I must be the only few in my generation (Gen Z) to collect DAW paperbacks from the 60s and 70s. Books these days are always massive with more than 600 pages per book, but DAW books always never reached more than 400 pages and they all had those iconic yellow spines. It almost makes me wish for Roger’s time machine so I could see all these books in mint condition lined up on a shelf in a bookstore!
Authors were able to write tight and concise prose back then. A good story in less than 300 pages. Today it seems the desire is to write unending sequels and keep the money rolling in in an IP.
We lost half my immediate family during the 1970's; my father, my oldest sister and my older brother all died during this period and my two nieces were taken away by their father when he got remarried. We didn't see them again for twenty years. Between that, puberty and high school half way through the decade I need something to keep my sanity. I threw myself completely into sword and sorcery comics and books; Conan and Elric along with Lord of the Rings, Dune, Thomas Covenant, science fiction, horror novels, Lovecraft, Shannara, anything and everything I could get my hands on basically. To this day I still love all of it. These all helped me through a very difficult period.
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser will always hold a special place in my heart. I discovered the stories along with those of Robert E. Howard in my early teens, and they were hugely influential for me. All the more because it led me to discover Mike Mignola via his stunning adaptations of the stories. Thanks, Michael!
Yes! The Lankhmar stories were fantastic. Particularly the story that introduces Fafhrd, and story in which the two meet each other (even with the tragedy). Must read them again (again (again)).
I was a kid reading the comics and playing D&D in the late 70s/early eighties. Found Conan, Kull, Lankhmar, and eventually Elric through the comics. It was not until very recently that I actually read a word of Robert E Howard's prose fiction. Nowadays, I pick up used copies of Elric, Leiber, and Howard paperbacks wherever I see them and love them. Beautiful covers, great stories. The Solomon Kane series with Jeff Jones covers, Daw, Ace...all great. Always like your videos. This one is especially helpful as a comprehensive overview of a genre I am both rediscovering and discovering for the first time, really, in terms of prose fiction. Thanks for the good work. Need to seek out that Karl Edward Wagner Kane series, now...
Michael Moorcock is fantastic. I live in Devon next to Cornwall where he holidayed near St Michael's Mount and wrote his first book Corum about it, calling it Moidel's Castle.
That was a great walk through 70's era sword and sorcery. It was interesting that you mention D&D, since most everyone, creators and players, back then were immersed in this stuff, these books shaping the game itself and the playing of it. Without Tolkien, Howard, Moorcock, and all the others, those early wargamers would never have decided to throw in some fantasy elements from the books they loved to create D&D.
Thanks for the trip back. I miss those iconic days of my parents being alive and us kids running from our grandparent's house to our house. We live those Sword and Sorcery days by pretending that a little wood was our battlefield and we played Tarzan and Jane and Boy.
Another element is that the 70's was a surging time for print media in various forms in a way that has disappeared with all the digital seas we drown in. Frazetta's covers sold those books, but also launched the Frazetta poster business that used the Conan paintings, which ended up on the walls of stoners and film makers. The Conan comic brought new imagery to kids reading comics, but also resulted in Barry Windsor-Smith virtually creating the limited edition fantasy portfolio movement by going into publishing and serving fans who'd gotten a taste for his approach to Conan. The art for record album sleeves began to feature a lot of comic book and S&S artists and characters like Conan, Dr. Strange and the Silver Surfer were really big with the drug-consuming youth culture. What had started as posters for the west coast dance concerts became a huge craze for posters that were rich in surreal and symbolic fantasy imagery. There were some high-quality, limited edition publishers like Don Grant and FAX, who revived the illustrated deluxe edition format for Howard, Lovecraft and others. What had been the art and province of fanzines became mainstream; it felt like the release of something that had been pent-up and underground for ages.
Due to Frazetta's artwork on the covers, I ordered Conan paper books from EERIE magazine. I remember an entire page of posters with S&S themes and blacklight posters.
@@99Michael I remember those! Warren had to be a big part of the Frazetta surge. His covers for Creepy, Blazing Combat etc. came before the Lancer Conans.
I came to Sword and Sorcery by way of Dungeons and Dragons. The old paperbacks are just a treat, and so cheap to acquire even now. Kind of a bonus for the lack of popularity.
S&S and fantasy definitely offered a lot of escapism to many in the 60’s & 70’s as baby boomers were growing up and going into adulthood by the 70’s. It’s not secret that film directors like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and others came out of the late 70’s and make some of the best fantasy and Sci Fi films in the 80’s, which inspired many kids that would grow up and enjoy fantasy and S&S.
Roger, Dr.Who wants his TARDIS back. And I'm trying to imagine Michael and Roger wearing jeans with huge flares and blaze orange body shirts. Hmmm, better not go down that road. You hit just the right notes here Michael, the best books with what I consider iconic covers: Jeff Jones and Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser, Frazetta and Conan, Whelan and Elric. Carter's novels are, as you say, fun and I don't think Carter ever pretended that they were anything but that. I grew up in the 1970s: the books and comics you show were the texts of my teenage and young adult reading life, especially Howard and Marvel's adaptations of his works. Thanks for the trip to a fondly remembered era.
