John Miller has posted a fine little tribute to Fritz Leiber over at the Wall Street Journal.

Leiber has long been one of my favorite writers, and for some time his stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser were my favorite sword-and-sorcery tales. REHupa’s 58th mailing (if I’m remembering correctly) was dedicated to Leiber, and in my contribution to that mailing I confessed that I liked F&GM better than Conan. Time, and in-depth study, has greatly increased my appreciation of REH’s most famous character, but I’ll still rank Leiber’s duo as his equals. I think my favorite account of the Twain is “Lean Times in Lankhmar,” in which Fafhrd finds religion, with hilarious results; I’m glad to note that it was one of Fritz’s favorites, too, along with “Bazaar of the Bizarre” and “The Cloud of Hate.”  I can’t imagine that there’s anyone with a taste for sword-and-sorcery who hasn’t tried Fafhrd & the Mouser yet, but if you fit that description, time’s a-wastin’! Get yourself a copy of one of the collections.  And if you’re a person who, for some reason, does not particularly care for sword-and-sorcery, you might be surprised by F&GM: try one of the stories I’ve mentioned and see what you’re missing.  The derring-do is leavened by humor, there are some intriguing, even profound, observations of human behavior, and a minimum of blood spattering and brains and entrails spilling.

As John says, Leiber “ranged from genre to genre,” winning awards in fantasy, horror and science fiction. His Wikipedia page has a decent overview, with links to discussion of some of the works. The one book of his that I always recommend is not a Fafhrd/Mouser, but Our Lady of Darkness, one of his forays into “urban horror” and absolutely the most chilling thing I’ve ever read. I also heartily recommend The Big Time, his Hugo-winning novel from 1958. And you owe it to yourself to try at least one collection of his short stories, if you haven’t already: Fritz was a real master of the form. So many great tales: “Smoke Ghost,” “Four Ghosts in Hamlet,” “Gonna Roll the Bones,” “Midnight by the Morphy Watch,” “Belsen Express,” “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes,” “Space-Time for Springers,” “Try and Change the Past,” “A Deskful of Girls,” “Rump-Titty-Titty-Tum-TAH-Tee”… well, egad, looking over lists on the ‘net, one could just go on and on trying to list those that remain green in memory.

I can see I’m going to have to have myself a little Fritz Leiber weekend. Oh, and John also notes that this is Fritz’s centenary year, so we’ll have a birthday party for him in December!

And by the way, John Miller’s Hey Miller blog is worth checking out, as is his Between the Covers podcast at National Review Online. John’s a fan of genre literature, so you’ll occasionally find it discussed (along with the political stuff — well, it is National Review…): scroll down through the archives for Otto Penzler on The Vampire Archives, Gene Wolfe on The Best of Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card on Ender in Exile, and others. Many REHupans are fans of Bernard Cornwell: he’s there discussing Agincourt. John’s also a history buff: plenty of books on the Revolutionary Generation and the Civil War.  There’s more in the archives, like his November 2007 talk with Paul Sammon about Conan the Phenomenon.  You won’t find my dulcet tones though: John’s interview with me was pre-podcast.

On June 13, the world of science fiction, fantasy and supernatural fiction scholarship lost one of its pioneers, Everett F. Bleiler. As Locus Online notes, in compiling The Checklist of Fantastic Literature: A Bibliography of Fantasy, Weird and Science Fiction Books Published in the English Language (Shasta, 1948), Bleiler laid the foundation for subsequent bibliographic work in these fields. He later produced annotated checklists, two cataloging early science fiction and one, most notable for our interests here, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction: A Full Description of 1,775 Books from 1750 to 1960, Including Ghost Stories, Weird Fiction, Stories of Supernatural Horror, Fantasy, Gothic Novels, Occult Fiction, and Similar Literature, with Author, Title and Motif Indexes. This massive survey of the field would probably, for most of us, represent a life’s work. But Mr. Bleiler did far more than compile these magnificent reference works.  He also edited some of the earliest SF collections (with Ted Dikty), and from 1955 he worked for Dover Publications, editing many of the volumes that we enthusiasts of fantastic literature regard as priceless gems of our collections. When I first joined REHupa I was not particularly well-read in weird literature beyond sword-and-sorcery (most of which, other than REH and Leiber, I had found unutterably formulaic and dull — I had yet, at that time, to discover Wagner and Saunders).  The members of this august association, notably my former housemates Vern Clark and Steve Trout, soon began to remedy that by introducing me to such luminaries as M.R. James, Robert W. Chambers, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, and others, as often as not through volumes edited by Mr. Bleiler and published by Dover.  Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature, of course, remains an essential guide to the realm of weird fiction.

