Charles R. Saunders — the Father of Sword and Soul
How a quiet journalist from Nova Scotia created a new genre of Fantasy-literature
Back in April 2020, when I started planning and drafting my article on Black Fantasy writers, one of the first names I came across was Charles Robert Saunders — a former-journalist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and famed as the “Father of Sword and Soul”.
Sword and Soul, as it turns out, is an offshoot of “Sword and Sorcery”, a genre of Fantasy coined by Fritz Lieber in the 1960s. “Sword and Sorcery” typically entails action-packed adventures in which mighty heroes travel distant lands, fighting various foes including brigands, sorcerers, witches and monster. The best example of this genre is Robert E. Howard’s “Conan the Barbarian” stories.
However, “Sword and Soul” branches out of “Sword and Sorcery” in terms of its inspirational-material. As the writer and publisher Milton Davis puts it, Sword and Soul is adventure fiction based on African myth, history and culture, and was coined by Charles Saunders in the 1980s, with his own take on the Conan archetype: Imaro of the Ilyassia. It differs from Howard’s take on the genre, which borrows elements and scenery from various Celtic, Greek and Scandinavian cultures.
But where did it all begin? And what became of this pioneer and his work?
Growing up with Warriors
Saunders was born in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania in 1946. Growing up, Saunders was first introduced to Science Fiction at age 12 when he read a short-story by Andre Norton. From here, he devoured the works of Robert Heinlein, Hal Clement, and Murray Leinster. He also became enamoured with Edward Rice Burroughs, such as “Tarzan” and “John Carter of Mars”. When he discovered Fantasy by reading Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, Saunders claims it was then that he decided to become a writer.
However, as much as he enjoyed reading about Tarzan and Conan, Saunders eventually realised that there were no characters that looked like him, and if there were, they were typically portrayed as cannibals or uncivilised brutes. It was while attending Lincoln University that he came to this realisation, helped along by the ongoing debates on Civil-rights and African identity politics among his classmates. He voiced his frustration in an 1975 essay entitled “Die, Black Dog: A look at racism in Fantasy Literature”. However, he still wanted to become a writer.
“I had a choice: I could either stop reading SF and fantasy, or try to do something about my dissatisfaction with it by writing my own stories and trying to get them published. I chose the latter course.” — Saunders from Interview with Amy Harlib.
And so Saunders began reading about African history, myth and culture. From these, he conjured up a new, mythical continent, vast and diverse, fraught with peril, and named it Nyumbani — after the Swahili word for “Home”.
But who would be the person to brave this new world? Saunders took inspiration from various African hero-myths — such as Kimera of Ugandan myth. However, he has mused that his hero came to him while watching one of the old Tarzan-movies with Johnny Weissmuller playing the half-naked, ululating jungle-warrior. Saunders says he fantasised, while watching, what it would look like if a Black man stepped out of the bushes, and proceeded to “kick Tarzan’s ass”. That became Imaro, the exiled warrior of the Ilyassai, who wanders Nyumbani on a quest to find his true identity.
The Rise of Imaro
Like Robert E. Howard, Saunders began writing Imaro as a series of short-stories, which he submitted to various “zines” — such as “Dark Fantasy” and “Weirdbook”. It was not the most lucrative starting-place for a writer, as Saunders observed in one post on his blog:
“I had stories published in magazines that paid in copies, and sometimes fractions of a cent per word. One of them famously paid one tenth of a cent per word, meaning you had to write 10 words to make a penny! [But] writing for the “zines” was a good way of honing the craft, getting feedback and establishing the beginnings of a readership”
Eventually, Saunders’ Imaro-stories caught the attention of Sci-fi writer Lin Carter, who decided to include it in his anthology The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories, in 1979. Carter’s anthology was published by DAW Books — a publishing house devoted exclusively to Science Fiction and Fantasy literature — and its founder and editor, Donald A. Wollheim, approached Saunders with a book-deal. And so it was that in 1981, Imaro: the Epic Novel of a Jungle Hero appeared on store-shelves. Saunders would write two more instalments in the Imaro epic: The Quest for Cush in 1984, and The Trail of Bohu in 1985. By the third book’s release, Saunders was already adding the final touches to the fourth instalment — The Naama War — when the sky darkened.
