If modern fantasy is the child of two fathers (Robert E. Hward and J.R.R. Tolkien), than one could make the argument that Edgar Rice Burroughs was the midwife that helped bring it into the world, via his Barsoom novels. When the history of the genre is looked back on, these remarkable books often get looked over, which is a shame, since so much of what makes modern fantasy fantastical comes from these pages.

Burroughs was an interesting character in his own right. Born in 1875, after a somewhat aimless life in which he did everything from working on a ranch to laboring as a pencil sharpener salesman, he became a voracious reader of pulp magazines and realized:

“[...] if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, that I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.”[16]

(a conceit followed by many genre writers today, with varying levels of success…)

This isn’t a biography, see the relevant Wikipedia page for more details. His greatest creation during his lifetime was Tarzan, which was a sensation during his lifetime, merchandised to the hilt and beyond with movies, comic strips, stage musicals, etc, though these days there is a bit more skepticism about it, for reasons that should be obvious. That being said, I think when it comes to actual cultural influence, Burroughs Mars stories have a wider reach...he had more success with Tarzan, but the Barsoom novels have had a wider legacy when it comes to the development of fantasy and science fiction. When Tarzan is forgotten, as I think it is now in the process of being, John Carter, Dejah Thoris, etc will likely live on. Maybe...possibly.

A brief description of the setting – Mars (called by the natives Barsoom) is a dying world, home to various grips of native martians. Red Martians, who look human, have red skin and are oviparous (they lay eggs – yes, the biology makes no sense, but its pulp fiction so don’t think about too much). Green Martians who are green skinned, have six lines and are savage and warlike. Other groups are introduced as the series progresses (White Martians, Black Martians, etc). In this setting, beginning with the first novel A Princess of Mars, Civil War veteran John Carter is transported to Mars, where he finds he has superhuman strength and speed due to the planets lower gravity. He has various adventures, rescues and falls in love with Dejah Thoris, Princess of the city of Helium, saves Barsoom from destruction and then gets sent back to Earth. Later novels detail is return, more rescues of Dejah Thoris (who seems to have a knack for getting kidnapped) and the adventures of their children and other characters, spanning eleven books in all.

At the time they were written, not one would called this fantasy, because that classification did not e exist. If they were written today, they would considered fantasy/planetary romance. What is not in doubt is the influence they had on scifi and fantasy. Many of the writers of Scifi’s Golden Age were fans of the series (as was Ronald Reagon, who states that A Princess of Mars was his favorite book growing up). When it comes to fantasy, the influence is there when it comes to the world building. Over the course of the series, Burroughs turns Barsoom from another bog-standard pulp setting into a richly detailed world with vibrant cultures that exist in their own terms, a concept that to this day is one of the corner stones of fantasy. The idea of the stranger in the strange land as depicted be John Carter can be seen in modern-day isekai stories.

But above all, I think the main inheritance from the Barsoom stories is the pure spirit of adventure and imagination. Even today the stories can light up the imagination. Brave heroes and beautiful damsels anging across strange and wondrous alien landscapes, but without the blood, thunder and gloom of Conan the Barbarian or the epic bigness of Lord of the Rings. Adventure for its own sake. That’s what I get out of the Barsoom novels, and of they seem to be forgotten today, its only because so they came out so early and were so influential that many writers since had repurposed tropes and themes fro the books for their own works:

Nevertheless, without Burroughs and Barsoom, the fantasy genre would look very different, and be a lot less interesting than it is today. The 2012 movie admittedly did it no favors. This is a shame, and hopefully someday there will be a proper adaption.

Modern fantasy fiction is a child of two fathers, and Robert E. Howard. If Tolkien helped build what we now call High Fantasy, Howard is the originator of its sister sub-genre, sword and sorcery. Both men are rightly considered the fathers of fantasy, yet it is hard to image two men who were more different from one another. Tolkien was the prototypical tweedy Oxford don, while Howard spent his life around his hometown of Cross Plains in Texas. Tolkien was a college professor who essentially wrote on the side, writing the Lord of the Rings in the company of his fellow Inklings, while Howard worked as a writer of pulp fiction. Tolkien gained worldwide renown in his lifetime and lived to a ripe old age – Howard died a suicide and his work would have been doomed to obscurity were it now for the dedicated work of August Derleth and L. Sprague De Camp (and the late, great Frank Frazetta, whose covers for the 50’s and 60’s reprints helped define the character for a new generation.)

Yet in one important sense Tolkien and Howard worked from the same foundation – a sense of nostalgia for a better time that had passed (or had never existed in the first place.) Yet this nostalgia took very different forms and led to different places. For Tolkien, the goal was to evoke a lost grandeur, the sense of a lost age, a more civilized and wondrous time, now replaced by a dirty, barbarous present. But for Howard, it was civilization that was to be lamented. He looked to a past that was rough, not refined, free of the decadence and decay that came with civilized man. In Howard’s writings, civilization is portrayed as irredeemably corrupt, a source of vice and venality, filled with soft men who lie and cheat, selling their souls and sacrificing others to dark gods for earthy power.

Only among the barbarian, the savage, is there strength and vigor to be found, men who are forthright because to do otherwise is to risk having your skull caved in with an ax. It was a Rousseauist view of humanity that worked from the assumption that the closer one is to a state of nature the better. His other heroes do not embark on great adventures to save the world, there are no humble hobbits or noble rangers in the Hyborian Age. Conan and Kull are men out for themselves, often hard to distinguish from the enemies they slay, who do not seek to protect the world but rather to make their way in it, without being corrupted by it. They are men who become Kings by their own hand, adventurers who overthrow old orders so that they may rule at the top, as Conan did in Aquilonia and Kull did in Valusia. They are reminiscent not of King Arthur and the Golden Age of Camelot, but of older legends like Achilles or the heroes of the old Norse sagas, for whom the attainment of personal glory was the primary goal, the surest path to immortality.

Its not hard to see why Howard’s tales took this attitude. He was born in 1906, barely sixteen years after the U.S. Census Bureau declared the frontier closed. The Texas of his childhood was a place where the Wild West was still a living memory, a place of cowtowns and boomtowns steeped in tales of gunfights, outlaws and Indian raids. The Texas oil boom of the early 20th Century was at its height, bringing with it a massive increase in crime, vice and bare-knuckle violence, the dark tide of modern civilization pouring itself over the frontier. It’s hard to make the case for the merits of civilized society in such a situation. Progress brought corruption and left despair in its wake and what it built could not be expected too last for long, it would soon collapse under its own weight.

Indeed, it is this fatalistic view of human existence that differentiates Howard’s nostalgia from Tolkien’s. The Lord of the Rings saw the restoration of an older, civilized order to its rightful place, leaving the darkness behind to live in the light. But to Howard such an order was unnatural and could not last. Civilizations were doomed to fail; no matter how high they climbed, humanity would fall back to its natural barbarous state, falling from within or overwhelmed from without by those who were uncivilized, and thus unweakened.

