ELAK OF ATLANTIS
by Henry Kuttner
Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
Kuttner Sharpens His Literary Sword
Thunder in the Dawn
The Spawn of Dagon
Beyond the Phoenix
Dragon Moon
Cursed be the City
The Citadel of Darkness
Website
Also By Henry Kuttner
Author Bio
Copyright
Kuttner Sharpens His Literary Sword
BY JOE R. LANSDALE
HENRY KUTTNER IS something of an unsung hero of science fiction and fantasy, and to some extent, horror fiction, if for no other reason than he wrote a classic little booger tale called “The Graveyard Rats.”
He was a witty, fast-writing kind of guy who could come up with a story at the drop of a hat, and maybe have it finished before the hat hit the floor. Perhaps had he lived longer, and not been knocked dead by a heart attack in his forties, he would be better known, and perhaps if his novels, written by himself and in collaboration, had elicited the same impact his short stories received, he might also have a greater reputation with the mainstream. Within the field of the fantastic, and the science fictional, he is better known, and among certain aficionados of his work, he is considered to be as important a writer as almost anyone who ever wrote in the field(s).
Another reason he is not as well known as he ought to be is because he was so versatile. Unlike one of his protégés, Ray Bradbury, he never developed a singular voice by which he could be identified immediately. This is not to say he wasn’t stylistic. He was, and the echoes of his style can be seen in the works of Ray Bradbury, but unlike Bradbury, who worked to codify his approach to story, Kuttner did not.
To make matters even more confusing, he wrote under a number of different pen names, and if that isn’t enough, when he married C. L. Moore, another wonderful writer, the two of them worked together on almost all stories thereafter. It might even be said that if Henry Kuttner is unknown, so is C. L. Moore, because in a way, they became the same person, a writer(s) who wrote stories and used a lot of names to hide behind. They had to. They were producing a lot of stories for a lot of different markets and needed different names and different voices. They were like spies, moving from one country to another with falsified passports.
They worked together on stories so closely that if one got up to go to the bathroom, the other could sit down and take their place and pick up where they left off, seamlessly producing prose until replaced once again by the other.
It was said C. L. Moore provided the romanticism to some of their best stories, and you can see this touch in her solo work. It was also said that Kuttner provided the wit and the ideas, and there is evidence of that.
Still, I’ve always found this to be an easy answer, and a little too pat. The true answer, especially since they were so interchangeable, is that they were both extraordinarily talented writers who found one another and together fell into a wonderful creative groove. It must have been one hell of a bonding; my guess is they could both be witty and romantic and exploding with ideas. The fact that writing was their profession and they needed to eat and pay bills didn’t hurt either. That’s a real incentive. But that need is not enough to explain the incredible ingenuity with which they worked, the sparkling style they created, and the lasting impact these stories have had on so many readers.
Perhaps, had they written alone, they might have produced better work individually than together, but it is hard to imagine better stories than those accredited to their pen names; these stories are some of the classics in the field of science fiction and science fantasy. To confuse this even more, some of their more famous pen names—Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell come to mind—were sometimes the solo work of one or the other. Trying to decipher it all makes the head hurt.
Kuttner’s work, or the work attributed to him more than C. L. Moore, has been the source for a few films, the earliest being, I believe, “The Twonky,” which was done for television. One of his (and her?) best stories, “Vintage Season,” was filmed interestingly, and most recently, “Mimsy Were The Borogroves” was filmed as The Last Mimsy. This is probably Kuttner’s most famous story. The results were mixed. It was a movie that couldn’t quite decide if it was a serious science fiction film or something for the young adult viewer alone. But the premise and the general storyline were all Kuttner (or at least all Lewis Padgett), and that’s what the viewers take away with them when they leave the theater; that haunting idea so marvelously expressed in the original short story, and so proven in everyday life by anyone old enough to have trouble with the DVD player or the cell phone, only to have their eight-year-old kid show them how it works. I won’t say more. I hope your curiosity will invite you to read the original story, and afterward, to watch the film.
The bottom line is this: Kuttner was one talented dude, and his stories move through the stories of a lot of writers writing today (I am one), and they will move through writers of the future as well; as long as there is the written word and there are heralds to proclaim his excellence, his stories will have their impact.
Okay. I lied. I don’t trust that at all. That’s the way it should be. It’s not the way it is.
But this introduction and this book are a kind of herald. We want to alert you to his genius. This is just a taste. This is just one side of Kuttner. His work is being discovered and rediscovered a lot lately; there have been encouraging signs of this in the films and new editions of his short stories, examples of the latter being Two Handed Engine and this fine collection of early sword and sorcery stories. But neither of these volumes touches the bulk of Kuttner’s output. I hope these films and collections lead to a thunderous awareness for all things Kuttner, but I’m not holding my breath.
