Michael Moorcock Covers From My Youth

My friends and I didn't read Robert E Howard, we didn't read Terry Brooks (other than that first Tolkien pastiche). A lot of us read Tolkien, but not everyone. Michael Moorcock, though, we all read. I think my friend Karl H. told me about Stormbringer first, before I picked up anything by Moorcock.I'm pretty sure he repeated the sword Stormbringer's line to the dead Elric. For him at fourteen or so, it was the epitome of wicked coolness. When I discovered the Lancer copies of The Dreaming City and The Sleeping Sorceress in my dad's vast attic book collection, I was hooked. Gilded battle barges, dragon attacks, demon patrons, and the unholy black sword in the hands of an albino wizard were like nothing else I'd read yet. My dad also had the DAW Dorian Hawkmoon books which were just as mindblowing in their own ways. He also had the first set of Corum books which were even better.

Over the next few years, I plowed through all the core Eternal Champion books. It was the same thing for most of my friends. I remember my buddy Alex R. getting all excited when he discovered (the first person among us) the Count Brass books. 

I'm going to discover how well Stormbringer holds up for a post-middle-age man, but I know it was perfect for a teenager. Elric is all aggrieved moodiness, rebelliousness, and hopelessly romantic - and Romantic. 

The book covers I'm showing below were all books I read multiple times before I finished high school. I've probably read the Corum books the most, finding their Celtic-inspired setting particularly appealing , but even with those, it's been some time since I've read them. The only Moorcock book I've read in recent years was The Eternal Champion. I reviewed it all the way back in 2014 at Black Gate and was left underwhelmed. Nonetheless, I have big hopes for Stormbringer. I'm only a little bit in, and already I feel fourteen again in the best possible way.

 

 

 

Gordon Dickson Covers From My Youth

   My dad was a HUUGE Gordon Dickson fan. He easily had thirty novels and short story collections in the attic boxes. As a kid, I read a bunch of them, and well, most of them weren't anything special. Still, they were short and quick and their depictions of competent humans aligned against assorted aliens helped lay the groundwork for my science fiction universe. I know Harlan Ellison was a big fan of his short fiction, so I should probably give some of that a go at some point, but up to now, I haven't.

   I've scavenged all the books from Dickson's Childe Cycle. I've read half of them and, while tinted by age, my memories of them are they were really good. Centered around the mercenaries of the planet Dorsai, he envisioned the series, in addition to the six science fiction novels he finished, as having three historical and three contemporary novels. It would tell the extended history of humanity as it splintered colonizing the stars and was reunified. At his death in 2001, Dickson hadn't finished the final book in the series, Childe, and had never written the non-sci-fi novels. 

   It's an interesting example of evolving covers over the years. Those first two, Dorsai! by Paul Lehr and Necromancer by Jack Gaughan (someone I normally like) are nicely modish, late seventies artwork, but too generic and unmemorable. Now, the next two, both by the mighty Kelly Freas, are a great improvement. Soldier, Ask Not might have one of the best military sci-fi covers around. I've always assumed it depicts the Friendly soldier, Jamethon Black, a character I remember sympathizing with, despite him being something of a humorless scold. Here, dressed all in black and set against a background of stars, he stares forlornly off into the distance, awaiting whatever battle may come. The cover for Tactics of Mistake, featuring the super-tactician, Cletus Grahame, has more than a whiff of evening-time-in-the-Playboy-Mansion-grotto to it, what with him in that intergalactic smoking jacket and orange mood lights playing overhead. I absolutely dig it.

   The last two are just not good. Michael Whelan, one of the book cover greats, has given The Final Encyclopedia the floating man contemplating a tower that no one ever needed. Maybe it's a direct scene from the book, but I don't care, The colors are blah and the scene is just dull. Still, it's way better than what Jim Burns did for The Chantry Guild. 

I'm going to try and do more of these. Old covers, as much as they trigger a burst of nostalgia, also serve as a catalogue of the genre. Clearly, covers fifty-odd years ago were whiter, but they were also pulpier and more exciting. There was no chance you were going to mistake a sci-fi or fantasy book for a romance or some generic airport thriller.