It is a gloomy idea, but it comes with lesson – the actions of a strong individual were all the more greater, his victories more glorious. Conan and his others heroes live for the day…the world may end tomorrow, but today we are alive. “Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content… I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.” It is a darkly romantic view of life (and there is no philosophy more dependent on nostalgia than romanticism,) defying the night even as darkness falls, seizing every moment and living them to the fullest until the final ending comes.

“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.” RE Howard, Beyond the Black River, 1936

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in 1892 in South Africa, moved to England when he was three and spent the bulk of his childhood in the countryside around Birmingham. Both his parents died when he was young, and his mother named a close friend of hers who was also a Catholic priest has his guardian. Upon reaching adulthood he got married, went of to fight in the First World War, was invalided out during the Battle of the Somme, went on to Oxford, academia and literary glory…for more details, consult his Wikipedia entry.

Tolkien’s impact on the fantasy genre is unquestioned and nowhere is the subversive nature of nostalgia more evident. The bucolic idyll of the Shire is the English countryside of his youth, the quiet ways of his hobbits, their suspicion of change for its own sake a quiet rebuke to the idea of Progress. The deep Catholic faith that filled his life gave him stories an epic quality, like an old medieval romance where everything was more colorful, where the flaws in even the most heroic of beings made their victories all the more greater, their failures more poignant, and even the smallest of persons could make a difference. That evil exists and must be resisted, and where even those seemingly lost to darkness (like Gollum) might in the end find salvation in the most unlikely of circumstances. And overlaying it all was this enormous mythology, a sense that the characters (and by extension the reader) were participating in a great drama whose roots lay in a legendary past that inexorably shaped the present.

Today a lot of this seems cliched, even trite. Who hasn’t read a story about a Evil Dark Lord© in his Big Tower of Bad beings hurled down by impossibly perfect heroes? Critics point to the myths and legends on which he drew upon and denounce it all as reactionary tripe. But at the time it was something that went completely against the grain. The early 20th Century belonged to the Modernists, to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce and all the rest. It was a break with the past and the old ideas, which the Great War had so completely discredited. “Sweep the whole field of art clean of all themes and subjects which have been used in the past,” as Marinetti declared in the Manifesto of Futurism. But Tolkien and his fellow Inklings wet down a different route, embarking on an act of cultural reclamation, looking to the past, to nostalgia, for answers for the problems of the present.

Old wine in new bottles…but it is old wine that tastes the best. To the march of progress, contrast it to the peaceful ways of the Shire, that exist out of time. The gleaming progress of technology has its dark reflection in the despoliation of Isengard and the bleak hell of Mordor. The power of myth and legend and how they can stand against even the most strident of ideologies, that if we remember our past and where we come from, we can reclaim the future. There is an optimism there that we do not see these days, that by looking to the better times of the past, even if they only existed in our heads, we can hope for a better tomorrow.

“If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

Perhaps more than any other genre, Fantasy has its roots in nostalgia, in a yearning for a past that never was, a lost world that cannot possibly exist. It’s roots lay in the old myths of the past, in the tales of King Arthur and Siegfried, the stories of the Olympian gods, of heroes and villains played out across a legendary landscape that speaks to something fundamental in human nature.

Nostalgia: pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again. Although in the case of fantasy, it might be updates to something from that that never existed, but you kind of wish had. Rooted in a heroic past, at odds with the present, who hasn’t at one point or another wished they could escape the dullness of modernity, to become if only for a moment the hero of the story, slaying our own personal dragons?

This foundation in nostalgia has both its benefits and its drawbacks, but it is one of the things that makes the genre what it is. It gives the genre its escapist nature while allowing for the creation for a world fundamentally different from our own, where paradoxically the problems of our world can be looked at from a new angle. Yet it can also be limiting, for when were to greatly reverence the past it limits what kind of stories we can write and how that can turn out. Some of the best stories are the ones that embrace a subversive nostalgia, once that embraces the flaws as well as the triumphs, and turns them so that one takes the place of the other.

For better or worse, this tendency was laid into the genre at the beginning. Perhaps no one shows better than the two men who more than anyone could claim to be the fathers of the fantasy genre as its exists now; JRR Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. Both were men from very different worlds, shaped by experiences that were very much at odds. Tolkien, the tweedy Oxford Don, Howard the hardscrabble writer from Texas. Yet they had this one thing in common; faced with the problems of their present day, they looked to the past for inspiration.

In the last post, we had a look at the best of the worst – movies in the fantasy genre that are examples of so-bad-it’s-good…or just plain bad. But that is only part of the story. Even though the genre has a whole has a rather spotty record when it comes to cinematic adaptations in the pre-Lord of the Rings area, there are some cases where filmmakers have gotten it right. Some of those movies remain well known to this day – movies like Labyrinth (a failure at its release, today acknowledged as a classic) Big Trouble In Little China (“Terrific, a Six Demon Bag! Sensational, what’s in it Egg?”) and of course, Conan the Barbarian.

But there are other fantastickal gems that have fallen through the cracks. Movies that are remembered today only as cult classics, or forgotten entirely. Hidden Treasures, whose awesomeness has been hidden under the passage of time and the passing of memory.

Hawk the Slayer (1980)
A cult classic if there was one. According to the Guardian, it “…kicked off the cinematic sword and sorcery boom that would give us Excalibur, Conan, Dragonslayer and Willow.”

Zardoz (1974)
Back in the golden age called the 70’s, there was someone who thought that a giant flying stone head screaming, “The gun is good! The penis is evil!” while vomiting a stream of assault rifles, a post-Bond Sean Connery in a red nappy, all in a post-apocalyptic setting, was a surefire hit. They don’t make movies like this anymore…but sometimes you’re glad that someone did.

Ladyhawke (1984)
Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, a pre-Ferris Bueller Matthew Broderick, mixed with a soundtrack that mingled proggy synthesizers with Gregorian Chant. It doesn’t get more 80’s than this.

Excalibur (1981)
Not exactly a hidden treasure (it was a hit when it came out) but for my money the best cinematic depiction of the Arthurian legend in the last fifty years.

Fire and Ice (1983)
A rotoscoped masterpiece, directed by Ralph Bakshi and featuring art by Frank Frazetta.

With the well-deserved cancellation of Wheel of Time on Amazon (and the imminent arrival of the next season of Rings of Power…) the time has come to take a look back at the cinematic past of the genre. The original idea was to put down a list of the best in fantasy-related cinema out there, but that was scrapped when I realized that the Lord of the Rings would likely fill slots one through four, and five and six as well when all the Directors Cuts and Special Editions are put in.

