Forgotten Stories
of
Fantastic Sword-fighters:
Gardner F. Fox's Alan Morgan Of Llarn
(Part 1 of 2)

by Andy Beau

The sword and planet Llarn series by Gardner Fox (1911-1986) was only published once, in the mid-1960s. This was the period when publishers were looking for additional fantasy adventure stories because of the popularity of Lord Of The Rings and Conan. The stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB) were rediscovered, including the sword and planet series of John Carter Of Mars and Carson Napier Of Venus. In turn, some then-current writers wrote pastiches of these ERB series for the fans of the genre. This Llarn series is one of those pastiches. By about the end of the 70s, this ERB-type genre again faded away, and little has been written in the field since.

In the mid-40s to the early 50s Fox wrote for Planet Stories and other pulp magazines. In addition, he was very involved in the comic book field--he created the Flash and Hawkman, among others, worked extensively on the Justice League Of America and Batman, and had his hand in the comic book field over several decades. He is considered by some to be one of the greatest comic book writers of all time. He also wrote over 100 other novels, some under different pen names and many not in the fantasy field.

The Llarn series is composed of two books, Warrior Of Llarn and Thief Of Llarn. Llarn is one of eleven planets that revolve around a small red sun, near Canopus, the second brightest star seen from earth and 98 light-years away. It has a large ring or band around it, similar to Saturn’s, which takes up a quarter of the sky and glows at night.

Many millennia ago, a nuclear war devastated Llarn. Many of the survivors, both human and otherwise, were changed by the fallout and evolved into different types of beings. There are people whose skin is the color of a golden tan and who were the original inhabitants of the planet before the War. They were not changed by the radioactive fallout. The fallout caused some people and animals to accelerate their evolution in a few thousand years instead of millions of years. The people with pale blue skin are the descendants of the blue apes that existed before the War. They and the golden people are bitter enemies. The sea people are a flat white, live under the remaining two seas, and hate all other races. A little is said about some seven-foot warriors in one part of the story. One group of people appear to possess magical powers and are despised by the other races because of this. And lastly there exist a few beings who are pure energy enclosed in tentacled geometric figures. They are what the human race there would eventually evolve to in many millions of years in the future. The fallout accelerated the evolution of a few humans during the War, evolving a few of them into these advanced creatures.

Remnants of some of the ancient technology and the ancient cities exist around the planet. As with ERB’s John Carter of Mars, the gravity of Alan Morgan’s adoptive planet is less than earth’s. Consequently, Morgan can move faster, jump longer, and is stronger than the native inhabitants, which give him an advantage in the many battles he fights.

In the first book, Warrior Of Llarn, while growing up Alan Morgan has been indirectly led by an unknown entity from Llarn, via psychic powers, to learn the skills he will need when he will arrive on Llarn and join the service of this entity. This entity has occasionally haunted his mind and dreams all his life. When Alan is deemed to have learned these skills, he is then transported against his will by the entity to Llarn. The entity wants him to perform a task for him on Llarn. Alan arrives naked in the middle of a desert of red sand, with the red sun blazing down, and with only a pink point in the distance. He remembers from his dreams that he is to journey toward it, and does so, though he is nearly overcome by exhaustion. Upon arrival he discovers the pink object is a transparent dome filled with pink mists with no opening. Some men of a pale blue skin ride up to him on steeds similar to big zebras with two slim forward-pointing horns on their foreheads. Alan battles the leader, inadvertently killing him and falling through the pink dome. The other blue men are shocked at this and ride away quickly. In the dome, Alan retrieves a small metal ball that he feels is the object he was sent to get. He then leaves the dome, mounts the dead man’s steed, and rides on, to eventually arrive at an ancient deserted city. There he encounters the lovely golden skinned Tuarra, princess of Kharthol. She is being pursued by soldiers of the usurper of her father’s throne. Both she and the soldiers are flying through the air on individual flat black fliers, using the controls while lying down on it. Morgan engages in some sword fights with her pursuers, as in the following:

The more delicate maneuvers of the blade I had to forgo when I faced two men. I wove a web with my thin blade, slashing, parrying almost by instinct. For the first time in my life, I did not think as I fought. I let the magic of my sword loose as I freed the animal instinct of my body. I fought to stay alive, and to stay alive I had to kill these men. No time now for riposte and remise, only for the point moving in and out in its deadly dance, eluding the blades that sought to hold it, darting into openings no wider than the breadth of a finger.

