Roy Thomas – Page 2

The SFFaudio Podcast #133 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Beyond The Black River by Robert E. Howard

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #133 – Beyond The Black River by Robert E. Howard, read by Todd McLaren (courtesy of Tantor Media’s The Conquering Sword Of Conan). This is a complete and unabridged reading of the novelette (2 Hours 29 Minutes) followed by a discussion of it (by Jesse and Tamahome).

Talked about on today’s show:
Todd McLaren, Conan’s voice is confident, Balthus is the Jimmy Olsen to Conan’s Superman, Robert E. Howard’s avatar in Beyond The Black River is Balthus, “the damnedest bastard who ever lived”, “buckets of mead”, a noble death, a prominently displayed dog, barbarism vs. civilization, Red Nails, “the viking hat”, The Savage Sword Of Conan, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Tam is a Conan novice, The Last Of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, western, “alabaster skin”, the triumph of Barbarism (is the coda for the story), Texas, would the 1% agree with Howard?, Picts, the world of Hyboria, Cimmeria was a real place, history, historical romance, physical display, don’t overblow the homo-eroticism, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, autodidacts, Margaret Atwood’s interview on CBC’s Q, “occasionals”?, Walt Whitman and Henry James, The Turn Of The Screw, sword and sorcery, did Howard invent the barbarian as a character?, Genghis Khan, forbidden knowledge, Howard and Jack London, The Call Of The Wild, California, Alaska, Yukon, slavery, civilization to barbarism, “a Conan dog”, atavism, Zogar Sag is the Jesus to Jhebbal Sag’s God, secret language magic, secret symbols, Conan The Barbarian, Conan is at the height of his power, atavistic magic, “what was I missing”, chatty Conan, Brian Wood’s new Conan comic (adapting Queen Of The Black Coast), Barry Windsor Smith, “he’s busy getting revenge”, a distillation of what’s in the stories, Conan and the philosophers, Oliver Stone and John Milius, Conan The Destroyer, sword vs. sorcery, Berserk (manga), “if you were in the Hyborian age which god would you worship?”, “a Klingon god”, “who is the good guy in Beyond The Black River?”, why does Conan side with the Aquilonians?, “swarthy white men”, Conan is bronzed by the sun not swarthy, end the Jersey Shore references, “this is a war story”, Conan doesn’t believe in an external valuation, why is there only one Devil?, Gullah the Gorilla God – the hairy one who lives on the moon, Africa, Aquilonia is France, Hyboria is Europe, Hyperborea (boreal + hyper = far north), Stygia = Egypt, Texas history, the Picts are the Comanche in this story, Julius Caesar, degenerating white men, Kull, Brule The Spearslayer, “noble savage”, a “symphony of racism”, Bran Mak Morn: The Last King by Robert E. Howard, Kings In The Night, The Whole Wide World, The One Who Walks Alone by Novalyne Price Ellis, Vincent D’Onofrio as Robert E. Howard channeling Conan, photographs of Robert E. Howard, Howard was a LARPer, “Howard was a rough-hewn intellectual”, boxing, gun culture vs. cat culture, WWII, Lidice, “even a white man’s dog is worth more than seven Picts”, Bill Hollweg’s Queen Of The Black Coast audio drama, would Beyond The Black River make a good audio drama?, Lou Anders’ Hollywood Formula doesn’t work here, philosophy of the woods, audiobooks and comics are better than movies, SSOC #26 & #27, Dark Horse’s Savage Sword Of Conan, Volume 3, ostrich feathers tell a story, a frontier story, Weird Tales covers by Margaret Brundage, the Hulk, supple, Red Nails would be a good readalong, laser beams and dinosaurs.

Weird Tales - Beyond The Black River by Robert E. Howard - illustration by Hugh Rankin

Weird Tales - Beyond The Black River by Robert E. Howard - illustration by Hugh Rankin - "Fierce joy surged through him."