Beautiful Ballantine Covers

Many of the books I'm hoping to read for my new Black Gate column were published by Ballantine books, some as precursors to and others as part of the famous Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. That's got me looking at my shelf-full of them and their beautiful covers. Several times over the years I've written about the quality of old book covers compared to modern ones. It should come as no surprise I think the old ones come out on top most of the time.

While Gervasio Gallardo is probably the single artist most recognized from the Ballantine AF books Lin Carter edited, there were other artists of note, especially for the pre-Carter books. Here are some of my favorites, all by the recently deceased Barbara Remington.

These hippy trippy covers were my first vision of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien couldn't understand them, but that's because Remington wasn't able to read them before doing the covers. She said she would have done something very different if she had, but I'm glad she didn't. I love these ludicrous artifacts from stranger days. 

I particularly love that together they form one lunatic vision of Tolkien's world

The first three of these are by Barbara Remington, while the fourth, possibly by a different artist, is uncredited. I hope to tackle Worm sooner rather than later, but I make no guarantees. These covers are remarkable. I love the ouroboros motif and the high middle ages depictions of the knights and castles. The dogs and lions on Mistress have a heraldic quality reflects perfectly echoes Eddison's medieval stylings. 

I look and look at both these sets of covers and I wonder why must we continue to suffer God awful photoshopped covers. 

Gahan Wilson: some words and a bunch of cartoons

Recently, I listened to the most excellent folks at Sanctum Secorum talk about Roger Zelazny's fun homage to the Universal monster movies, Sherlock Holmes' London, and HP Lovecraft, A Night in the Lonesome October (1993). You can (and should) listen HERE. The three hosts - Bob Brinkman, Jen Brinkman, and Marc Bruner - were delighted by the book and have a lot of fun discussing it and how it could be used to inspire RPG adventures. 

The funny thing is, unless I missed it (which we all know is entirely probable), they didn't mention one of the coolest aspects of the book: each chapter is illustrated by Gahan Wilson. Wilson is one of the greatest contemporary cartoonists, with a special love for the creepy and bizarre. His cartoons were long mainstays of Playboy and the New Yorker (they might still be for all I know). I grew up reading them in the cartoon collections my dad owned. Later I bought my own books. 

Snuff, hero of A Night in the Lonesome October on the lookout

He also drew a comic for National Lampoon called Nuts. It told the adventures of a young boy called only, The Kid. It's less overtly creepy than most of his work, but it's just as fun, and even a little melancholy sometimes, as any honest examination of being a kid will be.

Wilson is also a writer of some very good weird short stories as well as two fun novels. Many of his stories can by found in the 1997 collection The Cleft and Other Odd Tales. The first novel, Eddy Deco's Last Caper (1987) mixes a noir detective, Lovecraftian monsters, and art deco architecture. In the second, Everybody's Favorite Duck (1988), stand ins for Holmes and Watson face off against stand in for Fantomas, Fu Manchu, and Moriarty during the late 80s. All three books are terrific, playing with all sorts of genre tropes and archetypes, playing with them completely straight as much as flipping them around, as well as featuring more of Wilson's cool comics.

The thing for which most fans today probably know him for is the recently, lamentably, retired Word Fantasy Award HPL trophy. Argue how you will over the appropriateness of HPL as an award, it's a much cooler looking one than the crappy moon and tree they came up with.

What he will be remembered for most, more than his stories, more than his sculpture, are his cartoons. Unlike the more reserved, Gothic-inspired work of Charles Addams, Wilson's are more grotesque, gorier, more in-your-face. He draws on mid-century sci-fi movies, HPL, classic monsters, serial killers, whatever he needs to give you a good, creepy chuckle. His style is also more exaggerated, with weirdly wrinkled skin, piggy eyes, and all sorts of other oddball characteristics that make his work instantly recognizable as well as what makes it so cool looking. Even his straightest looking characters are off in some way and look like they've stepped out of some stranger, weirder world just to the left side of our own. 

Now, some really good cartoons.