The 1980s were not kind to Sword & Sorcery. What started as an explosion in the 1960s became a marketable sub-genre by the 1970s, but after Conan the Barbarian (1982) in particular, the writing was on the wall. Things were changing. You still had heroic fantasy but it was becoming seedier and seedier, the stuff of bad barbarian movies and sleazy comic stories. By the 1990s, no one admitted to publishing S&S, unless they had a Conan product. The writers who had willingly penned Howardian fiction in 1977 were now calling their work “Epic Fantasy” or “Dark Fantasy” or even “Science Fiction”. Just as long as it wasn’t compared to Dungeons & Dragons or Heavy Metal.
One of the few exceptions was Fantasy Tales, the British semi-prozine then later prozine put out by the British Fantasy Society. Starting during the 1970s boom (Summer 1977), Stephen Jones and David Sutton compiled a mix of modern horror and classic Sword & Sorcery, much as any fan would have found in a copy of Weird Tales in 1933. This love of all forms of dark fantasy was a blessing, not a curse, for the horror side of the magazine helped keep circulation up, and many fans of S&S like the Cthulhu Mythos-esque side of Weird Tales as well. While publishing important horror authors such as Clive Barker and Dennis Etchison, the magazine also broke ground for S&S writers like Karl Edward Wagner, Adrian Cole, Darryl Schweitzer and Brian Lumley (who all wrote straight horror as well) as did Ramsey Campbell who created Ryre, his own heroic fantasy character. To make things even richer, the editors published and re-published classic Weird Tales writers like Manly Wade Wellman, his wife, Frances Garfield, Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch and Hugh B. Cave. This bridge with the past solidified Fantasy Tales status as the true offspring of Farnsworth Wright’s “Unique Magazine”. FT also included many fantasy poems.
The semi-prozine magazine began with typewriter quality fonts but the art was of the highest quality from the beginning. In 1988, Fantasy Tales was respawned as a professional magazine with type-set letters and the same brilliant collection of artists that included Stephen Fabian, John Stewart, Jim Pitts, Allen Koslowski, Dave Carson and many others. The change from semi to pro came with a small price tag, less Sword & Sorcery and more focus on horror, but the heroic fantasy was still there. The covers of the new edition were predominately horror or even Science Fiction with a few robots but the spirit never changed.
After the final issue in Winter 1991, the editors continued on in the spirit of Fantasy Tales by becoming editors of anthologies. These included FT specific titles like The Best Horror Stories from Fantasy Tales (1988), The Giant Book of Fantasy (1991) and the similarly titled The Giant Book of Fantasy and the Supernatural (1994) which contained some reprints but also new stories from the magazines authors, like Adrian Cole’s King Kull pastiche “Treason in Zagadar” and the last Ryre story by Ramsey Campbell, “The Mouth of Light”.
Semi-Prozine
Issue One (Summer 1977) featured “Naked as a Sword” by Kenneth Bulmer, “Mylakhrion the Immortal” by Brian Lumley, “The Stone Thing” by Michael Moorcock.
Issue Two (Winter 1977) featured “The Feast of Argatha” by F. C. Adams.
Issue Three (Summer 1978) featured “The Last Sleeping God of Mars” by Andrew Darlington.
Issue Four (Spring 1979) featured “First Make Them Mad” by Adrian Cole , “Bloodgold” by Joe R. Schifino and “At Last the Arcana Revealed” by A. J. Silvonius.
Issue Five (Winter 1979) featured “For Life Everlasting” by Brian Mooney.
Issue Six (Summer 1980) featured “Lair of the White Wolf” by J. R. Schifino and “The Story of the Little Brown Man” by Darryl Schweitzer.
Issue Seven (Spring 1981) featured “The Other One” by Karl Edward Wagner.
Issue Eight (Summer 1981) featured “The Elevation of Theosophus Goatgrime” by Brian Mooney and “Weirwood” by Michael D. Toman.
Issue Nine (Spring 1982) featured “The Grey Horde” by David Milpass and “The Laughter of Han” by Lin Carter.
Issue Ten (Summer 1982) featured “But the Stones Will Stand” by Mick Chinn.
Issue Eleven (Winter 1982) featured “The Story of Laillia the Slave Girl” by Drey Prescott (Kenneth Bulmer).
Issue Twelve (Winter 1983) featured “The Stones Would Weep” by Darryl Schweitzer, “In the Labyrinth” by Simon R. Green and “A Rock That Loved” by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.
Issue Thirteen (Winter 1984) featured “The Sorcerer’s Jewel” by Robert Bloch.
Issue Fourteen (Summer 1985) featured “The Castle at the World’s End” by Chris Naylor.
Issue Fifteen (Winter 1985) featured “The Exile of Earthendale” by Adrian Cole.
Issue Sixteen (Winter 1986) featured “Zerail” by Josepha Sherman.
Issue Seventeen (Summer 1987) featured “The Ghoul of the Four Winds” by William Thomas Webb.
Prozine
Issue One (Autumn 1988) featured “The Thievery of Yish” by Lin Carter and “A Vision of Rembathene” by Darryl Schweitzer.
Issue Two (Spring 1989) featured “Ice and Fire” by Kenneth Bulmer.
Issue Three (Autumn 1989) featured “The Sustenace of Hoak” by Ramsey Campbell”.
Issue Four (Spring 1990) featured “Into the Dark Land” by Darryl Schweitzer.
Issue Five (Autumn 1990) featured “The Changer of Names” by Ramsey Campbell.
Issue Six (Spring 1991) featured “How Jaquerel Made War in Bel Azhurra” by Janet Fox and “Day of the Dark Men” by Mike Chinn.
Issue Seven (Winter 1991) featured “The Pit of Wings” by Ramsey Campbell.
Fantasy Tales published many different stories, some of the Robert E. Howard variety with swordsmen and women taking on evil monsters but also fantasy of the Clark Ashton Smith and Lord Dunsany style, with sardonic humor and dark deeds. The magazine published at least four major characters (Elric, Kane, Ryre, The Voidal) as well as interesting series like Kenneth Bulmer’s Torr and Tara Vorkun from the novel The Swords of the Barbarians (1970) in two stories about the warrior and the witch who has to be naked to cast her spells. Other writers of note include Darryl Schweitzer who would become editor at Weird Tales (a magazine inspired, no doubt, by FT) in the late 1980s, who wrote several of his stories connected to the Shattered Goddess (1982), Jessica Amanda Salmonson and Janet Fox from America, and Brian Lumley with his Smithian Tales of the Primal Lands, in England. And of course, Lin Carter who has circled the field of Sword & Sorcery from 1965 was there, often selecting these stories and authors for his Years’ Best Fantasy anthologies.
Another important feature of the magazine was the artists. Inkers like Jim Pitts, Russ Nicholson, John Stewart and Stephen Fabian all contributed exotic black & white interior art as well as color covers. Many of these artists were unknown in America until the second Monster Manuel for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons called The Fiend Folo came out in 1981. (Taken largely from White Dwarf magazine.) After that Jim Pitts and Russ Nicholson in particular were featured. They would continue working on role-playing game books as well as illustrating Fantasy Tales, and adding to the look and feel of Sword & Sorcery.
