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.
Unlike the other stories in either series, this one opens with a poem about Jirel. It thought it was quite good, and I wish Moore and/or Kuttner had written some poetry. If there’s any out there, I’d appreciate anyone with knowledge of it to let me know. Maybe Stephen Haffner knows of some.
The story itself opens with Jirel and some of her men breaking into an inner chamber of Franga the sorcerer’s castle. He’s trying to perform a rite with the Starstone, but Jirel stops him. Franga manages to escape through a secret passage, but not before vowing to search time and space for someone to help him get the Starstone back.
The Starstone is a magic jewel, but its magic comes with conditions. It only works if taken in combat or given freely.
The next scene opens in a Martian tavern where Northwest Smith and his pal, the Venusian Yarrol, are drinking. Smith is in a maudlin mood. He laments that he can’t return to Earth. He wants to see green grass again.
Smith starts humming a tune: “The Green Hills of Earth”. Moore (or Kuttner) provide three verses. Again, I thought they were quite good and wish there had been more. And yes, according to legend, this is the story that gave Robert Heinlein the idea for his classic story “The Green Hills of Earth.” That probably should be the topic of a future post.
A portal opens in front of Smith while Yarrol is going for refills. A man requests Smith’s help, and as he’s going through the portal, Yarrol comes back and tries to keep him from going through.
They both end up in medieval France. Smith gets to see the green hills of Earth again, although his time there is brief. His mission is to lure Jirel through a portal into a realm where Franga has more power and has allies that will help him overpower Jirel and get the Starstone back.
There’s more straightforward action in this story than in the other stories in either the Northwest Smith or Jirel series. That is more likely due to Kuttner’s influence. This story is a collaboration, after all.
I’m not going to detail the rest of the story. I found the ending to be somewhat bittersweet. It would be nice if Moore had written more stories about Jirel or Smith. Still, these stories are high water marks in weird fiction and deserve to be read and remembered.
As does C. L. Moore.
Starstone wasn’t my favorite of Moore’s stories, but it is entertaining.
Purportedly, it wasn’t one of Moore’s favorites either. When these stories first appeared in book form, back in the 1950s, Gnome Press interleaved the Jirel and NW Smith stories. Presumably, this was to facilitate publishing the cross-over story in the final volume; however, when that time came, Moore had decided that the story was not good enough to reprint. Nor does it appear in the two Donald M Grant deluxe editions of a few decades later. I don’t believe that it was reprinted anywhere until after Moore’s death.
(My source for Moore’s opinion is P. Schyler Miller in his review of the second Gnome Press volume. He commented that even second tier Morre is better than much that is published today. A statement that is as true today as it was then.)
Moore is definitely a neglected treasure.