I visit the 1970s every day! Mostly comics, movies, and tv shows. Glad to find this channel. I'd like to (re)visit some great fantasy, i mean sword and sorcery, from the 1970s too! I just want to add that "Leiber" is pronounced LEE-bur.
I was in a second hand bookshop today and there must have been a dozen Moorcock paperbacks in the fantasy section but half of them were a little beat up to say the least. I ended up scoring Great Expectations, A Room With A View by E.M. Forster, The Day Of Their Return by Poul Anderson and The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey. Ah hell, I might go back for some Michael Moorcock later in the week.
The Frazetta covers of the Lancer Conan series were certainly a big help in popularizing the genre. I discovered them in the 70s and I was hooked. Moorcock, Wagner, Lieber, Jakes, Carter and the rest - I eagerly devoured all that I could get my hot little mitts on. I still have all the early Conan comics including #1 and Savage Sword.
Another great S & S anthology series was the "Swords Against Darkness" volumes edited by Andrew Offut. I believe that there were 5 altogether. They had some well-known writers like David Drake, Manley Wade Wellman, Henry Kutner, and Ramsey Campbell, but also gave a number of fledgling writers their 1st publication. Offut himself contributed to the genre by writing Conan pastiches, but also expanding the adventures another of R. E. Howard's characters - Cormac Mac Art - a Gaelic adventurer who along with his companion Wulfer Skull-Splitter raised havoc in 8th century Britain. Howard had completed 3 or 4 stories and left fragments of a couple of more. Offut added 4 or 5 novel length tales to the canon. I think that the 2 that were co-written with Keith Taylor - "Tower of Death" and "When Death Birds Fly" are the most enjoyable.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 Keith Taylor, who I mentioned in the post above, had his own heroic fantasy hero named Felimid Mac Fal. He was a bard who had adventures throughout the British Isles in the 9th Century. He had a magical harp, an enchanted sword, and a recurring foe named Tosti Fenrir's Get who was a Viking berserk/literal werewolf. There were at least 2 books in his series. The first, called "Bard" was made up from 4 short stories previously published in "Fantastic Stories" magazine. The second, "Bard II" was a novel length adventure.
The fantasy genre has moved from "stories" to "histories"--and apparently that cannot be presented to potential buyers in any way other than novels sold by the pound.
Well done, Michel! I remember those wonderful Lancer paperbacks so well. Great art, great stories and glue on the spine of the book that dried out so fast that the book was falling apart before you got it home. 😂😂😂That was the only problem that I had with that publisher. I really haven't read any Conan since maybe the 80s although I remember him well. Since you've been talking about him so much, I thought I'd try a few to see if he was as good as I remember. I picked The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian and am currently listening to it on my drive to and from work. So far, I've listened to The Phoenix on the Sword, The Frost Giant's Daughter and am in the middle of The God in the Bowl. Yes, the stories were as good as I remember. Thank you for prodding me into this excellent dive!
Excellent overview of a great genre. Another writer of that era is Charles Saunders who created the Imaro series, creating sword and soul ( stories taking inspiration from various mythologies of Africa)
Lin Carter also tried his hand at a Clark Ashton Smith pastiche with "The Scroll of Morloc". Not sure if he made any other attempts at CAS pastiche or not, but based on that one I hope not.
I'm surprised you didn't say anything about the influence of women on the popularity of 70s S&S. Red Sonja and Frazetta's jaw-dropping fantasy women surely drew many to the genre. And the influence of feminism reinvigorated the genre throughout the decade because of the influence of writers like C. L. Moore and Andre Norton as well as the new generation of women writers - Joanna Russ, Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Lynn, Robin Hobb, etc. I highly recommend the 1979 DAW anthology Amazons!, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, which shows a lot of women writers in fine form, and plants the seeds of fantasy trends that are in full bloom today, such as fantasy in African and Asian cultural settings.
I never really got into Sword and Sorcery in the 1970s with the exception of a satirical take on the genre - the comic book _Cerebus the Aardvark_ by Dave Sim. From the early issues, I bought them regularly.
“Bones stripped of flesh are always a bad omen…for their former owners.” And for a while there Sim could reliably reduce me to gales of helpless laughter, at least up through High Society.
I remember looking into Cerberus thr Aardvark a few years ago, but I never read any myself. Now that you brought those memories back, I think I'll try to find it.
