The Life and Times of Johannes Cabal

Jonathan L. Howard's Johannes Cabal is a necromancer and (as one might expected) a disagreeable sort of guy, though not in the usual cackling villain sort of way. True, when we first encounter him in Johannes Cabal the Necromancer he’s running a travelling carnival as a cover for collecting souls for Satan--but he’s got important goals. Mainly, it's Cabal’s arrogance and disregard for social niceties that make him unlikable--but those qualities only make him more enjoyable to read about.

Cabal has appeared in three novels. The first tells the story of the carnival and features Cabal’s more moral brother, Horst (a vampire). The second, Johannes Cabal the Detective, has Cabal on the run in a Ruritanian crazy-quilt Europe and forced by circumstances to solve a series of murders on an airship.

Both of theses novels feature quirky characters and a good deal of humor amid the soul-stealing, political intrigue, and murder.

Cabal himself emerges as a more complex character than he first appears. He’s a misanthrope by all appearances, but he wants to conquer mankind’s greatest enemy--death.  He just doesn’t care overmuch who he’s got to kill or what amoral direction his “studies” have to take to do it.

The world of the novels is ours but with some differences: extra European nations, ornithopter-like aircraft, and a generally higher profile for necromancy, most prominent among them. The time period the stories takes place in is pretty vague, too; it mostly seems to be loosely Edwardian (maybe late Victorian), but with occasional mentions of science/technology that might even place it in the early 1960s.

The third Johannes Cabal novel is apparently out in the UK. Johannes Cabal: the Fear Institute is about an expedition into the Dreamlands, which sounds promising. Howard sprinkles the occasional Lovecraftianism in the other novels, so it will be interesting to see what he does there.

In preparing this post I ran across an article written by Jonathan Howard himself about Cabal on D&D website. I’ll let the author himself tell you how Cabal can inspire gaming. He even gives a character sheet!

I can say the novels are well worth a read.

Life and Death in the Dung Ages

If you like your fantasy of the dark, darkly humorous, and dirty variety exemplified by Warhammer fantasy, then I’ve got a couple of book recommendations for you. Jesse Bullington’s two (standalone) historical fantasy novels are just the sort of grubby, violent, and irreverent stories you’ve been looking for.

I’ve mentioned The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart before. It’s probably the more humorous of the two and maybe the most violent—though that’s a close call. Bullington’s latest effort, The Enterprise of Death has a bit more sympathy for its protagonists perhaps but doesn’t lose the qualities that made Brothers Grossbart entertaining.

Set in 15th Century Europe, The Enterprise of Death concerns a necromancer’s apprentice on the run from her evil master, and the friends she makes along the way—which include real historical figures mercenary/artist Niklaus Manuel Deustch and drunken eccentric Paracelsus. There’s plenty of corpse-reviving, cannibalism, witch-hunters, prostitutes, and pox along the way.

Sometimes Bullington hews close to history: there’s a monstrous voice-mimicking hyena that comes right out of Pliny. Other times, he goes his own way, like with his interesting take on vampires.

Bullington’s gritty and ironic novels are a nice palate cleanser from typical secondary world fantasies with protagonists with heroic destinies going about saving the world—and they don’t involve a multiple volume commitment.

Dangerous Fairies to Know And Love

Blackwood's Guide to Dangerous Fairies is a novel by Guillermo del Toro and Christopher Golden that serves as a prequel to the recent remake of Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.  What's most interesting (and most game-inspirational) about it is that Blackwood's tragic story is interspersed with an (un)natural history of malign fairies of the world, illustrated by Troy Nixey standing in the the fictional Mr. Blackwood.  Nixey's art reminds of Guy Davis or Duncan Fegredo--which means it really fits the material well, even if it doesn't exactly look like the work of a guy (Blackwood) who the movie tells us that some people thought was "better than Audobon."  Check these out:

Croque-Mitaine: Bogeyman en francais.

