Grimdark Magazine Issue #2

by Adrian Collins

  [GdM]: Through some of your blog posts, you’ve shown some pretty passionate opinions on the topic of Grimdark. Why do you think so many straight fantasy and sci-fi readers are unable to accept stories where the golden hero doesn’t win, or exist, and where morally questionable or corrupt characters also have a story to tell beyond being the big evil dark lord or witch?

  [RKM]: Well, allowing those elements you’ve just mentioned into your fiction involves opening the door to some hard human truths - there are no actual good guys and bad guys, only people with agendas and the decisions they take; life is complicated and full of damage; we all have the hard-wired capacity for some pretty shitty behaviour; no-one gets out clean. And so rather grimly on. Now a lot of people are reading fantasy specifically to escape from those truths. Which is fair enough as far as it goes - you pays your money, you takes your choice. But to me, addressing that type of truth is the whole point of good fiction, whatever the genre or medium. It’s more or less why I write, it’s what I aspire to achieve. Good fiction embraces the reality of the human condition and tries to do something with it—illuminate it, examine it in detail, pose useful questions about it maybe. Above all good fiction should make us really feel the space we’re in. That doesn’t, of course, invalidate tight plotting, rip-roaring escapades, moments of great drama, passion and excitement, all that good shit. But truly great drama is built on accurate human truth. Take away that foundation, and all you’re left with is tinsel. And here in the SF&F genre, and particularly in the arenas of fantasy and comic-book superhero narrative, we do seem to be blessed with a large audience whose enthusiasm for tinsel is total and unabashed.

  [GdM]: How does Grimdark link to the darker aspects of other genres and mainstream literary fiction? Is it limited to just sci-fi and fantasy, or can it grow in other genres, or subgenres? Where do you see its next big break out?

  [RKM]: To be honest, I think it’s something already well established pretty much everywhere else. In mainstream fiction, you only have to read something like Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or Bret Easton Ellis’s Imperial Bedrooms for grim darkness enough to make a Nazgul weep. And the crime genre has been working a vein of explicit human depravity and predation for decades now—just off the top of my head, try Val McDermid’s The Mermaid’s Singing, Mo Hayder’s Birdman or just about anything by James Ellroy. To that extent, I think Grimdark is really just the name we’ve ended up giving to the extension of that general zeitgeist into the space occupied by epic fantasy’s previous evasions. Nor is this something particularly new—I was heartened to read in the Guardian a couple of days ago (link here if you want it) that someone’s brought out a new translation of the original edition of the Grimm Brothers’ Folk and Fairy Tales, and they are fucking brutal. As indeed are most folk fictions and mythologies. To that extent, the presumed “original” fantasy landscape that it’s been claimed Grimdark is distorting and spoiling is in fact in itself a false conceit, a construct. It’s just the latest iteration in a process of prissy and puritanical sanitisation that began with the Victorians and is still with us today. The ur-myths that epic fantasy is ultimately derived from were savage, atavistic things, and there was a kind of wisdom in that, an understanding of just what lies at the roots of human nature, of what we really are and are capable of. Grimdark as a project is really just trying to hack its way back to that wisdom, through the cloying sticky strands of a saccharine web spun by generations of people that wanted their thrills rendered safe and cheap and suitable for children. It’s a tough gig, but we’re on it. But pretty much everywhere else in the field of fiction and entertainment, that journey is already well underway.

  [GdM]: How have the readership responded to the release of the closing novel to your first fantasy series, Dark Defiles? Was it what you expected?

  [RKM]: Well, I’m a bit a taken aback by the ones who seem to think I didn’t finish the story! Quite seriously—there have been more than a few alarming (to me, anyway) comments along the lines of really annoyed by the open ending/can’t wait to see what happens in the next book. Uhm, look…..don’t know how to break this to you, guys…..

