Adventure Constant

For those of you who pre-ordered my latest written book, my eternal thanks.  For those of you who have yet to order, today is the day you can one-click the digital version and start reading within moments.  Here, let me help you with that:

My Three for Three

Happy Three for Three!  Today's the day to review bomb Amazon.com.  Pick three books that you really should have reviewed by now and write at least three sentences about them.  Post these reviews to Amazon and you are done.  If you pick your favorite independent author, you'll be doing them a solid favor by giving their profile a small boost thanks to the inscrutable working's of Amazon's algorithms.

My three books were as follows:

1. Two Stars for In Search of Wonder, by Damon Knight
2. Five Stars for Catskinner's Book, by Misha Burnett
3. Four Stars for Cirsova, Issue 4, by various

That last one only had one review when I submitted mine.  One.  The first two have a dozen each.  If you've read Cirsova and enjoyed it enough to look forward to future installments, you should do yourself a solid and post a review.  Every review increases the chances that more get sold.  More getting sold increases the chances of more getting made.

Cirsova Four, Part One

This was a long time coming.  Cirsova Issue #4 has been in my hands for months, this copy has travelled across the Pacific twice, and I’m just now getting around to reading through it.  There just aren’t enough hours in the day for all the great fiction raining down on our heads, but I’m trying to consume and write about it all anyway.  My goal is to write at least a few sentences about each story, but this might take a while given that number four is double-stuffed with creamy genre goodness.

The story that kicks off this latest edition left me cold, which is ironic given that it revolves around the a city surrounded by fire and lava.  Wall Wardens, by Lynn Rushlau, tells one chapter of the tale of the last city in the world, and one of the wizards charged with maintaining the massive magic barricade that keeps the fire and the drakes outside, looking in.  The setting is fantastically creative – a literal safe bubble in a sea of fire, and I could see many a role-playing game revolving around the politics of the city and foiling the numerous attempts by apocalyptic cults to bring down the magic barricade.  In this short story, however, the villain’s motivation didn’t make enough sense, and I didn’t have enough reason to root for the protagonist to give this story a solid recommendation.  It’s not a bad story, but it doesn’t stand out among the usual Cirsova affair.

The second story starts as a standard King Aurthur as a young boy story, and then takes an unexpected twist into a Lovecraftian nightmare.  That this twist surprised me actually surprised me given that it’s right there on the cover.  The Lady of the Amorous City, by Edward M. Erdelac, uabashedly mashes up heroic knights with damsels in distress, tentacled monsters, and bottomless lakes housing things best left undisturbed.  Thought it starts slow, when the action ramps up, the story doesn’t relent until the end.  Even with everything I’ve said already, this story still contains a few surprises for readers.  All in all, this winds up a tight little read with a little bit of everything mixed in. 

What If You're Wrong?

A recent post of mine was one of those, "Have you actually read any of the old pulps?  Because they are crazy fun.  Here's one that ain't perfect, but has all the adventure, action, heroism, and humor that a reader could ask for."  At some point, somebody will take me up on this, and then one of two things are going to happen:

1. They read it, enjoy it, and merrily go their way, the scales freshly fallen from their eyes.
2. They read it, they hate it, and merrily go their way, never listening to my ranting again.

I'm good either way. 

But honestly, this was just an excuse to talk more about Queen of the Panther World.

You see that bloke facing down a six foot panther dressed in a skirt?  His name is Jimno  He has to throw that harness on it, and bust that bronco.  Then he has to do it five more times.  Somebody has to train these mounts before they can be ridden to war or to fight a dragon, the latter of which happens more than once in this story.

What Jimno is going through here is a punishment for sass-talking his wife after she slapped him around with a club for burning the soup.

This is how Jimno was introduced:

 

He gets better.

Let me spell that out for you one more time.  This story sees two average Chicago guys teleported to a world where all the women are strong, the men are meek, and the good guys ride seven foot mildly telepathic panthers into battle against big dragons and the renegade men who would subjugate the world beneath the hooves of their elk-lizard mounts.  In this new world the two average guys are as strong as the mightiest warrior because that's how insert characters and escapism work.  That's the explanation - no gravity, no magic, just that's how it is.

And it works.

The real world Joes manage to get captured by the rebellious warrior men, escape from their prison, fight their way to the village of the warrior women, liberate the men from their oppressors and train them to fight, battle dragons, launch raids and ambushes, and counter ambushes, and even find the time for a little romance along the way.

I can't figure out how it works, but it does.

If that description doesn't sound like something that interests you, then maybe science fiction and fantasy aren't really your thing.  Maybe you should stick to Oprah approved books.

Lessons Learned From King Conan

This isn't something that I set out to do. 

One of the sellers at a recent Toy Fair had cheap copies of old Conan comics available, so I took a flyer and picked up a series of five of them.  I've been on a Howard kick lately, and have discovered that a great many of the older things I've been told are terrible are actually pretty darn good.  At ten bucks and an hour or so to read them all, it was worth a shot.