This is an Oakman.  It has a evil Swamp Thing sort of feel, I think.

When tooth fairies go bad--the toothbreakers.

Just flipping through the pictures ought to provide plenty of monster fodder for fantasy, urban fantasy, or horror games.

The Court of the Air and Beyond

Stephen Hunt’s Jackelian novels are often called “Steampunk”--and I suppose they do have the essential elements with their fantastic pseudo-Victorian sort of setting--but they draw from a much wider range of genre fiction tropes. In fact, all the factions, locales, and (dare we say) character types seem to make tailor made for gaming inspiration.

The first novel, Court of Air (2007), introduces the basic setting elements (and they’re a lot of them!) in a story about two orphans in the Kingdom of Jackals (Britain’s stand-in) who come to play a role in a world-destroying threat--a Communist stand-in rebellion secretly subverted by Lovecraft-by-way-of-Mesoamerica insectoid Elder Gods looking to regain the ascendancy they enjoyed in the last Ice Age. The heroes include an agent from the steampunk equivalent of SHIELD complete with helicarrier (the eponymous Court of the Air), a boy of the feyblood (super-powered magical mutants hated and feared by the world) who gains the magical weaponry of a legacy hero similar to the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, and a plucky young girl with ancient nanites in her blood linking her to the robot savior at the Earth’s core!

That’s only a few of the ideas Hunt throws at us. There’s enough for 3 or 4 Rifts supplements. We’ve got Middle Eastern stand-in Cassarabians with magical biotech, Steampunk computers like in The Difference Engine, airships (I did say it was Steampunk), and the robotic Steam Men. The Steam Men are probably my favorite element of the world--these coal-burning artificial intelligences field heroic armies of knights, worship (and are sometimes ridden) by spirits called the Steamo Loa, and throw the cogs of Gear-gi-ju to divine the future.

In the midst of these rapid fire ideas, there’s a fast-paced adventure story. This is true of all Hunt’s novels in the series (the novel’s are standalone, but they have recurring characters). The second novel, The Kingdom Beyond the Waves, gives us a submarine journey up-river into a perilous jungle and a Bondian super-villain out to use ancient technology to take over the world. The Rise of the Iron Moon has a sort of War of the Worlds-esque alien invasion.

The world bears some resemblance to Tekumel in that civilization is fallen from great technological heights, and the artifacts of previous ages may appear like magic. It also contains a lot of stand-ins for real world historical elements--some of them with only the thinnest disguise. Quatershift, for example, is Revolutionary France with a mixing of various Communist states.

One characteristic of Hunt’s writing is a tendency to use portmanteau or sometimes punnning names. The world-saving robotic being is called Hexmachina. I’ve already mentioned the Cassarabians and the Steamo Loa. I could see this name practice irritating some readers.

I think these are minor quibbles. If you’re looking for good adventure fiction in a fantastic setting, particularly if you like sort of “kitchen sink” settings, I think you’ll find something in this series to enjoy.

Not Heroes

The grizzled veteran looked up from the finger he had been diligently sawing at with his knife.

“Huh?”

“I says,” his small friend repeats, not taking his eyes from the bugbear’s finger—and more importantly the ring on it—”it must be magical, else why’s it so damn hard to remove?”

“Not you.  Him.” The veterans gestures to me with the knife, and the smaller man finally notices.

“Oh! You’re the scribe, ain’t ya?”

I nod.

“Thought Goan was minding you.”

“He was. He died yesterday.” I think back to the unfortunate, nervous Goan. He had eyes that had darted around like spooked birds. They weren't vigilant enough, apparently, to avoid the dripping slime that burned a hole straight through him. It had taken him longer to die than I would have thought, but die he did despite the cleric’s efforts.

“Ah,” the veteran says with a tone that refuses to commit to either sympathy or disinterest. The smaller man just nods, and seems a bit embarassed.

“I’m looking for the captain.”

