Category Archives: C. L. Moore

Worldcon Report, Part 1

This is going to be the written report, mostly without pictures because I haven’t had time to sort through the ones I took and see what I want to post. It’s been one of those weeks at work and it started on the way down to San Antonio. I spent more time than I would have liked dealing with a couple of problems that waited until I was on the road to arise. I post some pictures in the next few days.

James Gunn at his reception.

I had to teach class Thursday morning, so by the time I got to San Antonio, checked into the hotel and hoofed it over to the convention center to register, I just made it before registration closed. I wandered the dealer’s room and familiarized myself with the layout before grabbing a bite. At least I intended to. I ran into Adrian Simmons, editor of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and ended up accompanying him to a private, invitation-only reception for James Gunn. Adrian had been invited, and I went along as his guest. It was a great event, and I took advantage of the opportunity to speak with him. He’s 90, and critics are calling his new novel his best. I picked up a signed copy before the weekend was over. There’ll be a review going up at Futures Past and Present sometime in the next few months. Learning of Fred Poh’s death made me extra glad I grabbed a signed copy, in spite of being a little overbudget.

What would you eat for a book?

Later I attended the Bookswarm party, which was packed. I got a chance to talk to Martha Wells for a few minutes, and I walked away with two free books. The theme of the party was Eat a Bug, Get a Book. The bugs were sanitized and freeze dried. (I ate a mole circket and a dung beetle and got The Other Half of the Sky edited by Athena Andreadis and Exile by Betsy Dornbush.) The highlight of the party was getting to meet Brad Beaulieu, Douglas Hulett, Courtney Schafer, and Zachary Jernigan. If you haven’t read them, you should. Other than a glimpse of Jernigan from across the street, the only one of that group that I saw after that night was Courtney Schafer.

The next day was one of those where there was about twelve hours of programming I wanted to attend, all of it in a three hour block. I went to most of the Robert E. Howard panels, of which there were many. Most of the hanging out I did with friends was with members of the Robert E. Howard Foundation or chatting with folks at parties. Saturday was much the same, but Sunday was a little more relaxed. Among the non-Howard panels I attended were a discussion of C. L. Moore’s “Vintage Season”, the history of firearms in the 1800s, a discussion on writing that included Michael Swanwick and James Patrick Kelly, a panel of Texas writers who have passed on, and readings by Jack McDevitt and Howard Waldrop. I only caught part of the panel on sword and sorcery since it was up against one of the more interesting Robert E. Howard panels. The autographing lines were either nonexistent or ridiculously long, so I only got a few signatures.

Sword and Sorcery Panel: (l. to r.) Stina Leitch, Lou Anders, Sam Sykes, Saladin Ahmed, Chris Willrich

I went to the Alamo Saturday morning with Bill Cavalier, editor of REHupa. He hadn’t seen it, and it had been a while since I had paid my respects. Next to the Alamo is the Menger Hotel. Teddy Roosevelt recruited the Rough Riders in the bar, and it’s something of a mini-museum. I’ll do a write-up of it on Dispatches From the Lone Star Front over the weekend.

I didn’t try to attend the Hugos. I wasn’t impressed with the slate of nominees for the most part. But it’s a popularity contest, and currently my tastes and those of the field are in a state of moderate divergence. The Legacy Circle of the REH Foundation went to dinner Saturday night.

There were some free books, including NESFA’s three volume Chad Oliver set. I found the first two of the Heinlein juveniles I was missing, and picked up an extra copy of Glory Road. This year marks the 50th anniversary of that novel. I read it when I was about 14, and it’s about time for a reread.

It’s good to be the king.

Some overall thoughts. First, this was the first time I’ve been able to attend a Worldcon. It wasn’t quite what I expected. I’ve attended World Fantasy twice, and the density of pros in that venue is high, but then that’s a convention that’s aimed at pros. Worldcon is more geared for fans. I never saw some of the bigger names, although I know they were there. Most of the ones I did see, I only saw once or twice. The convention center is a bit too spread out for this sort of event.

I was surprised at crowded it wasn’t. I was also a little surprised with how old the average attendee seemed to be. While people seemed to be having a good time, I didn’t detect a great deal of excitement. Maybe that’s because I’m getting older, but everything seemed more laid back than I was expecting.

I’d certainly attend another Worldcon, but only if it wasn’t at the same time classes started. And only if it wasn’t too far away. While I enjoyed it and am glad I went, I wouldn’t travel halfway around the world, or even the country, to repeat the experience.

I’ll post some more photos later in the week.

Happy Birthday, Henry Kuttner

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Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore

Henry Kuttner was born this day, April 7, in 1915. He passed away far too young in 1958.

