Last November, after finishing Black God's Kiss, I searched for more books from C. L. Moore, especially ones being published by Planet Stories. Fortunately, Northwest of Earth was soon to be in print, featuring stories of Northwest Smith, a more planetary romance type of character than Jirel of Joiry. One of the short stories in Black God's Kiss, "The Quest of the Star Stone" was a cross-over of sorts between Jirel and Northwest, so I had some exposure to him as a character. After a delay in publication, Northwest of Earth arrived, and I was excited to find this blurb on the back: "Science Fiction's Original Outlaw!" Considering that most of the stories in the book were published between 1933 and 1936, I thought this could be true and dug into the stories.
The first story in the collection, and the first Northwest story to see publication, is "Shambleau," a fascinating reconsideration of the Medusa story. I don't feel like this is much of a spoiler for two reasons: the story begins with a stream of consciousness-like consideration of Greek mythology, and the cover of the book has a painting from "Shambleau," itself spoiling what might have otherwise been the big reveal. "Shambleau" is perhaps the strongest story in the collection, which is a delightful recollection of the best the pulp era had to offer. Most of the things I had to say about Black God's Kiss would be repeated here: lovely, perhaps florid prose; engaging scenarios; just a wonderful read, if you have that sort of leaning.
But one of the negative comments I made about the earlier book is also true in this case: the protagonist doesn't do very much in his own stories. Northwest Smith does little but survive the encounter that is the centerpiece of each story. The general pattern is falling into association with someone disreputable and perhaps a little…off…, setting off to perform a task for them, and getting sucked into a weird universe that is only tangentially related to the one Northwest is from. Given the few descriptions of that original universe, Northwest appears to come from a place that is stereotypical of the great planetary romances: Earth is a super-advanced paradise with floating buildings and helicopters used as the primary means of transportation; Venus is a swampy, muggy forest planet with weird and hidden cultures hiding in the jungles; and Mars is a desert planet with the ruins of long-dead civilizations being uncovered by human settlers. This more closely aligns with the image I have in my mind of the golden age of pulp.
But Northwest rarely acts in these settings. He might go through them to get to a destination, but then he usually finds himself transported to another place, more evocative of the work of Lovecraft for the sheer creepy weirdness of its inhabitants. Then it is Northwest's task to merely survive and escape the clutches of these weird and sometimes godlike beings as the narrator offers layered description after layered description of not only the surroundings Northwest finds himself in but also his internal conflict. So, to say these stories are science fiction actually goes against my personal definition of science fiction, since there is no science at all and these exotic locales can be interchanged with mindscapes (and sometimes they are) or lands of wonder in a fantasy setting.
In fact, Northwest rarely acts at all, sometimes escaping by his own dumb luck or oftentimes because of the intervention of some third party. Usually he moves through the stories with no more idea what is happening to him than the reader, which is fine since he is the viewpoint through which we see the stories, but there is no authorial omniscience displayed at all. We learn as Northwest does, stumbling through foggy dimensions or through smoky hallways, usually never finding out all the details of how we got to where we are. Looking back at the jacket blurb, "Science Fiction's Original Outlaw" is a bit ironic, because the character Northwest has a reputation among his peers in the stories, but we never get to see anything that could have led to this reputation. People fear him, but none of those adventures, which could at least be defined as tangentially science fiction, appear to exist. Instead it is all trapping as we follow one of the solar system's most feared outlaws again and again into situations well beyond his control.
I feel like I might be overstating my point here, but it really is a quibble and an observation on an otherwise wonderful read, again especially if you are interested in good pulp writing. All of the stories feature such strong atmospheric descriptions, the reader easily becomes lost in the words and totally immersed in the settings. Another story I found to be very strong (And actually more science fiction-y than the others, but I Think that is not a cause of my liking it) was "Lost Paradise" concerning a race of people living in the Andes who, it turns out, are evacuees from another great civilization in the solar system. Their tragedy is a strong background to the events of the story, which takes a twist at the end which may a little predictable to modern readers and movie-goers, but was probably stunning to its readers in 1936.
