Sword & Sorcery

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Sword & Sorcery

1Thulean
Modifié : Août 30, 2011, 6:18 am

I want to start a new thread to discuss this rather than it getting lost in the other thread.

To me S&S is weird fiction. I think it is one of the characteristics that separates it from high fantasy and epic fantasy and what have you. S&S seems to have a lot of horror in it. Occult ritualistic style magic, demons, old ones and the like. Anyone have a similar opinion of S&S? Or other opinion.

Just look at the S&S authors. REH, Fritz Leiber, C L Moore, Henry Kuttner, Clark Ashton Smith. Even Karl Edward Wagner was primarily a horror writer though I am not sure he is a weird fiction author.

Thoughts?

BTW, how cool would it have been if HPL had given us some S&S?

2semdetenebre
Modifié : Août 30, 2011, 9:03 am

Many of the authors you mention are all fine examples of S&S to one degree or another. You could say that REH invented the blueprint, although I've heard it argued that Fritz Leiber really cemented the paradigm in place with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. I'd put C.A. Smith on the low end of the scale, being more sorcery than sword. I'm not as familiar with Kuttner & Moore - what do they do in the genre?

I'd say that Wagner rates as an essential weird fiction writer for his short story "Sticks" alone, although he uses Weird tropes in a lot of his other work. His Kane stories are top-of-the-line S&S, too. Kane is great because he is not a nice guy. An incredibly well-realized anti-hero, in fact.

You have to be a little careful with considering S&S in general to be weird fiction, as much of it seems to consist of uninspired Tolkien high-fantasy rip-offs or adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons modules.

I'm having a hard time getting my brain around the idea of HPL writing S&S. Maybe in collaboration with REH?

3paradoxosalpha
Août 30, 2011, 9:19 am

I agree with #1, and I appreciate #2's caveats. Tierney's Simon stories (like the ones collected in Scroll of Thoth) are a more recent example of work with a little swords and sorcery and a lot of weird. Books where the protagonist is both a sorcerer and a swordsman, like Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone are often good at demonstrating the overlap of the categories.

If we go to source material, Lord Dunsany, although his good stuff might be best classified as high fantasy, set key precedents both for sword & sorcery and for weird in general.

And truly, there's nothing weird about yet another story that reads like Tolkein recycled through D&D manuals. I think of that large class of literature as "flat fantasy."

4Thulean
Modifié : Août 30, 2011, 9:25 am

Kuttner had his Elak of Atlantis tales and C L Moore had Jirel of Joiry.

Certainly I would not consider Tolkien style fantasy and D&D novels to be S&S. Some people do use S&S to mean the same thing as fantasy though.

For me it has always been kind of hard to define sword & sorcery. It is kind of a "I know it when I see it" type thing.

I would also include Abraham Merritt's Ship of Ishtar as S&S. Maybe the first S&S story as it was written in 1924.

5paradoxosalpha
Août 30, 2011, 9:23 am

Oh, wrt HPL writing swords and sorcery, an arguable pastiche of the same would be Lumley's Dreamlands stories: Hero of Dreams, Ship of Dreams, Mad Moon of Dreams, etc. Some of Lumley's other books (House of Cthulhu, Khai of Khem) also work the weird swords and sorcery zone pretty rigorously.

6Thulean
Modifié : Août 30, 2011, 9:40 am

>2 semdetenebre:

An REH and HPL collaboration? That would have been awesome!

>3 paradoxosalpha:

I am not at all familiar with Tierney. I'll check him out thanks.

I have not really read Dunsany but I was under the impression that it was more...fairy tale style?

Also, I have always considered sword & sorcery and sword & planet to be very much related but S&P is not weird fiction really, is it?

Of course S&P is another genre term that gets missused sometimes, imo, of course. I see a lot of people call space opera type stuff S&P.

