Kane (fantasy)

Kane is a literary character created by Karl Edward Wagner in a series of sword and sorcery novels and short stories first published between 1970 and 1985. The stories are set in a grim, pre-medieval world which is nonetheless ancient and rich in history. In some of Wagner's later stories Kane appears in the present day — for example, as a drug dealer in "Lacunae" and as a somewhat suspect publishing magnate in "At First Just Ghostly".

Character background

Little is known about Kane's origins. In the story "Misericorde", he declares to one of his foes that his father's name was Adam and his stepmother's name was Eve, possibly making him the biological son of the Biblical Adam's first wife Lilith. Like traditional depictions of Cain he is a powerful, left-handed man with red hair, said to have killed (strangled) his brother Abel, and has been cursed by a mad god with an eternal life of wandering. Nevertheless, he is vulnerable to wounds, and it is said that he can be killed "by the violence that he himself created", although his wounds heal at a rapid pace. Kane is portrayed as both an excellent warrior and an accomplished sorcerer, who spends the millennia wandering from one adventure into the next. Also like the Biblical Cain, Kane is marked as a killer ("I kill things," he tells Elric in "The Gothic Touch". "It's what I was made to do. I'm rather good at it"); those who meet the gaze of his icy blue eyes cannot maintain contact for long, for they give away Kane's true nature as a butcher of men.

Kane is often compared to Conan the Barbarian, but is quite different in that he is a devious character with a more somber and reflective outlook on life than Conan and has none of the latter's dislike of sorcery. His creator described Kane as "not a sword and sorcery hero; he is a gothic hero-villain from the tradition of the Gothic novels of the 18th and early 19th centuries", and as a character "who could master any situation intellectually, or rip heads off if push came to shove".[1] Some commentators have argued that the fantasy protagonist that Kane has most in common with is Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné, but Wagner was also inspired by novels such as Melmoth the Wanderer and The Worm Ouroboros.[2] Kane is unconcerned with common morality, since no human relationship can ever last more than a small fraction of his lifetime (although the daughter he fathered in "Raven's Eyrie" turns up as an adult in the modern-day "At First Just Ghostly"); and he frequently ends up on the wrong side in the conflicts in which he involves himself, often to his own detriment. A common theme running through all Kane stories is the hero's weariness with his own immortality and his attempts to give his existence meaning.

Works

Novels

Story collections

Other tales

Kane also appears in "Lacunae", collected in Why Not You and I? (1987), and in "At First Just Ghostly", "Deep in the Depths of the Acme Warehouse" and "The Gothic Touch" (which features Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné), collected in Exorcisms and Ecstasies (1997). This volume also includes the fragment "In the Wake of the Night" and an early version of "Lynortis Reprise".

Reprint collections

Night Shade Books reprinted the complete novels and stories in two volumes, as follows:

All of the Kane novels & both short story collections were reissued as a five volume, limited edition set (each volume illustrated & signed by different artists, as well as unsigned) by Centipede Press in December 2015.

References

  1. ↑ http://karledwardwagner.org/LastInterview.html
  2. ↑ http://karledwardwagner.org/Revelations.html
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