good sword and sorcery

bolen

First Post
So lately I have been on a "R E Howard" kick. Who is another good author

I know Wagner's Kane series, Surely there must be someone else who is worth reading in this genre.
 

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Gardner Fox (Yes, the guy who created the Silver Age Flash) wrote several stories and books in the genre. Niall of the Far Travels, featured in some early Dragon magazines (I could have sworn these were collected at some time, but if they were I can find no record of it), his Kyrik and Kothar novels; He also wrote some 'Sword and Planet' books in the vein of ERB: Warrior Of Llarn and Thief Of Llarn.

Lin Carter did write S&S Conan pachistes along with the Thongor & the Godwane books, among others. His main contribution was the Ballentine Adult Fantasy Series that kickstarted much of the modern interest in fantasy along with the 60's Tolkien revivial. That imprint reprinted a lot of early fantasy that would have been lost to us otherwise.

Carter also edited the Flashing Swords anthology: Flashing Swords, Flashing Swords #2, Flashing Swords #3: Warriors & Wizards, Flashing Swords #4: Barbarians & Black Magicians, Flashing Swords #5: Demons & Daggers.

Roland Green: The Wandor series

The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddidson

Tanith Lee's Birthgrave series.

John Jakes' Brak the barbarian. Yes, it's as wretched as you can imagine.

Offut's 5-volume Swords Against Darkness series. Out of that come a few series, most notably Charles Saunders three Imaro the Warrior novels, the only African-themed S&S I'm aware of (Imaro, The Quest for Kush and The Trail of Bohu).

Andrew J. Offutt's Cormac series -- The Sword of the Gael, The Undying Wizard, Sign of the Moonbow, The Mists of Doom, When Death Birds Fly, and The Tower of Death

Jirel of Joiry, by C L Moore; one of the first and finest female sword and sorcery series.

Jessica Amanda Salmonson's anthologies Amazons! and Heroic visions (2 volumes each)

Henry Kuttner's Elak of Atlantis
 

Poul Anderson

Based on your avatar alone, I would recommend three Nordic swords and sorcery novels by Poul Anderson: The Broken Sword , Hrolf Kraki's Saga, and War of the Gods.

Anderson is amazing at his craft. He's better known for his sci-fi novels but his fantasy stands right alongside Leiber and Howard, and in my opinion he's better than Carter, DeCamp or Moorcock.
 

replicant2 said:
Based on your avatar alone, I would recommend three Nordic swords and sorcery novels by Poul Anderson: The Broken Sword , Hrolf Kraki's Saga, and War of the Gods.
Seconded. (Actually, I've only read his The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions. I need to pick up more of his stuff.)
 

replicant2 said:
Based on your avatar alone, I would recommend three Nordic swords and sorcery novels by Poul Anderson...
I would also recommend Anderson, especially Three Hearts and Three Lions which greatly influenced D&D.
 


Good S&S? Isn't that an oxymoron? :p

Seriously, though, there's some fun S&S stuff out there. Fritz Leiber coined the freakin' phrase -- he's easily right up there with Howard.

For more modern interpretations of the genre, the x-slayer series of books from the WFRP setting aren't bad. Skavenslayer is, I believe, the first one, but there's gotta be at least eight or nine of them total, and they mostly are all self-contained and you could read them in any order without too much trouble.

If you like S&S, you'll probably like the slightly older, but in many ways similar planetary romance genre, like the John Carter of Mars books or the Carson Napier of Venus books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. His Pellucidar books have a definite pre-S&S feel to them as well. Not so much magic in those, though, just strange fantastic scenery and aliens and whatnot.

And some would (and have) argue that the D&D novels are the major modern representation of S&S fiction today.
 

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