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| SFReader Forums > Book, Magazine, and eZine Publishers > Flashing Swords > The New! Improved! S&S | Forum Quick Jump
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erazmus
Master
      
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 7/14/2005 8:34 PM (GMT -4) |   | Strap on your broadsword and lace up your sandals because Sword and Sorcery is back! That's an article of faith around here but when we say that Sword and Sorcery has a new edge what is it we really mean?
If we're looking at a revitalised genre, what killed it the last time and how is it different now?
It's got to be more than all the original writers of S&S are dead and someone new is telling the tales. That's almost where the genre started, S&S wasn't coined as a term for almost twenty years after REH killed himself and it didn't gain popularity until just before the standard for the genre was the Conan pastiche.
Why did it die in the first place? My own opinion was that the only thing holding S&S together as a seperate entity from general Fantasy to begin with was the efforts of Lin Carter. The genre itself didn't seem to last much past his passing as a commercial enterprise anyway. I can remember when half of Daw's catalog was S&S. A lot of those authors are still with us (I'm not THAT old!)but today they write straight Fantasy or Science Fiction. Why? Maybe I ought to e-mail Andy Offutt and ask? I know the answer. People, meaning us too, stopped buying books with barbarians in bunny furs on the cover. Conan became a comic book. Or an Arnold joke. Sure it didn't disappear entirely, just nobody wrote it anymore.
What's different now. What's going to be different this time?
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
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Red Viper
Acolyte
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 439
| Posted 7/14/2005 10:42 PM (GMT -4) | | Raz: I think the biggest thing that might move S-and-S forward is greater attention to character. By that, I do not mean protagonists wallowing in self pity; but I do think it possible to write S-and-S with characters who go beyond the sometimes cardboard examples too prevelant in the genre. A dash of growth here, a smidgen of introspection there, a little more humanity in the characters, I think, will give readers someone to connect with, and something to think about after the big hairy monsters are slain.
Mr. Hocking's Kel stories do a good job of this; Hocking spends very little time having Kel dwell on his feelings for Lucella, or trying to figure out what those feelings are, but those feelings are in there. They don't slow down the story, they don't get in the way, but they are in there ... and every schmuck who has had a Lucella in his life can identify with Kel.
Ditto for "Two Fools Make A Tragedy" by C.J. Birch. It's a gritty story, plenty of mayem and mystery, but the relationship between the characters rang familiarly to me, and probably would to anyone who has ever been married. Such characterization has, in much of the past s-and-s work, been quite rare. The efforts of these authors, I think, is a positive direction for our genre.
One other thing, too, that can help move it all forward would be to connect our fantasies more solidly to our realities. One of the best s-and-s tales to do this, I think, is Poul Anderson'd "The Tale of Hauk," in which the Viking Hauk comes home to find his aged father, who was ill and dying when Hauk went to see, has died and come back from the dead. The undead father wants to force Hauk to kill him, to give him a better death than the "straw death" illness gave him. Undead dad will rip the entire village apart if Hauk doesn't do it. So Hauk must confront father and do the deed. OK, how does that connect with reality? Well, it does metaphorically. Many of us have aging parents, and we're watching them change and grow ill, etc. Many of us contend with Alzheimer's or other conditions. Many of us find ourselves suddenly having to be the grown up, realizing mom and dad and what they used to be, or aren't there any more. Readers in that boat surely can identify with Hauk. Anderson, in a scary, bloody, entertaining sword-and-sorcery tale, has given the reader something deeper to chew on, if the reader so wishes. That, too, is a rarity in sword-and-sorcery -- but it's a direction the genre can handle, and I think a direction writers should take more often. (By the way, I think "The Tale of Hauk" fits just fine into the parameters Howard set forth for the New Edge sword-and-sorcery.)
Anyway, this is all just my two-drachmas' worth.
Red Viper, aka Steve Goble | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 7/15/2005 12:02 AM (GMT -4) | | Steve,
I see. Thanks, I had not quite come to that conclusion for myself yet.
