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Karl Edward Wagner (1945–1994)

Author of Conan: The Road of Kings

108+ Works 3,774 Members 67 Reviews 28 Favorited
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About the Author

Image credit: Copyright © Beth Gwinn

Series

Works by Karl Edward Wagner

Conan: The Road of Kings (1979) 309 copies
Darkness Weaves (1970) 304 copies
Bloodstone (1974) 297 copies
Dark Crusade (1976) 259 copies
Killer (1985) 259 copies
Night Winds (1978) 229 copies
Death Angel's Shadow (1973) 223 copies
In a Lonely Place (1983) 133 copies
Legion from the Shadows (1976) 109 copies
Echoes of Valor (1987) — Editor — 76 copies
The Book of Kane (1985) 65 copies
Why Not You and I? (1987) 61 copies
Tell Me, Dark (1992) 58 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories Series VIII (1980) — Editor — 58 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: XVIII (1990) — Editor — 57 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series IX (1981) — Editor — 55 copies
Echoes of Valor II (1989) — Editor — 51 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIII (1985) — Editor — 50 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series X (1982) — Editor — 48 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: XIX (1991) — Editor — 47 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIV (1986) — Editor — 46 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XI (1983) — Editor — 46 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: XXII (1994) — Editor — 42 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: XXI (1993) — Editor — 41 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: XVI (1988) — Editor — 41 copies
The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX (1992) — Editor — 36 copies
Echoes of Valor III (1991) — Editor — 35 copies
Exorcisms and Ecstasies (1997) 33 copies
Savage Heroes: Tales of Sorcery and Black Magic (1977) — Contributor — 19 copies
Intensive Scare (1990) — Editor — 16 copies
Horrorstory (1989) 12 copies
Horrorstory: Volume Four (1990) 8 copies
Sticks {novelette} (1974) 8 copies
Ravens Eyrie (1977) 7 copies
Undertow (1977) 7 copies
Two Suns Setting (1976) 6 copies
HorrorStory Volume Three (1991) — Editor — 5 copies
Sign of the Salamander (1975) 3 copies
The Dark Muse (1975) 3 copies
Misericorde 3 copies
In The Lair Of Yslsl (1974) 2 copies
KANE (5 VOLUMES) (2015) 2 copies
Kane. La saga (2022) 2 copies
Lacunae 2 copies
Red Harvest 2 copies
Lynortis' Vergeltung (1974) 2 copies
One Paris Night 2 copies
The Other One 2 copies
Locked Away 1 copy
Midnight Sun 1 copy
Diagnose: Exitus (1994) 1 copy
Final Cut 1 copy
.220 Swift 1 copy

