Illustration by Crystal Frasier

Sci-Fried: It's a Dark, Dark, Dark, Dark World

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Cave Raptors are sated; It's time to blog!

Time for a little back history on everyone's favorite literate goblin (and by that, I mean Golarion's only literate goblin): I love science fiction, but I am woefully ignorant of the subject. I sat on my mother's knee and watched Star Wars and Star Trek, I read through my father's dog-eared old copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and a few of my Saturday morning cartoons were set in space. That's about it. I remember reading some John Carter of Mars in junior high, but it didn't leave enough of an impression on me at the time that I even remember it that well. As embarrassing as it is for any goblin to admit, I just don't know much about this subject I enjoy, least of all its mysterious origins.

I supposed that's why Erik Mona, Pierce Watters, Christopher Carey, and James Sutter, the quartet behind Paizo's Planet Stories, line, asked me to start reading and reviewing this classic science fiction. Without any fond childhood memories (literally; my childhood involved being locked in a rabbit hutch with my 27 siblings), I wouldn't be viewing any of our Planet Stories fiction through the lens of nostalgia. Instead, I can dole out honest thoughts and observations on twentieth-century classics from a twenty-first century perspective.

Illustration by Emrah Elmasli

From my perspective, this is both thrilling and terrifying, like riding one of those blood-thirsty horses humans are so fond of. Now I get to read the classic origins of science fiction from almost a century ago for work, but at the same time, these are books that my boss loves. If I don't like them, will he feed me to the dreaded bandersnatch? Plus the library of Planet Stories is huge, and getting bigger every other month! Growing like a well-fed literary octopus (and you thought those metaphors were dead and gone). For my very first Sci-Fried, I decided to look at Henry Kuttner's The Dark World.

Time for another confession that will get me laughed at in the forums: I selected Mr. Kuttner because I really enjoyed the movie The Last Mimzy, which is based on Kuttner's short story Mimsy Were the Borogroves. I imagined that Dark World would be somewhat similar, familiar, and comforting in this strange new land of fiction.

But no. There was nary a stuffed rabbit to be found.

Instead, the story follows Edward Bond, who is not a little girl but rather a World War II veteran who feels strangely out of place in his own skin. It turns out that Edward Bond is not Edward Bond at all, but rather the wizard Ganelon from a parallel world, trussed up with Edward Bond's memories and life as a prison. I don't want to share too much of the story, but obviously the majority of the book takes place in the bizarre titular "Dark World," and many of the descriptions of this setting are both psychedelic and believable.

Kuttner's writing style is distinctively "chunky;" very intricate descriptions and bulgy sentences that can be a little difficult to handle at first if you're used to the "say it all now" style of modern authors. But The Dark World drew me in after the first chapter, and I had trouble putting the book down once that happened. What at first seemed like a fantasy story instead took a sharp turn into sci-fi as Kuttner tried to explain everything from vampires and werewolves to Cthulhian gods with the science of the 1940s. Some of the theories stretched my suspension of disbelief, but never quite broke it. Having finished the book now, I almost wish it were longer, with more time to examine the uncanny science and history of the Dark World itself.

The narrator is probably the best part of the book. We see everything through the protagonist's eyes, but until the very end we're never told for certain whether it's Ganelon with Edward's memories, or Edward with Ganelon's memories. Control switches between the two personalities, and bits of memory bleed through to the other, which makes what could've been an obnoxiously perfect hero into an underdog I could root for. I really want to spoil the ending, because it made me cackle with delight, but instead I will demand that you order your own copy and read it for yourself.

My final impressions of The Dark World are that it can be a difficult book to start, but once you get into the pace and get used to Kuttner's narrative flavor, it's an impossible book to stop. Once all the pieces are in play, the action flows fast and furious, with only occasional chapter breaks to let you catch your breath. The Dark World is relatively short, making it a great first step into the genre of pulp that you can read in one sitting. If you love science and history as much as I do, then some of the genre explanations will make you positively giddy. A fun book, even 63 years after it was originally published, and definitely one I'd recommend.

Dark World may have lacked hyper-advanced stuffed bunnies, but that's only because this book is for grownups.

Crystal Frasier
Production Specialist

Illustration by Tomasz Jedruszek

We're Baaaaaaaack!