Readers and writers these days find it hard to invest time into reading anything older than a year or two, but let me tell you (and I pause to wag my finger and say shame on you), Kuttner s
till reads well and his stories are unique, and many ideas that are just now being explored by writers of science fiction and fantasy… well, sorry, Kuttner has already been there and he most likely did it better.
For many writers who are just drawing their swords, and are interested in what went before and how certain writers developed, or for that matter how certain genres developed, look here, for you can see how Kuttner began sharpening his literary sword, and what better way to symbolize this sharpening, than with tales of swords… and, of course, sorcery.
But more to the stories at hand.
Early in his career, before meeting Catherine (better known in the pages of magazines as C. L.) Moore, he wrote for Weird Tales. Not only did he write the classic horror story “The Graveyard Rats”—also filmed, badly, for the TV film Trilogy of Terror 2—he soon wrote a series of sword and sorcery stories, influenced by Howard’s marvelous Conan tales, but quite different because they came from the mind of another highly original writer.
Kuttner’s creation, Elak, was his own thing, and not Howard’s Conan, but they certainly were characters who might have crossed paths and gone on a three-day drunk and whoring expedition together. In the end, that ramble might have led to a savage duel due to the fact that they were both in their own way what today would be described as alpha males. There was also the fact that Elak had a fat, drunken, friend, Lycon, who always traveled with him, and whose smart mouth and attitude might have stirred the pot and led to a savage decision made in blood.
It would have been Elak’s skillful swordsmanship against Conan’s brawn and fearless assault. It might have made for an interesting fight.
Kuttner’s stories, unlike the tales written by Howard, have a sense of humor. This is not to say there wasn’t a note of humor in Howard’s work, but it certainly wasn’t an identifying trait, and sometimes those notes were played quietly and without great success. Outside of sword and sorcery, Howard did write a series of western tall tales that had a bit of the Pecos Bill humor about them, but they were never, at least for me, that successful. The humor seemed heavy and contrived, and though many scholars point to these stories as a sign of Howard’s maturity as a writer, I always felt they were stories of the moment, of their time, and that the humor was as heavy as a rain cloud and twice as wet.
Kuttner understood humor, both the subtle sort and the more blatant, and unlike Howard, he was really good at it. Also unlike Howard, and more akin to Leiber, there’s a playfulness about the prose and the descriptions; everything isn’t so deadly dark and serious, though Kuttner could certainly summon up the shadows when he chose, and he could write some of the bloodiest and most exciting adventure scenes ever conjured by a writer’s mind, as you will see when you read these stories.
I even think it’s telling that Elak uses a rapier, and not a big heavy sword. The rapier suits his personality, which is, at least by comparison to, say, Conan, somewhat dapper. Still, Elak has a kind of confidence and force of will that would have made John Wayne move back a step.
When it comes to Kuttner’s other character, Prince Raynor, who made two appearances in Strange Tales, the prose presenting his adventures is in my estimation a little more formal and stiff, which may have more to do with distinguishing the two characters, Elak and Raynor, than anything else.
Most likely it was due to the fact that Kuttner was constantly exploring style, character, and story methods and didn’t like to repeat himself. Of the two, I like Elak best. Though there is certainly no lack of entertainment value in the other, there seems less inventiveness and liveliness of style, and the stories feel a little bit familiar. Fans of the Raynor stories may argue the point as a matter of personal taste, however, and I would be unwilling to battle them on the issue. They’re still good tales.
I mention this business about style because I think the writing style of Kuttner was always interesting. He was always experimenting. He was one of those rare kinds of writers who was a combination story teller, stylist, and thinker, though when he wore science fiction clothes, he was more of an extrapolator of ideas and concepts than he was a master of science. He was the forerunner of the Galaxy magazine writer who brought more characterization and social issues to the work than nifty scientific gadgetation, a word I think I just now made up.
Kuttner’s work, for me, threw off sparks and set little mental fires that made me think. He was willing to toss ideas and concepts off like spaghetti, fling it against the wall to see if it sticks. And there was an echo beyond the reading. His ideas were so original and came from so far out of left field you had to have an aerial view of the grounds so you could see them racing at you from beyond the bleachers.
In these sword and sorcery stories his style, or more accurately, his styles, were developing. These tales are not the echo tales of the more mature Kuttner, not the stories chock full of ideas and sparks and little fires that burn in the brain and make you think. They are pure joy. They are the pudding after the steak and the sides. But they are wonderful pudding, fine entertainment.