Besides, where’s the fun in that? It’s easy to out together a list of the best fantasy films put there, mainly because the list would be short. The sad truth is that when it comes to the moving image, the fantasy genre does not have a glorious record. For decades it was considered scifi’s embarrassing younger brother, which meant that the fantasickal visions that were brought to the screen were glorious only in the reverse. There were exceptions, or course, examples of the genre that transcended the low expectations of the broader movie-going public, but for every Return of the King or Dragon Heart, there was a Dungeons and Dragons: The Movie, or Gor.

Yet ones man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Any work of art seen as crap at the time it came out can be seen later on as a lost treasure, a cult classic, an example of the “so-bad-it’s-good” genre so beloved by our irony-drenched generation…or at least a cautionary tale of how not to do it…

Dungeons & Dragons (2000)
Not so much so-bad-it’s-good as just-bloody-awful. Eagerly awaited by D&D fans around the world way back in the day, who were greatly disappointed (including your truly, who had to go back and see it twice just I could be sure what I was seeing was not a hallucination…)

Gor (1987)
John Norman’s series has attracted its fair share of controversy over the years. But this just offended everybody.

Masters of the Universe (1987)
There are ways to bring a beloved toy franchise to the silver screen. This is not one of them.

Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983)
Cavemen, dinosaurs, and flying saucers shooting lasers. What’s not to like?

Batman and Robin (1997)
I confess I have a particular animus against this one, as I totaled my car on the way back from the theater. Appropriate karma for a disaster of a movie that took the 60’s TV series and went in all the wrong directions. Interesting fact: Joel Schumacher wanted to adapt Batman: Year One next. Not hard to see why the studio passed.

It is an odd fact about artistic endeavors that those possessed of the greatest creative genius can also be the most reprehensible human being. Its an odd balancing act, a way for the universe to level scales. Which begs the question, how should those of us who read, look and listen to such works regard their very, often horrible flawed creators? Should we see what they create as separate from how they have lived? Or should see the both as flowing out of each other, and that to reject one is to reject the other?

Love the art, hate the artist? Or hate the art because of the artist?

Let us consider a few examples:

H.P. Lovecraft, one of the fathers of weird fiction and a giant of the horror genre. Every one from Stephen King on down has cited him as an important influence, and a list of authors who have added to the Cthulhu Mythos over the years would run to several pages long. The Call of Cthulhu, the Shadow over Innsmouth…the list of his works goes on.

He was also a racist and an anti-Semite whose views were considered extreme even by the standards of his own time, who saw anyone who was not of Anglo-Saxon descent as lesser (despite this he was married for a time to a Jewish woman.) Indeed, one could make the argument that it was his racism that gave his works their edge – Michel Houllebecq (himself no stranger to controversy) points out in H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life that Lovecraft took racism down to its bare core: fear. Fear of the other, fear of change, fear of that which we do not understand.

Today Lovecraft’s views would put him beyond the pale. Yet he continues to be read and be an inspiration. Should we separate the man from his work? Or if we cast the man, then it follows we must cast out what he has created?.

Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of the titans of scifi and fantasy, the author of The Mists of Avalon, which retold the story of King Arthur from a feminist, pagan standpoint and brought a fresh perspective on the old legend. And through Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine she provided openings for new authors to show their works, something all to rare in any era.

She also sexually abused her own daughter – see this article from the Guardian for details. Again, can we separate the artist from her work?

Phil Spector, a pioneering record producer who created the Wall of Sound and worked with everyone from the Ronettes to the Beatles to the Ramones…and now imprisoned for second degree murder.

Charles Dickens, one of the great authors of the English language…also a bad husband and worse father.

Caravaggio, one of the founders of the Baroque movement in art…who killed a man in a brawl over a gambling debt and spent the last four years of his life on the run from a long list of enemies.

And so on and so forth. Artists who created works of wonder down the centuries…even as the lives lives reprehensible in one form or another. Can we separate the individual from the art? My personal view at the moment is yes. Art can be seen as separate from the artist, indeed one of the marks of something truly exceptional is its ability to stand on its own without any need to know anything about its creator. That the work alone is explanation enough. Lovecraft’s racial preoccupations don’t make the Colour Out of Space any less shocking. The Mists of Avalon remains an original retelling of the Arthurian saga. I can listen to End of the Century without remembering its producer’s subsequent offenses. If we were to scrub the historical records of all art, music and literature created by those whose lives were less than exemplary by the standards of our own time, our bookshelves were be empty, our stereos and iPods silent and the museum walls bare. We must judge such things on their own merits, independent of the failures behind the scenes, otherwise we could not enjoy anything at all.

And yet…and yet…

What of Leni Riefenstahl? Her masterpiece was Triumph of the Will, which is studied to this day for its technical innovations. It is also a propaganda piece for one of the vilest regimes ever to hold power in human history?

Or DW Griffith, director of Birth of a Nation, the greatest piece of puffery ever created for a terrorist organization…and a groundbreaker in innovation for film as an art form?

I won’t even mention Neil Gaiman, or every rock band that toured in the 70’s. What is the answer? Damned if I know…but I still enjoy Bleak House…

Let be clear about one thing. I have never played Sonic the Hedgehog. I have never read any of the comics or seen any of the animated or live action movies. I know nothing about Sonic the Hedgehog beyond what a one minute glance at its Wikipedia page tells me. And yet for some reason, YouTube keeps putting this in my daily feed:

And I can’t stop watching it.

Why is that? It’s certainly entertaining…and the song is a classic one from the Chemical Bros.:

But…no. That’s not it. It’s the secret sauce, the thing that marks a true star. Its Jim Carrey. A true modern master.

Even then, he held his own against the Wayans.

Put him in a rubber Mask and he still makes it work.

Also, here is the original version:

And then there is this 90’s gem:

Think of anyone else who could sell this scene and still keep his dignity.

A Canadian national treasure, and my go to guy when I need a laugh to brighten a dark moment.

Gather round children, and cast your minds back to the ye old days of the late 80’s/early 90’s, when fantasy was still very much an underground thing, most stories were tedious Tolkien retreads or Dungeons and Dragons sessions put down on paper, and writers of the feminine persuasion were notably light on the ground. Which makes this book and the various series it spawn so interesting….

Nowadays, female fantasy authors are a pretty common sight, so it’s a bit shocking to consider just how ahead of its time Dragon Prince was in terms of what could be done in a traditional fantasy novel. When I first picked it up, it was amazed just how different this was from the other fare to be found in bookstores (yes, books were sold in actual stores. Ask your Dad….) What Melanie Rawn did with this story was take all the elements of an awesome epic fantasy and mix it with the conventions of a romance novel, seasoned with some of the most detailed and compelling examples of world building to be found anywhere. The result was something groundbreaking. While there are battles galore and fantastical deed by the score, the core of this tale is the relationship between Rohan and Sioned, the passion that draws them together, the dangers and obstacles that block them. No final voyages to Valhalla here…more along the lines of a traditional romance, Lancelot and Guinevere, Romeo and Juliet, or any number of bodice rippers sold by the dozen made magnificent by the inclusion of dragons.

