My family and I have relocated, a process of fixing up one house prior to moving into it, moving in while the renovations were still under way, then fixing up the old house to sell. As transitions go, it's a big one. This new place is as close to a dream house as my wife and I are ever likely to find: it's where we hope to spend the rest of our lives, may they be long and healthy. Yet it is not an easy line to cross. A move like this, a mere 25 minute trip from one house to the other, has required almost four months of continued effort, poised always on that illusory transition line. I found myself saying, now that these walls are stripped of wallpaper, all I have to do is mud them. Now that they're mudded all I have to do is prime them. Now I have only to paint them -- but there were always extra steps, like settling on proper paint colors, and unexpected details, like a basement water drain back up.

Certainly this transition, which I am still undergoing as I type this, has no elements of tragedy, but it has been wearying, and in those moments when I've not been moving boxes or involved in house repair or working at the day job (I've had very little time for the site or this zine or my own writing, or my master's thesis) I've thought of other transitions and how we're all undergoing them all the time.

For instance, this is the sixth issue of Flashing Swords, which means our little online version has now endured one more issue than the original Flashing Swords anthologies by Lin Carter. It is a turning point perhaps as illusory as all the turning points have so far been with my moving process, but I feel it a real one, even if it is comparing oranges to apples, or at least to tangerines. It is the issue that features the final installment of Robert Richardson's three-part series of Jack Nimble and Phillipe the Platypus, that launches a four-part story arc of S.C. Bryce's Dermanassian, that returns Steve Goble's Calthus to our pages.

It also brings Harold Lamb back to our readers.

When I first discovered Harold Lamb's historical swashbucklers I didn't know that he was one of the earliest adventure writers you could read for pure enjoyment. I didn't know that he was one of the most inventive plotters in adventure fiction I would ever find. I didn't appreciate that he was way ahead of his time in his portrayal of non-Western cultures or religions. I just loved his stories.

Lamb drafted fast-paced tales of high adventure, laced with action, intrigue, and daring, all laid in the exotic east. By and by I tracked them down, wondering all the while why no publisher had bothered collecting them properly. Oh, certainly, you could find Harold Lamb works, but most of it was his later histories, or his early -- and not nearly as good -- public domain material. Very few publishers were reprinting his great work from the years he wrote for Adventure magazine.

Well, speaking of transitions, now publishers have found their way to these grand old stories, and folks who always wondered why Robert E. Howard thought so well of Lamb can finally see why. Look no further than this issue for a sample of some of Lamb's swashbuckling magic, then get thee to a copy of Sages and Swords (You ought to be buying this new Pitch-Black anthology in any case, as it brims with heroic fiction) . Therein you'll find the first of two rare Crusader novellas about Nial O'Gordon. This is Lamb at a high point of his writing. It's hard to find fiction that sounds so much like Robert E. Howard as Lamb when he's writing about Crusaders. (You'll be interested to know that Pitch-Black's Lords of Swords 2 will feature the second Nial O'Gordon novel.) This is the first time these two novellas have ever been reprinted--they've lain a'mouldering since the early 1930s.


Come June of 2006--only a few weeks from now -- you'll see the first two of four volumes that collect all of Lamb's exciting Cossack fiction, from Bison Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press. It was a labor of many years just to find the stories in those old pulps, then more work tracking down the copyright holder, then finding a publisher, then prepping the manuscripts--it's taken many man-hours, and a host of allies and friends, but finally these glorious old adventures will be available to everyone. I urge you all to pick them up. If they do well enough, collections of his Crusader and Mongolian fiction will follow. Look for Wolf of the Steppes and Warriors of the Steppes. For more details you can visit www.haroldlamb.net , or the Bison web site. The volumes are available for pre-order through Amazon, but I encourage you to get to your local bookstores and request the books there. The more people who see them on the shelves, the greater Lamb's chances of finally joining the ranks of celebrated swashbucklers like Dumas and Stevenson. Which brings me to another point.

An ill-defined line was drawn after the turn of the century. Adventure fiction prior to that time can be revered and appear on school reading lists -- adventure fiction after that time is often beneath notice. It would take a much longer essay than this one to explore the reasons why that happened. Allow me only to say that I'm overjoyed that I see signs of that trend reversing just a little. Bit by bit works with elements of adventure are being grudgingly accepted into the canon. Note the recent success of a certain epic with Hobbits and the recent Howard publishing boom. I can only hope that the recognition of other work will follow. Really, if we revere Dumas and Stevenson can't we revere Howard and Lamb? Does five or six decades away from the earlier swashbuckling writers mean that this "new" adventure fiction isn't worth our regard?

Now, though, I must draw this editorial to a close. Next issue I'll step aside and let Joe McCullough have the editorial word. Joe's been quietly working behind the scenes here at Flashing Swords for the last three issues, and it's high time to let him have the pulpit. Between then and now keep your eyes sharp for a delightful sword-and-sorcery feast cooked up by John C. Hocking and Storn Cook, a web comic which will be debuting at www.swordandsorcery.org very soon.

I have spent the whole of this editorial speaking of joyful or promising transitions and it is time now to turn to a sorrowful one. Between last issue and this Jeffrey Blair Latta passed away. I can't claim to have known Blair well, but I exchanged numerous e-mails with him over the last nine or ten years. Six years ago he and his brother D.K. (with whom any regular readers of Flashing Swords must surely be familiar) were two of the first to respond with congratulatory notes at the birth of my little girl. Blair founded Pulp and Dagger and The Altair Accretion , which I have mentioned before on this site. It was (and remains) a home for adventure fiction when there were few homes for it to be found -- and there still are few homes to be found, remember. He was one of us, ladies and gentlemen, a sword brother. He loved our favorite genres and a few more besides, and devoted much of his time to reading and writing about them. Even in his last days he was working on the site, providing an outlet for the fiction he loved, that we love. He died far too young.

I would like to dedicate this issue to his memory and hope that you will keep his family and his brother D.K. in your thoughts.

--Howard Andrew Jones

April, 2006