Kuttner wrote everything he wrote with heart and conviction and a dedication to craft. His intent was not always the same, and he got better and more interesting as he went along, but these tales of Elak and Raynor are a rare treat indeed. They are first of all hard to find, and give us a glance at what Kuttner was to become; we can watch his garden grow in these stories. This collection is a great service to all of us Kuttner fans, and to those it will introduce to his work. These stories may be pudding, but they aren’t tapioca. There’s something special here, a real frothy treat made from exotic ingredients containing lost cities and flashing swords and beautiful women and Druids and ghosts, a few pulpy wood knots and splinters of early prose, a flash of style and insight, and in the end, a flourish of tossed gory glitter in the hair.
He had a kind of magic all writers wish they possessed. Some of us can fake it a little, but Kuttner, he wasn’t faking. He was the real deal. He was a writer of endless possibilities, and it saddens me to think his life, that wonderful magpie mind, constantly collecting thoughts and ideas for stories, was knocked silent by a premature heart attack.
Oh, the places he would have gone.
I hate what we as readers missed due to his early demise, but I am so happy he wrote what he wrote, which is quite a bit, and that he wrote so many different kinds of tales, presented us with so many literary meals to devour, from the steaks to the sides, to the gourmet treats, to the fine and frothy, sweet desserts of Elak and Raynor.
Prove my fears unfounded. Let the heralds speak of Kuttner, and let their voices ring down through the ages, past my time and past yours, and over into the awareness of future readers, and let their words stick: “Kuttner is magic.”
Enjoy.
Joe R. Lansdale
June, 2007
JOE R. LANSDALE is the author of more than twenty novels and two hundred short works, including scripts for both comics and film. Two of his stories, “Bubba Hotep” and “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road,” have also been adapted for film. He is the winner of the Edgar Award, the Grinzani Prize for Literature, and six Bram Stoker Awards, and has been named the 2007 Grandmaster of Horror, to be honored at the World Horror Convention.
Thunder in the Dawn
1. MAGIC OF THE DRUID
THE TAVERN WAS ill-lighted and cloudy with smoke. Raucous oaths and no less rough laughter made the place a bedlam. From the open door a cold wind blew strongly, salt-scented from the sea that lapped restlessly against the wharves of Poseidonia. A small, fat man sitting alone in a booth was muttering to himself as he drank deeply of the wine the innkeeper had placed before him, and Lycon’s quick, furtive glances searched the room, missing no detail.
For Lycon was a little frightened, and this prevented him from getting drunk as quickly as usual. His tall friend and fellow adventurer, Elak, was hours overdue from a clandestine visit to a lady of noble blood, the wife of a duke of Atlantis. This alone might not have troubled Lycon, but he was rem
embering certain curious events of the past fortnight—an inexplicable feeling of being trailed, and an encounter with masked soldiers in the forest beyond Poseidonia. Elak’s dexterity with his rapier had saved them both, and later, he had attributed the attack to the soldiers of Granicor, the Atlantean duke. Lycon was not so sure. Their opponents had not been the swarthy, sinewy seamen of Poseidonia—they had been yellow-haired, fair-skinned giants such as were native to the northern shores of Atlantis. And for many moons Atlantis had been looking northward with apprehensive eyes.
The island continent is, roughly, heart-shaped, split down the middle by a waterway which runs from a huge bay or inland sea at the north down to a lake nearly at the southern extremity, thirty miles from the seacoast city of Poseidonia. For as long as men could remember the northern shores had been harried by red-bearded giants whose long black galleys had swept down from the frozen lands beyond the ocean. Dragon ships they were called, and those who manned them were Vikings—sea pirates, plunderers who left ruin and desolation wherever they beached their craft. Lately rumors had spread of a great influx of these Northmen—and in taverns and by campfires men met and boasted and sharpened their blades.
There were two men in the brawling clamor of the inn who had attracted Lycon’s intent gaze—one a gross, ugly figure clad in a shapeless brown robe, the traditional garb of the Druid priests. Beneath an immense bald head was a hairless, toadlike face glistening with sweat. These Druids, it was said, wielded immense power secretly, and Lycon habitually distrusted priests of any order.
Besides the Druid, Lycon watched a bearded giant whose skin showed traces of being darkened artificially and whose hair was probably dyed, as it showed blue in the lamp’s glow. Casually the small adventurer touched the hilt of his sword. Somewhat reassured by the feel of its smooth metal, he banged his cup on the table and yelled for more wine.
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