Lemuria Press

A Very Gainsbourg Christmas (Year 7)

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 07:09:40 GMT

Is anyone still on LiveJournal? I'm not.

I am, however, still posting annual Serge Gainsbourg mega-posts every Christmas.

Come join my over at my current, semi-frequently-updated blog, Paperback Flash, for this year's festivities!

And merry Christmas, everyone!

A Very Gainsbourg Christmas: Year 6!

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 01:36:54 GMT

It's that time of year again! The presents have all been opened. The Swedish meatballs are being digested. Snow is(n't) in the air and on the ground, and I'm ensconced in the ancestral home in Minnesota. It's Christmas! Which means it's time for my annual post to this old blog as part of one of the few traditions I've managed to continue for six years running.

I speak, of course, of the annual tribute to my hero, Serge Gainsbourg!

I imagine many of you didn't quite get the presents you were hoping for this year (and even fewer of you actually got anything of substance from _me_). But no more! All of that is over, because I come to you with a sleigh-full of wonderful treats from the Greatest Gallic, Mr. Serge Gainsbourg himself!

Don't say I never got you anything!

But before we get to the tunes, a bit of reflection on the year that was (and will be for another week) 2011.

Work at Paizo continues to dominate most of my life and thoughts. Our Pathfinder Roleplaying Game continues strong sales, at times this year even eking out Dungeons & Dragons as the best-selling tabletop RPG in hobby stores. All of that success has brought new product lines, new staff, new licenses, and new challenges. I've said it countless times, but every year I think "there's no way I could be busier than I am now," and every year I've been busier than the year before. As they say here in Minnesota: Uff Da!

I'm thankful that 2011 has had me traveling less than in the last two years, as it means I can spend more time at home in Seattle with my girlfriend Danica and our pug Ptolemy. Danica and I traveled to Finland this year as guests of RopeCon, probably the most prestigious "invite" an American game professional can get. Our hosts treated us like royalty, and everyone there was wonderful. They tell me they need to let 10 years go by before they can invite a guest back, but I'm not certain I'm willing to wait that long, and I may have to head back some time on my own dime.

As part of that trip, Danica and I visited St. Petersburg, Russia, marking our first trip beyond the Iron Curtain. We both loved that trip as well, which included visits to the Hermitage art museum as well as side-trips to museums dedicated to torture devices and deformed babies. My kind of town, St. Petersburg!

All the while, my buddy Serge Gainsbourg has been by my side (and in my ears), pounding out the soundtrack of my life with a puff of cigarette smoke and a row of alcoholic beverages. It's true, I pick some strange heroes, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

So as my annual tribute to you, the reader (both of you who still read this blog, anyway), let's get on to the festivities!

First up this year is an early hit of Gainsbourg's that bubbled back to my attention thanks to a really fun scene in the French-language Gainsbourg biopic "Gainsbourg: Un Vie Heroique," which we saw at the Seattle International Film Festival. The song is called "Intoxicated Man," and true to Serge's life story, it's about drinking.

Here's the short scene from the movie, which features a neat duet with another French signer, Boris Vian, who had a hit with a very similar subject matter.

In previous years, I've tried to match my Christmas clips to my mood. Two years ago, when the toll of travel and a hideous work schedule made me feel like I was sliding into my own sort of Gainsbourgian decline, for example, I posted songs from the era of Serge's slide into alcoholism and eventual death. This year, I'm feeling much more confident and having a lot more fun with things, so I've selected a few tracks from what I consider to be Gainsbourg's strongest period, from the late 1950s and 60s.

Up first is one of my favorites, a beautiful little number called "Scenic Railway" complete with its own very early music video.

In France, Gainsbourg is perhaps best known for his clever lyrics and double entendres. My four years of high school French let me catch most of it, but at times all I can manage is knowing that he's on fire vocally, even if I don't fully understand what exactly he's saying. This next track is a perfect example, and it's become one of his most frequently covered songs. It's called "Elaneudanla Teiteia," and it is awesome.

Ok, so I'm going to sneak one in from the 70s. While Serge's masterpiece, the concept album "Histoire de Melody Nelson," dropped in 1971, things started to slide by the end of the 70s. You can tell just by looking at him. Apparently you can't drink like a fish every single day of your adult life without it taking a physical toll. Dammit. So he's starting to look a bit like a wreck in this one, but I still love the song (not least because I understand nearly all the lyrics). In the middle of a long, cold winter in Seattle, I often think about the warm feeling of standing directly in a ray of the Sun, and this song comes thundering up from my subconscious. "Sous Le Soleil Exactement." Enjoy!

Lastly, Gainsbourg achieved a great deal of fame and renown writing material for others, particularly younger women that he leered at like a lecher, if not slept with outright. One famous example is France Gall, for whom he wrote a song that won the Eurovision Song Contest. This isn't that song, but it puts the two of them together again in a fun little 60s ditty about LSD. It's one of my favorites (the song, not the drug). It comes complete with the very Serge Gainsbourg title, "Teenie, Weenie, Boppie," and I absolutely love it.

So that's it for 2011. I still blog over at Paperback Flash from time to time, and I post almost daily to my Facebook fan page. Stop by and say hello!

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It's Alive!

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 09:09:39 GMT

This week I've been blogging up a storm over on my other blog, Paperback Flash.

I'm reviewing all 52 new titles in DC Comics's New 52 relaunch, and so far I've covered 10 of them.

I'm not going to bother crossposting any of that content over here, and in fact I've pretty much made the decision to abandon this blog, more or less, treating it like an archive.

I'll probably keep posting my Gainsbourg Christmas posts over here, because I'm a sucker for tradition, but beyond that most of my blogging will be over at Paperback Flash, and not here.

I've already written more posts over there this week than I have written here in over a year.

Come on over and read 'em!

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A Very Gainsbourg Christmas: YEAR 5!

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 03:59:55 GMT

Another year is almost gone, and I've hardly posted anything to LiveJournal in the last twelve months. But the snow is in the air, I am ensconced in the ancestral home in Minnesota, and I'm a sucker for tradition, so today means SERGE GAINSBOURG returns to Lemuria Press!

Before we get to the tunes, here's a bit of a recap on what's been going on with my blog lately.

Nothing.

Ok, that's the short version. The long version is that for whatever reason I've posted here SIXTY-TWO fewer times in 2010 than I did in 2009. Another way of saying that is to note that this is my 11th post so far this year. Fairly pathetic, really.

So what's going on? Why haven't I been posting to Lemuria Press as much as I used to? Let's see the run down:

1) Facebook. The conversational nature of Facebook and the near-real-time give and take with readers makes it a far superior venue for short observations, link sharing, and nearly everything other than in-depth posts than Livejournal. I regularly post several times a day over on Facebook, even while this place dies a little each day. If you haven't already stopped by, check out my "fan" page over on Facebook and join the conversation!

2) I moved in June, and a lot of my life is still in boxes. At long last, my paperback and pulp collection is shelved and sorted, but my scanner is still in mothballs, which means no new paperback scans. No new paperback scans mean no new posts to my other blog over at Paperback Flash (which I crosspost here), which means less posting in general. I hope to rectify this soon.

3) Work, work, work. Paizo's editorial staff (which I manage) is now around 15 people, and we're making more stuff (and re-making new printings after sell-outs) than ever before. That means more work has crept into personal time, which means less blogging. All work and no play makes Erik a dull boy. That said, it does make Erik money, which is a nice substitute for excitement.

4) Meh.

So that's the reasoning behind my absence here of late. I hope to do better next year. One thing that I KNOW will happen next year, however, is a Serge Gainsbourg Christmas extravaganza. Speaking of which...

LET'S BEGIN!

Last year I presented a bunch of Serge's music from his slow descent into alcoholism and mediocrity. Enough of that. This year I'm going to start with a couple of tunes from his early period, jazzy "chanson" tunes that fit within the musical style of French music in the late 1950s and early 60s, but which have a heaping helping of the brilliance that would set Gainsbourg apart in later years.