  That aside, response has been good—a lot of people seem genuinely upset to be taking their leave of the characters, which is great because it mirrors my own feelings a bit, not to mention the shape of real life. Nothing’s forever, that’s the tragic knot at the heart of human existence, and if I’ve managed in this trilogy to echo the longing that truth engenders, then I count myself well satisfied. In the end, I know of no higher praise for a piece of fiction than to be told that you miss it after you’re done.

  [GdM]: Reader response to the non-mainstream sexuality in A Land Fit for Heroes has been pretty mixed. A pretty common theme amongst one-star reviews on Amazon is the mention of homosexual sex, even though most reviewers seem to want to push the fact that homosexuality wasn’t the issue. Do you think, had Ringil been straight, that such an issue would have been made about the sexuality in A Land Fit For Heroes?

  [RKM]: Absolutely not. And I think it’s indicative that among the various reviews of The Steel Remains that called out the explicit gay sex as gratuitous, the explicit straight sex in the book was almost uniformly ignored. I confess I was pretty surprised at the time, not so much at the various explicitly anti-gay responses Steel generated—I guess I’d always imagined there’d be a bit of that—but at the extent to which ostensibly unbiased people can be so unaware of their own buried prejudices. Trawl back through the internet noise there was at the time, and you stumble time and again on readers and reviewers who are transparently struggling not to recognise the real reasons for their dislike of the text.

  That said, I should also point out there was an upside to all this. Steel got a tremendous amount of love from the gay community—great reviews in the gay press, gay reviewers on non-community publications interviewing me with great enthusiasm and kindness, I won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, Hal Duncan gave the book copious accolades. And clearly these are not things I could have expected to enjoy if I’d made Gil straight. So to some extent it’s been a swings-and-roundabouts affair—what I lost in some quarters, I gained in others.

  [GdM]: How has feedback on the open use of homosexuality in A Land Fit For Heroes changed from the release of The Steel Remains, to your most recent release of The Dark Defiles? As society becomes more modern and open, have readers and reviewers followed?

  [RKM]: Well, there has been a six year gap, it’s true, between the publication of Steel and Defiles. So it’s hard to know if things in genre really have changed culturally in that time, or if it’s just that by book three I’ve shed all the readers who had hardcore issues with the material, and the others have just got used to my schtick! I think I did generate some genuine shock with the first Ringil book, and so far I haven’t seen any of that with Defiles—though it is early days yet, of course. It’d be nice to believe that in six short years attitudes have shifted significantly and A Land Fit for Heroes has been a part of that, but I’m inclined—with natural grimdark cynicism :-) –to go more with the latter explanation.

  [GdM]: The Dark Defiles is twice as long as the previous two books. Why not turn it into a couple of books and make A Land Fit For Heroes a quadrilogy?

  [RKM]: Heh. Can’t say I didn’t give it some thought, and certainly there would have been enough whole cloth to work with. But the opportunity never presented itself in terms of story arc—there was no point anywhere in the middle sections of Defiles that could have served as a cut-off point, the pace just doesn’t ever let up enough and all the elements are locked in play until the very end. And I don’t hold with just chopping a story off in mid-stream because you’ve hit a certain number of words and want to claim your delivery advance. I’m a great believer in making each novel a rounded affair, with a narrative and thematic arc that resolves by the end. Steel was like that, and so were all my previous SF books. The Cold Commands wasn’t quite—though not from want of trying!—because the overarching arc of t
he trilogy got in the way. I wasn’t overly happy about that at the time, and I was determined never to let it happen again. So one way or the other, The Dark Defiles had to be a wrap, whatever length it came in at!

  [GdM]: What can your readers expect to see next? We've read that you're contracted to write two sci-fi books. Will we see some old favourite characters reappear, or are you starting afresh? Is there anything you can tell your readers?

  [RKM]: Yeah, I’m going back to the Black Man (Thirteen) universe for a while, though not using the same characters or contexts. We’ve moved on a bit in time since the events detailed in Black Man, and we’re on Mars, not Earth—but expect the same hardboiled outlook and similar themes. Should be plenty grim and dark enough for everybody concerned :-)

  [GdM]: For grimdark fans who've not read you before, where should they start and why?

