Argon’s Other Eye 3 – Demon in the Mercenary Sorcerer’s Eye of Skelos!

“Her black hair was so high-piled that he realised its glossy sheaves must be wrapped around a cone of some sort, perched atop her skull... A carcanet of gold wire, cloth of gold and what seemed to be a million pearls surrounded her covered her upper chest. Its bi-lobate lower curves were carelessly trapped in a bandeau of white silk that revealed the flesh tints within. Her great heavy girdle was also jewelled, and supported a long and voluminous skirt of pale yellow, shockingly side-slit...”

Perhaps you’re thinking that the above is a quote from Ye Olde Aquilonian Vogue, or an excerpt from What The Well-Dressed Cimmerian Who Likes Putting On Ladies’ Clothes And Why Shouldn’t He Is Wearing, you’d be wrong. It is, in fact, a brief paragraph taken from ‘Conan The Mercenary’, a book by the subject of this episode of Argon’s Other Eye, Andrew J. Offutt. I read a piece by a (female) writer once who was of the opinion that the author of a particular bit of porn must have been a woman because of the immense amount of detail that had been put into describing the clothing of the lady participants. Going by that, Andrew J. must be, like, 7 convents’ worth of lesbian vampire nuns. He isn't, of course, or rather wasn’t, since he’s sadly no longer with us;  I’d like to think that that description would cause him to do whatever the opposite of spinning in your grave is, though.

So far as I can tell, AJO, God-Emperor of Humanity, only worked on a couple of Conan books; he also wrote a number of sexy Sci-Fi stories for Playboy books, created Shadowspawn for the Thieves’ World series, had a character called Cormac MacArt (described as being ‘In the tradition of Conan’, only super Celtic, one assumes; as a side note, anything In the tradition of, Inspired by, or even tagged as being by the same publisher as Conan, as one not-very-good book I read was, is fair game for this blog, so BEWARE, CORMAC) and produced a bunch of other novels and edited a good few anthologies, too, which I’ll pass over for the time being.

My favourite thing of his, however, is the War of the Wizards trilogy, even if I’ve only read the first two parts. These follow the adventures of a buxom redhead pirate called Tiana, trying to find her kidnapped twin brother, reassemble a wizard and prevent various calamities which threaten the WHOLE DAMN WORLD. The aforementioned lesbian vampire nuns appear in vol. 1 (strictly speaking, nothing’s mentioned about them being lesbians, but I bet that particular bit was cut out by the editors, blast their eyes), as do a blistering series of adventures which continue throughout the two novels - sword fights , foiling villainous plots, narrow escapes from being sacrificed, eaten alive, etc., all with a female protagonist who has no trouble thrashing the opposition and frustrating their knavish tricks, sometimes while wearing (not very many) clothes, sometimes not, according to the God-Emperor’s whims. While his language isn’t as OTT as, say, Lin Carter’s, Andrew certainly does pay a great deal of attention to his descriptions of the female form, and War of The Wizards gives him ample (tee hee!) opportunities to do so.

“Great standing breasts, large and firm as melons”

“Short britches molded and revealed her luscious formations”

“Flaunting her deep full chest with arms akimbo”

“Tiana felt warmth in her leather-clad bottom, and it was pleasant”

“...the rounded thighs crowding her snug short breeks, the full perfect breasts so displayed”

“...the jiggle and bounce of her half displayed bosom”

You get the idea. Evidently, AJOGHOH really liked writing about boobs; luckily, I really like reading about ‘em, so that’s fine. I wonder who first coined the phrase ‘bi-lobate chest’, Mr Offutt or Robert Jordan, too; on the face of it, bosoms that resemble a huge pair of ears don’t really sound that appealing, but apparently it just means ‘divided into two lobes’. Enrich your word power the Cimmerian way.

Andrew’s Conan books are pretty superior, to be honest, massive amounts of sex withstanding – he doesn’t treat the man himself as a braying lunk who just slaughters everything in his path, which is always a temptation for the pressed-for-time S&S author. I do have a load of the Thieves’ World books, too, which I did like a lot – I may deal with those at a later date, although they’re slightly outside my pulpy remit. What I will get ahold of, 2^nd hand price tag of nearly £13 notwithstanding, is Ardor on Aros, a Sword & Planet adventure which is (apparently) the first to feature overt sex. Gor was a bit of a letdown for me, but I trust the God-Emperor to succeed where Wonder Norm failed.

His son, Chris Offutt, revealed in a blog post (which, sadly, I can’t find) that Andrew used to recite his stories to the kids to keep them entertained during long car journeys, with Mrs. Offutt giving him a gentle slap when things got too lively for impressionable young minds. Certainly whacks the kak out of ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, doesn’t it, especially if he started off with (say) Satana Enslaved...

Well, that’s your lot. Happy new year, and I’ll return in January with a juicy big dollop of Thongor for you.