Beyond The Black River - illustrated by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala

Posted by Jesse Willis

Gods Of The North by Robert E. Howard

SFFaudio Online Audio

“Anybody ought to be willing to pay a dollar for the privilege of reading, for a whole year, the works of Lovecraft, Smith, and Derleth.”

-Robert E. Howard (from a letter to Fantasy Fan, December 1933)

“I am so happy that we were able to quickly clear up this misunderstanding. We have accepted Orion’s apology without reservation and I thank our lawyers, and Orion’s lawyers, on both sides of the Atlantic for helping us resolve our issues. Orion was a great licensee of ours for many years and we are delighted to have reached an agreement to renew and expand that relationship. We are already brainstorming the many new productive ways we can work together in the future. Those of us who work at Paradox have put a lot of work into protecting and developing our wide array of Robert E. Howard derived brands since we got into the Robert E. Howard business. The new Conan movie will wrap next month, the Age of Conan MMOG recently launched a big expansion, and we are well along in the development of a number of other feature films and licensed products which we will be announcing shortly. Orion is perfectly positioned as a leading science fiction/fiction publisher which can provide the wider audience we want to reach the real thing, REH’s original stories”

-Fredrik Malmberg, President and CEO of Paradox Entertainment, Inc. and its subsidiaries (Conan Properties International) (from a 2010 press release)

Gods Of The North, first published in 1934, is still just one of two Conan stories available on LibriVox.org (the other being Red Nails). Gods Of The North is a 3,500 word vignette, it’s been republished under the titles The Frost Giant’s Daughter and The Frost King’s Daughter. The reason it survives, and is known today, has nothing to do with marketing campaigns, intellectual property protection or lawyers. It survives for one reason alone – it survives because of it’s fans. In fact, it survives despite it being originally written as a piece for sale. It was actually rejected by Weird Tales magazine editor Farnsworth Wright:

The Frost-Giant's Daughter Rejection Letter

Check it out… Gods Of The North was first published in a fan magazine (that had just sixty subscribers) – a fan magazine that counted both H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard among its feature (and letters column) contributors. Neither Lovecraft nor Howard wrote to, or for, THE FANTASY FAN because it was a profitable venture – they wrote to it, and for it, because they were themselves fans of fantasy and the stories and poems they were weaving. You may know the story. It’s a pretty famous one today, but it isn’t famous because it was a well marketed, properly licensed by the right’s holder, or branded. It is, instead, because it’s a good story that fans (another word for readers) appreciate.

Gods Of The North was nearly forgotten. It lay un-reprinted and virtually unknown for more than thirty years until it was re-discovered and reprinted in the December 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe. Here is the editorial introduction for that reprinting:

The publication of this strange story by Robert E. Howard, author of the Conan stories, so much a part of the Living Library of Fantasy, represents a departure for this magazine. Without abandoning our policy of bringing you, month after month, the best in NEW Science Fiction and Fantasy. We will, front time to time, publish material such as this, hitherto known to only a few students of the field! GODS OF THE NORTH was published in 1934, in Charles D. Hornig’s THE FANTASY FAN, which had a circulation of under a hundred! We thank Sam Moskowitz, Editor and SF historian, who showed us this story.

Here’s the |PDF|, it’s also available (with a slightly different text) at |WIKISOURCE|

Here’s my description of the plot:

A winter war in the mountains of Vanaheim, and a bit of gossamer, are all that stand between Conan of Cimmeria and the frosty beauty who spurns him.

And here’s the audiobook:

Gods of the North
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 21 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: September 21, 2008
She drew away from him, dwindling in the witch·fire of the skies, until she was a figure no bigger than a child. First published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan.

