Harold Lamb
[4][2][6] He was shy with impaired hearing, sight, and speech as a child,[2] attending the Friend’s Seminary in New York City, but declaring that he had not enjoyed the experience.[7] The majority of Harold Lamb's work for Adventure was historical fiction, and his stories can be thematically divided into three categories — those featuring Cossacks, Crusaders, or Asian/Middle-Eastern Protagonists.Lamb's stories were well-researched and rooted in their time, often featuring real historical characters, but set in places unfamiliar and exotic to most of the western audience reading his fiction.While his adventure stories had familiar tropes such as tyrannical rulers and scheming priests, he avoided the simplistic depiction of foreign or unfamiliar cultures as evil; many of his heroes were Mongolian, Indian, Russian, or Muslim.Those holding positions of authority are almost universally depicted as being corrupted by their power or consumed with greed, be they Russian boyars or Buddhist priests, and merchants are almost always shown as placing their desire for coin above the well-being of their fellow men.While his stories are not bereft of the "damsel in distress" trope, Lamb typically depicted his female characters as courageous, independent, and more shrewd than their male counterparts.Their motives and true loyalties, though, remained mysterious to Lamb's male characters, and their unknowable nature is frequently the source of plot tension.[9] By far the largest number of these tales were short stories, novellas, and novels of Cossacks wandering the Asian steppes during the late 16th and early 17th century, all but a half-dozen featuring a set of allied characters.He chooses to wander Asia rather than face forced "Cossack retirement" in a Russian monastery and launches into an odyssey that takes him to Mongolia, China, and Afghanistan.Two novelettes feature the young knight, Nial O'Gordon, and three short novels are centered around Sir Hugh of Taranto, who rediscovers the sword of Roland, Durandal.Lamb also wrote a variety of stories featuring or narrated by Muslim, Mongol, or Chinese protagonists, set for the most part during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.[15] Writers acknowledging the influence of Lamb's work include: Ben Bova, Thomas B. Costain, Gardner Fox, Harry Harrison, Robert E. Howard, Scott Oden, Norvell Page, Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson.