WHAT’S HOT: Wandering Star’s Solomon Kane, as envisioned by Gary Gianni. After reaching top prices of over $1000 in some instances for the Limited Edition (forget about the ultra-rare leather edition), prices for this have dropped steadily since the Del Rey trade paperback appeared. This latest copy sold on eBay for $380.00 (another copy was bid up to $427.22, but the reserve was not met). Add to this the fact that a Gianni-inspired Kane statue sold around the same time for $325.00 in furious bidding, and it’s a pretty good showing for the now somewhat venerable presentation of the Puritan.

My guess is that prices on the Wandering Star books are beginning to stabilize, and that $300-$400 is what you can expect to shell out for a copy of The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane for the foreseeable future. That’s only about double the price it cost to buy it new, but not too bad for a collectible and fully-illustrated volume. Presumably, as time passes and more copies get lost or destroyed or damaged, the remaining fine copies will inch up in price. If Howard fandom experiences any serious growth as a result of the coming onslaught of films and books, that might spike it up, too. Certainly Solomon Kane remains the best illustrated of the Wandering Star volumes to my mind, the one where artist and subject were most perfectly matched (it also seems as if there are more illos in this book than the others). The other books all have their champions and detractors art-wise, but few have argued that Gianni failed to nail Kane.

Other Wandering Star titles may be stabilizing as well. The Ultimate Triumph, for example, recently sold in the Limited state for a flat $100.00. Frazetta is Frazetta, so on the one hand you might expect this title to go for a bit more than a single Benjamin. Then again, much of the art is mere sketchwork, and while it’s been linked to the stories often quite cleverly, it just doesn’t have that cohesive, made-to-order feel of Gianni’s Kane drawings and paintings. My biggest problem with the WS books has always been that they are a lot more fun to have on the shelf than to read, as the text is quite small and you are always worried about spilling something on them. But the stories in this volume are all top rate, and Frazetta even in minimalist form is, as I said, F-R-A-Z-E-T-T-A.

WHAT’S COLD: Wildside Howard hardcovers. Just about everything they’ve put out remains in constant circulation on eBay at list price without getting sold. It’s understandable: for much of that material, this series represents the umpteenth time they’ve been reprinted, and who is about to give up their Grant, Arkham, Bison, and Wandering Star editions in favor of what basically amount to public domain, print-on-demand versions. Wildside’s books are also a bit garish for my tastes, with in many cases bright yellow titles and generally poor artwork on the cover and poor sans-serif fonts in the interiors. I think of all of them my favorite has been Treasures of Tartary, as it seemed a bit better designed than most. But one can easily see newer editions supplanting these in the future, dooming these to the eBay doldrums normally reserved for the cheap paperbacks of the 70s.

WHAT TO WATCH: Conan’s World and Robert E. Howard. James Van Hise (editor of the equally cold Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard) is trying to sell the infamous Conan’s World at a starting price of $14.99, with a BUY IT NOW price of $20.00, AND an astronomical $10 priority shipping charge for a book so small and thin it would have zero problem fitting comfortably in a $4.60 USPS priority flat rate envelope (even flat-rate boxes are only $8.95). This for a book which everybody — even the author himself — calls the single worst book on Robert E. Howard ever written, ever. Add to that the fact that never-read copies of the same book (after thirty years, it’s still hasn’t sold out it’s original run) are available from Wildside Press for only $10, and you have to conclude that Van Hise is hoping that one of you is a complete idiot. The auction even has the gall to post a picture of a noticeably browned copy and call it “mint.”

If you really feel you need to shell out money for this book, I suggest contacting Darrell yourself, as last I heard he still has a stack of them that he sells at conventions for $3 or so (although perhaps the Wildside website is not only selling the old Borgo stash at $10 a pop, but Darrell’s excess copies as well). Every time I think I’ve seen it all….

Speaking of what’s cold, it seems I lasted about a week of posting REHupas on eBay before running out of steam. I’ll have to start that again soon. Each one has sold for almost $50, which as I’ve said is the new average price for a REHupa (a few years ago, which may as well be a million at this point, it was $20). Once guys like me have exhausted our store of old ‘zines and a new generation of collectors has snapped them up, REHupa mailings are going to become mighty scarce, held long-term and seldom coming to market. The universe of extant copies is so small, and the contents frequently so valuable, that in the coming years collecting REHupas is going to get brutal.

