Weekly Geekly Rundown for August 30, 2024
Celebrate Cimmerian September
I was thinking about sharing the latest Veritasium video since it discusses democratic elections, Condorcet cycling, Kenneth Arrow’s Dictator problem and analysis in Social Choice and Individual Values. Arrow’s book is one of the most important and most difficult books I’ve ever read. It has shaped my view of political process more than any other work and has made me far more a realist than most around me. I place it among what I believe are the five most important books in political science. Since it’s still early in election season I’ll save sharing the video for another time. In part because they don’t do a particularly good job of describing many of Arrow’s critiques. It’s fantastic for Condorcet cycling, but it presents Arrow’s arguments in a less than accessible way. I’ll be hunting down some additional videos on these concepts and then that will be the “Weekly Geekly Oddity.”
In case you were wondering what I personally call the seemingly random miscellanea I put at the beginning of each Weekly Geekly Rundown, that’s it. My outline says “Weekly Geekly Oddity” which I then overwrite with whatever this week’s topic happens to be.
Which brings me to this week’s topic. This weekend marks the beginning of the second Cimmerian September (thanks to
for letting me know this exists). Cimmerian September is the creation of Booktuber Michael K. Vaughan. He began the event last year as a way to encourage viewers and readers to read the original Conan stories written by Robert E. Howard and as the month progressed he discussed those tales with his audience.As he mentioned in this year’s preview video a few months back, he’s opened things up a bit and expanded the Cimmerian reading to include comic books and pastiches. He’s even permitting the reading of the “dreaded” L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter pastiches.
Why the scare quotes around dreaded?
I appreciate how much modern scholars have advocated that people read the original Robert E. Howard stories to get a look at what a real Conan story looks like. Howard was a very talented writer and is worthy of being assessed on his own merits. I would venture to say that Howard, along with Dashiell Hammett and a few others, is one of the great American writers of the early 20th Century. He manages a nice balance between the florid prose of a writer like Clark Ashton Smith (florid but great) and a concise to the point of almost being terse author like Hemingway. He belongs alongside Fenimore Cooper and Twain (I put them side by side for a reason) as one of the quintessential American voices. I am eternally grateful to the scholars like
and others who have worked to highlight the craftsmanship and depth of Howard and to help us see how great a loss his death was.All that said, I still have a soft spot for de Camp and Carter’s pastiches. In no small part because they were the first introduction I had to Howard’s writing at all. The de Camp and Carter collections were the Conan books that were carried by my local library and I devoured them. I enjoyed all of the stories. When I look back at my favorite stories like The Phoenix on the Sword, The God in the Bowl and The Tower of the Elephant, they are inevitably stories written by Howard. But I would not have read them if not for the work and advocacy of de Camp and Carter. De Camp’s promotional work in fanzines like Amra and his promotion of Howard’s writing are a part of why we read his works today. His scholarship, shoddy as it was, encouraged others to examine Howard from a scholarly position and this resulted in better research.
I also think de Camp’s and Carter’s stories are fun. Would I have preferred that they were pure pastiches along the lines of Thongor instead of stories inserted directly into Hyboria claiming Howardian DNA? Yes. I think I would have still enjoyed them in that way, though I am okay with them finishing some fragments. Do I wish de Camp realized the talent of Howard the author, especially given how much money de Camp made publishing Howard’s tales? Yes. His “psychological biography” of Howard is a terrible example of the pseudo-Freudian psychobabble of the mid-20th century. Made all the more ironic given how much self-insertion existed in his own Harold Shea stories, though less ironic when one reads de Camp’s own “psychological autobiography” which reveals him to be consistent with his psychobabble obsessions.
Beyond his advocacy and the fun of his own tales, he also inspired better writers. I don’t know that the Kane stories would exist without a need for a response to the Thud and Blunder pastiches that followed in de Camp’s wake. Anderson’s On Thud and Blunder essay was published in Swords Against Darkness III and Anderson had been an active member of de Camp and Carter’s Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA). That guild produced many wonderful tales of non-Howardian Sword & Sorcery in the Flashing Blades anthologies which expanded the genre in wonderful ways and inspired even more writers to jump into the genre. Without these tales would we have had a David Gemmell or a Joe Abercrombie? Maybe, but the inspiration is clear.
