Elak of Atlantis

Read/Watch 'em In Order #100

Henry Kuttner was a great writer, producing a quite a large body of work despite dying relatively young at the age of 42. His stories included science fiction, fantasy, horror and even some superhero comic book scripts for DC's Green Lantern during the 1940s.

One of his ventures were four sword-and-sorcery tales written for Weird Tales (three of them in 1938 and one more in 1941). These tales involve a wandering adventure with a royal background--Elak of Atlantis.

The first Elak tale was published in the May and June 1938 issues of Weird Tales. Titled "Thunder in the Dawn," it is a masterful example of world-building, includes a number of great characters (both good guys and bad guys) and includes some battle scenes that come close to equaling Robert E. Howard in their excitement. Much of the rest of the story reminds me of A. Merritt, with perhaps a dash of Clark Ashton Smith thrown in.

Elak is indeed a wandering adventurer, but he was once a prince in the kingdom of Cyrena, located at the northern end of the continent of Atlantis. He left after killing his stepfather. We are never really given the details of this, though we are assured several times that it was a fair fight.  Elak let his brother take the throne of Cyrena and began to indulge his wanderlust. Somewhere along the line, he gained a sidekick--a fat and perpetually drunken swordsman named Lycon. But even if Lycon drinks too much, he's intensely loyal and good in a fight.

Elak had intended never to return to Cyrena, but a Druid wizard named Dalan finds him and tells him an evil wizard, backed by an army of Vikings, has taken over the kingdom and holds Elak's brother a prisoner. So Elak has to go home--he's the only one who can unite the local chieftains into an army.

But before heading home, Elak insists on paying one last visit to his girlfriend Velia. The trouble with that is Velia is married to the local ruler. She's not married to the ruler by choice, but was sold to him by her family. Normally, adultery is my Berserk Button and there are few protagonists in fiction who can commit this particular sin without instantly losing my sympathy. But Velia was forced into a marriage to a brutal man who would literally skin her alive if she crossed him. So I think we can safely give Elak and Velia a pass for running off together when the husband catches them.

Thus Velia is added to the group for their voyage back to Cyrena. It's an eventful trip, with Velia's husband pursuing and the wizard ruling Cyrena tossing some pretty powerful magic at them. At one point, Elak ends up in a strange dimension that is literally populated by dead gods and only escapes when someone else sacrifices more than her life to save him.

All of this is being told to us in vivid and often powerful prose that brings the characters and their strange, magic-drenched world to life. And this continues throughout the novella as Elak eventually leads an army against the Viking invaders and fights a long, brutal battle. Eventually, he and Dalan journey into the lair of the evil wizard, where Elak learns one effective way of imprisoning someone is to make that person a god.

It's an exciting and gripping story, the longest of the four Elak tales as it effectively introduces us to Elak and his companions, then tosses them into a bizarre and breathtaking adventure.