@@ignorethis214 Reading Cerebus is tricky. Fairly early on, Dave Sim had a psychotic episode in which he conceived a master vision for the whole 300-issue arc. Parts of it are amazing. Other parts reek of increasingly intense misogyny (women, we learn, embody the anti-divine principle) and outright weird, Sim fancying himself a rabbi offering radical fresh interpretations of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim texts. The first 25 issues form a loose arc, during which Sim rapidly went from very funny writer and pretty good artist to absolutely astonishing. Some of that stuff is so, so funny: the barbarian chief Bran Mak Mufin, a Batman/Wolverine parody called the Cockroach, the Elric parody Elrod with his black sword Seersucker and talking like Foghorn Leghorn, Lord Julius who looks and talks exactly like Groucho, and so much more. The second 25 issues are a tight single story, High Society, where Cerebus ends up in the midst of power politics. It is even funnier than the stories before it. There’s an election in it, and a panel with the Cockroach (by then one of Cerebus’ bodyguards) throwing an enthusiastic supporter and saying “Back, foul suburbanite!” that sort of nails the tone. The next 25 issues are where the wheels start coming off. The storyline Church and State makes Cerebus the Pioe, and Sim plays around with the whole “how do you know he’s NOT infallible?” thing, which I find pretty sophomoric. In the letter pages, he was also getting more and more vocally misogynistic. Technically it’s gorgeous and a marvel of plotting and execution, but morally ugly. Things go on and on after that. I can’t really recommend any of the rest, with one significant exception. The latter hundreds are a big storyline called Mothers & Daughters, with several sub-arcs. The last of them, Minds, is what he was heading toward ever since his early vision. It gets metafictional, and it is *amazing*. I don’t want to spoil it, so there’s very little to say except that it shines an entirely fresh light in everything we know about Cerebus the character. I love it. And then…there’s the last hundred issues. Long eventless arcs letting Sun indulge in pastiche of his favorite writers. More misogyny. Utterly bizarre religious politics and stuff. And, finally, as a character prophesied during Church and State, Cerebus dies alone and unmourned, and goes to eternal torment. And it’s over. So, um, yeah.
Their are new Thongor stories being written by Robert Price in Swords and Sorcery Magazine. I know this because I had a story in the same issue. (It's online venue.) I've said this before but you really need to read Flame and Crimson by Brian Murphy. It's a great history of S&S.
Have you read any of Alex Bledsoe, "Eddie LaCrosse" ? books? He is new to the Fantasy, sword Genre. First Book was in 2007 The Sword-Edged Blonde. It introduces readers to Eddie LaCrosse and his world and sets the tone for the series with its blend of fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction. The mystery is engaging and the characters are well-drawn.
did you ever read any of the GOR series (I can't believe I read those as a kid) , I remember that and conan were my favorites in the 70's/early 80's especially the comics.
Do you guys have matching shirts? OMG, you guys have matching shirts. I will need to check out Sword of Deviltry. The only Leiber I’ve read is Conjure Wife, which was nice and creepy. Great discussion!
I've found Leiber and particularly the Fafhrd stories to be incredibly uneven. I'm not saying don't read the Fafhrd stories. Do. Just don't stop in case the first few stories don't appeal to you. Swords and Deviltry had two bad stories followed by a great one. The second volume, on the other hand, Swords against Death might be the best s&s story collection every published.
@Michael K. Vaughan All is well, thank you. Haven't felt like making videos for ages, but I've been talking about a new project with a friend that we might start soon!
Two other series from that period that belong here are the Dray Prescott series and the Gor series. The first 6 to 8 Gor books are fantastic, then the author starting focusing more and more on the slave aspect of women. Both of these series focus on a man from earth who ends up on another world where they have to become master swordsmen to survive. The concept of Dray Prescott is similar to the Burroughs Mars books initially but quickly goes in very different directions. Lin Carter, author of the Thongor books, also wrote a series about a man (John Dakar, who comes to be called Jandar) displaced in the same fashion to Callisto, very much like John Carter.
Do you like the animated movies that they made with its was different for the time then heavy metal came out in the theaters when midnight night showing where going on Which where cool really cool video.
Anyone interested in sword & sorcery should read the Thongor series. Lin Carter may not be the best writer but he is very imaginative and fun. The true gem of the series is the world setting for Thongor. Carter seamlessly blends the traditional Lost Continent of Lemuria with Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom, Pellucidar, even Tarzan’s Lost City of Opar, as well as Robert E Howard’s Hyborian Age, into a unique and entertaining world. Thongor himself is a fun character. If you read the series don’t take it too serious, it’s 100% escapism.
Ah, the ‘70s. At one point in 1978, Devo and Yes both had new albums out and there were new issues of Howard the Duck and Master of Kung Fu, and my 12/13-year-old self loved it all. And yes, we need Corum, Hawkmoon, Count Brass, and other collections to match the new Elric ones.
Speaking of fantasy, are you familiar with the A Wizard of Earthsea, or Veil of Darkness? I have not read them, but I see them on lists containing some of the books you've mentioned, and if you're familiar with them I'd be interested in your opinion.
You should check out the Gottrek & Felix series. It's awesome S&S. It's based on the Warhammer RPG, which I've never played and know nothing about, but the books are great.
I think if you're going to talk about '70s sword & sorcery, you have to mention Zelazny's Amber series. At least among the people that I knew, it was at least as influential as Moorcock and Leiber.
Really like when you cover the history of this or that genre or writer. I was a teenager in the 1970s and basically any pictures of me from then need to be expunged. Yikes. But yes, the music was great, reading was good, and I learned about oppression, so how bad could it have been? (Irony Alert) That was the edition of LOTR I discovered back then, too. Dazzled me. It was a while before I could snag a copy of The Hobbit but those old covers, and the Conan, (basically Frazetta, too, on ERB's books, all that drew me in like a maelstrom. I liked to escape INTO rather than FROM. I'd go to Middle Earth via reading no matter how good or bad the epoch might be.
