Forgotten Sword and Sorcery authors.

[dask]

And that's Jim Steranko next to him if anyone's interested.

 

[nomadman]

Ah. Yes, the nomenclature which has been used for HPL's "gods" has a confusing history, especially when Derleth enters the mix, as he used the same terms for both sides at different times; but generally the "Elder Gods" was the "goodies", whereas the "Old Ones" or "Ancient Ones" were the "baddies"....

True. I've often confused the two in the past, though I'm more or less a straight Lovecraftophile. Just one of Derleth's many subtle influences I guess...

Thats why i havent bought one of the books online i cant pay 200-300 dollars for a writer i dont know. If it was rare REH or Vance or Lord Dunsany book i could pay that much.

Normally i found books like this in Bookmooch but not even there you can find Kane books.

I was pretty lucky in that I found a bunch of pristine secondhands one day that covered nearly the entire series. Other than that, I've seen copies of Nightwinds and Darkness Weaves knocking about more than once (though even those are pretty rare), and a really battered copy of Bloodstone which I passed over, not knowing its rarity at the time. I've also seen a couple of copies going for under a tenner or amazon and abe, but the prices tend to fluctuate wildly so if you see them grab them.

 

[dask]

Yep. Here's a list of his fantasy tales:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Ball[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the link. I have a few of these anthologies, I'll have to give ol' Mr. Ball a chance. The other one, Brian N., is pretty good. (Related perhaps? Doubt it.)

 

[Toby Frost]

Ummm... at risk of sounding thick -- was that intended tongue-in-cheek, or seriously? Either way, the artist was Frank Frazetta....

No, I was entirely serious there. I thought I recognised the, er, muscle tone - oh, stuff it, I thought I'd seen arses like that elsewhere. Thanks for the info - the only fantasy illustrator I've really heard of is Vallejo, because his name is on model kit paints.

 

[j d worthington]

I must be showing my age, I guess. For a very long time, Frazetta was "the" fantasy artist, known for his work for the Warren magazines (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, etc.), as well as most of the covers for the Lancer Conan books (though Roy G. Krenkel did the one for Lancer's King Kull), as well as tons of other fantasy illustrations which are still seen as iconic. He had a strong influence, I would say, on Vallejo, though they have a rather different approach. At any rate, apologies if that seemed a bit... snobbish? Not intended as such; just honest surprise....

 

[Toby Frost]

Not at all: it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say.

I started seriously reading fantasy slightly too late to see those covers, round about the point where heroes were starting to look more like medieval knights than Norse berserkers. The earliest fantasy covers I can remember were Eddings novels, and they tended to be rather more airy-fairy, so to speak. Heroes tended to wear generic armour (somewhere between 1066 and 1450 with the occasional rapier thrown in) and heroines favoured floaty dresses instead of the combat bikini (a la Jabberwocky by Terry Gilliam - I think the key word is 'diaphanous').

But I do think they are very good covers, and remind me of Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd stories in particular. I wonder if the Franzetta style was an influence on Mills and Bisley's comic book Slaine, The Horned God?

 

[RiderEngland]

I don't know if he counts as "forgotten" but I think Alan Burt Akers (real name Kenneth Bulmer) is certainly underrated.

He wrote the Dray Prescot series of novels. Over 50 books, I think.

 

[BAYLOR]

No one's mentioned John Jakes yet.

Ive read a couple of Brak stories , I can't say im fan of them.

 

[BAYLOR]

Ive read a couple of Brak stories , I can't say im fan of them.

The Kothar stories by Francis Garner Fox are decent.

 

[BAYLOR]

I don't know if he counts as "forgotten" but I think Alan Burt Akers (real name Kenneth Bulmer) is certainly underrated.

He wrote the Dray Prescot series of novels. Over 50 books, I think.

Ive few of his novels .

 

[BAYLOR]

Karl Edward Wagner who gave us the Kane the Mystic Swordsman Series is largely out of print.

 

[Vince W]

Charles R. Saunders. If you can find any copies of his Imaro books in good nick, buy them.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I'm not really one for S&S (or High Fantasy) but one series I did enjoy was the Raven: Swordmistress of Chaos books written by Angus Wells and Robert Holdstock under the pen name Richard Kirk.
I suspect they both had their tongues stuck firmly in their cheeks as they wrote them and wrung every ounce of cliche they could out of the things.
You gotta love a series which features a bare breasted warrior woman riding into combat on a battle cow - as she is on the front of volume 5 A Time of Dying (original UK Corgi edition).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4360080-a-time-of-dying

 

[The Big Peat]

Peter Morwood's The Horse Lord isn't quite S&S - more Heroic Fantasy if we're being precise - but it has plenty of the spirit and is rather obscure these days.

 

[Elentarri]

Peter Morwood's The Horse Lord isn't quite S&S - more Heroic Fantasy if we're being precise - but it has plenty of the spirit and is rather obscure these days.

I loved Peter Morwood's Russian Tales - Prince Ivan, Firebird, The Golden Hoard.

 

[Lostinspace]

Is "The War of Powers" series by Robert E. Vardeman and Victor Milán forgotten. It was once famously characterized by David Langford as "968 pages of junk food for the mind."

 

[BAYLOR]

Cables Burnett Swan Read one book by him Wolfwinter. An excellent novel. He's very hard to find all of his books appear to be long out of print.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I assume that you mean Thomas Burnett Swann. I read several of his books, which were then readily available in paperback, back in the early and mid-seventies. I don't remember any of his books being sword & sorcery, though. Maybe some of them were, but most of them were ... fantasy based on mythology, yes, but pastoral and romantic (mildly erotic) in their themes. His writing, as I remember it tended to be lyrical and poetic—not surprising because he was also a poet.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Is "The War of Powers" series by Robert E. Vardeman and Victor Milán forgotten. It was once famously characterized by David Langford as "968 pages of junk food for the mind."

Good to see Dave bring referenced! His reviews in White Dwarf magazine were brilliant. His takedown of L. Ron Hubbard is legendary!

 

[Pyan]

Is "The War of Powers" series by Robert E. Vardeman and Victor Milán forgotten. It was once famously characterized by David Langford as "968 pages of junk food for the mind."

I have this, as a two- volume tpb. I don't often disagree with Dave Langford, but I do think that in this case, he was more concerned with a snappy summary than a fair assessment.