What Archetypes Can Do For You

I am, as I have stated before, a rather shameless and unabashed writer of science fiction and fantasy. The reasons for this are many and multifold but can basically be traced back to the stories that I read when I was young. In particular things like Richard Adams’ Watership Down and the Narnia books of C.S Lewis. As a teenager I moved on to books like The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus, the novels of Philip K. Dick, the early Elric stories of Michael Moorcock and J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

All this was, I hasten to add, part of a varied literary diet: I have long adored the work of Len Deighton, Eric Ambler, Walter Wager, Ian Flemming, Trevanian and a host of other thriller writers. I also devoured westerns by writers such as by Jack Shaffaer, Will Henry, Louis L’amour and the pulp westerns of George G. Gilman, Joe Millard and Charles R. Pike. When it came to horror I loved James Herbert, Stephen King, Guy N. Smith, Robert McCammon and, always, the Pan Book of Horror Stories.

Don’t get me wrong, I was also reading people like Joseph Conrad, John Braine, Grahame Greene, Anthony Burgess and John Fowles but only ever really appreciated their literary worth much later on since, to my 14 year old self, the psychological horror of something like The Collector could never compete with the visceral violence of The Fog.

However, if given the choice, I would always choose a good SF or horror novel over the delights of a western or thriller: something which has stayed with me until this very day.

Although genre writing can be something of a trap for writers (Philip K. Dick, for instance, wrote brilliant realist novels but was forever seen by both his publishers and readership as a science fiction writer) it does offer a certain comfort for readers, and the old axiom of ‘never judge a book by its cover’ doesn’t always apply when it comes to genre writing.

However, if genre is a trap then it is certainly the most elastic trap of all. Even within a simple boundary definition such as ‘fantasy’ there is huge scope for writers: everything from the comic novels of Terry Pratchett to the gritty neo-sword and sorcery of Joe Abercrombie or the dark childhood nightmares of Neil Gaiman.

One of the things that genre offers a writer is the notion of archetypes: warriors, scientists, bold explorers, detectives, secret agents, wizards, starship pilots et al, archetypes who can be shaped into something more distinctive.

In terms of heroic/epic/ s & s fantasy, the most enduring archetypes of them all is Robert E. Howard’s Conan, who’s seed can be seen fairly directly in characters such as John Jakes’ Brak the barbarian or Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis, reflected in characters as diverse as Moorcock’s Elric, C.L Moore’s Jirel of Joiry or Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane and who’s more recent descendants are surely David Gemmell’s Druss or Joe Abercrombie’s Logen Ninefingers.

Similarly, the greatest detective of them all – Sherlock Holmes – spawned a host of imitators but equally was the progenitor for characters as diverse as Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Hammet’s Continental Op, Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse and many, many more. Now none of these characters could be mistaken for Holmes but, somewhere deep inside, they have the same DNA (and there is an argument to be made that Holmes himself was an avatar of Poe’s Auguste Dupin.)

The point of all this slightly disjointed rambling is to celebrate the archetypes of imaginative fiction and to see them as useful springboards or templates to use in your own fiction – not copies, mind you, but rather as a literary ‘chip off the old block’.

My Favourite Short Stories # 5: The Haunter of the Dark by HP Lovecraft

“Cautious investigators will hesitate to challenge the common belief that Robert Blake was killed by lightning, or by some profound nervous shock derived from an electrical discharge. It is true that the window he faced was unbroken, but nature has shown herself capable of many freakish performances. The expression on his face may easily have arisen from some obscure muscular source unrelated to anything he saw, while the entries in his diary are clearly the result of a fantastic imagination aroused by certain local superstitions and by certain old matters he had uncovered.”

Having waxed lyrical about the joys of Clark Ashton Smith, it only seems fair that I now mention the great H.P Lovecraft. As with CAS, it’s downright difficult to pick just one Lovecraft tale but, for me, The Haunter of the Dark has just the right mix of otherworldly horror and gothic SF sensibilities that HPL did so very, very well.

First published in Weird Tales (where else) in 1936, The Haunter of the Dark is something of a Lovecraftian in-joke, being a sequel and/or reply to Robert Bloch’s mythos tale "The Shambler from the Stars", while its protagonist – Robert Blake – is almost certainly a literary avatar of Bloch himself (with a little bit of Lovecraft and a generous dollop of Clark Ashton Smith thrown in for good measure) and the structure of the story mirrors H.H Ewers’ horror tale The Spider.

Add in Lovecraft’s consumate ability to create an ethereal, alien atmosphere in even the most seemingly ordinary of settings (in this case Providence, Rhode Island, a familiar enough stamping ground for HPL and his tales) and cosmic horror is almost inevitable.

