blondel becomes quite angsty and introspective, and it becomes fairly clear that his quest is no really about the finding Richard… but I may be spoiling the book.

 There are a few scenese of action and a stirring battle at the end. It always surprises me that vidal can write action so effectively. Being more used to his essays and politcal writings I expect him to be far too … civilized … to write well about swords dismembering people and masses of troops clashing on a battlefield.  The aftermath of the battle is suitably awful and somber too. 

 So the bottom line is that is a great story, and can be appreciated as an adventure yarn, as an existential allegory, and as an inventive demythologization of medieval legends.