Horseclans
Encyclopedia
Horseclans is a science fiction
series by Robert Adams
, set in a North America
that had been thrown back to a medieval level by a full-scale nuclear war
.
from present-day southern Canada
to central Texas
, and from the Mississippi River
to the Rocky Mountains
, post-apocalyptically. The Horseclansmen were portrayed as fierce, noble and often gifted with telepathy
, which came in handy for their dealings with their horses and "cats"—sabertoothed tigers that had been revived by scientific means in the years before the nuclear war.
Some people, including the Horseclans' founder and mentor-figure, Milo Morai, were "Undying"—effectively immortal
or at least unaging and almost impossible to kill by means other than suffocation, drowning & decapitation. The Undying were also sterile
, which was a source of anguish for some of them.
The known Undying were
In addition, Bookerman mentions two other Undying, one of whom he claims was dead.
Although not among the Undying, two other major characters are extremely long-lived, Hari Krooguh being almost two hundred years old when last mentioned in the books and Bili Morguhn, aka Bili the Axe, remaining active until his death from bear-inflicted injuries at the age of almost a century. In addition, both Hari and Bili possess extraordinarily strong mental powers of telekinesis and illusion (as does Aldora).
It could be argued that although never categorized by a name they form a third type of humanity.
The Horseclans looked down on "dirtmen", or farmers, and by extension all non-nomads, although they later resettled on the east coast. Many "Dirtman" communities were descended from odd, out-of-the-mainstream groups of Americans, and often had religious beliefs that were unpleasant at best.
The main civilization in North America during most of the books is that of the "Ehleens",—a conglomeration of Greek
-speaking Mediterranean peoples who had invaded the eastern half of North America and set up kingdoms. The main Ehleen kingdom, Kenooryos Ehlas (New Greece), was dominated by a thoroughly corrupt, debased version of the Greek Orthodox Church
, and the conduct of whose rulers is, in some ways, also reminiscent of Hellenistic kings.
Other peoples the Horseclans dealt with were "Ganiks", "Mehrikans", and "Ahrmenee". The "Ganiks" were degraded descendants of hippie
communes, whose religion of "Orghanikonservashun" (organic-conservation) forbade them to eat animal meat (but not human meat; Ganiks were enthusiastic cannibals), bathe, or hot-work metal (due to the pollution caused by burning coal).
"Mehrikans" were descendants of present-day Americans
. "Ahrmenee" were descendants of present-day Armenians
living in the Appalachian Mountains
.
In a similar fashion to the world of Robert E Howard's Conan
and of Jack London
novels, civilisation is seen as having a softening and corrupting influence in comparison to the hardy Ahrmenee and the Horseclans, although not to the extent that they outweight the peace and prosperity that Milo and others work towards.
In addition to the novels, there are two short story anthologies containing stories by both Robert Adams and others set in the Horseclans setting, Friends of the Horseclans, (1987) and Friends of the Horseclans 2 (1989)
The GURPS
system had a worldbook (GURPS Horseclans) and a solo adventure, (GURPS Bili the Axe - Up Harzburk!), devoted to the series.
. Mundania Press are planning on re-publishing the entire series, the first of which (The Coming of the Horseclans) features artwork by Stacey L. King. At some point there were also covers done by Carl Lundgren
of 60's psychedelic album-cover fame and Christos Achilleos for UK-only editions.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
series by Robert Adams
Robert Adams (science fiction writer)
Franklin Robert Adams was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, formerly a career soldier. He is best known for his "Horseclans" books. He wrote as Robert Adams, an abbreviation of his complete name.-Writings:...
, set in a North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
that had been thrown back to a medieval level by a full-scale nuclear war
Nuclear warfare
Nuclear warfare, or atomic warfare, is a military conflict or political strategy in which nuclear weaponry is detonated on an opponent. Compared to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can be vastly more destructive in range and extent of damage...
.
Background
The books mainly concerned the doings of the "Horseclans", a nomadic people originating from the "Sea of Grass"—the Great PlainsGreat Plains
The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...
from present-day southern Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
to central Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, and from the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
to the Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...
, post-apocalyptically. The Horseclansmen were portrayed as fierce, noble and often gifted with telepathy
Telepathy
Telepathy , is the induction of mental states from one mind to another. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, and has remained more popular than the more-correct expression thought-transference...
, which came in handy for their dealings with their horses and "cats"—sabertoothed tigers that had been revived by scientific means in the years before the nuclear war.
Some people, including the Horseclans' founder and mentor-figure, Milo Morai, were "Undying"—effectively immortal
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
or at least unaging and almost impossible to kill by means other than suffocation, drowning & decapitation. The Undying were also sterile
Infertility
Infertility primarily refers to the biological inability of a person to contribute to conception. Infertility may also refer to the state of a woman who is unable to carry a pregnancy to full term...
, which was a source of anguish for some of them.