Every writing venue I know talks about characters and plots but I've seen my share of "This story is just too long for what's there" or "There's just not enough life in your characters" rejections to sometimes come away a little puzzeled. I think I started this thread because I don't have any glib answers to some of my questions but I do have a few theories.
There are too few stories that "Give the readers something to chew on" in the genre. Metaphore has never been my forte either but I can appreciate a good one. I shall TRY to bear that in mind in my writing.
I think one of the things that almost killed S&S as a commercial enterprise was the tide of bad writing that seemed to choke much of the genre right at its apex. I'm talking about the later Gor books and some of the other series of S&S or S&P that seemed to wash over the stands when I was a young man. I can get nostalgic about some of that today, in the way that I remember older fans were nostalgic about the pulp magazines when I was a kid but along with the gems those old pulps did publish a lot of borderline trash, as did the serial paperbacks of my youth.
That and the attemp by some well meaning editors, Lin Carter included, who didn't see S&S allways so much as its own genre but as a broader label for what we'd call heroic fantasy. I reread recently the Deryni story in Carter's Flashing Swords #4. It's much like the novels that I loved but not much in tone or tempo what I'd call S&S now. Now I call it pretty much mainstream fantasy. No one I know would call Kurtz's "The King's Justice" to name a recent title I recall, Sword and Sorcery. Weather you love a genre or hate it you have to agree on whats in it to find what you want and avoid what you don't.
I like what I see in Howard's Flashing Swords. Given the limit in size of the stories it covers a lot of ground. And I don't miss some of the things I don't see in it. I'm very, very glad there's a market for the sort of fiction I love to read.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
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Supr
Neophyte
Date Joined Apr 2005
Total Posts : 107
| Posted 7/15/2005 3:19 AM (GMT -4) | | Steve, very interesting thoughts!
I don't know the story. But I'm not so sure whether my interpretation of it wouldn't be the subconscious myth of fathers killing. Because for me S&S means always fight to the end. But on the other side the S&S heroes always wish/do die by the sword... So you're right.
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John Hocking
The Olde Prospector
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 144
| Posted 7/15/2005 6:08 AM (GMT -4) | | "Mr. Hocking's Kel stories do a good job of this; Hocking spends very little time having Kel dwell on his feelings for Lucella, or trying to figure out what those feelings are, but those feelings are in there. They don't slow down the story, they don't get in the way, but they are in there ... "
Thanks, Steve. That's me striving for a "hardboiled tone".
Back before hardboiled was universally equated with trenchcoats, fedoras and lonely saxaphones playing in the rain, it was a broader term for clear, unsentimental prose that didn't tell the reader how to feel, but showed him. Back in the day Hemingway, Dos Passos and John O'Hara were considered "hardboiled", believe it or not.
The prime dictum of "hardboiled writing" is still around--- every working writer has heard "show, don't tell". But you don't see much of that style in modern fantasy, and I think its undervalued in all fiction today. | | Back to Top | | |
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PaulMc
Adept
Date Joined May 2005
Total Posts : 992
| Posted 7/15/2005 6:28 AM (GMT -4) | | quote:
Originally posted by John Hocking
The prime dictum of "hardboiled writing" is still around--- every working writer has heard "show, don't tell". But you don't see much of that style in modern fantasy, and I think its undervalued in all fiction today.
That is also the mantra of screenwriting. Make it happen on-screen, don't describe it off-screen.
Howard and I were traded some email. He mentioned the cinematic feel of many s-and-s stories, and maybe this is why. There are other correllations.
One thing that keeps film and s-and-s directly aligned is the concept of "inciting incident"; that incident which pushes the movie into action. The inciting incident should happen with in the first ten minutes. Ideally, it will happen sooner, within five minutes.
Or, maybe it even happened before the camera started rolling.
Unlike a novel, short stories don't have alot of time to build to an inciting incident. Maybe this is why the "in media res" ('in the middle' if I recall my lit classes correctly) method of opening a story in the middle of things and dropping hints for the reader to catch-up (not really the same as backstory) is a popular style for s-and-s.
