Category Archives: Weird Fiction

Strainers of the Pulp #19, Three Kings’ Day edition: “Worms of the Earth” by Robert E. Howard, Weird Tales, Nov. 1932, v.20 n.5

1 Reply

We’ve drained the mead horns, reduced the great roast boar to gnawed bones, and watched the vast bonfire around which we defied winter’s darkness smolder into mere ashes, but we’re not done with sword and sorcery yet! No indeed, not on this, the most sword-and-sorcerous sounding holiday of the year…Three Kings’ Day! And what better way to celebrate it than by talking about the Last King of the Picts, Bran Mak Morn! It’s Robert E. Howard’s “Worms of the Earth” from Weird Tales, November 1932!

We’ve talked about ol’ REH a lot during the sword and sorcery festivities; how can you not? We’ve encountered both Solomon Kane and Conan in some great stories already, but for me, personally, I think Howard’s single greatest character is Bran Mak Morn – there’s something really compelling about him, this very last ruler of Pictdom, presiding over a declining and dying people and watching the Romans marching over his homeland. Howard loved to indulge in a certain Celtic gloominess, both personally and literarily, and that’s fully on display in the Bran stories. It lends them a poignancy that’s not often present in his other works; Conan’s barbarism and Kane’s zealotry are portrayed as powerful and vital forces, elemental and therefore permanent, but Bran is the last of his kind, and we know that he is destined to be ground down by the millstone of implacable history.

Aside from the purely aesthetic appeal of this Pictish mono no aware, it’s also a chance to see Howard examining a different point in the Spenglerian cyclicity he believed in; Kull and Conan are barbarians who, in Howard’s weird racialist worldview, revitalize their respective nations by taking up the crown and injecting their own wild vitality into civilized kingship. But here we see a people at the end of their “natural” lifespan, senescent and impoverished, struggling vainly against an ascendant Empire. And, to top it all off, in this story Bran glimpses the possible fate of his own Picts when he confronts the twisted and degraded remnants of a people his own ancestors had conquered and displaced! Bran Mak Morn is Howard’s greatest, most interesting character, which makes this story, “Worms of the Earth,” his greatest sword and sorcery story ever, at least for me. Hell, I’d put it up there as one of the all time greatest stories in the genre ever!

Worth keeping in mind is that the readers of Weird Tales had yet to be introduced to Conan at this point; Kane had made it to the pages of The Unique Magazine already, of course, and Kull had shown up in a previous Bran story from 1930 (“Kings of the Earth”), so readers were certainly familiar with Howard’s blood-and-thunder style and approach. The Cimmerian himself wouldn’t show up until the NEXT issue of Weird Tales, when “Phoenix on the Sword” would be published (Dec 1932), and after that, of course, Howard’s career and writing really changes; I think “Worms of the Earth” is still very much a weird tale, with its emphasis on inhuman horrors, atavism, and vast sweeps of time embodied in ancient landscapes. It’s still very much sword and sorcery, of course, but I think that it isn’t until Conan that Howard tips the balance more towards adventure and away from the Lovecraftian-influenced cosmicism on display here. But enough jibber jabber, let’s get to it!

A great swashbuckling cover, but this isn’t Bran fighting a Loch Monster or anything…it’s Kline’s heroic Venusian he-man Grandon fighting some swamp-dwelling space devil! Kline is an interesting guy; along with Farnsworth Wright, he had been an early editorial assistant to the first editor of the magazine, Baird, and had stayed on as an editor and reader under Wright, as well as writing his own weird fiction, fantasy, detective stories, and science fiction. He would shortly leave off writing, focusing more on becoming a literary agent for a number of big names in the pulps, including Howard himself! In fact, after Howard’s death by suicide in ’36, Kline would continue to represent his estate, helping Howard’s father get the many thousands of dollars still owed to REH by Weird Tales (and some other magazines, too). The scene illustrated here on this cover is interesting; first off, it’s from what would end up being a novel-length work that would stretch over seven issues of the magazine. It’s obviously a pastiche on Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” novels, largely successfully so too, I might add; if you liked those novels, then you’ll almost certainly like Kline’s planetary romances, which are often more-Burroughs than Burroughs in execution. But this cover also illustrates that, while Howard is rightfully identified as the creator of sword-and-sorcery, there was both a lineage of swashbuckling weird fiction that predated and inspired him AS WELL AS a clear hunger from readers for that kind of thing.

Nothing too noteworthy in the ToC (other than our story today), but the Weird Story Reprint is interesting; they’d reprinted “Frankenstein,” with this issue’s segment being the penultimate entry in an eight-issue long stretch that really annoyed a lot of people. There had always been some annoyance with multi-part stories among the readers, because of the dangers of missing an issue, but in particular a lot of people felt that reprinting a classic that almost everyone had read or could have easily gotten a copy of was a waste of good magazine space. It would actually lead to a change in policy for Wright and the magazine, which would in response to those complaints rededicate itself to reprinting more obscure work (for more about the history of the “Weird Story Reprint” series in the magazine, you should read my introduction to the collection “Night Fears: Weird Tales in Translation” from Paradise Edition books).

And now, on to the story itself!

A great title illustration, as usual, and one that doesn’t even spoil the story or anything! Just a great scene from one of the best parts of the story, in my opinion, with a really subtly devilish Atla and a grim and haunted looking Bran… wonderful stuff! The shadows are a nice touch, too, very moody and pensive and weird. It’s signed “MW,” but based on the style I’m pretty sure it’s J.M. Wilcox’s work (sometimes known as Jayem Wilcox, or JMW). Wilcox would go on to produce the very first illustration of Conan when he did the title art for “The Phoenix on the Sword” next issue, making him an important part of sword and sorcery history.