The known Undying were
- Milo (who did not know his own age due to amnesia caused by a head wound in 1936),
- Bookermann (once a German cavalry officer),
- Mara (an Ehleen noblewoman who marries Milo),
- Aldora (an orphaned Ehleen girl taken in by one of the Horseclans),
- Demetrios (the Ehleen High Lord and the only Undying to perish during the course of the books),
- Drehkos (Nobleman of Morguhn involved in the Great Rebellion),
- Tim and Giliahna (the children of a Horseclans chief) and
- Neeka (an Ehleen physican who later also marries Milo).
In addition, Bookerman mentions two other Undying, one of whom he claims was dead.
Although not among the Undying, two other major characters are extremely long-lived, Hari Krooguh being almost two hundred years old when last mentioned in the books and Bili Morguhn, aka Bili the Axe, remaining active until his death from bear-inflicted injuries at the age of almost a century. In addition, both Hari and Bili possess extraordinarily strong mental powers of telekinesis and illusion (as does Aldora).
It could be argued that although never categorized by a name they form a third type of humanity.
The Horseclans looked down on "dirtmen", or farmers, and by extension all non-nomads, although they later resettled on the east coast. Many "Dirtman" communities were descended from odd, out-of-the-mainstream groups of Americans, and often had religious beliefs that were unpleasant at best.
The main civilization in North America during most of the books is that of the "Ehleens",—a conglomeration of Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
-speaking Mediterranean peoples who had invaded the eastern half of North America and set up kingdoms. The main Ehleen kingdom, Kenooryos Ehlas (New Greece), was dominated by a thoroughly corrupt, debased version of the Greek Orthodox Church
Eastern Orthodox Church
The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...
, and the conduct of whose rulers is, in some ways, also reminiscent of Hellenistic kings.
Other peoples the Horseclans dealt with were "Ganiks", "Mehrikans", and "Ahrmenee". The "Ganiks" were degraded descendants of hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
communes, whose religion of "Orghanikonservashun" (organic-conservation) forbade them to eat animal meat (but not human meat; Ganiks were enthusiastic cannibals), bathe, or hot-work metal (due to the pollution caused by burning coal).
"Mehrikans" were descendants of present-day Americans
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. "Ahrmenee" were descendants of present-day Armenians
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
living in the Appalachian Mountains
Appalachian Mountains
The Appalachian Mountains #Whether the stressed vowel is or ,#Whether the "ch" is pronounced as a fricative or an affricate , and#Whether the final vowel is the monophthong or the diphthong .), often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians...
.
In a similar fashion to the world of Robert E Howard's Conan
Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero that originated in pulp fiction magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, several films , television programs, video games, roleplaying games and other media...
and of Jack London
Jack London
John Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
novels, civilisation is seen as having a softening and corrupting influence in comparison to the hardy Ahrmenee and the Horseclans, although not to the extent that they outweight the peace and prosperity that Milo and others work towards.
Novels
The novels of the Horseclans series are the following:- The Coming of the Horseclans (1975)
- Swords of the Horseclans (1976)
- Revenge of the Horseclans (1977)
- A Cat of Silvery Hue (1979)
- The Savage Mountains (1979)
- The Patrimony (1980)
- Horseclans Odyssey (1981)
- The Death of a Legend (1981)
- The Witch Goddess (1982)
- Bili the Axe (1982)
- Champion of the Last Battle (1983)
- A Woman of the Horseclans (1983)
- Horses of the North (1985)
- A Man Called Milo Morai (1986)
- The Memories of Milo Morai (1986)
- Trumpets of War (1987)
- Madman's Army (1987)
- The Clan of the Cats (1988)
In addition to the novels, there are two short story anthologies containing stories by both Robert Adams and others set in the Horseclans setting, Friends of the Horseclans, (1987) and Friends of the Horseclans 2 (1989)
The GURPS
GURPS
The Generic Universal RolePlaying System, or GURPS, is a tabletop role-playing game system designed to allow for play in any game setting...
system had a worldbook (GURPS Horseclans) and a solo adventure, (GURPS Bili the Axe - Up Harzburk!), devoted to the series.
Timeline
The timeline of the series does not strictly follow the order of the series' publication, although there are times when the series sticks with the flow of the events for three or four books before going to another point in history. Several of the books consist mostly of flashbacks to earlier eras, including events prior to WWIII and even pre-WWII times. With few exceptions, no specific dates are given for events in the alternate history, although from time to time RA gives clues that allow reasonably certain dates to be calculated. The action appears to proceed along the following lines:- 1980: WWIII. The aftermath, and dwindling of the remnants of civilization, continue for decades. Over the course of the next fifty years, Milo Morai develops the Horseclans people and leads them from being bomb-shelter refugees through a stage of subsistence farming, leading eventually to self-sufficient nomadism. Milo encounters Clarence Bookerman. (Horses of the North)
- ~2030: Morai and Bookerman part, after a dispute over the merits of Nazism. Bookerman gives Morai advice that enables him to awaken his latent mental talents. (Horses of the North) Bookerman wanders throughout the former United States, travels to Europe, and there, believing the former US eastern seaboard to be mostly uninhabited, initiates the two Ehleenee invasions.