  [RKM]: I’m tempted to say just jump in wherever, but that would be a bit disingenuous, given that Land Fit for Heroes was always conceived as a trilogy. I mean, I have tried quite hard to make each book work as a standalone, and with the qualified exception of Commands, that is more or less the case. But still, it’d be a bit William Burroughs to wilfully read them out of sequence! Best start with Steel and see how you go. Or, of course, you always could check out my future noir Takeshi Kovacs novels, which I’d argue contain exactly the same thematic elements as my fantasy, just deployed in a hardboiled SF context instead. Again, there is an order to the books—Altered Carbon, Broken Angels, Woken Furies—but these truly are standalone, and you’d lose nothing by trying them in any random order. Check out the blurbs, see what appeals. Whatever you pick—hope it’s a blast! [GdM]

  Excerpt: The Dark Defiles

  A Land Fit For Heroes Book III

  RICHARD K. MORGAN

  This is an extract from The Dark Defiles by Richard Morgan, published by Hachette Australia in December 2014 RRP $29.99

  He’d paid the whores for the whole afternoon, but in the end couldn’t summon much enthusiasm for a third go round. Usually, two women at once solved that kind of problem for him, but not today. Maybe it was the smell of damp wool that still clung to their bodies even after they’d peeled naked for him, maybe the fact he caught the mask of fake arousal falling off the face of the younger one a couple too many times in the act. That kind of thing stabbed at him, took him out of the moment. He knew he was paying, but he didn’t like to be reminded of the fact, and back in Yhelteth he wouldn’t have been.

  What’s the matter, Dragonbane? You never fucking happy? Up on the steppe, you craved all that southern sophistication you’d left behind. Put you back in the imperial city and you wish you could have the simple life again. Now here you are with simple whores in a simple little town, and that’s not right for you either.

  Ye Gods, he missed Imrana. Wasn’t talking to the bitch currently, but missed her still. So when the young one knelt before him on the floor and slipped his flaccid cock into her mouth, while her older companion sat on a stool in the corner, legs apart, lifting one pendulous tit at a time and tonguing the nipple with leering glances in his direction, he just grunted and shook his head. Hoisted the girl bodily from her knees – his cock slipped back out of her mouth, still pretty much flaccid – and set her aside. The older whore eyed him warily as he got up off the dishevelled bed. He read her thoughts as if they were tattooed across her face. No telling what any paying customer might do when they couldn’t get it up, and this one here was big and battle-scarred, and a foreigner to boot. Harsh alien accent and hair all tangled up with talismans in iron. Lurid tales of the Majak had percolated right across the continent in the last couple of centuries – they’d doubtless got as far as the Hironish Isles long ago. Bloody steppe savages, disembowel a girl and cook her on a spit soon as look at her most likely if they got out of bed the wrong side one morning . . .

  He forced a reassuring grimace and went to stare out of the window. Heard them move behind him with alacrity, start gathering up their clothes and the coin he’d left on the table. Light-footed, they left in what seemed like seconds and the door of his room clunked shut. He felt the relief it brought go through his whole frame. He slumped against the window, rested his head on cool glass. Outside, a light rain was falling into the street, clogging up daylight that was already past its best. A couple of children went past, splashing deliberately in the puddles and yattering some rhyme he could barely make out. He’d learnt the League tongue, more or less, while on campaign in the north during the war, but the Hironish accent was hard work.

  Yeah, like their fucking awful food and their fucking awful weather and their fucking awful whores. Five weeks in this shit-hole already, and still no—

  Commotion downstairs. A woman shrieked. Furniture went over. He frowned. Cocked his head at the sound. Another shriek. Coarse laughter, and men calling to each other. The words were indistinct, but the rhythms were Majak.

  Uh-oh.