The veteran points with a thumb, slick and glistening with what must be bugbear ichor. “Down that passage. He’s at the door with the mage.”

I head down the rough-hewn passage, stepping around more bugbear carcasses, leaving the adventurers to their work.

The two did eventually succeed in getting the ring. The small man (his name was Orven) was right: it was magical. It allowed the wearer to breath underwater--which saved Orven from a judicial drowning in Nharm, but helped him not at all when months later someone drowned him in a cask of cheap wine and cut the ring from his hand.

(Pre-)Summer Reading

I don’t care what the calendar says: 98 degrees is an evocation of summer if there ever was one. Close enough at least to mention some vacation reading selections that could also provide some rpg inspiration.

Leviathan, and its sequel Behemoth (and Goliath on the way) by Scott Westerfield imagine a quite different World War I where the Entente Powers are Darwinists (utlizing “fabricated” animals as technology) and the Triple Alliance are Clankers utilizing mechanical technology far advanced of our real history. I suppose the setting might be called steampunk, but the mechanical technology is firmly hydrocarbon-powered, and the biotech adds a new angle. The series follows Deryn Sharp--a Scottish girl masquerading as a boy so she can join the British Air Service, who winds up serving on the bioengineered airship, Leviathan, and Aleksander of Hapsburg--secret heir to Austro-Hungarian Empire, currently being hunted by his country’s German allies.

There is, of course, the hint of possible romance between the two, and conveniently the adults are often out of the way so our teen protagonists can save the day (these are YA novels), but there's plenty of action--and beyond that--there’s a lot of interesting worldbuilding and plenty of neat alternate tech for any sort of rpg. Then there’s the great illustrations by Keith Thompson to really inspire:

The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman is also about a Great War, but this one is in a fantasy (rather than science fiction) context. The West--a part of the world only becoming “stable” as it's settled by humanity--has become a battleground between two groups controlled by inhuman powers. The agents of the Gun are notorious outlaws, given superhuman abilities by the demons inhabiting the firearms they carry.  The people of the Line live regimented, industrial lives in the service of 28 sentient Engines. Caught in between are the mass of unaligned humanity, and the mysterious and powerful Folk--the original, nonhuman inhabitants of the West. The knowledge that there is a weapon--a thing of the Folk--that could end the war sets in motion a race to retreive the one, brain-damaged man that may know its whereabouts. This man, an aging general, and his hapless doctor get caught between the forces of Gun and Line.

One caveat: there's a sequel coming, so it's not "done in one."  Don't let that dissuade you.  Gilman’s world has a lot of great ideas to steal for an rpg setting, and gives great example of non-medieval secondary world fantasy to stand beside those of Mieville, VanderMeer, and King. 

Rider of the Weird West: The Merkabah Rider series

In the mood for some good Weird Western fiction? Well, hit the trail with Edward Erdelac’s Merkabah Rider series and you’ll get it from both barrels.

The titular Rider is a Hasidic Jew and an initiate of mystical order known as Merkabah Riders. The Rider roams the post-Civil War Old West, combating supernatural evil with his esoteric powers and knowledge. He’s armed (and armored) by a coat full of magical talismans, mystic spectacles (etched with the seal of Solomon), and mystically engraved Volcanic pistols--particularly effective on the astral plane.

The first volume in the series is Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Plains Drifter.  It's composed of a series of short-stories or novellas, with the glimmering of an overarching plot running through. Over the course of the stories, Rider combats a Canaanite god, a demonic tornado, and the denizens a house of ill-repute where Lilith herself is the madam.

The stories have a lot of real world mythological and occult detail--interpreted through a unifying mythos--but all of that only serves to enhance the pulpy action. In this way, the stories are perhaps most similar to Richard L. Tierney’s Simon Magus short-stories--though those have more of a Cthulhu Mythos bend (though that’s not entirely absent from the Merkabah Rider, either).

