Elric of Melniboné Elric of Melniboné[1] is a fictional character created by Michael Moorcock, and the antihero of a series of sword and sorcery stories centring in an alternate Earth. The proper name and title of the character is Elric VIII, 428th Emperor of Melniboné. Later novels by Moorcock mark Elric as a facet of the Eternal Champion. Elric first appeared in print in Moorcock's novella, "The Dreaming City" (Science Fantasy No. 47, June 1961); subsequent novellas were reformatted as the novel Stormbringer (1965), but his first appearance in an original novel wasn't until 1973 in Elric of Melniboné. Fictional history[edit] Elric is described by his creator, in the first book, Elric of Melniboné, as follows: It is the colour of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. Elric's finding of the sword Stormbringer serves as both his greatest asset and greatest disadvantage. Influences[edit] Novels[edit] Original saga[edit] DAW series (1977) Later novels[edit]
The Elric Saga The story of Elric, the last emperor of Melniboné, ruler of the dreaming city and keeper of the ruby throne, brings together many images of life and death, fate versus free will, generations of tradition and the destruction of that tradition, thought versus action, evil versus good , law versus chaos, and the difficulties faced when trying to reconcile and make meaning out of one's own existence. It is also a vehicle for Michael Moorcock to expound on yet another incarnation of "The Eternal Champion", a theme that runs throughout many of his fantasy novels. On this page I hope to give a brief overview and opinion of this tragic, yet action packed series. He also influenced me to find and enjoy another fantasy author Fritz Leiber, and his not so clean cut heroic pair of fantasy swordsmen "Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser" . Elric of Melniboné: "It is the color of a bleached skull, his flesh; and the long hair which flows below his shoulders is milk-white. Queen Yishana : Ruler of Jharkor.
Dorian Hawkmoon Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln is one of the fictional characters created by Michael Moorcock in his series of the Eternal Champion books. Overview[edit] Dorian Hawkmoon is one of the less "problematic" characters Moorcock ever created a series around. Hawkmoon is captured by the evil forces of Granbretan who implant by means of arcane technology (devised by a caste of 'sorcerer-scientists') a sinister black jewel in his skull. The Runestaff is one of the major artifacts in Moorcock's multiverse. Some of the artifacts have servants. Hawkmoon's struggle with the empire of Granbretan was treated in The History of the Runestaff, which consists of four books ("The Jewel in the Skull", "The Mad God's Amulet", "The Sword of the Dawn", and "The Runestaff"); the setting of this tale is a post-holocaust Earth.[1] Other media[edit] In 1985, Kerie Campbell-Robson created a role-playing game based on the Hawkmoon series, published by Chaosium and using its Basic Role-Playing system. Notes[edit]
Michael Moorcock Michael John Moorcock (born 18 December 1939) is an English writer, primarily of science fiction and fantasy, who has also published literary novels. He is best known for his novels about the anti-hero Elric of Melniboné, a seminal influence on the field of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Moorcock in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[3] Biography[edit] Michael Moorcock was born in London in 1939 and the landscape of London, particularly the area of Notting Hill Gate and Ladbroke Grove, is an important influence in some of his fiction (cf. the Cornelius novels). Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Moorcock is the former husband of Hilary Bailey. Moorcock was the subject of two book-length works, a monograph and an interview, by Colin Greenland. In the 1990s, he moved to Texas in the United States. Views on politics[edit] Writer[edit]
Dying Earth Dying Earth is a fantasy series by the American author Jack Vance, comprising four books originally published 1950 to 1984.[2] Some have been called picaresque. They vary from short story collection to fix-up (novel created from older short stories) perhaps all the way to novel.[2] Setting[edit] The stories of the Dying Earth series are set in the distant future, at a point when the sun is almost exhausted and magic has reasserted itself as a dominant force. Origins[edit] Vance wrote the stories while he served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. According to pulp editor Sam Merwin, Vance's earliest magazine submissions in the 1940s were heavily influenced by the style of James Branch Cabell.[5] Fantasy historian Lin Carter has noted several probable lasting influences of Cabell on Vance's work, and suggests that the early "pseudo-Cabell" experiments bore fruit in The Dying Earth (1950).[6] Series[edit] Stories by Vance[edit] 1. 2. 3. 4. Sequels[edit] Translations[edit]
Ambrose & Elsewhere Glen Cook Glen Cook (born July 9, 1944) is a contemporary American science fiction and fantasy author, best known for his fantasy series, The Black Company. Cook currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri. Biography[edit] Glen Cook's love of writing began in grade school, and in high school he wrote the occasional article for his school's newspaper. It was during this time that Cook wrote his first novel of The Black Company, a gritty fantasy series that follows an elite mercenary unit through several decades of their history. Cook is currently retired from his job at GM, living with his wife, Carol, and children (Justin, Chris, and Mike) in St. Published works[edit] The Black Company[edit] An epic fantasy series about a band of mercenaries known as The Black Company. Garrett P.I. In a combination fantasy and mystery series, Garrett is a freelance private investigator in a world where magic works all too well, and where humans co-exist uneasily with numerous other intelligent species and halfbreeds.