Mr. Bleiler’s achievements did not go unrecognized during his lifetime: he received a special professional award from the World Fantasy Convention in 1978 and a Life Achievement Award ten years later, and won the Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association in 1984.

For more on Mr. Bleiler and his accomplishments, see the brief obituary at Locus Online (they promise a full one in their July print issue), his Wikipedia page, and the entry in the SF Encyclopedia.  Brian J Showers has an interesting interview with him, and a good bibliography of his work.

Mr. Bleiler passed the torch to a younger generation, as well: his son, Richard, in addition to working with his father on the two checklists of early science fiction mentioned above, was the compiler of The Index to Adventure Magazine, the CD version of which I find one of the most useful reference tools in my library.

The announcement of the end of The Cimmerian Blog represents a real blow to Howard, Tolkien, and fantasy fandom. Initially an extension of the webpage Leo Grin had created for his superb REH journal, the blog has been, for the past five years, the most consistently entertaining and informative website for the Howard fan. We will carry on with the REHupa blog, of course (and by “we” I mean mainly Morgan and Indy, but I’ll see if I can’t up my own frequency a bit), and endeavor to expand our coverage of Howard happenings, and perhaps some of the TC contributors will join us here, or will hang out over at Damon Sasser’s REH: Two-Gun Raconteur blog (which, with sterling contributions of late from Rob Roehm and Brian Leno, as well as Damon himself, bids fair to assume TC‘s mantle) or at Black Gate, so Howard fans will still have sources of news and views in blog form.  Still, TC‘s blog really stood out, in design, in format, in content, just a superb act.

The closing of the blog apparently also marks the exit, for now, of Leo Grin from Howardian affairs. This is a terrific loss. To my way of thinking, the towering figure in Robert E Howard fandom during the decade ending this year was Leo Grin.  And I’m not just talking about his massive 6’8″ frame.

That The Cimmerian was the finest of the REH periodicals published during the decade there can be absolutely no argument.  In my opinion, Leo raised the bar for the rest of us: The Dark Man and Two-Gun Raconteur, at least, were both better for having The Cimmerian out there. (In fact, The Cimmerian was probably an outgrowth of Leo’s short but memorable tenure on The Dark Man board of reviewers. His impassioned arguments for what a Howard journal should be not prompting the sort of action from the rest of us that he desired, Leo was inspired to go forth and create the periodical that he wanted.)

Not long after joining REHupa in late 1999, Leo took on the task of redesigning our website (originally developed by Ed Waterman and hosted by Rob Jones) and adding a lot of interesting and useful material. (See this page where he discusses some of the changes he was making. Many of the features of this website that we’ve grown accustomed to were Leo’s doing.) Some years later, after he had gotten The Cimmerian Blog going, he set up the REHupa blog and handed the keys to Morgan, Indy and me.  So at least two REH websites owe him a tremendous debt — and unless I miss my guess, there are a couple of others that show his hand, too — or at least, the hand of people who learned from him.

