Guest Post | DC Flirts with Sword-and-Sorcery, Part Two: Horror Anthologies

By GW Thomas

Nightmaster failed to become DC's first sword-and-sorcery title, but DC kept trying in the horror magazines. “The Eyes of the Basilisk” (The House of Mystery #184, January-February 1970) was written by E Nelson Bridwell and drawn by Gil Kane and Wally Wood. The plot has the country of Karinek invaded by the deadly serpent. The king offers his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who can slay the basilisk. Many try, but fail. Two brothers, Ursus and Ulfar, go to defeat the monster using a polished shield. Ursus doesn’t look into the basilisk’s eyes, but in the shield. The terrible gaze freezes him and the serpent kills him. Ulfar goes to avenge his brother, lifting the shield and reflecting the monster’s gaze into its own face. The basilisk turns itself to stone and Ulfar becomes king. It is only at the end that we find out Ulfar is blind.

Kane and Wood’s presence here is significant. Wally Wood was the artist responsible for “Clawfang the Barbarian” (Unearthly Spectaculars #2, December 1965) five years earlier and he had drawn several pieces for his own fanzine, Witzend. He would go on to do both Hercules Unbound (1975) and Stalker (1975) for DC. Gil Kane would draw many sword-and-sorcery pieces, some based on Robert E Howard’s stories for Marvel in the pages of Savage Sword of Conan and Conan the Barbarian. Perhaps his best of all of them was his adaptation of “The Valley of the Worm” in Supernatural Thrillers #3 (April 1973).

DC’s next ploy to test the waters was to reprint three of Joe Kubert’s Viking Prince stories from the pages of The Brave and the Bold from 1955, in DC Special #12 (May-June 1971). More Viking Prince episodes would be used to fill out the backs of DC Special #22-25. These giant-sized magazines featured new stories about the Three Musketeers and old Robin Hood reprints.

Gil Kane tried again with “Sword of the Dead” in Adventure Comics #425 (December 1972). This time Kane wrote and drew the six-pager. The story concerns two warriors. The first is Evlig, a merciless killer who murders the family of the second warrior: John of Gaunt, a retired knight turned farmer. John suits up and finds Evlig. The two square off with lances, sending John to the ground. Evlig tries to finish him off, but John rises up and slays him. Only after Evlig is dead does John see his own slain body. His righteousness was so powerful, his spirit accomplished what his body could not. A few things come to mind about this tale. One: the villain’s name is so obviously a form of the word Evil, while John of Gaunt was an actual historical person. The idea of the dead who kills reminds me of Robert E Howard’s “The Man on the Ground” (Weird Tales, July 1933) where a Texas feuder also sees his dead body after a fight. Kane was a fan of Howard, so this isn’t surprising.

This was followed by DC's first sword-and-sorcery title launch: Fritz Leiber’s two best thieves in Lankhmar, in Sword of Sorcery (March-April to November-December 1973). Before the five-issue run, drawn largely by Howard Chaykin (another artist linked to the feel and look of sword-and-sorcery with his work for Marvel), Fafhrd and Grey Mouser first appeared in Wonder Woman #202 (September-October 1972) in an introductory episode that did little but pit them against Diana Prince. This tale was written by science fiction master, Samuel R Delany and drawn by Dick Giordano. Sword of Sorcery failed after only a few issues, as would titles like Stalker, Beowulf, Dragonslayer, and Claw the Unconquered. Success was to be found in the science fiction-tinged The Warlord by Mike Grell, running for 133 issues with new material up to 2008. You would think after all this trying, DC would have ended the sword-and-sorcery appearances in their horror titles, but this was not so.

“The Survivor” in Weird War Tales #15 (July 1973) was written by Jack Oleck and drawn by Gerry Talaoc. Oleck was a mainstay of the DC horror titles, and not surprisingly, he wrote more of the stories featured here than anyone else. Here is the first of two about Vikings. Lars Ironhand and his crew are stranded on a weird island where the monsters of Throna the Witch attack them. Defeating all her minions, Throna leads them to water. Drinking the liquid causes the Vikings to grow small in body but large in head. Lars, the last survivor, writes a warning to anyone else who might end up on the island and be changed by the water. By the time he finishes, he has changed into a monkey.

“King of the Ring” from Plop #23 (September-October 1976) is an unusual outlier that has to be mentioned. Written and drawn by Wally Wood, the strip is one of the first comic parodies of The Lord of the Rings in the manner of Harvard Lampoon’s Bored of the Rings. While not sword-and-sorcery exactly, the funny piece packs many of the highlights and characters of Tolkien’s masterpiece into only six pages. Woody uses silly variations such as Gondeaf for Gandalf and Snyder for Rider, etc. He has a crew of dwarves with names like Slappy, Droopy, Sleazy, Groucho, Harpo, Snoopy, and Shlepo. There is an incognito king who announces he is incognito, the frog-like Glum who wants his “sweetums,” Nazighuls, norks, Schlob, and the ring finally gets destroyed when Frodo shoves Glum over the edge. Wood ends it with the ring flying out of Mount Doom to Gondeaf’s hand. The wizard decides to keep the ring and be evil. Drawn with Wood’s best Mad Magazine-meets-The King of the World style, it is a classic parody.

“Valley of the Giants” was written by Jack Oleck with art by Jess Jodloman for Secrets of the Haunted House #6 (June-July 1977). Jodloman drew King Kull for Marvel’s Kull and the Barbarians (1973) and this experience serves him well in this tale of Vikings. Oleck has a ruthless band of Vikings - lead by Rurik - raid the English coast where an old witch prophesies that Rurik and his men would die by giants. A storm drives them to the African coast. There they attack and capture an Arab ship. One of the Arabs tell them of a fabulous treasure in a valley of giants. The Vikings kill all the Arabs to protect their ship and then press on into the jungle. Pygmies attack them with poisoned arrows. Rurik and his men die fighting the pygmies, but before they die Rurik laughs, knowing the giants of the prophecy are not their opponents but themselves.

“Bruce the Barbarian” in Unexpected #205 (December 1980) was written by JM Dematteis with art by Vic Catan. Bruce E Platt is an unpopular disc jockey who uses the occult to create a fantasy world in which he is a heroic barbarian. This alternate reality becomes so real that when his former girlfriend, Cornelia, comes to his apartment, he kills her by accident. When the cops come to arrest him, they find Bruce being tormented for eternity in a very real hell. This type of story, the fantasy fan as escapist-loser is one of my least favorite tropes, being the shallow reaction of non-fantasy fans: whether it is Harlan Ellison’s “Delusion For a Dragonslayer” (1966) or the anti-LARPing film, Mazes and Monsters starring a young Tom Hanks (1982). Dematteis would pen the final issues of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, so I suspect he’s not an anti-fantasy fan.

“Troll Bridge” in Unexpected #220 (March 1982) was written by Gary Cohn; art by Paris Cullins and Gary Martin. This tongue-in-cheek tale of a troll who works his way up to larger and larger bridges ends when he is tricked into wearing a magic cloak by the wizard Wendik the Trollsbane. The cloak sends him to another dimension where he finds a new home under the Brooklyn Bridge. This goofy tale appeals to me with its cartoony style that reminds me a little of Shrek and by not taking itself too seriously.

