I have to admit to never being a great fan of 'FANTASY'....I'm more of a SCIENCE FICTION fan. SWORD AND SORCERY isn't real life enough for me . I want ;Faster than light space ships ; Ray guns ; Horrible evil robots ; Gut busting aliens ; worm holes through black holes....You know all the real life ,genuine stuff backed up by science and technology. SWORD AND SORCERY ?...Well a time of wizards and demons ; Dragons and serpents and muscley half naked men and women roamed the barren wastes cutting other muscley men and women with swords forged from the metal forges of gods. God! There was lots of gods in them days. Every town village and fortress or city was full of gods , only outnumbered by the holy men and evil sects that worshipped them. The gods were very greedy in these times. All they seemed to want was lots of sexy ladies as human sacrifices and lots of jewels and treasure ,which seems reasonable enough!
The world of fantasy is very fond of swords and warriors. One of the most famous was ROBERT .E. HOWARD'S 'CONAN, THE BARBARIAN'. A big beefy bloke from the frozen "Eeeh it's grim up North!" wastes of CIMMERIA. But he came down south wearing animal skins ;Horned helmets and most important his massive sword forged by those unbeatable northern swordsmiths from unbreakable northern steel, which helped him as he was a bit of a bad tempered sort and picked fights with gangs and armies and more than a few dragons and serpents. He became a thief and tended to nick 'THE CRYSTAL OF THYTORACKACDACKODACK' or the DIAMOND OF SALOAMONDIPIDDTYDUDAH'. These juicey items were always guarded by beastly man eating beasts, so CONAN, being of a butch ,manly persuasion and having the beasts drooling had to fight and slaughter these devil beasts. Shouting to his own god, a guy called 'CROM!'....."By Crom i say thee nay!"...." And with this sword Crom will strike you down!" and lots of friendly endearing stuff like that, i read some of the books ,but i got most of my CONAN stuff from MARVEL COMICS.
MARVEL got into the fantasy stuff with CONAN and KRULL THE CONQUEROR and i think a couple of others. KRULL and CONAN made a few low budget telly series along with a very tasty 'well-proportioned 'Warrior princess ,whom you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of ,XENA. CONAN was made into two quite big films with ,'Who else ,but ARNIE!', which weren't bad ,even with GRACE JONES in the second one. I don't believe for a minute ,even in the heights of fantasy CONAN/ARNIE could ever beat GRACE JONES....I mean JAMES BOND struggled!
The 'daddy of fantasy is ,of course 'THE HOBBIT' and 'THE LORD OF THE RINGS'. I've never read them and i'm ashamed to admit i've never watched the films all the way through. I had a chortle the other day, tho'! I picked up a copy and opened it at a page and it was a wizard telling someone :"To cross some plain: until you reach the mountains of something , then cross the sea of wotsit and enter the forests of thingey!".....I dont know if this was for the rings or for a 'packet of fags ,a loaf of bread and some p.g. Tips, or something!'.....It just seemed to sum up it all up.
All the wizards did everything for the common man of which everyone was one and as his spells and potions did everything ,no inventions or technology ever shows in fantasy. Razors didn't exist as everyone had swords and daggers which were honed to razor sharpness and so they could shave. The only ones who didn't carry blades were the smart arse wizards who all had beards down to their feet. Thats why they carried those really long staffs ,not to fight with ,but to swipe the beards from round their feet before they tripped over their facial hair and went arse over pointy hat !
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