If one "good" thing that came out of the pandemic was my being able to get into sword and sorcery stories. I really appreciate you not quite shying away from some of the outdated ideal and racist depictions/language. Of course, many of the stories and the genre as a whole is greater than these pitfalls but I appreciate someone covering the genre is able to talk about it. I've found that some people can get defensive, dismissive, or even aggressive when you bring them up but I think it's important to acknowledge the good, the bad, and the ugly of the media we enjoy so thanks for doing that!
100% agree. Thank you so much for this comment, and for understanding where I am coming from. We need to talk about that stuff, and we can still enjoy the stories. The two aspects are not mutually exclusive. I’ve already gotten a lot of guff from people on earlier videos and elsewhere for even mentioning some of the issues, while still praising the books! It’s totally insane, and part of the reason why I mentioned the fandom in the intro for this video.
@@TheDungeonDive Yeah I getcha. Unfortunately, those types of people are found in almost every fandom under the sun and while they can be loud they're often not representative of the fandom as a whole. I get wanting to escape from the real world but many of these works aren't written in a bubble devoid of subtext (whether good or bad). Ultimately, what matters IMO is the text and your relationship with it and reading deeper than the ink on the page deepens that understanding and appreciation of these works. And it also makes use of all those reading classes in school which is a pretty good thing
Right on! I also think it's my responsibility to my viewers to point out these issues. If I'm making recommendations to people, that reflects on me as a person. So if I recommend something that has some issues with racism or sexism, I need to call that out so that the person I'm recommending to knows that, and so they don't think I am endorsing that kind of behavior.
@@TheDungeonDive I’m currently reading the omnibuses. Expensive but the oversized format is great. Volume 2 is the best to have for it has adaptation of People of the Black Circle, my favorite story thus far.
I read Swords & Sorcery and Spell of Seven last month, and had a great time. This was my first introduction to S&S. The C.L Moore story was one of my favourites, very haunting and dream like. So looking forward to the rest of this series!
I'm really looking forward to reading the Moore book as well. Comparing and contrasting stories written by men and women, with lead male / female characters is something I'm intensely interested in doing during this project.
I'm very excited for this series! I haven't read much S&S. I look forward to getting some knowledge dropped on me and some good hooks as to where to start.
Either of these three anthologies would be a perfectly fine start. I would recommend Warlocks and Warriors. It’s quite good! And I’m also super excited to discover and learn more as I go.
I'm 2 years behind but I would like to stop by and say: Well done Sir! I've only been reading Conan and other Sword & Sorcery stuff since.. maybe 4 years back now, so most of this is still new to me. And it's always nice to get more information and suggestions for new stuff to read, so thanks :)
Excellent review for these three books. I haven't read any of the three, but I've read a lot of stories by most of the writers within those covers. My introduction to S&S: My 7th grade English teacher was a big Conan fan. At the end of school that year, at the beginning of the summer break, he gave me a big paper grocery bag with all the Lancer editions of the Conan books. I read 'em all that summer. Wow! Admittedly, I was a little burned out on Conan at that time, but I looked for other Howard characters--this would've been 1972-'72, so the S&S and Howard Booms were in full bloom. I also read a lot of Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories. My interests moved on as I entered college--although I did read a few of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane stories--and it wasn't until about three years ago my interest in S&S returned and I started re-reading stories and seeking older ones I'd missed before, as well as searching for contemporary S&S writers. Your review here is very solid and well done. I look forward to listening to more!
I really enjoyed this overview. I believe future videos in the series would definitely benefit from at least a simple title listing in the RU-vid description, as it was a little cumbersome having to click back through the video trying to find the table of contents for each collection. Thanks for posting this and looking forward to what's next!
Thanks for the reminder! Thought they were already there with wiki links. Something must have happened in an update or something. They will be added back!
I grew up with this in the 80's. Pulp stories were easy reads. I was a avid reader of these stories. Not just swords & sorcery, also The Destroyer (Remo Williams series) & Mac Bolan.
@@TheDungeonDive There was a short lived TV series with was pretty good. Short lived. Marvel Comics put out graphic novels of the Destroyer series. Just like the books non-politically correct. It will upset Hollywoke big time. I'm now listening to the audio books during my commute. I'm laughing at the interactions between Remo & Chiun.