Next week many of us will be arriving in Cross Plains for an event that also bears the strong imprint of Mr. Grin. Robert E Howard Days had been going for some years before Leo got involved, but he did a lot to elevate it to, as the saying goes, “the next level,” from a small, rather informal gathering of a few dozen fans to a well-organized program that draws hundreds. From the press-release-style announcements at the REHupa website, to the interesting and informative panels and presentations, to the Silent Auction benefitting Project Pride and the Howard House, and of course the presentation of annual awards, there is almost no aspect of Howard Days that does not bear the stamp of Leo’s imagination, hard work and dedication. I tried a few times to get Leo to take a bow, but he always backed away, preferring to keep his involvement in the background.

I fear that this encomium is veering toward hagiography, so I will mention but one more of Leo’s important contributions and then close. Largely (in my opinion) thanks to Leo’s prodding, cajoling, and other less savory forms of suasion, Robert E. Howard scholars started going public. I’d been trying for years to get people to contribute material to The Dark Man, with limited success.  Leo, perhaps because he offered genuine cash American money for contributions, managed to actually get enough submissions to put out a regular zine.  (The regularity part of the equation was helped tremendously by Leo’s incredible industry. His creation of The Cimmerian Awards also provided further incentive to publish one’s essays or research.) Those who never worked directly with him might not know what a skillful editor he is, with a real gift for shaping a writer’s material into something that is not only more entertaining than what was submitted, but thereby also more informative (for who really gets much information from something that is tedious to read?).  Leo and I are of two different schools of editorial thought, both perfectly valid: I prefer to leave the writer’s work to the writer, for the most part, and confine myself to cleaning up grammatical and typographical errors (if other changes are needed, I like to just suggest to the writer where I think something needs to be reworked, and let him or her do it); Leo is of the more active school, ready to cut-and-paste, strike through, and rework, forging the raw material into something more forceful, direct and readable. Peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism gives him the fan-tods.  He always gave me, and as far as I know all the other authors he worked with, ample opportunity to participate in all this rewriting and editing. For my part, though, I thought the changes he made to my work were always for the better. And it could be argued that Leo’s greatest editorial contribution to Howard Studies was to shepherd the work of Steve Tompkins, David Hardy, Rob Roehm, Brian Leno, Chris Gruber, Morgan Holmes, Barbara Barrett, Gary Romeo, and others into print, both in the journal and on the blog(s).

Okay, I said I’d end with that, but there’s one more thing: Leo’s own writing about Robert E. Howard forms a most valuable addition to Howard Studies.  In his first REHupa zine, in mailing 160 back in December of 1999, Leo made a spirited defense of Howard’s work as being not altogether as grim and dark as many had averred, but as being also joyous and life-affirming. In his stories, Leo wrote, “combat is savage but a sense of joy for life and an unparalleled sense of humor shine through like a rainbow after a storm. Far from walking away from a Howard story depressed and morose, one is energetic and overwhelmed with energy and vibrancy. I cannot think of a story from another author sporting a so-called ‘happy ending’ that gives the same feeling of relishing the marrow of life, the thrill of living.” It was a refreshingly contrarian viewpoint, and of course he continued to demonstrate it over the next decade, in REHupa and both print and online TC. But it was not only contrarian — it was extraordinarily perceptive.  Agree or not — heaven knows I have not always agreed with Leo’s arguments — his views are always based on solid research and backed by strong evidence. In my opinion, one of the most insightful and significant essays of the decade was Leo’s heartfelt “In Defense of Hester Jane Ervin Howard,” a much-needed corrective — or at least a challenge — to the decades of demonization REH’s mother has suffered.

Leo’s career in Howard fandom has not been an exceptionally long one, but it has been an exceptionally important one, with many, many contributions both public and private (let’s not forget his purchase of a copy of the Jenkins Gent from Bear Creek which he then gave to the Howard House) that have left us all considerably in his debt. I hope that the decision to pull the plug on The Cimmerian Blog will not mark the end of his involvement in Howard Studies.  I certainly wish him the best as he pursues other writing opportunities and interests, but I am selfish enough to hope that he will still occasionally lob one of his contrarian theses our way.  We will always be the richer for having a friend and colleague like Leo Grin.