Good call, Jon.

The writing doesn't rise to the level of Howard's work and the art isn't up to the level of the black and white Conan comics that introduced me to the character, but those are both really high bars.  The stories are classic sword and sorcery tales.  They may be a bit workmanlike, but for some reason I'm a lot more forgiving when comics use Conan for stories than I am when writers use him that way.  There's something about the transition to a new form of media that puts my mind at ease.  It may be that Howard's writing is just so dang good it feels cheap when anyone else writes about Conan, but the change in media wipes the slate clean and doesn't automatically lead me to compare the tale with one of Howards.

The first issue features Conan's standard nemeses in a trio of sorcerers, one each from Khitai, Ophirea, and Shem.  They plot and gamble to determine who shall slay Conan and claim the power behind the throne of Aquilonia.  They lure him to their lair - three towers on a magic isle and hijinks ensue.

It has also been instructional for me as a D&D guy*.  One thing I've always struggled with was high-level adventuring.  Once the characters hit domain level and bought castles and cathedrals and such, figuring out ways to get them back into the dungeon can be a bit tricky.  With armies at their disposal, the normal grind of leveling breaks down into, "Send in the marines. His Majesty has no intention of missing Taco Tuesday at the castle."

We usually just broke kayfabe and ignored the kingdom while the party headed out on a little jaunt.  In these stories, Conan might be the King, but he's still the only one who can solve the problem.  Either he is the only one who knows about it, or it is a threat that targets him directly.  These solutions might be old hand for many, but seeing so many examples back to back to back really helps get the juices going and expands this DM's repertoire.



The art is standard early-80's comic book fare and features the standard early-80's style.  That is to say, while it features a strong sense of fantasy, the fashions and hairstyles are firmly founded in 1980 standards of beauty.  While they tend to run towards the workmanlike end of the spectrum, this is an end of the spectrum that I cut my comic-milk teeth on, so it feels right to me.

 

Best of all, my three year old loves them.  She asked me to read them to her, and it has been a real pleasure to introduce her to the magic and heroism of King Conan.  Reading Howard's prose to a three year old never would have occurred to me, but the inclusion here of the bright colors, and the tactile feeling of pointing to the word balloons to help her follow the action keeps her engaged.

As a casual comics fan, this has been a fun little jaunt for me.  I'll have to keep an eye out for more cheap thrills like this at the next convention/toy fair.



*This is incidental, but worth a mention.  For the record, I'm a big D&D guy, but try to post most of my gaming material over on a blog written by a pseudonym.  Seagull Rising is more political, and I try not to mix politics and gaming if I can help it.

A Retraction, A Clarification, and Some Inspiration

A flurry of discussion followed my last post, and a man whom I deeply respect (Daddy Warpig)offered up this bit of constructive criticism:

Pundit believes the OSR, and D&D as a whole, is too tied to Western Fantasy tropes. He thinks Appendix N keeps the OSR mired in the same-old, same-old, basically regurgitating D&D over and over, producing game after game (ACK! LFP! 30 other clones!) that are little more than slight variations on D&D, with no true innovations in setting or mechanics. He opposes this, hence his OSR game was Arrows of Indra, dungeoncrawling in ancient India.

His disdain for N is based on a genuine philosophical difference, a genuine desire to see the OSR innovate, not economic concerns. It's unfortunate that the "Pundit just cares about money" became the common belief in the Pulp Revolution crowd.

Daddy Warpig spent some time panning in the gravel bed of Pundit's ravings and came up with a golden nugget there.  Forget all of the RPG Pundit's bleatings and wargarbl, his proxy makes an excellent point.  His selective data bias makes him blind to the exact same calls for innovation that come from within the Pulp Revolution.  Hell, it had a full blown discussion about how the "SF/F Counter-Reformation" makes for a more inclusive and precise description, and only abandoned that title because it is too wordy and esoteric.  People who approach the Pulpsters in good faith will see that themselves, and all the hand-holding in the world won't help those so blind to the Pulp Revolution's aims and goals that they refuse to see.

Regardless, I was wrong to ascribe motive where it was not clear.  I officially retract my accusation that the RPGPundit hates the Appendix N because it competes with his won products for RPG inspiration and tabletime.  The previous blog post has been amended accordingly.

That said...even as I inhaled to point out where Daddy Warpig missed an important point, he continued:

Pundit may be right about the variety of D&D clones in the OSR, but he is DEAD WRONG about the value of Appendix N for readers, however. as I said on Twitter, for a lot of people, Appendix N isn't about gaming anymore. It's about rediscovering the classic roots of SF/F. And for a lot of those people, it's about reinvigorating SF/F tales with the energy and fun of those same classics.

I'm not saying he's RIGHT, I'm saying he's SINCERE. There's a big difference there. I think the lack of innovation in the OSR is that people aren't going back to the pulps ENOUGH. There's so much more wildness and weirdness and awesomeness there that could make for some very cool roleplaying games.

