Master of the Pit

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Over the course of publishing the first two Kane of Old Mars novels, I've talked a lot on this blog about Michael Moorcock. About how he's won more awards than you can shake a stick at, and rightly so. How he was one of the pioneers of modern fantasy, and created or popularized such fantasy tropes as the weakling antihero warrior, the struggle between Law and Chaos, and the concept of the "multiverse." So this week, rather than prattling on, I thought I'd cut right to the chase and give you a preview of the third and final Michael Kane book, Masters of the Pit:

They came in a howling pack, bursting from the trees and running down the beach towards us; grotesque parodies of human beings, waving clubs and crudely hammered swords, covered in hair and completely naked.

I could not at first believe my eyes as I drew my own sword without thinking and prepared to face them.

Though they walked upright, they had the half-human faces of dogs—bloodhounds were the nearest species I could think of.

What was more, the noises they made were indistinguishable from the baying of hounds.

So bizarre was their appearance, so sudden was their assault, that I was almost off my guard when the first club-brandishing dog-man came in to the attack.

I blocked the blow with my blade and sheared off the creature's fingers, finishing him cleanly with a thrust at his heart.

Another took his place, and more besides. I saw that we were completely surrounded by the pack. Apart from Hool Haji, Rokin and myself, there were probably only two other barbarians in our party, and there were probably some fifty of the dog-men.

I swung my sword in an arc, and it bit deep into the necks of two of the dog-men, causing them to fall.

The hounds' faces were slobbering, and the large eyes held a maniacal hatred which I had only previously seen in the eyes of mad dogs. I had the impression that if they bit me I would be infected with rabies.

Three more fell before my blade as all the old teachings of M. Clarchet, my French fencing master since childhood, came back to me.

Once again I became cool.

Once again I became nothing more than a fighting machine, concentrating entirely on defending myself against this mad attack...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Taking Back Escapism

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Well, here we are—the final installment in Michael Moorcock's Kane of Old Mars trilogy. In City of the Beast, Moorcock first introduced us to the steely-eyed physicist and swordsman Michael Kane, a man catapulted across space and time by a chance invention, who hit the ground running and managed to make himself a prince of the violent, vibrant world that is ancient Mars. Moorcock himself has said that, in the early days of his career, he would sometimes only give himself a few days to write a book, and in that seminal Michael Kane tale, we felt that breathless pace—the prose light and quick, the images coming in fast succession as Kane fought blue giants, cities of thieves, and vast subterranean monsters. In its sequel, Lord of the Spiders, Michael Kane—yanked cruelly back to Earth by his fellow scientists—manages to return to his adopted world, only to find himself in a place (and perhaps time!) far removed from his beloved green city of Varnal and the gorgeous princess waiting there. With Lord of the Spiders, Moorcock keeps the same breakneck pace, but the story as a whole feels darker, as Kane's adventures become colored by his despair and deal with darker subject matter—genocide, revolution, and assassination.

In Masters of the Pit, Moorcock returns a final time to the familiar characters of Mars, who by this point feel like old friends—Hool Haji the blue giant, steadfast Princess Shizala, and of course Michael Kane. Yet rather than rehashing either of the book's predecessors, Moorcock takes the story in yet another new direction, this time with a more philosophical bent. While much of the story deals with Kane and Hool Haji traveling (and frequently battling their way) across the world in search of a cure for a deadly plague, the focus of the story seems to be not on the violent struggle, but on the moral one. By far the stars of the show in my mind are the citizens of Cend-Amrid, who in their attempt to survive through machine-like efficiency have succeeded in killing everything that made them human. Adding to the theme are the dog-men of Hahg, degenerate mutants that continue to cowardly serve the evil, winged First Masters even though freedom lies easily within their grasp. Or there's always the barbaric horde of Rokin the Gold—crude, lowbrow raiders who Kane nevertheless comes to respect for the sheer passion with which they live.

As with much of Robert E. Howard's work—and, honestly, most of the early pulp masters—it's this respect for the individual, the enshrining of action and free will as the ultimate good, that permeates Moorcock's last adventure in this series. It is, at its heart, a rebellion against the modern world where—much like the men of Cend-Amrid—many of us feel trapped as tiny cogs in a vast machine, one whose function we have little control over. And if there's anything that Moorcock's writing offers us, it's freedom. In a world where "escapist" is often a derogatory term, Moorcock stands up and wears the label proudly, and Masters of the Pit is a shining example.

I don't know about you, but I'm with him.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

A New Adventure on Old Mars!

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD. Those who have not yet read City of the Beast should seriously consider doing so before pressing onward.)

Although it stands on its own as a novel, Michael Moorcock's Lord of the Spiders picks up immediately where the events of City of the Beast left off. In the second of the Kane of Old Mars books, Moorcock brings us a slightly darker series of adventures for the American physicist and duelist Michael Kane. Pulled back to Earth on the eve of his engagement to the beautiful Princess Shizala, Kane begins this story frantically preparing a second version of his matter transport machine, this time with only the narrator (Mr. Edward P. Bradbury/Michael Moorcock himself) to assist and fund his endeavors. Yet when the switch is finally thrown and Kane goes hurtling through the aether to arrive on Mars's surface, he finds things very different from when he left. The Blue Giant savages he remembers are now civilized and in the midst of a bloody civil war, and the free peoples of the south are marching on each other over false accusations. Has Michael Kane arrived on the same planet, only to find himself centuries in the future? And are his cunning and sword arm enough to free downtrodden peoples—both blue-skinned and otherwise—from the rule of tyrants? Only an adventure worthy of Michael Moorcock—complete with airships and spider-people, false gods and throne-room assassinations—will reveal the truth.