Associated Works

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1989) — Contributor — 987 copies
The Dark Descent (1987) — Contributor — 719 copies
Dark Forces (1980) — Contributor — 566 copies
American Supernatural Tales (2007) — Contributor — 441 copies
Michael Moorcock's Elric: Tales of the White Wolf (1994) — Contributor — 391 copies
Lovecraft's Monsters (2014) — Contributor — 347 copies
The Mammoth Book of Vampires (1992) — Contributor — 337 copies
Red Nails (1977) — Editor, some editions — 312 copies
A Whisper of Blood (1991) — Contributor — 256 copies
Dark Love (1995) — Contributor — 251 copies
Borderlands 1 (1990) — Contributor — 233 copies
100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories (1995) — Contributor — 217 copies
The Hastur Cycle (1993) — Author — 208 copies
The Book of Cthulhu 2 (2012) — Contributor — 207 copies
The Mammoth Book of Zombies (1993) — Contributor — 201 copies
Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (1981) — Contributor — 196 copies
The New Lovecraft Circle (1996) — Contributor — 186 copies
The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men (1994) — Contributor — 160 copies
The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (2012) — Contributor — 153 copies
Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror (1991) — Contributor — 146 copies
Cutting Edge (1985) — Contributor — 126 copies
Vampires: The Greatest Stories (1997) — Contributor — 121 copies
The Mammoth Book of Monsters (2007) — Contributor — 121 copies
Splatterpunks II: Over the Edge (1993) — Contributor — 119 copies
Silver Scream (1969) — Contributor — 110 copies
Phantastic Book of Ghost Stories (1990) — Contributor — 109 copies
A Taste for Blood (1992) — Contributor — 107 copies
The Mammoth Book of Terror (1992) — Contributor — 100 copies
The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 3 (1977) — Contributor — 100 copies
The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (1994) — Contributor — 98 copies
Whispers: An Anthology of Fantasy and Horror (1977) — Contributor — 95 copies
Metahorror (1988) — Contributor — 91 copies
The American Fantasy Tradition (2002) — Contributor — 89 copies
Best New Horror (1989) — Contributor — 87 copies
The Hastur Cycle, Second Revised Edition (1997) — Contributor — 85 copies
The Mammoth Book of New Terror (2004) — Contributor — 85 copies
Best New Horror 2 (1991) — Contributor — 77 copies
The Ultimate Witch (1993) — Contributor — 75 copies
The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror (2021) — Contributor — 75 copies
Best New Horror 3 (1992) — Contributor — 73 copies
Demons (2011) — Contributor — 64 copies
Night Visions 2: Dead Image (1985) — Contributor — 64 copies
100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment (1998) — Contributor — 63 copies
Who Fears the Devil? {unspecified} (1963) — Introduction, some editions — 63 copies
Confederacy of the Dead (1993) — Contributor — 61 copies
The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales (1988) — Contributor — 55 copies
Best New Horror 4 (1993) — Contributor — 54 copies
It Came from the Drive-In (1996) — Contributor — 54 copies
100 Hilarious Little Howlers (1999) — Contributor — 53 copies
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 08 (1997) — Contributor — 52 copies
Fine Frights (Anthology) (1988) — Contributor — 51 copies
A Quest-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic (2002) — Contributor — 50 copies
The Architecture of Fear (1987) — Contributor — 50 copies
The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 10 (1984) — Contributor — 49 copies
Ripper (1988) — Contributor — 49 copies
Red dreams (1984) — Introduction, some editions — 48 copies
100 Fiendish Little Frightmares (1997) — Contributor — 46 copies
The Century's Best Horror Fiction: Volume 2 (2011) — Contributor — 46 copies
Forbidden Acts (1995) — Contributor — 43 copies
The Best New Horror: Volume Six (1995) — Contributor — 43 copies
Visitations of the Night (Grails) (1994) — Contributor — 42 copies
Whispers III (1981) — Contributor — 38 copies
Touch Wood (1993) — Contributor — 36 copies
The Vampire Hunter's Casebook (1996) — Contributor — 36 copies
Walls of Fear (1990) — Contributor — 34 copies
100 Tiny Tales of Terror (1996) — Contributor — 33 copies
Whispers V (1985) — Contributor — 33 copies
Top Fantasy (1974) — Contributor — 33 copies
The Complete Masters of Darkness (1991) — Contributor — 31 copies
Shangri-La (1982) — Contributor, some editions — 29 copies
Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead (2011) — Contributor — 29 copies
Swords Against Darkness (2016) — Contributor — 26 copies
Grails: Quests, Visitations and Other Occurrences (1992) — Contributor — 23 copies
Dark Terrors (1996) — Contributor — 22 copies
Night chills : stories of suspense and horror (1975) — Contributor — 22 copies
Summer Chills (2007) — Contributor — 21 copies
The Giant Book of Terror (1994) — Contributor — 20 copies
South From Midnight (1994) — Contributor — 13 copies
Gaslight and Ghosts (1988) — Contributor — 9 copies
The Best of Whispers (1994) — Contributor; Contributor — 6 copies
Secret City: Strange Tales of London (1997) — Contributor — 5 copies

Tagged

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Common Knowledge

Members

Discussions

THE DEEP ONES: "In the Pines" by Karl Edward Wagner in The Weird Tradition (December 2023)
Reading Kane by Karl Edward Wagner in The Weird Tradition (July 2021)

Reviews

Three stories of death for Kane. Cold light was not on par with Mirage and Reflections for the Winter of my Soul.
Kane is a glorious sword and sorcery character that also explores the the philosophical questions of life and death. Truly more than what is expected with a curious glance. Delve deeper and enjoy the world of Kane.
 
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wvlibrarydude | 5 other reviews | Jan 14, 2024 |
Sword and sorcery at it's best. Kane is not a good guy!
 
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wvlibrarydude | 3 other reviews | Jan 14, 2024 |
This 2023 edition of the 1983 collection of Karl Edward Wagner's short horror fiction comes with a brief new introduction by Ramsey Campbell, which references certain sources and influences in addition to recounting personal conversation with the author. The book is a collection of eight of the best stories of its genre to have been written in the second half of the twentieth century.

"In the Pines" is in many respects--and by internal admission--an updating of the 1911 Oliver Onions story "The Beckoning Fair One." It has all of the evil inexorability of Onions' tale with none of its quaint moral circumspection.

