Today it was a good day, and it started good yesterday night, when over an excellent (and crazy expensive!) pizza with a friend and a colleague writer, we outlined a shared universe and decided we’ll have a go at it in the next few months. Then today I did a lot of writing and translating, got a fer bills settled, and got good news for a few projects. Capital.
So I decided I deserved a small award, and went browsing on Amazon for something to read. Not that I lack books to read at the moment, but what the heck, ebooks do not have an expiration date, right?
And because I feel like reading science fiction (like a do, normally, in the summer) and because I am, after all, one of those guys that choose their reading matter because of the covers, I saw these, checked out a few reviews, and got them without any further hesitation. Because sometimes the cover sells you the book, right?
Now, was this fast or what? I started reading E.C. Tubb’s The Winds of Gath around lunchtime, and by tea time it was over. The novel is pretty slim – 240 pages, in fact, and it’s pretty fast reading, but all in all I’m well pleased, and I’ll go on reading the series as long as it manages to be this fun.
Back when I was starting as a science fiction reader – as to say, in the late ’70s – I chanced upon an article in a magazine that basically quartered and killed E.C. Tubb and his Dumarest series. Cheap, repetitive, boring, bad bad bad. Oh, well, I took note and moved on – it’s not like there wasnt other stuff to read, right?
Fast forward to 2017 and the announcement that a TV series was in the works based on the Dumarest novels. Back then, a friend dropped on me the whole 33-books series, telling me it was a good opportunity for me to brush up on the plot before the series hit our screens. The series never happened, I never read the books.
Let’s talk about crime, shall we? As those that have chanced to read my BUSCAFUSCO novellas probably know, I’m not that much into homicide. It was Agatha Christie, I believe, that said that a proper whodunnit should feature a homicide, but, really… c’mon, Agatha, there are so many crimes that are a lot more interesting!
And mind you, I like a good murder mystery just like the next guy, but having the possibility, I do prefer softer but trickier crimes.
Curiously enough, My life as an explorer is the title of two books, that were published in 1926 and in 1927. The 1926 one was by Sven Hedin, a man whose adventures in Central Asia are the stuff of legend, and the 1927 book was by Roald Amundsen, one of the greatest Arctic explorers. And I’ve read them both.
The thing that strikes me is that both explorers had to be two of the most self-centered and egotistical individuals ever to walk the earth – and I find it quite funny that the books of these two world-explorers and adventurers end up being mostly about them and only tangentially about the places they visited and the people they knew. Fascinating reads, mind you, but somewhat spoiled by the attitude of the central characters/authors.
Reading Hedin comment that some men were born to wear the spurs, others to wear the saddle, or reading the progressively more hilarious rants of Amundsen about Umberto Nobile (he himself another fine specimen of vain, egotistical man – with an extra side of collusion with the Fascist Regime), was not overly pleasant. In the end, there are books by other explorers and adventurers that at least make you feel it would have been nice meeting them and having a chat over a cool drink.
But comparing these two books with the same title, led me to wonder whether there was (or there is) something in the character of people that went to the farthest corners of the earth looking for adventure, knowledge or some other strange kicks. I was reminded of Roy Chapman Andrews, that was not a very nice person and sometimes that slipped in his self-promoting books, and I thought about Freya Stark commenting scathingly on the adventures of Rosita Forbes. And there’s others, even if they now escape me (yes, I’ve read a lot of adventure diaries and travelogues). We do read these books for the adventure, not for the sympathy of the authors – but sympathetic authors exist even in the adventurers/explorers field, and in the end these are the ones I’m likelier to bring with me afterwards.
It’s the 11th of June, Robert E. Howard’s anniversary, and just 36 hours a go I did a post on my Italian blog about sword & sorcery, and mentioned Dark Agnes de Chastillon. And then yesterday, as we were recording our podcast, my friend Lucy and I talked briefly about Robert E. Howard’s women – because he did write a few very interesting women, and Dark Agnes was one of them.
I first met Dark Agnes de Chastillon, also known as Agnes de la Fere (a name that might ring a bell with those that have read Dumas) in the mid-80s. Having broken into the habit of reading in English, a whole world opened up for me, and I raided the shelves of the cheap paperbacks in the Sevagram bookstore. Some books I picked because of the author, others just because of the cover. Sword Woman was perfect on both counts.
I have always loved Lyon Sprague De Camp’s books – both alone and in tandem with his pal Fletcher Pratt, both as a writer of fiction and non-fiction. De Camp & Pratt’s Castle of Iron was the very first fantasy I read, and then I tried to track down and read any book that had Lyon Sprague De Camp’s name on the cover.
This hunt for books was not helped by the fact that Italian SF/fantasy editors did not share my enthusiasm for Lyon Sprague De Camp’s work, or for him as a person – one of them actually celebrated De Camp’s death, and later would say that he “spat on the man’s grave”. Because, you know, Lyon Sprague De Camp desecrated the purity of Robert E. Howard’s Conan. Or something. Wankers.
(full disclaimer – while I believe that Howard’s work at his best was impossible to emulate, and think De Camp’s Conan pastiches are well below par, I also believe that without De Camp’s work to keep Conan in print, Howard’s work today would be a niche interest for very few connoisseurs – like it happened to many other pulp writers)
Karavansara 