I start today with one of Gainsbourg's earliest hits, Le Poinconnuer des Lilas, a brilliantly written song about a ticket puncher in the Paris Metro. I chose this clip because it includes English subtitles. A lot of Serge's lyrics are absolutely brilliant, and although the songs that go with them are often extraordinary in their own right, the brilliance of the lyrics are often lost on those who cannot speak French. I myself have only high school French to guide me, so I only catch part of it. Thanks to the maker of this video, you can get a chance to see Serge at the height of his lyrical power. I love this song.

Next we have another tune from the same era, a little ditty called "Chanson de Prevert." The lyrics are haunting and the song carries a hint of sadness just perfect for the deep winter months.

Ok, how about some up-tempo Serge, from a little later in his career? I thought you'd never ask. Here's is my 100% absolute favorite Serge Gainsbourg song on YouTube, a duet with French pop starlet France Gall that won the Eurovision Song Contest. It's a song about a little girl named Annie (Gall) who likes to suck on lollipops. Of course, the song is actually about blowjobs, which Gall didn't realize until some time later. She was allegedly furious, but the joke is on her. Something tells me Europe was in on it. The duet in this video (to say nothing of the weird imagery on the scenery) does a lot to bring up the creepiness factor, which is probably why I love it.

Unfortunately, the douchebag who uploaded this to YouTube disabled embedding, so you'll have to click the link. Trust me, it is absolutely worth it.

CLICK THE LINK! CLICK THE LINK! OMG, CLICK THE LINK!!!!

LOVE IT.

Ok, enough about twisted lyrics. Did you know that Gainsbourg was also a talented film score composer capable of laying down an awesome track without a single word? Here's a song from the movie "Cannabis," in which he starred with the love of his life (and later wife), British actress Jane Birkin. It's called "Danger," and it's my unofficial theme song for 2011.

On that tune, Serge collaborated with his all-time greatest music partner, the unparalleled Jean Claude-Vannier. Vannier helped Serge score his opus, Histoire de Melody Nelson, which is where I first came across Gainsbourg. If you've never listened to this 1971 masterpiece, you really owe it to yourself to listen to the whole thing. Thankfully, it's all on YouTube for your listening pleasure. Trust me, everyone you know who really knows about music knows and loves this record. I'm sure I've included the main track below on previous Gainsbourg Christmases, but because I'm such a nice guy, here it is again.

You're welcome.

There's a slightly better version here, but the same ass disabled embedding, so I leave it to true experts to seek out by following this link. With a little work, you can piece together the whole TV special "music video" version of the album from that link. It's weird, it's wild, it's perverted beyond imagination, and it was parodied on a Flight of the Conchords episode you probably love. It's available in its purest form on YouTube. Give yourself something for Christmas and check it out.

So until next year, or until the next time I post to Lemuria Press (very likely the same thing), Merry Christmas from me and Serge!

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The Fall of Cthulhu

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:29:28 GMT

Let's see if I remember how LiveJournal works....

Here I sit at my ancestral abode in the suburbs of Minneapolis without a whole lot to do, churning the hours until the family convenes for the annual Christmas festivities. With a lot of free time and relatively few distractions, I decided to use my time productively, and wrote up a very long recap of the last session of my epic 4-year Call of Cthulhu campaign back at the office in Seattle.

Only I'm not posting it here, because I wrote it for my EN World column, which has had only slightly more life to it in the last year than this place has.

You can read the whole story here, at EN World.

But regular readers of Lemuria Press (assuming there are any of you left!), do not despair! I'll be posting at least a couple more times before I head back to Seattle on Tuesday, including the annual Serge Gainsbourg Christmas extravaganza.

It wouldn't be Christmas around here without a little Serge.

But you already knew that.

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Moving, Moving, Moving

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 23:33:11 GMT

Slowly but surely, my life is coming out of boxes in the new apartment and taking on some semblance of its former meaning and shape. Last weekend I filled up five IKEA "Billy" bookshelves with nonfiction and some gaming books (now down to just one gaming shelf!), but ALL of my fiction (probably about a dozen moving boxes full) remains in boxes awaiting new bookshelves to properly display it.

My girlfriend and I have a houseguest currently occupying the second bedroom/library, so it will be at least another week before I get all that mess sorted out. My home office desk is still in pieces awaiting reconstruction.

Oh! And this weekend is Paizo Con, so nothing will be happening until that's over and done with.

After Paizo Con my schedule is fairly normal. A quick trip up to Victoria with vacationing parents in early July, then off to Indianapolis in August for Gen Con, which will be huge as ever. And it's looking like there may be a September trip to France in the offing for one of their major game conventions, but I don't want to jinx that by talking about it too much before the details are all sorted out.

So, like every year, things get super-stressy from about April through the beginning of September. I've tried to make it different every year, but I've come to accept that this is pretty much the way it will be forever, or at least until I get a different job.

But I like this job, and plan to stick around a while. It'll be 8 years at Paizo on July 1st.

Wow.

So, anyway, this is all my way of saying I will get back to the blog and more regular posting soon... at least until next April or so! :)

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New EN World Post: I Have Too Much RPG Stuff!

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:09:46 GMT

Wha?

A new post here on Lemuria Press?

And no one had to die to make it happen?

AMAZING!

I'm still stuck in publishing/moving my apartment hell in a way that will continue to keep me away from regular posting to this blog or Paperback Flash for the immediate future (my home office desk is not even assembled yet!), but I did manage to carve out some time to write up a new EN World column.

This month's installment, naturally, focuses on my recent move across town in Seattle, and reflects on what that move means for my elephantine RPG collection.

Enjoy!

RIP Frank Frazetta (1928–2010)

Mon, 10 May 2010 19:30:28 GMT

Legendary pulp paperback artist Frank Frazetta died today of complications following a stroke. No other illustrator in the history of book publishing has had such a monumental impact upon the public consciousness and visual design of books. His imitators are legion, but his abilities will never be surpassed.

I've posted often about Frazetta's work here on Paperback Flash (click his name on the tag list below to jump to past posts), and his death today is enough to shock me back into posting here, despite crushing book deadlines of my own at my own little corner of the publishing world.

I only wish I'd uploaded more Frazetta covers to make this retrospective even more impressive. I'm in the process of moving so new scans will have to wait a bit, but for now here's a visual feast of several Frank Frazetta images from my book collection. I've got at least 30 more, but alas they will have to wait until things are a little more settled.

You'll be missed, Frank, but never forgotten.

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Crossposted to Paperback Flash.
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I'll Be at NORWESCON in Seattle This Weekend!

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:10:26 GMT

I will be a guest of Seattle's venerable NORWESCON science fiction convention this weekend, and would love to meet you if you will also be there! I've been a panelist for the convention's gaming track for about five years going, and the convention's offerings just get better and better.

This year, my buddy Tim Nightengale used his formidable Rolodex to put together an astonishingly awesome gaming program with participants you're unlikely to find this side of Gen Con. Seriously, Seattle is a major center of RPG and hobby game activity, and I believe representatives from most of the major local companies (WotC, Paizo, Green Ronin, etc.) will be on hand.

Here's my seminar schedule (a bit light this year, which is fine because I should spend most of the weekend writing). I'm really excited about all of these, and hope to see you there!

Friday, Noon, Evergreen 2
Build a Better Adventure
What makes a good adventure? One that players can't wait to continue; that they spend their off-time thinking about and planning for until they play again? Join our gaming panelists in a discussion of how to design better adventures.
Erik Mona (M), Richard Baker, Bruce R. Cordell, James Jacobs

Friday, 4:00 p.m., Evergreen 2
Underwater Ninja Tigers! (or A Friendly Discussion on Monster Design)
What makes a truly great monster in a game? Our panelists discuss the best of the best in the gaming menagerie (or the worst of the worst, depending on your perspective), with an emphasis on the monsters themselves and not on any particular game systems statistics, and give their expert advice on how to come up with your own creations.
Erik Mona (M), Wolfgang Baur, James Jacobs

Saturday, 1:00 p.m., Evergreen 1
Ask the Gamemasters
Has your current campaign reached a dead end? Not sure how to keep your players happy? Have a problem player that you need to deal with? Want to add some house rules to your game, but unsure how to make them work? Come to this panel with questions about your RPG campaign.
Erik Mona (M), Jason Bulmahn, Sean K Reynolds

Should be fun! See you there!