“No Penny, No Paradise” in Unexpected #222 (May 1982) was written by Robert Kanigher of Wonder Woman fame (as well as SF titles like Metal Men) and had art by Keith Giffin and Larry Mahlstedt. Not really a hardcore sword-and-sorcery tale, the plot follows Alexander the Great as he conquers Asia. Before his death, he reminds Philo to place a penny on his tongue. When Alexander arrives at the River Styx, Charon refuses him entrance into heaven because he has no penny. Alexander goes back to haunt Philo. The thief defeats him by placing a penny in his own mouth before dying. Alexander is powerless to stop Philo from crossing the Styx while he is damned forever. Giffin got his start with the later issues of Claw the Unconquered. Unfortunately he did not ink his own work. Malhlstedt’s inking lacks the weird flavor of Claw. The cover art was provided by Ernie Colon, the artist who created Arak, Son of Thunder with Roy Thomas.

With that final issue, DC Comics said goodbye to short sword-and-sorcery, but not all heroic fantasy. In 1982, the company had the unpopular Arak, Son of Thunder, Arion, Lord of Atlantis, Masters of the Universe tie-ins, The Warlord (no longer with Grell), The Atlantis Chronicles by Esteban Maroto, and the on-again-off-again Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld. By 1988 though, the ranks of DC would not include sword-and-sorcery. In fact, by the 1990s, only old cornerstones such as Conan, Elfquest, Masters of the Universe, and television fare such as Xena, Warrior Princess would be in evidence. The 1990s would not be kind to sword-and-sorcery. DC Comics, like everyone else, had tested the waters, but ultimately gone back to superheroes.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Day 6

Myself in Three Fictional Characters

Tomorrow's October, which means that this blog is going to turn towards Halloween and if I'm going to do that Three Fictional Characters meme, I'd better do it today.

The Desolation of Tolkien: Not a Movie Review [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

First, a little explanation of the title. I saw that one of the chapters in John C Wright's book, Transhuman and Subhuman (2014) was "The Desolation of Tolkien" and I thought, "Finally, someone is going to talk about it!" Imagine my surprise when I read it and all Wright was doing was reviewing the second Hobbit film. (I agree with his review, but still: disappointed.) I realized after that, I'd have to write about it.

What I am referring to is: how does a fantasy writer work today? You have no choice but to decide you will ignore Tolkien, consciously write against him, or accept him and sadly give up and run down to Hobbiton. Tolkien casts a long shadow, and a wide one. You have no choice. Decide. In this way, Tolkien has desolated the fantasy field, though I doubt that was ever his intention.

Let me explain better. Imagine if you will, you are a writer. You want to create a fantastic story that is not explainable as science fiction, nor intended to solely chill you like horror. It's a tale of wonders, set in an imaginary world perhaps. If you include even one non-human race your reader will wonder, are they elves or orcs or ents or somesuch? (And if you don't use any, does the reader feel cheated?) If you have cities in your world, that reader will expect that armies will march from said centers to engage in battle. You may not want to do any of these things, but the expectation is there. Lin Carter proved this with the Ballantine Fantasy Series back in 1971. According to an interview he gave Amazing Stories, the books that were most like Tolkien sold the best. According to ST Joshi, even masters of early fantasy like Clark Ashton Smith failed to sell. Carter did us a great service, introducing many forgotten books like Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword (1951), but it had elves and it did better. Enough so that Anderson wrote some new books in the series. Tolkien is everywhere.

Don't believe me? What are they calling George RR Martin, who married the popular Lord of the Rings with Dune to create A Song of Ice and Fire? The American Tolkien! Game of Thrones was sold to HBO as "Sopranos in Middle Earth." George made his decision. He can work within the Tolkien tradition. I think he does it better than Terry Brooks or Stephen R Donaldson or David Eddings or any of those endless series writers, but they all dwell in the Land of Tolkien. In Brooks' case, intentionally.

As Peter S Beagle explains in The Secret History of Fantasy (2010), the Ballantines knew what the reading public wanted, knowing The Sword of Shannara was a pale imitation, but a guaranteed money-maker. I heard Terry Brooks talk on the radio back in the 1980s. From his words you would have thought nobody had written a fantasy before that Oxford Don with the extra middle initials. And perhaps he is right? Who cares about William Morris or Lord Dunsany, ER Eddison or James Branch Cabell or... Have we learned nothing from Richard Adams' Watership Down? A bestseller that looked more to Homer than Tolkien. It can be done, but it isn't.

What of sword-and-sorcery? Robert E Howard predates Tolkien; exists without him. But Howard's shadow is almost as big. Choose one form of darkness or another. (So LOTR fans will get it, do you choose Sauron or Sarumon?) Many choose to write under Howard's umbrella, seeking their own place there, much as some horror writers are perfectly happy to lie under Lovecraft's Mythos shadow. No one exists in a vacuum, but a good writer needs to feel the sun on his or her face once in awhile. To breath the fresh air and spy out their own landscapes.

One thing both Howard and Tolkien (as well as CS Lewis and ER Eddison) would agree on is a love of the "Northern Thing." What is that? It's an old sensation that anyone reading through a copy of East of the Sun and West of the Moon or seeing the artwork of Kay Nielsen or John Bauer for the first time understands. Related to that is a love of the Arabesque, that you can find when you read One Thousand and One Nights. Does commercial chock-a-block fantasy do this anymore? Do any of these fat paperback writers make you feel that Northern breeze? The heft of the sword in your hand? The pulse of magic in the air? Would a photocopy of a photocopy of the Mona Lisa amaze you the same way as standing in front the original painting? You might glimpse some sense of Da Vinci's brilliance, but not all. Is it any different with Tolkienesque fantasy? I think not. The Ballantines created a new publishing market and that's good for writers (food and paying the electrical bills are always good), but it is bad for readers. Innovation can't dwell in the shadow of old John Ronald Reuel.

So what can we do? How do we write something new about something old? I have no idea. If I did, I'd be doing it right now. And making a killing setting up the next wave of fantasy books. Will someone some day accomplish this? I think so. It may take a century or so, but one day Tolkien will fade into the background, as did Morris, Dunsany, and the rest. In our time now, with our still-current Peter Jackson films, a Game of Thrones TV show, (not to mention The Shannara Chronicles!), video games like World of Warcraft, and all those fat paperbacks... well, we will have to wait. That long, cold shadow isn't going anywhere soon.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

British History in Film | 1066 and The Pillars of the Earth

I started this British History in Film project that I was just going to write about in the 7 Days in May feature, but it could make a fun feature in itself, so... spin-off! In last week's 7 Days in May, I wrote about King Arthur (2004) and The Vikings (1958). It's kind of appropriate to keep them separate since both are only historical in the loosest possible sense.

With this post, we're kicking off movies that we can actually put some dates to, because they include actual, historical events and people. Not that historical accuracy is going to be a requirement here. This is purely for fun.

1066: The Battle for Middle Earth (2011)

First up is this documentary-style mini-series about the Viking and Norman invasions of Britain that led to the Battle of Hastings. It's pretty good and takes an unusual approach in focusing on the common soldiers rather than their leaders.