Nothing in Robert Zemeckis’ Marty McFly-and-Roger Rabbit-ridden career kindles much optimism on the part of the heroic fantasy enthusiast that the November 16 release Beowulf will be aught but a Polar Express to embarrassment. In as startling a makeover as has occurred since Stanley Kubrick chose to present Stephen King’s woman in Room 217 to Jack Torrance as an incarnate wet dream (at first), the TV promos have been playing up Grendel’s mother-the-MILF in the seal-sleek form of Angelina Jolie.

(Continue reading this post)

The blogging universe is a large place, growing bigger every day. WordPress claims that .8% of the Internet is powered by its software. In that maelstrom of creativity, I occassionally come across someone blogging about REH in an impressive fashion.

Case in Point: a new blog titled The Silver Key. The blog’s author, Brian Murphy, has over the last few months offered readers a nice selection of thoughtful posts on fantasy. Horror movies, The Once and Future King, Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut, Pulp Fiction — Brian handles them all with grace and discernment. I especially enjoyed his succinct evaluation of what I consider one of the most underrated films of all time: Excalibur. Very nice to know there is at least one other person out there who appreciates the fierce, moving, Shakespearian grandeur and pathos of the film and all its trappings. (I myself have a long essay on Excalibur in mind, if I ever get the time to write it in a way that does the subject justice).

Recently Murphy turned his attention towards Robert E. Howard, and I found his commentary more learned than most blog evaluations from guys who aren’t known in Howardian fandom. One of the pleasures of The Cimmerian has been the discovery that the world is filled with REH fans who are utterly unknown to the group of scholars who form the core of the field. It’s often easy to assume that there’s only a few dozen guys out there who like REH and write for the various magazines, but the truth is that there are legions of intelligent fans absorbing this stuff and valuing Howard, who for whatever reason have never come out of the shadows. It’s a heartening notion.

Give Brian Murphy and The Silver Key a read. Perceptive and intelligent readers of fantasy need to stick together.

I recently ordered the magisterial collection The History of the Hobbit, a three-volume set available in slipcase. Those of us who treasure Christopher Tolkien’s The History of Middle Earth in twelve books have always lamented that, for various reasons, he failed to publish the same substantial analysis of The Hobbit that he undertook for The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, and most of Tolkien’s other writings. Author John D. Rateliff has now rectified that oversight in spades.

Rateliff spent well over a decade analyzing the manuscripts for The Hobbit in a fashion that anyone familiar with Christopher Tolkien’s work will appreciate: sifting through drafts, dating manuscripts and typescripts, undoing many of the mistakes of earlier scholars, and offering a bewitching look into the creation of a modern classic. The set contains a great copy of the novel, complete with Tolkien’s original drawings, maps and color illustrations reproduced as plates on glossy paper stock, a pleasantly large font suitable for reading, and of course the latest corrected text. Two accompanying volumes, titled Mr. Baggins and Return to Bag-End, comprise Rateliff’s meticulous research, featuring not only a mountain of notes and other scholarship but Tolkien’s entire story in draft form, which gives us all sorts of strange and wonderful glimpses into a Hobbit that never was. When you get through the introduction and find out that Thorin began as a dwarf named Gandalf, it’s clear that you’ve dropped down a particularly beguiling rabbit (hobbit?) hole.

There is much here to inspire Howard fans. Might not our field someday get a History of the Hyborian Age, that charts the creation of REH’s body of fantasy work, reprints all the drafts, offers extensive commentary and notes, and contains an encyclopedia (or “glossography,” as Gary Gygax referred to the material underlying his Greyhawk campaign world) of all the people and places that make up the legendarium? Some of the work has been done, appearing in various journals and editions, but much remains for the enterprising scholar. I’ve always wished I had time to collate a Complete Guide to Hyboria the way Tolkien fans have Robert Foster’s Complete Guide to Middle-Earth. It’s volumes like these that go a long way towards captivating fans, and if one was written for REH I’m guessing it would vastly increase the respect for his world-building achievement.

Coming up in the October issue of TC (almost ready to ship) is a great letter from Steve Tompkins that speculates on various aspects of Aquilonian realpolitik, and reading that offers a small taste of the unexplored depths of Howard’s creation, namely how much realistic complexity those four years of brilliant story-writing generated. The usual know-nothings often assume that Howard gave little thought to realism and consistency — not true, as Tompkins amply shows in his letter. One of the most startling revelations Rateliff makes is that, far from Tolkien slowly composing his children’s story in languorous stretches of cautious composition, the manuscripts show that in all likelihood The Hobbit was written at white heat during vacation breaks from his teaching duties. This directly contradicts most of the favored images of Tolkien burning the midnight oil for leisurely years on end, and indeed sounds much more like the writing habits of a pulpster like REH than some would care to admit.