The Ghost of Edward Rice Burroughs
From the outset, the Imaro-series met a major snag before the launch of Imaro. In an interview with Amy Hardib, Saunders explained that DAW Books had decided to add the tagline: “The Epic Novel of a Black Tarzan” to the first book. This was picked up by the Burroughs-estate, who threatened to sue unless the tag was changed. This forced the publishers to reprint the books with a revised tag-line, which delayed the release date by a month, and caused Imaro to lose its stride with book-sellers. Things did not get better from there. All three Imaro books, while received warmly by the critics and forming a robust fan-base, sold poorly, so much so that in the end, DAW Books told Saunders they would not publish any more of his stories.
The Wizard in the North
In 1969, after graduating from Lincoln, Saunders had been called in to serve in Vietnam. He resorted to relocate to Canada, living for a few years in Ontario, before moving to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was here that he wrote the Imaro stories, and got the devastating news DAW Books.
In Nova Scotia, Saunders made a living as a teacher and a civil-servant, before getting hired as a columnist for the Halifax Daily News in 1989, where he remained until the paper shut down in 2008.
Throughout this period, Saunders kept writing, expanding his repertoire. He wrote two screenplays— “Amazons” in 1986, and “Stormquest” in 1987, two films, he conceded, were so awful he refused to even name them. He also wrote a radio-play about the Black Canadian boxing-champion Sam Langford, which aired on CBC in 1987. Saunders even wrote a book on African-Canadian boxing — Sweat and Soul: The saga of black boxers from the Halifax forum to Caesar’s Palace (1990). He also devoted himself to writing monographs about the African community in Nova Scotia, such as Share & Care: The Story of the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children (1994), and Black and Bluenose: the Contemporary History of a Community (1998).
However, he never stopped writing fiction, and while writing about boxing and the African-Canadian Community, he decided to step away from the fast-paced and action-packed style of Robert E. Howard that had defined Imaro, to something more akin to J.R.R. Tolkien. This became Abengoni, a four-part epic about African magicians fighting the forces of evil. However, he was unable to find a publisher who would accept the series.
But Saunder was also eager to return to Nyumbani, and decided to introduce a new hero to his mythical continent: Dossouye, a warrior-woman of the Abomey-kingdom, who goes out to make a home for herself in the wilderness, aided by her war-bull, Gbo. In an interview with Steven Tompkins, Saunders stated that he drew inspiration from the Dahomey warrior-culture of Benin, just as the Ilyssai were based on the Masai, and that Abomey was also located in Nyumbani. He even intended for Imaro and Dossouye to meet at some point. When it came to publishing the exploits of his new protagonist, Saunders decided to go back to his early successes, and submitted the warrior-woman’s stories to various anthologies such as Amazons! (1979) and Sword and Sorceress (1984), giving Saunders’ fans a new hero to cheer for.
But would those same fans ever get to see Imaro again? That remained to be seen.
Night Shade Books
In July 2003, Saunders received an email from Benjamin Szumzkyj, an Australian fan of Imaro, who was eager to see the warrior’s exploits back in print. Szumzkyj told Saunders of Night Shade Books, a small press based in San Francisco, that focused on Science Fiction and Fantasy. Saunders proceeded to contact Night Shade and asked if they would be willing to reprint his Imaro series, along with some of his new stories.
And so in 2006 and 2007, two new editions of Imaro and The Quest for Qush appeared on the market, along with plans to publish a reprint of The Trail of Bohu, and the long-awaited sequel. That was until, after the release of The Quest for Qush, that Night Shade informed Saunders that they would be pulling-the-plug on the franchise.
Angered and disbelieving, Saunders asked then-editor Jason Williams how this could be happening.
“Jason told me […] the books did get into some bookstores, but not as many as Night Shade needed. There were a lot of returns from the stores that did stock the books. The books — especially the first one — got a lot of good reviews, but I was hoping to get Imaro reviewed in hip-hop magazines such as Vibe and The Source, and they passed on it, if they ever even considered reviewing it in the first place. It was as though there was a wall of some kind standing between my books and the people who might want to read them. Jason told me that much of the reaction he got from certain booksellers can be summed up this: they believed that fantasy fiction is a “white realm”. This wasn’t just a white booksellers’ attitude. Some of the Black booksellers said the same thing.” — from interview with Steven Tompkins.
The Fellow-pioneer
But while Saunders had been unlucky with traditional publishing, there was still hope, and he didn’t have to wait eleven years for it.