I had a screenplay concerning Irish Monks discovering North America (Saint Brendan). My first draft started in Ireland. I quickly learned that to get the movie going, (and to save shooting budget) the action needed to open on the boat on the sea (not unlike "The White Wyrm"!) The decision to go across the sea was already made before the camera started rolling.
To throw in a non-action example, in the movie The Big Chill the inciting incident is the suicide of their friend that brings all the characters together for his funeral. The suicide happens before the movie starts.
I guess that was a little off-topic, but .. what's old is new. Show us; don't tell us, regardless of where you take us in the future.
-- Paul McNamee
http://writer.paulmcnamee.net
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Red Viper
Acolyte
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 439
| Posted 7/15/2005 7:23 AM (GMT -4) | | John: Good points about Hemingway, etc., and not telling the reader how to feel. There is a certain amount of preachiness in much literature today; I've seen it creep into some science fiction and fantasy as well, and I don't really like it. But I think sword-and-sorcery can use some characters who have a broader range of feelings, and let those feelings color the stories a bit, while avoiding that preachiness of tone and the tendency to wallow in philosophies and self-pity and such.
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 7/15/2005 9:29 AM (GMT -4) | | Sort of a tricksters as hero, to fall back on a Cambellian arch-type. we don't see much of this in fantasy, let alone our brand of fantsy and its a damn shame. I know there's room for a guy who gets what he wants with his mind, charming it, romancing it instead of prying it from the cold dead grasp of his enemies. Not to say that hero couldn't, or wouldn't fight.
The Mouser had an element of that sometimes. Closer to home Kel the archivist has a touch of it, if he had a bit more advarice. I guess what I'd like to see would be Conan the trickster, a sort of sword toting flim-flam man, "The Sting" in sandals.(The Stainless Steel Rat in bunnyfurs? . . .well perhaps not that far.)
Any examples of that I've missd out on? My reading to date is far from complete . . .
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
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PaulMc
Adept
Date Joined May 2005
Total Posts : 992
| Posted 7/15/2005 9:37 AM (GMT -4) | | quote:
Originally posted by erazmus
Sort of a tricksters as hero, to fall back on a Cambellian arch-type. we don't see much of this in fantasy, let alone our brand of fantsy and its a damn shame. I know there's room for a guy who gets what he wants with his mind, charming it, romancing it instead of prying it from the cold dead grasp of his enemies. Not to say that hero couldn't, or wouldn't fight.
The Mouser had an element of that sometimes. Closer to home Kel the archivist has a touch of it, if he had a bit more advarice. I guess what I'd like to see would be Conan the trickster, a sort of sword toting flim-flam man, "The Sting" in sandals.(The Stainless Steel Rat in bunnyfurs? . . .well perhaps not that far.)
Any examples of that I've missd out on? My reading to date is far from complete . . .
My first thought was Mouser. I don't recall any at the moment. It sounds like something Clark Ashton Smith might have done, but I don't know alot of his stories, and I don't know if he had heroes that carried beyond a single tale.
It almost sounds like you want an Autolycus; Prince of Thieves (see Hercules: the Legendary Journeys/Xena: Warrior Princess) but get him out of camp-t.v.-fantasy and give him a grounding in s-and-s.
-- Paul McNamee
http://writer.paulmcnamee.net
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 7/15/2005 9:48 AM (GMT -4) | | Paul,
Yes, sort of like that anyway, I only dimly recall the character.
I've been thinking about what made the old S&S work when it was the new S&S. It seems to end up looking like this;
Conan gave way to the Grey Mouser and Fafhrd who again yeilded to Elric of Melbinonea who was promtly strangled by a team of bad workers lead by Thongor and the Tarnsman of Gor. Each generation of great S&S built on the foundation of the one before it with a different take on the type of Character it featured as hero. I know I left out a lot of characters, this is a shorthand version of a glimmer of an idea.
So a flim-flaming schemer who somehow gets the girl, the gold or the throne while putting as much of the icky carnage and perilous sorcerer slaying on others would seem to be new, improved and viable. It also sounds like a heck of a lot of fun!
