I was saddened to find out that Andrew passed away a few years ago as I searched for information on his favorite book of mine, which my brother gave me for a Christmas present in 1978, My Lord Barbarian. I read five other books written or edited by Andrew. But this was the most powerful, a novella, set in an interplanetary era where men still fought with swords. The protagonist, a dominant barbarian in the mold of Conan, at one point has a fight with a mechanical snake. The part that I most recall about this and which echoed in my mind when I was reading the report that three barbarian warlords managed to impregnate virtually all the women in Europe who would have viable offspring about 4,000 years ago, was the beginning of the novella, when the reader discovers that an entire planet of women are begging to have this savage’s babies—kind of like being a cross between Brad Pitt a West Baltimore drug dealer and the reigning UFC champion.

Andrew J. Offutt did a great deal of work attempting to keep the increasingly out of sync genre of Swords and Sorcery alive, for which any Robert E. Howard fan should be grateful. In fact, my favorite pastiche of a Conan story was a novella done by Offutt, and was set, I think, in an eastern city and involved a sorceress.

If you want a good, quick read, that will horrify every member of your family and circle of postmodern emasculated acquaintances, read My Lord Barbarian, then give it to your woman as a primer on acceptable behavior.

Really, the cover ought to convey enough of the idea to set her pretty little heart at ease…