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Shameful! Absolutely shameful!

I refer, of course, to the fact that the last several months have seen the Planet Stories footprint on this blog dwindle down to almost nothing. It turns out that producing a 576-page RPG core rulebook and a bestiary with more than 350 monsters in addition to our Pathfinder, Pathfinder Companion, Pathfinder Chronicles, Pathfinder Modules, Pathfinder Scenarios, GameMastery, Titanic, and Planet Stories lines is a bit time-consuming. (Just reading over that list makes me want to hide under my desk and take a nap.)

But those days of slothful negligence are past! The classic SF of Planet Stories will once again shine forth from this blog, and given our total artistic redesign of the line, there's never been a better time for it. In the coming weeks, we'll be talking more about Robots Have No Tails by Henry Kuttner, the first book in the new format, as well as its introduction by weird-fiction superstar Tim Powers and Kuttner praise from H. P. Lovecraft himself, plus subscription benefits and the philosophy behind the new look for the line. For now, however, I'm happy to let Mr. Kuttner speak for himself. The following excerpt is from the Robots Have No Tails story "The World is Mine," in which our drunken scientist hero attempts to solve his own murder while wrangling three adorable and incompetent martians bent on planetary conquest...

"The little guys came through the machine or whatever it was. You said you hadn't adjusted it right, so you fixed it."

"I wonder what I had in mind," Gallegher pondered.

The Lybblas had finished their milk. "We're through," said the fat one. "Now we'll conquer the world. Where'll we begin?"

Gallegher shrugged, "I fear I can't advise you, gentlemen. I've never had the inclination myself. Wouldn't have the faintest idea how to go about it."

"First we destroy the big cities," said the smallest Lybbla excitedly, "then we capture pretty girls and hold them for ransom or something. Then everybody's scared and we win."

"How do you figure that out?" Gallegher asked.

"It's in the books. That's how it's always done. We know. We'll be tyrants and beat everybody. I want some more milk, please."

"So do I," said two other piping little voices.

Grinning, Gallegher served. "You don't seem much surprised by finding yourselves here."

"That's in the books, too." Lap-lap.

"You mean—this?" Gallegher's eyebrows went up.

"Oh, no. But all about time-traveling. All the novels in our era are about science and things. We read lots. There isn't much else to do in the Valley," the Lybbla ended, a bit sadly.

"Is that all you read?"

"No, we read everything. Technical books on science as well as novels. How disintegrators are made and so on. We'll tell you how to make weapons for us."

"Thanks. That sort of literature is open to the public?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"I should think it would be dangerous."

"So should I," the fat Lybbla said thoughtfully, "but it isn't somehow."

Gallegher pondered. "Could you tell me how to make a heat ray, for example?"

"Yes," was the excited reply, "and then we'd destroy the big cities and capture—"

"I know. Pretty girls and hold them for ransom. Why?"

"We know what's what," a Lybbla said shrewdly. "We read books, we do." He spilled his cup, looked at the puddle of milk, and let his ears droop disconsolately.

The other two Lybblas hastily patted him on the back. "Don't cry," the biggest one urged.

"I gotta," the Lybbla said. "It's in the books."

"You have it backward. You don't cry over spilt milk."

"Do. Will," said the recalcitrant Lybbla, and began to weep.

Gallegher brought him more milk. "About this heat ray," he said. "Just how—"

"Simple," the fat Lybbla said, and explained.

It was simple. Grandpa didn't get it, of course, but he watched interestedly as Gallegher went to work. Within half an hour the job was completed. It was a heat ray, too. It burned a hole through a closet door.

"Whew!" Gallegher breathed, watching smoke rise from the charred wood. "That's something!" He examined the small metal cylinder in his hand.

"It kills people, too," the fat Lybbla murmured. "Like the man in the back yard."

"Yes, it— What? The man in—"

"The back yard. We sat on him for a while, but he got cold after a bit. There's a hole burned through his chest."

"You did it," Gallegher accused, gulping.

"No. He came out of time, too, I expect. There was a heat-ray hole in him."

"Who...who was he?"

"Never saw him before in my life," the fat Lybbla said, losing interest. "I want more milk." He leaped to the bench top and peered through the window at the towers of Manhattan's skyline. "Wheeee! The world is ours!"