Kuttner got his start in Weird Tales, his first story being “The Graveyard Rats”, a grisly little piece. Other stories for WT followed, and soon he was branching out into science fiction and the shudder pulps. Legend has it that he started using pseudonyms after writing stories that appeared in the first two issues of Marvel Science Stories, stories that almost got the magazine shut down for pornography. Supposedly no editor would buy stories with Kuttner’s byline for a while. Mike Resnick reports in his introduction to Girls for the Slime God (in which the above mentioned stories are reprinted) that in a late 1940s poll of sf readers, two of Kuttner’s pen names came in higher than his real name. Those pen names were Lawrence O’Donnell and Lewis Padgett. Not surprising since his best regarded stories are under those names.

Kuttner’s best work was done in collaboration with his wife C. L. Moore. The story is that Kuttner wrote her a fan letter, not realizing that “C. L.” stood for “Catherine Lucille.”

Kuttner wrote in a wide variety of genres, including sword and sorcery. His tales of Elak of Atlantis (reviewed here, here, here, and here) as well as his two stories of Prince Raynor (reviewed here and here) helped fill the gap left by Robert E. Howard’s death.

It was in science fiction that he made his reputation. Stories such “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”, “The Proud Robot”, “The Twonky”, “When the Bough Breaks”, the Baldly stories (collected in Mutant), the Hogben stories, and countless others have remained popular and readable to this day, showing only a few signs of not aging well. His story “What You Need” was filmed as an original series Twilight Zone episode. Kuttner wrote a lot of what at the time was considered novel length work in the pulps, much of it still unreprinted. A few years ago I managed to get most of the pulps containing these stories, and over the next year or two I hope to make time to read and report on them. It’s also been long enough since I read some of them, that I need to refresh my memory.

There’s a lot of great Kuttner material that either hasn’t been reprinted or has been reprinted in such obscure places that it doesn’t matter. For example, “We Kill People” from Astounding‘s March 1946 issue is every bit as good as the stories that are the most well-known.

Kuttner’s work was marked by a dry, cynical sense of humor and a pessimistic outlook on life, and the stories often ended on a note of horror. As the 1940s turned to the 1950s, the Kuttner quit writing so much for the pulps. Part of this was burn-out, part of this was Kuttner was finally getting his college degree and then a master’s. He authored several mystery novels during this period. He passed away from a heart attack.

I first encountered Kuttner on a hot, humid afternoon the summer before I entered high school. I was taking a break and pulled out the SFBC edition of The Best of Henry Kuttner, which had arrived in the mail a few days earlier. Although I don’t recall why I purchased it, I suspect it was because Ray Bradbury, who was something of a protege of Kuttner’s for a while, wrote the introduction. The first story was “Mimsy Were the Borogoves”. My mind was blown. My life would never be the same.

Of all the science fiction and fantasy authors I’ve ever read, Kuttner is still my favorite. I thank God frequently that Stephen Haffner has reprinted so much of his early work. (I just wish he’d done it before I spent all that money tracking down those pulps.)

Kuttner (along with his wife C. L. Moore) is one of the few authors who has his/her own shelf in my library. (The others are Ray Bradbury, Leigh Brackett and her husband Edmond Hamilton, and Robert E. Howard, who books take up two shelves. Charles Beaumont would have his own shelf if he had written more books before he died.)

Much of Kuttner’s early work is clunky, but if you read his stories in chronological order, you can see him maturing. He was a writer who wasn’t afraid to stretch himself, to take chances and do something different. Just read “Happy Ending” as an example. The story is told in reverse, Ending, Middle, Beginning, and it works.

If you’ve not read Kuttner, you should. A large of number Big Names (Mariam Zimmer Bradley, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Robert Silverberg, Mike Resnick) list him among their influences. Find out why.

Happy Birthday, Hank.

Blogging Northwest Smith: Juhli

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With “Juhli”, C. L. Moore returned to the formula that had been successful in her first few Northwest Smith stories. The previous installment, “Dust of Gods“, was most a straight-forward adventure tale, with little of the weird science fantasy elements in prior stories, and certainly none of the erotic imagery.

The opening paragraph discusses Smith’s myriad scars, focusing on one particular scar over his heart. The next paragraph finds Smith waking up in a dark room with no idea where he is or how he got there. He manages to find a wall and put his back to it. This is a good thing because there’s something else there with him. Whatever is there touches him, delivering a strong electric shock. When he wakes up, the thing is still there somewhere, but there’s a young girl as well.

The girl, who is named Apri, is the servant of Juhli. Juhli is a fearsome member of an alien race that lives in the city of Vonng. Vonng exists in two planes. In Smith’s the city is in ruins, but in Juhli’s plane the city is still quite inhabited. Smith learns that he’s been captured, but his capture is an error. He’s been captured to feed Juhli. The error comes from Smith’s notoriety. Normally those taken are folks who won’t be missed.

Juhli makes her appearance and takes Smith and Apri to a structure that loops back on itself. What I mean by that is when Smith walks in a straight line between the columns supporting the roof, he eventually returns to his starting point.