I've read The Spell of Seven, but not the other two collections. Of course, if they're all edited by L. Sprague De Camp, then I'd be surprised if they're very different as collections. DeCamp is okay, but he's never great. Plus you have to take his editorial stance with a grain of salt. Not that he doesn't believe what he says, but his opinions are clearly not objective and lop-sided. Amra is a nickname that Conan got during his pirate days on the seas, especially among the southern black nations. "Amra" supposedly means lion. I don't remember for sure, but I think Amra only pops up in two stories. one from his pirate days, and then a second time in Hour of the Dragon, where the slaves on a ship remember who he is or was in the past.
@@TheDungeonDive I had a subscription to Amra back in those days. It was a great fanzine for those into the Sword & Sorcery genre. They had a strong bias toward REH in general and Conan in particular but also covered Edgar Rice Burroughs and had scholarly articles on dark ages weapons and combat, often authored by DeCamp. In one of the later issues which I still have a number of fans articulated their thoughts on what would make a good Conan movie. Amongst the requirements were spx by Ray Harryhausen and the casting of Christopher Lee as Thoth-Amon. No one had heard of Arnold yet.
So excited you are doing this series! My favorite, hands down, genre of fantasy fiction. I do not usually go in for anthologies, but after hearing that “When the Sea King’s Away” didn’t make it into the top three of the first anthology you reviewed, I have to read the book now. The Conan story from that anthology I know well, and “Sea King” is definitely not the best F &GM story ever written, but I think it is still strong. So the other stories in this anthology must be quite good! I agree, Lin Carter is hit or miss, mostly miss, IMHO. I also love their stories but I do not consider Smith or Lovecraft to be in this genre, “as a general thing” (to quote Howard). 😃
Hey, thanks! I'm not too fond of "When the Sea King's Away." It has some great moments, but it's a little long, IMO. Lot's of time spent with our heroes just wandering around. :) It's good, but not in my top 5 stories from the pair. Smith has a few HARDCORE S&S stories, and some others that are borderline, but yeah, I mostly agree with you. Lovecraft's one or two are even less so, and totally out of place here. Really looking forward to covering all kinds of related stuff and semi-related stuff, and touching upon some of the lesser known and talked about stories and authors. Looking forward to revisiting favorites, and especially discovering new stuff! What are some of your favorites?
@@TheDungeonDive In terms of the stories themselves, I am a die hard Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser fan. “Ill Met in Lankhmar” is IMHO the greatest S&S short story ever written. I even like it more than Howard’s “Tower of the Elephant” which I think is a close second. But in terms of a series of books, rather than just the stories by themselves, Elric is my favorite. The combination of S&S with an acid trip us hard to beat. Unlike a lot of people I really like that the gods have such an influence on the heroes in the Elric saga. Conan and F & GM sort of thumb their noses at the gods. But in Elric’s world, the heroes often find themselves puppets of the gods. It brings a futility and sense of despair to the stories that is interesting I think. But F & GM have had by far the largest influence on me, in particular in terms of my gaming.
Elric is by far my favorite. Love the saga so much. Although, I think Divlish the Damned might be giving that a run for its money! Is Ill Met in Lankhmar the one with the street of all the different religious sects? I too am a huge fan of F&GM, but not a huge Conan fan. I actually like Solomon Kane a lot more. I just find him to be a more interesting character.
@@TheDungeonDive “Ill Met in Lankhmar” is the last story in the first book if you go with the paperback releases of the stories. It is when the two first meet, start to develop their friendship, and have their first conflict with the Thieves Guild and the wonderful encounter with Hristomilo the sorcerer. One of the best, and most horrific, presentations of Black Magic in old S&S fiction IMO. Conan is not my favorite either, but Howard does have a way of writing that is engaging. What I do not like about the Conan stories is that I never feel he is in jeopardy. It’s more just waiting to see how he ends up kicking the crap out of the antagonist. I do like how magic is portrayed in the stories though. And if I am truly honest with myself, S&S stories are like pizza to me. Even when they are bad ... they are still pretty darn good!
@@TheDungeonDive To me people today seem to be looking for things to be racist. I dont believe that the purpose of this story was to be racist.. but every time a story features black people or women then people today seem more ready to look for trigger words and minorities being portrayed in a bad light than letting themselves be swooped away by the story. I never read this story as racist.. there is a racist character in the story but that is absolutely fine.. he is an asshole in the story. I am Danish but I don't whine about Danes being potrayed as murdering raping viking barbarians.. it's just a fantasy stereotype and I am fine with stereotypes. In short.. 😄 I never read the message in this story as racist.. I never thought about it untill I read a review of it that said that it was racist.