None of which is to say that you should read the de Camp and Carter stories expecting to be wowed in the same way as you would be by a Howard story. You won’t be. De Camp was a fine writer of his own tales, but his pastiches are typically too reductive. Carter’s writing is awful compared to his skills as a curator/editor and advocate, and I say this as someone who reads his Thongor stories every year. I do that because I love reading stories that channel the childhood fantasy of shooting Conan stories at John Carter stories in the Hadron supercollider to see what results and what I imagine would result is remarkably Thongor-esque.
If you haven’t read Howard’s Cimmerian tales in their raw state, do that. Do it immediately and suffer no imitators. If you have read them, then join me in reading some de Camp and Carter alongside the good stuff. Sometimes it’s okay to drink a little local bourbon along with your Macallan. Robert E. Howard is the Macallan of Sword & Sorcery, properly aged, single malt, and distilled excitement. De Camp and Carter are the relatively inexpensive local distillery who gets you by and is fun to chat about with friends.
Speaking of fun to talk about with friends, September might also be a good time to watch some Barbarian Movies so long as you understand that where written Sword & Sorcery has both literary and hack elements, the movies are almost completely Thud and Blunder.
Weekly Film Article Cavalcade
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
As someone whose interest in the Terminator franchise was killed off long ago, I read Luke Y. Thompson’s recent review of Terminator Zero at SuperHeroHype expecting to read the same plot points and the same disappointments. I had far more interest in giving my friend internet traffic than I did in yet another desperate attempt to play on the nostalgia of former fans to bleed out yet another dollar in revenue. I was about a quarter of the way through the review when I found myself saying, “Hey, I might actually check this out.” I eventually ended up at a point where I’ll likely be watching some of the episodes this weekend, but only after watching Kevin Costner’s film Horizon. Luke has convinced me this one is worth a whirl, especially since it channels the 90s/00s anime obsession with Christianity. From Neon Genesis Evangelion to Witch Hunter Robin and Full Metal Alchemist, many of my favorite anime include interesting interpretations of Christian lore.
Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat
Courtney watched quite a few movies this week and gave micro reviews on her X/Twitter account, but no long form from her this week. Based on her tweets, I can’t wait to read her review of His Three Daughters if she chooses/gets to write one.
Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse
is back with #45 which gives a good overview of a ton of Sword & Sorcery content that’s out there right now.
Similarly,
over at has a very interesting post this month that covers a lot of ground including a nice bit about Janet Morris who passed away this past month.
I had no idea that there was a band called Gygax and given how quickly the Gygax children were sued when they published a magazine called Gygax, I’m amazed that the band has lasted as long as they have. I will definitely be checking out these three songs and enjoying as
keeps introducing me to more and more table top gaming adjacent music. Here I thought the only gaming adjacent bands were The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets (see below) and that group that did the Roll a d6 song (I love that they are playing 4e in the video).
The
reminds us that not only was 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons a great game, but almost all of the books are available in Print on Demand at affordable prices from DriveThruRPG. Most of those that aren’t are available as very affordable pdfs. In fact, the only pre-5e books that seem to be missing from that site in “pure” form are the 0e version of Gods, Demigods, and Heroes (supplement IV). A copy is there, but it lacks any of the copywritten characters like Conan and Elric that were in the original book. The same is true of their version of Deities and Demigods. Not Elric or Cthulhu for us here. In this case not necessarily due to licensing as much as TSR not wanting to push people towards rivals products back in the day. Contrary to much of the internet common knowledge, TSR did have permission to use both Lovecraft’s work and Moorcock’s Elric. So too did Chaosium. Licensing for games was new ground back then and Moorcock viewed his agreements as a “hippy” agreements, as he discussed in Kobold Quarterly #5.
As always, I recommend checking out
’s Substack. He is interviewing some wonderful guests and he is one of the second wave of cartoonists who entered the RPG space in the late 80s and early 90s to fill the space that Dave Trampier and others left behind. Those are tough shoes to fill, but Stan! is a great illustrator and he’s worked with people in every era of D&D. He’s the perfect person to talk about the 50 years of the hobby. If not for a short Sumo related interruption (for real), his discussions would be flawless.
