Category Archives: C. L. Moore

Kuttner

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Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) was born today, May 5. He’s been my favorite science fcition and fantasy writer ever since I read “Mimsy were the Borogoves” in The Best of Henry Kuttner the summer before I started high high school.

I was going to read and review Lands of the Earthquake (thanks for sending me a copy, Deuce), but I’ve been on the road with one of the dayjobs most of the past week. It took me all week to read “The Brood of Bubastis” for the Robert Bloch post, and I was falling asleep over the keyboard as I wrote it. So, obviously, I didn’t get to it. I’ll try to read it and post something in the next few months. Continue reading →

C. L. Moore, Pioneer of Fantasy and Science Fiction

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Catherine Lucille (C. L.) Moore (1911-1987) was born in Indianapolis on this date, January 24. She is the third of three major fantasy writers whose birthdays are every other day in January. The first was A. Merritt, and the second was Robert E. Howard.  She is someone whose work should not be forgotten. If you haven’t read her work, or if it’s been a while, do yourself a favor and do so.

Like Howard, I’ve written about Moore so many times over the years that it’s becoming a challenge to come up with something  new. Work and some travel have kept me from doing much reading for the last week, so there won’t be a review of any particular story.  Forgive me if I rehash things from older posts. Continue reading →

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 →

Kuttner’s “Line to Tomorrow”

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One of the things Henry Kuttner excelled at was the dark, sardonic twist at the end of many of his stories. Another thing he excelled at was time travel stories. Often in the same story. We’ll look at one of these today that he wrote in collaboration with his wife C. L. Moore that was published under their pen name Lewis Padgett.

Speaking of today, it’s Kuttner’s birthday, April 7, as this post goes live. I wasn’t able to read something for the birthday of Kuttner’s friend Robert Bloch. I wasn’t going to make that mistake for Kuttner.

“Line to Tomorrow” begins with Jerry Fletcher answering the phone way too early in the morning. He can only hear one voice. It seems to be a call between two people, but much of what they’re talking about doesn’t make sense. Continue reading →

Third Brief Shoutout: C. L. Moore

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While I made my deadline for submitting to the anthology I was trying for, I still haven’t had a chance to read anything by the birthday girl for today (Jan. 24), C. L. Moore (1911-1987). I blame labs starting today and another writing assignment I had due.

She’s no stranger to regular readers of this blog. I fell in love with her writing way back in middle school, and she’s been a favorite ever since.

I’ve read pretty much all of her solo work, and most of what she wrote in collaboration with her husband Henry Kuttner. But it’s been a while since I’ve read some of it.

Maybe I’ll revisit some of those stories.

If you’ve not read her, give her work a try. You’ll be glad you did.

Blogging Northwest Smith: “The Tree of Life”

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C. L. Moore (1911-1987) was born on this date, January 24. Shen  was one of the greatest writers of the fantastic in the 20th Century.

For today’s post, I’m going to continue the series I’ve been doing on her character Northwest Smith. Smith is frequently regarded as a Han Solo prototype.

In “The Tree of Life” he’s on his own, without his Venusain partner Yarol.

The opening of the story could have been written by Leigh Brackett, and I had to remind myself that this story is set on a different Mars than the one Brackett wrote about. Continue reading →

Retro Hugos: Final Thoughts on the Novelettes

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The Retro Hugo nominees for best novelette are (links are to reviews):

  • “The Big and the Little”, Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction 8/44)
  • “Arena”, Fredric Brown (Astounding Science Fiction 6/44)
  • “No Woman Born”, C.L. Moore (Astounding Science Fiction 12/44)
  • “The Children’s Hour”, Lawrence O’Donnell (C.L. Moore & Henry Kuttner) (Astounding Science Fiction 3/44)
  • “When the Bough Breaks”, Lewis Padgett (C.L. Moore & Henry Kuttner) (Astounding Science Fiction 11/44)
  • “City”, Clifford D. Simak (Astounding Science Fiction 5/44)

All of these stories are strong contenders. There isn’t a bad one in the bunch. but they aren’t all equal. With the exception of “Whent he Bough Breaks” and “The Children’s Hour”, I’ve not read any of them since high school. Continue reading →

Retro Hugos: “No Woman Born” by C. L. Moore

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This is the second to last Retro Hugo post on the novelette category and the last of the stories.  I’ll do a summary post on the novelettes before moving on to the short stories.

“No Woman Born” was first published in the December 1944 issue of Astounding. It is the story of a dancer and singer named Deidre who has been badly burned  in a fire. The story opens a year later, when everyone thinks she is dead.

Only she isn’t dead. Her brain has been transplanted in a robot body by a man named Maltzer. Her press agent, Harris, is the only other person in on it. Her new body is human in shape, but instead of having joints, her limbs are flexible metal rings. This allows her to move in a much more sinuous way than she could before the fire. Entirely new dance forms are possible with her new body. She can also modulate her voice so that it sounds exactly the way it did, husky and distinct. Continue reading →

Retro Hugos: “When the Bow Breaks” by Lewis Padgett

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Anyone who hangs out around here for any length of time and doesn’t know that Lewis Padgett is one the the pen names used by Henry Kuttner and his wife C. L. Moore clearly hasn’t been paying attention.  Written under the Lewis Padgett by-line, “When the Bough Breaks” was first published in the November 1944 issue of Astounding.

The spring before I started high school, my parents gave permission for me to join the Science Fiction Book Club. So I had a source of hardcover science fiction and fantasy to read that summer.  This was in the days before science fiction was regularly published in hardcover. Most books were mass market paperbacks.

At the time, the SFBC offered a number of titles from Ballantine’s Best of series. This was a way I could discover new writers, and I took full advantage of it.  I mean, if these writers weren’t good, why was there a volume entitled The Best of followed by their names? I was making money mowing lawns, so I had the funds to afford to buy some books. I was already familiar with the series because I had found The Best of Jack Williamson at a flea market about eighteen months earlier, and I bought every one the SFBC offered at the time.  (For some reason, they never offered The Best of C. L. Moore while I was a member, although they had published such a volume a year or three earlier.) Continue reading →