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
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jonesha
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 7/15/2005 9:52 AM (GMT -4) | | Nifft the Lean has elements of this--Michael Shea. Haven't finished it, though. Hopefully Hocking will come in on this. Certainly Vance's Cugel the Clever, as well.
best,
Howard
Managing Editor
www.swordandsorcery.org
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 7/15/2005 10:07 AM (GMT -4) | | Now Cugel the clever I've heard of! I think I have him in the library.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
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jonesha
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 7/15/2005 10:18 AM (GMT -4) | | Cugel, of course, is played more for laughs. Not a successful con man. The character Michael and Paul discuss would be an interesting one. Nifft I enjoy, although I had a hard time getting used to the style, which was a little too CAS for me. Into the second or third tale of the collection, though, I started to dig it. Alas, then last semester started and it's been sitting over there on my bookshelf ever since.
Best,
Howard
Managing Editor
www.swordandsorcery.org
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Red Viper
Acolyte
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 439
| Posted 7/15/2005 11:56 AM (GMT -4) | | I'm playing with a variation on the theme myself ... a character who, although he doesn't have tools of brawn and weapon skill, must cope with the dangers of a world reminscent of mythological times. I shoot for a sort of gallows humor in those tales, and some heavy irony, but I think they still represent the sword-and-sorcery school. It took me three stories to find the tone I wanted, and now I'm rewriting the first two tales (eventually) to try to bring them up to the level of the third. Anyway, it's one attempt on my part to take sword-and-sorcery in a different direction. With luck, those characters will find an audience soon.
Anyway, Raz, this is an interesting thread, and I like your conception of a sword-and-sorcery con-man. Go with it, and I hope to read the results some day!
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jonesha
Forum Moderator
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 655
| Posted 7/15/2005 12:24 PM (GMT -4) | | And a good story that was, Steve. You're so darned productive (and talented) I'd have to turn the zine into a Steve-only production to keep up! I hope you find an audience for all of your characters.
best,
Howard
Managing Editor
www.swordandsorcery.org
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Bruce Durham
Crom's Administrator & Drinking Buddy
Date Joined Jan 2005
Total Posts : 613
| Posted 7/15/2005 12:44 PM (GMT -4) | | I'd like to toss an axe into this discussion. If it's felt the topic isn't worth following, or should be in another thread, then fine by me.
We talk about the roots of S&S and the progression it has followed from the early days through to Lin Carter and Katherine Kurtz. Over time the genre has become diluted to the point where Mike states that 'People, meaning us too, stopped buying books with barbarians in bunny furs on the cover. Conan became a comic book. Or an Arnold joke. Sure it didn't disappear entirely, just nobody wrote it anymore.'
How much of the downfall and misplaced notions about S&S has resulted from Arneson and D&D? How much harm has that venerable invention caused the genre, to the point that new writers/reviewers use 'Forgotten Realms' and Salvatore as bench marks to guage their reactions to the written S&S word, and fail to look beyond the Dungeon Master/Crystal Shard syndrome to discover the real influences that drive many of us?
Does part of this re-educating (if it can be termed that), involve repairing the damage caused by D&D and its countless computer knockoffs? And if so, how?
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PaulMc
Adept
Date Joined May 2005
Total Posts : 992
| Posted 7/15/2005 1:10 PM (GMT -4) | | quote:
Originally posted by bdurham
How much of the downfall and misplaced notions about S&S has resulted from Arneson and D&D? How much harm has that venerable invention caused the genre, to the point that new writers/reviewers use 'Forgotten Realms' and Salvatore as bench marks to guage their reactions to the written S&S word, and fail to look beyond the Dungeon Master/Crystal Shard syndrome to discover the real influences that drive many of us?
Does part of this re-educating (if it can be termed that), involve repairing the damage caused by D&D and its countless computer knockoffs? And if so, how?
Bruce, are you nuts? You could make a killing with a Dalacroy video game! (hey, we're not getting that Conan game in the States so we need something!)[:o)]
I don't know how to re-educate, but you raise an interesting question. Maybe we just keep dedicating our works to those who went before. I mean, I found the Blues from the rock stars doing covers, seeing the songwriter of the session and going back. Then when I got there, there was even more behind the "old timers" than I ever knew! (The Rolling Stones -> Howlin' Wolf -> Charley Patton)
Maybe we don't re-educate, maybe we just carve our own corner. SwordandSorcery.org is a good start. The game novels are over there, the Jordanilogies are over there, the video game novels are there and we are here. All under 'Fantasy'.