Another nice element is the little homages and sly references Erdelac drops into the yarns. There’s a direct homage to Howard’s “Kelly the Conjure-Man” (based on a real Texas legend, according to Howard) and “Black Canaan.” Some real world historical personages show up: note the real name of “Sadie” given in “Nightjar Woman.” There also other details mentioned throughout that I suspect are references to famous Western films, as well.

So much material that could vaguely qualify as Weird Western is largely “everything and the kitchen sink” steampunkian monstrosity (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but the Merkabah Rider stories have a versimilitude about it them that comes from riffing off real world magical beliefs and placing everything in a real world context.

So check out High Planes Drifter, and its sequel Merkabah Rider: The Mensch with No Name--and I sure a third book in the series is on its way. They’d make great inspiration for Stuart Robertson’s Weird West rpg, and others I’m sure.

Curiosities and Eccentric Diseases

Internet browsing yesterday revealed that Jeff VanderMeer has edited a new collection bearing the name of the obscure scholar Thackery T. Lambshead--The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities--which is to be released in June. This is VanderMeer’s second involvement with a Lambshead work, the first being 2005’s The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, Complete with Illuminating Illustrations. This first work, and no doubt the upcoming one, should be of interest to aficionados of the weird and to gamemasters wishing to add a bit of weirdness to their game.

The diseases described are a diverse lot.  Michael Moorcock describes Samoan Giant Rat Bite Fever in a Victorian idiom. Alan Moore elucidates Fuseli’s Disease--a skin ailment occurring (and spreading) in dreams. Jay Lake discusses Mongolian Death Worm Infestation. One of the best is VanderMeer’s own article on Tian-Shan Gobi Assimilation--a creepy and Lovecraftian disorder of involving fungus (calling to mind VanderMeer’s Ambergris novels).

Maybe they all should have heeded the implicit warning of Neil Gaiman’s entry--Diseasemaker’s Croup.

Obviously, a good bit of fun is had by all--which includes (in addition to those above) Cory Doctorow, K.J. Bishop, China Mieville, and Rachel Pollack--and many more. I expect the same sort of good things from the new book which promises an even longer list of writers and illustrators.

Check ‘em out, so next time you’re feeling hypochondriacal you can think you have something really interesting.

My Five Favorite Howard Yarns

On Robert E. Howard’s birthday yesterday, I was thinking about my favorite stories by him. It can be tough to choose--there are a lot of good ones to consider. Here, in no particular order, are what I think are my top five:

"Worms of the Earth": Bran Mak Morn, King of the Picts is (almost literally) willing to make a deal with the devil to get revenge on the hated Roman conquers. This is a tour de force by Howard with some great elements--the clash of cultures Howard loved in his historical fiction, a brooding hero, and weird horror.

"Xuthal of the Dusk": Also called "The Slithering Shadow." This may not rank among the best of the Conan stories for most folks, but I love the setting of a lost city full of drug-addled inhabitants awaiting an inevitable--but unpredictable--death from a weird menace. The original title is suitably enigmatic, too.

"Blades of the Brotherhood": Apparently, Howard’s original title was “The Blue Flame of Vengeance,” but I first encountered it under this title in the Marvel 1986 comics adaptation, with great art by Bret Blevins. Solomon Kane takes on a gang of pirates he’s been dogging, as he’s wont to do. Kane gets some great, badass lines, and deeds to match.

"The Shadow of the Vulture": My favorite of Howard’s historical actioners, its got an epic plot that would make a great film. It's got German Ritter Gottfried von Kalmbach with Howard’s real Red Sonya (no “j” or chainmail bikini) against the Turkish Empire, culminating in the siege of Vienna, 1529.

"Queen of the Black Coast": While there are plots, and settings I like better in other Conan tales, there are spots in this story where Howard’s writing really soars, and Conan’s musing on philosophy are great.

Close to these are “Pigeons from Hell,” “Red Nails,” and “People of the Back Circle.” I fact, ask me in a week and one of those will have bumped one the ones above out of a top spot. In fact, in most of Howard’s fantasy stories I find some elements I like even when the whole thing may not work for me.