Today it’s a common enough formula, which makes this book something of a groundbreaker. It showed (to angsty Gen-X teenagers at least) that fantasy could be more than just the slay the dragon while standing on a mountain of skulls. That there was room for real emotion and passion.

Random image, because why not?

Shameless book plug

Read The Spear of Heaven

Consider if you will the character of Conan the Barbarian. What image comes to mind when you think of him, RE Howard’s greatest creation? Chances are it is a fairly big, burly fellow with a pitiless face and dark lanky hair, wearing perhaps a few scraps of leather, standing atop a mound of dead enemies and live adoring women:

But is it accurate? Consider this fellow:

Doesn’t look the same does it? Yet this is how the big bad Cimmerian was depicted in the May 1934 issue of Weird Tales. For a generation of readers, this is how he would have appeared, and because their eyes saw it on the cover, that is likely how their minds interpreted when they read the story. Conan – as a Roaring Twenties swell in barbarian drag.

It wasn’t until the sixties came about when the late great Frank Frazetta was commissioned to do the cover art for reprints of the original Howard stories as well as the works of writers who came after that the image of the character most familiar to us came about. The sullen, dark-haired adventurer from the north…painted by a man who cheerfully admitted that he never bothered to read the books before setting brush to canvas, an image reinforced by years of comic books, movies, and computer games. REH may have created the character, but it was Frazetta who gave him shape and form in our collective imagination.

There is a point to this – as much as writers like to flatter ourselves that the power of our words is such that merely reading the text will form indelible images of our characters in the minds of our readers, the fact is that visual interpretations of those characters will have more of an impact on how they are perceived. What they look like, the ideal they represent…words may say one thing, but a striking visual image, from a book cover, a film adaption, a comic book or fan art, can override what the words say and alter the way the reader subsequently interprets the story as it is read.

Consider the Hunger Games – today when we think of the character of Katniss Everdeen, we think of someone who looks a lot like Jennifer Lawrence with wavy dark hair. But in the original book, she is described as someone with olive skin and straight dark hair, which is different from how she ended up on the screen. Yet which image of the character is most likely to stick in our minds?

Or Sherlock Holmes, memorably portrayed by Basil Rathbone in a long series of movies in the 1940’s, to the point that his interpretation of the character determined how we saw it, even when we read the original stories?

never had a firm image of Tyrion Lannister in my head when I first read A Game of Thrones, beyond his being short, blond and sardonic, but when I reread the books today, my imaginations forms him into the shape and style of Peter Dinklage (which is only a plus, as he is a fine actor who does the character proud. Besides…spacepants.)

So what is the point of this? That an image truly is worth more than a thousand words, than the moment someone else reads your words all bets are off.

Shameless Book Plug

Read The Infinity Key!

A man finds a portal to a magical dimension behind a Burger King and finds himself in a land populated by monsters adventurers and wizards…which he interviews via a weak transdimensional wifi. If that’s not the perfect premise for a podcast, then life has no meaning…

http://hellofromthemagictavern.com/

Michael Moorcock on writing a book in three days….
http://www.ghostwoods.com/2010/05/how-to-write-a-book-in-three-days-1210/

and why it’s not necessarily a good thing
https://xjselman.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/the-dangers-of-formulas-pulp-fiction-and-the-pressures-of-self-publishing/

The Cool Kids want in!
http://www.themillions.com/2011/09/why-are-so-many-literary-writers-shifting-into-genre.html

The End of Britpop
http://thequietus.com/articles/14974-britpop-anniversary-nostalgia-blur-cast-balls

The End of Grunge

https://www.avclub.com/did-grunge-really-matter-1798241813

This painting sold for a millions dollars…and if anything, the buyer underpaid. R.I.P. Frank Frazetta, you are sorely missed…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_the_Destroyer_(painting)

The Rise of Fanfiction
http://www.vulture.com/2015/03/fanfiction-guide.html

Good tune from a great band – Apothecaries Weight from KYUSS

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An ancient kingdom is in turmoil. A man of honor and integrity tried to stand his ground against a wicked King, and for his sins was publicly and horrifically executed. Soon after, the King himself perishes, and what follows is a long and convoluted chain of murders, infidelity and struggles for wealth and power that see his successors fall like dominoes, the end of a storied ruling family, and the ancient kingdom brought low and left to the mercy of its enemies.

It sounds like Game of Thrones, does it not? But in fact this is the story of Les Roi Maudits – The Accursed Kings – a series of French historical novels by Maurice Druon, that George RR Martin himself cites as an inspiration for A Song of Ice and Fire.

If anything, The Accursed Kings shows that history can be more bloody and interesting than anything fantasy can dream up. Set in 13th and 14th Century France, the plot begins with the destruction of the Knights Templar and the burning of their last Grand Master Jacques De Molay at the stake. For a history buff like yours truly, this is a fascinating period. The Templars were not just a elite military order, but also by this point the bankers of Europe, something originally meant to fund the efforts in the Crusades. But with their last strongholds in the Holy Land lost, what did this mean? The Papacy had fallen under the control of the French Kings, to the point that the Popes left Rome and resided in Avignon. And the King of France was running low on money, and need a new source of revenue beyond what his overtaxed subjects could provide…

Or so the story goes. Druon draws upon a wealth of legends and folklore along with history to weave this tale. As the last Grand Master of the Templars burns at the stake, he lays down a curse upon the King, his puppet Pope and his advisers unto the 13th Generation, which will ultimately see the end of the Capetian House that had ruled France for centuries, their replacement by the House of Valois, and beginning of the Hundred Years War between England and France. All kinds of legends have grown up around the Templars over the years, and by my reckoning this is one of the more interesting.

A miniseries based on the books was shown in France in 2005, starring by the looks of it almost very prominent French actor at the time (kind of like how Game of Thrones has every British thespian of note at least making an appearance, something that makes a good drinking game, by the way…) Gerard Depardieu as the doomed Molay, but also his son (who tragically died a few years later) and daughter play prominent roles (as a King and Queen respectively), not to mention the incomparable Jeanne Moreau as the Countess Mahaut, whose struggle with her cousil Robert over the lands they both claim drives so much of the narrative.

Have a look at the first episode below. History truly is stranger than fiction.

Shameless Book Plug:

Get The Spear of Heaven

A long time ago, I was going through a back room stacks of an old used book shop, whereupon I came across a well-worn copy of THE ANVIL OF ICE, by Michael Scott Rohan. Like most good fantasy novels, this one initially drew my attention with the cover, but once said cover was cracked, it was the story within that kept it. And this began my journey into the Winter of the World, a forgotten ’80’s classic.