When author and painter Robert Blake moves Providence he becomes obsessed with a deserted church on Federal Hill – “a certain huge, dark church most fascinated Blake. It stood out with especial distinctness at certain hours of the day, and at sunset the great tower and tapering steeple loomed blackly against the flaming sky.” – obsession leads to investigation and he discovers that “There had been a bad sect there in the old days- an outlaw sect that called up awful things from some unknown gulf of night.”

And when Blake decides to enter the church he discovers a notebook, “a metal box of peculiarly asymmetrical form”, a ‘Shining Trapezohedron’ and the “vaguely charred” corpse of the last person to enter the eldritch sanctum of the church.

Upon deciphering the notebook he discovers “references to a Haunter of the Dark awaked by gazing into the Shining Trapezohedron, and insane conjectures about the black gulfs of chaos from which it was called.“

Finally, on a stormy and lightning flashed night, something comes for the unfortunate Blake, his terror and inevitable doom recorded in his “final frenzied jottings”:

“... The thing is taking hold of my mind... I see things I never knew before. Other worlds and other galaxies... Dark... The lightning seems dark and the darkness seems light... What am I afraid of? Is it not an avatar of Nyarlathotep, who in antique and shadowy Khem even took the form of man? I remember Yuggoth, and more distant Shaggai, and the ultimate void of the black planets... Azathoth have mercy!- the lightning no longer flashes- horrible- I can see everything with a monstrous sense that is not sight- light is dark and dark is light... those people on the hill... guard... candles and charms... their priests... I am it and it is I - I want to get out... must get out and unify the forces... it knows where I am... I see it - coming here - hell-wind - titan blue - black wing - Yog Sothoth save me - the three-lobed burning eye...”

It is in these last few passages in particular where Lovecraft’s gift for horror really shines: the notion of great, unknowable, Things in the void and the sheer insignificance of human kind by comparison to them. When he was on form, no one could write quite like Lovecraft or conjure quite the same sense of creeping dread and approaching doom.

Azathoth have mercy, indeed.

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thehaunterofthedark.htm

MY FAVOURITE SHORT STORIES #4: THE EMPIRE OF THE NECROMANCERS BY CLARK ASHTON SMITH

It isn’t easy to pick a single Clark Ashton Smith story, but after some deliberation I finally went for The Empire of the Necromancers, from his Zothique cycle of stories.

The last continent of a dying earth, Zothique is a place where the ancient gods have returned, where dark magic has been reborn and where decadence and debauchery are the order of the day.

First published in Weird Tales in 1932, The Empire of the Necromancers concerns Mmatmuor and Sodosma, two practitioners of the dark arts from the infamous isle of Naat. Having found themselves and their particular ways unwelcome in most of Zothique, Mmatmuor and Sodosma journey to the long vanished kingdom of Cincor where they resurrect the dead in order to make them their slaves, warriors and concubines.

However, the dead – and in particular the resurrected Emperor Illeiro - eventually revolt against them, condemning the necromancers to a fate far worse than death and committing themselves to a second, and much more permanent, demise.

To be honest, a simple synopsis of The Empire of the Necromancers does neither it or Clark Ashton Smith himself any real justice. Where the real magic lies is in Smith’s dense, lush prose and in the downright horrific imagery he conjures with:

“Tribute was borne to them by fleshless porters from outlying realms; and plague-eaten corpses, and tall mummies scented with mortuary balsams… Dead labourers made their palace-gardens to bloom with long-perished flowers; liches and skeletons toiled for them in the mines, or reared superb, fantastic towers to the dying sun. Chamberlains and princes of old time were their cupbearers, and stringed instruments were plucked for their delight by the slim hands of empresses with golden hair that had come forth untarnished from the night of the tomb. Those that were fairest, whom the plague and the worm had not ravaged overmuch, they took for their lemans and made to serve their necrophilic lust.”.

Together with Robert E. Howard and H.P Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith was one of the Big Three writers who helped to put the weird into Weird Tales. Although his work has subsequently been overshadowed by Howard and HPL, he was easily their equal and (in my opinion) often their superior when it came to crafting strange and enchanting fiction. The Zothique stories in particular have an unearthly quality about them – the language is strange and often obscure, the characters generally doom-laden or downright unpleasant (sometimes both) and their influence far reaching. Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories, for instance, were directly influenced by CAS and the subsequent influence of Vance himself led into the work of such writers as M. John Harrison and Gene Wolfe.

Arguably the literary genius of the fantastic pulps, the work of Clark Ashton Smith is crying out for rediscovery, The Empire of the Necromancers is as good a place as any to start.

