This week’s (grand) episode of Angel (goddamn WB) brought us, in an aside, an argument about who would win in a fight, an astronaut or caveman.
Didn’t we see this resolved (albeit messily) in the last presidential election?
Astronaut beats caveman, barely. Then caveman asks tribal elders who won and they, being cavemen as well, say caveman won.
To celebrate, caveman run around world conking heads.
The other day, I wrote about Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, who is coming to the movie screen, if indeed the filmmakers manage to bring him there (you never know for sure till it’s done, as I know all too well). This was just the latest bit of data in what has been a return to the realms of pulp for me the past year or so.
I’ve always loved pulp, and never been far from it, and in the recent past I used a short Savage Worlds adventure with 1930’s pulp action to introduce my players to the system, I introduced my son to Doc Savage (in the pages of the original novels and Marvel comics, as well as the George Pal/Ron Ely movie misfire from the seventies, which is actually pretty cool if you’re a 7 year old boy), I reread some H.P. Lovecraft, I started (and have nearly completed) a juvenile adventure novel that is deep tribute to both Doc Savage and Lovecraft, I added more pulp to my DVD collection (The Shadow, The Phantom, The Rocketeer, and of course the Indiana Jones trilogy), and hell, I could go on, but you get the point. The listing may be extraneous, anyway, since when I think about it, I could probably do a similar list from any previous year. As I said, I’m never far from pulp.
The latest is I’m re-reading Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, in their original form, unexpurgated and un-bastardized by L. Sprague de Camp or anyone else. I always loved this stuff, and haven’t ventured near it in years, so the inherent danger was that it wasn’t actually as good as I remembered (this has happened to me quite a bit, alas, and much golden light from my storied past has paled in the process). I mean, what if Howard wasn’t as good as I remembered? What if the blood and thunder and poetry of his prose was what my teenaged mind brought to his clunky hack material?
Well, no worries. The SOB could write.
I burned out on fantasy years ago, having read so damn much of it, and seeing so much of it become, basically, clumsy Tolkien pastiche brewed in folks’ own Dungeons & Dragons games. George R.R. Martin brought me back for a grand visit with his “Song of Fire and Ice” series, which brings Shakespearian complexity and historical novel heft to muscular, gritty pulp adventure, and is some of the best damn fiction of any sort I’ve ever read. I drop back in on Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser every couple years, and each time I’m surprised that, while I recall Leiber as being a prose god, I’m still giving the man less credit than deserved.
And Tolkien. I love Tolkien, but I think Peter Jackson mostly improved on his work, and you don’t read J.R.R. for his prose anyway, but for his world- and language-building and epic tale-telling. And it’s when Tolkien’s at his pulpiest, with screeching Nazgul and sinister giant spiders and, well, Gollum, that he’s at his best. And Aragorn could build his fire in the wildlands of Weird Tales and be completely at home. Tom Bombadil…well. Um.
I’d read 100 pages of Howard’s Conan any day over 100 pages of Tolkien. Howard’s writing is as muscular and aggressive as his barbaric hero, and as intelligent. Conan is a far cry from the contemporary stereotype of the bulky, none-too-bright savage, and the stories put him in a variety of situations, not just the same one over and over. Magic in these tales is rare and mysterious and almost always corrupt. Monsters are scary, not just another bag of hit points to whack at. There is passion and danger and the feel of real (often swampy) earth underfoot.
So, in short, I’m lovin’ my return to Howard’s Hyboria, and watching Conan in action again is thrilling. If you haven’t read this stuff, you should. Start here.
The Atlanta Urinal-Constipation has shown an odd and disturbing trend the past few days: there have been several editorial attacks on John Kerry in the opinion pages, including a New York Times column today by David Brooks, who has a real gift for twisted facts and sophistry. I wouldn’t mind them running Brooks, as a general rule, though it would make me doubt their choices (but then, the main conservative voice they give us is Jim Wooten, who’s a spinning idiot at his very best), but it runs with a piece by a black guy lambasting the Democratic National Committee for challenging Dean, and follows two recent columns by Georgian veterans effectively calling John Kerry a traitor because he protested the war upon getting back from fighting it.
Kerry is strong, and it has the GOPpers worried, especially in light of Bush’s plummeting approval ratings. They’re very worried about their man (who was AWOL for a year of the National Guard service his poppy arranged so he wouldn’t have to go fight) having to face off against a true war hero who earned three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and a Silver Star, so the forces are mobilizing to tarnish his patriotism and honor (much as they did to Max Cleland in the last Senate campaign).
Some conservatives are very quick to accuse others of unpatriotic attitudes. Hell, disagree with a lot of them over which American Idol contestant is best and they’ll get pissy and call you a god-hating communist terrorist lover who hates America. Well, okay, that may be hyperbole. But disagree politically and you’re the Devil’s Spawn. They don’t seem to recognize that the right to disagree at all, including with them, is the very essence of being an American.
The ‘Nam vets, though, really bother me. They’re either tarnishing their own honor and integrity by playing rank politics, attacking a fellow vet for sheer partisan reasons, or they truly believe what they’re saying, that John Kerry was unpatriotic and betrayed them by coming home and fighting to bring everyone else home too. As far as I know, the number of people these days who think we should’ve been in ‘Nam at all is very small, so I can’t believe the men who came under fire would reflexively disagree with one of their own who wanted to save them from suffering and dying for bad reasons. To do so would be simple idiocy.
Military service isn’t a requirement for the presidency, and isn’t even a primary concern in my eyes. But the way these two men responded to their service, and their philosophies and actions thereafter, tells me something about them. One served two tours of duty, was wounded thrice, and saved several lives in acts of sheer balls, then returned and fought a war of conscience against the corrupt bastards who sent our troops to die for nothing. The other hid stateside in a National Guard unit made available to him because of who his old man was, didn’t bother serving his time, and has now taken our country to a war based on lies and profit, leading to the deaths so far of over ten thousand people, and an enormous drain on the political and economic strength of our country.
The good thing, I suppose, is that Bush is in enough trouble that he and his supporters are getting scared. The bad thing is that men who should possess a certain measure of wisdom and honor seem willing to sell themselves short through cheap attacks on a true hero.
Under An Outlaw Moon 