Michael Scott Rohan took a number of tropes that even by 1986 were considered well-worn and breathed new life into them. The story is set in an ice age world, where the ever-advancing glaciers threaten to grind what remains of civilization. IN, this time, beset by barbarism of the most vicious sort, a young smiths apprentice names Elof finds himself embarking on a remarkable journey to greatness…so far the usual fantasy quest, What sets it apart though is the setting.

The author grounds the tale in a brilliant set prehistoric culture, an almost Howard-esque setting where the remains of greater fallen civilizations rose about the ruins of the present ground down by the ever-advancing ice, which is itself but a tool of dark powers intent on wiping out humanity and returning the world to sterility. There is a mythic sense to the tale that is difficult to replicate, almost primal in nature…the closest comparison would be A Wizard of Earthsea. The magic system is not based on spell-slinging, not fireballs or magic missiles here, but in an older sense of the mystical, above all in the power of the smith, the craftsman, for whom the act of creating is as much an occult art as it is practical.

And then there is the Finnish Mythology – after reading the first few books I dove into the Kalevala, to read the tales of Ilmarinen, Louhi and the Sampo. Rohan is certainly not the first to draw upon existing world mythologies as a way to ground his own setting, but back in the days when everything looked to Celtic myth, the legends of King Arthur, or the Norse Ragnarok as their go-to source for gods, heroes and demons, The Winter of the World found a rich vein of literary ore in Finnish mythology and mined it deeply.

All in all, a good series and a hidden treasure.

Shameless Book Plug

Get The Thief of Galadorn

I had this song stuck in my head at the gym yesterday:

I found the lyrics and entered them into Midjourney without any other parameters to see what would come out:

"I Love It"
(feat. Charli XCX)

I got this feeling on the summer day when you were gone
I crashed my car into the bridge. I watched, I let it burn
I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs
I crashed my car into the bridge

I don't care, I love it
I don't care

I got this feeling on the summer day when you were gone
I crashed my car into the bridge. I watched, I let it burn
I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs
I crashed my car into the bridge

I don't care, I love it
I don't care

You're on a different road, I'm in the Milky Way
You want me down on earth, but I am up in space
You're so damn hard to please, we gotta kill this switch
You're from the 70s, but I'm a 90's bitch

I love it
I love it

I got this feeling on the summer day when you were gone
I crashed my car into the bridge. I watched, I let it burn
I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs
I crashed my car into the bridge

I don't care, I love it
I don't care, I love it, I love it
I don't care, I love it
I don't care

You're on a different road, I'm in the Milky Way
You want me down on earth, but I am up in space
You're so damn hard to please, we gotta kill this switch
You're from the 70s, but I'm a 90's bitch

I don't care, I love it
I don't care, I love it, I love it
I don't care, I love it
I don't care, I love it, I love it
I don't care
I love it

Not that impressed. Did it again using the lyrics for Led Zep’s Stairway From Heaven:

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she's buying a stairway to Heaven

When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for

Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to Heaven

There's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings

In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven

Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, makes me wonder

There's a feeling I get when I look to the West
And my spirit is crying for leaving

In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking

Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, really makes me wonder

And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason

And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter

Oh-oh-oh-oh-whoa

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on

And it makes me wonder
Ohh, whoa

Your head is humming, and it won't go, in case you don't know
The piper's calling you to join him

Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow? And did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind?

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one, and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll

And she's buying a stairway to Heaven

Better, more relevant.

Now lets try Slayer’s Raining Blood:

Trapped in purgatory
A lifeless object, alive
Awaiting reprisal
Death will be their acquittance

The sky is turning red
Return to power draws near
Fall into me, the sky's crimson tears
Abolish the rules made of stone

Pierced from below, souls of my treacherous past
Betrayed by many, now, ornaments dripping above

Awaiting the hour of reprisal
Your time slips away

Raining blood
From a lacerated sky
Bleeding its horror
Creating my structure
Now, I shall reign in blood!

Okay that works.

And for the final pass, Bye Bye Bye from ‘N Sync, because what the heck not:

Hey, hey
Bye, bye, bye
Bye, bye
Bye, bye
(Oh, oh)

I, I'm doin' this tonight
You're probably gonna start a fight
I know this can't be right
Hey, baby, come on
I loved you endlessly
And you weren't there for me
So now, it's time to leave
And make it alone

I know that I can't take no more
It ain't no lie
I wanna see you out that door
Baby, bye, bye, bye (Bye, bye)

Don't wanna be a fool for you
Just another player in your game for two
You may hate me, but it ain't no lie
Baby, bye, bye, bye (Bye, bye)
Don't really wanna make it tough
I just wanna tell you that I had enough
Might sound crazy, but it ain't no lie
Baby, bye, bye, bye

(Oh, oh)

You just hit me with the truth
Now, girl, you're more than welcome to
So, give me one good reason
Baby, come on
I lived for you and me
And now, I really come to see
That life would be much better
Once you're gone

I know that I can't take no more
It ain't no lie
I wanna see you out that door
Baby, bye, bye, bye (Bye, bye)

Don't wanna be a fool for you
Just another player in your game for two
You may hate me, but it ain't no lie
Baby, bye, bye, bye (Bye, bye)
Don't really wanna make it tough
I just wanna tell you that I had enough (Ooh, ooh)
Might sound crazy, but it ain't no lie
Baby, bye, bye, bye

I'm givin' up, I know for sure
I don't wanna be the reason for your love, no more
(Bye, bye)
I'm checkin' out, I'm signin' off
I don't wanna be the loser and I've had enough

I don't wanna be your fool
In this game for two
So I'm leavin' you behind
(Bye, bye, bye, yeah)
I don't wanna make it tough
(Make it though)
But I've had enough (Bye, bye)
And it ain't no lie
Bye, bye (Baby)

Don't wanna be a fool for you (I don't wanna be a fool)
Just another player in your game for two (In this game for two)

I don't wanna be a fool, but it ain't no lie
Baby, bye, bye, bye (Bye, bye)
Don't really wanna make it tough (Oh, oh)
(I don't wanna make it tough)
I just wanna tell you that I had enough

(But I've had enough)
Might sound crazy, but it ain't no lie

Bye, bye, bye (Bye, bye)

About what I expected,

That's all for now…

Shameless Book Plug

Click here to read it!

Available on Amazon

Available on Amazon

Get it on Amazon

Get it on Amazon

Inspired sequel or soulless cash grab? Only time will tell:

Some additional context:

"It was an utterly ridiculous idea": Geezer Butler on the embarrassing truth behind Black Sabbath's infamous Stonehenge set, their unfortunate 'devil baby' and Spinal Tap

https://www.loudersound.com/news/geezer-butler-black-sabbath-stonehenge-spinal-tap

And this, because why the heck not:

And not to boast, but I have speaker whose knobs go up to 12!