Here’s the same reading, with additional commentary:

Podcastle #162 – Gods Of The North
By Robert E. Howard; Read by Rowdy Delaney
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Podcastle
Podcast: June 21, 2011

My copy of Conan’s Brethren (a Gollancz collection of Howard stories), edited by Stephen Jones, features this striking image by Les Edwards (aka Edward Miller):

The Frost King's Daughter - illustration by Les Edwards

Comics adaptations:

Savage Tales #1 (May 1971) – The first comics adaptation, adapted by Roy Thomas (writer) and Barry Windsor Smith (artist):

Savage Tales - The Frost Giant's Daughter

Conan the Barbarian #16 (July 1972) – a colorized version of the ST #1 adaptation, except with Comics Code Authority self-censorship and an additional splash page:

Conan The Barbarian - Night Of The Frost Giants

Savage Sword of Conan #1 (August 1974) – an uncoloured and uncensored (full nudity is back) version of the same adaptation from Conan The Barbarian #16 and Savage Tales #1, but featuring the added splash page (in black and white this time) from CTB #16:

The Savage Sword Of Conan - ADDED SPLASH (in black and white) - The Frost Giant's Daughter

Conan #2 (March 2004) adapted by Kurt Busiek (writer) and Cary Nord (artist) – cover art by Joseph Michael Linsner:

Dark Horse - Conan #2 - The Frost Giant's Daughter - COVER

Conan #2 - The Frost Giant's Daughter - INTERIOR

But the fan connection doesn’t end there. The artist most closely associated with the Marvel Comics run of Conan The Barbarian and Savage Sword Of Conan was John Buscema. But, he never illustrated an adaptation of Gods Of The North or The Frost Giant’s Daughter. And so it was up to fan artists, like the impressively talented Benito Gallego, to step in to imagine what a Buscema version of this fan favourite tale might look like. And he did it twice!

Benito Gellago's illustrations of The Frost Giant's Daughter

[Thanks to Robert E. Howard, Charles D. Horning, Sam Moskowitz, Hans Stefan Santesson, Rowdy Delaney, Gorgon776 and many other fans]

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Music Of Erich Zann by H.P. Lovecraft

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Music Of Erich Zann is one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most popular short stories (it runs just 3,450 words).

The Music Of Erich Zann - illustration by Andrew Brosnatch

Here are the opening lines:

“I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found the Rue d’Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into all the antiquities of the place, and have personally explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue d’Auseil. But despite all I have done, it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann.

That my memory is broken, I do not wonder; for my health, physical and mental, was gravely disturbed throughout the period of my residence in the Rue d’Auseil, and I recall that I took none of my few acquaintances there. But that I cannot find the place again is both singular and perplexing; for it was within a half-hour’s walk of the university and was distinguished by peculiarities which could hardly be forgotten by any one who had been there. I have never met a person who has seen the Rue d’Auseil.

The Rue d’Auseil lay across a dark river bordered by precipitous brick blear-windowed warehouses and spanned by a ponderous bridge of dark stone. It was always shadowy along that river, as if the smoke of neighboring factories shut out the sun perpetually. The river was also odorous with evil stenches which I have never smelled elsewhere, and which may some day help me to find it, since I should recognize them at once. Beyond the bridge were narrow cobbled streets with rails; and then came the ascent, at first gradual, but incredibly steep as the Rue d’Auseil was reached.”

And the Rue d’Auseil, by the way, translates to “street of the threshold” – most appropriate.

Public domain:

The Music Of Erich Zann
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Cameron Halket
1 |MP3| – Approx. 19 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: LibriVox.org
Published: October 19, 2008
|ETEXT|
A student of philosophy is forced, by lack of funds, to to take lodgings in a run down rooming house in a strange part of Paris. First published in National Amateur (March 1922), then later in the May 1925 issue of Weird Tales.

Creative Commons:

Episode #100 – The Music Of Erich Zann
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by B.J. Harrison
1 |MP3| – Approx. 30 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Pseudopod
Podcast: July 25th, 2008

Commercial audiobook:

The Dark Worlds Of H.P. Lovecraft, Volume 4: The Rats In The Walls, The Shunned House, The Music Of Eric Zann
By H.P. Lovecraft; Read by Wayne June
3 CDs – 2 Hours 41 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Publisher: Audio Realms
Published: 2006
ISBN: 1897304242
|READ OUR REVIEW|

Discussion:

Episode #23 – The Music Of Erich Zann
Participants Chris Lackey, Chad Fifer and Andrew Leman
1 |MP3| – Approx. 29 Minutes [DISCUSSION]
Podcaster: H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast
Podcast: September 12, 2010

Other:

The Music Of Erich Zann

There is a very good comics adaptation, by writer Roy Thomas and artist Johnny Craig, done for issue #5 (June 1970) of Marvel Comics’ Chamber Of Darkness (the title was changed to The Music From Beyond).

