Writer Wander 021 - Kane by Karl Edward Wagner

Wander discusses a Forgotten Sword & Sorcery Antihero

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Rider Wander21. We are recording from church this time, so today is gonna be a particularly blessed episode. I'm standing in front of the church pacing around like a maniac, but again, thankfully, we live in the 21st century after the 2010s, and since cellular devices have been normalized, it is completely normal for someone to be out alone talking into his own phone. Again, people just assume that I'm talking to somebody. And I figured I'd get down to talking about something that I read quite recently. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down and read through an entire short story of Carl Edward Wagner, particularly his most famous character, Kane. Now, to give a little bit of an introduction to this character of Kane, Kane is a very interesting protagonist. He is a sword and sorcery hero, and for those of you who don't know, sword and sorcery is a genre of fantasy that's very action-packed, very focused on like you know, tight plots that move very quickly, a lot of action, a lot of emphasis on uh muscular power and just raw masculine thumus and and energy, right? And Kane, right, the the sword and sorcery subgenre as a whole has had a bunch of famous heroes, right? You know, the most famous one is obviously Conan, but there's been Fafford and the Grey Mauser, Elric of Mel Devine, who's one of my personal favorites, because it was with his books that I first started, I first really got hooked on the fantasy genre. And of course, you have many, many more whose names I'm just not for not remembering at the moment. And what's interesting about Kane is that he's actually a forgotten hero, he was very famous for a long time during his heyday. However, Kane nowadays is seemingly forgotten, and to me it's it's very strange. I can kind of understand why. I I have some theories, you know, the author was not the best human being, and um he died very early on, I think due to alcohol abuse or something like that. And the Kane stories are very interesting because I think it's one of those rare situations in which you have a prince a main character that is actually somewhat evil. Now, what am I what am I referring to? In the modern world, it might seem that it's very common for us to follow evil protagonists, however, like the more I think about it, that's actually not all that common. You see a lot of anti-heroes and you see a lot of morally grey heroes, but from my estimation, most of the time, they're still heroes, it's just that you know maybe they have a few extra shades of darkness or or something, or maybe they have a couple shady methods, but at the end of the day, especially as you look at the entire plot progress, they end up becoming heroes one way or another, and in many respects, these dark heroes are a very a staple of our tradition, so to speak. But Cain is interesting because he is actually evil, right? Cain, if you couldn't tell, is actually based off of the biblical Cain, who obviously, if you if you've read the Old Testament, you knew that the biblical Cain killed his brother, and he he was obviously cursed because of this. And in the lore of Carl Edward Ragnar's world, Cain was cursed to wander the land forever. He was he was cursed forward a perpetual immortality, and he wanders the land from age to age, you know, um finding different ways to amuse himself. And you know, the opening of most Cain stories opens up with him, you know, ruminating philosophically about his mortality, and you know, constantly trying to find different ways to you know to distract himself from the the everlasting enui of his own existence, right? And the story I read this time is actually called Cold Light, and it begins that way, and the main conceit of the story is that Kane is being hunted down by a group of crusader paladins who are trying to who are trying to kill him. And overall, I really enjoyed the story. However, it was deeply imperfect and deeply flawed. There were a lot of things that I did not like so much about the story. What I like a lot about Kane's stories is that because of the fact that Kane is a very evil kind of character, genuinely evil, he's not like Elric of Melden A, who's like dark but not really evil. Kane is legitimately evil. He literally, you know, he sacrifices people to like demons and he he plays around with dark rites. And what's interesting is that the call Edward Raggeder, in a lot of the stories he does about Kane, there are significant portions of the story that are not from Kane's perspective, but rather it is from the perspective of someone facing off against Kane. So you can actually read a lot of Kane's stories, and a lot of them feel like you're reading a horror novel in which Kane is the monster that is actually stalking you down. And this was one of those stories, right? It's not the best one of its kind. I think the best one of that variety is one in which Kane kidnaps a this sounds so weird