Lightweight...

Shameless book plug:

Get The Burning Mountain!

I won’t say much about TV series on Amazon, which has thankfully been canceled and consigned to the endless purgatory wherein bad fantasy book adaptions are consigned and forgotten (looking at you, Shannara Chronicles.) Suffice to say I thought it was awful. If you read any of my previous work, you’ll know that I think adapting any kind of fantasy that is not even partially set in the real world is tall order and best, and an invitation to cringe more often than not. Wheel of Time on Amazon was certainly an example of the latter...enough! It is done. Let it be forgotten.

That being said, The Wheel of Time books remain a real achievement and an important milestone in the development of the fantasy genre. If anyone deserves the title of the American Tolkien, it is James Oliver Rigney Jr. of Charleston, SC, better known by his pen name Robert Jordan. There is a whole generation of writers coming up since the 90’s who found this a gateway into the fantasy genre. I was thirteen (or maybe fourteen?) when I cracked open the Eye of the World, the first book in the series, and it was like falling into an enchanted pool out of an old Celtic myth that also served as a magical portal to another world where all kinds of interesting things happen, and I didn't come up for air for many days after. Given that my actual life at the time was less than ideal, the appeal was obvious.

In short, WOT was awesome. I won't write down a summary of the series because:

a) its fourteen books long, fifteen if you count the prequel

b) if you’re reading this blog, you probably already know what it is. If you don’t Wikipedia has a decent summary here.

Wheel of Time is perhaps the best example within the last fifty years of what an epic fantasy can do. It came about before the Grimdark Revolution sparked by A Song of Ice and Fire, and it is decidedly old-school in its approach. There is a Chosen One, a plucky of band of heroes around it, and a great and terrible evil that must be defeated, and a vast, richly detailed and utterly believable setting in which it takes place. The system of magic is detailed (sometimes excessively) so and well thought out. Most interesting of all, WOT takes the concepts of gender seriously. Male and female mean something in this world, the One Power that lies at the heart of it is divided between male and female halves, with the conflict and attraction between them mirrored in the relationships and dynamics between the male and female characters. In the hands of a lesser writer, this concept could run the risk of being regressive. Robert Jordan puts it at the heart of the story, and makes the whole thing dance. (This was the first thing the makers of the TV show ditched when they began their march to adaptational ruin.) The characters were vivid and memorable – my personal favorite is Mat, the rogue and scamp, and though no fault of his own, the greatest military genius of his time.

That being said, WOT is not perfect. If ASOIAF’s great weakness is that new volumes are slow in coming, with WOT it the exact opposite. Robert Jordan was a writing machine, cracking out a new installment in the series every year, until illness took him from us far too soon. But after A Crown of Swords (book 7 of the series) it all starts to bog down. The pacing of the narrative slows to a crawl. Multiple chapters are wasted on secondary and tertiary characters who really don’t contribute anything to the broader story (like Cadsuane, for example. I don’t the point of that character. Or seemingly endless descriptions of the internal politics of the White Tower....who cares?) One gets the impression that Jordan is spinning his wheels. I think by that point the series has fallen into one of the great traps of epic fantasy – it got too big for its own good. Too many minor characters, too many subplots, drawing attention away from the main narrative (Faile’s kidnapping by the Shaido is a good example. That could have been wrapped up in a few chapters, instead of being stretched out over three books).

Let me clear – the series remains a good read despite all this. There is something in every book that I like, even in the latter third of the series where things slow to a crawl. And Brandon Sanderson does an excellent job in taking up where Robert Jordan left off after he died, and brought the series to a satisfying conclusion, with a delightful surprise at the end (and no, I will not spoil it. Go read the books if you haven’t ready!)

Despite the damage done by the failure of the TV show, I think The Wheel of Time will remain vital on the fantasy landscape, because it offers an alternative to the two dominant trends in 21st-century fantasy: the nihilism of grimdark and the intimacy-focused, romance-heavy narratives of romantasy. Jordan’s world is not free of darkness or moral ambiguity, but it is fundamentally a story of hope, redemption, and the belief that individuals can change the course of history for the better. Its tone is rooted in the glory of classic epic fantasy, celebrating heroism, sacrifice, and the enduring struggle between Light and Shadow. The Wheel turns in the end, and hopefully we will see more of its like in the future.

Anyway, that's all I got for now.

Shameless book plug:

Revenge of the Winter Queen

If you go to the series page on Amazon for The Nine Suns you will see changes. Where there had once been an eight books series has been reduced to five, with the two books appearing completely new titles...which is true in a sense.

Books Four – Six (Revenge of the Winter Queen, People of Judgment, The Young King) have been combined into a single volume called Return of the Young King. Books Seven and Eight (Lord of the Crookside, The Treasure of Okhenaar) are now combined as well into a single volume called The Boundless Empyrean, which also includes new content originally meant to be Book Nine of the series, but now making the final third of the combined volume.

But why, you may ?

Both story cycles were originally meant to be single full-length novels, that's how they were plotted and conceived. And that’s how they were written...but they were subsequently split up and published across to multiple volumes. To understand why, we need to go back about fifteen years.

I have been working, on and off (these days definitely on) as an indie writer for about fifteen years. When I first dipped my tow into that pond, it was still a new and somewhat unsettled frontier. The attraction of taking you work directly to the reader without gong through the usual publishing gatekeepers was obvious...but on the other hand no one was quite sure how to make a success of it. I’ll leave aside all the usual debates about genres and so on (hint: you can never go wrong with vampire romance) but one idea that was current at the time was that readers didn't like big books. If you wanted to succeed and make money, publishing lots of shorter novels as part of a series. Get ‘em hooked, was the thinking...lots of two and three dollar novels, or even .99 cents.

It made a certain amount of sense at the time – Kindle Direct had only just launched and no one was quite sure what to ake it of. It seemed like the good idea of the time, and bandwaggoner that I am, I went along. Hence the breaking up the original novels into smaller volumes.

How times have changed. A lot of water passed under the bridge between now and then...I basically cut back on writing for about six years for a number of reasons (health and financial problems, my father passing away, family issues that required multiple trips overseas, and so on.) When things finally settled down, it was clear that the indie book landscape had settled a bit, with a better of what worked and what didn’t. If you are exclusive to Amazon (which is what I am, at least for now) then Kindle Direct is going to be a big part of your income stream. And since KDP pays you by the number of pages read, bigger books do better.

So the stars were aligned, you could say. Reediting Books 4 - 8 and putting them back to together as they were originally meant to be, and add in what would have been Book 9 at the end was both artistically beneficial and fiscally prudent (or at least I hope it is!) Also, I took the opportunity to do a full edit of the entire series, tweaking things here, nipping and tucking there. And there are new covers.

