Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" discussion

We have Gonji and Egypt occurring now.
Jan-Feb is our annual Anthology time.

Need some suggestions for Nov-Dec., at least to put into a poll.

The Sword of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett
and
The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany

Theme of Conan Pastiche (not clonans); ie Conan: Road of Kings or many others.

Or to stick with REH, we could do a Cormac Mac Art by REH or even pastiches from Offutt like When Death Birds Fly.

Or something new, like Skelos magazine?


Other ideas to poll?

S.E. wrote: "We have Gonji and Egypt occurring now.
Jan-Feb is our annual Anthology time.

Need some suggestions for Nov-Dec., at least to put into a poll.

The Sword of Rhiannon by [author:Leigh ..."

Sword of Rhiannon!

The Conan pastiche library could use some love. I know there is a lot of mediocre novels in the Tor series, there are also a few gems; Conan and the Emerald Lotus is really good, as are most of the books by John Maddox Roberts. And we could look back at the earliest works by deCamp/Carter/Nyberg; some of the short stories were not too bad. (I know, heresy!)

I am a hard-core Howard fan, but I still enjoyed many of these pastiche stories. In an effort to bring Howard's pure works to the masses (a noble cause, for sure) some have trampled over these fun stories, good and bad.

Hmm...no reaction from the anti-pastiche crowd? Perhaps most Howard fans are over it, and can live with the pastiche novels now that they have mountains of Howard's un-tampered original material readily available...

I read quite a few pastiches in years past. Burned out on them a bit. Some were good, some not so much. As you say.

C.L. Werner's Brunner, I recommend omnibus, but that might be a bit much to bite off, though getting all the stories in one package is sweet.

Jack wrote: "S.wagenaar wrote: "Hmm...no reaction from the anti-pastiche crowd? Perhaps most Howard fans are over it, and can live with the pastiche novels now that they have mountains of Howard's un-tampered o..."

After reading the Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter stories several times when they came out I also read some of the novels that were published written by Poul Anderson's " Conan and the Spider God", Karl Edward Wagner's "The Road of Kings", and a couple of others. When Tor starting putting the Pastiches in the 80s I was somewhat disappointed because you could not find the original Howard stories anywhere. I never read any of the Robert Jordan, et al novels and never will. I am a fan of Robert E Howard's writing not pastiches of Conan Stories which never measure up. I sold all my Lancer/Ace pastiches as I prefer the Howard versions in the Del Rey publications in the order the stories were written.

Conan and the Spider God was actually written by deCamp, and is truly atrocious. Anderson wrote Conan the Rebel, and it's pretty decent.

I totally get where you are coming from in terms of Howard vs pastiche; there is only one Howard. But I feel that the "quality " of the pastiche work is purely subjective, and opinions vary wildly, as they should. Pastiche is very hard to do well. If you try to copy the original style exactly, it usually fails spectacularly, and if you try to revise or update the character, it becomes unrecognizable . Just try to respect the source, I guess...

Thanks Stan, Jason, Jack, and Charles....this is great. I'll shoot out a poll today.

Vote!
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

I added a novella-length book to the poll. I'm thinking of either The Emperor's Railroad and its follow-up The Ghoul King, The Traitor (or any other Michael Cisco, S&S flavored, novella) or something from tor.com's list of releases.