Monthly Archives: January 2023

Blogging Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry: “Quest of the Starstone”

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C. L. Moore

Today, January 24, is the birthday of C. L. Moore (1911-1987). She was one of the best practitioners of the weird tale, and later, mostly with her husband Henry Kuttner, of science fiction.

Today for her birthday, I’m going to look at “Quest of the Starstone”, in which Northwest Smith and Jirel meet. This story was a collaboration with her future husband, Henry Kutner. This story was originally published in the November 1937 issue of  Weird Tales. Catherine and Hank didn’t marry until 1940.

His his introduction to the story in Echoes of Valor II, Karl Edward Wagner says it was a collaboration by mail. I’m going to rely heavily on that volume and a couple of others when I look at the two remaining stories in the Northwest Smith series. “Quest of the Starstone” is the final Jirel story. Continue reading →

C. L. Moore’s PS – A Guest Post by Will Oliver

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Yesterday was Robert E Howard’s birthday, and tomorrow is C. L. Moore’s. Will Oliver provides another guest post about their correspondence. Thanks will.

C.L. Moore’s P.S.

By Will Oliver

C.L. Moore (Catherine Lucille Moore, January 24, 1911—April 4, 1987) was a fan of Robert E. Howard’s writing. As she once explained to R. H. Barlow in an April 1934 letter, “I’d like to read everything Robert E. Howard has ever written. The first story of his I read was WORMS OF THE EARTH, and I’ve been a fanatic ever since.” Moore had a brief correspondence with Howard toward the end of his life and one of the early extant letters is dated January 29, 1935. She addresses a wide array of topics, praises Howard’s writing, and then signs-off. However, she added an interesting postscript that read:

P.S. I just wanted to remark that

‘We pinned our hope

To a rotten rope

And the Man from Galilee.’

In the faint hope that you’ll recognize it. Those three lines are another of my pet ha’nts, and absolutely anonymous so far as I’m concerned.

Continue reading →

Robert E. Howard Guest Birthday Post by Will Oliver

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Today, January 22, is the birthday of Robert E, Howard (1906-1936). I’ve done a number of birthday posts on Howard over the years. This year I decided to do something different and post an article by Will Oliver.

Will sent me this article a couple of months ago. We’ve gone back and forth on some of the words Howard uses in it. One particular racial term, actually. Will quotes Howard directly. I consider the word in question offensive. Most people do. But I also find whitewashing the past (no pun intended) offensive as well. If we don’t know the past with all its inherent ugliness, we risk repeating it.After some discussion, we’ve decided that I’m going to use the first letter of the word and replace the other letters with asterisks.

Consider this your trigger warning. If even Continue reading →

A. Merritt – Ruminations on His Birthday

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Well, this is a bit embarrassing.  I’ve been swamped lately and up to my ears in writing projects, travel, and preparing for classes and labs to start. So when I logged on a few minutes ago to do this post about A. Merritt, I was surprised to see the birthday post on Tolkien (what birthday post on Tolkien, you ask), was still in draft and hadn’t been posted.

Must have failed to hit the PUBLISH button. I also didn’t realize it had been nearly three weeks since I had posted.  There wasn’t much to it, more filler than anything of substance,  so I deleted it.

So getting on to today’s post. I’ve written about Merritt before. He’s sadly fallen out of favor in recent years.

But that is changing. Centipede Press just published Burn Witch, Burn! and my copy arrived the other day. I haven’t even had a chance to break the shrink wrap on it.

As you may know, Centipede Press titles aren’t cheap. This was $50. On the other pseudopod, though, Centipede Press books are some of the highest quality publications around.

I haven’t read this particular title yet. I’m going to try to work in as soon as possible. Both Robert Bloch and Karl Edward Wagner held it in high regard. With endorsements like that, I’m going to make the book a priority.

Now to make sure I hit the PUBLISH button.