D&D Animation: Then and Now.

Back in the 1980s, I used to watch the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. I thought it was great, and so did a lot of my peers. The animation was standard for cartoons of the time, in fact it might have been slightly better than some shows. I recently compared episodes of the GI JOE cartoon from the time period to episodes of the D&D cartoon and the D&D cartoon looks a little better in my opinion.

Here's a little clip for you to look at.

Since the 1980s, television animation has come a long way, or at least some of it has. Viewers can watch the beautifully rendered Avatar series on Nickelodeon, if they want to see what television animators are "capable" of producing. Not everything out today is of the caliber of Avatar, as not every thing in the 60s was Johnny Quest, but Avatar is a reasonable example of how beautiful modern televised animation can look. If I wanted to be mean, I could have used Samurai Champloo as my point of comparison, but I'm not that mean. I just wanted to point out that in the past 20 years, it has become possible to distribute some pretty beautiful animation on the medium of television. Which is why the new "provisional" trailer for the upcoming direct to DVD adaptation of the Dungeons and Dragons (Roleplaying Game) related Dragonlance book series, has me worried about how the film will affect the public's perception of D&D. I think it will give people the perception that D&D fans are satisfied by derivative stories with poor animation. Have a look for yourself:

In the interest of being completely honest, I should note that I am not biggest fan of the Dragonlance series. I find it entertaining, but in that kind of "it's related to my hobby so I like it" kind of way. The first trilogy of books, which the DVD is an adaptation of the first novel thereof, is pretty poorly crafted and very derivative. But I found some of the characters compelling and very much enjoyed the second trilogy, and some of the subsequent series as well -- including the recent "fill in the gaps" trilogy that has been being released this year. The new "fill in the gaps" trilogy eliminates some of the holes in narrative of the first trilogy. The need for such a series speaks volumes about the original series.

That said, Dragonlance has legions of fans, these are NYT Bestsellers we are talking about, and they deserve better than what this preview is showing me. If the CGI integration doesn't improve in the final product, I'll probably recommend that my friends watch Record of Lodoss War instead of the upcoming Dragonlance movie. At least, I'll be buying it first, so my friends will have warning.

Kong vs. Kong: Universal, Nintendo, and Copyright

I love video games. I can still remember the times I used to walk into my local video game arcade, this is back when arcades were a hangout. The arcade was called "The Outer Limits" and it featured all the latest quarter vacuums. Within only a couple of years the place would become a dive bar. But for one brief flicker of time's candle, this was the place to hang out after school and in the summer.

One particular day, I noticed there was a new machine with a very long line waiting to play. Quarters were lined up like crazy, as players marked their turn on the machine. Like I wrote, this was back in the day. What was this new and exciting game? Was it the original Street Fighter? Was Tapper? Or even Dragon's Lair? No, this was something completely different. It was a game that combined my childhood love of Kaiju, with the natural attraction of cartoon characters jumping over rolling barrels. That's right, the game was Donkey Kong.

I was ten years old. Even though I noticed the huge appeal of the game, and even though I played it many times myself, I could never imagine the revolution in the video game industry that this one game would have. According to an article by Spanner over at The Escapist -- an excellent online video game magazine -- without the Donkey Kong video game, the today's gaming industry would be very different. Nintendo would likely not exist and based on Spanner's narrative I can imagine that the home video game console might have died in the video game market crash of 1984. If Nintendo hadn't resurrected the home video game console with their NES system, we might not be playing them today. Without Donkey Kong, Nintendo might never have released that amazing little box. Not too shabby for a game that's title, according to Spanner, is a mistranslation of "Stubborn Gorilla."

Spanner's article about Donkey Kong is important to us hear at Cinerati for a couple of reasons.

It is a story of hope about a company that became successful during turbulent times in a particular facet of the entertainment industry. Nintendo not only survived the collapse of the video game console market, they helped resurrect it. In a world where the makers of films and television shows are worried about how the technologies of the future will affect them, Nintendo's story provides more than a glimmer of inspiration.

