Sword & Sorcery Roundtable

Session #1 of the Dark Worlds Quarterly Sword & Sorcery Round Table podcast is live!

Scott Oden, John R. Fultz and Jason M. Waltz. discuss our opening topic: “Sword & Sorcery: Fossil or Fuel?” The conversation touches on much more including Robert E. Howard and whether Sword & Sorcery really just Historical Fiction? These three practitioners in the art of heroic fantasy give a lively debate. G. W. Thomas is the moderator.

 

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9 Comments Posted

  1. Thanks for the insights. I think its hard to keep up the intencity of emotion in longer pieces. S&S tales show such a different world and are filled with unique cultures. Howard’s stories generally hit like a baseball bat and left the reader with a series of wonder. Hour of the dragon was still a roller coaster, but I don’t think it hit as hard due to the emotional saturation level.

  2. Good discussion, but I’m a bit surprised at the panelists responses to humor in S&S. No one mentioned Fritz Leiber and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Those stories have lots of humor and they’re undoubtedly S&S. In fact, Leiber made me realize that S&S can have a very different tone than Howard’s stories.

    I also disagreed with Fultz’s opinion piece in Grimdark Magazine when it came out. My reasoning is more that grimdark fantasy stories tend to have an epic scope, like Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire series, which I really liked btw (I also really enjoy Fultz’s stories, too).

  3. Thanks for the comments, guys! Yes–we should have mentioned that Fritz Leiber was a master of injecting humor into his sword-and-sorcery–he did it well! He’s pretty much the only author who can make me laugh while reading sword-and-sorcery. It was sort of a “buddy comedy” kind of a approach with Fafhrd and the Mouser.

    • There was humor in the stories but the plots and world were serious enough. My dislike is for humorous Fantasy that jerks me out of the story with stupid jokes. (Xanth being a good example.) I have no problem with humor as a logical part of telling a story though i admit I prefer darker forms of ha ha.

    • There’s a – at least for me – very fine line there though. Leiber did write great buddy and definitely S&S tales, and I appreciate his humor . . . up to a point in every story. I’ll never list him among my favorite authors to read because I think the humor is overdone in every tale and invariably end each story disgruntled or bored. That’s me though.

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