The seven week countdown to Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains starts today. I’ve been periodically updating the REH Days 2010 Information Page, so you might want to check that out by clicking on the tab at the top of this page…if you would.

And how can you help out REH Days this year, you ask? Howzabout going through your “stuff” and donating Howard and Howard-related items to the Silent Auction, held every year at the Celebration Banquet at Howard Days? We’ve all got extras or dupes of Howard matter in our collections, and what better way to help out the fine folks of Project Pride in Cross Plains than to donate a few of those books or magazines or fanzines or posters or artwork or the odd things we’ve all acquired but really don’t need anymore. It’s a very good thing to perpetuate the Legacy of Robert E. Howard, and that’s exactly what Project Pride does with the Robert E. Howard Museum. It’s an all volunteer outfit, folks, so you’d be doing them a great favor by sending items to the Silent Auction. So box that stuff up today and send it to: Project Pride, POB 534, Cross Plains, TX 76443. Or, you can bring it with you to Howard Days, and we’ll find room! Indy sez Thanks!

Paul Sammon (author of Conan the Phenomenon) will be joining us this year to enhance the already fun-filled dance-card that is Howard Days. He will really help to round out this year’s theme, The Illustrators of REH, by joining our 2010 Guests of Honor Jim and Ruth Keegan on a couple of panels. Conan the Phenomenon is an award-winning book chock full of fantastic REH graphics, and if you haven’t checked it out yet, Crom may not be ignoring you… Plus, the erudite Mr. Sammon has worked on ALL THREE Conan movies, so you know he’s got some good stories. And he even told me he won’t charge his usual fee for autographs!

Arlene Stephenson of Project Pride tells me there will be a new t-shirt for sale this year, plus a new hat design and a polo shirt available in the Gift Shop at the Howard House. This year’s Keegan design for the Postal Cancellation is a wonderful addition to that ongoing collection, and there’s always some goodies at the Swap Meet held at the Pavilion as well.

Things are shaping up nicely for another great REH Days, so bring your sunscreen and Howard stuff, be prepared for a surprise or two (aren’t there always?) and we’ll see y’all real soon!

George Scithers, editor of Amra, the Conan and Sword and Sorcery fanzine and later the editor of the revived Weird Tales, passed away on April 19:

Writer, editor, and publisher George H. Scithers passed away yesterday at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, from complications following a massive heart attack suffered the morning of April 17. He was 80. He had been in declining health for the last few years, due to complications from diabetes and a heart condition.

Scithers was a writer, editor, publisher and military engineer (with the US Army 1946-1973, retiring with the rank of Colonel). He began publishing fiction of genre interest with “Faithful Messenger” for If  in 1969, and wrote a spoof cookery book (suggested by Damon Knight’s famous 1950 Galaxy story), To Serve Man: A Cookbook for People (1976) as Karl Würf; but his main sf activities were as an editor and publisher. He began his active involvement with sf and fantasy in 1959 as editor of the famous fanzine Amra (1959-1982), which specialized in Sword and Sorcery, particularly the work of Robert E. Howard; it won Hugos in 1964 and 1968. Scithers published two Mirage Press anthologies drawn from it: The Conan Swordbook: 27 Examinations of Heroic Fantasy (1969) and The Conan Grimoire (1972), both with L. Sprague de Camp, co-founder with him of The Hyborean Legion, a group devoted to Howard studies; earlier, De Camp alone had been responsible for the Amra-derived The Conan Reader (1968). In 1973 Scithers founded the Owlswick Press, which continued intermittently to publish sf and other material of quality until 1993.

The late Steve Tompkins was a longtime member of REHupa.  While he was not an active member at the time of his death, being a REHupan is liking being a Marine, once you are a REHupan, you are a REHupan for life. Today is the first anniversary of his passing and the many remembrances and tributes that have been posted the past 24 hours show just how much he is missed.