Take a look below. Dive back into the Nine Suns. And if you do pick up one of my books, remember to leave a review!

Just a heads up…

There’s a major reorganization of my books coming down the pipe in the next few weeks. More details will come, but for now I can safely say that The Nine Suns series will look very different when it is done.

In the meantime, here is an excerpt from the next coming installment of the Nine Suns – no title as of yet. Apologies for any misspelled words or types, its still pretty raw. Enjoy!

“It was the splinters I hated.” Gerel shifted about on the hard bench. “Especially in the final yearts. Every time I went out on the mast, I collected another splinter in my fingers. That mast was more splinter to than wood.”

“More than the splinters,” Pohtoli responded. Those damned runes…every time they lit up, I never knew if they were going tap set the ship on fire.” He tapped a dark spot on his arm, where such an incident had left its mark. “I won't miss that,.”

The others in the cell chimed in. “The crystal locker was like a hot day in hell. No windows, not even a breeze…”

“Cracks in the hull...every time we landed I swear we picked up a new family of rats.”

“Never mind the rats. Remember when we landed on Tiyasfal, and those strange crabs made their nests in the downing? Three weeks to root out every last one of them! And those claws were sharp.”

“We could eat those crabs. You can't eat rats...well, people don’t’. But ursuhli…”

“What about ursuhli?”

“Well, you eat bats…”

“And you think that means we eat rats?”

“You don’t?”

“Of course not! Rats are filthy creatures. Do I look like a cat to you?”

Gaebrel leaned back against the bulkhead, closing his eyes, letting his comrades complaints waft over him like a cold breeze. Part of him wanted to correct them, to call them out for their ingratitude. But he could see the pain behind the complaints. It was their way of grieving. Reminding themselves of the Sparrows bad points helped numb, if only for a moment, the pain of the loss.

Gaebrel couldn't bring himself to speak. He stared up at the ceiling, too tired to speak, too numb of weep. He'd lost more than a ship...it was like ‘ed list a limb and a friend at the same time. The Sparrow, the fastest ship in the Nine Suns...his home for so many years. He knew every inch of her planking, had climbed out onto the mast. When the sails were opened and she ran before the wind, lea[ping through the gray like a hound let off the leash, he could feel the excitement running up his legs. A ship was a living thing, and the Sparrow was a runner.

Now she was gone, a wreck left on Okhenaar, caught in that cursed green ice, gone to wherever that vile place went, never to be seen again in his lifetime. His ship was lost...a part of him died with it. He was no longer a captain, just another man behind bars, cast on the wind.

Abruptly, Gaebrel became aware that his comrades had fallen silent. He looked up, and saw his father standing on the other side of the bars.

“You look terrible,” Ifrick said, and for a moment Gaebrel thought he detected an actual hint of concern in the older mans voice.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gaebrel shot back. He’d jump naked into an Empyrean stone before giving the man the satisfaction of seeing his pain. “I’ve never felt better!”

“Really? Most captains who lose their ships will dive to the bottom of a bottle. Or close a door and reach for a loaded pistol. But you don’t drink, and I have you guns locked away. Can't have your brains painted on the side of my ship. People will notice and talk. Besides, better you sit here sober and alive, that way you can reflect on your failure son! And I don’t mean your ship!”

“Is there a point to this, old man? You’re voice is starting to grate…”

“Okhenaar, you fool!” Ifrick gripped the bars of the cell. “A treasure beyond imagining! You had in your grasp, and you let it slip through you fingers!”

“I think Zemovaar had something to say about that…”

“You should have come to me, Gaebrel! You should have brought Bartik to me...we’d have that treasure in my holds, and I would have made sure you all got your share! Every free sail and captain for hire in the Harza lands would be flocking to my banner and Stozenvaal would as good as ours! I would make you my heir...the Suns know you brothers have earned their disgrace. Now its lost.” One hand thump against the bars in frustration. “I started life as a pirate,” he said, his voice suddenly weary. “And now it looks like I’ll end it the same way. All I have is lost...a dream, dust on the wind. I hope your happy, boy!”

“I’ll be happy when you take your whining somewhere else, Father.”

Ifrick glared. Before he could say anything else, Potholi spoke up. “Lord Protector,” he began, “You anger is well justified, but if I may…”

“Speak your mind, Iyantuan! Don’t waste my time.”

Pohtoli paused a moment. “What are you plans for us? Are we your prisoners?”

“What are my plans.” Ifrick repeated the words. “To honest, I haven’t given it much thought! Maybe I’ll put you all to work...a fortune was lost in Okhenaar, and repayment is required! Or maybe I’ll strap each of you to a cannon and blast you into the gray, to feed the birds and peradins! I don’t know, and I don’t care. Until I do know and give a damn, you all can stay in my brig and rot!”

With that, Ifrick stormed out, slamming the door shut behind him.

Pohtoli shook his head. “You’re father,” he said after a moment, “is a real bastard.”

“Now you know this?” Gaebrel said with a bitter laugh. He leaned back again, and closed his eyes, and this tie, to his relief, sleep did come…

He floated the darkness, a disembodied spirit, a mind that sees all and understands everything. The Nine Suns were before him, shining lights in the gray of the Empyrean, and surrounding it all the eternal night of the Bittering, the light of the stars beyond cold and hungry and unknowable.

This was a dream. He realized it from the beginning, and yet it was something more. A vision, of what might happen, what could happen...hard to tell be or the other, or perhaps both. He wasn't afraid, more bemused than anything, he did not resist as some invisible force, and unseen hand, took hold and pulled him further in, towards the floating collection of lands and barely habitable rocks called the Harza states, to the familiar diamond shape of Stozenvaal. A fleet floated over it, cannons firing away, wreathing the area around the Crookside in white smoke and haze. Men in the ground shot back...broken ships floated in the Crook, while bodies lay on the ground. Hard to to tell who was winning...and he knew that question was not relevant at this moment.

Another ship floated above it all. On its deck stood a robed figure, and before that was the Helix of Terminal Negation. A pair of glowing hands raised up and gripped the glass sides of the Helix. Flames of many colors leapt out, envoping the figure, who stood there unmoving, mouth open in a scream...or was it laughter? The robes burned away, revealing the metal skeleton of the Automaton, which in turn glowed red, then disintegrated under the heat, turned to metallic ash, then nothingness. The rest of the ship flowed, consumed by a coruscating ball of flashing light, which swiftly formed itself into a ring whose interior was a disc of pure blackness at first, then shimmer and twisted until it showed the Empyrean...but not the Empyrean that surrounded Stozenvaal. A world could be seen distantly through it...he recognized it from his travels. Ilorin, home world of the Valarei. But he knew instinctively this wasn't the world he’d visited...Ilorin as it was in the distant past. He was seeing the past through the glowing ring.