Morgan has numerous sword fights throughout the book, usually against apparently insurmountable odds. But like ERB’s John Carter, he prevails because of his superb training on earth and his extra speed and strength from being on a planet of lesser gravity. After escaping Tuarra’s pursuers, she and Morgan are then captured by the blue people and taken to their city. Here they meet the queen, Ulazza:

Through a long corridor set with painted pillars we were conducted into a vast audience hall and toward a massive golden throne on which a blue woman sat. She was in the full ripeness of maturity and her skin was a pastel shade (of blue) -- the women of (the city of the blue people) have not the darker skins of their men-- that might have presented a pleasing sight to my eyes if I had not read the cold hate and bitter anger on her patrician features. Golden ornaments contained her breasts. About her slim middle was a belt of heavy golden plates from which hung a thin kilt of red silk. Golden sandals, reaching up almost to her calves, completed her garb. The contrast of the gold and the red silk against her pale blue skin was exotic and barbaric in the extreme, an effect added to by her coiffure in which golden balls were set here and there in thick black hair. The (two) tiny (1 inch) horns from her temples were heavily gilded…Ulazza was a beautiful woman, for all her pale blue skin, and those golden horns were the touch that added most to her appearance as a barbarian. She was a devil woman, roundly curved and enchanting, despite her inner fury.

They escape with the help of one of the people believed to possess magical powers. The three of them travel by boat on one of the two seas left after the War, stopping at an island. Here they encounter a strange, vicious creature, which attacks Morgan:

Humanoid in appearance with two legs and a torso to which were fitted two arms, it had an armored mouth and two eyes on stalks for a head, and thick scales over its entire body…. Its long arms ended in two thick yellow claws that looked razor sharp. Once those claws dug into me, they would slice through my flesh as a warm knife cleaves through butter. My longsword looked puny in comparison with this monster bearing down on me. It stood twenty feet high, at least. Its arms must have been eight feet long….My blade…cut through the upper arm of the beast, all the way through. The arm fell off….It was grievously wounded. Blood was spurting from its empty armpit. And then-- Even as I watched, it began to form another arm. No--two arms! Swiftly did those arms grow! As I watched they extended, grew big with scales and muscles and claws--…Through the neck of the thing I drove my blade so that its head leaped upward off its shoulders. The headless trunk tottered on scaley legs. And it grew two heads where one had been! I think I went a little mad at this point.

During their adventures together, Tuarra and Morgan acknowledge their love for each other and their desire to marry. However, misadventure prevails and they get separated. Tuarra is abducted back to her city to be forced to marry the usurper so he can then become the legitimate ruler. Morgan has several other adventures until he gains an ally in Tuarra’s Kharthol. While attempting to execute his rescue plan, Morgan is compelled by his ruling entity, who has finally regained its strength, to immediately leave his rescue attempts and use a flier to travel to the south polar regions. There he will finally meet the entity and give it the objects it has desired. After doing this, Morgan continues with his rescue attempt and succeeds, ousting the usurper. During their wedding night in the palace of Kharthol, Tuarra is once again kidnapped and Morgan chases down the abductor to outside the city. Just as Morgan is about to kill him and rescue Tuarra, the abductor calls down a large pterodactyl-type flying creature that carries Morgan off high into the air. Will Morgan be able to overcome yet another adversary to be together again with his beautiful exotic Tuarra, a Princess of Llarn? Will the end of the book disclose the answer, or will this saga be continued in the next book, Thief of Llarn?!?!

Ok, so I hammed it up a bit here at the end. In one of the last sentences, I was even inspired by ERB’s book title, A Princess of Mars, to describe Tuarra as...a Princess of Llarn. But that’s the flavor of an ERB-type sword and planet story--a romantic tale of swordplay and derring-do set on a planet of exotic peoples, lost sciences, strange savage beasts, and ancient cities. I’ll be reviewing the second book, Thief of Llarn, sometime in the future after I again re-read it after lo these many years.

Used copies of both books each sell for a few bucks on Abebooks.com and other used-book web sites.

About the Author

Andy Beau has lived in San Diego, CA since he was 16. There were no computer degrees in the 1960s, so he graduated with a degree in math and worked in the computer programming field from 1969 until 2003, when he retired early at 57. Prior to these articles all of his writing has been technical--the composition of user manuals--and there wasn't much call for analysis of plot and character development in that. Andy's been a fan of sword and sorcery tales since college in 1966. This has lead him to other fantasy adventure genres: lost race, supernatural thrillers, Lovecraftian horror, and more. He shares his long-term love for and knowledge of sword and sorcery with his readers in these columns. SwordAndSorcery.org is proud to have him.