Juhli isn’t human, although there are some superficial resemblances to humanity. For starters, she’s basically humanoid from the waist up. Moore doesn’t give a clear description of her from the waist down but implies she has the body of a snake. Her facial features are definitely not human. Her mouth is circular and doesn’t close, and she only has one eye in the middle of her forehead. Above that is some type of organ that resembles a feather. In spite of this inhuman appearance, Juhli is described as being beautiful.

Juhli wants to feed on Smith’s life force, and takes him in her arms. She places her mouth on his chest, which is the source of the scar mentioned in the opening paragraph. During the process, Smith experiences emotional extremes: exhilaration, terror, any strong emotion Juhli forces him to experience. In the process Smith sees the universe and Juhli’s world through her eyes.

I’ll not spoil the ending by saying how Smith manages to escape. I will say the ending is particularly bleak.

In “Juhli” Moore returns to the themes she used early in the series. There’s a beautiful, inhuman woman (or at least female) who tries to kill Smith through some type of psychic means. There’s some sexual imagery, although it’s not to the level of “Shambleau” and certainly not to the level of “Scarlet Dream“.

Yet the whole thing seems tired, like Moore is just going through the motions. We’ve seen this before. It’s not really new. Instead the story has an air of familiarity about it.

In spite of this, I liked the story. This is, after all, C. L. Moore we’re talking about. Her prose is superior to most of what you’ll find, even when it’s not necessarily her best. The woman could make long descriptive passages interesting, something that’s not easy to do. So, while not as strong a tale as some of the earlier entries in the series, “Juhli” is still a decent story.

Blogging Northwest Smith: Dust of Gods

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“Dust of Gods” was the fourth Northwest Smith story, and it was the last of the series published in 1934. The picture on the left accompanied the story in its original publication in Weird Tales. I scanned it from the only reproduction I’m aware of, the anthology Weird Tales: 32 Unearthed Terrors (Dziemianowicz, Weinberg, and Greenberg, ed., Bonanza Books, 1988). The book was printed on paper not much higher grade than the original pulp, and it’s yellowed with lines of text bleeding through from the other side of the page. But at least you can get a feel for what it would have been like to read the story in its original appearance. (What, you didn’t think I could actually afford copies of Weird Tales from the 30s, did you?)

Anyway, this installment in the series is a departure from the earlier tales. For one thing, Smith is not off by himself getting into trouble. His partner Yarol the Venusian is with him. In other words, Smith has company when he gets into trouble.

Secondly, there isn’t any exotic feminine menace in this one, and there certainly isn’t any of the sexual imagery that we saw in “Shambleau“, “Black Thirst“, or “Scarlet Dream“. While there isn’t any sexual content or theme, there is still an exotic menace. But compared to the earlier ones, it’s not that great of a menace.

The menace this time is more of a science fictional nature. The previous stories were science fantasy. “Dust of Gods” is essentially science fiction, although not of the hard science, nuts and bolts variety.

The story opens with Smith and Yarol in a bar on Mars, drinking and commiserating about their lack of funds. They notice some men acting strangely at a nearby table. Smith and Yarol are contemplating approaching the men when another man at an adjacent table stops them. He tells the duo that the men worked for him but failed to complete a task, recovering something very ancient in a lost Martian city. He convinces Smith and Yarol to try and succeed where the others have failed.

What he tells them is that at one time, before man arose on Earth, there was a fifth planet from the Sun where now there are only asteroids. This planet was ruled by three gods, all long gone, and two of them forgotten by most members of the races currently inhabiting the solar system. The third is still remember, and goes by the name Pharol. In fact Yarol had used his name as an oath minutes before the man approach him and Smith.

These gods came from another realm, and ruled until catastrophe befell the fifth planet. All that’s left of Pharol is dust, and it’s this dust the man wants Smith and Yarol to retrieve for him. In need of cash, they sign on.

The two end up in an ancient Martian city near the North Pole of the planet. Deep beneath the city, after avoiding a trap, they find a chamber filled with a strange glowing light that flows like water. In the center of the chamber is a huge throne built for three occupants. And in one of the seats there is a pile of dust. Yarol climbs up to gather the dust while Smith waits below, thinking while he watches the light pour out of the chamber. He concludes the guy who has hired them is up to no good, and if he gets his hands on the dust, there’s no telling what kind of damage he could do or if there would be any way to stop him. They decide to leave the dust. Just to be safe, they destroy it with their blasters.

And that’s pretty much all that happens in the story. It’s very much a departure from the earlier tales. The setting is a pretty standard science fiction setting for the time in which “Dust of Gods” was written. The concept of gathering literal dust of a god is an original idea, and not one I’ve seen much done with outside of this story.