Pumped up with that great bit of art, we’re ready to dive into the text of the story!

Love a story that starts with dialog; gives it an immediacy that can’t be beat, in my opinion. And this dialog starts off strong – nothing good is going on, you can be sure of that, and that conclusion is further supported by the imperial haughtiness of Titus Sulla, lounging in his chair of office, surrounded by a guard of Teutonic legionaries. You can again see Howard’s preoccupation with bodies and physicality here, too – Sulla is a Roman, but he’s no weak, lisping functionary, made soft by bureaucracy and civilization. No, he’s a soldier, a conqueror with a strong body and cruel countenance, and he’s surrounded by other huger bodies, “blond titans” from Germania, further symbol of the power and decadence of Rome. These powerful bodies are immediately contrasted with another body, this one made abject:

It’s a crucifixion party, one apparently being put on for the sake of the “guest” mentioned above, a dark man identified later “Partha Mac Othna.” But before we get this name, we get a very Ellsworth Huntington-esque discourse of race, civilization, and climate that contrasts this dark somber man with the Romans and Germans that surround him.

A “supple, compact body” with “broad square shoulders,” a “deep chest,” “lean loins…” you can joke all you want, but Howard’s fascination with and interest in masculinity and its physicality is certainly enthusiastic and sincere. Similarly expressed in this story is REH’s belief in the importance of racial purity, as made clear by the comparison of this dark, northern barbarian with his two compatriots, one at his feet and one on the cross:

There’s some kinship between these three, though it’s clear that the man on the cross and the “stunted crouching giant” represent a “lower type” than the clean-limbed and well-knit dark man. This racial hierarchy stuff is a central part of Bran’s pathos, for Howard at least, and it’s something that we’ll come back to in the story later. But for now, let’s get this guy crucified!

There’s some more verbal sparring, almost as if the Sulla is trying to goad his “guest” into something, but the strange, noble-looking Pict seems to reserve his ire for the Pictish King:

Takin’ it kinda personally, isn’t he? Almost weirdly so…oh well.

Anyway, they crucify the guy, who doesn’t scream out in pain or anything, only staring at Partha Mac Othna with a strange and plaintive intensity. Seeking to mock their victim’s suffering, a Roman solider offers the dying man a cup of wine and receives a defiant loogie in the eyes instead. Enraged, the soldier stabs the man with his sword, which pisses of Sulla something fierce.

The Pictish emissary stays awhile, contemplating the dead body hanging on its cross against a reddening sky, before turning back and heading to the Roman fortress city. A grim and perilous beginning to the story indeed!

How about that little bit of Yog-Sothery there, huh? “Black gods of R’yleh” is great, and the fact that “Partha” here would evoke even THEM speaks to his anger and despair at Rome. But why does this feller feel such animus towards to the Romans, you ask? Well…

What a twist! Partha Mac Othna is, in fact, Bran Mak Morn, King of Picts, posing as an emissary to gather intelligence on these his most hated of foes! Grom, his gnarled companion, begs his master to keep his voice down; the Romans would hang him from a cross if they knew who he really was. Rather, why not let faithful ol’ Grom ice the Roman dick?

I mean, that’s some top notch, grade-A badassery right there, isn’t it? Grom’ll happily run a suicide mission for his King, vowing to kill Sulla anyway, even if he is surrounded by bodyguards. But Bran knows that won’t work, and instead is already working on another plan…

It turns out that Sulla is frickin’ terrified of a certain Gael by the name of Cormac na Conacht who has vowed to eat Sulla’s heart raw. Showing sensible caution vis a vis having his heart eaten, Sulla tends to stick to the impenetrable fortress known at the Tower of Trajan when there’s trouble along the Wall. This knowledge inspires Bran to some dark, fearful plan…he sends Grom out of town with some gold and his diplomatic pass; he’s to ride to Cormac and get him to start raiding, sending Sulla off to the Tower. Then Bran takes a quick nap, where in a dream he meets his faithful advisor the Wizard Gonar who, having divined Bran’s yet-to-me-specified plan, is absolutely freaking the hell out:

What “this thought” is exactly will remain obscure, for now, but it does lead to a pretty great speech from Bran explaining why he has been pushed to this extreme measure (whatever it is):

It’s some real “burden of kingship” shit, sure, but damn if it doesn’t get me. In particular, the stuff about their shared experiences I find pretty moving…both of them listened to the same tales and songs, and that forged an unbreakable bond of shared heritage that held them together. And that final statement is, again, just a perfect encapsulation of a sword-and-sorcery ethos: by those bonds, Bran had the responsibility to protect him, and if he cannot do that, then he will avenge him. Shivery, noble stuff, great fantasy writing, some of the best Howard ever did in my opinion. And there’s more to come!

But Gonar is still scared. Why not just chop some dudes up like usual, he asks, ride along with the Gaels and slaughter Romans from sun-up to sun-down. Oh, don’t worry, Bran replies, I’ll definitely be doing that…BUT FIRST he wants something special for Sulla.

We’re spending A LOT of time on this early part of the story, I know, but I think it’s worth it to see Howard really doing some great work establishing Bran Mak Morn and the world of the Picts and Romans here. Bran has been fighting these Romans for a long time, and we feel his desperation and struggle – you get the sense that it’s not been going great for the Picts. After all, why else would their goddamn King risk himself to sneak into their stronghold? Things must’ve gotten pretty dire back in Pictland. And then, to have seen his man crucified and forced to confront his failures as King and Protector…he’s gone a little crazy now, and nothing is off limits in his war against the Romans.

Gonar tries one last desperate gamble: the things Bran is planning on using have gone from the world, they’ve dwelled apart for countless ages and no one knows where they are now. But Bran is sure that that can’t be true…somewhere, there is some sign, some thread of a connection that will lead him to them.

