Filipino sword-and-sorcery
Has anyone read or written an actual by-God Filipino sword-and-sorcery? You know, in the mold of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser or Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné to the extent of focusing on the heroes (or anti-heroes) instead of the setting? And using Filipino characters?
Curious cats want to know.
For those who don't know, the creations of Moorcock and Leiber were part of a fantasy subgenre called sword and sorcery. The primary proponent of this was-- of course!-- Robert E. Howard and the man from Crom, Conan the Barbarian.
As of the present, I know vin does European-type high fantasy stories and so does dean (though his Hinirang Tales are a Filipino-based created world) and nikki. Ditto with sean. But sword and sorcery? Nada.
10 comments:
None that's good. =)
haven't been up to date on local fiction, but sure would like to read one.
or write one.
reading one might be more enjoyable on my part, although i was addicted to the elric and f&gm books for a time. to be honest, i'm not really a fan of the sword and sorcery genre(/subgenre?).
charles: Yoiks. just read a conversation between Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan, about how they're coming out with an anthology on new S&S. Looks interesting and I was wondering how it would translate to Filipino.
It does make me wonder if Zuma can be considered an anti-hero worthy of Elric. Heh.
bhex: Heh. Why not try? I know I tried doing a chicks-in-chain-mail story but was hampered by the fact that I'm not female. Likewise, I like the subgenre for the happiness it gave me when I first got into reading and I'm thinking if I could pass the magic on by writing a Filipino S&S. Sounds fun at any rate.
I did come up with something like that years ago, but I eventually realized one pitfall of the sub-genre: I got tired of writing the same character over and over again. At least in standard high fantasy you usually get a large cast to work with; If I had to write Conan for all of, say, fourteen books, I'd probably go nuts.
Then again, it's probably not Conan's fault. Maybe I just need to find a character who I'm comfortable sticking with...
Yeah or alternate writing different stories. Heck, even REH got tired of writing Conan stories. :-)
Haha, but REH came out with Solomon Kane stories too! Is that considered Sword & Sorcery as well?
I wouldn't mind trying my hand at something similar.
Alex: I'm a lot less familiar with Solomon Kane, but I'm willing to bet that Howard wasn't as tired of the subgenre as much as he was probably just tired of Conan.
Kudos to you, Cat. You probably got all of us plotting to try out the subgenre here.
alex: Yupyup and the rest of storied cast too, including Kull and Bran Mac Morn. :-)
sean: Actually, according to the God Wiki, I don't think he tired of Conan but rather his market died on him. But he did run out of Solomon Kane stories.
And yes, you've pegged me on that one. ;-)
Hi, Banzai Cat!
I had a talk with Vin. He said your blog post rankled him, not because what you wrote is offensive, but because what you wrote is correct. He feels bad that over all this time he's neglected to write any sword and sorcery, and has done mostly high and epic fantasy. He feels that, as a fantasy fan, he's overlooked sword and sorcery. :D
Whoops, tell vin I'm sorry if it ruffled feathers! To be honest, I was actually thinking that us (as dean calls it) "dick litters" should band together to write Pinoy __ (read: S&S, epic fantasy, action-adventure). It's time to take pinoy pulp to the road, boys! Yee-hah! (And those guys from your pgs multiply should join is as well!)
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