Sword-and-Planet Love-Letter: Gardner Fox’s Warrior of Llarn by Brian Murphy Sword-and-planet (S&P) is an odd, anachronistic corner of speculative fiction, occupying a colorful and wild interstellar space somewhere between the charted lands of fantasy and science fiction. Fighting-men from earth travel via astral projection to planets where hovercraft soar, shining cities in oxygenated domes rise above dusty plains, and aliens wear radium pistols at their hip, but settle conflicts man-to-man and sword-to-sword. And not with lightsabers, but old school, real shiny bits of steel.  Strange, and awesome. The best place to start a foray into the subgenre is with the stories from the man who started it all, the late, great Edgar Rice Burroughs and his John Carter of Mars series. Another excellent choice is Leigh Brackett’s The Sword of Rhiannon, arguably the greatest example of this style of fiction. Barring access to these, or if you’ve already drank deeply of the purest draughts of Mars and are looking for the next red planet on which to draw your saber and fight green or blue-skinned aliens, I wholeheartedly recommend Gardner Fox’s Warrior of Llarn (Ace Books, 1964). Alan Morgan is the son of a well-to-do lawyer and heir to the practice, but does not love his earthbound life. A man of action, he’s at home in the woods, and would rather live off the land as a hunter in the wild. “I wanted no four walls around me, only the open woods or the salt spray of the ocean in my face,” he proclaims. Though he is of Earth, Morgan senses he is of another place and time. This feeling of displacement is sharpened by a mysterious alien voice in his head that beckons his aid. It’s a literal call from an alien seeking help on another planet, but also a metaphoric Call of the Wild, a voice from within. All my life I have heard the voice, Morgan tells us. Soon he gets his wish, and answers the call. He is whisked away to Llarn, an ancient planet so old that its mountains have been worn near flat, and its moons broken up, their remnants circling the planet. Llarn has been torn by nuclear war. Destruction and fallout has left vast, barren wastelands, empty cities, and mutated species. Savage beasts roam the planet, and even more savage races....