The doorbell sang. Gallegher, a little pale said, "Grandpa, see what it is. Send him away in any case. Probably a bill collector. They're used to being turned away. Oh, Lord! I've never committed a murder before—"

"I have," Grandpa murmured, departing. He did not clarify the statement.

Gallegher went into the back yard, accompanied by the scuttling small figures of the Lybblas. The worst had happened. In the middle of the rose garden lay a dead body. It was the corpse of a man, bearded and ancient, quite bald, and wearing garments made, apparently of flexible, tinted cellophane. Through his tunic and chest was the distinctive hole burned by a heat-ray projector.

"He looks familiar, somehow," Gallegher decided. "Dunno why. Was he dead when he came out of time?"

"Dead but warm," one of the Lybblas said. "That was nice."

Gallegher repressed a shudder. Horrid little creatures...

James Sutter
Editor, Planet Stories

The Dark World Approaches...

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

In my last Planet Stories post, I talked all about The Dark World, Henry Kuttner's story of two men trapped in the same body and thrust into a world of mythology and corruption, and dropped quotes by everyone from Ray Bradbury to Marion Zimmer Bradley to Roger Zelazny about how much they adore the book and the ways in which its unique take on science fantasy influenced their own writing.

Since I can't top their comments, I'm not even going to try. Instead, here's an excerpt from The Dark World, coming soon from Planet Stories:

Gripped in my right hand I still held the sword. I cut at him savagely by way of answer. He sprang back, glanced over his shoulder, and drew his weapon. I followed his glance and saw another green figure dodging forward among the trees. It was smaller and slenderer—a girl, in a tunic the color of earth and forest. Her black hair swung upon her shoulders. She was tugging at her belt as she ran, and the face she turned to me was ugly with hate, her teeth showing in a snarl.

The man before me was saying something.

"Edward, listen to me!" he was crying. "Even if you're Ganelon, you remember Edward Bond! He was with us—he believed in us. Give us a hearing before it's too late! Arles could convince you, Edward! Come to Arles. Even if you're Ganelon, let me take you to Arles!"

"It's no use, Ertu," the voice of the girl cried thinly. She was struggling with the last of the trees, whose flexible bough-tips still clutched to stop her. Neither of them tried now to keep their voices down. They were shouting, and I knew they must rouse the guards at any moment, and I wanted to kill them both myself before anyone came to forestall me by accident. I was hungry and thirsty for the blood of these enemies, and in that moment the name of Edward Bond was not even memory.

"Kill him, Ertu!" cried the girl. "Kill him or stand out of the way! I know Ganelon!"

I looked at her and took a fresh grip on my sword. Yes, she spoke the truth. She knew Ganelon. And Ganelon knew her, and remembered dimly that she had reason for her hate. I had seen that face before, contorted with fury and despair. I could not recall when or where or why, but she looked familiar.

The man Ertu drew his weapon reluctantly. To him I was still at least the image of a friend. I laughed exultantly and swung at him again with the sword, hearing it hiss viciously through the air. This time I drew blood. He stepped back again, lifting his weapon so that I looked down its black barrel.

"Don't make me do it," he said between his teeth. "This will pass. You have been Edward Bond—you will be again. Don't make me kill you, Ganelon!"

I lifted the sword, seeing him only dimly through a ruddy haze of anger. There was a great exultation in me. I could already see the fountain of blood that would leap from his severed arteries when my blade completed its swing.

I braced my body for a great full-armed blow!

And the sword came alive in my hand. It leaped and shuddered against my fist.

Impossibly—in a way I cannot describe—that blow reversed itself. All the energy I was braced to expend upon my enemy recoiled up the sword, up my arm, crashed against my own body. A violent explosion of pain and shock sent the garden reeling. The earth struck hard against my knees.

Mist cleared from my eyes. I was still Ganelon, but a Ganelon dizzy from something more powerful than a blow.

I was kneeling on the grass, braced with one hand, shaking the throbbing fingers of my sword-hand and staring at the sword that lay a dozen feet away, still faintly glowing.

It was Matholch's doing—I knew that! I should have remembered how little I could trust that shifting, unstable wolfing. I had laid hands upon him in his tower-room—I should have known he would have his revenge for that. Even Edward Bond—soft fool that he was—would have been wise enough not to accept a gift from the shape-changer.

