Elak of Atlantis - antediluvian antics

   I think one of the reasons I started this blog was the monolith that is Conan the Cimmerian.  You can't venture into the waters of swords & sorcery without confronting Robert E. Howard's most renown creation.  With the Shieldwall folks out there these days you also can't avoid a certain amount of triumphalism about Howard and his works getting their due and proper recognition.
   And I totally get it and am glad to see it (except for the jackassess who take their legitimate criticisms of Sprague de Camp and turn it into how such a bad writer he really was overall and bray about how most of his work is out of print).  But it does get a little annoying.
   So, without looking to neglect Howard (I couldn't avoid making one of my first real posts about Conan the Warrior), I wanted to create a place where I would write about as many different writers as I could manage.  From the bad (Lin Carter), to the mediocre (John Jakes), to the solid Chalres Saunders) to the sublime (Jack Vance), and as many authors I'd never read as possible.
    Lurking in the back of my mind was the sort of hope that I would come across someone, when their work was read end to end, would stack up favorably against Howard's.  Maybe there was some lost pulp-era hack who'd never gotten his due.  Maybe something I hadn't read in twenty years would seem amazing in the light of maturity.  Maybe some great author, someone like, say Henry Kuttner, had written something I'd never read and it would blow Conan out of the water.   Yeah, well, someday, maybe.  But not today.
   Henry Kuttner only wrote four Elak of Atlantis stories.  Along with two Prince Raynor tales they've been collected under Paizo Publishing's Planet Stories imprint and released as "Elak of Atlantis".  Thank you Paizo for getting a whole bunch of long uncollected or unavailable stories back into the light of day (the first Elak story, "Thunder in the Dawn", was last seen in de Camp's 1971 "Warlocks and Warriors").
   Henry Kuttner, on his own and later with his wife, C.L.Moore, was one of the great short story writers of science fiction's Golden Age.  He started as a horror writer and his first published story was "The Graveyard Rats" in the March, 1936 Weird Tales.  From there he wrote a series of horror stories becoming along the way a part of the Lovecraft Circle.  Eventually he pulled away and developed his own themes and ideas.  Stories like "Mimsy Were the Borogroves" are still in print and there are many more worth tracking down in any of the collections of his stuff floating around.
  By himself and with his wife, Kuttner wrote under tons of pen names in order.  Wikipedia lists seventeen.  For a second Fred Pohl even suspected Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain" (which, if you haven't read you should stop reading this, find it and read it NOW!) might have been by Kuttner.  The man could write and he wrote everything.  Horror, fantasy and science fiction all flowed readily and professionally from his typewriter.
   In 1938 he tried his hand at swords & sorcery.  Over that year, all between Weird Tales' cover he saw published the first three tales of Elak of Atlantis: "Thunder in the Dawn", "The Spawn of Dagon", and "Beyond the Phoenix".  The final story, ""Dragon Moon" was published in Weird Tales in 1941.  And that was the end of Elak.  In 1939 Kuttner wrote two more swords & sorcery tales featuring Prince Raynor (and someday I'll read and yap about them, but not now).  And that seems to have been it for the genre for him.  By then he was starting to write the science fiction that would secure his reputation.
  When we first hear of Elak in "Thunder in the Dawn" his adventuring companion, Lycon, is waiting for him in a tavern in Poseidonia.  Lycon, short, fat and given to drinking great quantities of whatever alcohol is available is worried that Elak is off with the wife of a duke.  From recent events, including an attack by masked soldiers, Lycon is sure the duke is aware of Elak's activities.
   Lycon becomes aware of two strange men in the tavern; one a large, barbaric looking man with clearly dyed hair and beard and the other a browned robed Druid.
   Lycon, drunk, soon picks a fight with the bearded man.  Only the timely arrival of the rapier wielding Elak saves him from his opponent's sword.  When Elak's sword proves too much for him and he he knocked down, the bearded man produces and throws at Elak, a winged serpent.
   Elak and Lycon together are unable to kill the poisonous thing.  Before it scores a fatal bite on the men the Druid calls on his mystics powers and throws flames from his hands at the snake and kills it.
   Soon we learn the Druid is named Dalan and he has come from Cyrena in the north of Atlantis to find Elak.  Elak's brother, Orander, king of Cyrena has been taken prisoner by the sorcerer Elf and his Viking allies.  Cyrena and its squabbling nobles have become easy prey for their enemies and Dalan believes only Elak can lead them against their foes and free his homeland.
   Of course Elak and Lycon and the duke's wife, set forth to distant lands to face off against foes dark and dangerous.  Chased by Granicor, the duke, and faced with monstrous obstacles, the quartet eventually make it to Cyrena in hopes of settling accounts with Elf.
  The two middle stories, "The Spawn of Dagon" and "Beyond the Phoenix" pit Elak and Lycon against Cthuluvian spawn and an angry local goddess.  In these stories we find out Elak is not above hiring on to kill a wizard or serving in king's guard.  He's also not above stripping corpses of their wealth and that Lycon's drunken brawling has caused the pair to be driven from Poseidonia and other cities.
   In the last tale, "Dragon Moon", Dalan reappears again seeking Elak.  Orander is dead by his own hand but only to stave off the sorcerous control of Karkora, an alien wizard from beyond Cyrena.
   Elak is a slightly different sort of adventurer than his forebears, Conan and Kull.  His homeland isn't the most civilized of Atlantis' kingdoms but neither is it a land of barbarians.  Henry Kuttner also didn't seek to make statements about civilization opposed to barbarism.  Elak is never concerned with the state of the world except for how it will provide for him.   His sidekick is an incorrigible drunk and instigator of fights.
   The stories are all fun and full of strange magic and terrible beasts.  In fact, the degree of powerful sorcery that occurs in each story is tremendous.  In "Thunder in the Dawn" Elak is cast into the astral plane and has to discover how to free his brother from the realm of fantasy.  Evil cultists seek to drown Atlantis in "The Spawn of Dagon" and in "Dragon Moon' an born dead child has become the darkest wizard in all Atlantis.
   The brief career of Elak of Atlantis is one well worth reading.  They aren't close the power of the Conan or Kull stories but they are fun.  The bickering antics of Elak and Lycon in "The Spawn of Dagon" point the way, from Falstaff and other lovable rogues straight toward Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (who'd appear in 1939 in "Two Sought Adventure").
   The prose of the stories is clean and simple.  The action is bright and colorful as are the heroes and villains.  Once things start, and that generally by the second page, they don't stop.
   The world of Atlantis, while following in Howard's pre-Cataclysm footsteps is less than vibrant and exotic.  We hear of Vikings and Druids.  One of Howard's many brilliant bits was taking the real world and mixing it about and adding elements of myth and creating something new out it in Hyboria.  Kuttner's Atlantis is a bit too familiar.
   Still, Elak's adventures are fun.  I'll even be bold enough to call them romps.  Perhaps that's what most distinguishes them from Howard's Conan and C.L. Moore's Jirel (another predecessor).  Even when dealing with possible world ending catastrophes their a sense of slapdash fun to events.

