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What you may not know (comma Bob comma) is that it is now being re-released, on the web, a bit at a time, for free. More details after the jump.

Though (at the time of this writing) there are only a few pages available, it’s an easy and risk-free way for new readers to get a taste of this classic and under-appreciated work.

While the art may sometimes lack polish, Duncan & Mallory is so relentlessly charming that it scarcely matters. Perhaps I’m viewing it through the lens of twenty-plus years of nostalgia, but with seemingly everyone in fantasy and comics trying to out-do one another at being dark and edgy, it’s refreshing to see a story that never stoops to being cruel or vulgar.

Mallory, in particular, is an endangered species in modern fantasy: a genuinely likable character. He’s a swindler and a cheat, but operates from a profoundly kind and moral core (and does so without ever becoming preachy — you’d never see a Mallory in any of the products extruded by the Rat Company). Then again, maybe I’m biased when it comes to dragons. You know. Maybe.

While on the surface, the story and dialogue seem relatively simple, there’s a lot of storytelling meat on these bones. Mallory is The Trickster (which appears to be a favorite theme of Ms. White — see her current work Coyote for example). There’s subtle, sophisticated verbal and visual play with the ambiguous and transgressive qualities of the archetype, even while the actual text remains at the level of slapstick. (In this, Duncan & Mallory is no different than many of the more traditional Trickster legends.)

The original printed-on-paper version was filled with wonderful little details and in-jokes that, sadly, don’t really come through very well in the relatively low-res scans on the website. If it seems like the sort of thing that appeals to you at all, I’d strongly recommend buying the dead trees.

On the other hand, the web version does include some commentary from co-author Mel White (the anthropologist one, not James Melville White; you’ll find the latter if you JFGI) that explains some of the process and the jokes. Pro tip: hover your pointer over the page image for xkcd-style mouseover text. It makes a great companion to the print version.

Three volumes have thus far appeared in print: Duncan & Mallory, Duncan & Mallory: The Bar None Ranch and Duncan & Mallory: The Raiders. Thus far? Yes. For in an SGS exclusive[1], I can now reveal that a fourth Duncan and Mallory story is in the works. This comes from no lesser authority than Ms. White herself, who was kind enough to talk about it for a few minutes at AggieCon 41. Apparently it was planned and outlined with Mr. Asprin, back in the day, and now awaits only Ms. White completing her thesis and having sufficient free time.

This probably represents the longest hiatus between released works in a series, ever, that does not in some way involve Valve Software.

Waiting, bated breath, etc.

[1]– Totally not an SGS exclusive. Everybody but me has probably known this for years.

[Edited 2010-02-10 by dhenke to remove Amazon links. See explanatory post.]

Return of the King, 1st US Edition Cover

Did you hear the one about the Aggie who had a truly first-class library of science fiction and fantasy?

The denizens of Texas A&M University take a lot of stick, some fraction of which they may perhaps deserve. As I’m a Rice alumnus, you may believe me when I say I’ve heard (and repeated) my share of the dreadful jokes.

But this post is about one of the places where not only have the Aggies excelled, but have done so within the realm of unqualified, unabashed flat-out geekishness — one of my personal favorite sorts of excellence, and one I deeply admire.

During Aggiecon 39, I managed — through a chain of serendipity and in spite of my own complacency — to get invited on a small tour of the science fiction and fantasy research collection at the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives. I went in assuming it would be an amusing way to pass a couple of otherwise idle hours.

It was one of the highlights of the con.

I’m not a library sciences geek; I’m sure I don’t know the first thing about what to look for, nor the right words to describe it. But the quality of the holdings, the careful curatorship and above all the genuine enthusiasm of the staff for the collection in their care were hard for even a layman to miss.

I told you all of that so I’d have an excuse to show you my pictures of the cover for the 1st US edition hardback Return of the King from their collection.

There have been a hell of a lot of different editions of the six-books-bound-in-three-volumes-not-a-trilogy. Enough, in fact, that another altogether separate book has been written to enumerate them. Books have covers, and the history of the War of the Ring in particular offers no end of situations that beg for visual illustration.

Update: There are a number of online galleries of covers, worth visiting but sadly incomplete. (Links to counterexamples would be welcome indeed.)

The covers illustrations run the gamut from tasteful to lurid to psychedelic to extremely minimalist to downright baffling. For the most part, they avoid the worst sins of modern mass-market fantasy cover art.

But this? Right here?

This is how you do a book cover.

I’m not saying that because I love the dragon. That’s a lie, of course. But I’m not saying it just because I love the dragon. The cover, taken as a whole, is extremely effective — it makes me want to re-read this story I know by heart, right now. Just looking at a digital picture of the book on a computer screen makes me want to hold it in my hands, smell the paper and wallow in the physicality of it as much as in the actual words.

detail: 1st US edition Return of the King cover

There are some great modern artistic interpretations of Tolkien. I’m partial to John Howe, myself. But somehow these simple line drawings (and the author’s own, for example in Farmer Giles) evoke some echo of the aesthetic of the text that all the sweeping vistas and photorealism in the world seem to somehow always miss. They speak of some sort of Anglo-Saxon dreamtime, rich with things unstated but implied: a body of myth like an iceberg, nine-tenths of it hidden.

Maybe it’s just me, but there’s also something about this illustration that makes it very easy to imagine it being a picture created by someone within the fictional world of the stories, a genuine artifact of the fictional world.

Plus, it is a tremendously appealing dragon:

[Edited 2009-09-15 by dhenke to add links to online cover art galleries.]

[Edited 2009-09-16 by dhenke to add link to JRRT's other artwork.]

[Edited 2010-02-10 by dhenke to remove Amazon links. See explanatory post.]