Really appreciate the care Howard is taking here – right now, we have no fuckin’ clue as to what exactly it is that Bran is planning, but it’s been made clear that it is dire as hell and going to be extremely dangerous. From a story telling perspective, I just don’t think REH ever hits this level of mastery again, it’s so good and sharp and propulsive. Bran is desperate, his back to the wall, and capable of anything in his quest for vengeance; to him, there’s nothing foul enough for the Romans, no act so base or vile that he wouldn’t stoop to, just so long as Sulla gets his. And even though he’s talked this good game about his responsibilities as king and all that, you see that there’s more there – it’s a deep, personal affront that he wants to avenge, so much so that Gonar basically calls him out for putting this personal hatred ahead of the actual needs of the Picts. It’s great stuff, isn’t it?

Before Bran heads out on his insane and horrific mission, he takes a brief moment to sneak over to the prison to murder the roman soldier that stabbed the Pict on the cross. It’s yet another scene of great badass action, particularly in the way Howard described Bran’s dark chuckle, the slash through the barred windows, and the blood welling up from Valerius’s throat as he dies. Ticking that chore off his to-do list, Bran then rides out of the city and into the wilderness, searching for…them.

There’s some great, evocative environmental writing in this section, wildernesses and border regions and ancient landscapes all lovingly described by ol’ REH. The romanticism of landscapes, and their hidden dangers, are something Howard is really well-equipped to work with in his fiction, having reflected extensively on his own wildernesses and frontiers back in Cross Plains, Texas. I’m also a sucker for ancient, nameless earthworks – these curiously regular hillocks and mysterious monoliths are wonderfully potent images, suggestive of deep time and lost civilizations.

There is also in this section another long paean to racial purity from Howard. As we’ve already mentioned, Howard was an unapologetic and enthusiastic racist, something that strongly informed his fictional stories, as we see here:

A big part of Howard’s disdain for “civilization” comes from his belief in racial purity – with civilization comes miscegenation, which for Howard is both unnatural and decadent. What’s funny, though, is how all this talk of Bran being a pure-blooded noble from a long-line of reproductively isolated aristocrats strikes us today; far from the strong limbed and lean-loined pantherish ubermensch Howard described, talking about Bran’s paternity like that immediately evokes the Hapsburgs, at least for me. The idea of Bran looking like Charles II of Spain during all this stuff going on is hilarious, and makes his revulsion at the fenmen, Atla, and the Worms of the Earth themselves later in the story all the funnier.

But anyway, Bran is spending some time wandering around the wastelands, searching for any sign of the horrible things that once dwelt there. He gets news from the fen dwellers, and learns that his Gaelic buddy Cormac has begun raiding, spreading terror all along the Wall and sending Sulla scurrying off to the Tower of Trajan, just like Bran said he would. Meanwhile Bran, all alone, keeps up his hunt, until one day he spies a distant daub-and-wattle hut in a particularly lonely corner of the fens. He goes to investigate, and meets one of the greatest characters in sword-and-sorcery history.

This is Atla, and she’s 100% rad as hell. Howard lets us know immediately that she’s not entirely human, too – she’s got fang-like teeth, almost pointed ears, oddly-shaped yellow eyes, and all her movements are sinuous, lithe, and serpentine. Bran recognizes all the signs, and since he’s one of the Old Picts, he knows the stories, guesses her heritage, and knows she can help him.

There’s so much to love about this – the fencing between Atla and Bran, and the shock and horror that even she feels to hear Bran speak so openly and blithely about forbidden things, it’s really fantastic. But even more, there’s a real grimness and sorrow to Atla, something strange and sad and special that you makes her character so interesting and unique. For one thing, she’s utterly and completely ostracized, living way the hell out in a place called the Dagon-Moor which you KNOW is not exactly on any of the major bus routes. She’s been exiled out here because of her heritage; it’s implied that she’s the product of a rape, a human mother attacked by one of them out on the moors, and that her inhuman blood has meant that she’s been driven to the very edge of the human world. And that revulsion is definitely something Bran feels too, even though she is the only thing that can help him find the Worms of the Earth.

Atla’s recklessness and scorn is just fantastic here, and the way she laughs at Bran’s threat is wonderful. Her mocking question “Do you think that such life as mine is so sweet that I would cling to it” is really great, an absolute gut-punch. And Bran’s realization that he’ll have to try different means of persuasion is met with equal scorn!

Atla is such a badass! But, after all that, Atla does have a price.

I think this is some of the best writing Howard ever did. There’s a real and aching loneliness to Atla, and it’s tempting to think that Howard, an artistic and romantic young man living way the hell out in an oil boomtown in central Texas, might’ve been mining something of himself when he’s having Atla express this deep and heartfelt yearning. There’s real humanity in Atla, probably the most you’ll ever see in a Howard character honestly – the only other example that I feel like even comes close to this is Balthus’ reminiscing about home from the Conan story “Beyond the Black River.”

Anyway, Bran swallows his revulsion and agrees to have sex with the snake lady, and Howard tastefully draws the curtains on the scene.

The next morning, while Bran is dressing for his walk of shame, Atla tells him that what he needs to do is steal the Black Stone; with that, he can force them to do whatever he wants. The Stone is deep beneath Dagon’s Barrow, which, again, love that Lovecraft connection.

There’s some fun stuff here for sure, and I can’t help but wonder if Tolkien (who certainly had read some Howard) read this one in particular – between the faces in the mere that Atla mentions, and then this whole shunning of sunlight and moonlight and even starlight, there’s some real Gollum resonances here, you know? But, regardless, this is prime sword-and-sorcery stuff, especially that last sentence; the idea that the Picts and these subterranean horrors have history really nicely sharpens the threat and danger of Bran’s scheme.