As the title suggests, it draws a lot of parallels with Tolkien's novels, staring with its being narrated by Bilbo Baggins himself, Ian Holm. Some of the connections feel unnecessary, like continually calling the Normans "orcs," but others - for instance, the reminder that England's defenders were mostly humble farmers from the shire - have a bigger impact. What the series never does though is actually mention Tolkien or explain why it's making these connections with his books, so it feels a bit pointless and mercenary overall.

The acting is fair and I ended up caring about the characters I was supposed to. The series also makes lovely use of the beautiful forests of England as the setting for these battles. It wasn't quite the narrative style I was looking for, but it ended up being a cool way to experience the story and learn some history.

The Pillars of the Earth (2010)



1066 covered the invasion of England by the Normans from France, led by William the Conqueror. I couldn't find any movies about his son, William II, but his grandson Henry is king when Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth kicks off. The mini-series opens with the sinking of the White Ship in 1120, which killed Henry's heir and sent England into a crisis over who was going to succeed.

The conflict around that is the backdrop to another story about the building of a fictional cathedral. The crown and the church and a couple of noble families all struggle for power with the cathedral project often being used as a bargaining chip. I'm gonna call it Game of Thrones Lite, but I don't mean it to be insulting. Pillars is playing in that same arena and is slightly less graphic, but it's also its own thing and totally captivating. My whole family was drawn in by these characters and the drama between them.

It's got a great cast, too, with Ian McShane as a wicked and ambitious clergyman and Matthew Macfadyen as the equally ambitious, but more noble priest trying to get the cathedral built. Rufus Sewell plays the builder in charge of the project and Eddie Redmayne is his apprentice, who also has a secret with important implications to the succession crisis. Donald Sutherland plays a noble who supports the underdog in the dispute, and Hayley Atwell is his daughter, though her role becomes much more important than just that.

I highly recommend the mini-series if you haven't seen it, so I won't spoil it (or 862-year-old history) by saying who wins the crown, but next week we'll pick up with a movie about the reign of that ruler.

Sword and Sorcery Cliche No. 1: The Ming the Merciless Haircut [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

I am currently re-reading John Jakes's entire Brak the Barbarian saga, and I was struck by an odd thought. Why do wizards in sword-and-sorcery always dress like Ming the Merciless? In "The Unspeakable Shrine," Brak meets his nemesis, Septegundus, the Amyr of Evil and high priest of Yob-Haggoth:

And from the black portal silently glided the Amyr of Evil upon Earth...The man was not of overwhelming stature. He was clad in a plain black robe with voluminous sleeves into which his hands were folded. His pate was closely shaven, his nose aquiline, his lips thin. His chin formed a sharp point, and the upper parts of his ears were pointed, too. His eyes were large, dark, staring, nearly all pupil. Very little white showed. He had no eyelids. Evidently they had been removed by a crude surgical procedure. Light pads of scar tissue had encrusted above the sockets which held eyes that never closed.

Septegundus is far from an anomaly. He is the stereotypical sword-and-sorcery wizard. Bald, weird-looking, powerful, with evil eyes. Compare him to Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings:

An old man was driving it all alone. He wore a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, and a silver scarf. He had a long white beard and bushy eyebrows that stuck out beyond the brim of his hat.

Tolkien derived Gandalf's look from the Scandinavian tales of Odin who traveled in the guise of "The Grey God," a man in a wide-brimmed hat dressed in grey. The Ming stereotype is coming from a different lineage, the gothics.

The horror tradition in fiction begins in England with The Castle of Otranto (1765) by Horace Walpole. These novels, especially those of Ann Radcliffe, feature creepy houses, lost heirs, fake monsters, and a lot of shocks for shock sake. This tradition would eventually dissolve into other forms of storytelling, including detective and mystery fiction and the psychological horror tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Do they feature bald-headed wizards? Not really. Though Ambrosio from MG Lewis's The Monk (1796) is certainly the most influential of all gothic characters:

He was a Man of noble port and commanding presence. His stature was lofty, and his features uncommonly handsome. His Nose was aquiline, his eyes large black and sparkling, and his dark brows almost joined together. His complexion was of a deep but clear Brown; Study and watching had entirely deprived his cheek of colour. Tranquillity reigned upon his smooth unwrinkled forehead; and Content, expressed upon every feature, seemed to announce the Man equally unacquainted with cares and crimes. He bowed himself with humility to the audience: Still there was a certain severity in his look and manner that inspired universal awe, and few could sustain the glance of his eye at once fiery and penetrating. Such was Ambrosio, Abbot of the Capuchins, and surnamed, 'The Man of Holiness'.

So how did the bald look find its way into sword-and-sorcery? You can thank Weird Tales. You have to remember that sword-and-sorcery as Robert E Howard created it was half fantasy and half horror. He had to sell these stories to Farnsworth Wright after all, and WT was a horror pulp. In the stories that Howard wanted to sell to Adventure (Stories like "By This Axe I Rule" or "Kings of the Night") he drops almost all the horror trimmings, writing something closer to a Harold Lamb or Talbot Mundy tale. He was a professional and he wanted to crack more prestigious magazines.

So, Weird Tales is the gateway. Howard introduces Thoth-Amon in "The Phoenix on the Sword" (December 1932) and this evil Stygian priest doesn't bear the look (not yet, later in the Marvel Comics and the L Sprague de Camp pastiches he would get the buzz cut.) Even though Thoth-Amon didn't get much description, his activities are similar to another character, Fu Manchu:

Of him it had been fitly said that he had a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan. Something serpentine, hypnotic, was in his very presence. Smith drew one sharp breath, and was silent. Together, chained to the wall, two mediaeval captives, living mockeries of our boasted modern security, we crouched before Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Robert E Howard had written of his own version of Fu named Kathulos of Egypt in "Skull-Face" (October-December 1929):

The hands--but, oh God, the face! A skull to which no vestige of flesh seemed to remain but on which taut brownish-yellow skin grew fast, etching out every detail of that terrible death's-head. The forehead was high and in a way magnificent, but the head was curiously narrow through the temples, and from under penthouse brows great eyes glimmered like pools of yellow fire. The nose was high-bridged and very thin; the mouth was a mere colorless gash between thin, cruel lips. A long, bony neck supported this frightful vision and completed the effect of a reptilian demon from some medieval hell.

Howard, after Rohmer, is clearly working in a tradition descended from Otranto, with men reborn from Ancient Asia, whether China or Egypt, the cradle of mysterious wisdom and evil.

To make this even clearer, there are two major undercurrents in the gothics that truly pin down the evil wizard type. The first is that the underlying plot of gothic stories is about something from the past terrorizing the present. In Otranto, this is the specter of the giant knight who crushes Manfred's heir with a helmet, steps out of paintings, and ultimately destroys him. In later years this can be seen in horror fiction in any story in which an ancient object haunts a family like in "The Stone Idol" by Seabury Quinn, or in ghost stories like MR James' "Lost Hearts." In mystery fiction this is the crime that haunts the perpetrator such as the classic Wilkie Collins story The Moonstone (1868) or Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock tale, "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" (The Strand, July 1893). In the noir branch, it's the unknown crime in Cornell Woolrich's The Black Curtain (1941). In sword-and-sorcery (and other forms of fantasy), this is Bilbo's Ring or the ancient snake worshippers of Set, who harken back to the Snake Men of Prehistory. It can be any object, book, knowledge, god, or monster that returns centuries later. And that's our sorcerer buddy. He is either such a person, or works for such a deity, or possesses such an object. They buy into the idea that ancient power can make them powerful now. It is up to the barbarian hero to thwart such ideas.