"Where the Summer Ends" similarly shows roots in earlier weird fiction, riffing on the Little People of Arthur Machen's stories such as "The Shining Pyramid," but using an American setting familiar to Wagner, and enriched with believable late-20th-century characters.

The epistolary elements of "Sticks" and the character of its conspiracy is very reminiscent of one of my favorite Lovecraft stories, "The Whisperer in Darkness." Its factual basis makes it very eerie indeed!

"The Fourth Seal" is about scientific research and inspired by Wagner's time in medical school, but it is really an incisive and dismaying political parable.

The well-twisted revenge tale "More Sinned Against" is told with understated and economical prose. Like some of the other stories in this collection, though perhaps to a greater degree, it gives unflinching accounts of drug abuse and sexual exploitation.

".220 Swift" returns to the Machenesque in more of a pulp action mode, tying in Robert E. Howard's ideas about Bran Mak Morn and an assortment of other lore. This piece is a very full novella with multiple arcs and resolutions.

"The River of Night's Dreaming" is in the jauniste mode, drawing on the mythemes founded in Robert W. Chambers' The Yellow Sign. It's evidently the only story in which Wagner mined this particular vein, but for my money, the puzzle-box narrative it offers is one of the best examples of the form. It offers a very unreliable viewpoint character whose homicidal madness is perhaps of a piece with a desire to turn back time, even while her memories are inaccessible or impaired, and time itself might be the very river of night's dreaming, which permits only a little swim upstream before the swimmer is exhausted.

The final story "Beyond Any Measure" shares the source for its title with "The River of Night's Dreaming" in the libretto of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This one concerns reincarnation and combines it in an unexpected way with a supremely traditional sort of gothic horror in a 1980s London setting.

Wagner's own afterword discusses his authorial process and some surprising details about his intent in stories that can be very murky about the "actual" conditions that they are describing and the messages he sought to convey.
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1 vote
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paradoxosalpha | 1 other review | Dec 9, 2023 |
One in a long running series, this was published in 1985 to showcase the best stories of 1984. Not all are what I would catagorise as horror: for example, Mrs Todd's Shortcut by Stephen King is about ageing, loss, new beginnings and other dimensions, and would perhaps fit better in a fantasy collection, which is not to minimise its impact as a great story. Similarly, Dinner Party by Gardner Dozois is an alternative future tale in which the United States is building up to a second Civil War, but foregrounds a story of the horror of what human beings can do to each other mentally and emotionally as well as physically.

Tiger in the Snow by Daniel Wynn Barber is a poignant story of a young boy's last hours, while The Thing in the Bedroom by David Langford is a tongue in cheek story which makes fun of the cliches of the genre. The End of the World by James B Hemesath, set in a remote part of the USA that is suffering a long drought, is another story of the horrific crimes human beings perpetrate against each other. Never Grow Up, one of two stories by John Gordon in this volume, is also in this vein and takes the form of a young boy telling the story of his life with his parents to the grave of a long-dead girl. Fred Chappell's Weird Tales is a Cthulhu Mythos tale with a twist in which the real life characters of H P Lovecraft and others appear.

Stories that "fit" the traditional genre include Daniel S Schow's Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You about an embittered Vietnam veteran and Leslie Halliwell's Hands with Long Fingers, a traditional story of supernatural vengeance. Talking in the Dark by Dennis Etchison is a rather nasty story where a reclusive and socially awkward fan gets the chance to meet the author whose work he idolises. The other stories in the collection are fairly standard supernatural revenge type tales, but for the standout stories that don't fit a formula, the collection merits 4 stars.
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kitsune_reader | 1 other review | Nov 23, 2023 |