7semdetenebre
Août 30, 2011, 9:58 am

# 6

As for Dunsany and S&S, I strongly recommend The King of Elfland's Daughter, which involves a seemingly doomed heroic quest. High fantasy, true, and just gorgeously written, but there is an undercurrent of the weird to it - more than a bit of magic that can bite you - that might make it a S&S prototype.

# 5

Oh yes - Lumley! I haven't read those specific works, but Mr. Lumley definitely needs his own thread here.

# 4

I've heard of Jirel of Joiry - how do those tales hold up?

# 3

I'd definitely include Elric here. The weird does indeed overlap with fantasy and SF in these tales and in the Eternal Champion saga overall. I could see these as having been serialized in Weird Tales back in the 20's/30's.

8Thulean
Modifié : Août 30, 2011, 10:53 am

Haven't read the Jirel stuff yet. I bought both Black Gods Kiss and the Elak of Atlantis volume that Paizo put out on their Planet Stories label. I am reading Foundation and Empire right now and then Second Foundation and then that is next on my list. I have read some of her Northwest Smith stories though and those are great. Too much to read and not enough time.

How are the other Eternal Champion stories outside of Elric?

9bookstopshere
Août 30, 2011, 11:15 am

for an odd collaboration check
The Challenge from Beyond by
H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, Frank Belknap Long, etc

10paradoxosalpha
Août 30, 2011, 11:22 am

I adore Moore's Jirel stories. They are very weird, trippy and super-sensuous.

Elric was almost certainly invented as a direct inversion of many of the characteristics of Conan. He's a physically-weak, downwardly-mobile, white-maned sorcerer in thrall to diabolical powers.

Dunsany was one of HPL's literary models, and I suspect that he was a direct influence on Leiber and most of the others in the list in #1. Joshi's The Weird Tale definitively positions Dunsany in the genealogy of the form. He was also a critical precursor for 20th-century fantasy in general, swords and sorcery included, in that the whole-cloth world-weaving of the Pegana stories fired the imaginations of later writers.

11semdetenebre
Modifié : Août 30, 2011, 4:19 pm

# 10

I'm going have to track some of those Jirel stories down (just added the Planet Stories volume Black Gods Kiss. Eventually. Good observation on Elric being a deliberate inverse of the Conan archetype.

# 8

The Eternal Champion cycle is vast, which is amply relayed by this pretty extensive Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Champion

Besides Elric, I also liked the Corum and Hawkmoon stories very much. Particularly the scenes in The Chronicles of Corum featuring those giant, hideous old gods in the mist making siege on Corum and company. Not a little Lovecraftian, I think. I also seem to recall enjoying various appearances by the character Erkose. Overall, the books run the gamut from the S&S stylings we've been discussing all the way to the surreal SF of the Jerry Cornelius series. General quality varies, too, but that might depend on the reader's personal preferences more than anything else.

12semdetenebre
Août 30, 2011, 4:18 pm

#9

Ok, what the heck is that? Apparently written in 1935, the Wikisource link you posted claims it's public domain and post the thing in its entirety. Need more background detail!

13paradoxosalpha
Août 30, 2011, 4:29 pm

The Fantasy Masterworks Black Gods & Scarlet Dreams volume is an excellent collection of Moore: half Jirel of Joiry, half Northwest Smith.

14bookstopshere
Août 30, 2011, 5:29 pm

Moore could write

I think Moskowitz included Challenge from Beyond in Horrors Unknown (an excellent anthology) - more on that round robin anon

16semdetenebre
Août 31, 2011, 11:09 am

#15

Thanks for that link. I don't remember ever hearing about this collaboration before. I assume it'll be covered in the second volume of Joshi's I Am Providence, whenever I get around to it! "Challenge from Beyond" sounds like fun, especially REH's bit. I'll try to read it this week at some point.

17artturnerjr
Août 31, 2011, 7:14 pm

Good stuff, folks. Lots of interesting things to talk about.