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Valley of the Flame (1964)

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:58:32 GMT

I've been away from the blog for a while working on some Pathfinder RPG projects. While procrastinating from one of those projects recently, I got into a discussion with a science fiction fan about the pulp era married writing duo of C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. I've published several works by the two authors in Paizo's Planet Stories fiction line, and a lot of my reading over the last few years has focused on these authors and their contemporaries. I haven't read everything they wrote. I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I've read dozens of stories and novels by both authors and I've amassed and plan to read about three times that much. I'm getting there.

Anyway, in the course of our conversation, the fan said "I actually liked Moore's solo work better than her work with Kuttner (whom I always saw as a great craftsman but not a great creative force)."

That's certainly the contemporary view of Kuttner. Many critics specifically cite Kuttner as a "craftsman," which (while absolutely true regarding story structure, clever endings, and the "mechanics" of a story) seems to me to suggest that Kuttner was technically good at his job, but not really good. If you know what I mean. I think "craftsman," as a critical label, is as much of a negative as a positive.

Kuttner was definitely a craftsman, and C. L. Moore was definitely in the upper tier of her generation, but I have developed what I think is a more complex appreciation for Kuttner than the standard view by seeking out works he published under his own byline and works prior to his marriage to get a sense of him as a writer outside of Catherine's influence. Additionally, I've favored work that has not been frequently reprinted, such as old 60s Ace novels or pulps from the 40s.

The place to start with Kuttner is the classic horror story "The Graveyard Rats," his first published work. This is a masterpiece, among the most effective horror stories I've ever read. It is really remarkable, and sticks with you a long, long time. I shudder to even think about it.

From there, explore the classic Galloway Gallagher stories collected in ROBOTS HAVE NO TAILS.

In her introduction to the Lancer edition of these stories, Moore claimed to have written not a single word of these screwball sci-fi mystery stories. These stories accurately display Kuttner's creativity, clever plot constructions, madcap (often very dark) humor, and tight, entertaining endings.

The thing is, Henry Kuttner wrote for a living. And he wrote a LOT. Whereas virtually everything I've read by C. L. Moore stood out in one way or another, a lot of Hank's stories are pretty clearly first drafts.

Every writer agonizes over his first story, polishing it up perfectly, revising time and again before it is ready to be sent off to some editor. "The Graveyard Rats," is a vivid Lovecraft pastiche so effective that many (including me) think reads as well as the genuine article.

That story, I think, is emblematic of the type of genius Kuttner was capable of when he had the time to fully develop his ideas and polish his style. Much of Kuttner's work, stylistically speaking, is fairly straightforward. But when he gets to Something Wonderful (like a crystal monster fallen from space, or a ribbon of life-giving, time-slowing nebula dust in the mountain valley of a South American tropical rainforest, or metal bus coming alive and squeezing the liquid chunks of its riders out the windows as it warps itself into a perfect sphere), the lush description kicks into overdrive. In some cases, Hank applied that lens to entire stories or short novels, and the results can be really breathtaking.

The best stories I've found by Henry Kuttner so far:

"Home is the Hunter"
"The Dark World"
"The Valley of Flame"
"The Mask of Circe"

The four of those stories are, in my view, as strong as the best works of C. L. Moore, or any of their contemporaries in the pulps of the 1940s. That the world could throw together two writers of such high caliber in the same marriage is almost unbelievable.

And with Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton, it happened twice in the same decade!

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Crossposted to Paperback Flash.
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Tales of a Monster Hunter (1978)

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 02:02:35 GMT

"Evacuate? In our moment of triumph?"

In 1977 Peter Cushing personified evil for me with his performance as the cold, calculating Grand Moff Tarkin in the first Star Wars movie. Futura Publications Unlimited released this book a year after that film's release, no doubt capitalizing on Cushing's increased fame as a villain in the blockbuster. What I didn't know at the time (as a lad of three years) was that Cushing had achieved considerable fame as the star of several Hammer films. Those were way ahead of me in 1978, but I'm sure I would have noticed this book immediately.

I mean, it's Tarkin's favorite horror stories. Who wouldn't want to check that out?

The book contains:

How I Became a Monster Hunter; by Peter Cushing
The Masked Ball; by Alexandre Dumas
The Mortal Immortal; by Mary Shelley
Dracula's Guest; by Bram Stoker
In the Footsteps of the Abominable Snowman; by Josef Nesvadba
The Ring of Thoth; by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Gorgon; by Gertrude Bacon
The Man Who Collected Poe; by Robert Bloch
The Ghoul of Golders Green; by Michael Arlen
There Shall Be No Darkness; by James Blish

That's a remarkably literate list from an actor, until you realize that Cushing didn't actually choose the stories. That duty seems to have fallen to legendary British anthologist Peter Haining, whose fingerprints are all over my library in the form of dozens of anthologies on diverse subjects. Haining died about a year ago, but not before releasing scores of anthologies featuring rare stories and overlooked gems. Regretfully, I have not yet had a chance to read the stories in this volume. I'm particularly interested in the Stoker, Conan Doyle, and Nesvadba offerings, as I'd never heard of any of them before picking this up last winter.

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Crossposted to Paperback Flash.
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The Creature from Beyond Infinity (1968)

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:03:59 GMT

Here's the 1968 Popular Library reprint of Henry Kuttner's 1940 Startling Stories novel, A Million Years to Conquer. It's interesting to compare this image by legendary cover artist Frank Frazetta with the interior opening spread from the pulp, which I presented in the last post.

All in all, this isn't one of the strongest Frazetta covers in my collection, which is another reason why it didn't exactly leap to the top of the Henry Kuttner pile (and believe me, that's quite a pile in my library!).

The Creature of the title is sort of the villain of the piece. I say sort of because what's really going on is that people get crazy irradiated and kill everything they touch, and this is connected to Ardath and his alien people, as mentioned in the previous post. And while the irradiated people become monstrous in aspect, the actual villain of the piece is one of the super-humans Ardath has harvested for his long-term genetics project.

I don't know if "The Creature from Beyond Infinity" was a reversion to an original title changed by Startling Stories or a new title from someone at Popular Library (which seems likely, as Kuttner was dead by the time the paperback version came out), but either way I think "A Million Years to Conquer" is a better and more fitting title.

Decent cover on this one, though. Everybody loves elephants, right?

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Crossposted to Paperback Flash, my vintage book and magazine collecting blog.
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A Million Years to Conquer (1940)

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:58:18 GMT

This is the cover illustration for the November 1940 edition of Startling Stories, which contains the novel A Million Years to Conquer, by Henry Kuttner. I picked up this issue on my initial sweep of Kuttner novels a few years ago, when looking for stories to reprint in Paizo's Planet Stories fiction line. I bought it because (to my knowledge), it had never been reprinted.

Turns out I was wrong. In 1968, Popular Library re-issued the story with a new title, The Creature from Beyond Infinity, complete with a cover from legendary artist Frank Frazetta. At some point the story appears to have fallen into the public domain, and is fairly easily available online. I'll get around to showing off that cover in the next few days.

