(We realize that we’ve been a bit remiss in discussing the actual release of FUTURES THAT NEVER WERE, so we asked one of the contributors – C.J. Casey – to drop by and give us his thoughts on it… as well as his experience with sword-and-planet fiction).
Confession #1: When I was a child, I sat on the floor in our village library and read most of the John Carter books, staying there so often that my Mom would call the librarian to see if her son had come back from Mars, yet. In other words, this essay is a little biased.
By now, the smoke has cleared and you’ve heard the news that the late, lamented quarterly Broadswords and Blasters has been resurrected for an anthology of that most wonderful type of fantasy fiction, “Sword and Planet.” While fiction based on science and scientific developments dates back at least a century before John Carter first woke up on Barsoom, Sword and Planet is a different animal entirely. These were stories where science took a backseat to adventure and romance. “Magic” in the shape of advanced technology was often used to flashy and dramatic effect, but the hero, and his muscles, usually won the day by dint of courage, daring, and astounding feats of strength. In short, as the opening essay in this collection states, these stories were full of broadswords and blasters galore.
The decision to open this with an essay discussing Sword and Planet was indeed a good one, as this style of fiction has fallen by the wayside. Star Wars and its various iterations over the decade are perhaps the largest cultural juggernaut influenced by stories of men and women with laser swords and tech versions of ancient Earth vehicles, but no one ever calls it that. Flash Gordon never got the sequels it deserved, perhaps thanks to an argument between the lead and the director. John Carter was criminally underseen in theaters. The recent film version of Dune came close to blending old action and adventure tropes in a far-flung setting, but it still didn’t have the gonzo breakneck pace that so much Planetary Romance fiction has. Yet there still exists a market for stories of adventure and daring, of heroes and villains and creatures that one can’t take the time to identify because they’re trying to kill you. This new book shows that these stories still percolate in the minds of fantasy and science-fiction writers around the world, as well they should.
Confession #2: I’d read enough science by 4th Grade to know that the new Flash Gordon movie was fantasy, but my imagination didn’t care. That was the first movie I spent my hard-earned allowance money on to see a second time in the theater. It was the third “Movie Novelization” I read, after Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. And, it was the subject of the first serial I ever watched, thanks to the old weekend TV show “Matinee at the Bijou.”
As one would expect, the covers of this book contain exactly what it says on the label, though as one would also expect from editors Matthew Gomez and Cameron Mount, there’s a little more as well. During its first sixty or seventy years of existence, Sword and Planet fiction was a product of the dominant culture of its day, which meant most of its heroes were male, White American or Western European, very heterosexual, and exceptionally-abled. The stories here, however, follow more in the storytelling tradition, rather than the cultural and societal tradition. Typical Sword and Planet plots and conflicts are everywhere here, but there are subtle (and not-so-subtle) changes within. A hero grabs a magic sword and is teleported to Mars, but instead of a buff Confederate soldier, this hero is a Black teenage girl who quickly makes a stand against forced marriage and slavery in this faraway world. She’s not the only female hero within these pages, either, though as a credit to the skills of these authors and editors, none of this comes off as “pandering” to current trends in fiction. If you read Broadswords and Blasters when it was published, like I did, you’re already familiar with the types of stories and the talent of the writers within, and this will be less of a surprise and more of a refreshing return. All of these stories are naturally written and fly off the pages in a way that will enchant anyone who’s read an adventure story. And considering that adventure stories in stunning and imaginary but strangely familiar locations were perhaps the first stories ever told around campfires and in city squares, these tales are carrying on an old and noble tradition indeed.
I won’t go through story by story, because that will rob you of the pleasure of discovering them for yourself. I will tell you that, no matter what your preference for fantasy, sci-fi, or adventure fiction, you’re going to find it. Heist? There’s one in here. Steampunk? Yup. War? Sure. And there’s a bonus to this as well regarding the language and structure of the stories within. Sword and Planet, as published in the pulp heyday, was known for its purple prose. As much as I like E. R. Eddings’s book The Worm of Ouroboros, let me share this excerpt from the first two pages of Chapter One:
The eastern stars were paling to the dawn as Lessingham followed his conductor along the grass walk…. [It] was bathed in night-dew, and great white lilies sleeping in the shadows of the yews loaded the air of that garden with fragrance….
“Child of earth,” [the martlet] said, “dost think we are here in dreamland…. This is no dream. Thou, first of the children of men, art come to Mercury, where thou and I will journey up and down for a season to show thee the lands and oceans, the forests, plains, and ancient mountains, cities and palaces of this world, Mercury, and the doings of them that dwell therein. But here, thou canst not handle aught, neither make the folk ware of thee, not though thou shout thy throat hoarse…”
Ouroboros is a great book, once you get used to the storytelling style, but it’s rather, well, purple, in a way that could make Bulwer-Lyton (of “It was a dark and stormy night…” fame) blush and ask for a rewrite. Not so the stories in this book. Most, if not all of the authors set their stories under “[t]he baleflue blue of distant, cold suns” or a “shimmering, purple dusk” inhabited by a sort of old-west culture, among other places. Yet while they pay a welcome tribute to the authors who have gone before them, they use this language and these descriptive names as seasoning, rather than the basis of an entire meal. Some of the authors make references to the classic stories of the pulp magazines, while others work on a completely new canvas, painting an original and stunning image with just a hint of the old pigments and techniques used before. I’m not going to go so far as to say that they’re improvements on the old, but they are the old stories told in a modern idiom, in a way that will appeal to readers whose grandparents hadn’t been born when these stories first crossed the blinding night sky.
Confession #3: Also in 4th Grade, I wrote a fan-fiction pastiche of Star Wars and John Carter and especially Flash Gordon about myself, called “Flash Tom.” Why did I call myself “Tom?” Other than I thought that “Flash Chris” sounded weird, I have no idea. Still, that was probably the first story I ever finished, and I later read it aloud to my class. Thankfully, I don’t think they remember.
In short, this is a welcome addition to the canon of modern pulp-flavored fiction. You’ll find stories here that will take you to the far future and the distant stretches of navigable space, as well as perhaps a little closer. Perhaps you’ll read these and remember the planetary fiction you read as a child. Perhaps you’ll see yourself in these stories in ways that you never quite could back when you would find them in the paperback racks of the library or the “Five for a Dollar” shelf at the flea market. Maybe you’ll be intrigued by the original authors who first carved out these planet-sized worlds into the landscape of popular imagination. And maybe you’ll start on your own journeys as well.
[1] E. R. Eddings, The Worm Ouroboros, E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc, 1926, Ballantine Books Edition, 1967
Broadswords and Blasters 