Happy belated birthday, Bob!

Ideas I Wish I'd Had First

Recent travel and conference attendance has impaired my post writing and general blogosphere presence, but has given me time to read other stuff while in hotel rooms and airplanes. In finally getting around to reading China Mieville’s latest fantasy novel Kraken, I’ve found it has several cool ideas to steal for gaming.

Kraken is set in modern London and concerns a curators descent into the city’s occult underbelly after the theft of a specimen of giant squid. It’s a Tim Power-ish set up and story (in a way, so was Mieville’s last modern novel, The City and the City), I think, but written in Mieville’s distinct prose style.

Anyway, there are several good ideas in here that I wish I had thought of first. There is a general strike amongst magical familiars, being lead by the spirit of an ancient Egyptian shabti, who took part in an uprising against the dead they were meant to toil for in the after-life. There's the menacing duo (there are a lot of menacing duos in fiction, aren’t there?) Goss and Subby, who get into a magically protected house by having themselves folded up and mailed in a box.

Best so far, though, is Mieville’s description of the “memory angels” which guard various London museums:

“In the Museum of Childhood were three toys that came remorselessly for intruders--a hoop, a top, a broken video-game console--with stuttering creeping as if in stop-motion. With the wingbeat noise of cloth, the Victoria and Albert was patrolled by something like a chic predatory face of crumpled linen. In Tooting Bec, the London Sewing Machine Museum was kept safe by a dreadful angel made of tangles and bobbins and jouncing needles...”

If there's anything the City needs its genius loci like that!

Winter is Coming: Pics Prove It

I know I'm not the only one excited about the upcoming HBO series Game of Thrones based on George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and the more set pictures I see, the more I feel like they're getting it right.  Entertainment Weekly's got a whole series of pics on their website.

I'm glad the armor and clothing have more of a historical feel than is generally the case for TV fantasy (like the recent Legend of the Seeker).

Here's Stark sons Bran and Jon Snow.  Barrington (Snow) isn't really how I pictured him, but that's to be expected.

I think Nikolaj Coste-Waldau is great choice for Jaime Lannister--and check out that armor.

Daenerys' costume does seem a little generic fantasy-ish, though Emilia Clarke wears it well.

How About Masters of Fantasy?

Showtime’s Masters of Horror was in the grand tradition of TV horror anthologies and aired over two seasons from 2005-2007. It featured famous names in horror film (Argento, Gordon, Carpenter, Miike, and Hooper, among others) directing episodes, several of which were based on famous short-stories, or stories by famous authors, including Lovecraft, Barker, Bierce, Matheson, and Lansdale.

Masters of Science Fiction was a short-lived ABC show with a similar premise, though devoted, as the title suggests, to a different genre. It featured adaptations of stories by Robert Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Sheckley among others.

It would seem to me that in the wake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter films, and with A Game of Thrones on its way to HBO, the way might be paved for a fantasy anthology--a Masters of Fantasy, perhaps?

In thinking of stories to adapt, one would have to think of things that could be done justice in an hour time-frame, in the budgets it would likely have, and for the audience of cable TV. Like the anthologies mentioned above, a mixture of classics and new stories would probably be what we’d see.  Of course, while their would probably be a temptation to go with stories set in the modern era, what I'd want to see would be a mixture of settings, both mundane and fantastic. 

Here are some stories, off the top of my head, I think would work in those parameters:

• “The Charnel God” by Clark Ashton Smith
• “People of the Dark” by Robert E. Howard
• “Only the End of the World Again” by Neil Gaiman. (I would love to see “Murder Mysteries” but it might be a bit ambitious)
• “Undertow” Karl Edward Wagner
• “O Ugly Bird!” by Manly Wade Wellman
• “Mai-Kulala” by Charles R. Saunders
• “The Sustenance of Hoak” by Ramsey Campbell
• “The Cloud of Hate” by Fritz Leiber

What about you guys: What would you like to see? What would work?