The second theme that the gothics give us is the idea that old things are evil and new things are our savior. This is immediately evident when you look at the hero, Brak:

The mendicant seemed to hunch in fright cowed by the figure before him: the bigger man plainly was an outlander, a huge, yellow-headed giant whose hair was plaited in a single long braid that hung down his back. A glossy fur cloak and cowl around the barbarian’s shoulders reflected the torchglare dimly. The big man was naked save for this fur and a garment of lion’s hide about his hips.

Brak is young, well-maned, and virile. The female characters are usually voluptuous, fecund, and available. Villains such as Ariane are usually too beautiful, hinting at their deceit, and often prove to be withered crones or monsters when their magic is dispelled. The wizard is the exact opposite to Brak, old-looking, bald, and with eyes that contain evil powers. The baldness is important, for it is a sign of age, impotence and decay. In gothic texts, the authors often suggested that the Roman Catholic religion was likewise decrepit and oppressive; old, but evil. The gothics weren't anti-religion, just anti-Catholic, for the hero (no longer disguised as a peasant, returned to his true lordship) marries the heroine in a good Anglican church, with a bright future ahead. The evil, old dude gets his comeuppance and if he has time says something akin to "And I would have gotten away with to too, if it weren't for you meddling kids." This kind of shorthand works for all kinds of villains and comics certainly have had their share, such as The Red Skull in Captain America.

Lastly, to cement the point, let's consider Elric of Melnibone. Michael Moorcock created Elric as a kind of anti-Conan. Instead of strong, he is a weak albino. Instead of handsome, he is freakish. In fact, Moorcock uses many of the villain characteristics to create his anti-hero. He is haunted by his sword, Stormbringer, who must be fed souls to keep the weak body going. This sword is the object from the past that haunts his present, dooming his future. In many ways, Elric is the image of the sorcerer, not the swordsman. In some ways but not all. Elric is not bald but has a flowing white mane. He is also resourceful, able to have companions, and is capable of love. Moorcock created a hero who is halfway between the two types. This should not be surprising when you consider one of his influences was Mervyn Peake, who wrote the Gormenghast trilogy, undoubtedly the most gothic of the fantasy sagas. Unlike Tolkien, Moorcock is consciously choosing to work inside the gothic tradition, though bending and stretching it to his own ends. This opening of gothic elements helped allow sword-and-sorcery to evolve past the Howardian formula. Series like Gene Wolfe's The Book of New Sun and Samuel R Delaney's Neveryona play with these elements in fresh ways. (Though read any Conan novel by Robert Jordan, Leonard Carpenter, or others and you will find any number of baldies trying to resurrect ancient gods. Even worse, consider Skeletor from The Masters of the Universe! Alas, some like the formulas as is).

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Fantasy, Oh, Fantasy, Where Art Thou Gone? [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The 1960s saw an explosion in heroic fantasy fiction with Ballantine's The Lord of the Rings and the Lancer Conan paperbacks. Suddenly barbarians and hobbit-like creatures were everywhere. In novels, collections, anthologies and comic books. It was a wonderful decade for fantasy readers. But by 1979, things were changing and soon a desert would be born.

What caused sword-and-sorcery to disappear after the 1980s? I believe it was a combination of things. First, publishers like Belmont were pumping out quick knock-offs to try and grab some of the riches. Books like Quinn Reade's The Quest of the Dark Lady (1969) did nothing to improve what was already seen as a limited sub-genre. Magazines like Heavy Metal (starting in April 1977) did even less, muddying the waters with a weird blend of sword-and-planet and sex. The bestseller, The Sword of Shannara (1977) by Terry Brooks also showed that even really bad Tolkien imitations could make fortunes. Why write short stories of lone barbarians when fat novels about elves and dwarves could sell millions of copies?

Secondly, the role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons (1974) had narrowed the idea of fantasy, pairing Conan and Middle Earth to create a homogenized version of what should have been a genre without limits. Elves and barbarians fight side by side in Gary Gygax's game world. The younger fantasy fans were ultimately gamers and many became writers as well. These include Raymond E Feist, RA Salvatore, Garth Nix, David Langford, Michael Stackpole, and many others.

Thirdly and irreparably, was the movie Conan the Barbarian (1982). What should have been a high-water mark that propelled sword-and-sorcery into the mainstream consciousness, the film was the best of a steadily sinking list of films that are so awful they soon became direct to video. Not until Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001 would another major fantasy film wave be created.

So things were pretty bad. What's a writer of heroic fantasy to do? Well, one of the few arenas left for sword-and-sorcery fiction was the gaming magazines. Yes, D&D may have caused some of the problems, but gamers still enjoyed heroic fantasy and published it alongside articles on fighting goblins and dungeon scenarios to play with your friends.

The biggest was TSR's The Dragon Magazine, which began in June 1976 and is still running in some form today. The issues of most importance are the paper ones: #1-359 (June 1976-September 2007). These were the ones that featured fiction. The list of authors who appeared is long but looking at the names I see trends:

The first is old-timers making an appearance. These included Rob Chilson, L Sprague de Camp, Harry O Fischer, Fritz Leiber, and Gordon Linzner. These stories were welcome, but not many. There were also novelists including excerpts to promote a new book: Terry Brooks (Shannara excerpt) and Andre Norton (Quag Keep excerpt). The most interesting of the old timers was Gardner F Fox, comic book veteran and now sword-and-sorcery writer with a long series about "Niall of the Long Journeys" starting in issue #2 and interspersed to #55 (July 1976-November 1981). Ben Bova, science fiction editor extraordinaire, also wrote a series on legendary heroes set in historical Britain between issues #236-311 (December 1996-September 2003).

The second group are names that have since become well-known in other publications like Asimov's, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and paperbacks. These stars of present day publishing include Thieves' World editor Lynn Abbey, Aaron Allston, Neal Barrett Jr, John Gregory Betancourt (future editor at Weird Tales and Wildside Press), Elaine Cunningham, Diane Duane, Esther M Friesner, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Brian A Hopkins, J Gregory Keyes, Jean Lorrah, George RR Martin (Game of Thrones superstar), Ardath Mayhar, Paul J McAuley, John Morressy, Joel Rosenberg, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (future editor of F&SF), Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Charles R Saunders, Steven Saylor (international bestseller with the Roma Sub Rosa mystery series), Darrell Schweitzer (future editor of Weird Tales), Lisa Smedman, Jeff Swycaffer, Steve Rasnic Tem, Harry Turtledove (sf and fantasy bestseller), Robert E Vardeman, and Lawrence Watts-Evan.

The third group are names we know from later days when the AD&D universe would sprawl out into paperbacks about the Dragonlance saga with its dragons and drow elves. These include Adam-Troy Castro, Troy Denning, Ed Greenwood, Tracy Hickman, Paul Kidd, Roger E Moore, Douglas Niles, Mel Odom, Jean Rabe, RA Salvatore, and Margaret Weis. Many of these books were bestsellers in their own right.

