Quote from: Benoist;525162I love me some Solomon Kane for instance. If you like the idea of the swashbuckling, gun flinging Puritan travelling in a land filled with curses and magic, a strange man that is too righteous for his own good, and ends up in countless adventures in a variety of settings, you'll like this a lot.

I recommend reading the Del Rey compilation. It also includes drafts of unfinished stories, ideas and bits of poetry that give access to the bigger picture of REH's writing. It's not all brilliant, but there are some great keepers in there. If you bite into Solomon Kane, you'll be able to move on to Conan and Kull without problem, IMO.

You know, that's exactly what I would like.  Genius recommendation.

Quote from: ggroy;525022In the case of REH, Lovecraft, Doc Smith, etc ..., how much of the respect for them was due to their stories being the first to become popular, as opposed to anything to do with literary brilliance on their part?

I think these people were brilliant. Truly brilliant. You compare the vast majority of pulp fiction with the sheer creative output these guys brought to the same table in the same time frame, and my God, that's devastating. Likewise, the legacy of these men in terms of influencing the way we think and dream about fantasy and horror is nothing short of flabbergasting, when you know where to look.

Nah. I think the term brilliance is perfectly appropriate. I don't believe in the tendency of people studying literature (as opposed to writing it) to over analyse everything, to make linear deconstructions of texts to prove an author was "really" thinking of this or that when he wrote this or that verse, or the supposed quality of alliterations and all that.

Yes, there are some things to be said in those fields that *are* valuable and interesting to consider from a craftsman's point of view, but if one thinks one writes thinking about all the ins and outs of the analysis some college graduate would give when reading it out loud years later... then one doesn't write much at all, as a matter of fact.

In the end, like mister G said, the actual brilliance of an author is only measured by your liking of his texts. How you embrace them and make them come to life in your head. If enough people find something there that makes them respond in kind and dream while reading... then you've touched something no college professor will ever be able to steal from you. That's brilliance, to me.

Quote from: Benoist;525168I don't believe in the tendency of people studying literature (as opposed to writing it) to over analyse everything, to make linear deconstructions of texts to prove an author was "really" thinking of this or that when he wrote this or that verse, or the supposed quality of alliterations and all that.

Reductionism and/or deconstruction does not always reveal more insight.  This is the case even in mathematics or physics.

Quote from: Benoist;525162I love me some Solomon Kane for instance. If you like the idea of the swashbuckling, gun flinging Puritan travelling in a land filled with curses and magic, a strange man that is too righteous for his own good, and ends up in countless adventures in a variety of settings, you'll like this a lot.

I second that. Solomon Kane is the right thing to recommend to a Gothic-horror-loving gamer.

Seriously, reading misterguignol's Gothic gaming threads reminds of the stuff I did (and the stuff I could have done) running my Savage Worlds Solomon Kane game. Though he's no Gothic protagonist, the Puritan's adventures ooze with the trappings of Gothic literature.

But I wouldn't overlook Worms of the Earth. There's a Del Rey volume that has Worms of the Earth and assorted other stories (I'm pretty sure that they mention Worms of the Earth on the cover) that's a good buy, too.

Quote from: The Butcher;525272I second that. Solomon Kane is the right thing to recommend to a Gothic-horror-loving gamer.

Seriously, reading misterguignol's Gothic gaming threads reminds of the stuff I did (and the stuff I could have done) running my Savage Worlds Solomon Kane game. Though he's no Gothic protagonist, the Puritan's adventures ooze with the trappings of Gothic literature.

But I wouldn't overlook Worms of the Earth. There's a Del Rey volume that has Worms of the Earth and assorted other stories (I'm pretty sure that they mention Worms of the Earth on the cover) that's a good buy, too.

Solomon Kane kicks ass. And then some. MrGuignol, your Gothic threads are full of Kaneness.

Quote from: The Butcher;525272...
But I wouldn't overlook Worms of the Earth. There's a Del Rey volume that has Worms of the Earth and assorted other stories (I'm pretty sure that they mention Worms of the Earth on the cover) that's a good buy, too.

That tale is in the Bran Mak Morn volume.  

Interestingly, Cthulhu Invictus assumes Howard's account of the Picts, etc., (including the Worms of the Earth) in its description of Britain.  (Although Howard's tale takes place about two centuries after the default time of CI.)

Quote from: Benoist;525147REH may be dry at times, but when he's on, he's got it man. HPL is good with ambiance mostly, and Clark Ashton Smith's prose is IMO superior to both HPL and REH.

I agree.  I read a lot of CAS last year, and found his stuff to be really great.  His work has a sense of dark humour and whimsey that the tales of REH and (especially) HPL lack.

Quote from: The Butcher;525272I second that. Solomon Kane is the right thing to recommend to a Gothic-horror-loving gamer.