Actually, if I do have a complaint about the book, it's that the aforementioned crossover story, "The Quest of the Starstone" is repeated in Northwest of Earth. I understand the rationale for it, was saddened to pay for another copy of a story in another collection. But, given the minor nature of this complaint and its utter selfishness, you should be able to tell that I am grasping at straws to find something bad to say about the book.
Showing posts with label C. L. Moore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label C. L. Moore. Show all posts
Friday, May 9, 2008
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Black God's Kiss
Recent conversation with a good friend have made it clear to me that I really don't have a good appreciation of the pulp stories of the 30s. Mark is a decade older than me, and it seems to have made a great deal of difference in the reading choices, beyond the most obvious. He recounts the ability to find collections of the great pulp writers, while I have never been exposed to them. Fortunately, Planet Stories, a relatively new publishing house, is seeking to rectify the dearth of attainable collections of some of the great old stories. The first book from Planet Stories that I have read is Black God's Kiss, a collection of the "Jirel of Joiry" stories that Moore published in Weird Tales between 1934 and 1939.
Now, again, in the interest of full discovery, I have to admit that I read most of this book while in vacation in Asheville, at the tremendous Grove Park Inn. For parts of two days I found myself sitting in the lobby of a great old inn, looking out over the mountains of North Carolina as the sun set over them, sitting in a craftsman style leather and wood chair and drinking some beer. The inn was built in 1904, and I realized as I read that it was quite possible that someone could have been sitting exactly where I was in 1934, reading the same story in its original publication in Weird Tales. There was a tremendous sense of appropriateness in my location and occupation as I read. That sense of near time travel was heightened by the tremendous writing I discovered as I read.
The book jacket describes the stories within as fantasy, but they are not the fantasy someone of my post-Tolkien tradition might immediately recognize. It seems to me that after Tolkien was published in paperback in the US, say the mid-60s, the pattern of a band of unlikely heroes questing for a magnificent artifact became the trope for a great deal of the fantasy stories that followed, good or bad. But prior to that, fantasy was more influenced by the stories in Weird Tales, a mix of supernatural and horror along with the traditional fantasy elements. The most readily recognizable example of this kind of writing would be Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, in which sometimes the heroes are lucky to survive and may do so despite their own best efforts. I think one could trace the evolution of this kind of story to a sort of mish-mash between the horror of Lovecraft and the planetary romances of Burroughs transposed to fantasy settings. The result is a usually dense style of writing with descriptions as important if not More so than action.
C.L. Moore typifies this style brilliantly in the stories contained in Black God's Kiss. At first, as I read, I was disappointed that the heroine does very little but survive in the first two stories. Jirel is described as the archetype of martial women, in some ways a shadow of Howard's Red Sonja and perhaps more a model of Sonja's likeness in movies and comics than Sonja herself. But as her career starts out, she is more reactive than the more active heroes modern fantasy generally uses. She is swept about by forces far more powerful than she can imagine, and her visits to another dimension become tours de force, not of swordplay, but of the descriptive power of Moore herself.
Moore uses sometimes florid prose to tell her stories, and it works to tremendous effect. There are a few clunkers in the descriptive passages (I about laughed myself silly when Moore describes Jirel as suffering "the desperation of despair"), but far more often, the passages work tremendously. As I read a few of the best passages to Mrs. Speculator, I discovered that Moore uses a near-poetic language and style in her prose, all at one evocative and descriptive, in the style of old world skalds. It nearly begs to be read aloud.
And over the course of the stories, Jirel herself evolves, becoming more an actor in her own life than just reactionary. By the end of the stories she remains a little flat, but we have seen her in all of her moods, at her best and at her worst. She is a remarkable character, angry and weak all at once, and no man's fool. It's no wonder she may have been one of the most popular characters from Weird Tales (if the cover blurbs are accurate).
Ironically, the only story that doesn't really work is a cross-over between Jirel and one of Moore's other famous characters, Northwest Smith. The set-up for a Middle Ages sword fighter and far-future spaceman coming together in the same story turns out to be far too clunky, and then Smith takes over what ostensibly is a Jirel story, causing Jirel to act remarkably out of the character that the rest of the book takes great pains to illustrate. Given that Planet Stories is putting together a collection of Northwest Stories, it seems obvious to me that this story should have gone in that upcoming book.