Lists

Awards

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Associated Authors

Ramsey Campbell Contributor
Robert E. Howard Contributor
Henry Kuttner Contributor
C. L. Moore Contributor
Kent Williams Illustrator
Clark Ashton Smith Contributor
Daphne Castell Contributor
Clifford Ball Contributor
David A. Drake Contributor
Dennis Etchison Contributor
H. P. Lovecraft Contributor
Charles L. Grant Contributor
David J. Schow Contributor
Wayne Allen Sallee Contributor
M. John Harrison Contributor
Jack Dann Contributor
Manly Wade Wellman Contributor
Gardner Dozois Contributor
Paul M. Sammon Contributor
David Langford Contributor, Cover artist
Nicholas Royle Contributor
D. F. Lewis Contributor
A. F. Kidd Contributor
Stephen King Contributor
Michael Whelan Cover artist
Simon Clark Contributor
David Campton Contributor
Steve Sneyd Contributor
Harlan Ellison Contributor
David Drake Contributor
Patrick Mcleod Contributor
Jeffrey Goddin Contributor
T. E. D. Klein Contributor
Joel Lane Contributor
Roger Johnson Contributor
Brian Lumley Contributor
James B. Hemesath Contributor
T. Winter-Damon Contributor
Vincent Mchardy Contributor
David G. Rowlands Contributor
John Alfred Taylor Contributor
Leslie Halliwell Contributor
Kim Newman Contributor
Kim Antieau Contributor
Joey Froehlich Contributor
Sam Moskowitz Contributor
Sheila Hodgson Contributor
Michael Shea Contributor
Fritz Leiber Contributor
Hugh B. Cave Contributor
Eddy C. Bertin Contributor
George Hay Contributor
Alan Peter Ryan Contributor
Richard A. Moore Contributor
Davis Grubb Contributor
Russell Kirk Contributor
John Tibbetts Contributor
Kevin A. Lyons Contributor
Robert Keefe Contributor
Basil A. Smith Contributor
F. Paul Wilson Contributor
W. H. Pugmire Contributor
Robert Frazier Contributor
Peter Shilston Contributor
Simon MacCulloch Contributor
Neil Olonoff Contributor
Ian McDowell Contributor
Bruce Boston Contributor
Scott D. Yost Contributor
Leigh Brackett Contributor
Ray Bradbury Contributor
Forrest J Ackerman Contributor
John Brizzolara Contributor
Fred Chappell Contributor
John Gordon Contributor
Charles Wagner Contributor
Jovan Panich Contributor
Daniel Wynn Barber Contributor
Steve Vernon Contributor
Phillip C. Heath Contributor
J. Michael Reaves Contributor
C. S. Fuqua Contributor
David Niall Contributor
Les Freeman Contributor
J. L. Comeau Contributor
Sean Brodrick Contributor
G. W. Perriwils Contributor
Mike Newland Contributor
Andrew J. Wilson Contributor
Richard McMahan Contributor
Conrad Hill Contributor
Charles Ardai Contributor
Jeff Hecht Contributor
David S. Garnett Contributor
Leonard Carpenter Contributor
Philip Nutman Contributor
Ed Gorman Contributor
David B. Silva Contributor
Michael Swanwick Contributor
William F. Nolan Contributor
Christopher Burns Contributor
Tanith Lee Contributor
Stephen F. Wilcox Contributor
Robert Hood Contributor
Howard Goldsmith Contributor
Frances Garfield Contributor
Donald Tyson Contributor
Richard Laymon Contributor
Al Sarrantonio Contributor
Jeffrey Thomas Contributor
Jr. Del Stone Contributor
Robert Deveraux Contributor
Chet Williamson Contributor
Nancy Kilpatrick Contributor
Lisa Tuttle Contributor
Lillian Csernica Contributor
Deidra Cox Contributor
F. A. McMahan Contributor
Sean Doolittle Contributor
Charles M. Saplak Contributor
Terry Lamsley Contributor
Conrad Williams Contributor
Adam Meyer Contributor
Scott Thomas Contributor
Paul Pinn Contributor
Gregory Nicoll Contributor
Mark McLaughlin Contributor
Jane Yolen Contributor
Greg Egan Contributor
R. Chetwynd-Hayes Contributor
Jack Williamson Contributor
Nictzin Dyalhis Contributor
C. M. Kornbluth Contributor
Richard McKenna Contributor
Arthur Conan Doyle Contributor
John Gawsworth Contributor
Seabury Quinn Contributor
George Barr Cover artist
Les Edwards Cover artist, Illustrator
Frank Frazetta Cover artist
Chris Achilleos Cover artist
Nick Bantock Cover artist
Lore Strassl Translator
Klaus D. Schiemann Illustrator
Tim Kirk Illustrator
Matt Stawicki Cover artist
Christos Achilleos Cover artist
Erhard Ringer Illustrator
Tom Edwards Cover artist
Martin Baresch Translator
Tom Kidd Cover artist
Grant Griffin Illustrator
Jeff Jones Cover artist
Ken Kelly Cover artist
Rick Berry Cover artist
J. K. Potter Cover artist
Sam Rakeland Cover artist
Jim Pitts Illustrator

Statistics

Works
108
Also by
89
Members
3,774
Popularity
#6,716
Rating
3.8
Reviews
67
ISBNs
139
Languages
8
Favorited
28

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