Sword & Sorcery linkage

I've had sword & sorcery on the mind lately, so let me clear out a few links.

First off, read Paul Jessup's s&s story The Gods Have Left Us at Flashing Swords e-zine. If you like that, follow it up with the excerpt of a new story in the same setting he posted at his blog.

My post the other day about Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser elicited a little talk about sword & sorcery in comics. Professor Hex posted this link about the Thongor comics. Thongor was the character created by Lin Carter. Like most of Carter's characters, it's a tribute to older writers, in this case Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. You can buy Carter's books from Wildside Press, if you were so inclined. Here are some other Carter links: In Memoriam, personal data, bibliography, an article on H. Rider Haggard by Carter (unfortunately, I had to find it on a Google cache, the original seeming to have disappeared), and Carter's introduction to The Three Impostors by Arthur Machen. By the way, Carter will be better remembered for his editing, especially the Adult Fantasy series that reprinted fantasy classics.

The Gor series by John Norman is probably one of the most (rightly) derided series in all of sword & sorcery. But that's not to say there weren't good moments. Fortunately for us, Sonya Taaffe gives us a look at Assassin of Gor and what's right about it. LiveJournaler Hans the Bold follows up with more detail on the Gor series and where it all went wrong.

If you'd like to know who some of the famed characters of sword & sorcery are, check out this list called Heroes of Dark Fantasy.

And finally, Night Shade Books has released Imaro by Charles Saunders. Imaro was one of the S&S greats that was little spoken of in recent years. This book reprints the first novel in the Imaro series, and I believe Night Shade will be publishing more Imaro books in the future. My first encounter (and the only one until I can pick up this book) was through Andrew Offutt's Swords Against Darkness series, which are a lot of fun. Sword & Sorcery has reviews of Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Imaro appeared in Vol. 4.

Hope that fills any sword & sorcery jones you may be feeling.