just saying it out loud, but one in which Kane kidnaps um a young lady and he he basically like kills all of the people that come to try and save her, and it is a very deeply dark story, and it it is almost entirely from the perspective of the girl, and Kane is the monster. And in this story, something similar happens where large chunks of the story are not from Kane's perspective, they're from the perspective of like the nine dudes that go off to hunt Kane, and you can see all the creative ways in which these dudes are like picked apart by Kane. I think one of the a lot of three of them are taken out by being trapped in a in a building. Um, a lot of them are taken out by you know him him having like incredible range and marksmanship with his crossbow, so all of that stuff is like super interesting, and one of the things that I find fascinating about these characters is that a lot of them have grudges to bear with Kane from like years ago. There was one who had like his entire village killed by Kane a decade before the events of the story. There was another one I think who had like his um his family sacrificed to demons by Kane. And so what's really interesting is that once Kane gets around to actually facing off with these people, often he barely recognizes them because he's just he's been around for so long and he's doing literally anything just to take to ease his mind off of things. Oftentimes it's it's not even for malicious purposes that he does the things he does. Fundamentally, he's like a little kid who has nothing to do, and he's just finding any way he can to distract himself. So, you know, one of the reasons why you're not completely repulsed by Kane as a character, though to some extent you are, but one of the reasons why you're not completely repulsed by him is because there's almost this in insane detachment that Kane has from just about everything that he's doing as a protagonist. Like, you know, Kane, what you know, when he's experimenting on people, when he's doing evil things, you know, on a fundamental level, you can tell that he's not he's not really doing it because he cares about the thing he's doing, he's just doing it because there's nothing else to do. And what's really interesting is that that makes him very similar to what a lot of like child delinquents do, right? Where oftentimes child delinquents or teenage delinquents, the reason they do the things they do is because they're just bored out of their minds, and it just sounds fun to pull pranks on people. It sounds it sounds fun to like rob people in blind daylight and uh you know distract yourself from the the squalor that you're living on on a day-to-day basis. And Kane oftentimes feels like that, and it's interesting the you know the the dichotomy that exists. I don't know if you guys have seen like that bell curve meme where on the left hand side you have like a really dumb person, then on the right hand side you have a really smart person, and in the middle of that you have like um you know someone who's like of average intelligence, and what's interesting about that bell curve meme is that you know in each one you have like a statement, right? You have like the middle guy saying a statement, and curiously enough, the guys on the left and the right, that is to say, the dumb guy on the left and the smart guy on the right, they both agree for different reasons, but they agree. And Kane, it's interesting, right? Because Kane is a wise, immortal being, yet a lot of his attitudes resemble that of children, of like little kids, you know, just trying to not in an immature way, well, actually, in an immature way, but you know, he's very smart about the things he does, but fundamentally he's just doing them for entertainment to distract himself with literally anything, literally anything to distract himself, and that's the fascinating thing about about Kane. And in the course of the story, you have like Kane's character who doesn't care about anything, who's just willing to treat the whole world as if it's just a big playground. You have it contrasted with this um paladin called Gaitha, who is like this very self-righteous um jackass who is willing to do anything to eradicate the forces of darkness. Um, you know, we're told that this character has regularly besieged necromancers' fortresses, and he has um he has murdered and destroyed oftentimes the innocent captives of these necromancers because they were tainted like evil. The title of the story, which is Cold Light, is in reference to this um antagonist uh belief that in order to enforce justice, in order to enforce the goodness and and light, it is necessary that you can't just enforce any light, you have to enforce a cold light that exercises that is not swayed by any emotions or feeling and is willing to make no truce whatsoever with darkness, right? So we're basically you know, if you want to think of the equivalent of that, you know, we're basically thinking of you know a a kind of goodness that is capable of like showing up to the enemy army's place and