Anyone who knows me well has heard me speak with reverence about Leigh Brackett. That lady could write. Call her style what you will: space opera, planetary romance, sword-and-planet, it was a little of all that and infused with gritty heroes, dynamic pacing, and wonderful, vivid settings. Few writers seem able to invoke an exotic sense of place as effortlessly as Leigh Brackett.

Brackett's never been completely forgotten, thank goodness, and her work has enjoyed a small renaissance in the last few years. Haffner Press has printed one volume in a projected three-volume set collecting all of her short stories, and Millenium Press, a UK publisher (for some odd reason their fine books are not available here in the states, although you can order them through Amazon UK) has some of her greatest work in a thick new paperback titled Sea-Kings of Mars.

She may never have crafted sword-and-sorcery, but Brackett's work is similar enough in spirit that sword-and-sorcery fans will enjoy her stories and likely revere them. I know I do.

Back in Brackett's heyday in the 1950s the great science fiction magazines were going full-force, regularly printing "that crazy Buck Rogers stuff." A number of magazines featured it. Because it was a genre often devoted to escapist adventure fiction, it was regularly under attack from critics and some writers. Here's what Brackett had to say, courtesy of an essay printed at the back of Sea-Kings of Mars.

Space opera, as every reader doubtless knows, is a perjorative term often applied to a story that has an element of adventure. Over the decades, brilliant and talented new writers appear, receiving great acclaim, and each and every one of them can be expected to write at least one article stating flatly that the day of space opera is over and done, thank goodness, and that henceforth these crude tales of interplanetary nonsense will be replaced by whatever type of story that writer happens to favour - closet dramas, psychological dramas, sex dramas, etc, but by God important dramas, containing nothing but Big Thinks.

Ten years later, the writer in question may or may not still be around, but space opera can be found right where it always was, sturdily driving its dark trade in heroes.

Well said, and I especially like the phrase "sturdily driving its dark trade in heroes." These words might as well have been written about adventure fiction in general. The sad state of things is, of course, that in short fiction unsightly adventure fiction has been driven out to the fringes of the galaxy, the small press. Adventure fiction lives on in novel-length works, but at some point the niche magazine, the alternative to the adventure magazine, drove a stake through its competition. The heroes have been on life support or in cryogenic freeze.

Eric Flint has been posting on the Baen site at length about this very topic. He points to the lack of major-venue adventure fiction outlets in the marketplace. Rightly so. It's just not there. Most of us know what you can find instead -- a variety of short fiction magazines dedicated to genre-bending literary work. There's nothing wrong with that -- but where's the stuff you'd sit down with to find a cracking good adventure tale? The rebellious work that daringly flew in the face of all the raygun-blasting adventure fiction has transformed into the kind of intractable behemoth it fought so hard to overcome.

Well, listen. Do you hear that? That, my friend, is the sound of the winds of change. They are coming. Like it or not, they are coming. The small press has steadily been offering up a dark trade in heroes, and, more relevant to us, sword-and-sorcery, and it is gathering strength. Look no further than Black Gate, and Carnifex Press, and the anthologies of G.W. Thomas. Look to Flashing Swords, where any true sword-and-sorcery fan can find a surprisingly good storehouse of fiction. Look for swashbucklers in Paradox. And look to Pitch-Black, bravely soldiering on with their heroic fiction anthologies. Pitch-Black's done its best to make things easy for you -- you can order Lords of Swords through Amazon and you can even find it at many Borders bookstores. (Not in your Borders? Ask at the front desk and they'll order it for you!) There's even a new player -- Baen is throwing a tremendous amount of muscle into Universe, a bi-monthly zine run by Eric Flint dedicated to printing tales of grand adventure in multiple genres. You can look here, and elsewhere, for further information when its available, but you can rest assured that they're serious. They're paying 25 cents a word, and they want the real thing. The kind of thing Brackett and Howard and Zelazny used to write.

I'd like to think of all of us as brothers and sisters of the sword, united by our love of adventure fiction. Surely I hope all of you will give these ventures your support -- although I surely hope that you will give it to Pitch-Black efforts most of all! For if you liked what you've seen in previous issues of Flashing Swords, you will love this one. I take great delight in thinking that those who've wrinkled their noses at previous issues may well start frothing at the mouth should they read what we offer this time.

Now, more than ever, Pitch-Black needs your support, and you can get something in return -- besides these stories, which you've probably noticed are FREE. Get thee to Amazon or Borders and order Lords of Swords! Click here to peruse a catalog of goodies featuring Storn Cook's fabulous Flashing Swords artwork. T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, mousepads, fridge magnets -- it all goes toward the cause, and lets you spread the word about your favorite zine.

Next issue will see the conclusion of Robert Burke Richardson's trilogy of stories, the return of Harold Lamb and S.C. Bryce's Dermanassian and Steve Goble's Calthus, and a whole host of other delights. For now, ready yourselves for a fabulous feast of fantastic fiction, stories far better than any small zine deserves to feature. These writers are going places. John Hocking recently sold a story to Black Gate. Bruce Durham, first published here, is seeing print in other venues and recently won first place in a historical fiction contest sponsored by Paradox. Nathan Meyer's just won a Pitch-Black story contest and gotten on staff as a Mack Bolan writer. Nancy Varian's been quietly crafting sword-and-sorcery for ages while earning a living with Dragonlance novels, and is getting ready to branch into something entirely new. William King, whom you should well remember from issue 1, recently signed a six-figure deal for a sword-and-sorcery series (and writes me from the Czech Republic to say that sword-and-sorcery is alive and well and revered in Eastern Europe, thank you very much). I could easily go on. Suffice to say that most of our writers are enjoying successes, and I can almost guarantee that the new ones soon will join their ranks.

None of them are lone wolves howling in the night. No, my friends, none of us are. Take strength. Our critics and naysayers may seek to relegate us to the fringes, but we are not alone, we are a gathering pack. Our voices are raised in ever-growing numbers!

Paws and rayguns and swords together!

--Howard Andrew Jones

January, 2006