Around the same time as Night Shade Books was giving up on Imaro, Saunders was approached by another fan, Richard Tyler, aka Uraeus. Uraeus was working on forming a print-on-demand publishing company, Sword & Soul Media, and wanted to start with Saunders’ Dossoye-stories. Saunders agreed, resolving to have all his books, including the final instalment of Imaro, published through Sword & Soul Media. And so, in 2009, fans were finally able to pick up the sequel, The Naama War.
Uraeus also introduced Saunders to Milton Davis, a Chemistry-grad from Georgia who had, serendipitously, been writing the very same material as Saunders. Like Saunders, Milton had grown up reading Sword and Sorcery stories, and noticed the lack of African representation, and set out to write his own take on it, eventually self-publishing Meji, a story of two brothers raised in different cultures and seeking their destinies in the wilderness. From that point on, Davis and Saunders collaborated on various anthologies, including Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology (2011), Changa’s Safari (2011), and Griots: Sisters of the Spear (2011). They also collaborated on a fourth novel set in Nyumbani, Nyumbani Tales (2017), this one composed of various short-stories involving other characters from the mythic homeland.
Another pioneer was Balogun Odjetade, a native of Chicago who grew up on a steady diet of comic-books, martial-arts movies, and fantasy board-games. With a resume that includes acting, screenwriting, production, and teaching African martial-arts, Saunders went so far as to call Odjetade a “Blackaissance Man”. Like Davis, Odjetade devotes himself to introducing Africa-based myth and culture into various entertainment arenas, such as Fantasy role-playing games.
Saunders also made the acquaintance of producer Taaq Kirksey, who in 2006 told Saunders he would try and put Imaro on the big screen, a promise he’s still trying to hold.
The Passing of a Wizard
Despite his large and eager following, Saunders kept a low profile throughout his life. Colleagues from his time at the Halifax Daily News described him as “The second quietest journalist he had ever met”.
After the paper’s closure in 2008, Saunders became ever more secluded. His apartment at Primrose Street in Dartmouth, had no internet connection, no landline, nor did he own a mobile phone. Instead he would head to the local library once a week to use their computers to catch up with his friends online. In fact, very few of those who worked closely with him ever met him as a fiction-writer. He and Davis kept contact through birthday cards. In 2009, Kirksey sent Saunders a message telling he would be visiting him in Nova Scotia. Saunders didn’t get the message, and Kirksey had to almost barge into Saunders’ flat before finally reaching him.
Then in May 2020, the announcement came that Charles Saunders had passed away at the age of 73. His death was mourned within the Fantasy Community, who tweeted their respected and wrote tributes. Among the mourners is Kirksey, who remains determined to see Imaro become a motion picture. His other colleagues, including Milton Davis, continues to foster and build the community of Sword and Soul fiction through his publishing company MVmedia LLC.
Today, Sword and Soul forms a small but robust community of writers, made possible by online publishing and print-on-demand. Indeed, it continued to grow, featuring not only in books, but also comic-books and board-games.
Sword and Soul
Among the various interviews that Saunders gave over the years, he was often asked what he thought the future held for not only the sub-genre he had invented, but also for other Black fantasy writers struggling to bring their stories into the open market.
In an interview with the Innsmouth Free Press in 2010, he was asked what his thoughts were on the future of Sword and Sorcery, and on diversity in Fantasy. To this, he was confident that Sword and Sorcery were in “good hands”, with authors such as Paul Kearny and Joe Abercrombi keeping it fresh in public interest, while authors such as Scott Bakker and Stephen Erikson blurring the lines between Sword and Sorcery and Tolkienian world-building. He was also hopeful about growing diversity in Fantasy, referring to David Anthony Durham and his Acacia series, which used a variety of cultural influences in his stories.
He was however a bit more reserved in regards to how the internet has influenced Fantasy writing.
“[…] I will say, however, that the Internet has made it easier for writers to connect with readers, and it has broadened the dissemination of non-best-selling writers’ work, whether that work is good or not-so-good. Readers have so much more room for choice these days. But I don’t think that the majority of writers are going to get any richer.”
Granted, for his own part, monetary gain was not what brought him to create Imaro, Dossouye, Nyumbani or Sword and Soul as a whole. It was an ideological decision, a wish to write stories about characters that looked like him, and others of African descent. And as his legacy continues to exist, and with the prospect of reaching an every wider audience, his efforts might well echo through the Fantasy-genre.
Father of Sword and Soul, indeed.