Here’s a disturbingly wordless stop motion animation adaptation:

Posted by Jesse Willis

The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard

SFFaudio Online Audio

The Thing On The Roof by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard sold The Thing On The Roof, a thirteen page horror story, to Weird Tales for $40. It is one of his Cthulhu Mythos Tales. As such it is set within the universe created by H.P. Lovecraft. I think I first encountered it in David Drake’s 1986 Baen Book Cthulhu: The Mythos And Kindred Horrors. But, after looking through my Robert E. Howard paperbacks collection I note that it was also hidden within my 1976 Zebra edition of Pigeons From Hell, edited by Glenn Lord . Can you believe The Thing On The Roof wasn’t listed on the table of contents?!?!

Was that supposed to be funny? An easter egg?

Strangely, The Thing On The Roof features a book collector who’s after a book that doesn’t have all of its contents either. Or maybe this mystery is indicative of something just a little more sinister. I’m seeing more odd parallels here. See, my avocation has been book collecting ever since I visited the Yucatan! And there’s a creepy stone object I got while down in Mexico – maybe it’s cursed?

Stone Object From Mexico

Wait, who is that clomping on my apartment door? I better finish this post before I answer it.

To sum up, The Thing On The Roof is available, complete and unabridged, over on the Cthulhu Podcast. It is read by FNH, who also recorded The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu awhile back. Highly recommended:

The Thing On The Roof
By Robert E. Howard; Read by FNH
1 |MP3| – Approx. 22 Minutes [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: Cthulhu Podcast
Podcast: May 15, 2011
|ETEXT|
An archaeologists, and book collector, is asked by an old rival to find a copy of the obscure first edition of Friedrich Wilheim von Junzt’s Nameless Cults. He may live to regret the favour. First published in the February 1932 issue of Weird Tales.

Podcast feed:

http://feeds2.feedburner.com/cthulhupodcast

Also, check out the excellent Roy Thomas adaptation done for Marvel Comics’ Chamber Of Chills issue #3 back in 1972 (available at the Diversions Of The Groovy Kind blog):

Chamber Of Chills #3 - The Thing On The Roof adapted by Roy Thomas and Frank Brunner

Posted by Jesse Willis

Commentary: Fredric Brown’s Eternal Arena

SFFaudio Commentary

For nearly a year I’ve been studying the extensive influence of Fredric Brown’s 1944 short story, Arena. It took a recent article, on roughly the same topic, over on the excellent bare•bones e-zine blog, to prompt me to actually finish writing up this post – which is essentially a collection of inspired by and/or similar stories. That other post, by Jack Seabrook, mostly covers the Outer Limits‘ response to Arena – which is something that I’ve only briefly mentioned. Seabrook’s article and the thoughtful comments it’s spawned are well worth looking at |HERE|. One of the comments there also points out the connection to Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game (but that’s another post altogether). My post on Arena begins here:

Arena (noun) – [Latin harēna, arēna, sand, a sand-strewn place of combat in an amphitheater, perhaps of Etruscan origin.] -1. An enclosed area, often outdoor, for the presentation of spectacular events -2. The part of a Roman amphitheater that was covered with sand to absorb the blood spilled by the combatants.

