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A century's worth of the exotic and the fantastic. The stories range from Richard Garnett's "The Demon Pope," a story on soul-selling, to Terry Prachett's amusing "Troll Bridge, " in which Cohen the Barbarian philosophizes on the decline of magic.
"The Demon Pope," by Richard Garnett (1888): 7.75 - Limped across the finish line, but otherwise enjoyable little ditty, in which we get all the hallmarks of 19th-century genre writing turgidity, ethnic-nationalism, and papist-bashing we could ever want (and in only several pages). Interesting to set this soul-to-the-devil tale so deep in the medieval past, although there are really no markers to set it apart from any timeless generic Protestant-generated assumptions about the Vatican except for the seemingly more "barbarian" names.
"The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth," (1908): 8.5 - I know only one other Lord Dunsany story, and that one impressed me much more than this -- or, it gave me an impression that I would get something much different than I got here (although, to be honest, the final five-paragraph short epilogue [in which our narrator casts great/convincing aspersions on the veracity of the 'story' put forth in the proceeding pages, noting that, yes, maybe this heroic fantasy happened, or maybe some fevered man just went into the woods and hallucinated with his schwert, and who can know and who can care] here goes a bit of the way towards recapturing some of that story's more recognizably 'modern' or, at least, contemporaneous elements; I mean, to be honest, the .5 on this score here is almost fully attributable to that last bit). That earlier story being one in which a man, standing before a magic window, takes in the rise and fall of a fantastical kingdom, although completely from the safety of his perch (and, clearly, quite the commentary -- and early -- on particular aspects of the imagination and the thin veil between the real and imagined world). Here is about as straightforward a reimagining of a classic fairy tale/heroic narrative there can be, and, to his credit, this is more than likely exactly what Dunsany was intending the whole time. Even at that, however, the droll complexity of the whole thing is a bit of something to consider: set out fantasy village, introduce (rough) parameters of magic world, sickness in village, discerned by village magician, who recognizes the spell from fellow necromancer, hero kills dragon-crocodile in order to procure magic sword embedded in his skin, proceeds to use magic, unbeatable sword weapon to vanquish the evil sorcerer terrorizing his community. It's forward-pushing at all times, smooth if not a bit too overwrought, and, most clearly, quite influential on those writing in at least some aspects of this style thereafter: i.e. the powerful hero in an opulent villain's lair was seen almost in full in that Howard adventure yarn I enjoyed so much [does reading/appreciating the primariness of this story change that appreciation at all? No, definitely not]; and the fleshed out cosmology and creatures (and knee-jerk affiliation of feminine sexuality and oriental themes with the villain's homestead) sure to pop up again in some (Tolkien?) later imitators. Regardless, what this story most clearly resembles, to me, is the concerted effort -- in a place and time un-saturated by copies and copies of copies of the very thing the author's about to do -- to tell and tell simply a fairy tale, and one mimicking the voice and style and concerns [I assume it's not unintentional how severely limited the development and psychological complexity of the hero in this story is; he's simply a constantly moving, active, doer of deeds] of a certain type of folkloric tale from centuries past (or, most importantly, whatever conception of the same exists for a man of a certain class and position in Edwardian UK.
"Through the Dragon Glass," by Abraham Merrit (1917): 6.75 - What to say? Some stories don’t need much; fairly standard fantasy fare for its time and place. The piece: soldier loots Forbidden City after Boxer Rebellion, finds mysterious dragon glass, eventually goes their through it, has adventure, and falls in love with, of course, "mysterious" girl. Admirable commitment to Orientalism here--there's barely any attempt to distinguish between Asian cultures; we touch -- all through the same Dragon glass portal -- elements of Chinese, Hindu, Tibetan, and Iranian cultures.
A century's worth of the exotic and the fantastic. The stories range from Richard Garnett's "The Demon Pope," a story on soul-selling, to Terry Prachett's amusing "Troll Bridge, " in which Cohen the Barbarian philosophizes on the decline of magic.
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(3.92)
THE DEEP ONES: "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" by Lord Dunsany
2
- Limped across the finish line, but otherwise enjoyable little ditty, in which we get all the hallmarks of 19th-century genre writing turgidity, ethnic-nationalism, and papist-bashing we could ever want (and in only several pages). Interesting to set this soul-to-the-devil tale so deep in the medieval past, although there are really no markers to set it apart from any timeless generic Protestant-generated assumptions about the Vatican except for the seemingly more "barbarian" names.
"The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth," (1908): 8.5
- I know only one other Lord Dunsany story, and that one impressed me much more than this -- or, it gave me an impression that I would get something much different than I got here (although, to be honest, the final five-paragraph short epilogue [in which our narrator casts great/convincing aspersions on the veracity of the 'story' put forth in the proceeding pages, noting that, yes, maybe this heroic fantasy happened, or maybe some fevered man just went into the woods and hallucinated with his schwert, and who can know and who can care] here goes a bit of the way towards recapturing some of that story's more recognizably 'modern' or, at least, contemporaneous elements; I mean, to be honest, the .5 on this score here is almost fully attributable to that last bit). That earlier story being one in which a man, standing before a magic window, takes in the rise and fall of a fantastical kingdom, although completely from the safety of his perch (and, clearly, quite the commentary -- and early -- on particular aspects of the imagination and the thin veil between the real and imagined world). Here is about as straightforward a reimagining of a classic fairy tale/heroic narrative there can be, and, to his credit, this is more than likely exactly what Dunsany was intending the whole time. Even at that, however, the droll complexity of the whole thing is a bit of something to consider: set out fantasy village, introduce (rough) parameters of magic world, sickness in village, discerned by village magician, who recognizes the spell from fellow necromancer, hero kills dragon-crocodile in order to procure magic sword embedded in his skin, proceeds to use magic, unbeatable sword weapon to vanquish the evil sorcerer terrorizing his community. It's forward-pushing at all times, smooth if not a bit too overwrought, and, most clearly, quite influential on those writing in at least some aspects of this style thereafter: i.e. the powerful hero in an opulent villain's lair was seen almost in full in that Howard adventure yarn I enjoyed so much [does reading/appreciating the primariness of this story change that appreciation at all? No, definitely not]; and the fleshed out cosmology and creatures (and knee-jerk affiliation of feminine sexuality and oriental themes with the villain's homestead) sure to pop up again in some (Tolkien?) later imitators. Regardless, what this story most clearly resembles, to me, is the concerted effort -- in a place and time un-saturated by copies and copies of copies of the very thing the author's about to do -- to tell and tell simply a fairy tale, and one mimicking the voice and style and concerns [I assume it's not unintentional how severely limited the development and psychological complexity of the hero in this story is; he's simply a constantly moving, active, doer of deeds] of a certain type of folkloric tale from centuries past (or, most importantly, whatever conception of the same exists for a man of a certain class and position in Edwardian UK.
"Through the Dragon Glass," by Abraham Merrit (1917): 6.75
- What to say? Some stories don’t need much; fairly standard fantasy fare for its time and place. The piece: soldier loots Forbidden City after Boxer Rebellion, finds mysterious dragon glass, eventually goes their through it, has adventure, and falls in love with, of course, "mysterious" girl. Admirable commitment to Orientalism here--there's barely any attempt to distinguish between Asian cultures; we touch -- all through the same Dragon glass portal -- elements of Chinese, Hindu, Tibetan, and Iranian cultures.