Bran, armed with the knowledge that Atla has given him, heads out, finds the strange prehuman stone circle atop Dagon’s Barrow, lifts the stone, and plunges into the deep darkness of the Earth. The path he’s on mirror the devolution of the Worms themselves, going from rough hewn steps to a smooth and almost slimy tunnel at the base. There, in a dark chamber, he finds the Black Stone, and is able to abscond with it. He decides to stash it in Dagon’s Mere, chunking the rock out into the center of the eerie pond.

Bran returns to Atla, who is not unsurprised to see him both alive and sane after his trip into the darkness beneath the Earth. Bran informs her that not only has he safely secreted away the Black Stone, but that he has become aware of things hunting him…his horse trod on something unnatural in its stable one night, and he’s been hearing a faint scrabbling beneath the earthen floor of his hut. They’re hunting him, using whatever strange senses and powers they’ve developed over their long exile in the dark. Now he’s ready to deal, and so Atla takes him to a forlorn range of hills that border the fen where the black mouth of a cave yawns wide to take them in.

Howard really paints the landscape here, conveying both its distance from humanity in both space and time – this is an old place, and the things that live here are older than the Romans, the Celts, and even the Picts. That sense of Deep Time, a key part of weird fiction, is really well-expressed here, a testament to Howard’s own appreciation of the earth and the tiny, transient things that call its surface home.

Bran and Atla plunge into the cave, and its somewhat shocking to both us and Bran that Atla herself is scared here – in lesser hands, the snake woman would be a one-off monster lady, but Howard makes sure we understand that she meant it when she said she was “half human, at least.” This place and the things that live there are scary as hell and fully alien, even to her.

And then they meet the Worms of the Earth.

Spectacular writing from Howard here, this sea of glowing eyes in the dark. It’s really truly an eerie and uncanny scene, but does it spook Bran?

Fuckin’ bad ass, man! And these horrible subterranean things think so too – Bran rolls a nat 20 on his intimidation check, and the Worms of the Earth are fully cowed by his killer speech. They hiss and mutter with Atla, and she’s shocked to report that they’re actually scared of Bran, and will do whatever he wants in exchange for the stolen the Black Stone. Bran wants them to take Sulla from the Tower of Trajan, and he agrees to meet them at Dagon’s Ring tomorrow and exchange the stone for the Roman.

Bran goes for a swim in Dagon’s Mere, recovering the Stone that he chucked in there earlier, which is heroic enough in my opinion – I once dropped something in Barton Creek Pool here in Austin, which is a natural spring fed pool with crystal clear water, and I never found it again…and there’s not even monsters in Barton Creek Pool! That’s actually a really fun little piece of this story too – there IS a monster in Dagon’s Mere, something huge and threatening which Bran only catches a glimpse and a ripple of. It reminds me a lot of the scene in Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu” where we learn that there’s some kind of huge white polypus thing in the swamps of Louisiana that the cultists commune with…you can’t beat these little hints of other weird shit and scary monsters on the periphery of a main story, in my opinion. It’s an evocative and effective tool in weird fiction’s box, and I appreciate it here because, in addition to just being fun, it’s also part of Bran’s mounting realization that he actually doesn’t know this landscape or its history as well as he thought he did.

Black Stone in hand, Bran rides towards Dagon’s Ring, making a brief stop over to see what’s happening at Trajan’s Tower, just out of idle curiosity.

He finds a dying Legionary amid the ruins, and from him he hears a tale of horror.

Bran realizing that he might’ve fucked up here is pretty great – he forced these things to involve themselves in the surface world again, and maybe he doesn’t have as much control as he thought he did over this situation. It’s a grim moment for Bran, who had been expecting to get this great triumphant revenge on his hated enemy…and it’s only going to get worse…

Bran, horrified at the destruction he’s wrought, hurries on to Dagon’s Ring, where he meets Atla and sees a seething, shadowy tide of the things approaching through the grass. And mingled in with the susurrus of their hissing is a lone human voice, gibbering and tittering. Bran demands that they give him Sulla, and Atla, with a smirk, presents him.

Sulla has been driven mad, not by anything they did to him, but by the simple brain-shattering realization of the true nature of a world honeycombed by tunnels through which inhuman horrors swarm and thrive. Bran kills Sulla, not in rage but rather out of mercy, realizing that there are in fact some weapons too foul and terrible to use. He hurls the Black Stone into the seething mass of shadows, and for a moment gets a clear view of them:

If Lovecraft’s synecdoche of horror is the deep sea, with its tentacles and slime, then Howard’s is the reptile, particularly the snake, with all its symbolism of ancient and pre-mammalian life and potency. The Worms of the Earth, the things that were once almost men before being driven underground and sinking deeper in atavism, are basically hellish snake-things, subtly human perhaps, but mostly all cold scales and merciless coils and hissing, flickering tongues. Sick with terror, Bran flees, but not before Atla gets a final mocking shot off.

And that’s the end of Robert E. Howard’s masterpiece, “The Worms of the Earth.”

It’s just so good, isn’t it? I mean, the characters are great, the setting is a blast, the action is killer, and the ending is perfect and horrible, with Bran having unleashed something that should’ve been left well enough alone. I love basically everything about this story; the pacing is even good, which can be tough in a short story that’s trying to deal with such a wide scope of geography and action.