Seriously, reading misterguignol's Gothic gaming threads reminds of the stuff I did (and the stuff I could have done) running my Savage Worlds Solomon Kane game. Though he's no Gothic protagonist, the Puritan's adventures ooze with the trappings of Gothic literature.

But I wouldn't overlook Worms of the Earth. There's a Del Rey volume that has Worms of the Earth and assorted other stories (I'm pretty sure that they mention Worms of the Earth on the cover) that's a good buy, too.

I ended up getting two best-of REH (I figured that way I would get a mix of Kane, Conan, and Kull) and a Horror Stories of REH (which also contains Worms of the Earth).  Thanks for the recommendations, guys!  Looks like I've got some reading ahead of me...

Quote from: Imperator;525287Solomon Kane kicks ass. And then some. MrGuignol, your Gothic threads are full of Kaneness.

I figure whatever latent Kaneness is my games probably filtered in through Kane's influence on Warhammer...which is pretty central to my own Gothic Fantasy games.

Quote from: misterguignol;525296I figure whatever latent Kaneness is my games probably filtered in through Kane's influence on Warhammer...which is pretty central to my own Gothic Fantasy games.

Word.

Quote from: Windjammer;524888That's getting close, but not quite.

See, it's become a standard criticism of Dragonalance that it scripted certain narratives. What's a lot less critiziced is what I find personally a lot more problematic: the content of these narratives. In particular, the ethos which infuses the key NPCs and the pantheon.

I agree about your view of the novels (the only character who shows some backbone and moral development is Kitiara, and look where that gets her), but I was specifically discussing Dragonlance as a game setting. Can it be divorced from the moralising of the books, and can the interesting elements of the modules be divorced from the railroading? Yes, I think so, since we did it way back in 1993 (although part of that might have been the GM jus plain failing to get the novels' subtext). Would I do it today? No, I don't have an interest in it anymore.

I must confess that I still love the cover of The Dragons of Autumn Twilight. It is one of the really, really rare Elmore paintings which work for me.

Also, for the record, Dragonlance was an immense financial success, so whatever its aesthetic qualities, people ate it up like candy.

Quote from: The Butcher;525094

Quote from: ggroyIn the case of REH, Lovecraft, Doc Smith, etc ..., how much of the respect for them was due to their stories being the first to become popular, as opposed to anything to do with literary brilliance on their part?

I am loath to call these guys "brilliant". They were definitely gifted creators, though IMHO their actual command of the written word isn't always on par with the vistas they've conjured; they are very evocative at their best, but manage to slip into purple prose very easily.

The truth is, fantasy and SF represent such a very small fraction of all fiction, that we only have very few truly gifted wordsmiths, that I'd call "brilliant" writers. Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance and Gene Wolfe are the only ones I'm really familiar with, that I'd use the term.

A lot of period pulp is just ink and dusty paper now. At one time, I downloaded a ton of them from the Black Mask Archive (defunct, but a lot of it is still found at Munseys) and tried to read the ones which sounded interesting. They were standard potboilers; maybe interesting for someone appreciating genre for its own sake, but dull as literature.

The reason we know REH, CAS, HPL, Asimov, Doc Smith and the others is because they were either much better than their contemporaries, or they wrote seminal works. I would put REH in the first group, although with the caveat that his non-Conan characters can be significantly more interesting, and Asimov firmly in the second in spite of his immense popularity. There are forgotten greats, who fell by the wayside because they didn't have anyone championing their work: it almost happen to REH andf HPL, and it did happen to Harold Lamb (whose Khlit the Cossack stories are pure gold), Arthur O'Friel (Tiger River is a great lost world story), or Arthur D. Howden-Smith (who is considered to be a second-rate writer, but whose Grey Maiden, a series of short stories about the fate of a sword through the ages, is outstanding). Some authors wrote both great works and others which have aged badly: Talbot Mundy's King -- of the Khyber Rifles, its prequel, Guns of the Gods or the grandiose swords & sandals saga of Tros of Samothrace deserve every bit of recognition they can get, while his Jimgrim stories (pulp!!! with all the three exclamation marks) are dead boring in spite of their breakneck pace and huge explosions.

My third and last post on Dragonlance, to answer this question:

Quote from: The Butcher;524987I still do not understand how is it that such a poorly written story, notwithstanding the universality of the themes at work, could be such a huge commercial hit.

Quote from: Imperator;524991We were teenagers and our brains were not fully formed. No, seriously.

It's pretty straight forward.

Remember the terror of adolescence. It's having experiences you think only you are having, and not being able to talk about these openly; it takes time to open up to others and realize you are not alone. Usually this takes place in the company of people your same age, but not necessarily.

Dragonlance depicted adult characters whose insecurities, self doubt, and immaturity mirrored pretty exactly that of its teenage readership. And now there's something infinitely soothing for those teenagers to realize that they can after all relate to other people around them.

