I can remember when I walked away from Fantasy in the late 1980s. I had read all the good stuff from the Pulp era, the best of what had followed up to the 1970s. The new products were just that “products” first, Fantasy second. I could not escape the photocopies of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I was about to walk away and spend the rest of my life reading George Simenon and Erle Stanley Gardner.
One writer brought me back from the brink. That writer was Thomas Burnett Swann.
It happened like this. I was sitting around a hospital waiting room — I can’t even remember why now — but it was a long wait. The lady with the Hospital Auxiliary book cart came by with books for a quarter. Cry Silver Bells was the only thing on that cart I came close to wanting to read. Minutes later I was a Swann fan for life…
Thomas Burnett Swann (1928-1976) was a Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University, who, like Tolkien, wrote fiction in his spare time. He published poetry in the literary magazines, wrote books of erudition. His fantasy books number only eighteen but each is a gem of anybody’s collection.
Swann set most of his novels in ancient historical times. Greece, Crete, Judea, Egypt, the Middle Ages, Celtic Britain and Etruria are the playgrounds of his half-animal heroes. Swann has a delightful pagan sense that is both poetic, sexual and deceptively readable. Beneath the sylvan glades lie deeper, mature themes that make the books worth reading over and over.
Swann published most of his short fiction in Science Fantasy, sister magazine to New Worlds and some later work in Fantastic. These stories and novellas are sometimes combined to form “novels” and sometime not.
Swann’s only series runs through three books, written in reverse order. The Day of the Minotaur, The Forest of Forever, and Cry Silver Bells tell about the mythological denizens of the Greek forests who are slowly losing their homes to Man. This theme pervades most of Swann’s work, focusing on the sense of loss and the dissipation of magic from our daily lives.
Two Swann books use the Bible as their setting. Moondust gives another account of how the walls fell at Jericho involving intelligent foxes that try to take over the Earth. How Are the Mighty Fallen tells the story of David and Goliath (who is, of course, a cyclops!) and David’s homosexual relation with Jonathon is handled with brilliant skill and understanding. Science fictional elements occasionally creeps into Swann’s work, but never intrude. He did write one straight sf novel, The Goat Without Horns that supposes a race of ocean-dwelling humans. Whether set in the past or the future, Swann’s fiction is always vibrant and touching.
Swann died of cancer at 48, robbing us of many more wonderful stories.
Novels and Collections
1. Day of the Minotaur (1966) ACE Books
2. The Weirwoods (1967) ACE Books
3. Moondust (1968) ACE Books
4. The Dolphin and the Deep (1968) ACE Books
5. Where is the Bird of Fire? (1970) ACE Books
6. The Goat Without Horns (1971) Ballantine Books
7. The Forest of Forever (1971) ACE Books
8. Green Phoenix (1972) DAW Books
9. How Are the Mighty Fallen (1974) DAW Books
10. Wolf Winter (1974) Ballantine Books
11. The Not-World (1975) DAW Books
12. The Gods Abide (1976) DAW Books
13. Lady of the Bees (1976) ACE Books
14. The Minikins of Yam (1976) DAW Books
15. The Tournament of Thorns (1976) ACE Books
16. Cry Silver Bells (1977) DAW Books
17. Will-O-Wisp (1977) DAW Books
18. Queens Walk in the Dusk (1977) DAW Books
Stories
“Winged Victory” (Fantastic Universe, July 1958)
“Viewpoint” (Nebula #40, May 1959)
“The Dryad-Tree” (Science Fantasy #42, August 1960)
“The Painter” (Science Fantasy #44, December 1960)
“The Sudden Wings” (Science Fantasy #55, October 1962)
“Where is the Bird of Fire?” (Science Fantasy #52, April 1963)
“The Dolphin and the Deep” (Science Fantasy #60, August 1963)
“The Murex” (Science Fantasy #63, February 1964)
“The Blue Monkeys” (Science Fantasy #67, 68, October 1964-February 1965)
“Vashti” (Science Fantasy #72, May 1965)
“The Weirwoods” (Science Fantasy #77–78, October-November 1965)
“The Manor of Roses” (F&SF, November 1966)
“Bear” (1970)
“The Goat Without Horns” (F&SF, August–September 1970)
“Love is a Dragonfly” (F&SF, March 1972)
“The Stalking Trees” (F&SF, January 1973)
“Will-O-the-Wisp” (Fantastic, September–November 1974)
“The Night of the Unicorn” (Nameless Places, 1975)
“A Problem of Adjustment” (Beyond the Fields We Know: Tales of Fantasy, 1978)
References
Some artwork from http://endpaper60.rssing.com/chan-12330711/all_p19.html