There was no time now for anger at Matholch, though. I was looking up into Ertu's eyes, and into the muzzle of his weapon, and the look of decision grew slowly in his face as he scanned mine.

"Ganelon!" he said, almost whispering, "Warlock!"

He tilted the weapon down at me, his finger moving on the trigger.

"Wait, Ertu!" cried a thin voice behind him. "Wait—let me!"

I looked up, still dazed. It had all happened so quickly that the girl was still struggling in the edge of the trees, though she cleared them as I looked and lifted her own weapon. Behind it her face was white and blazing with relentless hate. "Let me!" she cried again. "He owed me this!"

I was helpless. I knew that even at this distance she would not miss. I saw the glare of fury in her eyes and I saw the muzzle waver a little as her hand shook with rage, but I knew she would not miss me. I thought of a great many things in that instant—confused memories of Ganelon's and of Edward Bond's surged together through my mind.

Then a great hissing like a wind swept up among the trees behind the girl. They all swayed toward her more swiftly than trees have any right to move, stooping and straining and hissing with a dreadful vicious avidity. Ertu shouted something inarticulate. But I think the girl was too angry to hear or see.

She never knew what happened. She could only have felt the great bone-cracking sweep of the nearest branch, reaching out for her from the leaning tree...

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

It's a Dark, Dark World

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

"You're going to love this one," Erik told me when we decided to publish Henry Kuttner's The Dark World. "It's amazing."

"Cool," I said, and left it at that. After all, while being publisher of Planet Stories has given Erik the chance to accelerate his ascension to pulp scholarship, we see a lot of good books around here. So I got a little excited, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then I saw what some other folks had to say about it.

"I consider the work of Henry Kuttner to be the finest science fantasy ever written. The Dark World was the best fantasy I have ever read...my copy is already half thumbed to death as I imagine I have read it at least twelve times."
Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of The Mists of Avalon

Oh. Well...

"Henry Kutter was a neglected master... a man who shaped science fiction and fantasy in its most important years."
Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451

Huh.

"The Kuttner story which most impressed me in those most impressionable days was his short novel The Dark World. I returned to it time and time, reading it over and over again, drawn by its colorful, semi-mythic characters and strong action.... Looking back, Kuttner and Moore—and, specifically, The Dark World—were doubtless a general influence on my development as a writer."
Roger Zelazny, author of the Amber series

Okay, guys, I get it! Geez!

The honest truth, though, is that The Dark World is amazing. In Kuttner's fast-reading fantasy classic, WWII airman Edward Bond returns home from strange events during the war to discover that his mind is no longer his own. Instead, he now shares his body with his identical twin from an alternate dimension, the evil wizard Ganelon. Sucked through a portal to the mysterious fey realm known as the Dark World, Bond finds himself trapped between two warring factions. On one side is the Coven: a werewolf, a hooded immortal, and a beautiful and seductive witch, all eager to acknowledge Ganelon as their sinister ruler. On the other is the white sorceress Freydis and her band of forest rebels that want nothing more than to see the warlock's head on a spike. Within the first few pages, the book's central conflict comes out swinging: will Edward/Ganelon join with the rebels to release the oppressed world from the grip of a tyrannical, sacrifice—hungry god—or embrace the Coven to become the world's greatest villain?

It's a classic premise—the man drawn into another world of magic and swordplay—honed to the sharpest possible edge by Kuttner's clever brand of mythology backed by science. Yet the vibrant, instantly familiar setting isn't what makes this book stand out. No, what made it startlingly different in its day was its moral ambiguity. In an era—remember, we're in 1946—when you could reasonably expect any given protagonist to be a hard—jawed paragon of virtue, instinctively punching and slashing his way to justice without fail, Kuttner's hero is literally torn between good and evil. And for the first time in my pulp—reading career, I began to actually fear that our hero might not win. That the temptations of tyranny, unlimited power, and a life of luxury might be too much, and Edward Bond might—to quote another science fiction classic—give in to the dark side.

So take heed of what Marion, Ray, Roger—and, yes, Erik—have been saying and give The Dark World a shot. There are witches. There are vampires. There are werewolves. There are zombies. There are wizards and warlocks, dark gods with bloody sacrifices, and things that go bump in the night.

And they're winning....