14:05 I don’t think much of Moorcock’s fantasies are out of print (at least in the uk). But the latest reprints are uuuuuugly (and really cheap). It would be nice to get HC reprints of Hawkmoon and Corum… His realist stuff is definitely out of print though.
That was fun, is it me or did a lot of those non cimmerian barbarian warriors have very silly names? they put a smile on my face. S&S books certainly had some super painted covers back in ye olden days, some modern books must be so envious.
I wonder if you’d enjoy some D&D novels like Drizzt the dark elf? Those are some sword and sorcery ass sword and sorcery. Oh wait I’m forgetting a certain 500 book challenge again 😮
Some of my favorite books came from the decapitated unicorn series. Although, I have to admit that I bought some of them more for the cover art than the contents. If I ever get another dog, I must name him Thongor. Even if he’s a she.
And the French magazine HEAVY METAL could have contributed as well! Album cover art? Frank Frazetta art on panel vans? I think a lot of those books sold because of the cover art. If the cover art had been lame, nothing might have happened.
I believe a slew of bad movies killed the appetite for S&S with the general public. My personal beef was the familiar trope of the protagonist walking across the medieval village square and always a half dozen smokey fires choking everyone in the marketplace; you would expect to find burning tires in the town dump. Then everyone is dressed in rags, hanging out at some dilapidated castle. I wanted the Barry Smith renderings of polished marble towers under a star-studded sky. The awe of a young man venturing into the world beyond his mountain tribe. Instead, we got some brute with a sword kicking ass and looting the place. I enjoyed the paper books and bought the EEIRE and CREEPY with the Frazetta covers and Marvel's Kull (which I enjoyed the plotting and artwork more than Conan under John Buscema's run.)
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 Surely you don't mean The Barbarians, a 1987 sword and sorcery film with the Barbarian Brothers! ( I think they were in a Conan movie too.) You're correct. It was the 1980's movies that were appalling.
Yesterday’s sword and sorcery was heavily male based with most stories about he-man heroes rescuing buxom princesses and engaging in debauchery. Now it is non-PC to have that. The latest Dungeons and Dragons movie is showing that. High fantasy does not go in that direction which I feel has allowed it to be lauded and copied today.
Oh my, Michael! Roger looks so much like you when he has clothes on! Does that mean that you would look like Roger without said clothes? Of course, only the Lady of the Manor would and should know that...😶🌫...... I was just wondering.....😇
I must be the only few in my generation (Gen Z) to collect DAW paperbacks from the 60s and 70s. Books these days are always massive with more than 600 pages per book, but DAW books always never reached more than 400 pages and they all had those iconic yellow spines. It almost makes me wish for Roger’s time machine so I could see all these books in mint condition lined up on a shelf in a bookstore!
Authors were able to write tight and concise prose back then. A good story in less than 300 pages. Today it seems the desire is to write unending sequels and keep the money rolling in in an IP.
Fellow Gen Z DAW collector here!
i am also a gen Z with atleast twenty five daw books (mostly michael moorcock and c.j. cherryh)
We lost half my immediate family during the 1970's; my father, my oldest sister and my older brother all died during this period and my two nieces were taken away by their father when he got remarried. We didn't see them again for twenty years. Between that, puberty and high school half way through the decade I need something to keep my sanity. I threw myself completely into sword and sorcery comics and books; Conan and Elric along with Lord of the Rings, Dune, Thomas Covenant, science fiction, horror novels, Lovecraft, Shannara, anything and everything I could get my hands on basically. To this day I still love all of it. These all helped me through a very difficult period.
I’m so glad that they did. Books can be so important for getting through tough times.
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser will always hold a special place in my heart. I discovered the stories along with those of Robert E. Howard in my early teens, and they were hugely influential for me. All the more because it led me to discover Mike Mignola via his stunning adaptations of the stories. Thanks, Michael!
Thank you, Elliot!
Yes! The Lankhmar stories were fantastic. Particularly the story that introduces Fafhrd, and story in which the two meet each other (even with the tragedy). Must read them again (again (again)).
I was a kid reading the comics and playing D&D in the late 70s/early eighties. Found Conan, Kull, Lankhmar, and eventually Elric through the comics. It was not until very recently that I actually read a word of Robert E Howard's prose fiction. Nowadays, I pick up used copies of Elric, Leiber, and Howard paperbacks wherever I see them and love them. Beautiful covers, great stories. The Solomon Kane series with Jeff Jones covers, Daw, Ace...all great. Always like your videos. This one is especially helpful as a comprehensive overview of a genre I am both rediscovering and discovering for the first time, really, in terms of prose fiction. Thanks for the good work. Need to seek out that Karl Edward Wagner Kane series, now...
Michael Moorcock is fantastic. I live in Devon next to Cornwall where he holidayed near St Michael's Mount and wrote his first book Corum about it, calling it Moidel's Castle.