But this story lacks the power and impact of the earlier ones. Maybe it’s the lack of suggestive or outright sexual imagery. Maybe Moore was having an off day when she wrote the story. (Okay, a series of off days since she almost certainly didn’t write this one in one day. Or maybe she did. That would explain a lot.) It almost reads as though Moore had tired of the character, but with another 10 installments to come in the series, that’s hardly likely. Moore’s prose is still as rich and evocative as ever, but it seems like there’s less she wants to evoke. The menace isn’t particularly threatening, and all Smith and Yarol really have to do is think for a bit. While they do encounter some danger, it’s not really of the soul-shattering kind in the previous stories.

Whatever the reason, I found “Dust of Gods” to be the weakest story in the series to date, even though it’s not a bad story. That sounds harsh, but it’s really not saying much. Moore on a bad day was better than almost every writer of her time on a good day, with a few exceptions such as Howard. She’s certainly better than many of the writers working today, even the acclaimed ones.

There are 10 more stories to go, and I’ll look at another one soon.

Famous Fantasy Writers in a Five-Way

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Uh, story that is. A five-way story.Get your minds out the gutter. This isn’t that kind of blog. It’s suitable for the whole family. Yesterday’s post not withstanding.

And you guys in the back knock off the giggling. Geez, what I put up with.

Anyway, the story I’m talking about is “The Challenge from Beyond”, the fantasy version. I don’t have a copy of the science fiction version, which is long out of print.

I first read this story when I was in high school. I was 14 when I discovered C. L. Moore, so I couldn’t have been any younger than that, but I doubt I was older than 15. I found a beat up copy of the anthology Horrors Unkown at a yard sale and picked it up primarily on the strength of a couple of early Ray Bradbury stories I’d never heard of.

Everything else was just bonus, including a Northwest Smith story by C. L. Moore, “Werewoman”, which I’ll discuss in my series on Northwest Smith.

The lead story in the anthology was a round robin fantasy, “The Challenge From Beyond”, in which C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long each wrote a chapter. I’ll discuss it with spoilers below.

The story was published in the September 1935 issue of The Fantasy Magazine, edited by Julius Schwartz. According to the notes in Horrors Unknown written by Sam Moskowitz, who edited the anthology, the two stories titled “The Challenge From Beyond” were written in honor of The Fantasy Magazine‘s third anniversary issue.

The science fiction story was written by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Donald Wandrei, Edward E. Smith, Harl Vincent, and Murray Leinster. I’ve not read it, nor, as I said above, have a copy of it. As a set, the reputations of the fantasy authors have fared better than those of the science fiction writers.

C. L. Moore

C. L. Moore opens the story by putting geologist George Campbell on a camping trip. Awakened by a varmit getting into his supplies, he’s about to throw a stone he picked up in the dark at the animal. He stops when realizes that what he holds in his hand isn’t a normal stone. Shining his flashlight upon it, he discovers it’s a crystal cube. It’s extremely old, with the corners almost rounded. Inside is a small plate with some type of writing on it that seems to briefly glow after he turns off his flashlight. He’s fascinated and speculates on the origin of such an artifact. He decides to wait until morning to examine the object more closely.

A. Merritt takes up the next section of the story. Of all the authors who participated in this project, Merritt is the one whose name is most likely to be unfamiliar to contemporary readers. The irony is that at the time this story was written he was the most well known, the biggest name if you will. Recently Black Gate editor John O’Neill mentioned he had obtained a copy of Merritt’s only short story collection, The Fox Woman, and said he intended to review it at some point. I’ve got a copy on my shelf. Maybe I can beat him to it. (Not likely, given my time constraints.)

Abraham Merritt

Anyway, Merritt picks up the story with Campbell, not being able to get back to sleep, deciding to investigate the crystal with his flashlight. The thing does seem to glow briefly after he shines his light on it. He plays around with the crystal and his light, and suddenly he finds himself being pulled into the crystal. Merritt’s portion of the story ends with Campbell being sucked across the void. Merritt leaves it up to H. P. Lovecraft to tell the reader where he’ll end up.

Of the writers involved in this story, H. P. Lovecraft has grown the most in reputation, although Howard is seeing a resurgence. Lovecraft’s portion of the story is by far the longest. All of the other writers’ contributions are between two and three pages. Lovecraft’s is over seven. Much of it is an info dump describing a race of beings in another galaxy or universe (Lovecraft appears to use the words interchangeably). They resemble giant worm or catepillars, and early in their history they discover the means of space travel. They use this ability to conquer any races they encounter.

H. P. Lovecraft

Their method is to send small crystals into the void, programmed to activate when they land on planets. Any life form which picks up the cube finds itself transported to the home world of the worms, while a member of that race is transported into the body of the life form. The imposter poses as a member of whichever species it has switched bodies with. Some species the worms destroy, some they simply take over the bodies. Of course, Lovecraft adds a great deal of pseudohistorical gobbledygook about occult theories from human history and such.