And you can find it here, together with much of his other fiction, poetry and art, at The Eldritch Dark, a superb website dedicated to Clark Ashton Smith:
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/61/

HEROIC FANTASY QUARTERLY ISSUE 4

The new issue of HFQ is up!

Issue 4 features:

Fiction Contents
LIVING TOTEM, by Vaughn Heppner

A tale of adventure both in the physical and spirit worlds — a tale so old-school it’s Neolithic! What’s not to like about a story featuring a red stone axe named Blood of the Earth?

DEATH’S LAST DAUGHTER, by Jeff Crook

Jafar and Ketei brave a pitiless desert and its merciless tribesmen to confront sorcery and secrets in an ancient temple.

Poetry Contents

THE FOOTMAN, by W.E. Couvillier

Would that we all put on so brave a face at the end.

HERO OF OLD, by John Keller

This time, a horseman. And just when you thought things were all grim . . .

Do yourself a favour and check it out.

http://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/

AND THE WINNER IS...

The Sorceror's Guild has announced the winner of the Harper's Pen Award.

And the winner is...

John C. Hocking for "The Face in the Sea," and Black Gate for publishing the best all-around Sword & Sorcery short story in 2009.

Many congrats to both John and Black Gate and also a big thank you to the Sorceror's Guild for creating an award that recognises excellence in fantasy writing.

And as they say in Hollywood "it was an honour just to get the nom'"

http://sorcerersguild.blogspot.com/2010/03/and-winner-is.html

THROUGH BLOOD AND IRON

Just got word from Rob Santa that he's accepted my short story 'Forged in Heaven, Tempered In Hell' for the upcoming Through Blood and Iron anthology. Thus far the anthology includes stories from TW Williams, Steve Goble, Nathan Meyer, Bill Ward, Jason Waltz and a whole other shed load of great writers.

If you like your heroic fantasy action packed then this is a must have.

And on a personal aside, I am utterly delighted to be sharing the same pages as some utterly brilliant writers.

http://www.ricassopress.com/

ON THE SHORTLIST FOR THE HARPER'S PEN AWARD

In a week that has already thrown up the odd delightful surprise, I've just discovered (thanks to GW Thomas) that my short story The Dark Blessing has made the shortlist for the Harper's Pen Award 2009 (hitherto known as The Ham-Sized Fist Award).If I may be allowed to swear slightly: flippin' hell!

You can find the full list here: http://sorcerersguild.blogspot.com/2010/03/harpers-pen-award-2009-finalists.html

And the story in question here:

http://www.silverblade.net/issue3/shortstories7.html

MY FAVOURITE SHORT STORIES #3: THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH BY EDGAR ALLEN POE

“The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal or so hideous. Blood was its avatar and its seal – the redness and the horror of blood.”

Rightly considered the founding-father of the modern horror story, Edgar Allen Poe wrote a number of stories that are among some of the best tales of horror ever committed to paper – including, but not limited to, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, Ligeia and The Masque of the Red Death.

A brief, atmospheric and chilling tale, The Masque of the Red Death concerns a certain Prince Prospero who, when the countryside is ravaged by the Red Death, summons ‘to his presence a thousand hale and hearty friends’ who proceed to seal themselves into one of the Prince’s abbeys in order to wait out the pestilence.

“There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security was within. Without was the Red Death.”

For months to come the inhabitants of the abbey content themselves with an endless party, until Prospero throws a masquerade. But one of the masked revelers decides to wear a totally inappropriate costume ‘The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habilments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat….But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood – and his broad brow, with all the features of his face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.”

Naturally somewhat annoyed by this, Prospero orders his courtiers to “seize and unmask him – that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, from the battlements’. Unfortunately for all concerned, and firstly Prince Prospero himself, the masked figure is not simply a guest playing a tasteless joke, but the actual Red Death come to claim them all.

And that’s about it. Moreover, for most of the story’s short duration, a good half of the pages are taken up with ever more lavish descriptions of Prospero’s rooms and the effects that a simple striking clock has upon the revelers. And yet The Masque of the Red Death is such a brilliantly constructed tale, with an almost palpable sense of doom pervading it from the first words to the last, that ‘modern’ interpretations of its narrative and pace are both meaningless and pointless.

As a condemnation of the upper classes it is matchless, as an exercise in creating mood it is without peer and as a quick, creepy read by the fireside (preferably with a howling wind outside) there isn’t another story of its kind to touch it (except those written by Poe himself).