- The Horseclans later encounter and ally with the prairiecats (The Clan of the Cats), and acquire the ability to communicate telepathically with their horses (Horses of the North).
- The Horseclans develop into their final plains-dwelling form. During this period the events of A Man Called Milo Morai, The Memories of Milo Morai, and A Woman of the Horseclans take place.
- ~2370: Morai leaves the clansmen in order to find a rumored settlement of Undying.
- ~2570: After two centuries of searching world-wide, Morai concludes that there is no community of Undying anywhere on earth. He returns to the Horseclans, and finding them living as he had left them, leads them on their prophesized migration to Ehlai. (The Coming of the Horseclans)
- The clans cross the Mississippi river. (Horseclans Odyssey)
- 2593: The political merging of the Horseclans with Kehnooryos Ehlas is completed, creating the Confederation. (The Coming of the Horseclans)
- Blind Hari Krooger, tribal bard for decades, departs the Confederation to live again on the Sea of Grass. He takes many of the prairie cats with him. While travelling, he encounters the Teenehdjook, who overcome their customary distrust of humans and help him, and in turn he awakens their powerful mental abilities.
- ~2633: A Witchman, taking control of High Lord Zastros of the Southern Kingdom, leads a massive army against the Confederation. The army is defeated, Zastros and the Witchman controlling him are slain, and the dukes of the Southern Kingdom agree to join the Confederation. The rampant corruption of the Ehleenoee Church is laid bare, and the High Lord of the Confederation breaks up its control. (Swords of the Horseclans)
- The dukes of the southern kingdom work to rebuild their duchies. (Trumpets of War)
- Another Witchman, in the body of a young Ehleenee man, gains control of the aging commander of the Southern Kingdom army, and through him almost brings the duchies to revolt. The commander is slain and the Witchman is forced to return to the Witch Kingdom. (Madman's Army)
- ~2949: The Great Ehleenee Rebellion: Witchmen infiltrate the Ehleenee Church and through it cause an uprising. The uprising is put down. (Revenge of the Horseclans, A Cat of Silvery Hue, The Savage Mountains)
- ~2950: The Witchmen foment discord between the Ahrmehnee and the Confederation, prompting the latter to invade. After consulting the Silver Lady, the Nakharah (chief) of the Ahrmehnee learns that warring against the Confederation will result in the virtual extirpation of the Ahrmehnee race. He wisely merges the Ahrmehnee stahn with the Confederation. According to the Silver Lady, this happens about 12000 moons (~970 years) after WWIII. (The Savage Mountains)
- Bili Morguhn and his mixed force of Confederation nobles and Freefighters, still in Ahrmehnee lands at the end of the brief war between the stahn and the Confederation, are cut off from the Confederation by a massive volcanic eruption caused by the Witchmen's meddling. They encounter and ally themselves with the Moon Maidens and some Ahrmehnee. They are then approached by the Kleesahks representing Prince Byruhn of New Kuhmbuhluhn, and soldier on his behalf, defeating bands of Muhkohee raiders and immigrating Skoshuhns. The Skoshuns and Kuhmbuhluners form a political union—a republic—with a Kleesahk as one of their chief advisors. (The Death of a Legend, The Witch Goddess, Bili the Axe, Champion of the Last Battle)
- ~2980: The widow of the duke of Sanderz-Vawn tries to murder her stepson in order to have her son installed in his place. The plan is thwarted, and the stepson and his sister are found to be Undying. (The Patrimony)
- ~3030: Bili Morguhn, Prince of Karaleenos, gets the bad end of an encounter with a bear while hunting. He lingers for several weeks, during which he re-lives the memories of his youth, and then dies. (The Death of a Legend, The Witch Goddess, Bili the Axe, Champion of the Last Battle)
Cover Art
The original series, published by Signet, featured artwork by fantasy illustrator Ken Kelly. Part of the series was later published by Futura in the United Kingdom with new cover art by Luis RoyoLuis Royo
Luis Royo is a Spanish artist, known for his sensual and dark paintings, its apocalyptic imagery, his fantasy worlds and mechanical life forms...
. Mundania Press are planning on re-publishing the entire series, the first of which (The Coming of the Horseclans) features artwork by Stacey L. King. At some point there were also covers done by Carl Lundgren
Carl Lundgren
Carl Leonard "Lundy" Lundgren was an American baseball and football player and coach.Lundgren played football and baseball for the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and played eight seasons of Major League Baseball as a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. In eight years with the Cubs, he compiled...
of 60's psychedelic album-cover fame and Christos Achilleos for UK-only editions.
External links
- http://www.kenkellyart.com/ Ken Kelly's artwork site
- http://www.luisroyo.com/ Luis Royo's official home page
- http://www.mundania.com Re-publishing Robert Adams Work
- http://web.archive.org/web/20091027131304/http://geocities.com/evilsnack/horse.htm The Horseclans Project
- http://ofearna.us/books/adams.html (Franklin) Robert Adams at The BookShelf