The Black Company Cover of the first novel in the series, "The Black Company". The Black Company is a series of fantasy novels by author Glen Cook. The series combines elements of epic fantasy and dark fantasy as it follows an elite mercenary unit, The Black Company, through roughly forty years of its approximately five hundred year history. Novels[edit] Main chronology[edit] The Books of the North[edit] The Books of the South [edit] The Books of the Glittering Stone[edit] Bleak Seasons (Main Annalist: Murgen) —April 1996She Is the Darkness (Murgen) —September 1997Water Sleeps (Sleepy) —March 1999Soldiers Live (Croaker: the duty is passed off to Shukrat and Arkana of the Voroshk in the last chapter, implying thenceforth they will share the duty of Annalist) —July 2000 Spin-offs[edit] The Silver Spike (Case) —September 1989 Omnibus Editions[edit] Science Fiction Book Club hardcover omnibus editions[edit] Tor Fiction softcover omnibus editions[edit] Short stories[edit] To be released[edit] Plot summary[edit] [edit]
Leigh Brackett Life[edit] Leigh Brackett was born December 7, 1915 in Los Angeles, California and grew up there. On December 31, 1946, at age 31, she married Edmond Hamilton in San Gabriel, California, and moved with him to Kinsman, Ohio. She died of cancer in 1978 in Lancaster, California.[1] Career[edit] Author[edit] Brackett was first published in her mid-twenties. Brackett's first novel, No Good from a Corpse, published in 1944, was a hard-boiled mystery novel in the tradition of Raymond Chandler. In 1946, the same year that Brackett married science fiction author Edmond Hamilton, Planet Stories published the novella "Lorelei of the Red Mist". Brackett returned from her break from science-fiction writing, caused by her cinematic endeavors, in 1948. Brackett's stories thereafter adopted a more elegiac tone. This last story was published in the very last issue (Summer 1955) of Planet Stories, always Brackett's most reliable market for science fiction. Brackett's Solar System[edit] Screenwriter[edit]
Leigh Brackett (ology) Sword and Sorcery This term – describing a subgenre of Fantasy embracing adventures with swordplay and Magic – is usually attributed to Fritz Leiber, who is said to have coined it in 1960 in response to Michael Moorcock's request for such a capsule description; but the kind of story it refers to is much older than that. (Other terms that overlap with "sword-and-sorcery" are Heroic Fantasy and Science Fantasy, the overlap being considerable in the former case, but all three terms have different nuances. See also Science and Sorcery.) Earlier terms with similar meaning are "weird fantasy" and "fantastic romance". Leiber was a member of the Hyborian League, a fan group, founded in 1956 to preserve the memory of the pulp writer Robert E Howard, to which many professional writers belonged; the group's Fanzine was Amra. Weird Tales continued to publish sword-and-sorcery stories up to the 1940s; many did not see book publication until much later. See also: Gods and Demons; Paranoia; Pastoral; Sex; Villains.