Essentially, the novel was about this guy:

Old Ardath is the last survivor of an alien crash landing on Earth. He will be able to leave and repopulate his super-advanced civilization, but to do so he needs humans at the very top of their evolutionary peers. So he flies his space ship into orbit, from whence he periodically descends to kidnap super-awesome humans from various points in history. Like this:

I finally polished off the story on a recent trip to London, when I powered through five Kuttner novels over about a week and a half. This one turned out to be the turkey of the bunch, and although it has some fun points it doesn't even come close to Kuttner's finest offerings. Perhaps the effect was obvious because I read it in the same week I read The Mask of Circe, Valley of the Flame, and The Time Axis, but there you have it. On the other hand, the book was about 50 times better than the sorry POS that followed it (Frank Belknap Long's It Was the Day of the Robot, so all was not lost.

The Startling Stories cover was painted by Earle Bergey, a mainstay of the magazine who nearly always painted a "good girl" image, so this cover is something of a departure. I actually prefer it to the Frazetta cover on the '68 reprint, but then again I'm a sucker for the old stuff.

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Crossposted to Paperback Flash, my book and pulp-collecting blog.
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My New EN World Column is Online!

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 23:10:22 GMT

Happy New Year, everyone!

I just posted what should probably be last month's column to my EN World blog, entitled "Whitley "Whitt" Whittaker and Erik's Glass Jaw". It's about our ongoing office Call of Cthulhu campaign and my first real brush with PC death.

It turns out I can dish it out a lot better than I can take it.

But I'm learning my lessons and plotting my sweet, sweet revenge.

Check it out and let me know what you think!

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A Very Gainsbourg Christmas YEAR 4

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 07:23:56 GMT

It's been a hell of a year for me, so this year's Christmas Serge icon shows the great French musician heading into his long, slow decline, Gitane cigarette in hand, hunched forward, sliding into oblivion. Which is kind of how I've felt (minus the French cigarettes) for much of the past year.

There's really no reason for it. My business, Paizo Publishing, has had its most successful year ever. The major book release we put out this year (the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook) is still at this point the #1 roleplaying game book on Amazon.com, a spot it's held more or less consistently since it came out in August (so long as we could keep it in print, that is). Work has sent me all over the world this year. Off the top of my head, I've been in New York City, Las Vegas, Baltimore, San Jose, Portland, Minneapolis (thrice), and London, from which I have only just returned. And really, I think all that traveling is a major part of the problem. Last year (when I traveled perhaps twice as frequently, hitting all those places plus Columbus, Denver, Calgary, and more), I swore I wouldn't do it to myself again in 2009. That held for about the first third of the year, after which it was back to the airport on a regular basis.

All of that travel has brought a TON of good things my way. Again, off the top of my head, in the last year I've seen:

• The Winchester Mystery House
• The Rosetta Stone
• The Elgin Marbles
• T-Rex and Triceratops bones
• A stuffed dodo
• Meteorites from Outer Space
• The Original Painting for the cover of Guns, Germs, and Steel
• Huge paintings by Raphael larger than my apartment
• Whitechapel, London and several sites in the Jack the Ripper mystery
• Moctezuma's Throne
• A middle school production based on a Pathfinder adventure
• The Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook burning through two huge print runs in 5 months

I've also had dinner with a science fiction Grand Master for the second year in a row, was in a wedding, started a novel, was a guest of honor at a convention in a foreign country, lost about 20 pounds, watched the Vikings beat the Packers from the press box, and a bunch of other awesome shit that it's shameful that I can't remember at the moment.

So, yeah. All that stuff is awesome. But the travel is leaving me with a huge sense of dislocation that occasionally borders on depression. The dreary annual deluge and sunshine-disappearing-act of Seattle in Wintertime is no doubt adding to the general sense of malaise (which makes it a good thing I'm writing this from snowy—but sunshiny—Minnesota).

Here's hoping I don't fall into a decadent slide like my boy Serge. You'll know the decline has begun if you start seeing me in pictures with even bigger bags under my eyes, about 60 pounds of extra weight, and if I almost always slur my words when I speak. Oh, and if I tell Whitney Houston "I want to fuck you."

Things would have to be pretty bad to say that!

But even during a steep decline of greatness best measured by the space between "Melody Nelson" and "You're Under Arrest," Serge Gainsbourg managed to continue cranking out catchy, insightful music (almost) all the way to the bitter end.

We should all be so lucky.

So, in the spirit of holiday malaise and general decline, this year I've decided to highlight some of my favorite Gainsbourg sounds from what I would identify as the period after the height of his creative powers. I still LOVE each and every one of these songs and unless you're very brave you'll have to take my word that I'm still protecting you from the worst of it. I now own 297 Gainsbourg songs, and believe you me, they are not all golden. Even on Serge's lamest late albums, however, I can usually find one or two songs that I really dig.

This Christmas, as my gift to you, I present some of my favorite Gainsbourg songs from the era of his slow decline. It's a reminder that even if things are going bad, there's still time to create greatness.

Speaking of greatness, remember those great skin flicks they used to play on Showtime and The Movie Channel late at night on weekends back in the day? Stuff like Drive-in Theater and foreign movies in which naked boobs were the only redeeming feature? Remember the Emmanuelle movies?

Turns out Serge Gainsbourg wrote the score and theme song to the third Emmanuelle movie, "Goodbye Emmanuelle," the second sequel to what was at the time the most successful X-rated movie ever imported into the United States. By the mid-80s when it was showing on Skinemax, the sex was pretty tame, but holy god the score was awesome. I distinctly remember seeing this movie as a kid, so it was very likely my first encounter with Serge Gainsbourg. Try not to hold it against me that the clip below contains no nudity.

Speaking of Gainsbourg music scores, one of my absolute favorites is the instrumental theme from the film Cannabis, in which he and girlfriend Jane Birkin play weed dealers. I haven't seen the movie, but I have listened to the soundtrack about a trillion times. There's a great version with lyrics in which Serge talks about Cannabis, but I actually prefer the song without the words, just as he scored it for the film. I like how in the comments to this YouTube video someone wrote "the fact that this guy is not a massive star in America just proves what a massive bunch of fucktards we are." Couldn't have said it better myself!

Lastly is "Je Suis Venu te Dire, que J'en Vais" (I Came to Tell You that I'm Going). This is a sad, catchy tune, but I'm including it here because the person who posted it to YouTube thoughtfully included a ton of terrible/awesome photos that illustrate Gainsbourg's decline into the alcoholism that eventually killed him. In this period (or perhaps shortly after it), Gainsbourg started calling himself "Gainsbarre," a sort of alter-ego boozer that had completely taken over. Sad. But hey, great song.

Those few of you who managed to make it all the way through the song will no doubt have noticed the sounds of a woman crying over the last few verses. This is in noted contrast to Gainsbourg's hits "Pauvre Lola" and "En Melody!" from the Melody Nelson album that made me fall in love with Serge Gainsbourg in the first place.

In fact, instead of a simple link to that song, I think I'll leave you with the video itself. Most of the videos above are from a iTunes mix I call DEEP GAINSBOURG, and they are admittedly "advanced" listening. If you don't get the appeal of the song below (beyond Birkin's annoying laugh, that is), I cannot help you.

Whew! Well, listening to all of that and posting these videos has made me feel a lot better than I did when I started writing this post, that's for sure.

Another victory for SERGE GAINSBOURG!

Have a merry Christmas, everyone!

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London Calling, 2009!

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 23:46:00 GMT

It's a crisp November night here in London-town, where I've been stationed for much of the last week as a special guest of Dragonmeet, an exciting one-day gaming event that draws fans from all over the United Kingdom. I arrived on Thursday morning, flush with more than $1,000 of walking-around money from my London Fund auction (thanks, guys!) and eager to return to the city I visited last August as part of a Paizo trip to Gen Con UK. Unlike last year, this time I'm hitting the city all on my lonesome. I decided to add a week of vacation after the convention to explore the city, and today was officially the first day of that exciting journey.

