As you may have noticed I posted a lot of classic fantasy art pictures lately. So it´s only fitting that I´m getting this wonderful book for christmas:
Besides the muscled barbarians and voluptuous virgins it also contains galleries by Moebius, Giger and Phillipe Druillet. So there is some sci-fi stuff in too. Very looking forward to this (maybe I can post a few pictures).
Cool! Is this new from Taschen? Never seen it. (But I wasn’t in their shop since corona…).
Came out after many delays some time between late august and early october this year!
Been getting quite a few music books recently -
“I Am Brian Wilson: The genius behind the Beach Boys”
by Brian Wilson
Haven’t finished reading this one yet, it’s pretty dark, as Brian Wilson has had some pretty tough mental times and had a doctor who was totally taking advantage of him. Interesting stuff though, would recommend.
“The Foundations of Rock: From “Blue Suede Shoes” to “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes””
by Walter Everett
This is a really cool book, it’s quite academic and it assumes you know some music theory in parts. It looks at rock music from 1955-1970 and focuses on things like what instruments were used on what records and also developments in harmony and melody and song-form over that period. A great resource and introduced me to several acts I hadn’t really come across before.
“Riffs: How to Create and Play Great Guitar Riffs”
by Rikky Rooksby
Great book, really in-depth look at riffs. This guy has cataloged a LOT of riffs and organizes them by musical type (mostly which musical intervals they use). Includes a pretty wide selection from blues, 60s stuff, classic rock, 80s metal, 90s grunge - it’s interesting to see similarities between riffs in different eras.
“More Songwriters on Songwriting”
by Paul Zollo
There are two of these, this is the second one - collection of in-depth interviews with songwriters. Good to dip into every so often, some really interesting stories behind songs.
This one is mostly sheet music to allow you to play the tracks, but it’s really great as it’s the specific notation for all the guitar/bass/drum groove parts for some of James Brown’s best tracks. Also it has stories and info for each track, which you don’t normally get with sheet music.
I know most of the story from the Biopic “Love & Mercy”. If you´ve seen that too it would be interesting how that compares to the story how it is told in that book.
Both sound really refreshing after that abysmal Rolling Stone article I read the other day where somebody who clearly never had a guitar in their hands tried to write an essay on the art of the guitar solo while using a plethora of Freudian metaphors at that.
I haven’t seen that, sounds good, I’ll try to check it out soon…
When I was in university I got really interested in his lost “Smile” album and went to see him perform it live when he redid it in 2004, but I’ve never really heard the full background story about his illness.
Haha, yeah, things start to get pretty abstract pretty quickly in some music articles.
Outer Cardboard Box
Front depicting John Carter by Frazetta
Back depicting Arzach by Moebius
From the section on Philippe Druillet
From the section on Frank Frazetta
From the section on H.R. Giger
From the section on Moebius
From the section on Boris Vallejo
And there is a lot more! The thing is huge!
That’s the second tiniest forearm I’ve ever seen.
How do you know where it stops? 
Nothing much spectacular on offer this year, but those two novella-sized books made for pretty fine (if short) reading* (*in progress):
The second has the added bonus of a cover not cobbled together from clipart. So quite spectacular after all 
.
Finished both in the meantime and if I had to chose only one it’s clearly This Is How You Lose the Time War. The plain appearance hides a wonderfully complex, expertly written and emotionally satisfying story that probably classifies as Sci-Fi but is focused on people more than on technology. It also hides a reference to Naomi Mitchison, a proto-Fantasy author I’ve never even heard of before, but must check out as soon as the book stores open again. (Travel Light is the title in question.)
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water on the other hand is kept very simple in both story and diction, though not entirely without elegance. Both beginning and ending are captivating, just the middle section not so much.
Now back to reading sequentially, with Andrzej Sapkowski’s Hussite Trilogy.
Finished Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “A Princess Of Mars” now and I finally understand what Mike is on about in this video! 
Looks like we hadn’t this so far:
Yes, it’s a book written by Ken Williams, the founder of Sierra On-line. You can buy it at Lulu for example:
Funny video! BTW I loved that book as a kid, but of all the names I can only recall “Barsoom” or something like that.
About to start the Elric Of Melniboné Series by Michael Moorcock.
It´s remarkable how forgotten this seems outside of the hardcore fantasy geek community. It has been incredbily influential, tons of hardrock and heavy metal band have either written songs or whole albums about the same or even named themselves after aspects of it. Sometimes even with the author´s assitance.
They also saw that probably neither Song Of Ice And Fire or Witcher (with which the protagonist seems to share A LOT of at least superficial similarities).
It also is one of the classic anti hero stories and those are also always popluar.
Yet outside of the world of heavy music and comic books the character has never seen any adaptation. Not in the 80s fantasy hype not in the post Lord Of The Rings movie serials hype not in the limited television post Game Of Thrones hype (that might still be on going and to which the stories may be suited best for).
So all I got to go by for now is my fantasy and some of these nice illustrations.
I only read The Sleeping Sorceress, and wasn’t exactly blown away. How are the other books in comparison?
I really loved Moorcock’s The Dancers at the End of Time, though, which I read as part of my Dying Earth catch up. Definitely on a level with Gene Wolfe and Jack Vance there, and better than John Harrison. So I should probably try a few more of his books.
I´m just about to start (I only just finished my Conan collection and thought this might be the natural follow up!) but I´m very intriguied with the whole concept (I also read a brief adaptation of the first novel in Heavy Metal Magazine which I really really enjoyed, it contained some original text between the panels). Apparently the order is a bit complicated since he wrote it out of order (like Howard did Conan, but my collection was chronological so it kept switching betwen King Conan, Young Conan and Pirate Conan) but the books in my photo above have the stories in chronological order (where Sleeping Sorceress or The Vanishing Tower as it´s sometimes called is somewhere in the middle). Apparently Moorcock´s style changed over the years so they say he wrote differently in the early 60s than in the early 90s, but not I´m sure if I´ll be able to tell.
I´ll write more as I progress through these six volumes!
Guess I missed the “about to start” bit. Why read when you can look at pictures!? 
Anyway, what had me confused is that the different stories in that book didn’t seem very coherent. With Conan, at least it’s always the same world and character, but time and space seem to have no meaning in the case of Elric. Which may very well be how it’s supposed to be, it just wasn’t explained in that particular book. If so, that could be another bit that might have inspired parts of The Witcher.
I think that has a lot to do with Moorcock’s whole Eternal Champion Multiverse concept. I hope the Elric stories are easy enough to get to without having to know a lot about all the other series that are connected to that via that overall framework. Jerry Cornelius, Hawkmoon, Erekosë, Von Bek etc.
Oh yeah, that and the looks!
That and they´re both sometimes refered to as “The White Wolf”.
I guess all the stuff the series has influenced over the years make an adaptation more difficult. Just like people reacted to the Flash Gordon or John Carter movies in the wake of Star Wars (“Oh that´s a rip off! Oh it´s actually older? Eh never mind…”)
Edit: Looks like there are plans again, but I only belive it when I see it.
German Article: Bahnten den Weg für "Game Of Thrones" und "The Witcher": Elric-Romane werden zur Serie - Serien News - FILMSTARTS.de