It is also the story of a battle regarding intellectual property rights, especially salient given my post the other day regarding Cory Doctorow and the Doctorow Doctrine. Nintendo was sued by Universal because of the similarity Donkey Kong's title character had to the famous RKO (now Universal) monster King Kong. Universal wanted their share of Nintendo's, and all their licensees', profits from the game. Many of the licensees, like Coleco and Tiger, caved quickly to the demands. Nintendo, on the other hand, came out of their corner fighting and won. To quote, "John Kirby...stunned the room with a fatal blow to Universal's already weakening case. In 1975, Universal Studios had successfully taken RKO Pictures to court in order to prove the image and story of King Kong were over 40 years old and therefore in the public domain, clearing the path for Dino De Laurentiis to remake the movie in 1976 without paying any expensive royalties."

Copyright law has changed since then (lifetime plus how many years?), but one thing remains the same. Corporations still claim copyright for individual creator's works. You see, this is what I find most important about copyright. I don't care if a corporation is able to profit for lifetime-plus-seventy years on a product, but I do care that the individual responsible is able to profit. Cory Doctorow can advance his Walter Benjamin inspired defetishization of the artifact agenda all he wants, but I believe the act of creation instills certain rights, rights that shouldn't be hijacked by p2p servers or large corporations. Corporations, while necessarily being treated as individuals before the law in some ways (you do have to sue somebody after all), are not de facto people. Corporations should protect individual copyrights, and yes profit from them, but they shouldn't be giant leeches profiting off of the rights of dead men and women.

And this is where we can learn another lesson from the Universal City Studios, Inc. vs Nintendo Co., Ltd. case. When the case was over, the judge in the case (Judge Robert Sweet) determined that Nintendo could claim damages from Tiger Electronics. Tiger had been forced by Universal to change their Donkey Kong hand held game into a King Kong hand held game -- with some minor content alterations -- and pay royalties to Universal. Judge Sweet "determined the alterations were not sufficient to differentiate it from Nintendo's game," giving Nintendo the authority to take money from Tiger. Nintendo "instead decided to let Tiger off the hook and reclaim the profits Universal had made from the original King Kong license." So not only did Nintendo not pursue damages, they helped Tiger recoup royalties that never should have been paid in the first place. If only more copyright fights resolved themselves like this.

Most importantly, without Donkey Kong I probably wouldn't be going home to futz with my Wii tonight.

What's So Special About Conan?

In today's USA Today, Mike Snider writes about Conan's reemergence as a relevant subject in popular culture (hat tip to SF Signal for the story). There are those of us who comment about poplar culture who think that Conan has never been an irrelevant figure in society. How can a character who codified an entire literary genre become truly irrelevant? Every story about a sword wielding barbarian, no matter how trite or bad, is at some level inspired by Robert E. Howard's creation. But it can't be denied that there is exciting news for Conan fans. Snider points to five recent developments that signal Conan's relevance:

1. The New PS3/XBOX 360 Video Game coming out next week
2. The new "Conan The Phenomenon" hardcover by Paul Sammon
3. The Savage Sword of Conan Trade Paperback Collection by Dark Horse
and
4. An upcoming movie by Millennium Films.

Those these are important, and wonderful, developments for the Conan fan, they are not new. One should not think that there has been some kind of sudden explosion in 2007 of Conan material.

Snider neglected to mention:

1. Conan: The Ultimate Guide by Roy Thomas which released in September 2006
2. The new Conan comic book series (first released in 2004) written by Kurt Busiek and illustrated by Cary Nord by Dark Horse
3. The Mongoose Publishing Conan Roleplaying Game
not to mention
4. The Age of Conan series of media tie-in novels published in 2005 and 2006
or
5. Del Rey's publishing of Howard's Original Conan Stories released in 2003

The Conan explosion isn't a new thing either, I could have pulled numerous examples from the 90s or the 80s of Conan releases. Conan is always lurking in the pop culture subconscious and I think that we do a disservice to Conan fans, both existent and emerging when we use Arnold Schwarzenegger as the archetypal Conan representation, as Snider appears to do in the article. Some like Arnold as archetype, but I find Conan to be one of the most underestimated characters in American literature (with Natty Bumpo being a close second) and the Governator's portrayal -- while fun -- lacks the depth the character actually has as a literary figure.