That was a great walk through 70's era sword and sorcery. It was interesting that you mention D&D, since most everyone, creators and players, back then were immersed in this stuff, these books shaping the game itself and the playing of it. Without Tolkien, Howard, Moorcock, and all the others, those early wargamers would never have decided to throw in some fantasy elements from the books they loved to create D&D.
Thanks for the trip back. I miss those iconic days of my parents being alive and us kids running from our grandparent's house to our house. We live those Sword and Sorcery days by pretending that a little wood was our battlefield and we played Tarzan and Jane and Boy.
Another element is that the 70's was a surging time for print media in various forms in a way that has disappeared with all the digital seas we drown in. Frazetta's covers sold those books, but also launched the Frazetta poster business that used the Conan paintings, which ended up on the walls of stoners and film makers. The Conan comic brought new imagery to kids reading comics, but also resulted in Barry Windsor-Smith virtually creating the limited edition fantasy portfolio movement by going into publishing and serving fans who'd gotten a taste for his approach to Conan. The art for record album sleeves began to feature a lot of comic book and S&S artists and characters like Conan, Dr. Strange and the Silver Surfer were really big with the drug-consuming youth culture. What had started as posters for the west coast dance concerts became a huge craze for posters that were rich in surreal and symbolic fantasy imagery. There were some high-quality, limited edition publishers like Don Grant and FAX, who revived the illustrated deluxe edition format for Howard, Lovecraft and others. What had been the art and province of fanzines became mainstream; it felt like the release of something that had been pent-up and underground for ages.
Due to Frazetta's artwork on the covers, I ordered Conan paper books from EERIE magazine.
I remember an entire page of posters with S&S themes and blacklight posters.
@@99Michael I remember those! Warren had to be a big part of the Frazetta surge. His covers for Creepy, Blazing Combat etc. came before the Lancer Conans.
Good video! Love the collars!!! Travelling in my own 1970s time machine at the moment...Courtesy of Roger Zelazny's Amber Chronicles (Blood of Amber).
I came to Sword and Sorcery by way of Dungeons and Dragons. The old paperbacks are just a treat, and so cheap to acquire even now. Kind of a bonus for the lack of popularity.
S&S and fantasy definitely offered a lot of escapism to many in the 60’s & 70’s as baby boomers were growing up and going into adulthood by the 70’s. It’s not secret that film directors like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and others came out of the late 70’s and make some of the best fantasy and Sci Fi films in the 80’s, which inspired many kids that would grow up and enjoy fantasy and S&S.
Roger, Dr.Who wants his TARDIS back. And I'm trying to imagine Michael and Roger wearing jeans with huge flares and blaze orange body shirts. Hmmm, better not go down that road.
You hit just the right notes here Michael, the best books with what I consider iconic covers: Jeff Jones and Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser, Frazetta and Conan, Whelan and Elric.
Carter's novels are, as you say, fun and I don't think Carter ever pretended that they were anything but that.
I grew up in the 1970s: the books and comics you show were the texts of my teenage and young adult reading life, especially Howard and Marvel's adaptations of his works. Thanks for the trip to a fondly remembered era.
I visit the 1970s every day! Mostly comics, movies, and tv shows. Glad to find this channel. I'd like to (re)visit some great fantasy, i mean sword and sorcery, from the 1970s too!
I just want to add that "Leiber" is pronounced LEE-bur.
I was in a second hand bookshop today and there must have been a dozen Moorcock paperbacks in the fantasy section but half of them were a little beat up to say the least. I ended up scoring Great Expectations, A Room With A View by E.M. Forster, The Day Of Their Return by Poul Anderson and The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey. Ah hell, I might go back for some Michael Moorcock later in the week.
The Frazetta covers of the Lancer Conan series were certainly a big help in popularizing the genre. I discovered them in the 70s and I was hooked. Moorcock, Wagner, Lieber, Jakes, Carter and the rest - I eagerly devoured all that I could get my hot little mitts on. I still have all the early Conan comics including #1 and Savage Sword.
Another great S & S anthology series was the "Swords Against Darkness" volumes edited by Andrew Offut. I believe that there were 5 altogether. They had some well-known writers like David Drake, Manley Wade Wellman, Henry Kutner, and Ramsey Campbell, but also gave a number of fledgling writers their 1st publication. Offut himself contributed to the genre by writing Conan pastiches, but also expanding the adventures another of R. E. Howard's characters - Cormac Mac Art - a Gaelic adventurer who along with his companion Wulfer Skull-Splitter raised havoc in 8th century Britain. Howard had completed 3 or 4 stories and left fragments of a couple of more. Offut added 4 or 5 novel length tales to the canon. I think that the 2 that were co-written with Keith Taylor - "Tower of Death" and "When Death Birds Fly" are the most enjoyable.
I read the first volume of Swords against Darkness. That one was pretty good!
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 Keith Taylor, who I mentioned in the post above, had his own heroic fantasy hero named Felimid Mac Fal. He was a bard who had adventures throughout the British Isles in the 9th Century. He had a magical harp, an enchanted sword, and a recurring foe named Tosti Fenrir's Get who was a Viking berserk/literal werewolf. There were at least 2 books in his series. The first, called "Bard" was made up from 4 short stories previously published in "Fantastic Stories" magazine. The second, "Bard II" was a novel length adventure.