@@TheDungeonDive But I know that we see it differently and that is of course fine. I wasn't looking for "a fight". 😊 I just think that this racism hunt sometimes becomes an ecco chamber so I thought I would say that we are some who dissagree.
Oh no! I'm not looking to fight either. : ) I think this is a good discussion to have. I think you being Danish and me being American has a lot to do with how we read these things. America has a problematic history with racism (actually, we're still dealing with it today, so it's not really a problem in our history), so it's something at the surface, and I am a very critical reader - I'm always looking for subtext, meaning, and messages, even in things that are "pure entertainment." And like I've said many times, I'm not here to tell anyone to NOT read these stories for any reason. I LOVE these stories. But as a critic and reader who must remain honest to myself, I have to raise these issues as I see them. It's the only way for me to be responsible. I will say this though - I personally didn't find much to like about that story on any level. I wasn't even entertained by it. So as I found myself unengaged from the plot, I started to nitpick issues I had with it on other levels. I'm also not really a big fan of Conan the character, or his world. He doesn't interest me much at all, but I respect his place in the genre. Now Solomon Kane on the other hand! There's a REH I'm totally down with! :)
I will also be going out of my way to read S&S from minorities, and S&S featuring different kinds of characters. Have you read Charles R. Saunders' Imaro stories?
Hi Daniel, I enjoyed your review of these books! I am curious to try Henry Kuttner's S&S writing now. I wanted to check if you are familiar with Karl Edward Wagner's S&S editing and writing? His "Kane" stories and novels are some of my favorite S&S, particularly the 3 novellas in "Death Angel's Shadow". Hardcopies of his Kane books are OOP and expensive but you can get cheap Kindle editions. Besides his "Kane" stories, he edited early revised collections of Conan stories, wrote his own Conan novel "Road of Kings", has many collections of horror stories and was the editor of "Year's Best Horror Stories" for decades. He also had a medical degree and practiced in psychiatry. Best wishes and appreciation!
Hey thanks! I’ve got almost everything Wagner wrote. Just missing In A Lonely Place. Expect lots of Kane! At least two episodes most likely. Love those DAW horror anthologies as well! Especially the ones with the Whalen covers. Thanks for watching and commenting!
Glad to hear you are so familiar with KEW! I look forward to hearing your thoughts/feelings about his writing. It sounds like you have an amazing collection of OOP books, congrats!
@@TheDungeonDive I find it so hard to financially balance all my collecting interests when it comes to books, comics, art, boardgame and rpgs, any advice on how you do it? Might make a good subject for a video, if you haven't already, since it seems to be a universal collector's dilemma?
Comics I use Comixology. Music I use Apple Music. These subscription services save me a lot of money. Games I’ve very picky with. I only collect a couple of kinds, so I can safely ignore about 98% of all other games. I also never go all in on KSers, so that saves money. Books, I go hog wild with. :).
I don't think thats the best Steranko art there-pose on lizardman, choice of weapons, and the horse looks odd. It does have a good mood with a sense of danger.
@@TheDungeonDive Interestingly, I believe that the Steranko cover was originally done for another paperback original. I recall that I bought this anthology in the early 70's and a short time later read another S&S novel that had an action sequence that was an exact match for the Steranko work. Desert setting, hero wielding an axe from horseback, lizardman (the hench-monster of the main villian) with a flail. I am not sure of the title of the novel after all these years but it may have been either Quest Of The Dark Lady or The Sorcerer's Skull. I imagine that in the publishing business this happens with some regularity - an artist is commissioned for a jacket illustration, for some reason the deal falls through, artist sells the illustration elsewhere.
Hey dungeon dive does the novels by L Sprague De Camp, they're a bit humorous but not any more then other books by De Camp. The books I'm curious if they're still sorcery despite they're humorous bent are,The Goblin Tower, The Unbeheaded King,The Cloaks of Iraz, and finally The Honorable Barbarian.
I'm so excited to dive into this! Thank you so much for making/releasing it (despite my being a bit laaaate...) - I didn't want to add, though a little controversial, that I don't mind a little gatekeeping. Given today's norm of purposefully trying to destroy and/or erase something only because it doesn't fit the "right think" of today's social norms, a little gatekeeping serves to protect such genres and old media. (Note: I said 'a little' there's a good and a bad to everything.) ... but that's just my take having been on both sides of the argument.