>1 Thulean:

HPL did, IMHO, write sword & sorcery, albeit not a lot of it, & the stuff he did write in the subgenre was rather quirky (go figure - Lovecraft was a quirky guy). Regardless, I'd say something like The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath certainly qualifies. (Also, if memory serves, I've seen "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" in at least one S&S anthology).

>6 Thulean:

I don't think it's all that crazy to put sword & planet under the weird fiction umbrella. After all, WEIRD TALES did publish all those Otis Adelbert Kline S&P stories back in the day, didn't they?

>8 Thulean:

Re: Moorcock's non-Elric Eternal Champion stories - I recently finished his City of the Beast (Kane of Old Mars - more s & p stuff) & thought it was a lot of fun. Not The Sound and the Fury or anything, but an entertaining genre adventure nontheless.

18paradoxosalpha
Août 31, 2011, 7:40 pm

I certainly think that the better part of Leigh Brackett's sword and planet work is pretty weird. I've mentioned elsewhere that her "Black Amazon of Mars" has some impressive parallels with Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness."

19artturnerjr
Août 31, 2011, 8:47 pm

...and to tie in Ms. Brackett with the last-mentioned book in MY post, a quick glance at Wikipedia reminded me that she co-wrote the screenplay to Howard Hawks' THE BIG SLEEP with (wait for it) William Faulkner.

And people think fantasy fiction is strange. :/

20lucien
Août 31, 2011, 10:42 pm

Regarding Dunsany, I think "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" also works as an early proto-S&S story.

21semdetenebre
Sep 1, 2011, 8:53 am

I'd just like to say THANKS to everyone who's been posting here and elsewhere in this LT group. This is just the kind of stuff I've been hoping to see. I've been able to add so many things to my "must read" list list recently, it's incredible! Even better, it's all being recorded here for future reference. Very nice.

That gives me an idea - maybe we should start a thread (or threads) of "recommended reading"? Not necessarily intended used for discussion or reviews, just titles we REALLY like and recommend. Hmmmm... What do you think?

22artturnerjr
Sep 1, 2011, 9:30 am

>21 semdetenebre:

Sounds great. Go for it.

23Thulean
Sep 1, 2011, 10:23 am

I agree. Good idea. I think a reading group type of deal would not be a bad idea either though. A short story a week or something.

24paradoxosalpha
Modifié : Sep 1, 2011, 10:39 am

> 23

I think a short story a week is a brilliant idea. Most reading groups are trained at the book level, and are thus slower. But the short story is the paradigmatic form for weird fiction, and the greats have generally been issued in many different collections. If we can set the titles about two or three weeks in advance, that should give those who want to play time to find and read the story, and the pace of one story each week shouldn't blow anybody's cap.

Maybe a planning thread for the schedule, and then a fresh discussion thread for each story as it comes up?

25semdetenebre
Sep 1, 2011, 10:51 am

Ok - I just added several "recommendation" threads. Let's see how well it works out. I like the short story a week idea too! Let's set this up.

26Thulean
Sep 1, 2011, 11:20 am

You could do something like have everyone post that wants to contribute a story idea and then work through them one at a time in order.

27Thulean
Sep 2, 2011, 5:22 pm

There was an article that appeared yesterday at Black Gate about S&S. Well, about an old S&S anthology anyway.

http://www.blackgate.com/2011/09/01/swords-and-sorcery-at-its-pinnacle-a-look-ba...

28artturnerjr
Sep 2, 2011, 5:37 pm

>27 Thulean:

I see there's an HPL story in there, too. 8)

29semdetenebre
Sep 3, 2011, 6:58 pm

I was at my local comic book store today, about to by the Planet Stories edition of The Black God's Kiss when I happened to check their used books section and found the Ace Fantasy hardcover of Jirel of Joiry, with the exact same stories, for only $3! I love my local comic book store.

30Thulean
Sep 3, 2011, 7:32 pm

Nice score. I wish my local comic shops carried stuff like that. I was not aware that Ace even put out hardcovers.

31semdetenebre
Sep 3, 2011, 9:41 pm

#30

There is no price on the dust jacket, so I imagine it's a book club edition.

