RETURN OF THE SWORDS

Decades ago, back in the mists of time, my earliest attempts at writing revolved around what I later came to know as Sword & Sorcery (somewhat influenced initially by Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars series, and then Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion books). These primitive, immature scribblings morphed over time, and my earliest printed work was a very short story in the British Fantasy Society’s magazine, Dark Horizons #10 – “Designs of the Wizard” – in 1974. Two sequels followed – “Shadows of the Weaver” and “The Closing of the Days” – in Dark Horizons #12 and #14 respectively. All were bundled under the overarching title of “The Second Dragons”, and told an epic tale of human versus humanoid lizards in a post-apocalyptic desert Earth in well under 10,000 words. I returned to that particular world a couple more times – “Nightfall of a Dying World” (Dark Horizons 28, 1985) and “Fair Dues” (Dark Horizons 33, 1992) – when the mood struck, and may well do so again. I even wrote a novel, expanding on the original three stories; posterity will be relieved to know it no longer exists.

Now and then I’d dabble in other S&S tales [“The Pistol and the Sword” (Dark Horizons, 1979), “But the Stones Will Stand” (Fantasy Tales 10, 1982), “Sword of Light” (Victor Summer Special, 1987), and “Day of the Dark Men” (Fantasy Tales Vol.12 #6, 1991)], but over time I drifted away from that particular genre, for some reason. (Although I never entirely left: the jokey “Saving Prince Romero” was published in Unfit for Eden: Postscripts 26/27, in 2012).

Then, during 2020 – whether it was the unusually summery weather, or lockdown madness, who can say – I discovered a new enthusiasm for the form. I found time to dust off some of my unpublished S&S fiction and give it a good polishing (read: re-writing from the ground up) and I’m glad to say the exercise bore a little fruit. And so – by one of those typical coincidences which often plague the writer’s world – two pieces are appearing within a sort time of each other. “Face of Heaven, Eyes of Hell” has just been published in Phantasmagoria #18, while “The Essence of Dust” will shortly be released on an unsuspecting world in Swords & Sorceries Volume 2. And although there is little to connect either tale, they do take place in a shared universe (or should that be multiverse?).

I think it’s fair to say my S&S days are actually far from over.