Lovecraft ends his portion of the story with Campbell discovering he inhabits the body of one of the worms, which Lovecraft is now describing as a centipede.

Robert E. Howard

If Lovecraft essentially inserted a Lovecraft story into the tale, Robert E. Howard did the same with his portion. Campbell decides that the pleasures of humanity have bored him. He wants to live a life filled with new sensations. So he does what any Howard hero would do. He grabs a sharp instrument which the scientist in the room with him only thinks of as a scientific instrument, not a weapon, kills the scientist, and goes on a rampage.

The god worshipped by these worms/caterpillars/centipedes/whatever is a sphere. Campbell locates the room where the god is held, kills the priests, and holds the god captive until he’s made emperor.

And so it falls to Frank Belknap Long to resolve the story. He takes an interesting approach. Alternating paragraphs, he tells how the worm inhabiting Campbell’s body dies (It seems nothing can control the animal urges of a human being except a human being) and how Campbell, with the god’s aid, rules the world as a benevolent dictator.

Frank Belknap Long

As a story, “The Challenge From Beyond” doesn’t work especially well. Moore and Merritt’s portions fit together rather seamlessly. The problem comes in with Lovecraft and Howard. Each takes the story in an entirely different direction. Not that there’s anything wrong with this in principle, but it can be rather jarring. Especially if the character of the protagonist seems to change. Howard’s portrayal of Campbell seems at odds to that presented by Moore and Merritt.

Lovecraft really doesn’t do much with Campbell, instead using his portion of the story as an infodump. Campbell learns the history Lovecraft presents by absorbing it from the brain of the body he finds himself inhabiting. The only real problem I have with Lovecraft’s portion is the length. I think he could have left out some of his material and still had a strong, if not stronger, contribution.

I suspect the contributions of Lovecraft and Howard seem a little jarring to me because both writers had such strong personalities and distinct visions and authorial voices. When writing alone these qualities are assets. In collaboration, they can cause problems. Still part of the fun of this type of writing is to try to leave an impossible situation for the next guy to try to resolve.

Long does a good job of tying everything together except that after Campbell has gone on a killing rampage, I find him being a good and benevolent ruler a little hard to swallow. I will say that Long’s prose is strong.

Overall, this isn’t the greatest or best work of any of these authors. That’s not surprising since Moore and Merritt don’t write enough to really establish a story, and Lovecraft, Howard, and Long have to deal with what the other have left them. Still, this is a fun piece, and while definitely a product of its time, a small gem simply for who the contributors are.

“The Challenge From Beyond” is currently available in Adventures in Science Fantasy by Robert E. Howard and published by the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press.

Blogging Northwest Smith: Scarlet Dream

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“Scarlet Dream”
C. L. Moore

This post contains content of an adult nature and is not suitable for younger readers. You have been warned.

“Scarlet Dream” is the third Northwest Smith story. In terms of sexually charged imagery, it’s the most explicit of the ones so far, hence the warning above. (My discussions of “Shambleau” and “Black Thirst” can be found here andhere.) There will be spoilers, as well. You’ve been doubly warned.

When the story opens, Smith is wandering through the Lakkmanda Market on Mars. The name has a decidedly Leigh Brackett feel to it. “Scarlet Dream” was published in 1934, predating Brackett’s Mars by a few years, but still I can’t help wondering if Brackett was influenced a bit by the name.

Smith spies a shawl with an intricate pattern consisting of a scarlet thread woven in a blue and green background. The Martian vendor displaying tells Smith the thing gives him a headache, and he sells it to Smith for a good price.

After he returns to his quarters, Smith tries to trace the pattern on the shawl, gives up, covers himself with it, and goes to sleep. Sometime in the night he begins dreaming that he’s walking up a mist enshrouded stair. He soon loses sight of the bottom.

Eventually he is nearly run over by a young girl with long orange hair, wearing a short shift, and covered in blood. She babbles something about some type of monster killing her sister. Smith manages to calm her enough to carry her to the top of the stairs. Once there he takes her into a side room, sets her on a stone bench, and gets a little more explanation from her.

The girl, who is never named, tells Smith that he’s dreaming but that he’s entered a dream world that can only be exited by death or by a fate worse than dying. Most of Smith’s questions are answered along the lines of “We find it best not to think/ask/do that.” This includes trying to leave or learn new things. Indeed, it’s only when Smith eventually decides to leave that the monster shows up and attacks him. But that comes later.

One of the things she tells him is that no one has ever gone down the stairs he came up. She only went down the stairs in a panic. Why Smith doesn’t at some point try to retrace his steps is never explained. But if he did, then there would be no story.

Smith and the girl are in giant temple, and she leads him outside to a lake and a small shrine containing two cots, two blankets, and a few clothes. It’s completely open to the air, but since the temperature never changes, that’s not a problem.