While Steve had contributed thousands upon thousands of words to Howard and fantasy scholarship, at the age of 48 he was just scratching the surface of what he was capable of contributing in years left un-lived. His keyboard and voice have been silent for a year, but his many essays and blog postings will live on as long as there are eager Howard fans out there willing to expand their knowledge.

I have a tribute to Steve on the TGR website, and there are numerous ones over at The Cimmerian blog and one at Jim & Ruth Keegan‘s blog.

And, listed below are links to some memorable ones from last year:

Rusty Burke

Morgan Holmes

Howard Jones

Brian Murphy

Deuce Richardson

Charles Saunders

Steve Trout

While Steve is not on this earthly plane, he still lives on in our hearts and minds.

Steve Tompkins died one year ago today. The whole tragic sequence of events started when he ate a couple of hamburgers at a Burger King and got food poisoning. If you google Burger King Food Poisoning, there are many, many hits. There is an old punk rock song by MDC called “Corporate Deathburger.” The song has greater meaning for me the past year.

I still get the occasional moment when I see something and think for a second “I have to tell Steve about this,” and reality hits me.

Last month Robert E. Howard fans traveled from Austin, Boston, Plano, the Sacramento area, Washington D.C., Paris (France, not Texas) and the Houston area to celebrate with and honor Glenn Lord, the Godfather of Howard Fandom on his 78th birthday. The gathering was held at Tampico Seafood & Cocina Mexicana, which is located just north of downtown Houston. At the party Glenn received cash, gift cards, books, French champagne (personally delivered by Patrice Louinet and Fabrice Tortey) and a Liberty Bowl. A good time was had by all and it was an evening those present will remember for many years to come.

Glenn has been a Howard fan and collector since his first contact with Howard in 1951 when he acquired a copy of Arkham House’s Skull-Face and Others. He then set about finding copies of the original pulps containing Howard stories. Luckily, he was able to acquire quite a few from a bookseller who specialized in old pulps at bargain prices.

In 1965 he became the literary agent for the heirs to Howard’s writings and that same year he located the Legendary Trunk containing thousands of pages of typescripts. Over the years Glenn single handedly tracked down and saved hundreds of stories and poems for posterity. Glenn also published 18 issues of The Howard Collector, a journal that featured previously unpublished Howard stories, published (in conjunction with Arkham House) the first volume of Howard’s poetry, edited and wrote introductions for dozens of books, and wrote and compiled The Last Celt, a bio-bibliography of Howard.

In the 1970’s he shepherded in the Howard Boom, helped create Conan Properties and brought Conan to the big screen. During that decade and into the 1980’s, hundreds of hard cover books, paperbacks, chapbooks, comics and fanzines were published. He continued working as Howard’s literary agent until 1993. If you’d like to read more about Glenn, newly-minted REHupan Lee Breakiron has authored an informative entry on him at Wikipedia.

While a lot of us have known Glenn for decades and are aware of his many achievements, newer fans may not be familiar with the man and his deeds. Way back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, long before Howard and Conan were part of an international corporation, there was one lone figure carrying the torch and protecting the legacy of Robert E. Howard. If you’ve ever read a Howard story or poem, odds are Glenn found it or contributed significantly to the process that got it into print; in many cases for the first time.

Needless to say, we all owe Glenn a debt of gratitude for all he has done in the past and continues to do for Robert E. Howard, his prose and poetry. So why not take a few minutes to drop Glenn a line at the address below and tell him how much you appreciate all his hard work throughout the years. Glenn loves to hear from fans and I’ll bet you’ll get a reply back from the Man himself.

Glenn Lord
P.O. Box 775
Pasadena, TX 77501

All right, let’s everyone take a pill. I said I wasn’t going to get into this, but I can’t help myself.