I arrived Thursday morning following a 10-hour flight out of Seattle. I didn't manage to sleep even a wink on the plane, leaving me plenty of time to read two ancient science fiction novels in one sitting. The first was Henry Kuttner's THE MASK OF CIRCE, an exciting tale in which the main character is projected into an otherworldly dimension where he takes on the persona of the mythic Jason. What starts as a pure fantasy takes a typical Kuttnerian turn into the realm of weird-science and otherworldy lands trapped in the timescape. Overall I found it one of the better Kuttner books I've read to date, almost up there with THE DARK WORLD, which I still consider the finest novel-length work I've read from him (and I've read rather a lot). I followed that up with a reprint of the Argosy/All-Story edition of Ralph Milne Farley's THE RADIO MAN, originally published in 1924.

THE RADIO MAN is a sort of Edgar Rice Burroughs planetary romance pastiche, which is to say it borrows several elements from the then (and still) fantastically popular A PRINCESS OF MARS. In this case, an experiment in matter transmission via radio (then cutting-edge technology) sends the hero, Myles Cabbot, to Venus, where he becomes embroiled in the affairs of two warring nations. On the one hand there's the fair-skinned winged humanoids called the Cupians. On the other are the ant-like Formians, who (mostly) represent the "bad guys" in the relatively straightforward adventure story. I was particularly interested in reading this one (it's been on my to-read pile for a couple of years) because the formains were co-opted into Dungeons & Dragons, and no one really seems to know what to do with them. They just seem like boring giant ant-people. I'm sorry to say that a read of THE RADIO MAN doesn't really have much to offer in the way of fleshing these guys out, but Farley wrote a half-dozen sequels that may very well give some additional details about their society and culture. They did carry umbrellas drive around in weird little cars, which was a bit odd.

After landing, I took a fabulously expensive cab ride to my downtown London hotel, the Copthorne Tara Hotel, just off Kensington High Street. I was REALLY jetlagged on Thursday, but I managed to wander around the neighborhood a bit. Since it was the first Thanksgiving in my life that I haven't spent with my family, I decided to have the most American meal I could find—french fries at McDonalds. Yum! My belly filled with nasty fried potatoes, I went back to the hotel and sunk into sweet, sweet sleep.

Or at least I tried to. Just like last time, I'm finding that jetlag is REALLY kicking my ass. I've been here four days, now, and I'm STILL not 100% acclimated. I find myself getting tired in the middle of the day and wide awake in the middle of the night. Not an ideal situation.

That said, it has left me with a lot of time to read, and somehow in that first 48 hours I managed to finish another novel, this time Henry Kuttner's VALLEY OF THE FLAME. This one involves an American doctor discovering a mysterious city-out-of-time in the Amazon rainforest, complete with humanoids evolved from jaguars and cool differences in the time flow. As usual, Kuttner takes what seems like a pure fantasy concept and invents some scientific mumbo-jumbo to rationalize what's happening. In this case the titular flame is a bit of life-giving nebula gas (cue the ubiquitous pulp-era text reference to the Arrhennius Theory) that rapidly evolves animals and keeps the valley in a different time-state from the rest of the jungle. It's a fascinating tale filled with lush description, a bit of brutal violence, and Kuttnerian femme fatales. I quite liked it, and rank it in the top 10% of the Kuttner I've read to date (which is most of it).

On Friday I ventured out from my sleeping chamber to get a haircut and some Italian food, finally meeting with my host, Cubicle 7's Angus Abranson, and a few Dragonmeet volunteers for a nightcap and some dinner. I finished out the day by cranking out another 1,000 words of my Spire of Nex Pathfinder novel. Not a great amount by any stretch, but I'm now charting out chapters in the final third of the book, which means I'm covering a lot of new ground that hasn't been as firmly envisioned as the first half of the novel outline, so I'm pleased with any progress at this point.

On Saturday I headed over to Dragonmeet, which was held at Kensington Town Hall, just a couple of blocks from my hotel (and about 500 feet from my Thanksgiving McDonalds). There I ran a four-hour event based on my Spire of Nex novel for five British Pathfinder players, including a lot of folks who have been instrumental in setting up PaizoCon UK and the local Pathfinder Society scene. It's the fifth time I've run the event (twice at PaizoCon US, twice at last month's Neon Con in Vegas), and for the first time I managed to actually kill a player character with what's not really much of a combat adventure. It was a particularly gruesome end (eaten by a cloaker!), and many cheers were heard from the Pathfinder room. After that I participated in three seminars (state of the industry, how to launch a successful RPG, and a general Q&A) with fellow gaming celebrities Angus Abranson (Cubicle 7), Robin Laws (every company in the industry), Brennan Taylor (IPR), and Gregor Hutton (Box Ninja). The latter gave me a copy of his self-published science fiction RPG 3:16: Carnage Amongst the Stars, which has convinced me I need to be paying a LOT more attention to the "Indy RPG" scene. Lots of great things are happening there, but all of the time spent on Pathfinder has kept me from exploring much of it. I'm thinking that should change soon (no doubt with a session of the new game Umlaut: The Game of Metal, which I picked up at the show).

One more quick note on Dragonmeet. At the show I had the honor of paging through a pre-release copy of Cubicle 7's new RPG Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. As a long-time Doctor Who fan, this was a VERY exciting event for me, and I simply cannot wait to buy a copy when it hits the States in a couple of weeks. I think Angus is going to be tremendously successful with this game, and the top-notch production values go a long way toward solidifying my opinion on the matter. It's a beautiful boxed set, and I'm really excited to give it a whirl.

On Sunday Angus and the other volunteers and artists staying at our hotel (Norman, Tracy, and Linda) took the Tube to another neighborhood where we joined many of the guests and volunteers for an after-party drink-up at a local British pub. It was POURING rain that afternoon, but the walk was blessedly brief. So far I haven't cracked out the umbrella I brought from Seattle, but it doesn't look like my luck will hold out for the rest of the week, which promises to be wet and miserable, weather wise.

Today was a nice exception, being a brisk and dry winter afternoon. I spent most of the day at the wonderful Victoria & Albert Museum, of which I will have much to say tomorrow. In preparing for this post, I realized that I must have left the adapter for my camera back in Seattle, so I'm going to need to pick up a new one here in London if I'm to share any of my pictures with you before I return home next week. And I took some LOVELY pictures today.

Finished off the day at a GREAT Lebanese restaurant called Ranoush that I would highly recommend to anyone. There are several of these restaurants situated around London, apparently, and after tasting the shish taouk it's obvious why. Certainly the most delicious meal I've had since Las Vegas's Golden Steer several weeks back. They say there's no good food in England, but in London I always end up eating like a king.

More photos and stories tomorrow, if I can manage to find some way to get the pictures off my phone and onto my computer. In the meantime, here are a couple of shots from Dragonmeet with my players and assorted Pathfinder fans. Both were taken by Rob Silk, who plays a great cleric of Asmodeus and whose running of one of our scenarios was an absolute joy to behold.

More soon.

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Announcing the Erik Mona London Fund Ebay Auction!

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:59:13 GMT

I'm honored to be a special guest at Dragonmeet in London on November 28th of this year. I am so thrilled to get another chance to return to London so soon after last year's Gen Con UK trip, and I have plans for a full week of exploration in the city following the convention.

All that is going to cost some money, so I've decided to bite the bullet and post several collectible RPG and Dungeons & Dragons items from my memorabilia collection. I've accumulated a tremendous amount of cool D&D stuff over the last 10 years of working in the industry, and was hoarding old gaming books even before I got the job at Wizards of the Coast in 1999.

I've listed some really cool items in this auction, and if people show enough interest, I may delve even deeper into the depths of my collection to see what I can unearth. This time around I included the ultra-rare DUNE: CHRONICLES OF THE IMPERIUM RPG, the huge Greyhawk World Map from Dungeon a few years ago, a DRAGON MAGAZINE ARCHIVE CD-ROM, and OTHER GOODIES.

You can visit the complete auction list by following this link to my eBay store.

I figure most of you follow this blog because you're interested in the stuff I've written for D&D or Pathfinder, or we share common interests like gaming. Some of you probably don't care so much about this stuff, but I tried to jazz up the auction with cool photos and fun descriptions that might make it worth your while. After the first 15 auctions, it got kind of hard not to throw some jokes into the descriptions.