The trees seem to bend towards them, and the grass certainly does. Smith eventually learns that if a person stands barefoot in the grass for long, it will begin sucking blood through the feet. The trees are implied to be flesh eating.

Smith sits with the girl beside the lake, drifts off, and comes to as night is falling. Moore implies that at this point Smith engages the girl in sex. Regular sex between them is implied, with the word “kiss” and its variations being a euphemism for more than a kiss. In spite of the raciness of the covers Farnsworth Wright selected for Weird Tales, the contents tended to be squeaky clean. One of Robert E. Howard’s early Conan stories was rejected because Wright felt Conan took too many liberties with a young lady. (My opinion of that can be found here.)

Where Moore engages in some serious sexual imagery is when the girl shows Smith the only source of food. She takes him to a hall in the temple in which there are people “eating”. That there are other people present is mentioned more than once, but this is the only time we see them. Smith has no interaction with them. In fact, they’re only mentioned in a few sentences, basically as backdrop.

The way people eat is they kneel before spigots in the wall, spigots that curve upwards. What they drink from the spigots is blood, with the hint that it contains some addictive substance. Once Smith realizes what he’s drinking, he’s repulsed but finds himself returning the next day. Moore goes into details describing how pleasant and yet repulsive feeding is, dwelling on the taste.

Now I don’t know what mental picture you get, but what comes to my mind now is the same thing that came to mind when I was 15. Fellatio, although I had not encountered that word at the time. It’s hard to escape that image. The posture of kneeling, along with Moore deliberately stating that the spigots curve upward from the wall, leave little room for any other conclusion. What I have to wonder is what Wright thought about this imagery, or if he even noticed it. I doubt we’ll ever know. Smith comes to enjoy the feeding more than the girl, although he never completely overcomes his revulsion of it.

Smith eventually spies mountains through the surrounding mist, attempts to leave, is attacked by the monster, and drives it off with his blaster. It’s at this point that the girl tells Smith she would rather lose him to the fate worse than death than through death at the hand of the monster. She helps him get home, although he doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late.

Smith awakens to find his partner Yarol and a doctor leaning over him. Smith has been in a coma for a week. Seems Smith can’t be left alone to wander about on Mars without getting into trouble. Yarol gave the shawl away while Smith was out. The pattern was giving him a headache.

This is the third Northwest Smith story, and other than “Shambleau”, it’s the one that has stuck out the most in my mind since I first read the series nearly 30 years ago. Again, I’m struck by how graphic the sexual imagery is in these stories. If my parents had known what I was reading….

Moore seems to have a theme of vampirism going as well. In the first story, the vampire fed on life essence, in the second beauty, and now the grass actually drinks blood.

I’m going to continue this series. The post on “Black Thirst” is in the top 10 most viewed posts I’ve done. Stay tuned. There’s more to come. Or should that be Moore to come?

Blogging Northwest Smith: Black Thirst

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“Black Thirst”
C. L. Moore

SPOILER ALERT – You’ve been warned.

“Black Thirst” is the second Northwest Smith story, published in the April 1934 issue of Weird Tales shortly after “Shambleau”. Upon rereading, I found this story lacked the power of its predecessor. It may have been that I wasn’t able to get to the story until late at night, and therefore was fighting fatigue.

The story begins with Smith casing a warehouse along the waterfront of the Venusian city of Ednes one night when a woman walks by and asks him if he’d like to make a gold coin. This isn’t any ordinary woman, but a Minga woman.

When the first settlers landed on the shore, they found a giant castle ruled by a being, apparently a man, called the Alendar. He had a small entourage of the most beautiful women, which he began selling to the traders and settlers.

Over time, the Minga women, renowned for their exquisite beauty and chaste bodies, have been the prizes of kings, sultans, and chieftains throughout the solar system. They are never allowed to walk the streets at night alone and unescorted. But this one is.

She recognizes Smith, although they’ve never met, and raises her offer to one hundred gold coins. To receive it, all he has to do is come to a particular gate at the Minga castle in one hour, give her name, and enter.

Other men have died for lesser offenses against the Alendar.

Smith decides to take her up on the offer.

This part of the story was as clear in my mind as the day I first read it. What had faded were the events that followed. I had a vague memory of what happened but could recall no details.

Upon entering the Minga castle, Smith enters a dark world where beauty is the most prized and carefully nurtured commodity. And by nurtured, I mean bred. Although the woman Vaudir, who entices him into the castle, is one of the most beautiful women Smith has ever seen, she pales in comparison to the others he sees. Next to them she is plain and homely.

Smith also meets the Alendar, who isn’t a man even though he wears a man’s form. The Alendar can control people with his thoughts, and he takes Smith captive. He shows Smith women of such great beauty that it nearly drives Smith insane.

The Alendar is a type of psychic vampire that feeds on beauty, and he’s centuries old. The women in his stable have been bred for one purpose, and one purpose only. Food. The Alendar drains them of their beauty and their life essence. Only the least beautiful are sold as concubines and queens.