Unfortunately, Howard never did take up the semi-cliffhanger he left there at the end, though. For all intents and purposes, this is the last Bran Mak Morn story he ever wrote – he’s mentioned again in a later, modern horror tale (“The Children of the Night”), but REH never again gives us a story about the Last King of the Picts. Karl Edward Wagner, most famous for his grim n’ gritty Kane stories DID write a sequel novel based on the premise that Bran had awakened a horror in the hills; it’s called “Legion of Shadows” from the 70s, and I remember liking it well enough as a pastiche, although I don’t think it nails the real weirdness or tragedy of REH’s original story.

I’ve gone on and on about what I like in this story, so I won’t repeat myself, but I really do think this is one of the greatest sword and sorcery stories ever written. There’s a real depth to this one, with a lot of actually meditative moments from Bran, something that’s sometimes lost in the wilder and more action-packed Conan stories to come. And while the Cimmerian would end up defining the genre, I think Bran Mak Morn and his tragic, dying Picts illustrate some of its strengths better than Conan ever does, exploring history, memory, violence, obsession, and regret while also delivering a rollicking, tense adventure story full of flashing swords and horrible snakemen. I mean, what more could you want!?

Pulp and the Gray Strainer #18: “Two Sought Adventure” by Fritz Leiber, Jr., Unknown, Aug 1939, v.1 n.6

Leave a reply

Many names of Great Renown grace the Annals of the Heroic Age of the Pulps, but even in that ancient age of mighty deeds, three names tower above all others with regard to sword and sorcery. Howard we have touched upon twice (and we’ll revisit him soon enough), and we devoted a whole month to the incomparable C.L. Moore, so I reckon it’s high time we hit the final member of the classical sword and sorcery trinity! That’s right, we’re finally going to encounter Fritz Leiber’s foundational duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in their very first published story, “Two Sought Adventure,” from the August 1939 issue of Unknown!

Of course, we’ve already talked about ol’ Fritz, but that was in regards to his weird fiction story “The Automatic Pistol” from 1940 in Weird Tales, which is good and a lot of fun, you should read it. But undoubtedly Fritz’s greatest creations and most lasting renown come from the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Given that, AND the fact that he’s the one who actually coined “Sword and Sorcery” for this the best of all genres, I think it’s appropriate to give him another fanfare and more detailed biographical info this time around.

Leiber is, for my money, one of the best writers of genre fiction from the 40s through the 60s, in many ways a predecessor to the New Wave that would revolutionize science fiction in the 70s. His background and various experiences give his writing a depth and vitality that’s really unparalleled, especially for the time; he was the son of Shakespearean actors (and he himself acted on the stage), he was a fencer and an expert chess player, studied for (but did not get) a graduate degree in Philosophy, studied for but did not become a minister at a seminary, read and wrote for technical encyclopedias as a day job, taught as a drama instructor at Occidental college…I mean, the list pretty well sums up Leiber’s interests and the themes he explored in his writing. He also had a brief but important correspondence with Lovecraft near the end of the Old Gent’s life, and in many of his memoirs/recollections he attributed much of his development as a writer to HPL’s encouragement and advice. He wrote a lot of great stuff; his 1947 collection, “Night’s Black Agents” is simply one of the best short story collections of the era, in addition to having just the coolest fucking title of all time (a line from Macbeth, Leiber again subtly showing off his erudition).

Unfortunately, like a lot of writers in the post-pulp era, Leiber had a hard time of it financially. He lived in some apparently truly squalid apartments in California, and there’s some great anecdotes from the 70s of Harlan Ellison raging about how Leiber was forced to do his writing on a shitty typewriter propped up over the kitchen sink. Actually, it wasn’t until TSR, the company that made Dungeons & Dragons, licensed the rights to Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser that he was able to live somewhat more securely and comfortably. Frankly, and as we’ll see in today’s story, even if they hadn’t made official Leiber products, TSR 100% should have just been sending checks to Leiber (and Wellman and Vance) because a shockingly large amount of fantasy tabletop roleplaying is taken directly from his work.

Leiber wrote in a lot of different genres, although you might be surprised at how few times his work showed up in Weird Tales, despite his association with Lovecraft and horror. Case in point, today’s story was published in Unknown, the short-lived fantasy-focused companion to Astounding Science Fiction created and edited by lil’ Johnny W. Campbell himself. Campbell, as we’ve mentioned before, considered himself an intellectual and so he envisioned a a similarly intellectual fantasy magazine that would compete with Weird Tales. Unknown was therefore less lurid, more realistic (or at least the magic and monsters where supposed to be more internally rational), and generally more literary and sophisticated, even going so far as to allow for humor! That said, apparently Campbell would often tell Leiber that his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories were more like “Weird Tales stories, but…” he would accept them anyway. In fact, no Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story would ever appear in the pages of Weird Tales, which is kind of interesting.

That’s right, the cover of this issue went to Thelemite and future Founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. It’s a fairly bland cover, in my opinion, kind of lacking the *punch* you’d see in, say, a Brundage cover from Weird Tales. Very much more main stream looking, in my opinion.

The ToC shows Campbell’s editorial perspective too – fewer stories, but longer. That Hubbard is 90 pages (stretching somewhat the definition of “novel” perhaps, but still…that’s a long ‘un for a magazine)! You’ve got some of Campbell’s heavy hitters here too, del Rey and Kuttner, both important in the pulps and (del Rey as an editor in particular) in the paper back revolution that would come post WWII. Also neat are the two “Readers’ Departments,” integral parts of the participatory fandom that played a huge role in the development of modern genre literature. Unknown had a fun readers’ letters section; taking the title from the famous lines of Omar Khayyam is a very evocative, stylish, and literary thing to do, and the illo is good too:

Very E.C. Comics, isn’t it? But, godammit, let’s get to the story! Fritz Leiber’s first ever published short story AND also the very first adventure of that incomparable duo, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser!