When it comes to depictions of unreflective low art, one need look no further than the commonly perceived opinions of Robert Howard's Conan stories. If you ask the average man on the street to describe a Conan narrative, you will likely be given a tale of lust and violence. In the tale Conan will rescue some half-naked maiden from some rampaging beast and the story will end with the woman becoming all naked as she swoons at the hero's feet. In fact, a great deal of Conan pastiche has been based on this very simple formula. The largest problem with such a vision is that it is not all that accurate. Are there tales of this sort in the Conan oeuvre?
Sure, but there are also tales of visionary wonder.



Like most authors, whether they write literature or Literature, Howard's writings reflect his own thoughts, experiences, and education. The writing reflects the aesthetic tastes of the author, or his/her understanding of a prospective audiences literary tastes. What makes something worth reading again and again is when an author satisfies those with "lower" tastes while providing them with some food for thought. Howard is no exception. In fact, I was surprised while I was rereading the first published Conan story, Howard's The Phoenix on the Sword to find that the author seemed to be hinting at a theory of the value of literature and its role in society.

Howard's Hyborean Age is a mythic world filled with magic and wonder, but it is also a world based on the history of the real world. Howard combined multiple eras of history so that societies whose "real world" existence is separated by centuries could co-exist narratively. Conan's own people, the Cimmerians, are based on a very real historical peoples. Both Herodotus, in his Histories, and Plutarch, in his Lives, mention the Cimmerian peoples (called Cimbri in Plutarch). In The Phoenix on the Sword, Howard appears to expect his audience to have at least a little understanding of the historical Cimmerians in his conversation of the role of literature in civilization. Conan, as protagonist, must hold ideas which the reader sympathizes with for the particular narrative of Phoenix to work.

So what kind of people were the Cimmerians? According to Plutarch they were a people who were pillagers and raiders, but not rulers.

For the Cimmerian attack upon Ionia, which was earlier than Croesus, was not a conquest of the cities, but only an inroad for plundering.
Herodotus, Histories, I, 6

What did they look like? According to Plutarch:

Their great height, their black eyes and their name, Cimbri, which the Germans use for brigands, led us merely to suppose that they were one of those races of Germania who lived on the shores of the Western Ocean. Others say that the huge expanse of Celtica stretches from the outer sea and the western regions to the Palus Maeotis and borders on Asian Scythia; that these two neighbouring nations joined forces and left their land... And although each people had a different name, their army was collectively called Celto-Scythian. According to others, some of the Cimmerians, who were the first-to be known to the ancient Greeks... took flight and were driven from their land by the Scythians. Plutarch, Life of Marius, XI

What was their temperament? According to Homer:

Thus she brought us to the deep-Rowing River of Ocean and the frontiers of the world, where the fog-bound Cimmerians live in the City of Perpetual Mist. When the bright Sun climbs the sky and puts the stars to flight, no ray from him can penetrate to them, nor can he see them as he drops from heaven and sinks once more to the earth. For dreadful night has spread her mantle over the heads of that unhappy folk. Homer, Odyssey, XI, 14

It is Homer's description of the Cimmerians that Howard uses in Phoenix to describe the mood of the people and to separate Conan from his kin. When Conan is asked why the Cimmerians are such a brooding people, Conan responds:

“Perhaps it’s the land they live in,” answered the king. “A gloomier land never was – all of hills, darkly wooded, under skies nearly always gray, with winds moaning drearily down the valleys.” – Phoenix on the Sword

The average Cimmerian is a dour and towering barbarian who destroys civilization then returns to his gloomy homeland only to begin the process again later. Howard's typical Cimmerian is similar to that of the classical scholars, and presents a figure most unlikely to advance the literary arts. But this is where Conan differs from his kin. In The Phoenix on the Sword, Conan is an older man who has conquered on of the greatest nations of the Hyborean Age expressly to free them from tyrannical rule. He conquered to rule, and to liberate an oppressed nation. A far cry from the typical barbarian. By separating Conan from his kin, Howard simultaneously increases the audience's sympathy for the barbarian king while enabling the character to advance a theory of the value of literature.