The SFFaudio Podcast #051 had a brief primer, by Professor Eric S. Rabkin, on Fredric Brown‘s spectacular short story Arena. Rabkin pointed out the curious description of the alien, and the year in which the story was first published (1944). The story being a fascinating metaphor for the Pacific War. The description of the alien, a “red sphere with several dozen fully retractable thin tentacles” is nicely comparable it with the Imperial Japanese battle ensign…

War flag of the Imperial Japanese Army:

War flag of the Imperial Japanese Army

Now if we keep looking for symbols, we can certainly find them. Take the blue sand of the arena itself. If Carson represents the USA, and the alien represents Japan, would the pervasive blue sand not therefore be representative of the Pacific Ocean? Of course it would!

Next, check out the original story, available in an unabridged audiobook version created by Rick Jackson (aka The Time Traveler) for The Time Traveler Show podcast…

Arena
By Fredric Brown; Read by William Spurling
1 |MP3| – Approx. 1 Hour [UNABRIDGED]
Podcaster: The Time Traveler Show
Podcast: July 23rd, 2006
The mysterious Outsiders have skirmished with Earth’s space colonies and starships. Their vessels are found to be faster and more maneuverable, but less well armed. Survivors of these encounters are able to provide little other information about the enemy. Fearing the worst, Earth builds a war fleet. Sure enough, scouts report a large armada approaching the solar system. Earth’s defenders go to meet them. All indications are that the two fleets are evenly matched. First published in the June 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine.

Fredric Brown's Arena - illustrated by Williams

In the comics department, there was a 1976 Marvel Comics magazine adaptation in Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction. Of it, Pete Doree (Of The Bronze Age Of Blogs) sez:

“Arena is one of my all-time favourite one-off comic stories, from Roy Thomas’ short-lived Worlds Unknown. Rascally Roy obviously liked it as much as me, as he reprinted it in the last issue of his b/w follow up Unknown Worlds Of Science Fiction. What I like about it is that it’s storytelling pared right down to the bone: One man. One monster. Winner takes all. It’s that simple, and that elegant. The set up is so primal that you’re practically dealing in archetypes. Plus you get the amazing pairing of John Buscema & Dick Giordano on art. It was adapted from a story by Frederic Brown, a great old school sci-fi writer.”

And, check out this editorial from Marvel Comics issue 4 of Unknown Worlds:

Worlds Unknown (#4) Editorial - Science Fiction And Me by Gerry Conway

Keeping with the art theme, there’s Boris Vallejo’s depiction from the March 1977 Starlog Magazine printing of Arena (more on that |HERE|):

Starlog Magazine - March 1977- Arena - Illustration by Boris Vallejo

TV, movies and other SF authors also seem to have taken inspiration or paralleled Fredric Brown’s Arena too:

Star Trek: Arena:

Outer Limits: Fun And Games:

The one man against one man theme, as developed in Arena, departed the SF genre entirely with the 1968 film Hell In The Pacific. The movie stars Lee Marvin and Tishiro Mifune as shot down American and Japanese fighter pilots who make WWII more personal.

The meme sunk to its lowest low with the frighteningly awful (and least faithful) variation in “The Rules Of Luton” episode of Space 1999.

Space: 1999 - The Rules Of Luton

The meme transmogrified back into a man vs. alien confrontation for Barry B. Longyear’s 1979 novella Enemy Mine. Willis Davidge, a human fighter pilot, is stranded along with Jeriba Shigan, a Drac, on a hostile alien planet foreign to them both.

Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine - September 1979

TOR DOUBLE #6 - Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear

The movie version of Enemy Mine, 1985, magnified the allegory with a theme of racial brotherhood.

In 1989, Star Trek: The Next Generation first adopted the idea for an episode entitled “The Enemy“.

Another variation, in 1991, in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Darmok” nearly eliminates the physical conflict, replacing it with an intellectual puzzle on the difficulties of communication.

Star Trek: Enterprise, in an attempt to recycle every previous Star Trek series plot, did their own take with the 2003 episode entitled Dawn:

Update:

David Schleinkofer illustrated the Reader’s Digest Edition of Arena in the early 1980s:

Arena as illustrated by David Schleinkofer for Reader's Digest

Posted by Jesse Willis

The SFFaudio Podcast #080 – TALK TO: Eric Shanower

Podcast

The SFFaudio Podcast #080 – Jesse talks with Eric Shanower, the cartoonist for Marvel Comics’ The Wizard Of Oz series and Image Comics Age Of Bronze: The Story Of The Trojan War (available at HungryTigerPress.com).