I practically beg people to bid on my mint condition copy of CHRONOMANCER, for example. We'll see if it works (I have my doubts!).

Anyway, here's a look at some of the cool stuff that could soon be yours!

Help me raise a pint (or three) in jolly old London Town by checking out my London Fund eBay Auction before it's too late!

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Watched the "V" Pilot Tonight

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:58:30 GMT

It was ok. Good enough, or perhaps a bit better. I was very lukewarm (but patient) with it, but I think it took a slight turn for the better with the big fight scene and the, um, betrayal at the end. I also liked the juxtaposition of some of the scenes.

Sometimes I felt like the words the script put into the mouths of the characters were not all that well chosen, but the structure of the script was relatively tight.

Lastly, I felt the whole thing didn't have anywhere near as "heavy" a feel as the original mini-series. Part of that was because the original V (though cheezy by today's metrics) was groundbreaking. By comparison, this seemed "light".

I think it's the difference between an hour-long show and an 80s miniseries. I remember feeling some of the same things when I watched the first new season of Doctor Who, but I felt that new series grew into the format with just a few episodes. Or rather, it took me a few episodes to acclimate to the shorter, more rapidly paced format. I suspect this show will be the same.

I haven't added it as a season pass yet, but I plan to watch the next few episodes.

Kyrik and the Wizard's Sword (1976)

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:43:27 GMT

I'm happy to report that nudity returns to the Kyrik covers with this, the final installment in Kyrik's epic saga. I think it's pretty amusing how these books say "in the tradition of Conan" on the cover, as if it were even needed.

Shirtless dude? Check.
Naked chick? Check.
Giant snake? Check.

What other "tradition" could this book be following? In the tradition of Zorro? In the tradition of the Bronte Sisters?

Hardly.

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Crossposted to Paperback Flash, my vintage paperback blog.
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New Beginnings!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:40:51 GMT

Wow. Hard to believe it's been more than a month since the last time I posted here.

I've been running ragged around these United States of ours selling Paizo's new Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, which has been a huge success. We sold out of the first print run before it even hit our warehouse, and the second printing hits the West Coast in a couple of weeks. It should be in stores by the third week of November.

I also took a quick vacation back to the homeland of Minneapolis, during which I got to see the Vikings beat the Packers live on Monday Night Football at the Metrodome. There's really nothing better than that. bbcaddict even came by for the second week of the trip, so I got to poke around the cities with her a bit, which is always fun.

I'm starting to see Planet Stories books in more and more Barnes & Nobles around the country, which is nice. It's taken a long time, but I finally feel like the line is getting a foot hold, tenuous as it may be. I was really pleased to see that Dreamhaven and Uncle Hugo's, two gold-standard sci-fi bookstores in Minneapolis, pretty much carried the complete line. Of course I came home with a sack full of paperbacks and pulps, many of which will end up getting write-ups here.

Which brings me to a bit of an issue. Although I stopped posting to my Paperback Flash blog at the same time I took a hiatus from this one, I've still been reading—quite fiendishly, I might add. There's nothing like a plane trip to churn through old pulp, and I've had more than my fair share of them in the last couple of weeks. The problem is, almost all of my reading in the last month has been for stuff I plan to sign for Planet Stories, and as I phase into a paranoid season, I want to hold off on posting about these books until I've signed them up.

I doubt very seriously that anyone with the ability to jump in and buy these 50+-years out-of-print stories is monitoring my blog posts just to snipe the stories I'm reading before I have a chance to sign them (and, from a business perspective, they'd probably be fools to do so), but I just don't want to take any chances, especially with the (living) author I've been working with and reading extensively over the last several months. We're on the verge of signing a deal that will be fairly big news (at least to nerds like me), and I'd hate for some other bozo to spoil it.

The only bozo I prefer screwing up my stuff is ME.

Lastly, just because I haven't been writing here on this blog does not mean I haven't been writing. Just today I posted the latest installment of my new monthly gaming column on EN World, and urge you to hop over and give it a read. I had a good time writing this one, and thinking about the subject—starting a new RPG campaign!

I've also been dabbling with fiction. I have about 11 chapters of a Pathfinder novel outlined, as well as an extensive outline for a horror/sci-fi novella that I will probably expand into a short novel. It's been a long time since I seriously tried writing fiction (as opposed to essays or gaming stuff), and I'm having a blast doing it. None of this material is in the kind of shape it needs to be for anyone other than me to look at it, but I've got to go through here to get there, and so far I'm enjoying the journey.

More soon.

--Erik

Kyrik Fights the Demon World (1975)

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:20:20 GMT

If you look really closely and perhaps squint, you can make out a nubile young woman being carried off by a dragon/pterodactyl near the top of this cover, right under the words "In the Tradition of Conan". Sadly, she is not topless, which makes her the lone female to appear on a Kyrik cover wearing something over her nipples. It's not much of a covering, admittedly, but as a fan of smutty 1970s fantasy covers, I've got to say I was a little disappointed with this outing from painter Ken Barr.

I mean, Kyrik is supposed to be a bit of a "dark" hero, no? Nice iguana in the foreground, though. That really pulls everything together.

Here's the back cover copy:

THE MIGHTY KYRIK FIGHTS THE DEMON WORLD

When Kyrik—warlock warrior—finds a dying man and a bloody parchment map, he is drawn into a whirlwind of evil in which demon lords contend for all Terra. With Myrnis, his gypsy sweetheart, and the aid of the thief pack, he brings five ancient magical gifts to the land of Surrilione—where he meets betrayal by the very demon lord he is forced to serve.

Gary Gygax listed the Kyrik books in his fabled "Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading" in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide, which is how the ended up on my radar. The Kyrik books (as opposed to Gardner F. Fox's other barbarian hero, Kothar) are devilishly difficult to find, but I managed to complete the set last year without cheating and using the internet. I haven't read this (or its predecessor) yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

The talk of demon lords and the release year of this book leads me to believe there may be a fair amount of AD&D inspiration in this one. I'll let you know once I've had a chance to read it all the way through.

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Crossposted to Paperback Flash, my vintage paperback blog.
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New Column at ENWorld.org!

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:59:13 GMT

Folks,

The first installment of my new EN World monthly gaming column is now live on the site! It's titled, appropriately enough, "Who the Hell is Erik Mona?", and it covers a lot of my biography in the gaming business, from grade school to today.

I had a lot of fun writing the column. It reminded me a lot of the editorials I used to write for Polyhedron, Dragon, and Dungeon back when I was editing those magazines. I always appreciated the opportunity to talk directly to the readers, and I think this column—which I'm calling "Mona's Musings"—will hearken back to the spirit of the best of my magazine editorials.

Anyway, it was damn fun, and I hope you enjoy reading it.

Mona's Musings 1: Who the Hell is Erik Mona?"

Kyrik: Warlock Warrior (1975)

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:54:39 GMT

Sometimes I post covers to Paperback Flash because I've just finished a great book and I can't wait to tell you about it. Other times I post a quick synopsis of a book I will surely forget in the next few months, and the post here is a mile marker for my memory when I'm later reading other works in the same genre or by the same author, in which case my posting here is almost purely for myself.

And other times, as a service to the community, I like to post covers featuring green-haired women bearing their giant breasts.

You're welcome.

This beauty comes to us from the pen of one Ken Barr, on the glorious year of my birth, A.D. 1975. The subject (other than the woman and the awesome flying dino-horse) is the eponymous KYRIK: WARLOCK WARRIOR, the second of Gardner F. Fox's Conan clones. I've sampled a bit of Fox's first barbarian hero, KOTHAR, and was surprised by the originality of it, despite the fact that the main character is a carbon copy of Robert E. Howard's famous warrior.

