I don’t want to get into a morbid circle of posting whenever a Sword & Sorcery or other fantasy/sf great dies, as it seems ghoulish. But given my fondness for Imaro, I do need to acknowledge the death of his creator. Evidently he died back in May, but the word is just now getting out.
The first time I encountered Imaro was about 1980, when I was reading a Lin Carter-edited Year’s Best Fantasy volume from the mid-70’s. Carter defended Saunders and Imaro, who had been categorized as a “chocolate-covered Conan” knock-off. Carter pointed out the rich difference in the backgrounds. The story in the volume was not great,, but it was pretty good. A couple of years later I tracked down more, and came to appreciate Imaro and the world Saunders had built.
I also had read a story in the old Dragon magazine he had written, about a woman and set in the same world, I thought. It has been decades since I read that story; might be a somber excuse to track it down and re-read it. For that matter, I never read all of the Imaro stories. Might be time to rectify that. Some are out of print, maybe all right now. Maybe some of the people he worked with, like Milton Davis, can see about bringing some back into print.
Saunders painted a bright world, and despite the cultural difference I never felt excluded like an outsider looking in.