The Riddle of Iron: The Answer

The time has come to face Crom.

It’s been a long journey. I could keep reading Appendix N entries and #IronAge offerings until I’m blue in the face, but the same answers keep bubbling to the surface.

I now climb the hill to stand before his judgmental eyes, wearied, palms sweaty, my first and only rejection letter in hand. I must give Crom my answer, whether I’m prepared to or not.

The lessons learned swirl through my head. He may laugh me out of Valhalla, or he may find me a warrior worthy of joining his army. Soon, I shall know my eternal fate.

What is the Iron Age?

A literary movement; A label, coined by Raz0rfist, applied to the already-existing passion and desire to make an endrun around corporate gatekeepers to not only tell better stories, but to see those stories published, creating a parallel market that fills the void created by the mainstream media by offering what they won’t.

Breaking Sword & Sorcery’s Rules

We’ve learned what Sword & Sorcery is, and which rules we can get away with breaking.

The main character doesn’t have to be a morally gray lone wolf who distrusts every facet of the establishment (government, religion, etc.). He should believe in something and have conviction in that belief.

His partners don’t have to all be redshirts or part of a temporary alliance; They can be allowed to stick around for the long-haul.

S&S characters don’t have to be meatheads. They can be interesting and nuanced. In mainstream audiences’ minds, S&S main characters devolved into this derivative of a chop-first-and-ask-questions-later version of Conan sometime during the 1980s through the popularity of movies and TV, a stigma the subgenre has yet to shake.

But even before that, many writers were creating what were colloquially known as “Clonans”, pale imitations of Conan, such as Lin Carter’s Thongor the Barbarian, or even the 1980 Saturday morning Hannah-Barbara-like cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian.

Conan is still the face of the subgenre, but he has become a caricature of his original self. And so many S&S stories have become unintentional parodies of what used to be an unexplored and exciting new narrative frontier.

Don’t think that gender-swapping Conan is an easy out, either – Discerning readers will see through your ruse, especially if she’s written without any female sensibilities. Even back in 1934, men and women were already writing excellent female S&S leads who were at least as interesting as Conan. But, especially these days, being female alone isn’t enough for a main character to stand out.

Magic systems that are well-defined and useable by the heroes and villains are more common now than they were pre-1980, but they can work just fine. In fact, a unique magic system can make an otherwise forgettable story quite memorable.

Level up your imagination when creating these worlds. Rather than piggybacking off of Nordic, Chinese, Japanese, or African culture, create your own mythology and world like Lord Dunsany did back in 1905 with The Gods of Pegāna. Never settle for generic, cliché settings filled with generic, cliché monsters unless being too creative is slowing down the pace of the story. Otherwise, try and break out of the tired fantasy trope ghetto.

In addition to unique magic systems, monsters, and worlds, Weird Fiction elements and highly original main characters exceed at making S&S tales stand out. Weird Fiction doesn’t have to mean “space tentacles”. It can and should be highly imaginative otherworldly craziness that allows you to flex your writing muscles like no other genre allows. In other words, don’t just borrow from or ape H.P. Lovecraft, use your imagination and you just might become the next great influential author everyone else tries to ape, instead.

The Gatekeepers

There are those who say S&S writers must read all of Appendix N, or that you should only read works written before 1980 to become a competent S&S writer. Those opinions are fine, but some go as far to say all literary works after 1980 are garbage and write off the entire IronAge movement, declaring it “dead”.

These are the fires that burn us and the hammers that try to beat us into submission. Fire and hammers are unpleasant, I admit, but iron needs adversity to grow stronger and become steel. If we prove ourselves resilient to such criticisms and keep improving ourselves, we will come out the other side indomitable.

Iron has the immutable property to become steel, and no one can take that away.

• We should find inspiration wherever it may come, be it from Clark Ashton Smith’s vast catalogue of short stories, Jack Vance’s great novels, new and interesting indie author books that catch your eye, or even from the most unexpected of places such as the excellent S&S-inspired video game Elden Ring.

• It stands to reason we must do things differently from TradPub if we want to defeat TradPub. The thing about timeless truths is they’re immutable, too:

“Our stories need to be written in service of timeless truths. They cannot be weighed down by Modernist, Post-Modernist, and Meta-Modernist platitudes.”

• We must resist bad actor gatekeepers and do our best to prevent bad ideologies from entering the movement ourselves.

• We should read widely, both new and old, and in and outside of our genres, understanding that (while many newer stories have lost their moral compass), there’s still brilliant authors out there who are finding ways to keep the art of storytelling interesting, relevant, and–most importantly–alive.
• We should understand and respect that, due to all the modern distractions available today, reading and writing takes more sacrifice, moderation, willpower, and self-control than it ever has at almost any other point in world history.

• We should know and understand that reading a book is never a waste of time. Even a bad novel can teach us what not to do, but there are still authors out there right now who have their hearts in the right place and are pouring blood, sweat, and tears into their work. If you kick someone like that down, they’re going to come back stronger and stronger, even if the 1980-and-earlier-only crowd will always be too blind to see the living legends standing right before them.
• And most importantly, we should understand that the true IronAgers will always survive and will always keep writing and doing what they love, even if the IronAge movement itself is one day doomed to fail.

The Answer to the Riddle of Steel

On the stage of world history, the fact that iron would sometimes come out of the bloomery as steel felt like magic to the blacksmiths. The scientific explanation turned out to be far more mundane, but as I said, the magic is often in the seeking, not in the finding.

And that’s exactly what I’ve been experiencing through this series of posts: In seeking the answer to the Riddle of Iron, I’ve felt that magic along the way. The magic is in the way we carbonize ourselves; by figuring out ways to be innovative within the subgenre, striking a careful balance between what OldPulp and NewPulp gets right.

Conan had to come up with both the question and answer to the Riddle of Steel in the 1982 Conan movie. The question was:

What is harder, tougher, and more resilient than steel?

The journey to find the answer comes from the wisdom garnered through trial by fire. By proving ourselves resilient during times of turmoil, we are forged in the fires and come out tempered, stronger and wiser than ever. Like a spiritual rebirth.

(For an expanded, full explanation of my answer to the Riddle of Steel, please click here.)

The Answer to the Riddle of Iron

Tempering a blade is much like the revision process. We harden ourselves through adversity–the heat and brutal hammering of negative feedback and rejection letters and naysayers–in a quest to constantly find ways to become better writers. If we prove ourselves resilient enough, we will eventually become like steel, a force sharp enough and strong enough that we can no longer be ignored by the big publishing houses.

But that’s only half the answer. The other half is having a strong enough conviction of spirit to prove ourselves indomitable in the face of death. Just like our main characters, we must believe in something with real spiritual conviction if we’re ever to overcome mediocrity and be worthy of joining Crom’s army. We cannot cave to a rejection letter or some guy on the internet telling us we suck at writing. If we fail to prove our naysayers wrong, we prove that we weren’t strong enough to be forged into steel in the first place. Which means we were never made of iron.

Make no mistake: We will encounter Thulsa Doom during our journey. He will take the form of internet trolls, review trolls, pompous gatekeepers, and smug TradPubbers who think they’re better than you. And when you finally overcome Thulsa, he’ll still feel superior to you, and even want you to thank him for being a bully:

Thulsa smugly tells Conan it’s only because his village was attacked and his family was killed that Conan mustered so much resolve in his heart in the first place.

Iron, when carbonized, becomes steel. If we’re part of the IronAge as we claim to be, if we can tolerate the heat of adversity, then surely, we can find a steely spiritual resolve within ourselves which lets us rise far, far above the current mediocrity of the mainstream.

That is my answer for Crom.