The Phoenix on the Sword is the tale of a plot to assassinate King Conan, a plot organized my a Machiavellian figure named Ascalante who desires to assume the throne. Ascalante is the product of civilization, but he is the antagonist of the story and so Howard uses his opinions of the Arts as a way to separate him from the audience's sympathy. When he describes a poet who has been brought into his conspiracy he describes the poet in pejorative terms. These terms evolve as the narrative moves from unpublished draft to final published form. Ascalante originally expresses his disdain for Rinaldo (the poet) in a long description:

“Rinaldo – a mad poet full of hare-brained visions and out-worn chivalry. A prime favorite with the people because of his songs which tear out their heart-strings. He is our best bid for popularity.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished First submitted draft)

By the time the story is published the description is changed to the very brief, "“…Rinaldo, the hair-brained minstrel.” [Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword(published)]. In the published form, Howard leaves out the value of Rinaldo's participation in the plot because it is redundant with information presented later in the story. When Ascalante is asked what value Rinaldo has as a conspirator, Ascalante's response is similar in both the published and unpublished text, but his hatred of Rinaldo is made more clear in the draft than in the published text:

“Alone of us all, Rinaldo has no personal ambition. He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a civilized land. He idealizes the king whom Conan killed to get the crown, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils of his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they openly sing The Lament for the King in which Rinaldo lauds the sainted villain and denounces Conan as ‘that black-hearted savage from the abyss.’ Conan laughs, but the people snarl.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (published)

“Rinaldo – bah! I despise the man and admire him at the same time. He is your true idealist. Alone of us all he has no personal ambition. He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a peaceful land. He thinks he sees barbarism triumphing over culture. He already idealizes the king Conan killed, forgetting the rogue’s real nature, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils under which the land groaned during his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they open sing ‘The Lament for the King’ in which Rinaldo lauds the saintly villain, and denounces Conan as ‘that black-hearted savage from the abyss.’ Conan laughs, but at the same time wonders why the people are turning against him.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished First submitted draft)

In both descriptions the poet is shown to be a blind idealist. Rinaldo, it appears, cannot look beyond the Cimmerian stereotypes as presented by Plutarch and Herodotus. Howard doesn't require the reader to have those preconceptions, but for the reader who has read Herodotus and Plutarch the stereotype becomes even clearer. Also by editing down the prose the author, either willingly or at editorial command, displays an amount of trust that his audience can reach the proper conclusion that barbarism typically destroys the valuable within civilization. What is interesting is that while Rinaldo is a conspirator, the poet is an antagonist, he is not a villain. He is a blind a foolish idealist, not acting in his own self interest. Ascalante even goes on to describe Rinaldo's motivations:

“Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner, or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism, rising, as he thinks, to overthrow a tyrant and liberate the people.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (published)

“Because he is a poet. Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and the future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism and he sees himself as a hero, a stainless knight – which after all he is! – rising to overthrow the tyrant and liberate the people.” – Ascalante in Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished First submitted draft)

Ascalante specifies what kind of idealists poets are. They seek an imagined perfect society, and will always look for it no matter how good the society they are currently in happens to be. But this is Ascalante, the Machiavellian civilized man, and his opinion about what the value of the poet is. For him the poet is an easily manipulable puppet. What about the barbarian turned king, the protagonist, and oft argued proxy for the author? (It should be noted that many argue that Conan often reflects Howard's own views, this is not an original assertion on my part.)

Conan adores the poet, and understands the criticisms. He is aware that the poet's plays are leading many among the people to despise him, but he too is persuaded of the need for justice. When his chief adviser, Prospero, discusses disdain for Rinaldo, Conan comes to the poet's (and poetry in general) defense. The text is near identical in the published and unpublished format.