The Howard Community at large has recently been thrown into blazing-pistolas-brandishing-Bowie mode by some minor-league blogging by some woman who doesn’t have one freaking clue what she’s writing about:

http://fandomania.com/was-conan-really-a-fictional-character/

Maggie Van Ostrand wrote her Crazy Bob article based on what she read in L. Sprague de Camp’s REH Biography, Dark Valley Destiny. She read the opinions and conjecture and general b.s. Sprague brought forth in his book, further  extrapolated her own opinions and conjecture, and then went looking for support for her “facts”on the internet. Well, the article she found to prop up her hack job is right here (under CRITICISM) on the REHupa Website: Revisiting Dark Valley Destiny by Gary Romeo.

I’m not going to get into the merits or demerits of Gary’s article. Gary is well-known as a de Camp apologist/supporter – I’ve always admired him for that, and I’ve said so before - our Texas friend sticks to his guns, by gawd, and stands up to ALL the heavy-hitters in Howard Fandom! And he & I are in agreement when I say that the Lancer Conan the Adventurer is probably the book that has had the most impact in the last 43 years for the career of REH. L.Sprague de Camp and Frank Frazetta notwithstanding.

But thanks to Ms. Van Ostrand’s article, Gary Romeo is now taking an unfair whupping around the Howard internet community. So, all of you who are: get off his back. Leave him alone. Gary Romeo is NOT the problem, and he is taking unfair shit for his long-standing opinions. Get Off Gary! I’ve got news for you: Gary standing up for his opinions is Howardian Behavior that we should all admire!

So, direct your ire towards Maggie Van Ostrand and her stupid hack-job article – a number of us already have in the “comments” section there – and blame HER. It’s her fault for her crappy article. Besides, she writes just like L. Sprague de Camp did while writing DVD: make your conclusions first, then only use the “information” (opinions, conjecture, 3rd party accounts) that supports your conclusions. And don’t forget to make stuff up, too. Who’s gonna check your facts, anyway? Whoa – guess she didn’t know about Howard Fandom! Duck yer haid, Maggie!

OK, that’s all I got right now – don’t make me come out there.

I still remember October 1994. It was a fairly sunny and unusually warm Autumn and very pleasant to boot. In the middle part of the month, I got a phone call from Rusty Burke telling me that Karl Edward Wagner had died.  It was 15 years ago in late October 13 or early October 14, 1994 that he passed.  Wagner has had a big influence on Robert E. Howardom for decades. In effect, he was the First Purist. I came to Robert E. Howard via the Berkley People of the Black Circle (1977) edited by Wagner. It contained those immortal words: “It is the editor’s feeling that the Conan stories should be presents exactly as Howard wrote them, and that examples of pastiche writing have no place in a collection of the original author’s own stories. Pastiche-Conan is not the same Conan as portrayed by Robert E. Howard–and I say this as one who has written Howard pastiches.” This is the original Howard Purist Manifesto. Unfortunately, the Berkley pure text series died with three out of six projected volumes being published.  L. Sprague demanded it be murdered in its cradle as part of the deal forming Conan Properties, Inc. I didn’t know who Karl Edward Wagner was in 1980 when I discovered Robert E. Howard but I remember liking the informative forewords and afterwords. A few years later in Spring 1983, I picked up A Reader’s Guide to Fantasy by Baird Seales, Beth Meacham, and Michael Franklin (Avon, 1982). The entry on Karl Edward Wagner intrigued me. I had branched out to reading Lovecraft and then the Lovecraft circle. At the time I was reading Leiber’s Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser and Moorcock’s Elric. I was on the hunt for sword and sorcery. Luckily, Warner Books reprinted all the Kane paperbacks in 1983. That was a great summer listening to the Psychedelic Furs’ Forever Now and New Order’s Power, Corruption, and Lies not to mention lots of Dead Kennedys, Echo & the Bunnymen, and King Crimson (80s version) while reading the Timescape Clark Ashton Smith paperbacks, Leiber, Moorcock, Wagner, and C. L. Moore’s Jirel among others. I was immediately struck by the grimness of the Kane stories. Wagner had a strong weird or should I say gothic element to the stories. He was no slouch when it came to action scenes. These stories had that element that was all too often missing in sword and sorcery fiction.  That same summer, Warner published the horror collection In a Lonely Place. “Sticks” and “.220 Swift” blew me away. This was a guy worthy of the old Weird Tales. I bought the David Drake collection From the Heart of Darkness in Fall of 1983 because it had a Wagner introduction. I had never heard of Drake before but figured if Wagner liked his stuff, he must be alright.