I have only begun exploring this spectacular effort on behalf of Tolkien scholarship, but already it has generated all sorts of thoughts about how REH scholarship could benefit from applying this Tolkienian example to our bailiwick.

For those of you that are comic book fans (I am not) you might be interested in this retrospective article on an adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “Valley of the Worm,” a classic Sword-and-Sorcery comic illustrated by a legend in the business, Gil Kane (1926-2000). The piece was written by John R. Fultz, and here is his bottom line on REH:

He was a masterful writer, whose non-Conan work is too often ignored, but his prose sang with power and imagery unrivaled to this day for its evocative qualities. Howard has been much imitated over the decades, but there’s only one REH.

Amen.

gorse

noun
1. any spiny shrub of the genus Ulex, of the legume family, native to the Old World, esp. Europe, having rudimentary leaves, yellow flowers, black pods, and growing in waste places and sandy soil.

Also called furze or (especially British) whin.

[Origin: before 900; Middle English gorst, gors, from Old English; akin to Gerste, hordeum (“barley”)]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Over the cliff we shoved those we had slain and we did up the Roman’s arm with leather strips, binding them tight, so that the arm ceased to bleed. Then once more we took up our way.

On, on; crags reeled above us; gorse slopes tilted crazily.

[from “Men of the Shadows”]

puncher

noun
1. a hired hand who tends cattle and performs other duties on horseback [syn: cowpuncher, cowboy]

[Origin: 1875-80, so named for prodding the cattle when herding]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Laramie crawled along a few feet to put himself out of range of the rifleman on the rim, then shouted: “Slim! Swing wide of that trail and come up here with yore men!”

He was understood, for presently Slim and the three surviving punchers came crawling over the tangle of rocks, having necessarily abandoned their horses.

[from “The Last Ride”]

With our country’s annual ghoulish bacchanal upon us, here’s something to imbibe in preparation for the festivities. Head over to The Wall Street Journal Online and read John J. Miller’s latest excursion into the weird fiction field, “Arthur Machen’s Stories: What Nightmares Are Made Of.”

Machen (1863-1947) was a writer of vast talent and scope (Don Herron has referred to him in my presence as “One of the all-time great prose stylists”) who today is most remembered for his horror stories. Machen’s connection with Robert E. Howard and the other great talents at Weird Tales is strong — Howard considered the three greatest weird stories of all time to be Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu”…and Arthur Machen’s “The Novel of the Black Seal.” (Some of Howard’s letter and story excerpts referencing Machen are online here.)

Several of Howard’s most memorable memes were inspired by Machen, most notably the concept of monstrous Little People lurking in caverns under the bucolic English countryside, whether ultimately revealed as Picts or grimmer things. Check out stories such as “People of the Dark,” “The Black Stone,” “The Lost Race,” “Children of the Night,” and most powerfully, “Worms of the Earth.” (see Rusty Burke’s Introduction to Wandering Star/Del Rey’s Bran Mak Morn: The Last King for a bit more on the Machenian, and then Lovecraftian, influence on the Bran cycle.)

As such an influence, Machen has often featured prominently in Howard criticism. Steve Eng, who wrote the single best essay to date on Howard’s verse, “Barbarian Bard: The Poetry of Robert E. Howard,” comments in that piece that:

A perfect little poem is found in The Howard Collector anthology:

ROADS
I too have strode those white-paved roads that run
Through dreamy woodlands to the Roman Wall,
Have seen the white towns gleaming in the sun,
And heard afar the elf-like trumpets call.

— summing up in four lines the whole spirit of the Welsh mystic and fantasy fictioneer Arthur Machen. It is the kind of lyric Machen’s friend John Gawsworth would have assuredly published in the 1930s, had he seen it.

(Eng also wrote one of the best essays on Machen, “Machen and Me,” which appeared in Nyctalops, and later edited a volume of Gawsworth’s poetry. Steve is out of the field now, suffering from some form of adult senile dementia, but I hope to publish a selection of his best writing on Howard, Machen, and others in The Cimmerian Library at some point.)