It's not rocket science: better source material leads to better new material.

There you go.  That's it in a nutshell. The Pulp Revolution isn't calling for the train to return to a particular station and halt there forever more.  The Pulp Revolution is calling for the train to return to a string of stations and then set out along a different set of tracks than the one that brought us the bleak and insipid SF/F culture that we have today.

We can do better, but we should learn from the masters, not from the guys who imitate the guys who imitate the masters.

Let's Get Something Straight Here, People

When you come around these parts, and you see a lot of links to the Puppy of the Month Club, recommendations for The Good Stuff, and pointers to blogs by The Usual Suspects?  There's a reason for that, and no, it's not because I'm desperate for filler posts or trying to earn clicks by glomming onto the cool-kids crowd or even trying to ride on the coat-tails of my betters. 

This blog started off as an, I-Wanna-Be-A-Successful-Writer blog, and has subtly morphed into more of a, I-Want-You-To-Be-A-Successful-Writer blog.  The point of view of the blog remains that of a guy trying to escape the cubicle farm, but the content is more focused on reading and sorting the good from the bad.  There's a lot of great writers out there who deserve a lot more attention than they'll ever get from the big publishing houses, and most of them are part-timers writing in brief snatches when they aren't putting food on the table.  If I can direct a few more sales their way, and that helps keep them motivated to sit down and bang on the keyboard for a few more minutes every night?  Mission accomplished.

More than that, though, this blog represents another node in the greater community of readers who appreciate the rising tide of fun adventure fiction written by people who love sf/f for its own sake rather than as another club to wield against the latest social boogeymen.  It's by no means a central node, but it stands as a signal booster to support the efforts of everyone from the lone guy self-publishing his work through Amazon to the growing indie-publisher thumbing his nose at the big boys.

You see those links in the preceding paragraph?  Even if you didn't click on them, somewhere there's a bot zipping down the threads of the internet, and it will.  It will think to itself, "Hey, here's somebody else that thinks Justin's blog is worth linking to, I'd better move him up in the rankings."  Then when the next kid does a search for sci-fi writer, Justin shows up a lot sooner, and there's a better chance that this relative unknown picks up another reader.  Each link is just one little data point, but you put enough of them together and eventually you don't just have an improved search engine rating, you have a culture.

That's what we're building here - a counter-reformation of the world of sci-fi and fantasy, a revolution of pulp fiction, if you will.  As the new guys on the block, we can't sit around waiting for others to do the heavy lifting.  No publisher is going to hand a fat contract to the sorts of authors that we like.  No publisher is going to pay for fake tweets to market our crew.  No publisher is going to reach down and pluck a pulp revolutionary out of obscurity, fete them like royalty, and cart them around the country selling their work.

Which is great!  It gives us - authors and fans alike - a lot more freedom of movement, a lot more freedom to experiment, and a lot more freedom to choose.  They have to be stodgy and conservative to protect their interests, where we don't have anything to lose.  Except for the few moments it took to write up this blog post - and that's a small price to pay to lay another brick in the road to better authors, better fiction, and a better culture.

I'm a fan of the better culture that being built, and don't mind praising the guys who are building that culture.  If that results in my coming off as a bit of a carnival barker for works that fit into that culture, so be it.  There's some really amazing freaks in this freakshow, and I intend to do what I can to lure the townies in to take a look.

The New World of Longshot Reads

A while back a guy by the name of Jeff Duntemann crossed my Twit Box path.  Two tweets in he tossed me a link to a book he had written called Ten Gentle Opportunities.  The plug was so natural that it made me laugh…and it made me three dollar poorer.  At the time it looked like Ten Gentle Opportunities would languish at the bottom of my reading list – my choices are largely constrained by the Puppy of the Month Book Club these days – but even if the book sucked, it was worth tossing him a couple of bucks just to encourage that kind of behavior.

I almost didn’t pull the trigger on the purchase.  Too busy.  No previous contact with the author.  No recommendations from third parties.  After two decades of playing long odds on reading materials and losing, why would I fall back into that old habit?  In this case, Jeff was running in the right circles.  Whoever introduced Jeff to me via Twitter was an author with a name that I trusted.  While Jeff’s taste didn’t align with mine exactly, he was talking in good faith and treated our differences the way they should be treated – as novelties and not deal-breakers.

Besides all that, it was clear that Jeff wasn’t part of the Borg Publishing Alliance.  He was a self-published guy not restricted by the demands of a few New York aesthetes.  His work at least carried the possibility of new ideas and a fresh voice that hadn’t been milked of all personality by the normal meat-grinder of editors trained the same ways in a few schools to conform to the boiler plate voice coming out of the big publishing houses.

What kind of Pulp Revolutionary would I be if I can’t support a guy doing his own marketing for his own writing on his own time?

The bad kind, that’s what.

