Asotir the Talesman

All about your humble host.

If you dislike blog posts that are all about their authors, you’d better skip this one. If on the other hand you love to delve deeply into the souls of writers, you’re likely to find this post unsatisfying.

Sorry about that. It’s not like I try to be annoying. It’s simply that I’m caught in a dilemma between modesty, the acknowledgment that most people like to know something about those who are telling them tales, and the deep conviction that who I am is less important than what I tell.

Let’s face it: although Homer and Shakespeare and other talesmen past and present are interesting topics of speculation, the reason we all read the Iliad and attend performances of Hamlet is to be thrilled and enchanted by the tales themselves, regardless who wrote them.

I chose those two examples advisedly, not that I believe I’m in any way comparable to those staggering giants of our craft, but rather because of the way those tales came to be. Both were “true tales” of real historical events, passed down in various versions by many talesmen, and in the end finalized, and fixed into the forms we know today. The “authors” of those final versions we call Shakespeare and Homer, but many other voices ring out in the background, like the voices in a chorus, all blending together and none essential, though the loss of any one would diminish the effect of the whole.

There is nothing original (in the sense of the Romantic genius) in the tales I sign as Asotir. All have come from other sources, other voices, other talesmen, to whom I am greatly indebted and grateful, and without whom I would have no tales to tell in the first place.

And also, though I blush to say it, there is in the end nothing very interesting about me or my life. But you might want to know a little about the history of Asotir the Talesman, so here it is.

When I was very very young, my Mother and my Grandmother read to me. I learned to read relatively early, and being a sickly child soon became a voracious reader. I also fell in love with old movies which were still aired on local television stations at all hours of the day. When I was 11, I also fell in love with comic books, especially the Marvel hero tales created by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko with brilliant dialogue by Stan Lee. (I wish manga had been available to me then, as I loved the Astro Boy dubs that also aired on local telly.) I loved Edgar Rice Burroughs for his Barsoom and Tarzan novels, and happily watched the mid-1930s Universal serials of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe, that one very-enlightened local telly station aired instead of local news shows, at 6 pm. each weeknight.

I loved Thomas Hardy and his Return of the Native when I was 11, and the following year discovered JRR Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. Within a year I was also gorging my brain with paperback editions of Robert E. Howard’s Conan, Michael Moorcock’s Runestaff series, Isaac Asimov (Lucky Starr, Foundation, the Robots series) and Robert A Heinlein. Then there was the heady space opera of E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series. Another great favorite of mine was Eric Rucker Eddison and his Worm Ouroboros and Zimiamvian tales. That led me to his historical saga of Styrbiorn the Strong and his translation of the medieval Icelandic Egil’s Saga. From there, with a tip of the hat to Jack Kirby’s wonderful adaptations of Norse myths in the back pages of Journey Into Mystery (later retitled The Mighty Thor) it was only a step to reading translations of the other Icelandic sagas and about a dozen different translations of Beowulf.

Those are the roots of Asotir.