And now, an excerpt from Lord of the Spiders:

They gibbered and fell back for a moment, a terrible twittering noise, like that of thousands of bats, filling the air and echoing on and on through the complex of chambers.

Bac Puri's sword swung to left and right, up and down, slicing off limbs, stabbing vitals, piercing the unnaturally soft, clammy bodies.

And then he was, as if by magic, a mass of spears. He howled in his pain and madness as javelins like the one we had seen earlier appeared in every part of his body until it was almost impossible to distinguish the man beneath.

He fell with a crash.

Seeing the creatures were at least mortal, I decided we should take advantage of Bac Puri's mad attack and, waving my sword, I leapt through the entrance, shouting:

"Come—they can be slain!"

They could be slain, but they were elusive creatures and sight and feel of them brought physical revulsion. With the others behind me, I carried the attack to them and soon found myself in a tangle of soft, yielding flesh that seemed boneless.

And the faces! They were vile parodies of human faces and again resembled nothing quite so much as the ugly little vampire bat of Earth. Flat faces with huge nostrils let into the head, gashes of mouths full of sharp little fangs, half-blind eyes, dark and wicked—and insensate.

As I fought their claws, their sharp teeth and their spears, they slithered about, gibbering and twittering.

I had been wrong about them. There was not a trace of intelligence in their faces—just a demoniac blood-hunger, a dark malevolence that hated, hated, hated—but never reasoned.

My companions and I stood shoulder to shoulder, back to back, as the things tore at us…

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

More Moorcock!

Tuesday, March 4th, 2008

Here at Planet Stories, we've had a number of fortunate turns that have helped us go from the wistful dream of pulp-loving Erik Mona to a publisher that gets to unearth and reintroduce some of the best and most important fantasy and SF of the last century. And of all our lucky breaks, perhaps our greatest is our relationship with Michael Moorcock. In addition to having us publish his Kane of Old Mars series (three books that include City of the Beast, Lord of the Spiders, and the forthcoming Masters of the Pit), Moorcock has also written a number of insightful introductions for our other books, and has even pointed us to a few potential Planet Stories authors—after all, he's been reading this stuff longer than most of our staff has been alive.

Why is that such a big deal? Only because Michael Moorcock is, without a doubt, one of the most important and influential fantasy authors alive. He began editing the magazine Tarzan Adventures when he was fifteen years old—fifteen!—and in the decades since has written dozens of novels that have inspired generations. He's won the Nebula Award. The World Fantasy Award. The British Fantasy Award (twice!). The Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award. He's even in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. And in the course of winning those accolades, he's given us some of the genre's most memorable characters, particularly Elric of Melniboné, the skinny albino who, with his black sword Stormbringer, is perhaps the most famous of Moorcock's Eternal Champions.

The idea of a reprehensible anti-hero in fantasy; the concept of an eternal battle, not between good and evil, but between law and chaos; even the term "multiverse" to describe overlapping dimensions—all of these are things popularized by Moorcock that have since become pillars of the fantasy world, both in fiction and in gaming. He's been cited as an influence by everyone from Neil Gaiman to China Miéville, and his work remains as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.

All of which is why we're so honored to be working with him. If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and check out City of the Beast or Lord of the Spiders and get a taste of SF history at its finest.

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

City of the Beast

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

As the second book to be released by Planet Stories, City of the Beast couldn't be more perfect for the line. First off, you've got Michael Moorcock, arguably one of the most important sword and sorcery authors of all time, the man who created the original fantasy anti-hero, Elric of Melniboné, and popularized such concepts as the "multiverse." Now add in the fact that City of the Beast, the first in Moorcock's Kane of Old Mars trilogy, sends this aspect of his Eternal Champion to the red planet in an epic homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and you've got the makings of an epic sword and planet romp.

In City of the Beast, an accident in a high-security government lab sends top physicist and expert fencer Michael Kane hurtling through space and time to a Mars of millions of years ago, in an age when the planet was still rife with life. There he meets the beautiful princess Shizala, as well as the merciless blue giants who besiege her home. Using the sword training of his youth and a tactical mind earned in the jungles of Vietnam, Michael Kane bolsters the city's defense against the barbarians, earning the respect of the locals with his quick wit and wrist. But when Shizala is betrayed by one of her own and kidnapped by the giants, Earthman Michael Kane must set out across a hostile planet in order to bring her home.

With fantastic cover art by Andrew Hou and an introduction by Kim Mohan, former editor of Amazing Stories, City of the Beast is a work of love by a master of the field. Watch for it here and in stores everywhere this September.

James Sutter
Editor, Planet Stories