The S&S boom of the 70s led directly to Mattel’s “Masters of the Universe” toys.
I loved those!
Great one! Love the old S&S stories. Haven't been able to get into the more modern fantasy. They are sooooooo long.
Remember being able to get through a great story over a weekend? That is not happening again anytime soon.
The fantasy genre has moved from "stories" to "histories"--and apparently that cannot be presented to potential buyers in any way other than novels sold by the pound.
Well done, Michel! I remember those wonderful Lancer paperbacks so well. Great art, great stories and glue on the spine of the book that dried out so fast that the book was falling apart before you got it home. 😂😂😂That was the only problem that I had with that publisher.
I really haven't read any Conan since maybe the 80s although I remember him well. Since you've been talking about him so much, I thought I'd try a few to see if he was as good as I remember. I picked The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian and am currently listening to it on my drive to and from work. So far, I've listened to The Phoenix on the Sword, The Frost Giant's Daughter and am in the middle of The God in the Bowl. Yes, the stories were as good as I remember. Thank you for prodding me into this excellent dive!
Great video Mike I would love to hear more about 70s sword and sorcery...!
ERB was a fun writer as well.
Excellent overview of a great genre. Another writer of that era is Charles Saunders who created the Imaro series, creating sword and soul ( stories taking inspiration from various mythologies of Africa)
You are right. I should have talked about Saunders. I really wish his books would be reprinted.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 Yeah only the first 2 Imaro books are easily available as audiobooks I think. Don't know about the last 2 though.
The politicians back then were mild compared to the unhinged crazies that are running the sideshow now. Still remains the great need to escape
I wonder if Roger visited CBGB's and rocked out with the Ramones? He looks a little tuckered out. Loved the topic of today's video.
Thanks Tony!
More please! That was awesome.
Lin Carter also tried his hand at a Clark Ashton Smith pastiche with "The Scroll of Morloc". Not sure if he made any other attempts at CAS pastiche or not, but based on that one I hope not.
I'm surprised you didn't say anything about the influence of women on the popularity of 70s S&S. Red Sonja and Frazetta's jaw-dropping fantasy women surely drew many to the genre. And the influence of feminism reinvigorated the genre throughout the decade because of the influence of writers like C. L. Moore and Andre Norton as well as the new generation of women writers - Joanna Russ, Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Lynn, Robin Hobb, etc. I highly recommend the 1979 DAW anthology Amazons!, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, which shows a lot of women writers in fine form, and plants the seeds of fantasy trends that are in full bloom today, such as fantasy in African and Asian cultural settings.
The books that were edited were ok........but your right REH is the best.
Man, next time Roger wants to do this trip make sure to have him swing by to pick me up. This would be a blast to explore!
We will keep you in mind!
70's = burnt orange shag rugs and avocado green refrigerator.....phones came in three colors: white, black & red!!
Great overview! No stone left unturned. Still bummed you don't like the Gor series. The first four books in that series were alot of fun for me.
CriminOlly, at least, agrees with you about those Gor books.
I never really got into Sword and Sorcery in the 1970s with the exception of a satirical take on the genre - the comic book _Cerebus the Aardvark_ by Dave Sim. From the early issues, I bought them regularly.
“Bones stripped of flesh are always a bad omen…for their former owners.” And for a while there Sim could reliably reduce me to gales of helpless laughter, at least up through High Society.
I remember looking into Cerberus thr Aardvark a few years ago, but I never read any myself. Now that you brought those memories back, I think I'll try to find it.
@@ignorethis214 Reading Cerebus is tricky. Fairly early on, Dave Sim had a psychotic episode in which he conceived a master vision for the whole 300-issue arc. Parts of it are amazing. Other parts reek of increasingly intense misogyny (women, we learn, embody the anti-divine principle) and outright weird, Sim fancying himself a rabbi offering radical fresh interpretations of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim texts.
The first 25 issues form a loose arc, during which Sim rapidly went from very funny writer and pretty good artist to absolutely astonishing. Some of that stuff is so, so funny: the barbarian chief Bran Mak Mufin, a Batman/Wolverine parody called the Cockroach, the Elric parody Elrod with his black sword Seersucker and talking like Foghorn Leghorn, Lord Julius who looks and talks exactly like Groucho, and so much more.
The second 25 issues are a tight single story, High Society, where Cerebus ends up in the midst of power politics. It is even funnier than the stories before it. There’s an election in it, and a panel with the Cockroach (by then one of Cerebus’ bodyguards) throwing an enthusiastic supporter and saying “Back, foul suburbanite!” that sort of nails the tone.
The next 25 issues are where the wheels start coming off. The storyline Church and State makes Cerebus the Pioe, and Sim plays around with the whole “how do you know he’s NOT infallible?” thing, which I find pretty sophomoric. In the letter pages, he was also getting more and more vocally misogynistic. Technically it’s gorgeous and a marvel of plotting and execution, but morally ugly.