My Top Ten Horrors

In no particular order, here are what probably my favorite horror short stories (though I would imagine I've forgotten something)--just in time for Halloween.  Links to e-texts provided where available.

"The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen
"Who Goes There?" by John Campbell
"The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"Into Whose Hands" by Karl Edward Wagner
"The Clown Puppet" by Thomas Ligotti
"Pigeons from Hell" by Robert E. Howard
"Don't Ask Jack" by Neil Gaiman
"Whisperer in the Darkness" by H.P. Lovecraft
"Born of Man and Woman" by Richard Matheson

Honorable mentions go to "Dread" by Clive Barker, "Dr. Locrian's Asylum" by Ligotti, "The River of Night's Dreaming" by Wagner, "The Sandman" by E.T.A. Hoffman, "The Repairer of Reputations" by Robert W. Chambers, and "The Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick.  Maybe I should have done a top twenty!

Inspiration from Weird Menace

"Weird menace" or "shudder" pulps featured lurid stories in the horror genre with bizarre villains hatching macabre plots, and graphic (for the era) scenes of torture and murder.

And they had some really great story titles.  Titles where thinking of the sort of adventure that might have said title is possibly better than reading the story.  Here, presented for your inspiration, are a few choice ones:

"Satan's Roadhouse" by Carl Jacobi, Terror Tales (Oct. 1934)

"Death Teaches School" by Nat Schachner, Terror Tales (April 1935)

"Devils in the Dust" by Arthur J. Burks, Dime Mystery (Dec. 1935)

"The Shriveling Murders" from Dr. Death (April 1935)

"Brides for the Swamp God" by J.G. Quinliven, Terror Tales (May 1936)

"The Molemen Want Your Eyes" by Frederick C. Davies, Horror Stories (April/May 1938)

"Girls for the Coffin Syndicate" by Russell Gray, Dime Mystery (April 1940)

"March of the Homeless Corpse" by Wayne Rogers from Terror Tales (March 1941)

The New Pulp

The sort of action-filled, lurid stories that populated the pulp magazines have never completely left us, but for a couple of decades have been relegated to horror and men’s adventure paperbacks to be found in racks at super-markets, drug stores, and truck-stops. These days, there’s been a resurgence of very pulp stuff in a more upscale market under the more acceptable guises of “thriller” or “horror.” They still may not be the most highbrow of literature, but their narrative verve, and wild ideas make them ideal gaming fodder.

Case in point: The Dragon Factory by Jonathan Maberry. This is the second of his Joe Ledger novels, though I haven’t read the first, but I gather its sort of in the zombie genre. Mr. Ledger is a badass ex-cop who works for a secret government organization which is now on the outs with the current administration (whose being duped by the evil super-rich, who want to get their hands on Ledger’s boss’s super-computer). Those evil rich are personified in the beautiful, albino, sexually deviant, brother and sister, Jakoby twins, who wanted to sell transgenic monster soldiers to the highest bidder, and their ex-Nazi daddy who wants to unleash global ethnic cleansing. And that’s all just the set-up!

In comparison, David Wellington’s 13 Bullets is positively mundane. It’s only got a state-trooper and a federal agent going up against a nest of vampires. These vampires aren’t the brooding, sparkling variety, but rather low-level superhuman monsters with an appearance like Nosferatu’s ugly brother. Though Wellington’s tale has many modern, cinematic touches, he draws on older myths for some elements of his vampires--for example they don’t reproduce in the usual modern way.

Apparently, in a later novel in the series, Wellington has the protagonists find the remains of a Union vampire unit from the Civil War!

You get the idea. And those are just a couple of examples. More pulpy goodness no doubt awaits.