The second major gaming magazine was UK's White Dwarf, which ran from June/July 1977 to this day, but did not use a lot of fiction. The little it did feature was the humorous fantasy of David Langford (along with non-fiction by future fantasy star Garth Nix and the cartoon Conan parody "Thrud the Barbarian" by Carl Critchlow).

Probably the best magazine in terms of quality was Sorcerer's Apprentice, which ran for 17 issues from the Winter 1978 to a final issue in 1983. SA published the very best of fantasy authors with Robert E Vardeman, Charles de Lint, Tanith Lee, Janet Fox, Manly Wade Wellman, CJ Cherryh, and Fred Saberhagen. Roger Zelazny reprinted several of his Dilvish the Damned stories and even wrote a new one, "Garden of Blood" for issue #3. Karl Edward Wagner did likewise with his eternal swordsman Kane. Michael Stackpole, a future fantasy bestseller, wrote many of the non-fiction articles and acted as editor.

The last of the bunch was Ares, a magazine that focused on games besides AD&D. It ran from March 1980-1984 for 16 issues plus two specials. It featured fantasy fiction by M Lucie Chin, Jayge Carr, Ian McDowell, and Poul Anderson. The best sword-and-sorcery stories were "Inn At World's End" and "The Whispering Mirror" by Richard Lyon and Andrew Offutt, part of their Demon in the Mirror series that Timescape published.

November 1982 saw the gaming world enter the world of sf publishing when TSR, owners of AD&D bought Amazing Stories, Hugo Gernsback's original SF magazine. They would hold the copyright until 1996. Its new editor was George Scithers, who as a fanzine editor of Amra had been godparent to the term "sword-and-sorcery," born out of discussions between Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock. He won two Hugos for his editing at Asimov's before moving onto Amazing. The George Scither years at Amazing (1982-1986) held a nice balance between sf and fantasy with stories from Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Nancy Springer, Tanith Lee, Pat Murphy, David Langford, Lisa Tuttle, Diana L Paxson, Rosemary Edghill, Jayge Carr, Darrell Schweitzer, John Gregory Betancourt, Harry Turtledove (as Eric G Iverson), and Esther M Friesner. Many of these authors had appeared in The Dragon previously. Scither would leave in 1986 to re-emerge as the editor of another important magazine revival, Weird Tales in 1988, one of the last places to sell sword-and-sorcery in the 1990s.

The '80s saw a few bright flashes but over-all a dwindling in sword-and-sorcery. In paperback, the Thieves' World shared world spawned several books and there were also the Red Sonja novels by Smith and Tierney, Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Tomeo Gozon series, reprints of Elric, and new anthologies such as Sword and Sorceress by Marion Zimmer Bradley. The magazine markets for short sword-and-sorcery were pretty much depleted by 1980, with the folding of Ted White's reign at Fantastic and the last of Lin Carter's Year's Best anthologies. Fantasy was moving away from adventure and derring-do towards a softer, more literary kind. It also re-branded its name, no longer using sword-and-sorcery as a tag. The gamers went one way and the litterateurs another. The 1990s were coming and that desert I mentioned stretched out ahead, with only Conan pastiches and Xena: Warrior Princess left to remind us there had been a sword-and-sorcery boom twenty years before.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Dragonfly Ripple, Ep 2: "LotR Cartoons and D&D"

The new episode of Dragonfly Ripple is out! That's the show where Nerd Luncher Carlin Trammel and I talk to our kids about important parenting matters like Dungeons & Dragons and the animated Lord of the Rings movies. We also ask you for the best Star Trek episodes for kids, so give us your recommendations!

AND! Time travel and an exciting, new segment called "Jetpack Tiger" in which Carlin's 6-year-old son totally rules the podcasting universe while discussing the Lilo & Stitch movies. Hope you'll check it out.

The Battle of Five Armies: Of Orcs and Epics [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

As I sat watching the last of The Hobbit trilogy of films I realized something. We take so much for granted in the 21st Century. Imagine if I had a time machine and could go back to 1936. I'd step out (fighting the desire to find a newsstand and buy copies of Weird Tales in pristine condition) and meet some fan of Fantasy (after a very long search) and we'd talk. We could discuss Lord Dunsany, perhaps the recently deceased Robert E Howard, or ER Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros. Then I'd mention something about vast orc armies and I'd get a strange stare. Of course, Tolkien's The Hobbit hasn't been published yet. My mistake.

But it isn't the word "orc" that is the problem. It's the entire concept of vast, epic battles between men and orcs that is the stumbling block. The Battle of Five Armies is the first of these. My 1936 companion may be ready for the idea, but he hasn't got it yet. I jump back into my time machine, whispering one beautiful word in his ear, "Hobbit," and disappear. (Unfortunately the experience of seeing me disappear in my time machine drives him to read Amazing Stories or Astounding instead and we lose him from the Fantasy pool. What can you do?)

Eighteen years later my machine takes me to see Tolkien give us more with The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's vast ideas are starting to light new fires like Carroll Kendall's The Gammage Cup in 1959, with its army of mushroom warriors. I jump another ten years to see the campuses of America (along with an unauthorized paperback edition) drive Tolkien's popularity to the point where Led Zeppelin is singing of Gollum and Ringwraiths. We are approaching critical mass...

In 1972, Gary Gygax is about to sit down with a bunch of buddies and Dungeons & Dragons is on. Those stats-driven warriors need something to fight. Of course, it has to be a goblin. After Tolkien's estate and Gygax hash out the copyright of certain terms, the deal is done. Pairing this with the success in 1977 of the Tolkien clone, The Sword of Shannara, epic fantasy is now set to boil. The creation of Derivative Fantasy! Anybody can write of such creatures! The world of Fantasy now has its generic monster, the Orc. In any video game, any book, any RPG, the orc is the opponent in armor that warriors face everywhere.

But it wasn't always so. That is my point. The idea took a long time to get here. As scholars such as Michael Drout point out, it began in 1872 with a children's book by a Scottish minister. The book was The Princess and the Goblin by George Macdonald. Scholars and fans make a lot of noise about William Morris starting off the Modern Fantasy genre with his pseudo-Medieval novels like The Wood Beyond the World (1894), and he was vital in insuring that Fantasy would become a genre dominated by novels. But it is Macdonald that gave us the goblin foe; who gave Tolkien the leg up to write The Hobbit; who gave CS Lewis the inspiration to write of animal and monster armies in Narnia. Macdonald's tale of Curdie and the princess Irene seems quaint by today's epic, grand scale. A common boy and a restless princess discover a plot by the goblins to attack the castle, which eventually leads to an armed conflict. Despite the fight being appropriate for children, it did open the door to Fantasy tales in which humans are versed against an inhuman army. Eddison would use it to create two human armies in The Worm Ouroboros (calling them Demons and Witches), but it was Tolkien's The Hobbit that cemented the idea for all time.