The justly lauded 1964 film version directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price, expanded much upon Poe – bringing in Satan worship, a romantic sub-plot, narrative elements from yet another Poe story, Hop-Frog and lush cinematography from Nicholas Roeg - but the original short has a gothic power all of its own and a lingering eeriness that prefigured such writers as H.P Lovecraft and M.R James.

A classic supernatural tale and one that any writer of the fantastic should be familiar with.

“And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”

MADE THE LONG BFS LONG LIST

A rather delightful snippet of news courtesy of Pam Wallace.

My short story The Black Flowers of Sevan, which appeared in the first issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly last year has made the British Fantasy Society Award 2010 long-list.

You can read the full list of nominations here:

http://www.britishfantasysociety.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=592:british-fantasy-awards-2010-the-longlist&catid=34:bfas&Itemid=35#Best_Short_Story_4887986844405532

THE SONG OF TUSSAGAROTH

Just got word from Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles at Innsmouth Free Press that they want to use my short story The Song of Tussagaroth in an upcoming issue of IFP.

As the title of the magazine might imply, Innsmouth Free Press is a Lovecraftian themed publication (and a very fine one too). The Song of Tussagaroth is a sort of mythos sword and sorcery tale - replete with arcane knowledge, forbidden books and elder gods - and owes a fair bit to Clark Ashton Smith as well as HPL.

I'm rather pleased wi' meself as a result.

MY FAVOURITE SHORT STORIES #2: PETRA BY GREG BEAR

I first read Greg Bear’s superb short story Petra some twenty years ago in the Bruce Sterling edited anthology Mirrorshades - as good an overview of 80’s cyberpunk as you could ever wish to own. At first glance, Petra might seem an unlikely choice for inclusion in such a collection, and certainly appeared somewhat out of place among the gritty, steel and chrome futures imagined by many of the other authors (or in the case of Sterling and Shiner’s Mozart in Mirrorshades, a gritty, steel and chrome past). Nonetheless, Petra was and remains my favourite story from that particular anthology and its themes – natural disaster, evolution by other means and the cruelty of the Established Order – remain as intriguing now as they did then.

Briefly, the story concerns an unnamed narrator – an “ugly, beaked, half-winged thing,”- who is one of the inhabitants of a vast cathedral (possibly Notre Dame, giving the story another level in an already densely leveled narrative) in the years following the great disaster known as Mortdieu, triggered by nothing less than the death of God.

The very rules of reality themselves have been revoked, dreams and nightmares can easily become flesh, and the stone statues of the Cathedral (gargoyles as well as saints) have come to life, mating with human beings to produce stone and flesh creatures.

“When every delusion became as real as solid matter. Blinding pain, flaming blood, bones breaking, flesh powdering, steel flowing like liquid, the sky raining amber. Crowds in the shifting streets, gathering at intersections, not knowing what to do, trapped by their own ignorance… With the first faint suspicion that they had all gone mad, the first crack in their all-too-weak reserves of will, they projected their nightmares. Prodigal crows perched atop the trees that had once been buildings. Pigs ran through the streets on their hind legs, pavement rushing to become soil behind them. The forest prevailed over most of the city.”

Ruled over by the tyrannical Bishop, the cathedral has become one of the last enclaves of civilisation – and one that is ripe for revolution – where strict rules segregate human from stone (and flesh and stone) leading to stagnation and decay.

The first cracks begin to appear in the regime when the Bishop’s, Constantia, daughter falls in love with Corvus, a young man of stone and flesh, leading the story’s narrator to stumble upon the fabled Stone Christ, the one creature capable of creating order out of chaos.

“The figure was several ages at once. As I blinked, it became a man of about thirty, well formed, with a high forehead and elegant hands, pale as ice.”

Except that this Christ is a tired, washed out creature, barely able to sustain his own life, never mind bring salvation to a disordered world; another way needs to be found, a way that is illuminated by the revenant of St Paul and the copper giant Apostle Thomas.

Blending science and philosophy with dazzling imagination and deeply poetic writing. Petra is a breathtaking piece of science fiction (or science fantasy if you prefer) that uses theology as an exact science and creates all-too human characters from its flesh and stone protagonists.

As the Apostle Thomas says: “We have long bathed in God's milk, in His rules and creativity. Maybe Mortdieu is really a sign that we have been weaned.”

Amen, brother.

MY FAVOURITE SHORT STORIES #1: THE GRAVEYARD RATS BY HENRY KUTTNER

“Old Masson, the caretaker of one of Salem’s oldest and most neglected cemeteries, had a feud with the rats.”