So I bought the book, and thought that would be the end of it for a good long while.  Well, it now looks like each month will leave me with a gap to fill.  Fellow readers will understand the twitchy feeling that results from not having a bookmark stashed in a current read.  The thought of reading a book sight unseen by an author about whom I knew practically nothing appealed to me more than reading Castalia House’s latest blockbuster - sorry, Loki’s Child, you’ll have to wait until October – and so Ten Gentle Opportunities rocketed to the top of my list.

At a third of the way through this book I can only say thank god for self-publishers and social media.  This is not a review of Ten Gentle Opportunities – I’m only a third of the way through, so it’s too early to say more than that I’m loving it – rather, it is a morality play about of the benefits of the self-publishing model.  It is a call to arms for readers to get out there and take chances on the little guys.  They might not all provide books as entertaining and different as Duntemann’s, but you’ll face better odds than you will with the Big Five Publishers.  Better yet, when you hit that jackpot, you’ll have a new name and a new backlog to start pillaging for even more material.

The social media scene has been a god-send for readers and a fantastic way to push back against the SJW narrative, but at times the Puppy crowd tends to focus on the biggest names and the biggest fights.  That’s all well and good, but when you’re spreading around the Pepe Memes and barking back against the Hugo Crowd, don’t forget to spread the love when it comes to the lesser known lights, because some of them – like Jeff Duntermann – are bright indeed.

Puppy of the Month Book Club

In an effort to build up the fan community for those who love Sad Puppy, Rabid Puppy, and Puppy-related works, I've started the Puppy of the Month Book Club.  This new blog will select one book a month from either of the official Puppy Hugo lists, or at least a book that could have been on one of those lists.

Online sci-fi/fantasy fandom spends a lot of time talking about these books, but most of those conversations are scattered over a dozen blogs and multiple social media platforms.  If you're anything like me, a lot of those conversations are over and done with before you've had a chance to clear your reading queue and read the work for yourself.  This is a chance to join a community dedicated to selecting worthy books, and reading and discussing them in some detail. 

At this point, I'm calling for anyone who would like to sign up to Contribute to the project.  All you're committing to is reading one book and writing a quick summary or review.  If you're up for that, leave a comment, and I'll get back to you.  If that's too much, then feel free to lurk, and join in the conversation in the blog comments.

As a club, this isn't something I'm doing for me, but for the wider community.  I'll pick the first book, just to get the ball rolling, but future works will be selected on a rotational basis by other Contributors.  That way everyone can get thoughts on books they love, and everyone gets to read books that might be somewhat outside of their own lists.

It should be fun, shoot me a message, and jump on in.

On Vance and Hernstrom, A Comparative Defense

In a recent post, I stated that Schuyler Hernstrom's "Images of the Goddess" is better than Jack Vance's "Dying Earth".  That might be controversial.  It wasn't stated lightly, nor simply as click-bait.  Let me expound on it a bit.

Jack Vance is a great author.  He does an outstanding job suffusing the Dying Earth novels with the oppressive atmosphere of a world grinding to a slow and evitable doom.  That heavy gloom serves as a powerful counterpoint to the dry humor and wit of the tales themselves, but as a permanent undercurrent, it leaves the reader feeling that, despite all the sound and movement of the tale, it’s all pretty pointless given the impending cataclysm that is literally just over the horizon…until the angry red sun rises in the morning and once again reminds everyone that the end is near.

That sort of bleak outlook might be a useful corrective in the early days of a nation’s greatness.  In the middle decades of the twentieth century, when America strode forth out of decades of relative neutrality and blundered about the earth healthy, wealthy, and full of its own hubris, one needed such reminder that all such things are fleeting. 

We don’t live in that world.

We live a world where warnings of potential collapse generate clicks and drive voters to the polls.  Your own personal politics don’t matter in this regard.  The leaders of your faction may believe in fuses burning on debt bombs. They may issue pronouncements of global environmental collapse.  They may warn of the dire consequences of an American retreat from the world stage, or a resurgence of American warmongering, or even both at the same time.  We are all, regardless of our tribe, bombarded with this message over and over and over again from points both high (hello, Hollywood and D.C.) and low (hello, family and co-workers), and it all serves to press an atmosphere of gloom upon us as stark as that of the red sun of Vance’s Dying Earth.

If you feel that pressure, and escape fiction is your relief of choice, then you won’t find any in Vance’s Dying Earth.  All you’ll find is another world wallowing in the same gloom as your own.
In times such as ours and those of the Dying Earth, trust erodes and people become stingy with everything from their time to their wealth to their charity.  The autumn leaves tell us all to gather what we can and prepare for the coming winter.  Granted, the greedy and grasping misers are always a part of every culture, but their numbers grow and everyone begins to follow their lead as they clutch at any resource available.  It’s not an obvious or conscious shift, but rather a subtle and incremental shift in the culture.  And it’s a shift that helps lead even more weight to the daily struggle.