For most of those centuries, especially the most recent, the Alendar had fed on female beauty. But now he wants a taste of something a little different, male beauty. And Smith is intended to be the main course. It’s only with the assistance of Vaudir, and the sacrifice of her life, that Smith manages to escape.

While to my mind not as powerful as “Shambleau”, there are still some dark and disturbing implications in “Black Thirst”. First there’s the there’s the whole aspect of selling women. While Moore downplays it and makes it seem like an accepted practice, it’s really nothing more than slavery, and sexual slavery at that. At least that’s what’s implied when powerful men buy the most beautiful women in the solar system. Now I’m not saying Moore condones the practice. She never goes that far. Instead she states it for what it is, the selling of women by men for their beauty. Such things have been done for centuries, and in an exotic setting such as this, it’s really more of window dressing than anything else.

Where Moore appears be placing her emphasis is on the destruction of beauty. The Alendar, and by extension the men who buy women from him, are using women for the purpose of consuming and destroying their beauty. The women are used to feed, the Alendar’s life force and the men’s egos.

Is Moore saying that men destroy women for their beauty, that beauty is another commodity bought, sold, and consumed in a man’s world? I don’t know for sure, and like I said in the previous installment of this series, I don’t want to read too much amateur psycho-babble into the fiction. It’s an interesting thought, though. She certainly seems to be.

In her introduction to the Lancer edition of Fury, a novel she wrote with her husband Henry Kuttner, she talks about the themes that appear in an author’s work that the author isn’t consciously aware of at the time of writing. Hers, she writes, is “The most treacherous thing in life is love.” That’s another interesting thought.

In the two stories we’ve examined so far, love (or something associated with the sexual and/or romantic aspect of it) is presented as destructive and dark, twisted rather nurturing, and incredibly trecherous. Keep in mind, at this time Moore was unmarried. I know nothing about her personal life during this period, but I have to wonder. Had this attractive young woman been burned in a relationship? Had she witnessed friends or family members have their beauty consumed by a relationship? I don’t expect to ever find out. Such a thing would seem to be consistent with the Northwest Smith stories so far. But whether this interpretation is a sound one is a question I’ll leave to the professional literary scholars.

Blogging Northwest Smith: Shambleau

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“Shambleau” is the first of the Northwest Smith adventures, and the first published story by C. L. Moore. According to Lester del Rey, in his introduction to The Best of C. L. Moore (1975), she had been writing for 15 years before she submitted anything for publication. I’d like to know where he got that information, but I’m not questioning it. Since he’d known Moore personally for decades, I’m inclined to believe him. Of course, what I’d like even more is to get my hands on some of those unpublished stories. I suspect they’ve long since ceased to exist.

I don’t remember if “Shambleau” was the first story I read by C. L. Moore, but it certainly made the strongest impact on me. Here’s a synopsis of what happens (spoiler alert):

A young woman is being chased by a mob down a street in a spaceport town on Mars. The mob is closing in on her when she runs into Northwest Smith, a notorious criminal. He intervenes on her behalf to the bafflement of the crowd. Smith takes her back to his room, tells her she’s welcome to stay for the few days until he gives up the room and leaves. This girl isn’t human, and Smith doesn’t recognize her race. She’s dressed only in a shift and a turban. Smith assumes she’s bald. He realizes later she’s not when he sees her tuck what he thinks is a lock of hair under her turban. He’s sure he saw the lock move on its own. But he must be mistaken…

While Moore points out that sexual temptations don’t have much hold on Smith, he does find her attractive enough to make advances. At least until he takes in his arms, at which point he finds her repulsive. He doesn’t really understand why that is, only that the repulsion he feels is almost primal in nature.

Smith is in town setting up some type of criminal venture. We’re not ever told what. Over the next few days, Smith experiences a back and forth attraction and repulsion. He struggles with it, but ultimately he succumbs. Only when Smith’s partner Yarol shows up does Smith have a chance of escape, and even then it’s not easy.

Moore is playing with the concept of a gorgon, and goes so far as to state that the ancient Greeks had some knowledge of the Shambleau, which is the name of the race rather than of the girl. She even takes her resolution from that myth.

One of the things that’s so interesting about this story is that for all its length (~30 pages), not much actually happens. Other than the initial confrontation, which takes less than 5 pages, and Yarol’s rescue of Smith and the conversation that follows, about half of the story revolves around the Shambleau’s seduction of Smith. Yet Moore’s prose is so rich that you hardly notice that that many pages have passed.

Caedmon Records recording of “Shambleau”

And it’s the seduction that is the heart and soul of the story. Moore makes it very clear that Smith’s fall into the Shambelau’s clutches is a very bad thing, but she also makes it clear that it’s also an intensely pleasurable thing. And it’s described as the Shambleau caressing and touching Smith’s soul more than his body. It’s how she feeds, essentially a type of psychic vampire.