And more comic-book style art, though this time maybe it’s more “Prince Valiant” than “Vault of Horror.” Honestly not really my cup-o-tea, if’n ye ask me…just a fairly bland fantasy scene, though at least Unknown has enough sense NOT to toss in an illustration from the climax of the story right off the bat. Still, I wish the artists had had a little more verve or style or something, especially for such great and visually distinct characters (and situations) that appear here. Oh Well!

First thing first, I love fantasy calendrics like that…”Year of the Behemoth, Month of the Hedgehog, the Day of the Toad…” it’s just really fun, an easy and striking bit of genre semiotics that immediately shifts the reader into a “fantasy adventure” mode. Leiber keeps ladling on that fantastical flavor with more and more little flourishes, scenes of bucolic yeoman farmers, medieval-esque mercantilism, followed by the promise of a shift-change to astrologers and thieves; it’s great writing that sets a specific scene AS WELL AS positioning the whole of the story within a certain genre-space. And then it’s followed by a couple of paragraphs that introduce the main characters.

The tall northern barbarian is, of course, Fafhrd, while the small dark man is The Gray Mouser. As far as introductions go, these can’t be beat. Their gear, their appearance, their movements, everything is in service of explaining and presenting their characteristics – Fafhrd is a bluff and forthright barbarian in rough linen, bearing a sword and bow, and with a hint of wildness to him, while The Mouser is sneaky, clever, sharp, and secretive. It’s frankly just a perfect intro, efficient and effective.

Of course, we haven’t actually learned their names yet, although that’s not too far off in this story. Still, they’re very well developed and, for the most part, fully formed, the same characters that we’ll meet in their future adventures – this is due to the fact that Leiber, with his friend Harry Fischer (who actually created and named Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, basing them off of Leiber and himself) had been exploring the two and their world for several years already. Leiber in fact had already written several of their adventures already, and that background had practice has given Leiber a good handle on these two.

Anyway, as these two are riding along they’re suddenly ambushed! Bows twang, arrows fly, and the pair spur their horses onward, pursued by a band of eight or so well-armed and similarly equipped ruffians. But, unfortunately for the thugs, these two guys are characters in a sword and sorcery story who have JUST been introduced, so they use this convenient ambush to demonstrate their unparalleled skill and toughness.

Fafhrd executes a flawless Parthian shot and the Mouser zings a leaden ball back at their pursuers, striking two riders down and sending the rest scattering. That done, it’s time we got PROPERLY introduced to these two bad-asses:

There’s a cool efficiency to these two that Leiber likes to play with, particularly in their dialog and the way they speak to each other about what’s going on, always commenting on the action and characters around them. Their friendship is really compelling and very lived in and is, honestly, probably pretty familiar to a lot of people; these two are the kind of friends who, confronted with dangers or troubles, tend to minimize all the challenges they face, kidding around and making fun of the “blundering fools” who would dare challenge them, always talking each other up. It’s a great bit, honestly, and helps reinforce the central idea of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser: they are self-mythologizers that are always confident that they are the main characters in a story. Sometimes this self-awareness comes awfully close to metafictive fourth-wall breaking, but where Hamlet struggles against the role he’s cast in, the Mouser and Fafhrd relish it – they are swashbuckling sword-and-sorcery heroes, the very best possible thing to be, and they’re having a great time (even when they’re not, really).

Having dealt with the ambush, the two realize that this very valley is most likely the one they’ve been searching for. The Mouser unrolls an ancient vellum, and we’re introduced to their quest:

Certainly a taunting tone to Urgaan of Angarngi’s missive, isn’t there? He’s daring treasure-hungry fools to come and face the challenge of his mysterious treasure tower, but that doesn’t daunt these two. Rather, as they ride on, The Mouser reflects on how similarly equipped and armed the ambushers they faced were, suggesting that they might have been Lord Rannarsh’s men. It turns out that the Mouser cut the vellum sheet about the treasure tower out of an ancient book in Rannarsh’s library, and that the Lord, famously avaricious, might’ve taken notice of the theft and sent his boys out to kill them and claim the treasure for himself. Fafhrd scoffs at the idea, which of course means that The Mouser will turn out to be 100% correct.

The two adventurers come across a small cottage not far from the stumpy ruins of the tower, meeting a hilariously taciturn old farmer and his large extended family.

I like the farmer, and the later scenes with his whole family are really great, but for now Fafhrd and The Mouser decide to reconnoiter the tower in the fading light. It takes them a strangely long time to reach the tower, which seemed so close, and when they get there they find a skull and shattered bones just inside the treasure house. A strange sensation of foreboding and danger settles over The Mouser.

Very good foreshadowing, I think; the sense that there is very much something unnatural going on in this treasure tower, something watching and waiting and certainly at least a little sorcerous is conveyed well, but we’re still wondering what exactly is going on.

Heading back to the cabin, the two have a great and boisterous evening with the farmer and his family. Mouser does magic tricks, Fafhrd roars his wild sagas, and they get the whole lot of ’em drunk on wine. It’s probably my favorite scene in the whole story, actually, a wonderful little slice of life scene that really evokes the strangeness of these two adventurers showing up out of nowhere and throwing the normal humdrum pattern of these people’s lives pleasantly off kilter. Leiber is of course just as interested in adventures and swordplay and derring-do as Howard, but he’s ALSO interested in the little material things of life that define the world; his stories are steeped in this kind of rich, lived-in detail, with an interest in the way people spend their downtime. In addition to just being flat-out a lot of fun to read, I think it’s also an important development in sword-and-sorcery literature, a real key moment. Here, back in ’39, Leiber is illustrating to people a kind of “fantasy realism” that uses realistic, naturalistic details to deepen and enrich a secondary world setting.