And one hundred years later that, resulted in the genrification of the orc as common military assailant. World of Warcraft; Orcs Must Die!; the latest hack Tolkien-esque bestseller. It's everywhere and its not going away any time soon. For better or worse, Fantasy has an epic scale today. The quaint, personal-sized Fantasy tale, be it the glorious works of Thomas Burnett Swann or even the Howardian tale of the lone barbarian, is awash in a sea of orcs and battle. There's not much you can do...

For example, back around 1988, I met L Sprague de Camp at a convention in Calgary. I spoke with him about a project I had abandoned, that of converting his Novaria novels to an RPG setting. He thought I should keep at it, but I knew ultimately it wouldn't work. Why? No orcs. No elves. Novaria is a Fantasy world filled with humans. There are demons and magic, but all the armies are men. You can't fight the tide with your bare hands.

So there I sat this Christmas, watching what I felt was the best of the three Hobbit films, thinking: all Fantasy writers today have to make their peace with Tolkien and his orc armies. Either you accept them as part of what you are writing or you have to reject them and write something that is inherently anti-Tolkien. There is no middle ground any more. A book I read over the holiday made this even more evident to me. It was Conan the Invincible (1980) by Robert Jordan. In that rather pedestrian tale, Conan's enemy wizard has a race of scaly-skin henchmen called the S'Tarra. They are hidden in his castle fortress, breeding and preparing for the taking over of the world. Is it any surprise Jordan gave up writing Conans for pseudo-Tolkien in The Wheel of Time series?

Another author of note, one who shares Tolkien's double middle initials (Raymond Richard, not Ronald Reuel), is George RR Martin. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice shows a new ingenuity with this Tolkien dilemma. Martin has combined the two most commercially successful Science Fiction (Dune) and Fantasy (Lord of the Rings) franchises to create the Game of Thrones books. This sounds like I am disparaging him but this is far from the truth. I have the highest respect for GRRM. First off, for his amazing story writing before Game of Thrones with classics like "Way of Cross and Dragon" and "Sandkings," but secondly for his masterful control of character, which allows us to watch or read a story with dozens of distinct characters, each worthy of a tale of their own. So I glibly say "combined the political essence Dune and the fantastic world of LOTR," but go ahead; try it.

Really what George was doing was that thing we must all do as modern Fantasy writers. Dealing with Tolkien. I believe GRRM has chosen to accept Tolkien, and though we haven't seen much of it yet, "Winter is Coming." What does that mean? Orc (or White Walkers and Wildings) armies. Tolkien is coming and George has the cajones to make us wait through six fat books for it. Long live the orc! He's going to be with for some time yet.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

34 Movies I Missed Seeing from 2014

It's time again to run through and rank all the movies from last year that I saw. I'll be doing that over the next couple of weeks, but first: here's the traditional post of movies that I wanted to see from last year, but haven't yet. That's partly to explain why some movies didn't make it into the rankings, but it's also to build a watch list for myself.

This year, work was crazy during the fall and leading up to the holidays, so I didn't get out to the theater as much as I usually do. The Missed List typically has around 20-30 movies on it, but this time there are 34 that I need to catch up on in 2015. I still saw more than I missed though, so I'm happy about that. We'll start on those in the next day or two.

For now, here's the Missed List, more or less in the order that the movies were released:

1. The Wind Rises



Hayao Miyazaki's last film. I'm a fan of Miyazaki and have seen all his feature films since Castle in the Sky, but I'm not a superfan and The Wind Rises is different enough from his fantastical stuff that I didn't rush to see it. Going to correct that soon though.

2. The Grand Budapest Hotel



I experience mixed results from Wes Anderson, but I very much enjoyed Moonrise Kingdom and what I hear about Grand Budapest Hotel makes me think it's even more in my wheelhouse from its cast and setting to its themes and the way it's shot. I love hotels and stories set in them, but there's also that whole Upstairs Downstairs/Downton Abbey angle of telling stories of both the servants and the served.

3. Joe



I would love to like Nicolas Cage in a movie again and if I can't get National Treasure 3, this seems like the way to do it.

4. Locke



A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have been the least bit interested in a movie that's set entirely in a car with a dude on the phone. But I do dig Tom Hardy and I'm curious about the mystery of where he's driving to.

5. Chef



This is mostly about the cast and Favreau as a director, but I also love some nicely shot food porn.

Size Does (Not) Matter: The New Paradigm [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

A good friend, writer Jack Mackenzie, got me thinking about book lengths in Science Fiction and how they have been tied to publishing. He also got me thinking about how this no longer matters. Let me explain.

Science Fiction began as a novel medium. As Richard Mathews points out in Fantasy: The Liberation of Imagination (1997), "The emergence of realism as the mainstream focus for the literary imagination created a clear dialectical pole against which the fantasy genre could counterthrust as a specialized mode of fiction. In fact, fantasy especially utilized the novel - the most ambitious and popular vehicle for realism - as its primary literary vehicle as well." Fantasy in this case would include everything from The Castle of Otranto to The Hobbit to the Foundation series. All imaginative fiction.

Novels like Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho (291,000 words) were published in three sections because binding did not exist yet for larger books. These were read through circulating libraries that you subscribed to. This three part format dictated that the novel structure often had three distinct sections (Aristotle's classic Beginning-Middle-End). As printing improved, novels became shorter, like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (75,000 words) until HG Wells wrote Science Fiction at a mere 60,000 with The War of the Worlds. Varney the Vampire (667,000 words) may hold the record for single longest fantastical work but it was not structurally a novel per se, but a serial sold a penny sheet at a time. The venue dictated the form and length.

Then it changed. Slowly as magazines proliferated, short Science Fiction tales known usually as "off-trail fiction" began to show up in magazines like The Strand and in weeklies like Argosy and All-Story. But the novel took its biggest hit when Hugo Gernsback created the first Science Fiction magazine in 1926, Amazing Stories. Gernsback used novels but writers found short stories allowed them to explore more ideas more quickly and became the norm. Science Fiction books were culled together from stories, but these were not novels. The original Foundation trilogy is not a series of novels. The first three books are short story collections. (Shhh, don't tell anyone.) As were classics like City by Clifford D. Simak, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell, Voyage of the Space Beagle by AE van Vogt, and Adam Link, Robot by Eando Binder. You get the idea. Writers still wrote novels, serializing them, but even these were shorter affairs at 40-60,000 words, making them able to fit into an issue or two.

After the Pulps faded away and paperbacks took over, Ace Books came out with a popular series of "Doubles," two short novels back-to-back. These include some classics such as The World of Null-A and The Universe Maker (1953) by AE van Vogt, Philip K Dick's Solar Lottery was paired with Leigh Brackett's The Big Jump (1955), Robert Silverberg's The 13th Immortal went with James E Gunn's This Fortress World (1957), Big Planet and The Slaves of The Klau (1958) by Jack Vance, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Seven From The Stars and Keith Laumer's Worlds Of The Imperium (1962) and on and on and on. Eventually Ace would publish longer single novels in the 1960s but they would keep the same format and look.