Wagner was a fixture of the 1980s. He edited D.A.W.’s Year’s Best Horror annual anthologies. Those books were a truly eclectic grab bag of stories. Wagner probably gave Leonard Carpenter the best press he ever had. Wagner also wrote a column for Fantasy Newsletter often smacking around both fantasy and horror publishing trends. Deep down, Wagner was more of a Lovecraft type artiste than a prolific Manly Wade Wellman or Hugh Cave fictioneer. For Twilight Zone magazine, he compiled three different categories of important horror novels. Most of those I had never heard of. I think Wagner was engaging in obscurity as form of trendiness in that one. Leaving out Dracula? Come on! While the non-fiction and annual horror anthologies were out there, Wagner fiction was rare during the 1980s. I can remember the surprise and delight when finding Why Not You and I in the Fall of 1987.

I never met Karl Edward Wagner. I had hoped to do so. I did receive a note from him in late 1989 regarding an index to Harold Lamb. Virgil Utter, who was a prince of a man, mentioned me to Wagner and he took the time out to send a short letter to someone he didn’t even know. I will say this- Wagner seems to have been very well liked in person. All too often, stories abound about how this guy or that guy is a jackass or at least a jackanapes. Getting back to the letter- Wagner mentioned up coming volumes of Echoes of Valor that he hoped would go up through volumes 4 and 5. The series as some of you will remember made it to volume 3. That was one of the most important sword and sorcery pulp rescue operations ever performed.  Still faithful to Robert E. Howard, he finally got “The Black Stranger” out to the public. Wagner hated the term sword and sorcery by the way, preferring “Epic fantasy” instead.  At that time, some Wagner fiction began appearing in some of the myriad of  horror anthologies. The long awaited Kane epic In the Wake of the Night had never come out. The last short stories were often not up to the previous level of imagination. “At First, Just Ghostly” in the Wagner issue of Weird Tales seemed to be a fragment or excerpt taken from a novel. Of those last stories, I did like “The Gothic Touch” where Elric and Kane meet. It had a sort of E.C. weird science feel about it.

Wagner’s body gave out that October day in 1994. Personal demons won out in the end (as they often do). Somewhere around here, I have the letter from Hugh Cave where he discusses Karl Wagner’s death. I was buddies with Hugh Cave at the time and until his death (Hugh lectured me on how to be a husband when I got married). Hugh just couldn’t believe it that Wagner died at age 49. Like Robert E. Howard, there is a sense of unfinished business about Karl Edward Wagner. There is a legacy of fiction,  non-fiction, and editing. I wish projected books such as Silver Dagger, Queen of the Night, In the Wake of the Night, The Fourth Seal, Satan’s Gun, and At First, Just Ghostly were on my shelf. I have heard that Wagner books are steadily climbing in price from booksellers. There are online discussion groups wherein posters are bemoaning the difficulty and cost in procurring Wagner fiction. We have been told that the big publishers are not interested in him which if true is a shame. I would love to see the Del Rey treatment given to Wagner that has been done with Howard and Michael Moorcock. Reprint a novel with some stories, essays/articles, old small press magazine artwork etc as a multivolume set.  Steve Tompkins was thinking hard on writing a Wagner biography and had even begun a little work on it. The universe can be a cruel place.