Black God's Kiss is a wonderful read, symbolic and archetypal of the best work coming out of Weird Tales. Sadly, however, it merely whets my appetite for writing of this period instead of sating it. I've already ordered the aforementioned Northwest Smith stories, but it just raises the question in my mind....isn't it time someone started reprinting copies of Weird Tales somehow?
Now, again, in the interest of full discovery, I have to admit that I read most of this book while in vacation in Asheville, at the tremendous Grove Park Inn. For parts of two days I found myself sitting in the lobby of a great old inn, looking out over the mountains of North Carolina as the sun set over them, sitting in a craftsman style leather and wood chair and drinking some beer. The inn was built in 1904, and I realized as I read that it was quite possible that someone could have been sitting exactly where I was in 1934, reading the same story in its original publication in Weird Tales. There was a tremendous sense of appropriateness in my location and occupation as I read. That sense of near time travel was heightened by the tremendous writing I discovered as I read.
The book jacket describes the stories within as fantasy, but they are not the fantasy someone of my post-Tolkien tradition might immediately recognize. It seems to me that after Tolkien was published in paperback in the US, say the mid-60s, the pattern of a band of unlikely heroes questing for a magnificent artifact became the trope for a great deal of the fantasy stories that followed, good or bad. But prior to that, fantasy was more influenced by the stories in Weird Tales, a mix of supernatural and horror along with the traditional fantasy elements. The most readily recognizable example of this kind of writing would be Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories, in which sometimes the heroes are lucky to survive and may do so despite their own best efforts. I think one could trace the evolution of this kind of story to a sort of mish-mash between the horror of Lovecraft and the planetary romances of Burroughs transposed to fantasy settings. The result is a usually dense style of writing with descriptions as important if not More so than action.
C.L. Moore typifies this style brilliantly in the stories contained in Black God's Kiss. At first, as I read, I was disappointed that the heroine does very little but survive in the first two stories. Jirel is described as the archetype of martial women, in some ways a shadow of Howard's Red Sonja and perhaps more a model of Sonja's likeness in movies and comics than Sonja herself. But as her career starts out, she is more reactive than the more active heroes modern fantasy generally uses. She is swept about by forces far more powerful than she can imagine, and her visits to another dimension become tours de force, not of swordplay, but of the descriptive power of Moore herself.
Moore uses sometimes florid prose to tell her stories, and it works to tremendous effect. There are a few clunkers in the descriptive passages (I about laughed myself silly when Moore describes Jirel as suffering "the desperation of despair"), but far more often, the passages work tremendously. As I read a few of the best passages to Mrs. Speculator, I discovered that Moore uses a near-poetic language and style in her prose, all at one evocative and descriptive, in the style of old world skalds. It nearly begs to be read aloud.
And over the course of the stories, Jirel herself evolves, becoming more an actor in her own life than just reactionary. By the end of the stories she remains a little flat, but we have seen her in all of her moods, at her best and at her worst. She is a remarkable character, angry and weak all at once, and no man's fool. It's no wonder she may have been one of the most popular characters from Weird Tales (if the cover blurbs are accurate).
Ironically, the only story that doesn't really work is a cross-over between Jirel and one of Moore's other famous characters, Northwest Smith. The set-up for a Middle Ages sword fighter and far-future spaceman coming together in the same story turns out to be far too clunky, and then Smith takes over what ostensibly is a Jirel story, causing Jirel to act remarkably out of the character that the rest of the book takes great pains to illustrate. Given that Planet Stories is putting together a collection of Northwest Stories, it seems obvious to me that this story should have gone in that upcoming book.
Black God's Kiss is a wonderful read, symbolic and archetypal of the best work coming out of Weird Tales. Sadly, however, it merely whets my appetite for writing of this period instead of sating it. I've already ordered the aforementioned Northwest Smith stories, but it just raises the question in my mind....isn't it time someone started reprinting copies of Weird Tales somehow?
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