From: snake@CHEMVAX.PRINCETON.EDU
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 1995 11:31:34 EDT
 
Doug:
 
        Just a short comment on fantasy to follow up on my letter of yesterday.
Since the vast bulk of fantasy, as it is currently recognized, was written
after 1970, almost all the good stuff is covered in yours and related reviews.
Just for calibration, almost all of the series I usually recommend you've
already reviewed:  The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Earthsea, The Swords
Trilogy, Anne Rice's vampire books, The Lord of the Rings, The Lords of Dus,
The Book of the New Sun, and the Amber series.  But I do have a few other
recommendations which I'm certain you'll enjoy.
 
        First and foremost, Barry Hughart's fantasy trilogy _Bridge_of_Birds_
(T100 #64), _The_Story_of_the_Stone_, and _Eight_Skilled_Gentlemen_, which are
sort of detective fantasies in "a China that never was", are simply wonderful.
When I'm reading them, I always think they're the best fantasy ever written,
and they drop only slightly when viewed from a more distant perspective.
 
        Second, in my view the single most astonishing omission from the Top
100 list is the lack of any book by Robert E. Howard (author of the original
Conan stories).  I only found one Howard even in the gigantic supplemental
lists to the Top 100.  I'm amazed.  Howard was the best storyteller ever to
write fantasy, but he was 50 years ahead of his time, a tormented soul, and
ended up committing suicide in his thirties.  There are five or so collections
of the original Conan stories, and they're best read in chronological order
(of Conan's life), culminating in the one Conan novel, _Conan_the_Conqueror_.
It's important to note that the literary Conan is not at all like the
revenge-motivated moron in the movie "Conan the Barbarian".  This was John
Milius' fault, not Schwarzenegger's; the second movie, "Conan the Destroyer",
is much closer in spirit to the stories, but irreparable damage had already
been done.  Howard wrote lots of other fantasy, all of it good to excellent.
 
        Among other "early" SF/fantasists, you ought to try the first five or
so Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs (really!) and the first ten or so
Doc Savage novels (of ca. 200!!!) by Kenneth Robeson.  They are terribly
addictive, and provide an important basis for a lot of the more modern
speculative fiction.  Again, both are totally missing from the Top 100 lists
and supplement.  If you like these, it's even more fun to read Philip Jose
Farmer's _A_Feast_Unknown_ and its sequel, which chronicle the present day
exploits of thinly disguised (for copywrite reasons) Tarzan and Doc Savage,
who turn out to be half brothers, and are just fine, thank you, since they've
been taking the immortality serum provided by The Nine, an oligarchy of
of multi-thousand-year-old immortals who are the true rulers of the earth!
 
        Also very much in the style of Burroughs, but highly controversial,
are the Gor books of John Norman.  There are about 25 of these, but here one
must be very selective: books 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 ONLY constitute in
my view a single extended novel in which the character of the protagonist is
carefully developed, from neurotic earthman to ultra macho Gorean.
[Specifically, these are _Tarnsman_of_Gor_, _Outlaw_of_Gor_, Priest-Kings...,
Nomads..., Assasin..., Raiders..., Hunters..., and Marauders...]  Norman took
a lot of heat for these books, which are incredibly sexist -- virtually
all of the women on Gor are slaves, or secretly want to be -- and this has
obscured the merits of the series.  On the other hand, Norman did more damage
with books 7 and 10 through infinity, which are unspeakably awful, the clearest
examples of word-processed, repetitive text with 15 pages of plot packed into
300 pages of book.  But he obviously made a lot of money!
 
        Finally, you might pick up _Too_Many_Magicians_ by Randall Garrett.
This is one of the Lord Darcy detective fantasies, in an alternate history
where the laws of magic, not science, have been used to create a modern
technological society.  There's a lot of more recent fantasy which clearly
derives from Garrett's ideas, although I suppose that he himself is
the literary progeny of _The_Incompleat_Enchanter_, which I liked a lot more
than you.
 
                                All the best,
                                Bob Pascal