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.

Her first story was “Shambleau”, which introduced her character Northwest Smith. Legend has it that Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright closed the office after reading it in honor of “C. L. Moore Day”. I don’t know it it’s true or not, but it’s a good story.

The Northwest Smith stories are weird fantasy/horror tales that are set in space. The character of Northwest Smith was supposedly the inspiration for Han Solo in Star Wars. I can certainly believe that to be the case. Moore also made reference in the story to a fictional song, “The Green Hills of Earth”. She didn’t provide any lyrics, but Robert A. Heinlein did a few years later in the short story by the same name.

You can see what an impact this one story had.

The were a dozen stories in the Northwest Smith series. the first three, “Shambleau“, “Black Thirst“, and “Scarlet Dream” are loaded with sexual imagery, especially in my opinion “Scarlet Dream”. After those three, the tone of the stories changes a little as they become more standard adventure stories. They never lose the weird fantasy aspect, but the imagery changes.

As if this weren’t enough, Moore also created the character Jirel of Joiry. This fiery redhead starred in five stories, in addition to one in which she teamed up with Northwest Smith.  The first two stories in this series, “Black God’s Kiss” and “Black God’s Shadow“, are especially weird and have a dreamlike quality to them.

You hear a lot of bitching and moaning these days about the need for strong women in fantasy. What you usually get with those types of stories are men with breasts, not fully fleshed female characters. C. L. Moore was writing those types of women decades. Jirel is a strong woman who is also very feminine.

And I’ll take Jirel over Red Sonja any day.

While we’re on the topic no women characters in fantasy, let’s address the claim that female writers had to hide their identities by either adopting male pseudonyms or use their initials. This claim has been made about Moore. It’s completely untrue. She has stated that she usede her initials not to hide her gender but to hide her identity from her employer. She was the sole support for her parents. Moore was afraid that if her employer found out she was earning  money as a writer, then she would be fired so someone else could have her job. Keep in mind that Moore started writing dduring the depths of the Depression, when jobs were hard to come by. When that is taken into consideration, her fear seems to be a reasonable one.

Moore wrote other stories that weren’t part of any series. The one she is most famous for is “No Woman Born“. It’s the story of a dancer whose body is destroyed and her brain is transplanted into a mechanical woman.

Moore eventually married Henry Kuttner, another favorite writer around these parts. Much has been written about their collaborative writing process. According to Moore, they would discuss a story, and whoever felt the most strongly about it would start writing. At some point, the first person would take a break and the other would start writing where the first left off. It became difficult, if not impossible, to tell who wrote what.

They were so prolific, they adopted a number of pen names, such as Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell, just to name a few. After Kuttner’s death in 1958, Moore stopped writing science fiction and fantasy. Supposedly because she remarried and her husband didn’t want her writing science fiction and fantasy.

And that was a loss to the field that’s hard to measure.