Summer Reading

Looking for a good genre read for a summer vacation? Since I got a Kindle earlier this year, I’ve been able to buy books on even more of an impulse than before, since now I don’t have to find a place to physically house them. Here are a few, one digital and two physical, I’ve found particularly worthwhile--two just happen to be from the same author:

Fathom by Cherie Priest is the first Kindle formatted novel I purchased, and I was off to auspicious start. This is a modern fantasy, something like some of Neil Gaiman’s work,but who it reminds me of most is Tim Powers. It’s got the usual Powers elements--mythology reinterpreted, a bit of secret history, and obscure tidbits of the real world recast in a clever way. The story stars two young, female cousins on an island off the coast of Florida. They become involved in a battle between two powerful deities/elementals--one of water and one of earth. The water elemental has a plan to awaken the leviathan sleeping in the depths--and destroy the world. The young cousins are transformed into something other than human, and serve as pawns for the dueling supernatural beings.

Boneshaker is my second recommendation from Cherie Priest. This is what the kids are calling “steampunk” these days. Priest calls the planned alternate-history series “The Clockwork Century.” In a world where the Civil War still rages in the 1880s--abetted by superior transportation technology--an arrogant inventor's digging machine has turned Seattle into a no-man’s land, surrounded by 200 foot high walls. These walls are to hold in the blight--a gas, and one of those genre fictions substances that has an amazing variety of effects, all bad. The blight kills many that inhale it, and turns the rest into decaying zombies (“rotters”), and causes corrosion and decay of inanimate objects. Oh, and it can also be used to make a deadly and addictive drug called “lemon sap.”

When Zeke, the teenage son of the inventor responsible, heads into the blight-soaked city in a misguided attempt to clear his father’s name, Briar, his mother, catches a ride on an airship flying over the city to go after him. Yes, there are airships--this is steampunk, remember--so that’s a requirement. It’s also got another evil inventor in a sinister gasmask, an underground squatter society, inscrutable Chinamen, and the aforementioned zombies. What’s not to like?

My last recommendation is a work of nonfiction, but it does deal with magic. Spiritual Merchants by Carolyn Morrow Long takes on a fascinating topic I’ve dealt with here before--so-called spiritual supplies, used predominantly for African American folk magic. It outlines the history and origins of rootwork and related systems, and then details how the spiritual products industry went from local hoodoo drug stores, and small mail order operations, to major manufactures distributing products nationwide, with catalogs and the like. If you like to draw inspiration from real-world belief for your gaming, or just have an interest in real world magical systems, then its worth checking out.

That oughta do it for now.  It's only July, though, and I've still got a stack of books awaiting me.

The Saragossa Manuscript

Last Friday, Amazon delivered me the 1965 Polish film The Saragossa Manuscript directed by Wojciech Has. The film comes well-recommended, having been praised by the likes of David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, and Neil Gaiman. Jerry Garcia supposedly helped supply funds to get a full cut of the film restored. Having not finished the film yet I can't give my own full review, but so far I've been impressed by some of the imagery, and the unusual use of music--sometimes its usual (if quirky) sixties film score, but it has touches of primitive electronica experimentalism reminscient of some sci-fi scores of the era.

I went looking for the film because of its source material, the novel The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Count Jan Potocki (1761-1815). The book bears some resemblance to works like the Arabian Nights or the Decameron. It's a fantasy (at least in part) describing the experiences and stories related to a young Walloon officer in the Sierra Morenas of Spain in 1739. It includes gypsies, cabbalists, Sapphic sister Moorish princesses, and hints at secret history. The stories are nested like Matryoshka dolls, with narrators of some stories showing up as characters in others. Neil Gaiman, a fan of the work, has called it "a labyrinth inside of a maze." It combines elements of the gothic and picaresque with eroticism and humor.

The book itself has an interesting history. It's so convoluted in fact that Potocki's authorship was at times doubted. The novel was written in French, and over an extended period in several stages. The first few "days" were published in 1805 in French. Later, the entire manuscript was translated and published in Polish, but then the original complete manuscript was lost, and had to be "back translated" into French for a complete French version. Wikipedia suggests that scholars now think their were two versions: an unfinished one from 1804, published in 1885, and a rewritten, tonal different complete 1810 version. Only the first of these versions has appeared in English.