Another publishing experiment in a similar line in the 1970s was Laser Books. The Canadian publisher of Harlequin Romance novels wanted to try a Science Fiction line, to sell SF in grocery stores and convenience outlets. Three novels a month by new and established writers, each an independent work, but all in the 60,000 word range. The cover art for all the books was done by Frank Kelly Freas, giving the line a nice uniformity. Authors included Thomas Monteleone, Raymond F. Jones, KW Jeter, Ray Nelson, Stephen Goldin, George Zebrowski, John Morressy, Jerry Pournelle, Jerry Sohl, David Bischoff, Robert Hoskins, Piers Anthony, and Tim Powers. After 57 novels the experiment was declared a failure and the line was ended. No instant classics amongst these novels, but many of their authors did go on to pen worthy additions to the Science Fiction canon.

On the longer side, the 1960s saw the creation of the paperback bestseller. The Lord of the Rings, driven by the counter culture, sold stunning numbers for Fantasy. In the 1970s, John Jakes' Kent Family chronicles did similar things for historical fiction while Frank Herbert's Dune books were Science Fiction's big winners and Stephen King's horror novels for the darker stuff. The paradigm had changed. People wanted big fat books again, books that allowed a reader to dwell in strange places for a good long while. So how big were these books? If we include The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings is only 300,000 words. The original Dune trilogy is 398,000, but The Song of Fire and Ice series (five books, each at 300,000 words) is 1,500,000 words so far.

Most of today's basic bestsellers are 100,000 minimum. Would The Sword of Shannara (1977) have sold as well at 70,000 words rather than 180,000? Probably not. Book buyers were looking for something that felt like The Lord of the Rings as well as read like it (maybe a little too much like it). That's a marketing tactic. Buyers began to equate size with quality. (Bigger is better, our minds tell us. If only this were true. I'd rather read a 2500 word Lord Dunsany gem over anything David Eddings ever wrote!)

The long and the short of it all is that publishing markets determine how long books are. Asimov is what Asimov is because he wrote when he did. Could he have written longer novels if he had come along in the 1970s instead of the 1930s? He did in his later career. But are the later books as much fun as those old Astounding stories? Writers are the product of the markets that exist at the time they are trying to get published. The mid-listers of the 1970s are another good example. Avram Davidson could write wonderful 65,000 word books (sometimes shorter) and be part of Doubleday's mid-list making a small, but consistent living. Today? Forget it.

But then that was the past. All that was true up to 2007, when Amazon introduced the Kindle and the ebook went from an airy-fairy dream to the majority of the market share. And now with a movement towards indie publishing, authors are no longer tied to big publishers who dictate format, length or content (some would cry, also editing and proofreading). An author selling their own books online can now decide all of that for themselves.

This piece isn't about writing though, but reading. To go back to Jack Mackenzie. We both enjoy a good short SF novel. Something like Robert Silverberg's Nightwings or Michael Moorcock's The Eternal Champion or Tom Godwin's Space Prison. Fascinating reads that are 60,000 words or less. The ideas - the fun - are concentrated; not drawn out over 100,000+ words. That's how they wrote them back then. Because you had to.

It's fun to dip into an old stack of Ace Doubles. Jack Vance was the king of concentrated writing. He'd spark off more ideas in a page than a stack of bestsellers. But they weren't slow for all their richness. They moved with a pace that kept you turning all night until they were done and you wished they were longer. I think, and I'm sure Jack would agree, that every library (paper or digital) needs longer and shorter pieces, sagas as well as novellas and short story collections. I know when I've just finished a lengthy series that there is a period of time in which I feel soaked in that world, in that author's words, and it's hard to move on. That's when I reach for the short stuff. It gives you something to read while your brain processes all those chapters of Wonder. It gives you that needed step away from Hogwarts, or Middle Earth, or Arrakis. It lets in a little air, bittersweet as parting is, and says, yes, you will read again.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Ted White's Fantastic: Short Heroic Fantasy [Guest Post]

By GW Thomas

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction began its life as The Magazine of Fantasy. By the second issue the words "and Science Fiction" had been added. Why? Because no pure Fantasy magazine had ever made it past five issues. Weird Tales had been more Horror than Fantasy. Unknown published John W Campbell's version of Fantasy, but a brand for Science Fiction readers, almost an anti-Fantasy at times. Cele Goldsmith and the long-running Fantastic knew this too and the mix had always been heavier to the SF side. During the early 1960s Goldsmith cultivated Sword and Sorcery writers like Fritz Leiber, bringing him back to magazine publishing with new Fafhrd and Grey Mouser tales. She also brought in new writers like John Jakes with Brak the Barbarian and Roger Zelazny with Dilvish the Damned. This continued until June 1965 when Goldsmith (now Lalli) left the publication when Fantastic was sold to Sol Cohen, with a change from monthly to a bi-monthly schedule.

Laili was replaced by Joseph Ross (Joseph Wrzos) who inherited a huge stockpile of stories from the old days of the Pulps. Fantastic became a reprint magazine, its first new issue containing only one original story, the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tale "Stardock". Ross published the small reserve of Fantasy tales purchased before the switch that included Avram Davidson's classic novel The Phoenix and the Mirror and "The Bells of Shoredan" by Zelazny. Amongst the reprints was the Pusadian tale "The Eye of Tandyla" by L Sprague de Camp (from Fantastic Adventures, May 1951). But Ross wasn't long for the position, being replaced by Harry Harrison and later Barry N Malzberg. Both Harrison and Malzberg would leave over the reprints that plagued the magazine. They wanted to edit a magazine of new, modern Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Fantastic needed a new editor. One who could present both quality Science Fiction and Fantasy. Cohen was willing to sell his reprints in other formats and leave the new editor to his work. A choice was found with Robert Silverberg's help: junior editor from FaSF, Ted White. For ten years White would create a magazine that featured intriguing works of Fantasy as well as decorate it with great artists including Jeff Jones, Mike Kaluta, Ken Kelly, Harry Roland, and Stephen Fabian (and occasionally Joe Staton's pieces that remind me of DoodleArt). And this with the major handicap of low pay, for Fantastic offered its writers only one-cent a word in a marketplace that usually paid three to five cents. By cultivating new writers and snapping up gems where he could, White offered stories that often were chosen for the Year's Best Fantasy collections and even won the occasional award.

White's debut was April 1969 and its contents were not spectacular, chosen by others. The only hint of what was to come was Fritz Leiber's review column on ER Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros. It would have to wait until December 1969 before a truly interesting Fantasy would appear. This was Piers Anthony's Arabian Nights inspired Hasan, which Anthony supported with an essay on Arabesque Fantasy.

April 1970 saw another Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tale, a series dating back to Goldsmith but one that White was happy to continue. "The Snow Women" is a tale of Fafhrd's youth set in the cold north. Two more would follow in later years, "Trapped in the Shadowlands" (November 1973) and "Under the Thumbs of the Gods" (April 1975). At this time Leiber was collecting his tales into the first collections of Lankhmar and the new material would later be included.

Also in the April 1970 issue was John Brunner's "The Wager Lost by Winning," part of his Traveller in Black series, of which he would continue with "Dread Empire" (April 1971). Brunner, a British author known for his Science Fiction, created something different in these tales of the odd little wizard who roams the world, and they would win him a place in the Thieves' World alumni eight years later.