  He grabbed his breeches off the bed, trod hurriedly into them on his way to the door. Shirt off the table as he passed, out into the corridor still bare-chested. Shouldered into the garment as he went down the stairs. No time for boots or other refinement, because—

  He arrived on the ground floor of the inn, barefoot and undone. Surveyed the scene before him. Thin crop of locals at tables and bar, gazes fixed steadfastly down on their drinks, eyes averted from the quick chaos erupting in their midst, the new arrivals . . .

  There were three of them. Shendanak’s men, just in from the street by the look of it, felt coats still buttoned up and damp across the shoulders from the rain. One had the younger of Egar’s whores grasped firmly by the crotch and one tit, was nuzzling and licking at her neck. The other two seemed engaged in facing down the innkeeper.

  ‘Oi!’ Egar barked, in Majak. ‘Fuck do you think you’re doing?’

  The one holding the whore looked up. ‘Dragonbane!’ he bawled. ‘Brother! We were just looking for you! Get your drinking boots on! ’s time to light this shit-hole town right the fuck up – Majak style!’

  Egar nodded slowly. ‘I see. Whose idea was that, then?’

  ‘Old Klarn, mate! The man himself.’ The whore bucked and twisted in the speaker’s grip. She sank teeth into his forearm. He winced and grinned, let go of her crotch, used the free hand to squeeze her jaws open and force her head back, clear of his flesh. Looked like she’d left a pretty distinct bite there in the thick muscle behind the wrist, welling blood and everything, but the Majak’s voice barely wavered from its previous slurring good cheer. Egar estimated he’d been drinking a while. ‘Fucking bitch. Yeah, Klarn says we’ve been soft-soaping around these fish-fuckers for long enough. Time to get steppe-handed on their arses. In’t that right, boys?’

  Growls of approval from the other two. By now they had the innkeeper bent back over his own bar with the flat of a knife blade tapping under his chin and his feet dangling a couple of inches off the sawdusted floor. They flashed cheery, inclusive grins at the Dragonbane.

  Egar jerked his chin at the girl. ‘That’s my whore you’ve got there. Let her go.’

  ‘Your whore?’ The other Majak’s face was suddenly a lot less friendly. ‘Who says she’s yours? She’s down here waggling her tits and arse in grown men’s faces, she—’

  ‘She’s paid until sunset.’ Egar shifted his stance a little, squaring up. He nodded at the older whore. ‘They both are. They’re down here getting me a drink and a platter. So let her go. And you two – let him up as well. How’s the poor cunt supposed to pull me a pint if you have him pinned?’

  The two Majak at the bar were happy enough to obey. Maybe they’d been drinking less, maybe they were just more intelligent men. They nodded amiably, backed off the innkeeper and let him scramble loose. The one with the knife put his weapon away with a sheepish grin. But the guy with his arm round the whore was going to be a harder push. As Egar watched, he tightened his grip.

  ‘My coin’s as good as anybody’s,’ he growled.

  Egar to
ok a casual step forward. Measured the room without seeming to. ‘Then get in the queue with it. Or find yourself another whore. You’re not having mine.’

  The other Majak’s hand strayed down towards his belt and the big-hilted killing knife sheathed there. He barely seemed aware of the motion. ‘You’ve got ’til sunset,’ he said gruffly, almost reasonably, as if trying to put the case to some court in his own head. ‘I’ll not need long.’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you again. Let her go.’ Egar saw the other man make his decision, saw it in his eyes even before he went for the knife. His hand clamped down on the hilt, but the Dragonbane was already in motion. Across the scant space between them, bottle snatched up off the table to his right, sweeping in, and a braining stroke across the Majak’s head. He gave it all he had, was actually a bit surprised when the bottle didn’t break first time. The other man reeled from the blow, Egar stepped in after him, swung again, back-handed, and this time – yes! – the glass came apart in a bright burst of shards and cheap wine. The Majak went down, bleeding from multiple gouges in his forehead. The whore got loose and scurried behind her colleague; the injured man crawled dizzily about on the floor, blood running into his eyes. Egar curled one foot back, mindful of his naked toes, and kicked the Majak hard in the face before he could get up. He brandished the business end of the shattered bottle admonishingly at the other two.