Potocki himself is an interesting and character. He was served as a military officer, and was also for a time of novice of the Knights of Malta. He travelled and wrote scholarly studies on linguistics and ethnography. In 1790, he was among the first to fly in a hot air balloon. He also committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. Allegedly, this was done with a silver bullet he fashioned himself and had had blessed by a chaplain!

Anyway the novel is well worth your time. I'll keep you posted on the film, but I'm anticipating good things.

Cthulhu Behind Glass

I got back from my conference last night, so I'll be back to my normal posting schedule anon.  One last filler post for today. 

As a follow-up to my photo of my Howardian bookcase, I thought I'd show my Lovecraftiana bookcase, which includes not only works by the master, but allied works as well as references and commentaries.  The lower shelf (not fully pictured) holds the complete supernatural fiction of the Robert W. Chambers, who of course was one of Lovecraft's inspirations.

Probably the most obscure (though still readily available) volume here is Richard Tierney's Drums of Chaos wherein his historical Sword & Sorcery character, Simon of Gitta, teams up with his pulp sci-fi character John Taggart.  Oh yeah--and Jesus makes an appearance.  Other more off-beat titles include the flawed but entertaining Shadow's Bend, in which Lovecraft and Howard go on a road-trip to save the world, and Nick Mamatas's Move Underground, which is a Lovecraftian tale as written by Jack Kerouac.

Some of the Chaosium volumes are out-of-print, though, so maybe they're the hardest to come by, these days.

Hither Came Conan, the Cimmerian...vol. 3

After ordering six months ago, I finally got my copy of Robert E. Howard's Complete Conan of Cimmeria Volume 3 in the signed limited edition, yesterday.  The wait wasn't all Bud Plant's fault--the book had been delayed from its original release date.  In fact, for a while, it looked like it wasn't going to come out at all.  Volume two of these deluxe Wandering Star editions came out in 2003, and only Book Palace stepping in seems to have got this volume to print in this format.

Thankfully, here it is, and its just as pretty as the two previous volumes--red slipcase, and color plates by Gregory Manchess, plus tonal illustrations.  The contents are the same as Del Rey's The Conquering Sword of Conan paperback from 2005, but getting it with color paintings, signed and numbered by the artist, and on that crisp, acid-free paper, with that new book smell, just makes it feel--I don't know--more important.

Anyway, its got Howard's original versions of the Conan stories from 1935-36, which include "Beyond the Black River" and "Red Nails."  It also includes some of his original synopses, letters, and a Howard-drawn Hyborian Age map.  I don't know if I like Manchess's art as well as that of Gianni in the last volume, or particularly Schultz's in the first, but it certainly isn't bad by any stretch. 

The only question is, how am I going to fit this volume in the "Howard Cabinet" with its peers?

Names to Conjure With

A really good name for a character in fiction is a marvellous thing.  Some very good writers just don't have the naming facility, while others, perhaps less talented in some respects, have a great knack for it.  In alphabetical order, here are fifteen of my favorite names from fiction of the fantastic (and one comic book series)...Or at least there a sampling of those favorites I can recall at the moment.  How many do you recognize?

• Anasurimbor Kellhus
• Caladan Brood
• Dorian Hawkmoon
• Druss
• Eldred Jonas
• Feyd-Rautha
• Jherek Carnelian
• Kull
• Smaug
• Susheeng
• Syzygy Darklock
• Tars Tarkas
• Tempus Thales
• Tobias Moon
• Uther Doul

As a bonus, here are some organizations from fiction with cool names:

• The Blasphemous Accelerators
• The Big Coffin Hunters
• The Bloody Mummers
• The Deacon Blues
• The Galrogs
• The Silent Oecumene