Hope you enjoy it! I think it's entirely possible to love this genre of fiction, while also discussing it in a critical way. I've always found it odd that some people thing being critical of something means something negative, or means you want to stop other people from enjoying the thing. If anything is true, the opposite of that is true. I wouldn't waste the time and energy it takes to critique something if that thing wasn't worth discussing and sharing. With that said, though, there are some examples of this genre which are just flat out repulsive because of their misogyny and xenophobia. To deny that is to deny the reality of social progress, which is something I value. But again, I would never be a part of a movement that denies people the ability to examine these things, I would just encourage people to do it critically.
@@TheDungeonDive Oh, talking about something with a critical eye and the open mindedness of knowing "today's modern views were not yesterday's news" is an entirely welcomed notion / practice to me. I was commenting more on your expressed concerns of sharing your opinions on the genre due to the fans' protective nature and the 'gatekeeping' that occurs in some of these fandoms/hobbies. How, in my experience, some healthy gatekeeping is okay. Its the benefit of not rewriting or "censoring" the past - we get to look back and be repulsed or 'put off' by their actions and ideals (concerning racism, mysogony, etc etc - the negative perspectives we've evolved out of.) because it means we're growing and bettering ourselves as a society. Its situations like trying to ban an author's work or remove their posthumous awards that I feel go too far.
Yeah. I always get them mixed up, and make sure to record the mistakes for everyone to point them out and make corrections. As I say many times, keeping track of my mistakes is a full time job, and it doesn’t pay a thing! Good luck!
@@TheDungeonDive I wouldn't look at it as a full time job at all. Once it's pointed out, you know going forward. Easy. If you don't learn it, you don't.
Are you still doing this series? If you are I would suggest you read some of the newest kind of S&S. Specifically the books published by DMR Books. There are a lot of great s&s short stories in those anthologies in the style of the Swords Against Darkness
Oh yeah! I've read a ton of DMR stuff. Just finished Eyes of Sounnu, which is amazing - s-tier weird fantasy. When I do book stuff, I'm doing it on my dedicated book channel now, All Fiction is Fantasy.
I find such collections of stories fascinating. A glimpse to many worlds and characters in just one book. Seems like dinosaurs, such anthologies are the relic of the old times? Have you encountered Savage Realms Monthly by chance? Haven't read it myself but it started this year and there are January and February issues. It features new authors (cannot vouch for the quality of the writing though). Thank you for this series! Looking forward to another video.
I just found your channel! This is perfect! Fantasy, high or low, is one of my absolute favorite forms of entertainment. Wonderful content. Insta-subscribe.
With caution taken because of the pandemic - I've found that my local, used bookstores (not big franchised ones) tend to carry these books for as little as $0.25!!
if you reading swords and sorcery and such - racism existed - after all they are from 1930 and whereabouts. later 1970/1980 swords and sorcery douse down on racism - but how can I critize them if that was the norm of society? that's my opinion. I, of couse am against But I have to understand these tales, some have 100 years (almost)
@@TheDungeonDive I understand. My main problem, well gripe, would be that nowadays everything is can be criticised because it doesn't follow nowadays norm. Really interested to see your thoughts on books. I've got some Fantasy Masterworks where all CL Werner sword and sorcery stories there. There are some new Sword and Sorcery being release like Lord Byron (Byron A Roberts - he was the Bal-Sagoth singer) wrote some pretty good stories. Schuyler Hernstrom. I am reading Lin Carter Green Star (5 novels). Don't know if you are reading it but one of my favorites it's Karl Edward Wagner's Kane books. There are 5 novels/anthology I believe. I have them all. Hope to watch more books here. After your introduction I bought all Splatter Wester novels (one come out since you made the video) and I've already read two of them. Btw, do you have a goodreads account?
Right - and it should be criticized. But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy it, which is something I state over and over again. We should be ULTRA critical of the things we enjoy, and truly think about why we enjoy them. I am super critical about every single thing I choose to spend time and money on. :) I wouldn't be recommending these books if I thought they were bad. But when recommending old literature, it is crucially important to discuss things in context to modern society so that new readers know where I'm coming from. If I didn't mention it, and someone bought a book with a ton of racism and rape in it, they might assume that I endorse that behavior. To not mention it is irresponsible, and could paint me in a bad light. Green Star will be making an appearance as a sword and planet entry, and the Kane books will definitely be making an appearance! I have a goodreads, but I never use it.
Haha, as a kid in the seventies I read a lot of sword and sorcery and had those books but to think now there is a now a nerd commitee policing this trash is comical. It almost ruins the fun. Glad the seventies were more fun and it was great to be into the genre back then.