32paradoxosalpha
Sep 4, 2011, 10:03 am

Looking at the covers for that work, I can't help but notice that she dresses more comfortably in French and German.

33artturnerjr
Sep 4, 2011, 1:29 pm

>32 paradoxosalpha:

!!!
Indeed. I'm particularly fond of the Frazetta painting on the cover of the German edition. You don't happen to know the title of it (the painting, that is) off-hand, do you?

34Thulean
Modifié : Sep 4, 2011, 1:49 pm

It is called Sun Goddess and it is from 1970.

Here is a good quality image of it.

http://frankfrazetta.org/viewimage.php?loc=frank_frazetta_sungoddess.jpg

I love Frazetta's hipy, curvy women. :D

35artturnerjr
Sep 4, 2011, 2:08 pm

>35 artturnerjr:

Thanks for that.

Yeah, Frazetta's women always look like WOMEN, y'know? Don't know how direct the influence is, but I think the artist Frank Cho's ladies have the same kind of zaftig loveliness. This is a good thing. :)

36paradoxosalpha
Sep 6, 2011, 10:15 pm

Woohoo! As a fan of Tierney's Simon stories, I'd been wanting a copy of The Gardens of Lucullus, which had gone from being pricey to being entirely unavailable on Amazon. I found it today in a local shop in pretty good shape for a mere $8.50. This is the next novel I'll read.

37paradoxosalpha
Sep 21, 2011, 12:18 pm

Finished and reviewed The Gardens of Lucullus. Good fun, and as a hybridization of sword and sorcery with Lovecraftian horror, about as weird as weird can be. The ancient Roman setting was handled well, too.

38paradoxosalpha
Juin 24, 2012, 10:46 am

I just finished Swords and Dark Magic and posted my review.

39artturnerjr
Fév 19, 2014, 10:55 am

Don't think this has been mentioned here before - Robert M. Price has a couple of Thongor stories (continuing the series created by his friend Lin Carter (http://www.librarything.com/series/Thongor)) up on his website:

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/fiction.htm

40paradoxosalpha
Modifié : Juil 7, 2021, 12:37 pm

I just read and reviewed the first Thongor book The Wizard of Lemuria. It was a BOGO riding on my acquisition of Darkness Weaves at a local used book store. At $3 for the both of them and little more than an hour of reading time to polish off Thongor, I guess I can't begrudge it.

41WeeTurtle
Juil 14, 2021, 3:45 am

I'm not really sure what makes for "Sword and Sorcery" as apart from other "speculative" genres. I guess it sort of felt like D&D, in the sense of an every-day sort of fantasy as opposed to an Epic. Life is adventurous!

On the D&D end though, it's on the fringes but the weird stuff is there and starting to come out more. Illithids are probably the loudest Lovecraft reverence but things also get a little bit "weird" when psionics get involved.

I do agree on the whole though, that S&S can also be Weird, or rather, they are two genres that can mingle with others rather than be exclusive to themselves.

42paradoxosalpha
Modifié : Juil 14, 2021, 12:42 pm

Sword & Sorcery is the pulpy rough-and-tumble end of the fantasy pool, with Conan and Fafhrd and the Mouser as paradigms.

D&D as a rules system is agnostic about the fine increments in fantasy sub-genres. But the better-known campaign settings and adventure scenarios all seem to be "flat fantasy," a hybrid of epic fantasy and sword & sorcery, using the tropes of both and failing to maintain the feel of either.

I had the first edition of the AD&D Deities and Demigods book back in the day, the one that had a whole chapter on the "Cthulhu Mythos," with ample illustration by Erol Otus. D&D has never lacked for Cthulhvian options. See also our recurring discussion in this group about Appendix N.

43paradoxosalpha
Août 31, 2021, 5:32 pm

I'm not fully satisfied that it deserves the Sword & Sorcery label, but I just read and reviewed The Doom of Fallowhearth.