This is a sporadic feature, in which I explore classic
fantasy and science fiction works. You will either know what I mean by
“Appendix N”, or you will have no clue. If the former, skip the next paragraph.
Otherwise, read on.
In the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon
Masters Guide, Gary Gygax provided a large number of appendices, from random
smells to reputed magical properties of herbs and gemstones. Appendix N was a
bibliography of works that inspired him. Back in 1982 when I first got hold of
this book, there were only a couple of items on there that I’d read, and only a
few other authors that I’d even heard of. Many years later, after ,much
reading, I returned to Appendix N expecting to have added greatly to the works
on there that I’d read; but actually, there were still very few. Many of the
authors were obscure or out of print authors of, for want of a better
expression, golden age pulp; the kind that feature in Amazing Stories and the
like.
Now, thanks to the magic of eBooks, a lot of these works
are now available again without scouring second-hand bookshops (although this
is an enjoyable experience in itself), and also often for ridiculously low
prices. With that, I have begun to fill in the gaps in my reading, and
publishing my thoughts and observations on here. One of the things that I’m
particularly looking out for are obvious inspirations on the Dungeons and
Dragons game, as well as elements that were not used but would make good
insertions.
Due to the variable size of not only each individual work
but the number of recommended works for each author, this will not have any
kind of regular schedule.
Oh, and I’m aware that in the 5th Edition of
Dungeons and Dragons, the Appendix N bibliography was expanded and updated as
Appendix E of the Player’s Handbook. I’m sticking to the older, shorter list
for now. Maybe in the future…
Lord Dunsany
Or more properly, Edward John Morton Drax Plunkett, 18th
Earl of Dunsany. I’m not sure of Gary Gygax thought of him in the same format
as “Ellington, Duke” when he catalogued him as “Dunsay, Lord”, but it doesn’t
really matter if it’s not technically the correct way to reference a Lord. It’s
better to get Dunsany out of the way quite early on, since his work informs so
many other writers.
Born in 1878, Plunkett is probably the earliest author in
Appendix N, published from 1905 (
The Gods of Pegana) up until around the 1920s,
although he lived until 1957. He’s part, I’d say, of the Irish literary
pantheon, friends at various times with the likes of GB Shaw and Yeats,
spending as much time as an active military man as well as an academic in
classical antiquities. In fact, Plunkett seems to have been one of those men of
many talents that, I guess, being landed gentry gives one the time to pursue,
such as becoming a pistol-shooting champion and inventing a new form of chess.
Dunsany’s works are many and varied, and he mostly deals
in the short story format; there’s absolutely no way I can go discuss everything
that he wrote, such is the volume. It doesn’t help that I read his works a few
years back, using an e-book that had no kind of index despite containing some
30 hours of reading! So, much of this is from memory, which perhaps is the best
way since it means that the stories that really stuck with me are the ones that
I remember.
Generally, Dunsany has a wonderful way with words,
conjuring up strange and disturbing worlds, but also bringing the reader right
into the story – one can easily imagine these stories being told from a big
leather armchair in front of a fire. Take, for example, the opening of the
story Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon of Romance :
“Little upon her
eighteenth birthday thought Miss Cubbidge, of Number 12A Prince of Wales' Square,
that before another year had gone its way she would lose the sight of that
unshapely oblong that was so long her home. And, had you told her further that
within that year all trace of that so-called square, and of the day when her
father was elected by a thumping majority to share in the guidance of the
destinies of the empire, should utterly fade from her memory, she would merely
have said in that affected voice of hers, "Go to!"
There
was nothing about it in the daily Press, the policy of her father's party had
no provision for it, there was no hint of it in conversation at evening parties
to which Miss Cubbidge went: there was nothing to warn her at all that a
loathsome dragon with golden scales that rattled as he went should have come up
clean out of the prime of romance and gone by night (so far as we know) through
Hammersmith, and come to Ardle Mansions, and then had turned to his left, which
of course brought him to Miss Cubbidge's father's house“
The earliest work, the Gods of Pegana, is a bit more arch
in its style, for example “And
there fell a hush upon the gods when they saw that MANA rested, and there was
silence on Pegana save for the drumming of Skarl. Skarl sitteth upon the mist
before the feet of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, above the gods of Pegana, and there he
beateth his drum. Some say that the Worlds and the Suns are but the echoes of
the drumming of Skarl, and others say that they be dreams that arise in the
mind of MANA because of the drumming of Skarl, as one may dream whose rest is
troubled by sound of song, but none knoweth, for who hath heard the voice of
MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, or who hath seen his drummer?”
Over the course of many vignettes it builds up tales of the pantheon of Pegana,
and the terrible sleeping god MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI.