Kyrik, as I understand it, leads slightly darker adventures, and has some sort of demon sword (which probably makes him more of an Elric clone). I haven't had a chance to read any Kyriks, though I've managed to track all of them down over the last few years. They don't all have covers like this one, unfortunately.

A quick word on Fox before I leave you to enjoy my Monday holiday. If the name sounds a bit familiar you probably know him from his extensive comic book work, which spans the late 1930s to the modern era (Fox died in 1986). He invented the concept of superhero teams with the Justice Society of America, invented heroes like Hawkman, re-invented most of DC Comics's stable of heroes (Green Lantern, Flash, etc.) in the early 1960s in tales that ushered in the "Silver Age" and then he teamed up all of the best ones in the new Justice League of America, which still exists in some form today. Fox was sort of the Stan Lee of the DC Universe, and comics fans justifiably canonize him as one of the major early authors in the field.

But he also wrote his fair share of pulp, and a lot of it will wind up here on Paperback Flash in the months to come.

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Crossposted to Paperback Flash, my vintage paperback blog.
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Judgment Night (1965)

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:50:33 GMT

Catherine Lucille Moore (1911 – 1987) was one of the finest fantasy and science fiction writers of the Pulp Era, contributing two characters of historical significance in the form of Jirel of Joiry, the first female sword & sorcery protagonist and Northwest Smith, a spacefaring scoundrel who very likely served as a template for Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Later, her collaborations with husband Henry Kuttner (often published under the byline Lewis Padgett) would go on to become bedrock classics of the genre. Moore is a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and her status as one of the grand masters of the pulps is a given.

I particularly enjoy her writing, which my friend Kenneth Hite once described as "Clark Ashton Smith on Cialis." When I first encountered her lushly described, vivid prose, I immediately thought of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, though my reading in the last few years has traced this influence even farther back to Abraham Merritt, the giant of the early 20th century whose The Moon Pool and The Ship of Ishtar (among others) cast looming shadows over the Pulp Era. Moore's use of language and many of her themes are perhaps best described as "Merrittesque," though her stories often involve a sensual, in some cases barely disguised sexual element that makes them stand out from many of their staid contemporaries in the Pulp Era. Though her influences are clear, C. L. Moore is very much her own writer, and a great one at that.

Here's an example of her writing style, in this case describing a gown specially designed for the lead character of Judgment Night, Juille, the heir to a powerful galactic empire in the days leading to its inevitable fall:

The best dress designer on Cyrille seemed to be a soft-voiced, willowy woman with the pink skin and narrow, bright eyes of a race that occupied three planets circling a sun far across the outskirts of the Galaxy. She exuded impersonal deftness. One felt that she saw no faces here, was aware of no personalities. She came into the room with a smooth, silent aloofness, her eyes lowered.

But she was not servile. In her own way the woman was a great artist, and commanded her due of respect.

The composition of the new gown took place before the mirrored alcove that opened from the bedroom. Helia, her jaw set like a rock, stripped off the smart military uniform which her mistress was wearing, the spurred boots, the weapons, the shining helmet. From beneath it a shower of dark-gold hair descended. Juille stood impassive under the measuring eyes of the newcomer, her hair clouding upon her shoulders.

Now she was no longer the sexless princeling of Lyonese. The steely delicacy was about her still, and the arrogance. But the long, fine limbs and the disciplined curves of her body had a look of waxen lifelessness as she stood waiting between the new personality and the old. She was aware of a certain embarrassed resentment, suddenly, at the step she was about to take. It was humiliating to admit by that very step that the despised femininity she had repudiated all her life should be important enough to capture now.

The quality of impassivity seemed to puzzle the artist, who stood looking at her thoughtfully.

"Is there any definite effect to be achieved?" she asked after a moment, speaking in the faintly awkward third person through which all employees upon Cyrille address all patrons.

Juille swallowed a desire to answer angrily that there was not. Her state of mind confused even herself. This was her first excursion into incognito, her first conscious attempt to be—feminine; she disdained that term. She had embraced the amazon cult too wholeheartedly to admit even to herself just what she wanted or hoped from this experiment. She could not answer the dresser's questions. She turned a smoothly muscular shoulder to the woman and said with resentfulness she tried to conceal even from herself:

"Nothing ... nothing. Use your own ingenuity."

The dresser mentally shot a keen glance upward. She was far too well-trained actually to look a patron in the face; but she had seen the uniform this one had discarded, she saw the hard, smooth symmetry of the body and from it understood enough of the unknown's background to guess what she wanted and would not request. She would not have worked her way up a long and difficult career from and outlying planet to the position of head designer on Cyrille if she had lacked extremely sensitive perception. She narrowed her already narrow eyes and pursed speculative lips. This patron would need careful handling to persuade her to accept what she really wanted.

"A thought came to me yesterday," she murmured in her soft, drawling voice—she cultivated the slurred accent of her native land—"while I watched the dancers on Dullai Lake. A dark gown, full of shadows and stars. I need a perfect body to compose it on, for even the elastic paint of undergarments might spoil my effect." This was not strictly true, but it served the purpose. Juille could accept the gown now not as romance personified, but as a tribute to her own fine body.

"With permission, I shall compose that gown," the soft voice drawled, and Juille nodded coldly.

The dresser laid both hands on a section of wall near the alcove and slid back a long panel to disclose her working apparatus. Juille stared in frank enchantment and even Helia's feminine instincts, smothered behind a military lifetime, made her eyes gleam as she looked. The dresser's equipment had evidently been moved into place behind the sliding panel just before her entrance, for the tall rack at one end of the opening still presented what must have been the color-selection of the last patron. Through a series of level slits the ends of almost countless fabrics in every conceivable shade of pink showed untidily. Shelves and drawers spilled more untidiness. Obviously, this artist was great enough to indulge her whims even at the expense of neatness.

She pressed a button now and the pink rainbow slid sidewise and vanished. Into its place snapped a panel exuding ends of blackness in level parallels—satin that gleamed like dark water, the black smoke of gauzes, velvet so soft it looked charred, like black ash.

The dresser moved so swiftly and deftly that her work looked like child's play, or magic. She chose an end of dull silk and reeled out yard after billowing yard through the slot, slashed it off recklessly with a razor-sharp blade, and like a sculptor modeling in clay, molded the soft, thick stuff directly upon Juille's body, fitting it with quick, nervous snips of her scissors and sealing the edges into one another. In less than a minute Juille was sheathed from shoulder to ankle in a gown that fitted perfectly and elastically to her skin, outlining every curve of her body and falling in soft, rich folds about her feet.

The dresser kicked away the fragments of discarded silk and was pulling out now such clouds and billows of pure shadow as seemed to engulf her in fog. Juille almost gasped as the cloud descended upon herself. It was something too sheer for cloth, certainly not a woven fabric. The dresser's deft hand touched lightly here and there, sealing the folds of cloud in place. In a moment or two she stepped back and gestured toward the mirror.

Juille turned. This tall unknown was certainly not herself. The hard, impersonal, perfect body had suddenly taken on soft, velvet curves beneath the thick soft fabric. All about her, floating out when she moved, the shadowy billows of dimness smoked away in drapery so adroitly composed that it seemed an arrogance in itself.

"And now, one thing more," smiled the dresser, pulling out an untidy drawer. "This—" She brought out a double handful of sequins like flashing silver dust and strewed them lavishly in the folds of floating gauze. "Turn," she said, and Juille was enchanted to see the tiny star points cling magnetically to the cloth except for a thin, fine film of them that floated out behind her and twinkled away to nothing in midair whenever she moved.

Juille turned back to the mirror. For a moment more this was a stranger whose face looked back at her out of shining violet eyes, a face with the strength and delicacy of something finely made of steel. It was arrogant, intolerant, handsome as before, but the arrogance seemed to spring now from the knowledge of beauty.

And then she knew herself in the mirror. Only the gown was strange, and her familiar features looked incongruous above it. For the first time in her life Juille felt supremely unsure of herself. Not even the knowledge that the very stars in the Galaxy were subject to her whim could help that feeling now. She drew a long breath and faced herself in the mirror resolutely.