Moore also stresses Smith’s internal conflict, attracted by the pleasure and repulsed by the unnaturalness of it. It’s a struggle he ultimately loses, giving in to the temptation while the whole time being repulsed by his actions. It’s a struggle that on some level most people can probably relate to. The desire for something that you know is wrong or harmful, the momentary pleasure of something that will ultimately destroy you.

The imagery is definitely sexual in nature. While tame by today’s standards, I suspect this was pretty potent stuff back then. It was certainly powerful to the teenage boy I was when I first read it. Awash as I was in hormones, this story had a major impact on me. It was almost like Moore was reading my mind at times as I struggled to understand and contain the natural changes I was undergoing and the accompanying urges. And while the emotional impact when I reread the story the other night wasn’t nearly that intense, echoes were still there.

The reason “Shambleau” had such an impact on me, and why its popularity and acclaim has endured for over 75 years, is simple. What Moore deals with here, as I mentioned in a previous paragraph, is something that most people can relate to on some level. She’s dealing with what it means to be human, what it means to struggle with what’s right and what’s convenient. Unlike many writers obsessed with their own self-importance, she does it by telling a compelling story, and telling it well.right up to the end.

Much has been made of Moore’s introduction of emotion and sexuality into the science fiction and fantasy fields in the 1930s. I’m not going to rehash that here. I have neither the time nor the patience for the literature search. And I’m certainly not going to get into amateur psychoanalysis, a la L. Sprague de Camp with Robert E. Howard, and try to interpret Moore’s emotional and mental state. I have too much respect for her to ever do that.

One last bit of trivia. At one point in the story, Smith hums the tune of a song, “The Green Hills of Earth.” Robert Heinlein has gone on record saying this was the inspiration of his classic story by that name.

C. L. Moore Turns 102

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Catherine Lucille Moore was born on this day in 1911. She was one of the greatest fantasy and science fiction authors to work in the field. That’s the oldest picture of her I could find. I saw a photo of her when I was in college that was (I think) taken shortly before her death. She was sitting on the steps of a back porch, and the photo was shot from what I would consider an intermediate distance. If anyone is familiar with the picture and knows where I can get a copy, I would appreciate your letting me know.

I wrote a tribute last year and a belated tribute the year before, so I wanted to do something different this year. So after giving some basic facts, I’ll tell you what I have in mind.

First, the facts. Moore was working in an Indiana bank when she published her first story. The legend is that she wrote on a company typewriter after hours while working late. Legend also has it that Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright was so impressed by it that he closed the offices for the rest of the day. I don’t know for sure if either event actually happened that way, but if they didn’t, they should have. Moore went on to write some quite successful science fiction on her own before marrying fellow science fiction writer Henry Kuttner, probably my all time favorite author for at least three days of every week. After Kuttner died in 1958, Moore left the field. She remarried, and again legend has it, her new husband didn’t want her writing science fiction. Also again, I don’t know if that’s true. By this time she was writing for television, which paid considerably better.

She left quite a legacy, both on her own and with her husband. I’m going to take a closer look at that legacy this year. Again both her individual legacy and the one she shares with Kuttner. I’ve got a lot on my plate, and I can see I’ll need something to act as a sanity check.

For quite some time now I’ve been intending to take a closer look at her two signature series, Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith. Jirel was one of the first, if not the very first, sword and sorcery heroine who could swing a blade as well as any man. Northwest Smith was been called the prototype for Han Solo. I’ll deal with that in an upcoming post.

I’ve decided to start with the Northwest Smith stories (although I will cover the Jirel tales as well). They’re set in outer space, but they have strong fantasy elements, so I’m going to post the essays about them here rather than on Futures Past and Present. I intend to post the first one in the next day or so. Stick around. It’s been nearly 30 years since I read most of them, but images from some of the stories are still clear in my mind. They left quite a mark on a very impressionable young teenager. We’ll see how well they hold up to middle aged scrutiny.

Happy Birthday, C. L. Moore

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Moore with husband Kuttner

Today marks the 101st anniversary of the birth of C. L. Moore. Moore was an innovative writer who got her start in Weird Tales with the classic story “Shambleau”, which introduced the Han Solo prototype Northwest Smith. She also created Jirel of Joiry, one of the pioneering heroines of sword and sorcery. After her marriage to Henry Kuttner, most of her output was collaborative and mainly science fiction.

I wrote a more extensive tribute last year, albeit a day late. I’ll not repeat myself this year, except to say, go read her. Right now. Turn off the computer, put down the tablet, and go read her. Okay, you can leave the tablet on if you download one of her stories. She’s too important a figure in the field to be forgotten. While I’m sure others have written tributes today, I haven’t seen any. Of course the best tribute you can pay authors is to read their works.

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