KAMN Show #19: Ill Met in Lankhmar
Welcome to Show #19!
The feature topic for this show is the 1970 fantasy novella, Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber. While chronologically it isn’t the first story featuring Fafhrd and Grey Mouser (that one was “Two Sought Adventure”, published in 1939), it is the first story where they team up and work together. This story also won the Nebula Award in 1970 and the Hugo Award in 1971 for Best Novella.
The Ninjas disagree about this tale.
But seriously, if you like these stories, find the White Wolf printings, if you can, simply because of the Mike Mignola covers and interior artwork. If you’ve never seen them, follow the first four Amazon links below… those are the covers to keep an eye out for. And now I’m beginning to wish I’d completed the set and picked up the fourth White Wolf volume, going by the prices I see out there for them.
If you have a comment on anything we’ve discussed, let us know! You can call us at 206-666-5266, or send us an email us and let us what you think.
Books mentioned:
Link: Lankhmar - The Fritz Leiber home page
Link: Wikipedia: Fritz Leiber
Link: Fritz Leiber ISFDB Bibliography summary
In addition to Marvel’s comics, DC also took a shot with Fafhrd and The Mouser, but damn near 20 years earlier…
In the early 70s, DC Comics had a series called Sword of Sorcery that ran for five issues and it starred Fafhrd and The Mouser. The title was written by comics veteran Denny O’Neil and primarily drawn by Howard Chaykin with a couple of stories featuring work by Jim Starlin and Walt Simonson. Denny O’Neil is primarily known for his ground-breaking work with artist Neal Adams on Green Lantern and Batman. Howard Chaykin created the incredible science fiction series American Flagg from the early 80s. Jim Starlin is known for his cosmic epics for both DC and Marvel as well as his own Dreadstar. And Walt Simonson is best known for an incredible run on Marvel’s Thor from the mid 80s. This five issue series has a pedigree, beyond it’s characters and their original author…
Actually, DC tried this out first in the pages of Wonder Woman, actually teaming Fafhrd and The Mouser with Wonder Woman and Catwoman (I don’t know how, never read this) and it was scripted by Samuel R. Delany!?!? Go figure that…
Good stuff if you can find it, and nice to hear Summer mention the Epic Comics series by Chaykin and Mignola…
Nebula award nominees:
http://dpsinfo.com/awardweb/nebulas/70s.html
Not really a comment about the show, but what happened to the iTunes feed? I had to download the show off of the website because a 416 error occured when I tried to download from iTunes. Didn’t know if it was just me, so I thought I would bring it to your attention.
Good show though.
Peace
SA
OK, I agree with Summer. I loveed these stories when I first read them, and still do.
I read many of these storeis in magazines, in the 60s (Bazzar of the Bizare sticks in my mind, mostly because it was the cover story of the issue of Fantastic it appeared in, with a great Gray Morrow painting) and in the old ACE compilations which reprinted the magizine stories pretty much word for word. An entirely different environment for both readers and authors.
Most of these, as I recall, were in the short story, novelette form and there just is no way to do the same sort of character development as in The Wheel of Time or A Song of Ice and Fire.
As I type, Joe is acknowledging the fact that most of the stories were written for the pulps, which was a very different market when compared with the magizines of today, and David is still complaining about the lack of a big hook/gimmick in the stories. The problem here, in my opinion, is that, unlike today’s shorter fiction, the delay between stories may have been months, if not years, and authors had to contend with readers who may have never read any of the earlier stories or may have read but forgotten the details.
Also, reference the female characters (and maybe some of the depth of character issues) — the demographic these stories were aimed at was probably quite different. Some wit once commented that the golden age of science fiction is {12|13|14}. Consider that up until the current era the whole of SF & F was really a sort of amped up YA genre with boys as the primary audience.
Anyway, my two cents.
Cool show gang. This was one of those books that got passed around a lot in the early eighties when I was in high school and played a lot of Tunnels and Trolls, and everyone was a fan of the stories. Though it is called sword and sorcery I think the book also had a lot in common with “men’s adventure novels� such as They Call Me The Mercenary, Destroyer, and The Executioner series of books. All were pure entertainment that was meant to be consumed quickly. Which kinda ties in with what Tim Morris mentioned. To this day I would recommend the first sixty Destroyer books, which I have read dozens of times. The others haven’t stood the test of time as well as Remo Williams and gang. I think to truly enjoy books of this type, you have to had read them or at least the style early in one’s reading history. And I think one’s reading experience changes how we view books we’ve read.
I read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the first time back in the early eighties when I was in high school, and fell in love with the book. It was one of my top five favorites. A few years later, by the time I’ve read So Long and Thanks For All the Fish and graduated Basic Training, Hitchhiker’s was in my top twenty. Nowadays, somewhere in the top fifty. If Douglas Adams ever wrote a script for Seinfel(sp?)it probably would have been their best show ever.
I’ve rambled long enough.
Fred
I normally have a hard time with 50s and 60s pulp - even the classic Martian Cronicles are a trial due to the minimal plot consistancy required. F&tGM seem extremely well put together, and it’s somewhat hard to tell they were written as serials and out of chronological order. I’d say that shows how GOOD the writing is, boys.
You can compare Shakespeare and JK Rowling (please, don’t), but one of the comparing points has to do with what it’s audience was looking for/what the writing styles of the times were. Picking up Ill Met and expecting a Bill Bryson -era writing style is going to leave you disappointed.
I wonder what the gents who didn’t like this book thought about Flint’s Philosophical Strangler. It’s a somewhat modernized version of Fafred & the Grey Mouser. With extra silly thrown in.
-Rita