James Sutter
Planet Stories Editor

Return to Atlantis

Monday, September 10, 2007

Ray Bradbury once referred to Henry Kuttner as "a neglected master... a man who shaped science fiction and fantasy in its most important years." Kuttner sold his first story, "The Graveyard Rats," to Weird Tales in 1936, the same year in which he wrote a fan letter to rising science fiction author C. L. Moore, mistakenly believing her to be a man. The two were married in 1940, and in the years that followed they collaborated constantly, publishing under at least 17 pseudonyms, most notably Lewis Padgett and Keith Hammond. As Joe R. Lansdale relates in the introduction to our forthcoming Kuttner compilation, Elak of Atlantis, the story goes that the two worked so closely together on most of their projects that when one got up from the typewriter to go to the bathroom, the other would slide into their place and seamlessly take up where they left off. Yet before the collaborations, before many of the Cthulhu mythos stories born of Kuttner's relationship with H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, before the television scripts and film adaptations like The Last Mimsy, there was Elak.

Elak of Atlantis was one of the first heroes of the sword and sorcery genre, and remains one of the most important. Whereas Howard's Conan waded brutishly into the public eye with little more than a sword and an attitude, Elak was something different entirely. Cultured—though still a thief, adulterer, and cold-blooded killer—this droll fencer with the flashing rapier and secret past made way for a whole new breed of protagonist, falling somewhere between the Grey Mouser and Errol Flynn. With his perpetually drunk, Sancho-Panza-esque companion by his side, Elak battled his way across the fantastic frontiers of ancient Atlantis, slaying gods, wizards, dwarves, and foul horrors from Dagon's darkened depths, thrilling the eager readers of Weird Tales and earning himself a permanent place in the fantasy pantheon.

In Elak of Atlantis, the new Planet Stories book that's shipping to the printer as I write this, we've collected all of the Elak of Atlantis stories, many of which are exceedingly difficult to locate, as well as two even rarer stories featuring Prince Raynor, Kuttner's slightly-better-behaved scion of Imperial Gobi, the empire which fell long before Mesopotamia gave birth to modern civilization.

Kuttner has been cited as an influence by everyone from Marion Zimmer Bradley to Roger Zelazny, and both Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury have dedicated novels to him. By bringing back these stories, it's our hope to introduce a whole new generation to one of the most influential writers of the genre.

Enjoy.

James Sutter
Editor, Planet Stories

Kicking Down The Door

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

That more people don't know the name C. L. Moore is one of the biggest tragedies in science fiction and fantasy. This October, Planet Stories plans to do everything we can to change that.

First published in Weird Tales in 1934, Catherine Lucille Moore was writing science fiction and fantasy in a time where female authors were rare across the board, and practically unheard of in genre fiction. Abbreviating her name to hide her gender, Moore quickly rose through the ranks of the pulp authors, publishing alongside contemporaries like Robert E. Howard and even earning praise from H. P. Lovecraft himself. (So successful was her disguise, in fact, that she first met fellow SF author Henry Kuttner when he wrote her a fan letter believing her to be a man. The two were married a few years later, and went on to collaborate extensively.) What's more, she continued to excel once her gender became known, and in doing so paved the way for countless female fantasy and science fiction authors to come.

In Black God's Kiss, we've collected all six Jirel of Joiry stories, in which Moore introduced the world to the first-ever female fantasy protagonist. Where the pulp stories around her were filled with distressed damsels and helpless shrinking violets in need of rescue, Jirel burst onto the scene larger than life. Sword swinging, teeth ready to tear out the throats of her enemies, Jirel ruled her domain in Moore's medieval France analogue with an iron fist, holding it against all comers through the strength of her blade. Moore's moody, illustrative prose was equally anomalous for the time period, and from the hellish landscape beneath Jirel's castle to the fields of alien ghouls in "Quest of the Starstone," Moore's boundless imagination continues to inspire fans and authors to this day.

As noted SF author Suzy McKee Charnas points out in the introduction, C. L. Moore and Jirel of Joiry didn't just open the door for women in science fiction and fantasy—they kicked it down. Male or female, Black God's Kiss is a must-have for any serious fantasy enthusiast.

Come read the stories that started a revolution. You won't be disappointed.

James Sutter
Editor, Planet Stories