Of course, it also serves a nice narrative function, because the ancient old man, roused by wine and sing, manages to croak out an enigmatical little statement:

“Maybe beast won’t get you” and then he konks out…great stuff! And it’s echoed again the next day when, striking out early in the morning, they’re stopped by the gangly and shy farmer’s daughter, who has a warning for them.

This family of farmers live right next door to a death trap, apparently, and have learned to give the place a wide berth and keep a respectful distance. I really like how Leiber uses the peasants here – again, they have had to live next to this tower. Whatever danger dwells within, they’ve learned how to avoid it, getting on with their own life in the shadow of its threat. It’s only interlopers and outsiders who blunder into the tower who get killed. It’s a fun, subtle inversion of what a fantasy hero armed with cunning and expertise and knowledge and all that.

But of course no warning, no matter how blood-curdling or threatening, would cause Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to turn aside from a quest. They continue on through the woods, reflecting merrily (and perhaps a bit unconvincingly) on the remarkable imagination of the farmer’s daughter. Then they meet a very material threat: the men who had ambushed them yesterday have regrouped and reformed at the tower. It’s obvious that they know about the treasures rumored to kept in there, since they’ve also brought shovels and picks.

There’s a long (and good!) scene of sneaking and combat, with Fafhrd and The Mouser getting the drop on these guys. Now, I find the “Fantasy Combat Discourse” generally pretty boring, but I DO like the way Leiber does his fights. To be fair, if you’re one of those HEMA nerds who pours over fechtbücher and owns a broadsword, you’re going to be annoyed with Leiber; he’s a fencer, apparently a very good one, and so the way his heroes fight is very much informed by that. In particular, Fafhrd tends to wield his enormous sword a lot like a rapier, something that might strike some as silly. Deal with it, though, is all I can say, because the combat in this section is fun, and also better than any swordplay that Howard wrote – Conan might hew his way through twenty dudes, but Fafhrd is having to be realistically careful fighting two guys who have him flanked. There’s a sharper sense of danger, is what I’m getting at, probably because Leiber at least has a sense from actual fencing practice about the ways someone can get overextended or leave themselves vulnerable. Makes his fighting descriptions that much scrappier, I think.

A certain red-haired fellow among the ambushers confirms what The Mouser had suspected: these were Rannarsh’s men, and the venal lord had certainly hoped to get the fabled gems himself. Following the battle, there’s a great bit of Fafhrd barbarism – the combat over, becomes first almost hysterically hilarious, and then deeply, almost ridiculously, solemn about a man he’d just killed.

This is contrasted with The Mouser’s own reaction – he may be feeling a little sick and anxious now, but he knows that the force of the combat won’t come on him for some time. It’s another of these Leiber flourishes, a deep and abiding interest in the interiority of his characters and the often very different ways people can react to or experience extreme things. It is simultaneously taking a part in and commenting on the Howardian tropes of sword-and-sorcery, in particular the way Fafhrd’s barbarism is being contrasted with The Mouser’s more urbane reaction.

Entering the tower, The Mouser is relieved that he no longer feels the dread that had oppressed him the night before. They explore the first chamber of the tower, and run across more smashed skeletons – it seems like something indeed has been pulverizing interlopers here, although it may have been a very long time ago. Interestingly, however, the two find a scroll case on one of the corpses that includes a note very similar to their own!

This note, along with the many other skeletons strewn about Urgaan’s treasure house, reveal the truth: the dude has made some kind of death trap, and is luring people here with tales of unbelievable treasures.

Undeterred, the two advance up the stairs, determined to search out discover the treasure. As they reach the top of the stairs, steel glitters in the dark as a knife is hurled from a doorway, nicking the Mouser in the shoulder! Enraged, he darts into the room, sword drawn, and discovers Lord Rannarsh hiding there.

Unmanned by fear, Rannarsh seems only to be interested in escaping, even abandoning all claims to the treasure. However, confronted by his hated enemies, he masters himself enough to try a second dagger, which earns him a skewering at the hands of The Gray Mouser. Following his death, Fafhrd muses on how Rannarsh seemed to be seeking death, which The Mouser says was simply because he had appeared weak and afraid in front of witnesses. It’s another trademark of this duo, always willing to believe that others are as awed of them as they are of themselves, conveniently ignoring all other contradicting information, like when Rannash refered to a “thing” that had been playing “cat and mouse” with him. But, just as The Mouser makes this pronouncement, a sudden and horrific pall of fear falls upon them!

Having failed their saving throw vs fear, the two of them are frozen to the spot, listening to the steady footfall of someone approaching through the tower, up the stairs, and coming towards them. Eventually, a new NPC is introduced, an ancient looking holy man who looks grimly over the room before greeting them.

This man is Arvlan, a direct descendant of Urgaan, here to destroy the horror that his ancestor has left behind. Not letting them speak, Arvlan explains his purpose and history, and then sweeps out of the room on his holy mission.

Arvlan, we hardly knew ye! But, interestingly, once Arvlan gets mashed offscreen, the paralyzing fear that had held the two of them in thrall lifts, and they’re able to move again. Swords out, they rush into the room and see the red ruin left behind of the holy man, crushed and splattered in the middle of the room. But their attention is soon drawn away from the corpse and towards a stone marked with the words “Here rests the treasure of Urgaan of Angarngi.”

The two of them set to work, using pick, mattock, and pry-bar to begin their excavations. Weirdly, they quickly encounter some kind of strange, tarry substance in among the masonry, though not even that gives them pause; they keep gauging away, eventually exposing enough of raw stone that they can get their pry-bar in and wiggle it around, loosening and gouging alternatively. As they keep at the work, though, a new strange feeling of revulsion comes over The Mouser, a sensation clearly related to this dark, foul smelling glop that they’re working on. Nauseated, he goes to a window for a breath of fresh air, and sees down below them the farmer’s daughter. The young girl is clearly trying to screw her courage to the sticking place to come in and warn them of their danger.