   So get them and read them.  You can get the Paizo collection used (like me) for under $3 from Amazon.  They are a great example of an early effort to create something new in the fertile field of sword & sorcery pioneered in the years following Howard's unfortunate suicide.  Still, they don't come close to the power and original voice that Howard's Conan stories have.  But then little in the field  does.

In the Mail

   Went to sunny Bermuda to visit old friends for the Thanksgiving week and came home to the following in the mail:

 

   I'm still waiting for this:

   I love Amazon.  Only ten years ago finding these books might have taken a summer of driving up and down the region and rooting through often badly organized stacks in often unpleasant used book stores.  Today, with the pushing of a few buttons they're at my home in splendid condition at reasonable prices within a a few days.  I'm just not sad about the passing of so many of the book traders and junk stores that my reading habit necessitated me frequenting.  And what with gas being what it is and the Staten Island to New Jersey bridge tolls being pushed up to $12 Amazon looks all the better.  Woo hoo!

Any comments, pro or con?

"Hellsgarde" - C.L. Moore

   C.L. Moore's final story about Jirel, sword wielding, flame-haired, mistress of Joiry, a domain found somewhere in Dark Ages France, is the penultimate story in Sprague de Camp's "Swords and Sorcery" collection.  Despite containing the Conan story, "Shadows in the Moonlight" ("Iron Shadows in the Moon"), and the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story, "While the Sea King's Away", it's my hands down favorite in the book.