Things go on and on after that. I can’t really recommend any of the rest, with one significant exception. The latter hundreds are a big storyline called Mothers & Daughters, with several sub-arcs. The last of them, Minds, is what he was heading toward ever since his early vision. It gets metafictional, and it is *amazing*. I don’t want to spoil it, so there’s very little to say except that it shines an entirely fresh light in everything we know about Cerebus the character. I love it.
And then…there’s the last hundred issues. Long eventless arcs letting Sun indulge in pastiche of his favorite writers. More misogyny. Utterly bizarre religious politics and stuff. And, finally, as a character prophesied during Church and State, Cerebus dies alone and unmourned, and goes to eternal torment. And it’s over.
So, um, yeah.
I loved Savage Sword of Conan. John Buscema and Ernie Chan were my favorite artists.
Their are new Thongor stories being written by Robert Price in Swords and Sorcery Magazine. I know this because I had a story in the same issue. (It's online venue.)
I've said this before but you really need to read Flame and Crimson by Brian Murphy. It's a great history of S&S.
You are right. I really need to read that.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 It's really good. I read it in like one afternoon.
Titan books has reprinted the comic book adaptions of Moorcock’s books in The Michael Moorcock library. Highly recommended!
Have you read any of Alex Bledsoe, "Eddie LaCrosse" ? books? He is new to the Fantasy, sword Genre. First Book was in 2007 The Sword-Edged Blonde. It introduces readers to Eddie LaCrosse and his world and sets the tone for the series with its blend of fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction. The mystery is engaging and the characters are well-drawn.
I haven’t read that yet. Thanks for the recommendation!
did you ever read any of the GOR series (I can't believe I read those as a kid) , I remember that and conan were my favorites in the 70's/early 80's especially the comics.
I did read the first Gor book…unfortunately.
Do you guys have matching shirts? OMG, you guys have matching shirts. I will need to check out Sword of Deviltry. The only Leiber I’ve read is Conjure Wife, which was nice and creepy. Great discussion!
I've found Leiber and particularly the Fafhrd stories to be incredibly uneven. I'm not saying don't read the Fafhrd stories. Do. Just don't stop in case the first few stories don't appeal to you. Swords and Deviltry had two bad stories followed by a great one. The second volume, on the other hand, Swords against Death might be the best s&s story collection every published.
@@freelivefree7221 that’s good to know, thanks!
Well, of course we have matching shirts! And pajamas.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 😂
I'm going to pick up one of my Robert E Howard books as soon as this video ends! Your knowledge is great 👍
Thanks! So good to see you here! I hope all is well.
@Michael K. Vaughan All is well, thank you. Haven't felt like making videos for ages, but I've been talking about a new project with a friend that we might start soon!
Two other series from that period that belong here are the Dray Prescott series and the Gor series. The first 6 to 8 Gor books are fantastic, then the author starting focusing more and more on the slave aspect of women. Both of these series focus on a man from earth who ends up on another world where they have to become master swordsmen to survive. The concept of Dray Prescott is similar to the Burroughs Mars books initially but quickly goes in very different directions. Lin Carter, author of the Thongor books, also wrote a series about a man (John Dakar, who comes to be called Jandar) displaced in the same fashion to Callisto, very much like John Carter.
This channel is cool. I'll stay alive for another day.
Do you like the animated movies that they made with its was different for the time then heavy metal came out in the theaters when midnight night showing where going on Which where cool really cool video.
We're gettin historical up in here.
Anyone interested in sword & sorcery should read the Thongor series. Lin Carter may not be the best writer but he is very imaginative and fun. The true gem of the series is the world setting for Thongor. Carter seamlessly blends the traditional Lost Continent of Lemuria with Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom, Pellucidar, even Tarzan’s Lost City of Opar, as well as Robert E Howard’s Hyborian Age, into a unique and entertaining world. Thongor himself is a fun character. If you read the series don’t take it too serious, it’s 100% escapism.
Ah, the ‘70s. At one point in 1978, Devo and Yes both had new albums out and there were new issues of Howard the Duck and Master of Kung Fu, and my 12/13-year-old self loved it all.
And yes, we need Corum, Hawkmoon, Count Brass, and other collections to match the new Elric ones.
Maybe Ray Harryhausen movies helped. A hero sword-fighting skeletons! How was that not going to have an effect on the public's taste?
This was great, but you forgot the greatest sword & sorcery classic of the 70s (and of all times), the one and only The Eye of Argon! :D
Never had any S&S nose been so lithe or opaque.
😅
Speaking of fantasy, are you familiar with the A Wizard of Earthsea, or Veil of Darkness? I have not read them, but I see them on lists containing some of the books you've mentioned, and if you're familiar with them I'd be interested in your opinion.
You should check out the Gottrek & Felix series. It's awesome S&S. It's based on the Warhammer RPG, which I've never played and know nothing about, but the books are great.
They are great, both hilarious and epic. And there are audiobooks with Brian Blessed.
I think if you're going to talk about '70s sword & sorcery, you have to mention Zelazny's Amber series. At least among the people that I knew, it was at least as influential as Moorcock and Leiber.
Delightfully nostalgic.
Kothar is Appendix N, that gets him a bump.
Thanks for the time travel hijinks!