“Rinaldo is largely responsible,” answered Prospero, drawing up his sword-belt another notch. “He sings songs that make men mad. Hang him in his jester’s garb to the highest tower in the city. Let him make rhymes for the vultures.”
“No, Prospero, he’s beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my scepter, for he has hear ripped the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I will die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo’s songs will live forever.” – Phoenix on the Sword (unpublished first submitted draft)

“Rinaldo is largely responsible,” answered Prospero, drawing up his sword-belt another notch. “He sings songs that make men mad. Hang him in his jester’s garb to the highest tower in the city. Let him make rimes for the vultures.”
“No, Prospero, he’s beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my scepter; for he has near ripped the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I shall die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo’s songs will live for ever.” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

For Conan, the atypical Cimmerian, poems and the arts have more power than weapons or royal authority. Not only that, but it is right and just that this is the case. Conan, the barbarian, is the defender of the value of literature, while Ascalante, the civilized man, sees literature as only a tool used to manipulate the foolish. Conan would seek to discuss the past and future, the ideal ones, with the poet, while Ascalante would merely use Rinaldo to destroy what he opposes. Conan's conflict between desiring a free press and swift justice, and the eventual melee that will result because of his favoring of the press, are made clear in the poetic prologue to the final chapter of the narrative.

What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs – I was a man before I was a king. – The Road of Kings – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

Surprisingly, Conan's love of literature and the arts, and his defense of them, is so deeply rooted that he initially refuses to kill Rinaldo when Rinaldo attacks him. He still believes he can reason with the poet, it is only when he is left no other alternative that he kills the poet (the text is identical in both published and unpublished forms).

“He rushed in, hacking madly, but Conan, recognizing him, shattered his sword with a short terrific chop and with a powerful push of his open hand sent him reeling to the floor.” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

“He straightened to meet the maddened rush of Rinaldo, who charged in wild and wide open, armed only with a dagger. Conan leaped back, lifting his ax.

‘Rinaldo!’ his voice was strident with desperate urgency. ‘Back! I would not slay you ..’

‘Die, tyrant!’ screamed the mad minstrel, hurling himself headlong on the king. Conan delayed the blow he was loth to deliver, until it was too late. Only when he felt the bite of the steel in his unprotected side did he strike, in a frenzy of blind desperation.

Rinaldo dropped with his skull shattered and Conan reeled back against the wall, blood spurting from between the fingers which gripped his wound.” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

What is interesting in the narrative is that of all the conspirators, there are twenty in all, none are able to injure Conan with the success of the poet. The poet has both damaged Conan's regime and his body and yet Conan was ever reluctant to, though in the end capable of, slay his greatest enemy.

“’See first to the dagger-wound in my side,’ he bade the court physicians. ‘Rinaldo wrote me a deathly song there, and keen was the stylus.’

‘We should have hanged him long ago,’ gibbered Publius. ‘No good can come of poets..’” – Phoenix on the Sword (published)

What does this tell us of Howard's thoughts regarding the arts? We know that Conan loves them, but we also know how they were used to manipulate the populace and how his own love for them almost cost him his life. Is Howard trying to discuss how Plato's critique of the poets is a good one, while at the same time defending the possible nobility of the poet (as Aristotle does in his Rhetoric)? I think these are questions intentionally posed in the narrative (I know...never guess at intentionality), and make it clear why Conan's first story The Phoenix on the Sword was so compelling to readers when they first read it.

It should be noted that the story was originally submitted as a Kull tale, though I have yet to analyze that draft like I have these two subsequent writings. The Kull version was rejected by Weird Tales and the final (rather than the first) Conan version was the first appearance of what has become a culturally iconic figure.

Ursula K LeGuin, Cory Doctorow, and Copyright

I have been wondering for some time now just how long the SF/Fantasy community will allow themselves to be swindled by Cory Doctorow's attempts to undermine copyright protections for writers. He's been incredibly crafty in his arguments. He has adeptly, and accurately, demonstrated how corporations often claim the copyright instead of the authors who created a product, but he uses this to shift the issue away from "creator ownership" issue into an "us vs. the corporate overlords" argument. Doing so he simultaneously points out a genuine injustice while misdirecting our ire toward the concept of copyright, which in fact protects creators (at least when corporate overlords don't hijack the rights). He has also pointed out that SF/Fantasy fans tend to both download and purchase hard copies of the things they like. In essence, the SF/Fantasy fan steals a peek, then buys the product, thus doing no "real" damage to the right holder.

I have never found Mr. Doctorow's arguments, and he has others, all that convincing. They seem to be overly concerned with "audience" rights and not with creator rights, which are necessary if people want to be able to make a living from this stuff. Certainly, there is some pretty wacky copyright legislation out there (lifetime plus how many years?), but that doesn't mean that the creator of a product doesn't have the right to profit from his or her creation. They should, and do, and current laws protect such rights.