There is a lot of variety of themes to Dunsany’s works in the
Book
of Wonders,
A Dreamer’s Tales, and other anthologies. They do, however,
divide into broadly three categories – either they take place entirely within a
realm of fantasy, they involve a collision of the fantastic with our world, or
they’re pretty much based in our world, albeit exaggerated adventures stories.
Among the first category, for instance, are the likes of The Bride
of the Man-Horse (which opens with the marvellously baroque sentence “In
the morning of his two hundred and fiftieth year Shepperalk the centaur went to
the golden coffer, wherein the treasure of the centaurs was, and taking from it
the hoarded amulet that his father, Jyshak, in the years of his prime, had
hammered from mountain gold and set with opals bartered from the gnomes, he put
it upon his wrist, and said no word, but walked from his mother's cavern.”
Or, also from the Book of Wonder, How
Nuth Would Have Practiced His Art on the Gnoles, wherein the master thief Nuth
and his hapless assistant Tommy Tonker attempt to steal the fabulous wealth of
the Gnoles.
And here, perhaps, is the
inspiration from the hyena-like gnolls of D&D, except that the gnoles are
kept hidden and mysterious, known only through their cunning security and the
horrible fate that any thief may meet at their hands. Dunsany’s “fireside chat”
mannerisms are on full display here –
“"And
did they catch Nuth?" you ask me, gentle reader.
"Oh,
no, my child" (for such a question is childish). "Nobody ever catches
Nuth.””
Which takes us on to the second kind of story – that
where our world (or one not far from ours) intersects with the fantastic. In Idle
Days On The Yann, a dreamer character, pretty much an authorial insert for
Dunsany himself, spends time on a riverboat travelling down the River Yann in
another world, where strange and terrible cities and events befall him. In
style, this has to be very much the inspiration for HP Lovecraft’s Randolph
Carter stories, and other Dreamworld adventures.
Other times, the fantastic is tantalisingly out of
reach, such as in
The Wonderful Window, where the narrator can only passively
watch a marvellous city through a small window in his apartments, his
connection to it forever shattered when he tries to take action to help prevent
the city’s destruction. A similar evasive city appears and vanishes in the
Yorkshire moors in
The City on Mallington Moor; like Tolkien’s Rivendell the
traveller stumbles upon it suddenly. Like Moorcock’s Tanelorn, once glimpsed it
is never forgotten and ever unattainable.
There’s even a cunning reverse of this trope where the
Caliph of Baghdad is given glimpses by his chief hashish-eater of a strange and
wondrous city called “London”, in A Tale of London – “Its houses are of ebony and cedar which
they roof with thin copper plates that the hand of Time turns green. They have
golden balconies in which amethysts are where they sit and watch the sunset.
Musicians in the gloaming steal softly along the ways; unheard their feet fall
on the white sea-sand with which those ways are strewn, and in the darkness
suddenly they play on dulcimers and instruments with strings. Then are there
murmurs in the balconies praising their skill, then are there bracelets cast
down to them for reward and golden necklaces and even pearls”. Yes, that’s exactly like London!
Other Dunsany tales are fantastical
without evoking fantasy worlds. From Thirteen at Dinner, which is a
straightforward ghost story with hints of MR James, to A Tale of Land And Sea,
a ripping yarn where a pirate captain puts his ship on wheels and sails across
the north-west of Africa to escape capture in the Mediterranean. What follows
is a suspenseful pursuit by desert nomads. The same captain reappears in
another story, but I forget which one. Possibly The Loot of Bombasharna.
And so it goes on. Really there are
far too many Dunsany stories to cover, but if you like one you’ll like them
all. I love his expansive writing style, and to me each story is a little
polished gem, or a fine chocolate to be savoured. Go through too many at once
and the effect is diluted, and you feel a bit gorged, but, seriously, try at
least two or three. Or more.
On editing this entry, and looking
for images, there were cover images and pictures that bore similarities to pre-Raphaelite
and art nouveau styles, which drew me to mad Richard Dadd’s painting The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke, and
Isabella Rosetti’s poem The Goblin
Market. Also there are dark and shadowy images that bring to mind the works
of Edward Gorey. Dunsany definitely belongs to that pantheon of artists where
beauty and unease dwell side by side.
As for influence on the D&D game,
the only element I ever encountered in Dunsany’s works that could have been a
direct lift by Gygax were the gnoles. There are, however, plenty of characters
and places that could be plonked into a D&D campaign – the archthief Nuth,
the squabbling demi-gods Chu-Bu and Sheemish, the cities on the Yann. Scenarios
could be drawn from the fine thread that many of the stories suggest – what,
for example, is it actually like in the trap-ridden House of the Gnoles? I
think there are endless possibilities stored in the treasure-house of Dunsany’s
works.
Comments
Post a Comment