-- Paul McNamee
http://writer.paulmcnamee.net
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Red Viper
Acolyte
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 439
| Posted 7/15/2005 2:56 PM (GMT -4) | | Howard: Thanks for the kind words and encouragement.
Bruce: I think you are on target in citing the D&D spinoff books as part of the obstacle to making sword-and-sorcery a viable commercial genre again. I know that seeing a D&D emblem or a Dragonlance logo on the cover of a book turns some readers off. I'm one of them. Fairly or not, I just haven't looked into any of the books out there with direct game tie-ins. Part of that reaction, I suppose, is a fear that the novels are simply instruments for introducing new character classes and such, or so slavishly adhere to the game rules that creativity is stifled. Part of it, too, is my belief that the things that make a role-playing game fun don't necessarily translate well into fiction. In any case, those are my reasons for not reading them, fair or not.
I know other people have similar reactions, and I know some who have tried some of the game tie-in books and found their fears justified. I can see a newcomer, who feels burned by such an experience, swearing off the whole sword-and-sorcery genre. To overcome it, I suspect, will require a really good sword-and-sorcery movie that draws attention to a really good sword-and-sorcery book -- something that will get the public's attention and prod big publishers to seek more of the same in their usual follow-the-herd mentality.
And when it happens, I suspect the book will come out of the small press (or at least have its beginnings there) and the film will come from some small production company, driven by a director who just flat out loves this stuff and wants to do it right.
I'm probably dreaming. I do that a lot.
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Red Viper
Acolyte
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 439
| Posted 7/15/2005 3:19 PM (GMT -4) | | Quoting Howard: And a good story that was, Steve. You're so darned productive (and talented) I'd have to turn the zine into a Steve-only production to keep up!
My reply: I think a Steve-only 'zine would be too much. A couple of Steve-only issues each year would suffice. ... (tongue firmly in cheek, just in case any of you can't tell!)
Thanks again, Howard.
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nikolai
Stablehand
Date Joined Jun 2005
Total Posts : 33
| Posted 7/16/2005 3:35 AM (GMT -4) | | quote:
How much of the downfall and misplaced notions about S&S has resulted from Arneson and D&D? How much harm has that venerable invention caused the genre, to the point that new writers/reviewers use 'Forgotten Realms' and Salvatore as bench marks to guage their reactions to the written S&S word, and fail to look beyond the Dungeon Master/Crystal Shard syndrome to discover the real influences that drive many of us?
Does part of this re-educating (if it can be termed that), involve repairing the damage caused by D&D and its countless computer knockoffs? And if so, how?
I'm very fond of D&D. However, it's influence on S&S has been poisonous. I think there are a lot of people whose only exposure to S&S has been through D&D. And D&D is sort of a bland, watered down composite of lots of classic S&S.
Frankly though, I don't think D&D is to blame. S&S was created in Wierd Tales, and I'd say its downfall happened soon after REH's death. Once Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore and Leiber (there was a long break where he wrote no F&GM stories) had stopped writing the whole genre sort of fizzled out. There have been some "reinventions" since, but I think the end of this "golden age" was the most important event. Most S&S since has been trying to recapture this period.
This is a quote from Moorcock about starting Elric (in the 1960s):
quote:
MICHAEL MOORCOCK: I began writing 'heroic fantasy' because at the time almost nobody was writing it. Robert E. Howard was dead. Fritz Leiber had written a few Gray Mouser stories published in magazines in the 1940s, Poul Anderson had written The Broken Sword and then gone on to specialise in science fiction and Tolkien wasn't available in mass market. This was regarded as an uncommercial and specialised form and the editor of SCIENCE FANTASY, Ted Carnell, asked me to write my first Elric story not because he thought it would sell enormous numbers of copies, but because he had a special affection for that kind of fiction. As it happened, the readers loved those first stories and the rest is history. I had at the time something of a blank canvas. Now all the techniques and innovations I regarded as my own have been copied, as is the normal way of things, by generic versions, just as Tolkien and Howard have generic versions of their work. The only difference is that I'm still alive, still satisfying my urge to write fiction! The last Elric trilogy — really an Eternal Champion trilogy, I suppose — was an attempt to do something new, and I hope vital, with the form. If I succeeded, I'm glad, but I don't think I can take the genre any further without it ceasing to be that genre. So while I might yet write another fantastic book, probably something closer to Gloriana, I shan't write another Eternal Champion heroic fantasy.