In the past, the majority of the people I've read who seem to have any agreement with me have been corporate shills, and I don't want to just hang out with corporate shills -- or just them and Harlan Ellison (registered trademark) for that matter. So you can imagine my joy at finding that Ursula K. LeGuin also finds Mr. Doctorow's crusade a little too aggressive. It appears that Mr. Doctorow printed "in its entirety, a one-paragraph story that Ms Le Guin sent to the fanzine Ansible." LeGuin took issue and Mr. Doctorow eventually took action and apologized. You can read the original story at LeGuin's website.

LeGuin has accepted Mr. Doctorow's apology, but I'd like you to look at a couple of key phrases in Doctorow's apology which hint that he is also practicing more than a little self-righteous self-justification.

Andrew Burt, the person whom Ms Le Guin chose to communicate the matter to me, is someone with whom I had put in a killfile following an altercation. I delete all emails from him unread, and if he sent me a message, I did not see it.

Unless Andrew Burt (you can read a copy of a letter he wrote Jerry Pournelle here) and Mr. Doctorow engaged in a serious brawl, it seems a bit petty for Mr. Doctorow to have put his emails in a "killfile." I don't believe that Judd Apatow put Mark Brazill in his killfile, even after being told to "Get cancer." But I don't know the nature of the "altercation," I just know that Mr. Doctorow has used a word which has some heavy implications. Though given his frequent use of rhetorical techniques which might make Gorgias blush, I think it might be little more than a heated email/comment section/message board flame war.

In fact, it seems that Burt's major sin (according to the Doctorow piece) is that Burt believes in copyright protection, "Burt is the Science Fiction Writers of America VP who had previously sent a fraudulent takedown notice that resulted in my novel being removed from an Internet document server." So Burt tries to protect Doctorow's copyright, making an error that forces a takedown notice, something LeGuin describes as "An overworked committee mistakenly identified a few works, among many, as infringing copyright; the mistakes were promptly admitted and redressed, with apologies." That appears to be our "altercation." Which makes me think that Mr. Doctorow is a bit like Mark Brazill in all of this, even his apology seems snide and canned. This is implied by his assertion that, "My understanding is that she is unsatisfied and remains upset with me." When LeGuin is on the record as writing, "It may be a bit clouded with arguments and self-justification, but apologising is hard, and apologies are rare and valuable. I accept his in all good faith." Who seems to be the one most in need of justification here?

As for me, I agree with LeGuin's hope that, "In my view, the best thing that could come out of my brush with the Doctorow Doctrine would be this: the honorable reinstatement of the SFWA e-piracy committee, with an expression of appreciation from SFWA officers and members of the honest and effective work they have done for us for so long."

Does DEXTER IN THE DARK Spell Lights Out for the Franchise?

Dexter is back -- or most of him is back—in DEXTER IN THE DARK: A Novel(those of you who support independent bookstores can buy it at Mysterious Galaxy), Jeff Lindsay’s latest installment detailing the brutal exploits of his charmingly witty and only half-heartless serial killer, preying and slaying by his uniquely strict if lethal Harry Code of Conduct. This newest book finds Dexter in crisis – not of conscience, of course. He doesn’t have one. But in a crisis of identity, for Dexter’s mysterious inner fiend -- that giddy playmate that guides his death-dealing and leaves him elated after bouts of marvelous moonlit mayhem –- Dexter’s Dark Passenger is absent without leave.

As if prepping for a wedding and fatherhood aren’t enough to put Dexter off his game, a peculiar crime scene with macabre theological overtones sends Dexter’s Dark Passenger scurrying away, with troubling results for Dexter and his readers. Being out of communion dulls Dexter’s normally razor instincts, humor, and murderous talents when he, and we, need them most. Once again, he attracts the attention of a very dangerous intelligence, this time with a taste for children, but don’t expect the usual combination of chase, wit, twist, and surprise. Dexter is not only in the dark, he’s down right depressed. Jeff Lindsay takes a daring departure from the optimistic mayhem of America’s favorite avenging monster, but it’s a sad, fumbling new path.