I want to than
for letting me know about Cimmerian September. A lot of people have written Conan comic books over the years, but I think the man who wrote the Munchkin comic and truly gave Minsc a deeper personality is the right man to continue the comic book writing torch. He’s been writing, and will continue to write, the latest series and his stories have been very engaging. They incorporate existing lore, while stretching things in new ways.
Richard Iorio over at
has been one of my favorite independent game designers for a long time. His Shadow Sword and Spell is still among my top 5 Sword & Sorcery role playing games, not to mention his excellent Colonial Gothic game. The DriveThruRPG page may need a new image, but not for long because Richard will be releasing a new edition of that game soon. This week, he discusses how he feels about the “you are only licensing your digital books” trend in the modern marketplace.
Role Playing Game Recommendation
This week’s role playing game recommendation is Cryptworld from Goblinoid Games.
Back before Gary Gygax was ousted from TSR, he moved to Los Angeles in order to try to get a development deal for Dungeons & Dragons and other TSR properties as the head of Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment. While he was out there, two of his early partners (the Blume brothers) ascended to manage TSR’s day to day business. As a result of their management, TSR posted a net loss of $1.5 million and had to fire 75% of their staff. This is one of the reasons Gary returned in an attempt to take back control of his company, a task he hoped that Lorraine Williams (the sister of his friend and collaborator Flint Dille) would help him accomplish. That didn’t work out as Gary had hoped/expected and that has been the topic of a number of books. I won’t go into discussion of that here, but will recommend Jon Peterson’s books as a good place to start.
Among the 75% of TSR staff that were fired were Mark Acres, Andria Hayday, Gaye Goldsberry O'Keefe, Gali Sanchez, Garry Spiegle, Carl Smith, Stephen D. Sullivan, and Michael Williams. This talented group of game designers went on to form Pacesetter Games, one of the most ambitious game companies of the 1980s and one of the most creative game companies in the history of the hobby. Among their creations was an excellent game called Chill, a horror game with a very different vibe than The Game That Shall Not Be Named but was reviewed by Ethan Sabatella above.
Where that other game focused on cosmic horror and the death of player characters etc., Chill had players play characters who were members of an organization called SAVE that battled the supernatural and protected regular people like you and me. The world wasn’t ready for the game, even with its solid mechanics the “fighting against evil” vibe didn’t appeal to the horror rpg fans of the day. I guess we’d have to wait a decade for Buffy and the Winchesters to create the fanbase. Chill’s first edition is a great game that is not easily available today, except thanks to Dan Proctor and the folks at Goblinoid Games. They acquired the rights to a number of Pacesetter games, and to the mechanics, and used those to create Cryptworld. Cryptworld isn’t identical to Chill, though it plays very similarly, but it is a very worthy successor. Much more so than the 3rd edition Chill that funded on Kickstarter. If you are looking for a game to play this fall, make it Cryptworld I know I will be playing it.
Music Recommendation
I was watching a YouTube video the other day that was comparing Metal in the United States to the Metal coming out of England and one of the early tunes was Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast. I was struck by how timeless and powerful the central riff was. I wasn’t necessarily surprised because I’ve been enjoying Maiden for a long time, but the musicianship was excellent and I immediately went to watch the video and enjoyed the entire song. The song is about an encounter with an evil cult and the video includes clips from this week’s movie recommendation.
As I mentioned above, The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets are the first band I think of when it comes to gaming related music. I’ve never seen them in concert, but I think they’ve performed at GenCon before and that’s some serious geek cred. So too is writing songs based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. Going Down to Dunwich is a fun song that samples Dean Stockwell from The Dunwich Horror (1970). Check it out.
Metallica covered Diamond Head’s song Am I Evil on their Garage Days Revisited CD. It’s a song that fits thematically with the Maiden and Thickets song earlier and with the Cult/Witch theme of this week’s game, music, and movie recommendations. The 1979 live performance on the Diamond Head official page shows how strong the song writing was, even as the performance itself suffers from bad mixing and a lack of technical expertise on the performance. It reminded me a bit of what I often say about KISS, who is a band that I think writes amazing songs that are frequently better when someone else plays them.
Thankfully none of those critiques apply to the remastered version recently released by Diamond Head a couple of years ago. This version of the song rocks.