   C.L. Moore, born Catherine Lucille in 1911 in Indianapolis, made her first professional sale hiding behind her sexless initials and introduced her first important character, Northwest Smith, in 1933.  That story, "Shambleau", was published in the November 1933 issue of Weird Tales.  The next year saw the first story about Jirel of Joiry, "Black God's Kiss".  It was printed in Weird Tales as well.

   Over the following five years she wrote five more Jirel stories, including a crossover one with Northwest Smith called "Quest for the Starstone" (and co-written with her husband, Henry Kuttner).  While clearly influenced by Robert E. Howard's near single-handed creation of swords and sorcery, the Jirel stories are closer in mood to horror tales than the the more muscular sword swinging tales of Conan and the fictional followers he inspired.

   "Hellsgarde" describes Jirel's terrifying journey into and subsequent night spent in the long abandoned castle, Hellsgarde.  Two centuries earlier its violent ruler Andred took possession of an unknown but supposedly priceless treasure.  He was set upon almost at once from all sides by numerous men bent on taking it for themselves.  In the end Andred was tortured to death and torn from limb to limb, his blood spilled out onto the floor of his keep.  The treasure, though, he kept hidden and for himself.

  Jirel's undertaking is forced on her by Guy of Garlot.  He has taken several of her retainers hostage and their lives will only be spared if Jirel enters Hellsgarde and retrieves Andred's treasure.  Hellsgarde may only be found at evening and then, sitting in the middle of a marsh dangerous with quicksand, approached only across a long, narrow causeway.  Driven by the knowledge that Guy of Garlot's own keep is impregnable and his demand for the treasure is the only way to save her men, Jirel makes the sunset journey to Hellsgarde.

   Crossing the causeway she sees several ranks of soldiers seemingly in wait for her at the castle gateway.  Only as she nears them can she see they're dead, propped up on their own spears thrust through their throats or torsos or limbs.

  As she works to overcome her fear of the dead men and wonders how and why they came to be their the gate of Hellsgarde opens.  She is greeted by a man she sees as hunchbacked even though his back is straight. Jirel wonders if perhaps her impression is caused by the crookedness of his soul.

  Jirel quickly learns that the crooked man's master, Alaric, is responsible for the deaths of the propped up soldiers.  He informs her that Alaric comes from a distant branch of Andred's family and has come to claim his inheritance in Hellsgarde.  He also ensures Jirel that Alaric will make her most welcome.

  Daring to risk the night at Hellsgarde in order to determine if Alaric has come for and found Andred's lost treasure Jirel enters the castle.  Within she encounters only more strange and unsettling things.  The men who take her horse are more beast than man to her eyes and nothing they do shakes her from that impression.

   Inside the great hall of Hellsgarde, she finds Alaric sitting before a roaring fire.  He is surrounded by a several girls and women, two boys and two great greyhounds.  Behind him is his jester, a dwarf.

   Jirel quickly sees a similarity between Alaric, the doorman and the dwarf.  Though clearly not physically alike all three seem to be twisted by some great burden.  The women's faces seem hollow and the whites of their eyes too white.  Even the dogs seem wrong.  And yet she stays.

  What follows her meeting Alaric is an escalating series of disturbing events.  Like "The Valor of Cappen Varra", "Hellsgarde" doesn't read like a more typical swords and sorcery story.  It reads like a nightmare from the sufferer's perspective.  Jirel's discomfort, fear and determination are all conveyed perfectly by Moore's clear but its precision doesn't detract from the dark dreamlike atmosphere of the story.

  "Hellsgarde" is not like Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.  It has little of the ferocious physicality of the former or the humorousness of the latter.  Moore's story has more of the strangeness of the best of Moorcock's swords and sorcery.  Once Jirel crosses the causeway to Hellsgarde you can feel your feet shift under you as you realize the story is bringing you along into the uncertainty that makes up the sleeping world.

Note - All six Jirel stories are available from Paizo in the collection "Black God's Kiss".