WATCH OUT FOR THE FALSE ENDINGS!

Talked about on today’s show:
Artist Skottie Young, L. Frank Baum, black and white comics vs. color comics, colorist Jean-Francois Beaulieu, Classics Illustrated, the Tin Woodsman‘s story, Eric’s obsession with Oz, Oz is the first American fantasy, the Emerald City, Marvel Illustrated, DC’s Vertigo imprint, Roy Thomas‘ The Iliad, Age Of Bronze: The Story Of The Trojan War: The Thousand Ships, comics inspired by audiobooks, The March Of Folly: From Troy To Vietnam by Barbara W. Tuchman, the many and varied stories of the Trojan War, Conan comics, Garth Ennis, Neil Gaiman, Roy Thomas, marketing and promoting comics, Image Comics, comicbook end matter, maps, genealogical charts, pronunciation guides, bibliographies, Cressida’s star-fixation, the absence or presence of the supernatural, Homer’s The Iliad, Troilus and Cressida, where is the Trojan Horse?, Homer’s The Odyssey, The Judgement Of Paris, is there a tongue theme going on?, a seven part series, the industry trending from single issue comics to graphic novels, Garth Ennis’ Battlefield series, would a colour Kindle reinvigorate single issue comics?, Throwaway Horse, annotating comics, James Joyce‘s Ulysses (digital annotated), annotating The Age Of Bronze, re-coloring The Sandman, visiting the real Troy (in Asia Minor), the magnificent Windy Ilios, the Lion Gate at Myceane, the geography and economy of ancient Troy, portraying Odysseus’ madness, distracting Agamemnon, Homer’s dog (Argos), a very very old dog, listening to audiobooks, George Guidall’s reading of The Iliad (Recorded Books), The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, historical fiction, Audible.com, Aeneas and The Aeneid, WATCH OUT FOR THE FALSE ENDING!, LibriVox.org, Iambik Audio, Paul Auster, City Of Glass, the listening habits of artists, It’s Superman by Tom De Haven, Blackstone Audio, paranormal romance, The Book Of Illusions by Paul Auster, Hunt Through The Valley Of Fear by Gabriel Hunt (aka Charles Ardai), Hard Case Crime, Memory by Donald E. Westlake, Jim Thompson’s The Grifters, Fools Die by Mario Puzo, I thought George Guidall could do no wrong until he read a Lillian Jackson Braun audiobook, RadioArchive.cc, audiobook torrent sites, Conan Properties International, The Hound Of The Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Skype screen sharing, The Guns Of August by Barbara Tuchman, Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household, Michael Jayston, LOOK OUT – THERE’S ANOTHER FALSE ENDING!, a costumed Halloween party, Frog Went A-Courting, the frog vs. the prince, A New Brain, vampires vs. zombies, going zombie, dinosaur Halloween costumes, making costumes is hard!, the Shaggy Man, The SFFaudio Challenge, The 4th SFFaudio Challenge on BoingBoing.net, The Mysteries Of Paris by Eugene Sue, The Wandering Jew by Eugene Sue, Hugh
McGuire, the number of listeners to the SFFaudio Podcast is insane, the difference between a professional narrator and an amateur narrator is that the amateur narrator gets to choose his books, Gregg Margarite, Edith Nesbit, pronunciation and inflection are important, music and sound effects in audiobooks is wrong, Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time, Peter Pan, multiple narrators for plays, audio drama, BBC, quality control in comics, cartoonists are better off today than ever before, Sturgeon’s Law, superheroes in comics, why podcast discussions are better than radio interviews, commercial concerns.

Image Comics - Age Of Bronze The Story Of The Trojan War by Eric Shanower

Posted by Jesse Willis