Into the dying earth steps Cugel the Clever, a man who possesses no qualms about lying, cheating, or stealing his way into any valuable object that crosses his path.  We all know men like him, and in oppressive times the number of Cugel’s swell.  They are just one more battle to fight in our daily lives, and even as we laugh at or admire Cugel’s cleverness, he serves as a reminder of the real world Cugels we face every day.  Like the world of the Dying Earth, Cugel gives us no respite from our own daily grind.

This is not to say that Vance is a terrible writer.  His sprawling adventures feature some of the most colorful characters, creatures, and wizardry ever put to paper.  Aside from the oppressive tone of the setting, Vance’s prose stand tall in the field, and his tales are enormously enjoyable.  This is only to say that Vance’s writing in the Dying Earth stories utilizes a dark tone works better as a counterpoint to brighter days.  The counterpoint for those who live in the twilight times, who feel in the wind a darkness gathering, is lighter tales of adventure that use doom as a spice rather than a main ingredient.

Schuyler Hernstrom is one such writer.  Schuyler’s tales sprawl across continents and environments, feature distinct and colorful characters thrown together by fate, and even include the wry, dry humor that gives Vance’s writing such power.  The difference is that Schuyler’s settings, particularly those in his two stories featured in Cirsova, include an element of hope and optimism in a brighter future.  They are infused with the fun spirit of adventure that reminds the reader that anything is possible, in stark contrast to Vance’s reminder that everything is transitory.

A case could be made that Schuyler’s work is derivative, more than one review of “Images of the Goddess” has pointed to an obvious Vancian influence, but if it is, then Schuyler is standing on the shoulders of the Vancian giant and taking Vance’s Dying Earth to a place it’s never been – a happy place.  That subtle shift of mood may strike the nihilists among us as a step backwards, but at a time when civilization itself seems to be sliding backwards, it strikes this reviewer as a shift towards hope and optimism at a time when such a shift is sorely needed.

Holding Schuyler up as the next step in evolution among short fantasy fiction writers, as taking Jack Vance’s style and moving it forward, may be a controversial statement.  You may disagree, and more power to you.

But at the end of the day, at least be open to the idea that someday, somebody will surpass Vance.  Don’t fall into the nostalgic trap of believing that the classics are the best there are or ever will be.  That alternative leads to the notion that of Vance as the end of history from a fantasy short fiction perspective, and what future could be bleaker than a future in which fantasy fiction has already peaked and its best days lie in the past? 

Cirsova, Issue #2

When I grow up, I want to be Jeffro Johnson.  His Appendix N web series, soon to be released in full book format, is much reviled by all the right people, and justifiably so.  A bit late to the party, I was nonetheless impressed with his analysis which shed new light on old works, and helped revive my much atrophied interest in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. 

The backlash against Jeffro by the followers of the modern day Gog and Magog (Progressivism and the Narrative) seemed at the time to be over the top and un-necessary.  So what if an RPG nerd likes books that inspired the hobby?  In retrospect, the naysayers and perpetually offended had good reason to lash back so forcefully.  They saw what a deep and profound impact Jeffro's writing could have on the genre, and in their talentless boots the Scalzi's and mini-Scalzi's of the world trembled.

Enter Cirsova.

The next generation in the evolution of the genre magazine, Cirsova picks up where the dry and dusty modern magazines left off.  It has abandoned the dry and 'meaningful' stories carefully crafted to appeal to the right kind of readers, and instead offers the kind of adventurous fun that the pulps used to offer.

Consider for a moment children's programming.  When I was a wee lad adventurous shows were fun for their own sake.  Thudarr didn't need diversity or lessons about not petting stray dogs, he just needed a wizard in a busted down casino to stab.  At some point the producers were pressured into including a message, and we had to suffer through a one minute warning from Scarlet and Snow Job about how knowing we should eat our vegetables is half of the battle.  That was bad enough, but then came the inevitable message fiction cartoons such as the execrable Captain Planet and long slog through years of drek.  For all I know cartoons are still mired in that preach-first entertain-second mode - the short fiction magazines sure are.

At least until now.  Cirsova brings back the fun without the preaching, and in so doing signals a new and exciting era in sci-fi and fantasy stories.  It's shaping up to be part throwback to the old days where world-building took a back seat to story-telling, but one that acknowledges that the last five decades did happen. It's as good as the first issue, though the variety of stories doesn't run quite as full of a gamut as its predecessor.  It's clear the editors didn't front load the quality into the first issue and finishing this one only leaves the reader's appetite whet for more.

Now look, I'm not a particularly smart guy, and I'm not particularly dialed into the sci-fi/fantasy scene.  I'm just a guy who knows what he likes, and one who knows he can't get it from the big publishing houses these days.  Whether this meets the criteria for an egghead like Jeffro or the Superversive crowd or not is beyond my simple ken.  You can ask them yourself.

