Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Fourteen: Sterling Lanier

This is an ongoing sporadic series, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. Appendix N is the bibliography of Gary Gygax's original Dungeon Masters Guide, and lists a range of classic SF and fantasy authors that influenced his interest in the fantastical. See the first part of this series for more information.

I’m jumping back in time here. The next author should be Fred Saberhagen, but I missed Sterling Lanier before because I couldn’t find him. Now I have, so here I’m filling in a gap. I’ll be back to the regular order next time, with Saberhagen.

Stirling Lanier

Stirling E Lanier was born 1927 in New York, died 2007 in Florida, and in between he studied anthropology and archaeology at Harvard. He is best known for having championed the publication of Frank Herbert’s Dune, as well as an author and a sculptor – apparently he made some figurines of the Lord of the Rings characters and sent some to Tolkien, who liked them but didn’t want to commercialise his work.

Lanier wasn’t as prolific an author of many of those in this series, mainly writing short stories. He wrote a series of shorts about Brigadier Donald Ffellowes, a hunter of crypto-zoology, and two post-apocalyptic stories featuring the character Hiero, of which the first, Hiero’s Journey, is the sole recommendation in Appendix N (the sequel, The Unforsaken Hiero, being published after the DMG was first released, but not included into PHB5’s Appendix E). Given some of the themes, and descriptions, in Hiero’s Journey, I suspect he was also a bit of an outdoorsman and sailor, but perhaps he’s just good at research.

Heiro’s Journey

Within a few pages we are introduced to our protagonist, Hiero, or to give him his full name Per Hiero Desteen (a pun on “Hero’s Destiny?”), Secondary Priest-Exorcist, Primary Rover and Senior Killman, as he rides across the wastes of Kanda (formerly Canada) on Klootz, his morse (a giant telepathic riding moose).

Within the opening scenes, as Hiero and Klootz avoid a stampede of buffer (giant mutant buffalo) and attack by a snapper (giant mutant snapping turtle), Lanier also weaves in some background about Hiero being a “metz”, descendant of the Metis First Nation/French peoples, of how it is the 75^th century some time after an event known as The Death, and that Hiero serves a church long removed from Rome (which nobody in Kanda knows if it even still exists or not). Lanier simply drips with invention.

At first, the plot is simply a series of wilderness encounters, with Heiro and Klootz meeting Gorm, a young intelligent and telepathic bear, and later rescuing a woman from Dal’Wah (Deleware) by the name of Luchare from sacrifice to giant birds from a village of pale-skinned savages. Throughout this, we (and Heiro) learn more of the Unclean, a race of mutants who plot to keep humanity from advancing in knowledge. At their services are the Leemutes, particularly savage mutant creatures such as the ape-like Howlers.

After Luchare arrives, the plot enters the next phase, where Hiero comes into more direct contact with the Unclean, being captured, taken to their lair, escaping, and then being pursued by their forces. The Unclean are not unlike the Kolder from Andre Norton’s series – pale and hairless humans with strong psychic powers who live in a sterile island fortress and have access to advanced technology like ships that are powered without sail or steam, but they have a collection of creatures with psychic powers at their disposal as well.

When Hiero, Gorm, Luchare and Klootz meet Brother Aldo, then the story enters its final phase. Aldo is one of the “Eleveners”, followers of the Eleventh Commandment that “Thou shalt not despoil the Earth nor the creatures thereon.” They are descended from ecologists, dedicated to protecting the natural world, even the new one of strange mutants. The Unclean, however, are physicists and hard scientists dedicated to bringing back the old technologies that brought about The Death, caring nothing for protecting the natural world. Here Lanier’s politics come to the fore. Heiro’s quest is revealed to be a search for the ancient “computers” of the old world, and before the final confrontation in a hidden cache of ancient technology, the group encounter a society of dryad-like bird-women, beset by a fungoid intelligence known as The House.

There’s a lot of slogging through swamps, taking up almost the entirety of the first section as Hiero and his animal friends trudge along the northern shores of a great sea that is a conglomeration of what was once the Great Lakes. Even after the brief interlude where Heiro is held captive on the Unclean’s Isle of the Dead, they then end up rafting through the ruins of an ancient city mostly submerged. The sense of a world swallowed up by nature is highly prevalent.

I had a bit of a circuitous route with this, finally managing to track it down on Archive.org, only for the site to be shut down for a month or so thanks to hackers. And so it took a while to finish, but once out of the swamp, in and out of the story, it really picks up. Although the sequel, the Unforsaken Hiero, is not part of Appendix N, I may follow up with that (also on Archive.org).

Gaming Inspirations

The obvious thing is that this is more of an inspiration for Gamma World, with its psychic mutations and intelligent animals, than it is for D&D, but there’s no reason elements couldn’t be pulled. The bird-women and House, for example. Given its description as being like a slime-mould, I was rather hoping that House would be a non-centralised intelligence, but the core of it, in the end, seems rather like the inspiration for the gelatinous cube, despite House being intelligent. It’s also a little like a cross between Juiblex and Zuggtmoy, the demon lords of slimes and fungi respectively. The various Leemute races would make good enemy species, especially the reptilian Glith with their hypnotic gaze. Maybe, at some point, I’ll try and do some 5E stats for them.