The Eye of Argon and the Further Adventures of Grignr the Barbarian

by Michael A. Ventrella (Editor), Jim Theis, Monica Marier (Contributor)

212 pages, Paperback

Published November 18, 2022

About the author

Michael A. Ventrella's humorous adventure novels include "Big Stick," "Bloodsuckers: A Vampire Runs for President," "Arch Enemies" and "The Axes of Evil."

He is the editor of many anthologies, including "Release the Virgins!," "Three Time Travelers Walk Into...", "Across the Universe" (with Randee Dawn) and the "Baker Street Irregulars" anthologies (co-edited with NY Times Bestselling Author Jonathan Maberry).

His web page is www.MichaelAVentrella.com and he can be easily found on Facebook and other social networking sites. His blog regularly interviews prominent authors.

Mike lives in the beautiful Pocono Mountains with a tolerant wife and four obnoxious cats. In his spare time, he is a lawyer.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I do have a story in here.

This is the sort of novelty book that you'll either immediatly understand what's going on or will leave you scratching your head. If you're the former and have attended readings of "Eye of Argon," then you'll enjoy this one-of-a-kind book which provides the complete (and annotated) text of the original along with several stories adding to the legend. I'm particularly pleased with mine but the others are a lot of fun too.

[Daniel A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

My feelings towards Jim Theis' (in)famous classic The Eye of Argon is anomalous from how most folks think of that story, and so I'm perhaps not the right person to review my friend Michael A. Ventrella's edited collection of The Eye of Argon: And the Further Adventures of Grignr the Barbarian. Generally speaking, I very much agree with detractors of the public readings of The Eye of Argon that regularly take place at sci-fi and fantasy conventions, that to some extent the readings are laughing at Theis, rather than laughing with him; that Theis' having been a teenager when he wrote the original story necessarily means we're laughing at what was an imperfect, early writing by someone who ended up never writing fiction again and who had mixed feelings about those readings; and that Theis' having died young meant he couldn't as meaningfully consent to those readings either. (In other words, it's a detraction borne of compassion and empathy, something that should be celebrated everywhere, not just in fannish spaces.) But at the same time, there are enough stories in Mike's collection (the majority thereof, even) that definitively celebrate Theis, The Eye of Argon, and the readings thereof, rather than simply mock him and Argon, along with the acknowledgment that Theis did ultimately assent to the attention paid them, that I also don't at all feel uncomfortable reading it, and publicly acknowledging the same.

Part of that dichotomy lies in Mike's very introduction to this collection: Mike acknowledges that Theis' feelings towards the public readings of The Eye of Argon were mixed, insofar as he had written the story as a teenager, but ultimately assented to the readings so as not to seem bitter; furthermore, it feels ever-so-slightly churlish not to acknowledge that at least some of the misspellings, grammatical and hyphenation errors, and like corrections were due in no small part to the limitations of mimeograph, that was expensive to reproduce in the first place, and by the very nature of the medium didn't lend itself to making corrections whatsoever. But at the very same time, Mike also mentions that Theis eventually became a journalist. That is, someone who eventually earned a living as a writer, and if nothing else, if Theis had the way with words that I feel he inevitably would've developed in his fiction had he had a decent editor and matured as a writer thereof, I have great confidence that Theis was, in reality, a damned fine journalist when all was said and done, even though I haven't actually read any of his journalistic pieces; Theis' narrative is colorful and evocative, even if imperfect, and I feel like as an adult, he probably instituted the best instincts of writing that he displayed in The Eye of Argon to compelling journalistic effect. And it's for those reasons that I actually like the story in The Eye of Argon. No, of course it's not perfect; Mike says outright that no one's youthful fiction is, Theis' included. But when I realize the promise of What Could Have Been™, The Eye of Argon is a unique piece of fiction that's transcended Theis' life itself, and as Mike says in his introduction, that's a worthy legacy for any writer.

As for Mike's collection of edited stories in the second half of this book, as with many collections, they're a mixed bag. Much as I'm friends with Hildy Silverman, at least in convention space, there's a very fine line between satire and parody and . . . not, and when Hildy uses many of the same typographical and grammatical errors that Theis does, while not overly intrusive, they are a bit distracting; to that extent, I did not at all enjoy Peter Prellwitz's contribution, which I felt was the only one that felt like mockery to me, so overly replete was it with the errors that mimeograph necessitated that it was more than merely distracting. However, most, if not all, of the other stories, are excellent. From stories that fill in "missing" portions of Grignr's narrative (such as Hildy's {slightly gratuitous errors notwithstanding}, Keith R.A. DeCandido's {also a friend!}, and Jean Marie Ward's), to those that actively and gleefully play with the setting in unexpected and clever ways (such as Ian Randal Strock's {also a friend!}, Mike's, and Daniel M. Kimmel's {also a friend!}), these stories are both fun and entertaining, and arguably Ian's, Mike's, and Dan's stories are almost the best of the bunch.

Readers of this review, though, will note that I haven't yet mentioned Genevieve Iseult Eldredge's story. That's because theirs is by far the best story in an already excellent collection. I know Genevieve from conventions as well, and at the risk of flattery, their story doesn't merely fill in aspects of Grignr's tale, but even transcends anything else written here, and provides a truly amazing, even heartwarming, conclusion to Grignr's story. I enjoyed most of the other selections; Genevieve's has stuck with me.

Dan Kimmel suggests, in his review on this site, that those not in the know about The Eye of Argon may be lost should they read this collection, and that may be so. But this collection offers decent suggestion that The Eye of Argon in fact deserves a wider audience.