My Old Favourite Book Is My New Favourite Book

[barsoomcore]

So I dropped sixty bucks in my local used-book store, and came away with (among many other treasures including the d20 Menace Manual for $20) a copy of

The Swords Of Lankhmar

The old Ace paperback, with the Jeff Jones cover of Karl Teurhez on his dragon.

And I fell in love in all over again.

TSoL was the first Fafhrd & The Grey Mouser book I ever read. It was probably the first non-Tolkein fantasy novel I ever read (my memory on all that gets blurry -- ERB's Barsoom books might have come previously). I haven't read it in well over a decade and probably longer. Not since my teenage years, I shouldn't think.

Man have I been missing out.

What a GREAT book! It's got two of the best heroes of all time, a great map of Nehwon, fantastic swordfights, humour, terror (often combined with humour in Lieber's effortless way), a lively cast of memorable supporting characters (even the minor characters like the girl who tricks Fafhrd into sleeping with a cow stand out clearly in the mind). And all told in Lieber's unique style with its half-baroque, half-colloquial language that evokes a world wholly its own.

HUGE climactic sequence, beautiful girls all over the place, magic and mayhem and surprises and the weird and wonderful world of Nehwon with all its craziness.

This is what fantasy adventure novels are all about.

Damn, I'd LOVE to make this into a movie. It roars along at a spectacular click, not an excess word anywhere, just enough description to give you what you need to fill in the rest. Torture, titillation and triumph.

And a lot of sex. It's a very sexy novel, both in the nature of the world (Nehwon seems as nearly driven by sexual urges as is, say, our world) and the attitudes of the characters.

But ultimately, the novel is about a great friendship, about two great spirits who love each other deeply in a manner that is BEYOND sex (and I think that's maybe the point of the book, inasmuch as it has a point). It's about the things we will do for love. Love unconnected to lust or greed or insecurity. And how that love can surpass and embrace all else.

If you haven't read this, you're missing out on a great classic of fantasy adventure.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Yes, I find myself looking at 'my library' and every now and then pulling out one of those old books and finding myself saying much the same thing and comparing it todays writting and realize why it is harder and harder to find stuff I like.

 

[barsoomcore]

I think part of it is what Bloom calls "the anxiety of influence" -- he says that a big part of what drives any artist is the urge to demonstrate that they are NOT dominated by the influences of those who came before them, that they have something new and original to contribute that no other artist has offered.

So any genre suffers an unavoidable transformation as the artists working in that genre continue trying to demonstrate that they are DIFFERENT, thus putting out work that is somehow different from that which came before, and thereby transforming the genre as they go.

Until the people who loved the original stuff get so pissed off at what all these young whippersnappers are doing to their beloved genre, and launch a "retro" or a "neo" movement to return to the roots, and it all starts over again.

What I really really would love to see is a reliable source of quality "pulp" style adventure stories. But then that's mainly because I want a forum to publish the sort of stuff that I love to write, and to be honest I have that just a few boards up on "Story Hour". The only problem now is how to support myself writing Story Hours.

Hm.

 

[MonsterMash]

I do love the Lankhmar books, certainly I enjoyed them more than Tolkien or many others, though some of Moorcock's stuff is really interesting too.

 

[Chaldfont]

IMO, the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories are what D&D is ALL ABOUT. When I was a kid, long after I had discovered D&D, I found a paperback with "Ill Met in Lankhmar". I said to myself, "This is just like D&D". It wasn't until years later when, looking for something to read, I checked out the recommended reading list in the 1st Ed AD&D DMG and discovered Fritz Lieber again.

It turned out that D&D was just like Lankhmar instead of the other way around.

 

[barsoomcore]

Okay, check this publisher out: Hard Case Crime. They're publishing new books by new authors with new covers by new artists that recapture the feel of pulp crime novels. Those are some beautiful books.

Somebody needs to do this with F&SF novels.

I need to do this with F&SF novels. Who's got two or three million dollars so's I can start up a publishing company?

 

[nakia]

Have you checked out McSweeny's Quarterly? It may not be as pulpy as you're looking for, but they did do McSweeny's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, which is full of pulpy flavored goodness.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

You've brought back some forgotten memories, barsoomcore. So I went down to where I have my paperbacks boxed up and there are all my Ace paperbacks of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. If anyone is familiar with the original Judges Guild's City State of the Invincible Overlord it sure reads like Lankhmar.