Out of Pod Experience

Definitely agree about Moorcock. He's a huge inspiration for me because, like you said, his concepts and stuff are so appealing, even on a visual level. Very mythical, if that is the word. The problem with Moorcock though is the very inconsistent writing. I've only finished the first two books in the "saga", even though I have the rest of the original six book collection and I sometimes leaf through them in fascination, but still, at times his writing is pretty much garbage. Even when it's good, it's never far from being bad. Yet that's somehow part of the appeal. It is, after all, pulp fantasy fiction from the sixties.

Whenever that movie gets made some day, I envision is being something like Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, not just because of that albino boss dude, but just because of the overall gothic feel and stuff. Actually, that makes me wonder why Guillermo del Toro hasn't already made it. What's he waiting for? **** it, let's make the Elric movie, us guys right here in this forum thread... seriously... But also, like you, I've always envisioned Elric as a cartoon, not sure why - probably just fits with the cheesy fantasyness of the whole thing.

Moorcock also wrote music for (and played with? not sure) Blue Oyster Cult, one of the sickest bands ever. Their songs "Black Blade" and "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" are supposed to be about Elric / the Eternal Champion. Which is just so damm cool that it's almost fuk'd.

I've checked out those Amber books a few times but they just never really grabbed hold of me. Granted, I only read, like, the first page, but I have a strange sense of artisticness. I feel like I can sniff a book and tell if I'm gonna like it or not. There's just this feeling I get when I know I'm gonna like something, it's weird. Then again, I'm a bit older now, so maybe I'll like it now. That happens, happened to me a lot. We'll see, maybe.

As for Smith, I think you can find pretty much all of his stuff for free now. Some of the physical copies are pretty expensive these days. I have two copies of his works, the collections Lost Worlds and Out of Space and Time, both hardcover reprints from 1971. I got them when I was like sixteen (ordered them online) and threw away the dust jackets (probably not a smart move) but I don't think I would give them away for anything. I just sniff them all day (no girlfriend). They're beautiful. I'd recommend checking out any of the stories from either one of those collections.

Also regarding what you said earlier about the Laurentiis (or whatever) Conan film. I grew up loving that movie, still do to a certain extent. It was pretty epic. But I definitely feel your frustration. I'm not necessarily a huge Howard fan. His stuff was always mostly stiff and boring to me, but I did like some of the stories like the Tower of the Elephant which you mentioned earlier. I also leaped with silly enthusiasm into the story Red Nails, thinking that "red nails" probably referred to, like, human nails that were covered in blood (which is still a better idea; someone should remix Red Nails to involve that theme) but it turns out Howard's "Red Nails" is about literal metal nails that are painted red - wtf is this crap? I pictured someone clawing out their own eyeballs with blood-covered nails and he gives me a coffin with nails in it? But whatever. It was a while ago, I can barely remember reading it.

My dad is one of those people who thinks he knows Conan because he saw the movie. Unlike him, I actually read some of the original stories. But he thought that the novelization of the Dino De Laurentiis film was the original Conan story, because on the cover it said "by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp" and I had to pretty much argue with him, like, no, they just put his name there because he created the character, he didn't actually write that. He was dead a long time ago. He wrote the real stories in the thiries, etc. Since he was kind of an authority figure for me most of my life I thought he probably knew more than I did, but no, he was just mistaken on that one.

Same thing happened when I realized that he thought the Necronomicon was a real book created by Lovecraft (like a real "occult" book). I had to explain to him again that it was a fictional book within Lovecraft's stories that didn't actually exist - even though plenty of books were called the "Necronomicon" later on, with or without his name, but they were usually just stories or whatever, not the "real" Necronomicon. Then again, maybe it does exist... maybe it's out there somewhere... who has the answers? What does it all mean??

Yeah this game should be good though o/

So let me get this straight...we have dong sliders and Moorcock in one thread? I'm trying hard to be mature here...I swear. Ok, I'm lying. I'm not.

Incidently, Red Nails was the name of my guild when I played AoC.