eradicating everyone, taking no prisoners, and and whatever, and you know, it is an interesting dichotomy that Carl Edward Wagner puts into the story, right? And Kane is an interesting character, but I I don't know, I feel that this was this was kind of a weak, weaker story, right? I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this story, but I have to say that you know Carl Edward Wagner is not a particularly subtle writer. It feels like almost every second that you know he's talking, his characters, I think his dialogue is very weak, right? It it feels in this story in particular, it feels like the characters are are just like talking about they're talking the way that you would create a hypothetical dialogue between two different points of views, like they're talking like on this almost like philosophical, like very, you know, very artsy sense, oftentimes, and it just it doesn't feel it doesn't feel very human. Oftentimes when he's trying to portray the cruelty of the so-called paladins, it's almost they're almost like cartoonishly evil, and you know, I get what he was getting at. He was getting at the idea that you know these self-righteous people are not all that good, but it feels like he's beating you over the head with it for like you know the entire runtime of the of the story, right? And you know, constantly in every scene that you have these paladins, it's it's like bro, we get it. We get it, like you know, cold light, you know, we know what cold light is, we know the kind of dichotomy that you're that you're trying to that you're trying to to propose, right? But even for that fault, I can somewhat find it entertaining like the contrast that exists between like these these cartoonishly hypocritical paladins and Kane, who is like he just he does not he does not care, right? For the purposes of the story, Kane kind of acts like he's scared of the fact that like nine professionals are are coming after him, but honestly, like he's really like he has nothing to be afraid of. He you know, he could easily toy around um with these people if he wanted to. And what's also interesting is this other character who's like this this young sorceress who's in the story, and she sort of falls in with Kane for a while, and she has like this magical ability where she can touch Kane or really anyone and get like an understanding of the person's emotions, and it's an it's an interesting ability, but I feel that her character is very it's just it's very half-baked, you know, there's not there's not too much depth to her, in my opinion. You know, she she functions exactly the way that you would that you would expect her to function, and you know she she's like the you know the the token naive character of the story, but one of the things I respect about Carl Edward Wagner is that you never get the impression that Kane actually cares about her, and I can I can respect sticking to your guns like that because again the idea is that Kane is genuinely an evil person, he does not care about this this young woman, right? He he could not give a crap, she's just passing entertainment for him, you know. He uses her to you know to have his way and to you know to please himself, but even even then, and even she herself acknowledges it, right? That you know, the best she can do for Kane, she can't really heal any of Kane's pain or or suffering, and she can only provide a temporary reprieve or temporary distraction from it. And the story ultimately ends with the second paladin that's in charge sort of like being spared because he when they at one point they captured the witch girl, and you know, they they basically uh they did bad things to her, but the only one who who was kind of nice to her was like this other this other paladin, and she begged Kane to spare him, and Kane does so. But the story ends with like you know, since this paladin basically betrayed the guy who was his role model, uh, who was the paladin I was who was was always talking about the cold light of oh, you know, how evil needs to be destroyed, etc. Again, it there's a huge lack of subtlety. Um, but since he betrays that guy and in some sense helped Kane because of it, it sort of like destroys his worldview, and he's left in like this almost catatonic state where the story basically ends on not even on Kane, you know, the Kane just like exits the story and he he leaves like the girl, and uh, you know, because the girl is like consoling this paladin who he's falling, she you know, she she's falling in love with the with that paladin, and you know, Kane's like, oh whatever, I'll just go away. Like, there's not even there doesn't feel like there's a satisfying send off to that. He's just like he just goes away. The ending feels very rushed. It's a it's a color where Ragnar is like I'm reaching the end of the story, like fucking, I'm I'm done, I'm done, I'm out. And it just ends on like the question of whether this paladin character is going to you know give in to the darkness that has entered into him, to the existential crisis, or whether he's