Unlike DARKLY DREAMING DEXTER(at Mysterious Galaxy) and DEARLY DEVOTED DEXTER (at Mysterious Galaxy), DEXTER IN THE DARK leaves the complex realm of psychological vagary and broken psyches to dabble in something entirely outside Dexter’s universe: theology. Sans Dark Passenger, Dexter is befuddled, frustrated, and at risk of becoming normal, with all the emotions and vulnerabilities of any normal person, yet his world turns suddenly (and unjustifiably, despite ample narrative exposition) supernatural. Just when Dexter has no powers (not insight, not humor, and the boy can’t even seem to kill), Miami is overrun with them. The sum effect is a kind of amorphous melancholy, both for Dexter and his dear readers. Little help comes from the other characters made so vibrant in previous pages – the few times Dexter isn’t shuffling around in his own empty head, he’s avoiding conversations or being himself avoided. If you crave the slay-and-play criminology twice before scribed so ingeniously by Jeff Lindsay’s pen, brace yourself for page after unfunny, derivative, ill-conceived, if-it-had-to-be-supernatural-why-couldn’t-it-be-Lovecraftian-good page.

Spoiled until now navigating two books of vicious, psychotic violence on the shoulders of a fantastically entertaining monster, this clumsy foray into Anne Rice/DaVinci Code-esque old-god theology and conspiracy is by comparison plodding, simplistic, and dull. Lindsay abandons his established finesse of raising questions without answers, of suggestion and nuance, of abrasive yet oddly loveable and infinitely entertaining characters, and instead offers an obtuse, paint-by-numbers explanation for evil which abdicates Dexter from all moral responsibility for who and what he is, for his adherence to or abandonment of the Harry Code, and ultimately advocates an incoherent pseudo-loyalty to controlled evil. If Harry had read this book, he would have killed Dexter on sight. I found myself by the end rooting for the kids to get run over, shot, or drowned. Poor Rita.

For those who enjoy the Cthulhu mythos or tales with supernatural explanations, DEXTER IN THE DARK might be a fun romp, but this reader prays, to whatever Dark Gods will listen, that Lindsay returns to the world he tells so well –- Dexter’s Miami: wickedly funny, refreshingly mortal, splendidly violent, and mildly-sociopathic.

A History of Pulp Role Playing Games Part 1: The Dawn of Roleplaying Games

Those who wonder how old the connection between "The Pulps" and Roleplaying Games is need look no further than the introduction to the original (three book) Dungeons and Dragons boxed set. In this introduction, Gary Gygax describes who might be interested in playing his new creation:

These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don't care for Burroughs' Martian adventures where John Carter is groping
through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard's Conan saga, who do
not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray
Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find
DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste.

The introduction is filled with names near and dear to the pulp aficionado. Edgar Rice Burrough's character John Carter first appeared in the February through July issues of The All-Story in 1912. TSR also designed an early miniatures wargame on the adventures of John Carter, it was called Warriors of Mars.



Robert E. Howard's famous barbarian Conan debuted at the height of his power in Weird Tales December 1932 issue in "The Phoenix on the Sword," a rewrite of a rejected Kull story titled "By This Axe I Rule." In the tale, Conan is already a mature man and king of Aquilonia and deals swift justice to a band of would be assassins. If you look carefully at the cover of the issue, you will notice that the advertised story, "Buccaneers of Venus," is a John Carter pastiche by Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline eventually became Howard's literary agent. As a gamer, I can't help but speculate that the amphibious antagonist on the cover is an inspiration behind the Kuo-Toa in the D&D game (H.P. Lovecraft's Deep Ones are another obvious influence.)



L. Sprague deCamp and Fletcher Pratt's everyman hero psychologist/enchanter Harold Shea wandered into his first fantastic landscape in the May 1940 issue of Unknown.