What I can tell you is that Cirsova is a vindication of Jeffro's work.  It represents a step towards the classic quality and anything-goes storytelling that attracted the original generations of nerds to fantasy and sci-fi.  As such it also serves as an important data point for the inadvertent revolution started by Jeffro's Appendix N series.  It may be one of the first, but it's unlikely to be the last. 


Full disclosure:  I'm not being paid for this review.  Not only am I NOT being paid, I paid extra money for this issue of Cirsova; instead of the cheap PDF, I paid extra into the KickStarter for the hard copy.  Not only that, but I'm paying extra EXTRA money to be a part of Cirsova Issue 3 by purchasing ad space in it.  Not because I have anything to advertise, but just as an excuse to give it more of my money.

Congratulations, Cirsova

Yesterday the best little SF/F magazine that could, completed a successful Kickstarter for Issue #2.

The first issue was fantastic, and that was done on little more than a wing and a prayer.  It's going to be great to see what P. Alexander can do with some extra financial backing.  It didn't make the cut-off for any of the stretch goals, but most of those relate to "collector's edition" goodies, which don't have much appeal to those of us that are only in it for the stories themselves.

A $2 backing nets a copy of the PDF, which is a steal for the amount of content for the pirce.  It's looking like five short stories, a novella, and the continuation of Hutching's excellent long-form poetry retelling of John Carter's adventures. I threw down at the $10 level, more for the encouragement than the hard copy, as my reading has shifted over primarily to digital media.  Can't see me lugging around a hard copy magazine when the same thing is tucked right there in my cell phone.

Can't say either of the alternate covers tickle my fancy, but a glance at an uninteresting cover is more than outweighed by the hours of reading enjoyment that this magazine is sure to bring.

Two More From Adventure

Continuing to read random selections from the February 1911 edition of Adventure magazine provides a couple of gems. 


First up, "Dixie Pasha" by Thmas P. Byron, in which 400 French Zouaves come face to face with a new enemy - native troops well drilled by their leader, Sam Ames.  The titular character is an American ex-pat, black man from south of the Mason-Dixon line, who leads a small 80 man force of Arabs through colonial Liberia.  Viewed as raiders by the French Foreign Legion, they fight to secure safe passage for a Muslim holy man preaching 'jehad' to the local Liberians.

The holy man they escort is little more than a MacGuffin created as an excuse for adventure.  The Dixie Pasha engages in daring escapes and leads his men in pitched battles in fine tradition. That the erstwhile protagonists are Arabs led by a black man is irrelevant - aside from a few fun vignettes such as one featuring head-scarf wearing Arabs singing a mangled version of "Dixie".  Those coming to this story with a It's-The-Current-Year view of the early twentieth century may be surprised that the story features heroic black men leading an Arab force against evil white colonials.  As is so often the case, the truth (that in many ways our modern attitudes on race are less progressive than those of our forebears) is stranger than fiction (that a former slave could be a noble and heroic figure in his own right). 

Dixie Pasha is a throwback story in the best sense.  What is missing from the story is as striking as what is in the story.  Unlike so much of what is written today, this story doesn't serve a purpose beyond adventure.  Sam Ames is a melancholy figure, and a tragic hero, whose fight isn't one against the powers that be.  No one learns a very special lesson about tolerance and diversity.  It's just a bunch of guys doing their best to make their way in a dangerous world.  It's a refreshing change to read a story about adventure for its own sake.

The second story of the day is actually a collection of short stories told by Hudson Maxim.  Yes, that Hudson Maxim.

For those who don't recognize the name, he was the inventor of the modern day machine gun which bore his name.  (In an odd bit synchronicity, the modern day mens' magazine, Maxim, was named after the very same machine gun.)

Most of the stories involve near misses of one sort or another.  Running from a dynamite building shortly before it detonates, a wayward rocket narrowly missing a nearby train, and the like. One story that seems like it must be apocryphal details a Chinese servant to a Russian nobleman who tells a friend of the nobleman's penchant for dismissing the servant with a kick in the pants.  The friend, who was actually a Japanese spy, creates a special padding for the Chinese fellows pants.  Unbeknownst to the servant, the padding consists of a hot water bottle filled with nitroglycerin and a couple of blasting caps, which has the desired effect when next the servant is dismissed.  In fact, most of the stories detail the practical application of Maxim's deadly machines in the Russo-Japanese war.

The striking thing about this story is not the wild-west pre-OSHA tales of reckless industry, but what the use of an author like Maxim reveals about the cachet of mens' adventure magazines.  Our modern world looks back at these things as low-brow entertainment for the masses, as though that were an insult.  If this is what the average man read back then...do we really want to compare this to the sort of average fare is presented today?

Because we won't come out ahead in that game.

Why We Can't Have Nice Guy Things

Via Pulp-O-Mizer

In an effort to get a better handle on what people think of the old Mens Adventure Magazines (not sure if capitalized), I've been poking around the social media scene and running the pulp searches on the search engines.  There are ple
nty of resources out there, the aforementioned Pulp.org being the best I've found so far, but not nearly as much discussion as there is on the pulp sci-fi and fantasy front.