Cultural parallels:
- Steve Ditko's creation of a masked superhero who was not only younger than the other superheroes, but also experienced the same emotional, romantic, and societal insecurities as his readership ('does anyone like me?', 'will I ever find a job/place in the world?'). The end result rarely looked dignified, but it sure is commercially successful - just look at this scene (starting at minute 2:45), an only slight exaggeration of the movie.
- Nietzsche's observation about the Greek pantheon. Why did the Greeks invent it? To cope with life. Here's Hera and Zeus, physically and mentally infinitely more powerful than mortals, and yet they are having the most mundane of problems just like the mortals - him cheating on his wife, she flying into a fit of rage, him dumping the girl, they making up, her sulking, rinse repeat. It's the genius of the Greeks, says Nietzsche, that they created their gods with all these weaknesses. Because that contained the soothing lesson that even if you were infinitely more powerful, you'd still have the same problems. So you might as well stop bothering about the problems. (and questions like 'but what if I were richer/stronger/more beautiful?').

All that Weisman and Hick did was take that cultural trick and foist it on fantasy. I already said above how even the guys in the pantheon behave as if they were in a teenage soap. But it's even more pronounced with the mortal characters. Raistlin is the bestest wizard ever, but he feels as tiny and isolated as Peter Parker. Caramon is super muscley and good looking, but he has got big problems with girls, that sexy oaf.* Or Lauranna, that penthouse playmate, blond and tall, she can barely be a woman next to Kitiara. All this tells you: see, even these people are having your problems! No sexual confidence - and they're adults! So don't you feel lonely. Don't you feel you're a failure when even the adults are.

It's a terrible lesson, of course, because it can shield your petty little ego only so long from the truth that actual reality does occasionally contain wholesome people, and that in the long run you're better off to become one of them.

*Drizzt fits of course the same category, as does Wulfgar's immaturity and insecurity towards Cattie-Brie: physically powerful characters who display teenage weaknesses (self doubt, whiny emos, ...). So DL is hardly alone in this regard.

WRT Howard recommendations, I like King Kull, a more philosophical Conan predecessor, whose stories are full of uncertainty about the nature of reality and the fleeting nature of power (also, serpent-men); James Allison, a crippled man in Texas who remembers his previous incarnations on his sick-bed; and his handful of Babylonian stories. Some of his Outremere stories (found in Lords of Samarkand) are also good, owing a lot to Harold Lamb; but the earlier ones are simply painful to wade through.

Quote from: Windjammer;525497My third and last post on Dragonlance, to answer this question:





It's pretty straight forward.

Remember the terror of adolescence. It's having experiences you think only you are having, and not being able to talk about these openly; it takes time to open up to others and realize you are not alone. Usually this takes place in the company of people your same age, but not necessarily.

Dragonlance depicted adult characters whose insecurities, self doubt, and immaturity mirrored pretty exactly that of its teenage readership. And now there's something infinitely soothing for those teenagers to realize that they can after all relate to other people around them.

Cultural parallels:
- Steve Ditko's creation of a masked superhero who was not only younger than the other superheroes, but also experienced the same emotional, romantic, and societal insecurities as his readership ('does anyone like me?', 'will I ever find a job/place in the world?'). The end result rarely looked dignified, but it sure is commercially successful - just look at this scene (starting at minute 2:45), an only slight exaggeration of the movie.
- Nietzsche's observation about the Greek pantheon. Why did the Greeks invent it? To cope with life. Here's Hera and Zeus, physically and mentally infinitely more powerful than mortals, and yet they are having the most mundane of problems just like the mortals - him cheating on his wife, she flying into a fit of rage, him dumping the girl, they making up, her sulking, rinse repeat. It's the genius of the Greeks, says Nietzsche, that they created their gods with all these weaknesses. Because that contained the soothing lesson that even if you were infinitely more powerful, you'd still have the same problems. So you might as well stop bothering about the problems. (and questions like 'but what if I were richer/stronger/more beautiful?').

All that Weisman and Hick did was take that cultural trick and foist it on fantasy. I already said above how even the guys in the pantheon behave as if they were in a teenage soap. But it's even more pronounced with the mortal characters. Raistlin is the bestest wizard ever, but he feels as tiny and isolated as Peter Parker. Caramon is super muscley and good looking, but he has got big problems with girls, that sexy oaf.* Or Lauranna, that penthouse playmate, blond and tall, she can barely be a woman next to Kitiara. All this tells you: see, even these people are having your problems! No sexual confidence - and they're adults! So don't you feel lonely. Don't you feel you're a failure when even the adults are.

It's a terrible lesson, of course, because it can shield your petty little ego only so long from the truth that actual reality does occasionally contain wholesome people, and that in the long run you're better off to become one of them.

*Drizzt fits of course the same category, as does Wulfgar's immaturity and insecurity towards Cattie-Brie: physically powerful characters who display teenage weaknesses (self doubt, whiny emos, ...). So DL is hardly alone in this regard.

Btavo, sir :hatsoff: