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Eric Dodd
New Zealand
Martinborough
Wairarapa
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If you recognise this heading, you might recall it from the back of the 1st Edition Dungeon Masters Guide in 1979. In it Gary Gygax talks about the fairy and folk tales that first captured his imagination for fantasy, leading him on to EC and other comics. Science fiction, fantasy and horror movies were also an influence, but these are not the subject of this posting.
Gary lists 29 authors, of which I've read the works of 23. Some are big fantasy names, some more active in science fiction and a few are now pretty much forgotten. I'll work my way through them as I read them or re-read them. I'll be trying to highlight why I think Gary listed them, what you might get out of them today as fiction and as a source for role-playing, as well as giving my opinion of the work.
Let's start with an author now better known as a young adult author (if at all): John Bellairs. The Face in the Frost was his first proper novel, inspired after reading the Lord of the Rings while studying in England. It was published in 1971 and was well received by such luminaries as Lin Carter and Ursula Le Guin. My copy cost $6 NZ from Arty Bees in Wellington and is the 1986 Ace Books printing. It has 174 pages.
Bellairs has admitted that his central wizard character, Prospero (not Shakespeare's one), has "most of (Bellairs) phobias and crotchets." The story involves two powerful wizards, Prospero in a southern country and Roger Bacon (yes the real one) in a northern country. Prospero begins to be menaced by powerful spirits that surround his house, seemingly intent on trapping him there. He manages to escape with the visiting Roger Bacon and the two wizards begin to unravel the mystery of who is haunting them.
The spirits that harass them are genuinely frightening. As they travel and begin to research the meaning of the symbols and phrases they find evidence that power attacking them is also damaging the world through unnatural weather. The to kingdoms are preparing for war, the more organised north blaming the south as the source of the evil. Despite being much more powerful than the average inhabitant of their world, the wizards are old and quite frail and have to steel themselves to face their foe and restore the world to rights. Many of the locals they encounter are unsympathetic to any magic. Prospero disguises himself in one town, before finding how the locals killed and cursed a wizard. With righteous angers he threatens to tie all a blacksmith's horse shoes into knots in order to get the tools he needs to reverse the curse.
Far to the north the two wizards find their foe in thrall to a powerful book which is spreading the evil across the world. Prospero and the captive wizard Melichus are linked by a magical snowglobe the two created together as students. By stealing this Prospero is able to distract Melichus, who is fought to a stand still in a magical duel. Melichus ends up trapped in the snowglobe, while the evil tome finishes reading itself and imolates, leaving the world in safety.
The characters of Prospero and Roger Bacon are nicely detailed. Prospero could be seen as a prototype of the kind of arch-wizards that TSR loved to create: the sort who could be summoned eating pizza and a grid-iron sweatshirt. Here he is more of an anachronistic character like T H White's Merlin - modern and ancient items are mixed together in his house, his magic mirror looks in an 1943 baseball game and he whistles tunes from many different eras. It would not take much to push him into a twee wizardly character, but here he shows genuine emotions and is interesting creation. the real world of England and Scotland is mixed up in this fantasy world without spelling out just how they are connected. Magic is memorised like the D&D system, but Prospero also uses charges tarot cards and other schools of magic to suit the effect he is after.
The first three pages are a scene-setting essay detailing the structure of the two kingdoms in the book. This is an interesting little piece and sets up the possible confrontation between a well-organised, military northern kingdom and the balkanised, disorganised southern lands. One of the southern rulers is a wizard who has no interest in outside affairs but spends his time in a giant planetarium. As they pass through different lands the two wizards get a real feeling of the escalation of the crisis.
There are some very nice set-pieces that have a real atmosphere and interesting ideas for an RPG sessions or two. Prospero travels to the haunted woods outside the magic-hating village to learn that a wizard was buried below a tombstone and cursed to have his soul stuck with his body. Prospero undertakes an exorcism, but the results are not what he expected...perhaps something else is buried under the ground. Prospero's encounter with the fake and real towns of Five Dials are also very inventive. The power of the evil book that leads people to read it, desperate to decipher it and learn its secrets is similar to some of Jorge Luis Borges and HP Lovecraft's works. D & D's cursed tomes seem similar.
There is an unfinished sequel to this book published in a 2009 anthology called Magic Mirrors, for alas Mr Bellairs is no longer with us. The Face in the Frost is still well worth a read for fantasy RPGers. It may inspire a magician-only RPG game, perhaps like Ars Magica (5th Edition) and may make you think about mixing the real world with your fantasy world (but be careful!)
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