Pulp Fantasy Gallery: Kane

This is the first author to be featured in the pulp fantasy gallery who was not in Gary Gygax's famed Appendix N, but his contributions to the cause of pulp fantasy deserve recognition nonetheless. Beginning in 1970, Karl Edward Wagner began the saga of Kane, a left-handed, red-headed warrior cursed with eternal life after slaying his brother. As well as being a peerless swordsman, Kane is also a potent sorcerer with a decidedly amoral streak. It's been years since I read them, but these stories always epitomized what I used to call "heavy metal fantasy;" they were the types of tales my friend Mike's older brother probably loved.

Wagner also deserves praise, though, for his formation of Carcosa Press, which sought to preserve pulp authors and tales and present them for a new generation in hardcover form. Even more important, Wagner edited several volumes of Conan stories that were the first to restore the texts to their original form, free from the accretions that had watered them down in the decades after Howard's death. For that alone, we all owe him a great debt.