What’s Your Poison?
For my post today, I’m going to borrow my husband’s ode to the cool space men and women who clutch at their muscled thighs. I think it’s a very fun topic and I made the super cool space panda just for this post and I want to show it off. We all draw inspiration from somewhere, sometimes from most unexpected places. For me, sword and planet is the coolest things ever. What does it for you?
By Gordon Andrews:
I was over at the Odd Shots blog today and was reading Sharon Shinn‘s post, which happened to include vintage covers of western novels by Ernest Haycox, who was a great influence on her. At first blush, it might indeed seem odd that Sharon who is an award winning, best-selling SF author was so strongly inspired by a writer of a seemingly disparate genre. However, it really does not seem that strange to me at all.
As cool as they are, however, Westerns are not my favorite books or movies. Personally it was and to this day remains what Ilona says is called the Sword and Planet sub-genre. When I was younger, I had no idea that this subgenre had a name, I knew that those covers were made of cool. You know the ones with the buff guy, usually bronzed and shirtless holding a sword in one hand and some type of laser pistol in the other. Typically he was either riding or being attacked by some fantastic alien creature. If there was a hot chick on the cover all the better. It was like they combined the best elements of outer space exploration with gunfighters and pirates.
How It Started
It all started for me in the late 70′s with the Flash Gordon cartoon and movie. The Buck Rogers movie and t.v. show came out about then too, but that character has always held less interest for me as it was straight Sci-Fi. All space ships and jet packs. It never captured my interest. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I was able to appreciate more respectable Science fiction titles like Stranger in a Strange Land or Dune.
Flash Gordon, on the other hand, had a sword, Prince Barin had a bow (he was basically Robin Hood on Mongo), and Zartan, King of the Hawk-men, had a mace. Also, though he doesn’t really make it into the movie, Flash’s best friend was a Lion-man prince. I got the collection of the animated series for Christmas. It is cheesy and the kids make fun of me when I watch it, but it’s nearly as cool as I remembered it being nearly 30 years ago.
A few years later, the He-Man toys came out. Before he was Prince Adam, He-Man was simply a primitive hunter who saved the Sorceress from some monster and was give the magic harness and a cool sword. That was the story in the little comic that came with the action figures. When the cartoon came out, they changed the storyline a bit and He-Man’s mom was an astronaut from earth who had crashed on Eternia (sounds familiar). In the cartoon both the heroes and the villains employed magic and advanced technology in a way that was fascinating to me. He-Man used an enchanted sword and his nemesis Skeletor seemed to prefer the arcane arts, while Man-at-Arms and Lock Jaw were all about technology and advanced weaponry. The He-Man cartoons, both the 80′s version and the newer one, offer a nearly perfect blend of magic and technology.
He-Man by Earl Norem
The Thundercats changed it up a little but the main character still had a magic sword and the villain was still an evil Sorcerer. The Thunder Cats were from a technologically advanced race that had fled the destruction of their home planet and crashed on a primitive world. They were always fighting evil mutants and trying to scavenge the planets ancient technology to enhance their damaged space ship in hopes of escaping to the stars. Their villain, Mumra, was basically an ancient Egyptian mummy that somehow magically had come to life. It was an odd mix of space technology and Egyptian myth.
In Thundarr the Barbarian, a natural disaster had reduced mankind to simple savagery, twentieth century technology is mostly lost and replaced by magic and the evil wizards who used it to enslave humans. Instead of aliens, you had a host of mutant weirdos. Thundarr of course had, yep you guessed it, a magic sword and a sorceress princess who fought by his side, as well as a powerful lion like companion, Ukla the Mok (a bit like a Wookie). A lot of people realize that the fabled Sunsword is very similar to a Light saber from Star Wars, but what few know is that comic great Jack Kirby also worked on the show.
Roughly ten years earlier Kirby had created a very similar comic series for DC entitled Kamandi after his groundbreaking cosmic drama the Fourth World had been canceled (though considered brilliant today it was way ahead of its time and did not sell well). Kamandi was the last human on an earth overrun by highly evolved beast-men. He had grown up in a bunker called Command D. His grandfather and others had hidden in it following an atomic war. There is no magic in Kamandi’s world but his best friend is a tiger prince who he saved from the evil ape-men. It is a largely unknown and underrated series but you can buy a collection in hardback from Amazon. Its kind like Thundarr and Fallout but drawn by Kirby.
While I know a bit about the genre in comics and cartoons, what I did not realize until a few years ago was that the whole thing had been started by Tarzan’s author Edgar Rice Burroughs. In 1912 Burroughs published A Princess of Mars staring John Carter a Civil War vet who would come to be known as “The Warlord of Mars.” Before this there was really nothing like that out there. Burroughs Martian series combined Science Fiction with romance and adventure.
Though John Carter is less famous than his jungle lord counterpart, I prefer his stories. Not only are they fun to read, but without them there would be no Flash Gordon or Eric John Stark, a character that Leigh Brackett, author of The Empire Strikes Back, created in the late 40′s. Surely based somewhat on Burroughs Warlord, Stark was a human child raised by the natives of that savage planet Mercury. In Secret of the Sinharat and People of the Talisman, Stark, the mercenary and the outlaw, even travels to Mars to “thwart a red revolution.” Leigh Brackett is considered a giant of the planetary romance aka sword and planet sub-genre. Ilona grew up reading her stories and was undoubtedly influenced by them.
I know we don’t write about alien planets or the bare chested men who conquer them with sword and savage strength, but I like to think we do explore the themes of magic and technology clashing, of people like Kate learning to make the best of it in a new and frightening world.
Not to mention that Curran is a lion-man
With my early influence being mythology and Jules Verne, and a life-long fascination with archaeology, it’s not surprising that I strongly prefer well-crafted other worlds and alternate realities. (Now that I think on it, the first alternate reality I ever read was ‘The King Must Die’, Mary Renault’s version of Theseus’ tale.)
=A
I’m so glad to see Thundarr the Barbarian on your list. As a kid (and teen, and adult!) I watched all of the “boy/action” cartoons. This was one of my favorites. After I read your series this fall, I described it to my friends as “an adult, sexy version of Thundarr the Barbarian.” Of course, many of my friends then asked “Who is Thundarr the Barbarian?”
I also loved The Pirates of Dark Water…
Space Pirate Panda is pretty cool.
Have you ever read Heinlein’s “The Glory Road”? It’s actually the one that got me into reading Heinlein, and is quite awesome. An interesting mix of swords, bows, magic, and technology that just looks like magic.
Also, much love for the Thunder Cats. I miss that show!