June 1971 featured a new non-fiction series, "Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers" by L Sprague De Camp. This series of articles looked at classic Fantasy authors including Robert E Howard, HP Lovecraft, Fletcher Pratt, William Morris, L Ron Hubbard, TH White and JRR Tolkien, running off and on until 1976. These pieces offered intriguing insight into the lives and trials of Fantasy writers, leading de Camp to write the first major biographies of both Lovecraft (Lovecraft: A Biography), 1975) and Howard (Dark Valley Destiny, 1983).

February 1972 saw the first of the Michael Moorcock stories to appear in Fantastic, with "The Sleeping Sorceress" starring the albino superstar, Elric of Melnibone. Later the same year, Count Brass featuring Dorian Hawkmoon would appear in August 1972. Both characters would become one as Moorcock melded his multiverse together to include everyone from Elric to Sojan to Jerry Cornelius.

White published the magazine versions of several good heroic fantasy novels during his decade: The Crimson Witch (October 1970) by Dean R Koontz, which feels more like Sword and Planet, like Ted White's own "Wolf Quest" (April 1971), "The Forges of Nainland are Cold" by Avram Davidson (Ursus of Ultima Thule in book form) in August 1972, The Fallible Fiend by L Sprague de Camp (December 1972-February 1973), part of his Novaria series, "The Son of Black Morca" by Alexei and Cory Panshin (Earthmagic in paperback) in April-July 1973, The White Bull by Fred Saberhagen (November 1976) who was moving away from the robotic Berserkers to become a Fantasy bestseller, and The Last Rainbow by Parke Godwin (July 1978). All of which would populate the book racks of the 1980s.

August 1972 saw the beginning of a series of new Conan pastiches by L Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter. "The Witches of the Mist" (August 1972), "The Black Sphinx of Nebthu" (July 1973), "Red Moon of Zembabwei" (July 1974), and "Shadows in the Skull" (February 1975), all of which form Conan of Aquilonia. Lin Carter groused in his intros to Year's Best Fantasy about this book, which had been stuck in legal limbo with the collapse of Lancer. Finally free, it appeared serially in Fantastic then in paperback in 1977.

Several other Sword and Sorcery series got a new start or a first start in Fantastic. Lin Carter wrote new tales of Thongor's youth with "Black Hawk of Valkarth" (September 1974), "The City in the Jewel" (December 1975) and "Black Moonlight" (November 1976). He also offered posthumous collaborations with masters Robert E Howard in "The Tower of Time" (June 1975) - a James Allison reincarnation story - and with Clark Ashton Smith in verbose Mythos-heavy pieces, "The Scroll of Morloc" (October 1975) and "The Stair in the Crypt" (August 1976). The February 1977 issue featured an interview with Lin Carter that was informative about his days on the Ballantine Fantasy series and other Fantasy goings-on in the 1960s and 1970s.

Brian Lumley published some of his first Primal Lands tales, part Lovecraftian horror, part Sword and Sorcery in Fantastic. These included "Tharquest and the Lamia Orbiquita" (November 1976) and "How Kank Thad Returned to Bhur-esh" (June 1977) . Lumley's Fantasy harkens back to Weird Tales and the works of HP Lovecraft's Dreamlands and Clark Ashton Smith's sardonic fantasies.

Another good start was made by Australian writer Keith Taylor, who wrote about wandering singer and swordsman Felimid mac Fel. These stories were the embryonic form of the book Bard, which Taylor began under the pseudonym Denis More. "Fugitives in Winter" (October 1975), "The Forest of Andred" (November 1976), and "Buried Silver" (February 1977) form the first part of the series that went on to contain five volumes with further tales in the new Weird Tales in the 1990s.

Other heroic fantasy pieces included "The Holding of Kolymar" (October 1972) by Gardner F Fox, "The Night of Dreadful Silence" (September 1973) by Glen Cook, destined for fame with his Black Company in the 1980s, "Death from the Sea" by Harvey Schreiber (August 1975), "Two Setting Suns" (May 1976) by Karl Edward Wagner, part of the Kane series , and "Nemesis Place" (April 1978) by David Drake, featuring Dama and Vettius, Drake's two Roman heroes.

Not all of White's choices were Sword and Sorcery. He published the wonderful "Will-o-Wisp"(September-November 1974) by Thomas Burnett Swann, "War of the Magicians" (November 1973) by William Rostler, "The Dragon of Nor-Tali" (February 1975) by Juanita Coulsen, "The Lonely Songs of Loren Dorr" (May 1976) by George RR Martin (long before Game of Thrones) and "A Malady of Magicks" (October 1978) by Craig Shaw Gardner, beginning the popular humorous Fantasy series featuring Ebenezum.

By the end of 1978 Fantastic was on a quarterly schedule and losing readership. White had grown more dissatisfied with Sol Cohen, wanting to take the magazine into the slick market. He also wanted a raise. January 1979 was his last issue before he left to edit Heavy Metal magazine. He was replaced with neophyte Elinor Mavor. Another period of reprints followed and the look of the magazine declined. Mavor was finding her feet with new authors like Wayne Wightman, Brad Linaweaver and artists like Janny Wurts. She published Stephen Fabian's graphic story "Daemon" (July 1979-July 1980), but the only gem to appear before amalgamation with Amazing Stories was the two part serial of The White Isle by Darrell Schweister, with illustrations by Gary Freeman, in the April and July 1980 issues. A last gasp of wonder before Fantastic was gone. It was the end of an era, but too few even knew what was lost. Other magazines would attempt to do what Ted White had done, through self sacrifice and continuous networking, but none would ever be such a haven for short heroic fantasy again.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Top 5 Spider Movies

Amazing Spider-Man 2 starts this weekend and sadly, I couldn't be less excited. I'm planning to see it, but mostly for the kissing parts. The villain-focused mythology this new series is building doesn't interest me at all, largely because that was the weakest part of the previous Amazing Spider-Man movie.

With that in mind, I thought it might be fun to remember and talk about some other spider-based movies that I expect I'll still like better than this new one once I've seen it. I picked my five favorites and some honorable mentions that didn't quite make the cut. Naturally, I want to hear about yours in the comments.

5. Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)



When I wrote about Beast from Haunted Cave a couple of years ago, I mentioned that it's primarily a crime drama disguised as a creature feature. The monster takes backseat to the conflict in a group of bank robbers and the guide they trick into helping them, which is what makes me love the film all the more. What crime thriller wouldn't be enhanced by a mysterious, cave-dwelling, web-spinning beast? The fact that it's not really a giant spider, but a spider-like humanoid only makes it more appropriate as a replacement for Spider-Man.

4. Charlotte's Web (1973)



I don't have a lot of time for the live-action remake from 2006, but the original cartoon adaptation of EB White's book still holds a special place in my heart. Paul Lynde's Templeton the rat was a huge attraction, but I'm amazed at how fond I grew of Charlotte the spider and how heart-broken and yet optimistic I was over that ending. That's a complicated blend of emotions to ask from children, but it's exactly why the story is so powerful and enduring.

3. Tarantula (1955)



If you're gonna turn ordinary animals into giant freaks - which people loved to do in the '50s - you can't do better than the hairiest, nastiest animal of them all. I don't know if I've mentioned, but as much as I complain about cephalopods around here, spiders - and tarantulas in particular - are 1000 times worse. This is almost my worst nightmare.