Taking a bit of a sidestep from the heavier sounds of the other songs to highlight Mike Dawes’ excellent cover of Van Halen’s Jump. I’m sure I’ve recommended it before, but it’s good enough to recommend more than once.
Classic Film Recommendation
I am an unabashed fan of the Hammer and Amicus horror films of the 1960s and 1970s and I was overjoyed when Hammer jumped back into the horror game with The Woman in Black. In part because it was the scariest movie I’d seen in some time (I was home alone when I watched it very late at night) and in part because it did so while retaining a “Hammer” feel. The end of the film provides me with what William Dean Howells said about the American public, “What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.” Howells was being snide, but I don’t care. It is firmly what I want. The horror films of the 1970s, like Race with the Devil, had ambiguous or depressing endings.
It wasn’t surprising that Race with the Devil and Easy Rider had not only similar casts, but similar endings. The depressing, critical, deconstructive, and subversive negative ending was a staple of much of the cinema of the 70s. It conveyed the nihilism of the era where nothing really mattered. When I watch Saturday Night Fever and compare it to its 80s sequel Staying Alive, you can see the change in American outlook. In Saturday Night Fever, there is no hope. No support from family. No salvation from faith. Friends are cruel and betray you and everything is rigged. The only choice is to walk away. Saturday Night Fever is riveting, but it is also hard to watch. Staying Alive is an inferior film in many ways. The Broadway number that is the focus of the film, but features cult/witch stuff so is on theme, is terrible. The story of a struggling dancer has been better done, but the nostalgia in the Ice Cream Suit scene and the end strut lift the film into something almost special. It’s not quite there, but I love it and I love it because it’s a tragic story with a happy ending.
A lot of Hammer films, whether Captain Chronos, one of the many Dracula films, or this week’s movie The Devil Rides Out are films of horror that do not shy away from the evil of their villains, but typically end with the triumph of good. That triumph doesn’t come without a cost though. In The Woman in Black, Daniel Radcliffe’s character has to do what no other parent was willing to do in order to save his child from the Woman. He has to be willing to die trying to save his child. Throughout the film no other parent tries to save their children with any conviction. In many of the scenes, Radcliffe’s character is the only one trying at all. His efforts must be total or they are useless, but his final shot is not of him and his child in the service of the Woman like all the others. His final shot is him and his child rejoining his wife. It’s a tragic but happy ending, though the threat remains because other parents aren’t like him.
The Devil Rides Out is a perfectly Chill-ian movie, which is why I selected it over Call of Cthulhu as the role playing recommendation. A satanic cult threatens society and it is up to occult expert Christopher Lee to save the day. That’s right, Christopher Lee is the hero and he’s fantastic.
The trailer includes the scene sampled in the Iron Maiden video above, but one of my favorite moments in the film comes towards the end when Lee’s character starts the ritual to banish the evil. The effects when the horseman first appears are amazing. I wish the subsequent cutaways to a real horseman were as effective. They aren’t and I kind of wish some modern effect team remastered this movie with special effects for this scene, and this scene alone, based on that initial effect. I don’t want the film’s effects changed overall, just for them to be consistent in this scene.
It’s a wonderful film and one of my favorite non-Vampire Hammer films.
I found your even-handed comments regarding de Camp and Carter quite refreshing. I think that people are capable of liking a thing, even as they acknowledge that the person who made it might have been less than optimal. I (and most of my ilk) don't spend any time thinking about de Camp these days--my only issue with him ever was his cavalier treatment of Howard as a man. I had issues with his stewardship of Conan, but I can still think back fondly on my first reading of Conan in the Ace editions of de Camp's "saga." My rebuke of de Camp for his business decisions and personal grievances towards REH do not invalidate anyone's enjoyment of Conan. There are a few who take it personally, however, and defend what he did to the point of trying to gaslight REH fans. It's tiresome.
I think I'm going to do Cimmerian September this year. Seems like a lot of fun.
Okay the Hadron collider for genre made me laugh so thx for that, Christian, as well as a lot of other insightful stuff.
Agreed re deCamp & his awful “bio” (or should it be a phillippic or polemic given the character assassination therein). LSdC has his place but biographer ain’t it; after all, I have both editions of his Science Fiction Handbook on my reference shelves (when they’re not boxed up due to basement being repaired)