To be fair, most fantasy of the pre-Tolkien era was published in the pulps and as influential as these early fantasy tales were to the Dungeons and Dragons game (and are to the current D&D Eberron setting), they are not what most people mean when they are referring to "Pulp Roleplaying Games." Which is a shame since the pulps were filled with dynamic, original, and action packed tales that many modern Game Masters should look to for inspiration. Not every adventure need be a macguffin quest inspired by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

The lack of familiarity with, and I mean familiarity with and not awareness of, the underlying pulp inspirations that influenced the creation of role playing games is one of the largest failings of some of today's game designers. When I read Jesse Decker and David Noonan's discussion regarding why modern Dungeons and Dragons avoids explicit attempts at humor in its rulebooks, I near wept.

At no time was there a discussion about why the early rulebooks had humor in them, as opposed to the central reason they gave why there isn't humor any longer. They write, "In short, we worry that it isn't necessarily part of the shared D&D experience, and we don't want to mess up the flow of the game at the table." And in writing that one sentence, they ignore one of the major literary influences on the development of the Dungeons and Dragons game, the stories of Harold Shea by deCamp and Pratt. How can stories, and the tone they inspired, be not "necessarily part of the shared D&D experience?" Without these stories, you might not even have the game itself, particularly considering the deCamp/Pratt stories.

I am not saying this because I believe Gary Gygax to have been intimately familiar with Fletcher Pratt's Naval War Game, though he may have been. I am saying this because of two things. First, the underlying conceit of the Harold Shea stories themselves was probably inspirational to the creation of the "proto role playing game." Second, the humor that continually reared its head in early D&D books was the same kind of humor one found in the deCamp/Pratt stories.

To fully understand the above statement, you must understand the central conceit of the Harold Shea stories. Essentially, the central conceit is that Harold Shea (and his mentor) are able to travel to other dimensions -- many of which contain magic -- if they can alter their perceptions through the analysis of particular equations and logical proofs. When Harold Shea studies his first proof, which sends him to Ragnarök, a gamer can easily see the parallel between Shea looking at the pages upon pages of logic problems and their own experience looking at pages upon pages of rules. When roleplayers study the rules of a game, it is so they can fluidly experience the milieu the game is offering. This is exactly what Shea does in the stories. It should be noted that J. Eric Holmes, the editor of the first Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set, wrote in his book Fantasy Roleplaying Games (Hippocrene Books, 1981 pp. 209-210):

"Years before Dungeons and Dragons was invented, L. Sprague de Camp wrote a story called "Solomon's Stone," published in 1942 in the magazine Unknown Worlds...The story was a fantasy in which the hero exchanges personalities with his alter-ego in the astral world. Here he discovers that the astral self of each living person on earth is the self he imagines or fantasies himself to be in his most private dreams...I am always reminded of "Solomon's Stone," though, when I see the bizarre and wonderful characters created by my friends for the game."

Holmes, who was an adapter and not a creator of the rules, saw the connection between one of de Camp's stories and the underlying concept of role playing games. It isn't hard to imagine Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson being inspired by a character who even more explicitly used a "rules set" to experience fantasy adventure.

Decker and Noonan are fine designers, and they have developed some of my favorite products, but they seem to have lost the connection between the pulps and the game they are working on. Dungeons and Dragons is the scion of pulp literature and we do the game a disservice when we don't acknowledge this fact. And we do the players of the game a disservice when we don't point them in the direction of the things that inspired their hobby. Early editions of the game included bibliographies of inspirational materials, many other roleplaying games still do, but the three core books of the Dungeons and Dragons game lack such references (the Eberron sourcebook does contain some). Decker and Noonan may be aware that roleplaying was influenced by pulps, but they aren't familiar with what those pulps had to offer and it shows in their reticence to include humor in the D&D experience.

Listen to the Geekerati Episode on Popular Medievalism

Last night we had a wonderful chat with Professor Richard Scott Nokes of Troy University about Popular Medievalism. We talked about what it is and where it is, and it's everywhere. We also talked about the connection between playing Dungeons and Dragons and studying Medieval History, and we got a little hint that the reason we call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages is due to bad press from certain people during the Renaissance.

We discussed a lot of different topics, but we spent a great deal of time discussing some of our favorite Popular Medieval movies. Some of the movies we mentioned were: Excalibur, The Lion in Winter, A Knight's Tale, Henry V, The Last Valley, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Krull, and Ladyhawke.

What are some of your favorite Popular Medieval films? Books? Comics? Television Shows?

Listen to the episode and let us know.