One thing I did find is a fairly recent article at Splice.com, and it comes so close.  It almost commits to the genre before pulling back at the last minute and throwing a number of sops to the feminine imperative.

The title, Hard Case Crime: the Beauty of Male Passion, is a complete tease.  It extolls the virtues of male passion and sneers at the sensibilities of modern SJWs, but as is typical, feels the need to reassure 'my lady' that his fedora doth tip for thee.

Let's back up a step.  The story is actually about a modern publisher, Hard Case Crimes, which is now on the official watch list for this blog.  Hard Case Crimes publishes new works written in the old post-war style, complete with tawdry titles and lurid full color cover art (see every picture in this post.)  The publisher has been successful enough to land a TV series, and even published novels by Mickey Spillane (The Consumata), Gore Vidal (Thieves Fall Out) and Steven King (Joyland).

The analysis starts out great:

The simplest explanation for the popularity of Hard Case Crime is that the books, like most pulp fiction and the film noir movies it inspired, are about animus—the Jungian term for male passion. Like a Scorsese film, they depict men on the edge when the world is increasingly hostile to dangerous and flamboyant men. In the 1950s, writers like Jim Thompson and Dashiell Hammett brought readers into a world where carefully manicured lawns, Jell-O and white picket fences hadn’t taken hold.

Explains why these works are popular and compares them to the modern media's favorite punching-bag version of men:

Hollywood films, from American Beauty to Foxcatcher, neuter men who are passionate leaders in fields of the military or sports. Every sitcom dad seems to be an ineffectual schlub. 

Then devolves into standard apologies for non-apologetic men with this:

They aren’t liberals, but they also aren’t lad culture conservatives—juveniles like Gavin McInnes, always dropping his pants to get a reaction from the feminists.

And this:

Of course, a man must be able to read a woman’s signals, and it’s a good thing that feminism is teaching young men that no means no and yes means yes.

There's absolutely no need for that sort of, "an' it please the missus," forelock tugging, cringe.  If you're going to celebrate a more masculine form of literature, then be a man and celebrate it already.

Still and all, you have to give credit where credit is due.  Mark Judge may be a bit too obsequious to be an fully effective apologist for that old time religion, but at least he's trying.  And it's hard to come down too hard on a guy who ends his analysis with this sort of conclusion.

Hard Case Crime, and pulp fiction in general, is...an expression of authentic male passion, of sweaty sexiness, in a world of pajama boys, government-mandated health food, and reactionary conservaive blowhards.

Speaking as a conservative blowhard: Brother, you're half right and half go-kill-yourself, ya coward.

Read What They Read

God bless this modern age of ours.  The last few posts here have been railing about how they just don't make them like they used to, and it turns out that we can still read the Narrative-free tales of yesterday without combing the used book sales and flea markets of today.  An outfit over at the Pulp Magazines Project has a number of old adventure magazines scanned and ready for download.  It also includes a host of links to other archives where you can grab a copy and read it for yourself.

 

Cirsova has been doing a bang up job writing short reviews of one in particular, Planet Stories.  We'll leave the fantasy and sci-fi market to guys like he and Jeffro.

 

My first foray into short reviews of the pulps - tune in next post - will be "Two on Trinity," from the February 1911 issue of "Adventure".  Before we get into that, how's this for an odd bit of synchronicity?  A month ago an aunt of mine recommended a book, Prestor John, by John Buchan.  The "Coming Next Month" blurb for this magazine announces the first installment of that series which was presumably later published as a novel.  The full novel sits on my Google Drive waiting for a read.

 

That's a great sign.  Proof positive that these works are still floating about, being read and enjoyed more than a hundred years later.  Granted, there's going to be a lot of wheat in the chaff, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth looking.  After all, half the fun is the thrill of the hunt.

 

This is going to be even more fun than expected.

 

 

Why Johnny Doesn’t Read, An Exercise

Let’s run a little experiment together, shall we?  Open Google, and enter, ‘Why Men Don’t Read,” into the search bar.  The first few articles should be worth a laugh.

First up, Why Men Don't Read: How Publishing is Alienating Half the Population

Color me impressed!  I was ready to rip into the first five articles for their blatant misunderstanding of and contempt for men, and instead get a reasonable story from a reasonable guy.  From the Huffington Post of all places!  Will wonders never cease.

It's not perfect, or we would have nothing to talk about.  First problem is that the author feels the need to include the obligatory sop to the ladies in the audience.

I was hesitant to write this article, mainly because in no way do I want to be perceived as diminishing the talents of many, many brilliant women in publishing,

It's an article about men, and he still felt the need to talk about women.  Of course he did.  These days, you can’t say anything nice about men without covering your six by complementing women.  Compliments are a zero-sum game.   The modern religion of secularism has its forms and protocols that must be adhered to lest you be cast out as an unclean heretic, after all. 