So far, my Planet Stories fiction imprint has reprinted collections of C. L. Moore's two most popular characters, Jirel of Joiry in Black God's Kiss and Northwest Smith in Northwest of Earth: The Complete Northwest Smith. Reviews for both collections have been very positive, somewhat surprising for fiction that is closing in on being eight decades old.

A lot of the reviews highlight a specific weakness of her Jirel and Smith stories, a stylistic nuance that becomes much more pronounced when all of a given character's adventures are collected in the same volume. The problem is this: Although Moore's worlds are vividly realized, and her use of language and beauty of structure easily set these tales apart as classics, her classic characters don't really do much of anything in the stories themselves. Rather, they watch as something very interesting happens to other people. They often emerge victorious against their enemies by tapping some inner strength or reserve, or taking some internal journey. Though Jirel comes armed with a sword and Northwest Smith packs his trusty heat gun, the weapons usually remain holstered and the stories are more psychological horror that action adventure.

Not so here, in Judgment Night which almost seems to have been written in reaction to that specific criticism. Far from a wallflower, Juille spends the last several chapters of the book literally blowing apart an entire planet with an unthinkably powerful super-gun. It's a thrilling cat-and-mouse scene filled with carnage, collapsing buildings, and all sorts of entertaining mayhem.

Originally written as a two-part serial in 1943's Astounding (edited by that titan of early SF, John W. Campbell, Jr.), Judgment Night came 10 years after Moore's Weird Tales debut, when most of the Jirel and NWS stories were already behind her. It's a transitional piece, of sorts, bridging the early era populated largely by her Jirel and Smith stories and her later material (much of it also published by Campbell) written in collaboration with her future husband, Henry Kuttner (the two were married in 1940, but this story shows very little if any Kuttner influence and has never been credited to him).

The legendary Gnome Press published a hardcover edition of Judgment Night in 1952, complete with an effective cover from Frank Kelly Freas. That edition also included the short stories "Paradise Street," "Promised Land," "The Code," and "Heir Apparent," a good selection of Moore's non-series character, non-Kuttner material. The 1965 Paperback Library version I read (pictured above) lacks these stories, focusing only on the title tale.

Although I like the Gnome Press edition and the other tales included therein are worthy additions to Moore's canon, Judgment Night easily stands on its own as a great classic of Pulp Era science fiction.

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Crossposted to Paperback Flash, my vintage paperback blog.
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A Princess of Mars (1963)

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:21:14 GMT

I've been launching a major new fantasy RPG over the last month, so please forgive the lack of posts of late. I shall endeavor to get back into the swing of things presently. Having said that, it is perhaps appropriate that this post goes back to the very beginning of one of Paperback Flash's favorite sub-genres: Sword & Planet.

Like many fantasy sub-genres (see "science fantasy," "heroic fantasy," & etc.), "sword & planet" has suffered from numerous naming conventions over the years. Although volumes like Percy Gregg's dreary and pedantic Across the Zodiac (1880) and Edwin Lester Arnold's Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation (1905) introduced some of the broad themes that would go on to define the sub-genre, the defining seminal work that crystallized everything into its Platonic form was undoubtedly A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Originally published as a 1912 All-Story serial entitled Under the Moons of Mars, the tale featured the Martain adventures of a Confederate Civil War veteran named John Carter mysteriously transported to a Mars peopled by decadent societies of honor-bound swordsmen, roving tribes of four-armed green-skinned noble savages, armadas of airships and a veritable parade (in later volumes) of incomparable princesses in constant need of rescue from the machinations of nefarious evil-doers. It's fast-paced, exciting stuff painted vividly with a keen eye for cultural detail and a deft hand at crafting compelling action scenes.

It's no surprise that A Princess of Mars is one of the most influential science fiction tales in the history of American Literature. With little concrete science to speak of and swordplay and barbarism running as major themes in almost every chapter, A Princess of Mars and its sequels were precursors of the sword & sorcery movement that would emerge from the pulp work of writers like C. L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard. Howard himself joined the teeming ranks of Burroughs pastichers with his own Almuric (1939), which views ERB's archetypal story through a characteristically brutal lens.

By the time Howard got to the trough it had been fairly well picked over by other writers working in the Burroughs "tradition," folks like Ralph Milne Farley, Ray Cummings, and Otis Adelbert Kline. These authors used many of Burroughs's conceits to chart adventures of their own (usually on other planets such as Venus and Mercury) featuring swordplay and revolution on distant worlds. But, really, it all comes back to the pattern established in the outset of A Princess of Mars.

Roughly stated, the pattern is this:

1 ) Hero with swordfighting skill is mysteriously transported from Earth to Mars.
2 ) Hero is surprised at his ability to leap great distances and his relative strength thanks to the lower gravity of his new planet.
3 ) Hero encounters a dangerous monster.
4 ) Hero encounters a seemingly evil outsider culture, but then becomes adopted by that culture for his prowess at arms.
5 ) Hero meets incomparably beautiful princess. He falls instantly in love.
6 ) Princess gets kidnapped.
7 ) Hero rescues princess.
8 ) On the eve of Hero and Princess' wedding, the Hero is mysteriously whisked back to Earth, where he shakes his fist at the sky and swears to get back to Mars.
9 ) The end.

Perhaps it's the raw simplicity of the plot that struck a nerve that would create an entire genre out of rewriting this one book, but I think Burroughs himself deserves a lot of credit for crafting a very exciting narrative while slowly revealing intriguing cultural details about worlds we can see through our telescopes, and even sometimes with the naked eye. There's a certain caché when you set a tale on Mars, as opposed to some random planet whose name you pulled out of your ass. Almuric or Kaldar, World of Antares or Scorpio might be good names, but they can't compete with the mythic power of Mars. A dying planet with a dying culture. A place of dead seabeds and crumbling canals. As we look up in the night sky or view the planet itself from robotic rovers, there's a romanticism to Mars that pure fantasy can't touch.

Despite its freshness and inventive power, A Princess of Mars shows signs of both its antiquity and the fact that it was Edgar Rice Burroughs's very first fiction effort. Told in first-person narrative, John Carter can't stop telling you about how he is physically incapable of feeling fear, and often jumps into danger without even realizing how brave he is being. He just doesn't know any better. After a while it starts to get old, and I'm pleased to report that Carter's onanism trails off as the series continues.

The other main problem: Coincidence. Or, rather, Edgar Rice Burrough's near-addiction to it. Carter criss-crosses paths with his love, Dejah Thoris time and time again in a way that stretches credulity. In one epic scene, Carter is piloting a flier in an exciting climactic battle. He gets shot up, and the flier goes wildly off course, flying at random away from the battle to crash several miles away.... right at the feet of Carter's old buddy Tars Tarkas, who has arrived just in time to turn the tide!

If you sit and wonder how all of the random events that led to Carter crashing also conspired to get Tars Tarkas there at the dramatically appropriate moment, you're going to end up letting the little flaws in A Princess of Mars ruin what's really an outstanding novel. The appropriate response to the random crash scene is to go with the flow. You'll most likely skip right past the coincidence to exclaim "Hooray! Tars Tarkas is back!"

Because Tars Tarkas is an awesome character, and the book is a hell of a lot of fun when you let it carry you along.

The good news is that the series gets even better (perhaps even much better) in the sequel, The Gods of Mars, in which John Carter mysteriously returns to Mars (randomly within spitting distance of Tars Tarkas, naturally). The bad news is that the entertaining pattern established here will be repeated again and again and again in the century of science fiction to come, and is still being copied to this day.

No other genre I know of is composed of as slavish regurgitation of the plot points of a single story as the sword & planet genre is composed of the parts of A Princess of Mars. It is one of the most important science fiction stories of the 20th century, and a necessary addition to any science fiction and fantasy library.

Plus, it's damn fun.

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