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Afterword: The Origins of Bander
When I was in my early teens I discovered The Hobbit, and then soon thereafter The Lord of the Rings. Before long, I was devouring all sorts of fantasy novels, usually in the form of $2 paperbacks. I eagerly worked my way through stories by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Gene Wolfe, Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton, Michael Moorcock, Philip Jose Farmer, Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, Robert Lynn Asprin, and even John Norman. Most of these books were epic fantasy, but some were fantasy adventures with sci-fi overtones (like Philip Jose Farmer’s seminal World of Tiers series).
In college I prepared for my major in English/Literary Writing by studying the classic hero tales like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and poring through critical studies like The Morphology of the Folktale and The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama. At the same time, I delved into (then)-contemporary fantasy novels by Terry Brooks, Stephen R. Donaldson, Raymond E. Feist, and David Gemmell—among others.
But after college something happened. I got burned out by the fantasy genre. It seemed that most of the newer fantasy novels I came across were rehashes of Tolkien. You know the kind. These were books populated with a seemingly-random collection of faeries, trolls, dwarves, elves, lords of darkness, and other creatures with names cluttered with double vowels and diacritical marks. Usually there was a young squire and a magic sword or an amulet or something. Maybe even a pet baby dragon. I can’t remember all these clones, since they all blurred together in my mind, but collectively they committed the worst sin any work of fiction can commit. They were boring.
So I turned to other genres: mysteries, crime novels, and especially thrillers. I began with Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, then moved on to Michael Crichton, Elmore Leonard and John D. MacDonald. At the same time I was rediscovering classic Western movies like The Searchers and My Darling Clementine. In the late 1990s, I came across the Reacher series by Lee Child and appreciated how Child fused Sherlock Holmes with Superman, bringing together brains and brawn in one hero (although arguably Jack Reacher is a spiritual descendant of both Robert B. Parker’s Spenser as well as the pulp hero Doc Savage). In interviews, Lee Child admits that Reacher is an archetypal character who has existed in literature for thousands of years: the knight errant. Child further compares his creation to James Bond, Jason Bourne, and even Jack Bauer.
It got me thinking. What if I re-imagined the fantasy genre through the lens of a thriller or mystery—a medieval 24 or Mission Impossible? What if I had a fantasy hero who was as powerful as Conan, but he was also a thinking-man’s barbarian? What if I avoided the typical fantasy tropes: elves, dwarves, dragons, and hobbits in favor of gritty realism, brawling, and a system of magic that felt more like science than mumbo jumbo?
The result is the book that is currently lighting up your e-reader. Think of it as part fantasy, part thriller—with a dash of two-fisted pulp adventure. I call it “hardboiled adventure.”
I hope you enjoyed A Killing in the Air. Bander’s adventure continues with The Donden Cage, the next volume in The Further Adventures of Bander — available now. To get early notification of future Bander adventures, please sign up at: https://www.randynargi.com/map/
(I’ll also send you a free desktop wallpaper map of Northern Harion).
Thanks again for adventuring with Bander.
About the Author
Randy Nargi is an award-winning writer and film director who lives in Central Oregon with his wife (and frequent collaborator), actress Jessi Badami. Mr. Nargi received his BA in Literary Writing from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is a former technology entrepreneur and advertising executive who grew up in New York and has lived in London and Seattle.
More at: randynargi.com
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