going to start a new life with this young young witch woman, right? And again, Carl Edward Wagner is one of those authors where oftentimes his execution is not the best. Reading his stories, I can understand why he's not as remembered as he is now because aside from the fact that he's out of print, you know, I feel that his writing is not particularly good. His writing is not particularly good, and we're not just talking about prose again, we're talking about dialogue, we're talking about a lot of the situations that that Kane finds himself in. You know, they they're there, you know, it feels it feels effective. It feels effective and it's it's very good at times. However, there are very few Kane stories in which I feel like they, you know, they they're truly they truly cross that threshold into into greatness or like masterpiece level. It's not like you know, Robert E. Howard with Conan where like nearly every Conan story is just a masterpiece in that sword and sorcery genre and and it reads so so beautifully and so preciously, which is actually quite fascinating because I think Carl Ebert Wagner did make one of the best Conan pastiche novels, but I'm not gonna enter into that. But what I can respect about Wagner is that he is one of the he's a writer, he plays around with a lot of interesting ideas. I I like you know I like the things he tries to do, even if I don't think he fully he often succeeds entirely at them, right? But I don't think he's made anything bad, not yet at least, that that I've read, but he's never made anything that's like, oh yeah, this is one of my favorite stories of all time, right? With with you know with some exceptions. I think it's his one his one Kane story about the werewolves and the other one about the kidnapped girl were were pretty good to me. Pretty good to me. But uh but yeah, he he's someone that like I dig his concepts, I dig the things he's trying to do. I I like the idea of Kane. I just feel that that idea when it comes to the execution, it it often it often just lags, lags behind. But there's a lot of cool stuff that happens in this novel. I think my my highlight, it's not even like some deep emotional moment. It's like when there's this there's this wither wizard trying to summon a demon, and Kane just messes up the ritual because he tosses like a spear into like the you know the pentagram that the wizard is trying to make, and it messes up like the summoning, and as a result, like the demon just just grabs the wizard and like drags him to to hell. And I think that's a pretty funny way to to get rid of a of an enemy. So you can have a lot of fun with Kane, but again, it it lacks it lacks subtlety, it lacks a lot of subtlety in a lot of things, and it gets to a grading point. I know that at one point in this podcast, and I still hold to this, I mentioned that subtlety is option opten optional. It's really not as important as we think it is. If a story is good enough, we are not gonna care at all about how stuff subtle the story the story can be, right? You know, at the end of the day, if it if it's a great story, subtlety again, it's optional, it's for the people who want it. You know, as time has passed, I've realized that I value it less. But this is one of those occasions where the lack of subtlety really did great on me because it just it got to the point where it's like, you know, we get it, you know, these characters are grinding on me to a certain degree. And aside from that, I feel that you know Carl Edward Wagner is good, he's good. I like him, I like his work, but he's not good enough to make me forget about subtlety, which is you know, which is what you kind of need. If you want subtlety to be irrelevant in your story, you have to like have a certain threshold of like goodness for me to like suspend my disbelief regarding the subtlety of the story. But I enjoyed myself, and I think that Kane is definitely worth a shot. Um, I probably paid too much money on like the two books I bought that basically collect his short stories and his novels, but I don't regret any of the time I've spent with Kane because again, the the things that he has attempted, like the thing that you know, the thing that Carl Edward Wagner tried to do with the Dark Crusade novel, where he he literally made a story about a hero creating a dark empire, about about you know, Kane basically starting a dark. Empire for entertainment, and that story was that story was awesome. You know, it was interesting to see Kane like play both sides of a conflict so that he could bring about the rise of a religious cult, only to turn on that cult in the end. You know, it was such a cool exploration, and you know, stuff like that. He's a character that a lot of the things that have not been done in fantasy yet, or don't seem to have been done in popular fantasy yet, were done in Kane. So it's definitely worth looking for that. And it's worth looking for it, you know, for inspiration for a character that's genuinely evil, not just an anti-hero. But uh, this is Rider Wander. Keep wondering.