He also downplays what we now know to be a deliberate and malevolent cultural shift when he says,

nor do I believe that there is a true ‘gender bias’. A bias insinuates some sort of malice, a purposeful exclusion of a segment of society for selfish or ignorant reasons.

1911, Courtesy,
http://www.pulpmags.org/

Give him credit, this was written in 2011.  The mask has slipped since then, and the publishing industry, in line with the rest of the coastal cultural pioneers, continually signals its desire to see masculinity replaced by a tepid uni-sexual market that presents a monocultural diversity.  The order of the day is making men more feminine and women more masculine for reasons too deep to go into here. 

Those complaints aside, it’s actually a very good article that throws stones at a publishing industry (and its media allies) who don’t understand men, who don’t cater to men, and who just plain don’t like men, but who then go on to blame men for turning their backs on an industry that has no use for them.

To use a recent example, take Melissa McCarthy’s brilliant marketing strategy for the Y-chromosome-free rehash of Ghostbusters.  The water carriers in the media leapt at the chance to write virtually identical stories quoting her disdain for potential customers when she called them friendless losers.   Good call, Mel, keep on proving the critics right, that’ll put butts in seats.

Back to HuffPo, the writer points out that most of the publishing houses are dominated by women, and that the product and the marketing serve women.  Which is fine, good luck with that.  He makes a strong plea for more resources dedicated to male readers when he says,

Publish more books for men and boys. Trust editors who try to buy these books, and work on the marketing campaigns to hit those audiences. The readers are there, waiting, eager just under the surface. And I promise, if publishing makes an effort to tap it, they’ll come out in droves.

But he doesn’t understand those women any more than they understand him.  His advice is sound.  It is logical and it makes good business sense.  Those two arguments work on logical men engaged in productive business, but the emotive women engaged in business for fulfillment rather than profit won’t listen. 

They didn’t listen.  The article was written five years ago and little has changed in the big publishing houses.

 

But much has changed down in the swamps at the feet of the dinosaur publishing firms.  They are no longer needed.  Men who read are taking matters into their own hands and producing their own works.  We’ve done what we always do – found an exposed flank in our enemy’s defenses and ruthlessly exploited it.  In this case that flank is self-publishing.

 
There is more men’s adventure fiction being written than ever before, and all the publishing apathy in the world can’t stop the onrushing tide.  It’s early days yet.  The word hasn’t fully gone out, the structures aren’t fully developed, and the filtering of the good from the drek has a way to go, but men’s adventure writing will soon make a huge comeback.

 We don’t need their help.  We’ll do it on our own.

 

 

Johnny Got His Paperback

The world needs more men’s adventure fiction.

You’ve probably seen at least one click-bait article featuring a series of garish and campy covers for the men’s adventure fiction magazines from the 1950s and 1960s.  They feature bright colors, exclamation points, and outrageous article titles, “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” being the prime example.  We’re supposed to look at those magazine covers and laugh at the naked salesmanship of their creators, and the crass simpletons who consumed them.

Well not this lug, sister.  Go peddle that smoke water somewhere else, because those who sneer at the once-popular and now maligned men’s adventure genre are fools.

To start with the easy observation, the men reading those magazines were reading.  That's a huge point in their favor right out of the gate.  Their attention wasn’t yet snared by 100 television channels, video games, the modern day news cycle, cell phones, and of course the internet and blogs like this.  Criticizing them for reading the wrong way is a lot like criticizing them for eating the wrong kinds of vegetables. 

Sure, they were reading, says the cynic, but look at what they were reading.  That was trash with no redeeming value.  Those stories represented simple fare for simple minds with simple tastes.

 Au contraire.

The men reading these magazines were former GI’s, the men who came of age wading through the surf surrounded by death and flying lead.  They spent their young adulthood crawling through mud, holding dying friends in their arms, and chasing exotic women through strange foreign lands.  They learned more about the world and about life through a year of direct experience than most college kids learn in a decade of classroom study.  When it was time to relax, they sought out reading that would help them recapture the thrill and excitement of those formative moments, and materials that reinforced their self-image as brave men fighting the good fight against long odds.

The stories in those early men’s adventure magazines, regardless of how well written they were, were not just empty brain food.  Instead, they served to reinforce the cultural ideal of hard working and (generally) honest men fighting their way through a hostile world.  These were tough men facing difficult times – as we all do – who read as a means of reconnecting with the masculine need to strive, to build, and to protect.

Today the illiterati turn their noses up at the very idea of a masculine ideal, and it is this rejection of the western approach to manhood that leads them to reject stories of violent defense of the innocent, of struggle against the odds, and of brotherly camaraderie.  The tough guy tales of the past have been ejected from the universities and the schools by weak minded people who cannot even recognize what a man is, let alone why trying to be a better one would be something worthwhile.

We’re not done here.  We’ll go into this in more depth in later posts. For now, just remember that your reading tastes could do a lot worse than emulate guys like these.

 

Be a man.  Read more manly.