It’s fun to read the Weird Tales guys wrestling with Machen’s visions. At one point Lovecraft confided to REH that:

Long and I often debate about the real folklore basis of Machen’s nightmare witch cults. I think they are Machen’s own inventions, for I never heard of them elsewhere; but Long cannot get over the idea that they have an actual source in European myth. Can you give us any light on this? We haven’t the temerity to ask Machen himself.

They should have wrote him — the resulting correspondence would have been great. And I doubt any temerity was necessary, as Machen certainly had a sense of humor — witness his book Precious Balms, a collection of bad reviews of his own work.

You can read The Novel of the Black Seal and Machen’s other works at Project Gutenberg Australia. If you want to learn even more, check out The Friends of Arthur Machen, a stellar organization comparable to REHupa that was nominated for a World Fantasy Award last year.

Every few months I announce with trumpet blasts that I’m going to be getting rid of all my old REHupa mailings, putting them up on eBay at the rate of one per day. Each time this happens, I last but a few days before Real Life drags me off to other things. A few months later, the cycle repeats.

Well, it’s almost November 2007, time to give it the ol’ college try once more. REHupa #132 has been posted at eBay. It’s a fine example of a.p.a. material — here’s my description from the auction entry:

REHupa #132 clocked in at 195 pages, and included many items of interest. This was Morgan Holmes’ first mailing as Official Editor, a reign that would become noted for its kept-the-trains-running professionalism and for several unfortunate battles within the a.p.a., leading to the very first (and to date only) expulsions in the a.p.a.’s history. Morgan lays down the law in his Editorial: “If a member persists in making his ‘zine reading like it belongs in the basket weaving a.p.a….I will kidnap the offender, put him in a bare room, force him to read Lin Carter paperbacks and pump Ace of Base music constantly into the room. I mean business.” A new sheriff had just entered town.

Sword-and-Sorcery author David C. Smith (Oron, et al.) joined the a.p.a. with this mailing. At the time, Novalyne Price Ellis, L. Sprague de Camp, Glenn Lord, and Roy Thomas were Honorary Members, and this issue has a nice letter from Sprague in which he admits that “My biggest mistake in reviving Conan was taking on Carter as a collaborator without first trying to lure Leigh Brackett into the job.” But then he goes on to suggest: “My second biggest, I think, was in not taking a stronger line against the waist-length hair attributed by Frazetta to Conan in his cover painting for Conan the Adventurer.” Typical de Camp, getting so close to the real problem (bad pastiche) and then losing his way in criticism of the classic rendition of the Cimmerian, which most fans rightly see as perfection.

This mailing of REHupa is also notable for the announcement made by screenwriter Michael Scott Myers that The Whole Wide World had been greenlighted by Hollywood, complete with newspaper announcements. Other highlights of the Mailing include a reprint of Karl Edward Wagner’s essays “Celluloid S&S: Boon or Menace?” and “Hold the Bologna On Mine,” Steve Trout’s “final notes” on the editorial alterations in the Donald Grant Solomon Kane volumes (a revelation which has since become legendary in the field), Part III of Richard Toogood’s “Solomon Kane Chronology,” a review from the always interesting Rick McCollum titled “Baen’s Cormac Mac Art in Review,” Scott Sheaffer’s latest response to Richard Toogood in an a.p.a. shaking fight that along with one other would eventually get Sheaffer expelled from REHupa, and much else. At almost 200 pages of Howardian writ, it’s a good Mailing.

Let’s see if I can’t get a streak going with these things, and finally get them out of my archives and into the hands of fans who will give them a much better home.

English fan David Drage has been planning a regular podcast for pulp aficionados over the last year. Recently, the first episodes of the podcast have appeared at his website, with more to follow on what looks like a monthly basis. Highlights for Howard fans include an audiobook rendition of the Solomon Kane tale “Red Shadows,” some commentary on new Howard books such as Almuric and Conan the Phenomenon, information on casting for the new Solomon Kane film, and a laconic and humorous Howard Days trip report by Larry “Deuce” Richardson.

My first impression is that the jury is still out on whether this experiment will become a must-listen for fans. Right now the delivery is a bit bland and stiff, the information somewhat of a rehash of things long known on the Internet, and the theme music far too goofy compared to the somewhat rarefied accent of Drage. On the plus side, the Richardson trip report does hint strongly at the possibilities of the medium, and how phone interviews and other never-before-heard audio content (on-site reports from Howard Days or Gen Con, perhaps) would be compelling. Drage’s podcast is still in its infancy, and as he gets more contributors and develops a less scripted delivery of his material, it might grow into something special. Give it a listen and see what you think.