Appendix N has made Kothar immortal.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 You are SO right!
Really like when you cover the history of this or that genre or writer. I was a teenager in the 1970s and basically any pictures of me from then need to be expunged. Yikes. But yes, the music was great, reading was good, and I learned about oppression, so how bad could it have been? (Irony Alert)
That was the edition of LOTR I discovered back then, too. Dazzled me. It was a while before I could snag a copy of The Hobbit but those old covers, and the Conan, (basically Frazetta, too, on ERB's books, all that drew me in like a maelstrom. I liked to escape INTO rather than FROM. I'd go to Middle Earth via reading no matter how good or bad the epoch might be.
Yeah, those were the editions of Lord of the Rings that I first read as well.
(They made a Thongor comic???) Great video!
Thanks!
Hey Vaughan, have you read anything by DMR press? They are dedicated to Sword and Sorcery stories like few others nowadays
14:05 I don’t think much of Moorcock’s fantasies are out of print (at least in the uk). But the latest reprints are uuuuuugly (and really cheap). It would be nice to get HC reprints of Hawkmoon and Corum…
His realist stuff is definitely out of print though.
Yeah, I was thinking they should be reprinted in nice hardcovers like Elric.
That was fun, is it me or did a lot of those non cimmerian barbarian warriors have very silly names? they put a smile on my face. S&S books certainly had some super painted covers back in ye olden days, some modern books must be so envious.
Michael, One thing you didn't mention about Lin Carter. He wrote some of the episodes of the original Spider Man cartoon.
I didn’t know that!
I remember Savage Sword. It was a larger format, like a magazine. More British format size.
Yes. The pages are even larger than the omnibus reprints.
thanks,1970's were great!!! I think Frank Frazetta album and book covers had a lot to do with it. Also D&D helped.
I agree about Frazetta, for sure.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 Yes, I commented before I watched the whole video and you hit all the things I thought of, good stuff the 70's. thanks
Great history lesson!
I hope that other Moorcock series like Corum and Hawkmoon and Von Bek will get the same treatment as Elric with those nice hardcovers.
Yeah, me too.
I would have added the amazing Tanith Lee with the incredible trilogy The Birthgrave, Vazkor, son of Vazkor, Quest for the White Witch (1975-1978).
I wonder if you’d enjoy some D&D novels like Drizzt the dark elf? Those are some sword and sorcery ass sword and sorcery. Oh wait I’m forgetting a certain 500 book challenge again 😮
Thanks!
I'd add the rise of heavy metal. Look at some of the album covers of that era.
Looking groovy 😎
Thanks!
Some of my favorite books came from the decapitated unicorn series. Although, I have to admit that I bought some of them more for the cover art than the contents.
If I ever get another dog, I must name him Thongor. Even if he’s a she.
"The furniture was strange"
Was it wrapped in plastic? 😂
And the French magazine HEAVY METAL could have contributed as well! Album cover art? Frank Frazetta art on panel vans? I think a lot of those books sold because of the cover art. If the cover art had been lame, nothing might have happened.
Frazetta was amazing.
Greetings from Ukraine! Very interesting video, thank you.
Greetings! I hope you are doing okay over there!
Yeh you cant beat mission brown clothing. Actually you can, but you know. Rock n roll was pretty good in the 70's too. Great historical wrap up.
I will attempt to bring mission brown back!
I believe a slew of bad movies killed the appetite for S&S with the general public. My personal beef was the familiar trope of the protagonist
walking across the medieval village square and always a half dozen smokey fires choking everyone in the marketplace; you would expect to find burning tires in the town dump. Then everyone is dressed in rags, hanging out at some dilapidated castle. I wanted the Barry Smith renderings of polished marble towers under a star-studded sky. The awe of a young man venturing into the world beyond his mountain tribe. Instead, we got some brute with a sword kicking ass and looting the place.
I enjoyed the paper books and bought the EEIRE and CREEPY with the Frazetta covers and Marvel's Kull (which I enjoyed the plotting and artwork more than Conan under John Buscema's run.)
There were a lot of bad S&S movies in the 80s!
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 Surely you don't mean The Barbarians, a 1987 sword and sorcery film with the Barbarian Brothers! ( I think they were in a Conan movie too.)
You're correct. It was the 1980's movies that were appalling.
Yesterday’s sword and sorcery was heavily male based with most stories about he-man heroes rescuing buxom princesses and engaging in debauchery. Now it is non-PC to have that. The latest Dungeons and Dragons movie is showing that. High fantasy does not go in that direction which I feel has allowed it to be lauded and copied today.
You are probably right. Of course I’ve always liked the whole buxom princesses and debauchery thing.
@@michaelk.vaughan8617 Woo hoo!
I still don't understand why every paperback of that era looked like porn.
Why wouldn’t they!? 😅
Oh my, Michael! Roger looks so much like you when he has clothes on! Does that mean that you would look like Roger without said clothes? Of course, only the Lady of the Manor would and should know that...😶🌫...... I was just wondering.....😇
Yes, just like Roger. We are practically twins.
Increasing popularity may not be a good thing. How long before Howard receives the Dahl-Fleming treatment?