Both under his own name and, later, in collaboration with his wife C.L Moore, Henry Kuttner was one of the finest writers of the pulp age. His work ranged from Howardesque sword and sorcery (Elak of Atlantis) to superbly literate science fiction (Vintage Season, Mimsy Were The Borogroves) and witty fantasy (Housing Problem).

However, early in his (solo) career, Henry Kuttner also produced a number of darkly somber, atmospheric and downright scary tales. The first and, arguably, the finest of these was The Graveyard Rats. First published in Weird Tales in 1936, The Graveyard Rats is an elegant exercise in short story terror, calling to mind the work of such masters of the macabre as Lovecraft and Poe while remaining an original and disturbing piece of work.

Concerning the battle between Salem cemetery caretaker (and oft times grave robber) Masson and the eponymous rats, the story moves effortlessly from man vs animal to something deeper and more sinister to a brutally shocking denouement in little over half a dozen pages.

“It was crawling towards him and in the pale glow of the flashlight the man saw a frightful gargoyle face thrust into his own. It was the passionless, death’s-head skull of a long-dead corpse… it made a faint groaning sound as it crawled towards Masson, stretching its ragged and granulated lips in a grin of dreadful hunger.”

It’s often the way of the world that time and changing tastes in fiction tend to rob older horror tales of their power - relegating what was once cutting-edge to the status of period piece – The Graveyard Rats remains a sharp and grisly piece of macabre fiction.

If you don’t know Henry Kuttner’s work, The Graveyard Rats is the perfect place to start, a minor masterpiece from a writer who’s work (in particular the collaborations with C.L Moore) stands as a shining example of intelligent pulp fiction.

NEW FICTION UP AT KINGS OF THE NIGHT

The excellent Sword and Sorcery ezine Kings of the Night has two new stories up for your reading pleasure: "Easy Money" by Greg Hall & "Beginnings" by Eric S. Brown.

If you haven't tried Kings of the Night before, then why not try it now? In a world seemingly teeming with sword and sorcery fans there are precious few outlets for the genre in its purer form, but editor GW Thomas is helping to fight the good fight (and it even contains a story by me - The Obsidian City, which is kinda/sorta a Shining Cities story).

http://www.gwthomas.org/kingsofthenight.htm

WILLIAM TENN: 1920 - 2010

I discovered via the British Fantasy Society that William Tenn (the pen name of Philip Klass) passed away in February 2010.

I've always had a tremendous fondness for the short stories of William Tenn ever since I read two brilliant pieces by him in the original Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus - The Liberation of Earth and Eastward Ho!

Both were clever, witty, satirical and the sort of story that could never appear outside SF. The Liberation of Earth deals with the fate of mankind following a series of 'liberations' by various alien races who decide to use the planet as an outpost in an endless galactic war, while the sublime Eastward Ho! finds white civilisation ever marginalized and pushed aside by the rise of the Great Indian Nations in the aftermath of a nuclear war, leading the survivors of the United States with no option but to flee east to the promised lands of Europe where a man 'can breath free'.

Described by The Science Fiction Encyclopedia as "one of the genre's very few genuinely comic, genuinely incisive writers of short fiction." William Tenn passed away on 7 February 2010.

SOMETIMES YOU GET THE BEAR...

After a reasonable start to the writing year the sometimes less than reasonable realities of the writing business have begun to manifest themselves once again.

More accurately, I’ve had a bunch of stories rejected in the past few days.

Getting knocked back from a market is never easy and it tends to be one of those things that makes you want to kick stuff around the room, especially if you have a fondness for the story or stories in question. (I have a fondness for all my stories, it must be said, but some more than others.)

On the plus side, it does mean that I now have come stories to submit elsewhere. On the negative side it does mean going through the whole process of waiting, hoping and generally checking my inbox every five minutes.

While the business of rejection is part and parcel of every writer’s life and while I know on an intellectual level that rejection isn’t necessarily to do with the quality of the work (at least that’s what I tell myself) it’s never easy.

I think it was Brian Stableford who pointed out that a story rejection is somewhere on a par with being told that your child is ugly, after all you have done your best to make sure that the story leaves the house in its best clothes with its hands and face freshly scrubbed and has a positive mental attitude towards the world outside (and clean underwear in case of an accident).

In practical writing terms this means that you’ve written the best story you possibly can with the original idea and material, your grammar is up to scratch, your characters vivid and rounded and your imaginative world as compelling as it’s possible to be.

You’ve also researched possible markets and submitted the tale in question to the one you reckon will be most sympathetic to it.

Yet still it fails to make the grade, for whatever reason.

Hard to take sometimes.

I remain sanguine, however, and more determined than ever to crack the markets in question.

After all, sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you.