The ring seemed to quiver and for a moment the light dimmed. Then a glowing finger shot out from the side of the ring, quickly splitting into hundreds of separate strands, of of which struck one of the ships floating above Stozenvaal. More shot down towards the land below, spearing men through the chest, striking down women and children before they had a chance to flee. When they hit the ground the strands spread out, coalescing into a broad fire that spread across the land fast as thought, faster than a shout, burning everything them touched. Within the span of ten quick breaths, everything living thing on the land was scorched, dead for the it had the time to realize it. The fire then burning deep into the ground, and Stozenvaal cracked like a glass egg hit by a hammer, the pieced crumbing apart, consumed by the multi-colored fire, which turned the physical structure of the land into something else, into food for the horrible working above. The disc grew larger and larger, until he could see within it a fleet of ships, moving through the gray.

They were made of stone, and looked like giant fortresses or castle that had decided to rise up and fly. Their tall towers were peaked with glowing crustal, and their sizes marked with giant stone faces, so stylized and twisted that it was hard to tell what they were supposed to represent. Scorch marks and battle damage marred many of hem, and occasionally the towers of one would glow and send out blts pass red lightening at some unseen enemy.

The ring was a tunnel through time, he realized. The first of the ships passed through it, moving from the distant past into the present, and the others swiftly followed. Hundred of ships, surrounding the area around the dying Stozenvaal, spreading out for hundreds of miles. Stozenvaal itself twisted and diminished, the last fragments of it converted into energy and sucked away, leaving only an empty space where a land and its people once floated in the Empyrean. The last of the ships came through the rung, and with a final flash, it winked out of existence, the connection to the past and its horrors lost. But the stone ships remained.

Then his vision shifted outwards until he was looking upon the Nine Suns as a whole…watching as that fleet of stone ships spread out, attacking in all directions. There was no force that could stop them. Fleets of ships gathered to repel the invaders from the past were scorched by ancient magics long forgotten, more potent and powerful than anything used today. Worlds burned under their assault, the survivors forced into a miserable servitude. No real could stand against them, until at last the only Sun that was left was Agaz itself, and from this came the Neverborn, drawn to fight against an ancient enemy long forgotten, the ensuring conflict so great and terrible that it seemed the Suns themselves might be snuffed out…

“Enough!” Gaebrel shouted into the darkness. “Enough, I say. This isn’t real, this is a dream, and a bad one at that! If you’re going to show me a vision of the fire and death, than the least you could do is add a decent meal and pretty woman to share it with! At least then it would be bearable! Show yourself already or let me wake up, I have burdens of my own, I don’t need this mess as well…”

The Nine Suns faded away, living him surrounded in darkness. A moment later a man appeared...a Valarei fellow, dressed in archaic cloths, wearing a crown made of antlers on his head.

“Progress,” Gaebrel said. “Who the hell are you?”

I am the Young King, came the answer, spoken directly into his head.,

Gabrel rolled his eyes. “No you’re not,” he said. “I’ve met the Young King. He doesn’t look anything like you.”

You are correct. I am a reflection of the first Young King, a memory of him, embedded in the medallion. A fragment of his will. I am the reason you cannot rid yourself of the medallion, why it has stayed in your pocket all these years, and will continue to do so until my purpose is fulfilled.

“I almost dread to ask...what would that be?”

The Infinity Key...I am a piece of that ancient artifact. The Young King removed the medallion from it, and without that final piece the device is useless. I mus be be reunited with I...that is why you carry me. You must bring me to the Infinity Key and restore it. And then you must use the power of the Infinity Key to destroy it.

“Sure...I’ll get to work on that! In the meantime, what's with all the visions of death and destruction? Trying to give me nightmares, you’ve given all other kinds of trouble.”

The one you call Zemovaar, he is a kezan.

“I thought the kezan were all dead.”

He is a survivor, the last of his kind. He will use the Helix of Terminal Negation to open a portal into the past, and bring the kezan into the future, before the moment when they were brought low, when they still had the full measure of their power. No realm will stand against them, they will breing about a dark age and ultimately the end of all things. I cannot let this happen, not until my purpose is fulfilled! You must stop it.

“How I am supposed to do that? I have no ship, not even a sword. I might be dead myself by the time I wake up. You ask the impossible.”

It does not matter, that is for you to figure out, you must stop it. Now, do what must be done.

The darkness was replaced by light. “You are bloody useless,” Gaebrel snarled as he was dragged back to wakefulness. “Useless I say! Useless…”

“Useless.” Gaebrel mumbled the words as he opened his eyes. He sat up and leaned forward with a groan, his head spinning as he clutched the side of his head. “Ughh…”

“What was that?” Morrec looked over at him. “Are you all right Captain?”

“Never better,” Gaebrel muttered. It took a moment for the spinning to stop, and then he heard the shouting.

“Iyantuans...they doe so slowly! We give you to our young ones, they cut you and dance as you scream!”

“Shit in your mouth, you feathered savage! Vermin, scum! You infest the Empyrean like rats with wings! Every time one of you dies, the gods laugh!”

“Every one of my wing you kill, we kill ten!”

“Hah! I’ve seen your kind flee before he wind at the sight of an Iyantuan child! Cowards with wings, overgrown chickens, that's what you are!”

“Open that door, Iyantuan! I will kill you where you sand and make your skin into a coat!”

“Bah! I’ll off your wings and given them to my friend here to eat! Hurren, now’s your chance to for a real meal!”

“Don’t pull me into this feud,” Hurren rumbled.

Gaebrel looked up. Pohtoli was standing before the bars, shouting insults across the narrow space between the cells. Locked up in the other one, bound hand and foot, its winds tied to the body with rop, was a tall peradin, who returned the Iyantuan’s attack with jibes of his own.

“You will die screaming!” the peradin said with a clicking sound, the equivalent of a laugh among his kind. “I, Yu’oa, shall make it so!”

Shameless book plug:

Get The Burning Mountain

This is a special gift for the readers of this blog...a free novel. It’s not for sale on Amazon or anywhere else, the only place you can get it is by clicking the link below:

Click Here For The Book

Here is the description:

Donarec is a man fleeing from his past. Once a hero, the confidant of kings, he is an exile in a land ruined by civil war, where the strong prey upon the weak. Destiny catches up with him in the crossroads town of Saathi’s Hold. Seeking only a night’s rest and the chance to earn some much-needed coin, Donarec finds himself caught between two brutal gangs warring for control of the town. He is drawn towards a beautiful and mysterious woman held captive by one of the gang leaders, even as his past catches up to him and new enemies close in for the kill. Bodies fall as Donarec is forced to fight for his life and the freedom of others. For in this hard land, justice only comes at the edge of a sword...

If there’s enough interest, I might write a sequel…