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CharlesR
Neophyte
Date Joined Jan 2005
Total Posts : 64
| Posted 7/16/2005 6:28 AM (GMT -4) | | I mentioned in another thread that I'd been reading Moorcock's new trilogy as well as re-reading the original Elric stories and I'd pretty much agree with what he says in the quote above. The final volume, White Wolf's Son almost does leave the genre. There's not nearly as much action and adventure as in the previous two books, Dreamthief's Daughter and Skrayling Tree. The choice of a twelve year old girl as the primary narrator would probably have been enough to put me off had I not already read and enjoyed the first two novels. As we've discussed many times here, though we can't always readily identify what exactly sword & sorcery is, we can usually tell pretty darn quick what it isn't.
I don't really think D&D had much to do with the fall off of S&S. I blame the amazing influence of the Lord of the Rings on the fantasy genre and the shift away from most forms of pulp literature. Don't see any mass market Doc Savage reprints these days and Edgar Rice Burroughs is barely represented on the chain store shelves.
I think sword & sorcery can rebound, but it's going to take some good writing and probably some inspired marketing as well.
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 7/16/2005 8:48 PM (GMT -4) | | I often forget the not so coinsidental emergence of D&D with the death of S&S paperbacks. I started playing D&D Christmas 1974. I stopped somewhere in the very early ninties. I had wanted to be a writer in highschool, set it aside and didn't pick it up until I was 39. In between I generated thousands of pages of notes on various D&D campainges. Fifty three three inch binders bursting. If I had been writing in that time I would be a much better writer and probably produced several novels by now, some of which might have been salabe.
Does D&D swallow potential writers? REH was dead long before he hit 39 and wrote a hell of a lot of stories. Are there other writers or potential writers out there who put all there creativity into dungeon design and senario writing? Heck I played with some, so I know there were.
Despite claims I hear all the time that the game is basically based on Tolkien it realy obviously isn't. Professor T's work has no actual and obvious magic going on in it, Gandalf doesn't cast spells as such, nor do the few other wizards. It is REH's work that was the inspired setting for a lot of it, evil wizards with terrible powers, priests both light and dark battling it out alongside mighty warriors and cunning theives. Bilbo picked one pocket, and got caught. The entire structure of D&D's class system sugests a source other than Tolkien. His wizards and elves weild unworldly power along side ordinary might of arm and skill with a sword. It's Kull and Conan where the sorcerer isn't a warrior.
As to S&S today, outside of the small press and reworkings of Howard's characters, is there S&S today? Sword and Planet is clearly dead in my mind. Heroic fantasy I see aplenty and some of it mighty good but it seems much cleaner and brighter, in general, and set on a much less personal scale than what I usually think of as S&S. Am I being too narrow in my thinking? Was S&S really just a good handle Lieber coined to distinguish modern heroic fantasy from the frothier sort of "Faerie Queen" work of ages past? Did it just get a shave, haircut and a job so now I don't recognise it anymore?
Mike
Michael D. Turner
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 7/16/2005 11:50 PM (GMT -4) | | In addendum
I think the question of D&D's effects on S&S would best be answered by editors. I don't think we see the effect clearly in what we read so much as an editor does when he reads the slush piles. The worse is certainly screened out.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
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jhmcmullen
Neophyte
Date Joined Sep 2004
Total Posts : 67
| Posted 7/18/2005 8:08 AM (GMT -4) | | quote:
Originally posted by erazmus
In addendum
I think the question of D&D's effects on S&S wo | |
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