SWORDS 'N' STUFF

I’ve recently gotten back into writing sword and sorcery fiction again. Don’t know why (although by a strange coincidence, S&S does seem to be getting popular again, so maybe, for once, I’m tuned into the zeitgeist). I dug out some old stuff and gave it a good polish (or major re-writes, to be fair) and, miracle of miracles, actually had some of it published: in two of Parallel Universe’s Swords & Sorceries anthologies, and an edition of Phantasmagoria. Naturally, spurred on by this, I just had to have a crack at some new stuff.

The story published in issue 18 of Phantasmagoria in 2021 – “Face of Heaven, Eyes of Hell” – was set in a corner of my own multiverse (known variously as the Internection, the Boundless, the Infinite Tiers) where immortals have finally tired of their immortality and descended to the earthly plane in order to fight themselves into extinction, causing inevitable mayhem among humans as they go. They’d call it collateral damage these days. At some point I even jotted down a few notes (a grandiose term for the odd sentence, or even just a word or two) for more tales set in the same milieu, building up to a grand finale (with hints of The Magnificent Seven, or more appropriately, The Seven Samurai).

Recently I needed to submit something to a writers’ group I’m involved with and, firmly believing that no one should suffer alone, rattled off a second tale set in this universe (now labouring under the trite and – I hope – temporary title of ‘the God War’). However, I couldn’t find the notes I’d originally set down (imagining I’d deleted the file, either by accident or due to a lack of enthusiasm) so I used what was lodged in my memory (always a mistake).

Needless to say, when the hurley-burley was done, I found the original notes, stuck in a folder marked ‘Archive’. I had of course misremembered quite convincingly, with what I’d written actually being a mash-up of two separate ideas. Never mind: I now have half a dozen separate notes that I can fill out into proper plots at some point (one of which is a cheeky reworking of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, but with a red sword) and what I think is a more apt title for the second story.

It does go to show, though, never throw anything away. You never know when – or even how – it’ll come in handy.

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.