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/lit/ - Literature

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9648345 No.9648345 [Reply] [Original]

I'm interested in reading early pulp stories, particularly the ones which were influential on the fantasy genre. I've read a few Conan stories and enjoyed them quite a bit. I've also got some editions of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, though I'm not sure where to start with those.

Help me out with an "essential pulps" list, lads.

>> No.9648350

Edgar Rice Burroughs

>> No.9648421

>>9648350
This.

Read through the John Carter series.

>> No.9648616

>>9648345
Solomon Kane is horribly underrated.

>> No.9649586

>>9648345
Let me advertise a bit my good ol' lad Clark Ashton Smith
He could use more popularity on this board

>> No.9650367

>>9648345
Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories.

>> No.9651567
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9651567

>>9648345
>Sword and sorcery
Read David Gemmell, especially if you want some pulpy heroic fantasy. Check out his Drenai Series.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/40522-the-drenai-saga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drenai_Series

>> No.9651796
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9651796

I've been reading a lot about the old pulpy magazines. Pretty interesting stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_US_science_fiction_and_fantasy_magazines_to_1950
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_Science_Fiction_and_Fact
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Stories_(magazine)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Worlds,_Universe_Science_Fiction,_and_Science_Stories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_Tales

>> No.9651816

My recommendations to start with:
Coming of Conan by Howard
The Dragon Masters by Jack Vance
Knight of Swords by Michael Moorcock
Swords and Deviltry by Lieber

>> No.9651938

>>9648345
Try reading Fafhrd and Gray Mouser in order of publication. Leiber wrote some 'prequels' stories much later in his career, and these appear first in many collections, but they are inferior. As fpr sword and sorcery/sword and 'planet' there is no mystery. The often name dropped writers from this era are the better ones. Stuff like Leiber, Burroughs, Robert Howard is imaginative and entertaining. Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Vance go even further by combining imaginative scenes with baroque prose and in Vance's case, eloquent dialogue - they're actual literature.

>> No.9653731

If you haven't read the original Dragonlance trilogy, I'd recommend that.

>> No.9654698

>>9651938
>and in Vance's case, eloquent dialogue

i love how Vance's characters are unfailingly polite even when they're about to stab someone in the back, or tie them up to be raped.

"And then there was Twisk, who usually appeared as an orange-haired maiden wearing a gown of gray gauze. One day while wading in the shallows of Tilhilvelly Pond, she was surprised by the troll Mangeon. He seized her about the waist, carried her to the bank, ripped away the gray gauze gown and prepared to make an erotic junction. At the sight of his priapic instrument, which was grotesquely large and covered with warts, Twisk became frantic with fear. By dint of jerks, twists and contortions she foiled the best efforts of the sweating Mangeon. But her strength waned and Mangeon's weight began to grow oppressive. She tried to protect herself with magic, but in her excitement she could remember only a spell used to relieve dropsy in farm animals, which, lacking better, she uttered, and it proved efficacious. Mangeon's massive organ shriveled to the size of a small acorn and became lost in the folds of his great gray belly.

Mangeon uttered a scream of dismay, but Twisk showed no remorse. Mangeon cried out in fury: "Vixen, you have done me a double mischief, and you shall do appropriate penance."

He took her to a road which skirted the forest. At a crossroads he fashioned a kind of pillory and affixed her to this construction. Over her head he posted a sign: DO WHAT YOU WILL WITH ME and stood back. "Here you stay until three passersby, be they dolts, lickpennies or great earls, have their way with you, and that is the spell I invoke upon you, so that in the future you may choose to be more accommodating to those who accost you beside Tilhilvelly Pond."

- Jack Vance, "Lyonesse"