A kind of mania descends on everyone now – The Mouser has seen something in the ceiling, but he can’t articulate it even to himself, and instead lurches sick and fearful out of the room, focused only on keeping the girl from entering the tower. Meanwhile, Fafhrd seems possessed, blind and deaf to everything else expect the stone that hides the treasure. Like the weird fear aura the place had earlier, it seems like the tower is projecting some kind of weird psychic effect, and everyone is mostly powerless to resist it. As the Mouser reaches the bottom of the stairs, his muddled mind steadies itself enough to realize that what he’d seen on the ceiling was a corresponding smear of gore, the counterpart to the blood on the floor. What could it mean!? And why is the tower suddenly vibrating!?

Meanwhile, Fafhrd has finally cracked into the treasure chest!

In the moment, this is all extremely strange and weird and not entirely clear. A weird basin full of dark celestial mercury, upon which floats a weird tangle of glittering geometric shapes, including the huge diamond promised in Urgaan’s message. Everything sparkles with a strange inner light, and Fafhrd weirdly seems to sense that he’s gripping a piece of a thinking mind in his hand as he grabs for the diamond. Meanwhile, the tower is beginning to twist and undulate; The Mouser thinks at first it is toppling, but he realizes there’re no fissures or breaks…rather, it’s like it’s wiggling or bending! Back in the treasure chamber, the weird gems start jittering in the black mercury, and Fafhrd is having a hard time holding on to the skull-sized diamond in his hand. Doors and windows begin to clamp shut, closing like a sphincter, and Fafhrd realizes that the room itself is changing shape.

The Mouser reaches the girl, and they dive for safety beyond the clearing outside of the tower, while Fafhrd confronts the realization that, basically, he’s inside an insane robot.

The diamond, strangely mobile and very hostile, flings itself at Fafhrd’s own skull as he tries to escape, eventually exploding into a cloud of sparkling dust. At that, the tower begins its death throes, with Fafhrd only just escaping before the door slams hut.

There’s a break in the story, resuming after some time has passed.

And that’s the end of the story!

It’s a pretty strange one, isn’t it? I think it’s true to Leiber’s own proclivities, but you can see the Campbellian “rationality” in the tower/robot. Urgaan’s tower is not merely magical; it’s some kind of weird magical technology, complete with what is obviously a kind of high-tech gem-based brain. Presumably, Urgaan has built this conscious robotower as some kind of horrible death trap – lured in, the computer then smooshes all interlopers, it’s weird stone body lubricated by that odd tarry goop. It’s a fun and fully bonkers idea, although it’s not too wildly different from Howard’s magic, which is often more occulto-scientific that pure magic. Why Urgaan would do that is left mysterious, which is actually kind of fun – people can be real assholes, and if you’re some kind of ancient technomancer then maybe that’s the sort of the thing you’d do!

You can also really see the influence Leiber had on Dungeons and Dragons in this story, too. It’s almost exactly the kind of thing Gary Gygax would write, right down to the dungeon built around a weirdly complex and almost certainly fatal death trap. But even beyond the setting and the trappings of the dungeon, I think you get a sense that Gygax et al. ALSO certainly styled their adventurers after Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

And it’s the characters of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser that are so important and foundational to the genre, in my opinion. Even Conan at his most avaricious (say, in “The Jewels of Ghwalur”) ends up shifting gears, exploring a mystery, saving a girl, and engaging in heroics, whereas Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser are almost single-mindedly focused on this tower, ignoring countless warnings and obvious signs that something is amiss. That stubbornness and single-minded selfishness is key to their motivation and characters, and Leiber is really the first writer of the genre to really explore that aspect of sword-and-sorcery. Even though they envision themselves as heroes, any actual heroism that they end up doing is often in spite of themselves. It’s often funny, although only rarely does Leiber play that purely for laughs; rather, their self-importance and unassailable confidence gives them the boost they need to persevere in the face of insane odds. Mostly, Leiber is interested in the way these characters, who clearly see themselves in a certain light, are actually a little more complicated and gray than we might expect. Particularly in the post-Howard world, most of the sword and sorcery heroes are painfully noble barbarians; guys like Elak of Atlantis are even Kings who (despite renouncing a throne) always carry with them a sense of portentousness and destiny. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are different, wanderers and adventurers and thieves, just a couple of scrappy normal dudes who are going to carve their destiny and wealth out of the carcass of the world. Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser are an interesting counterpart to Conan and Jirel, and represent a key part of the evolution of the genre.

Sword & Sorcery & Straining #17! “The Tower of the Elephant” by Robert E. Howard, Weird Tales, March 1933, v. 13, n. 6

2 Replies

Like a true Barbarian Hero I am currently adventuring in distant lands, having braved the cursed tomb of Newark Airport to arrive in the bleak, windswept hills of Pennsylvania, where death and danger lurk in the shadows of every tree, mountain, and Wawa. But that doesn’t mean an end to my long-as-hell ramblings, no, far from it indeed! For hark! Another edition of Pulp Strainer (Sword & Sorcery Edition) is upon us, and we’re continuing our REH lovefest with probably my favorite Conan story of all time: The Tower of the Elephant from the March 1933 issue of Weird Tales!

“The Tower of the Elephant” is an interesting story because, aside from being rad as hell, it was also the first Conan story where he’s an adventurer, wandering through civilized lands in search of fortune and excitement. The previous two stories published in Weird Tales, “The Phoenix and the Sword” (Dec ’32) and and “The Scarlet Citadel” (Jan ’33) both take place when Conan is wearing the crown of Aquilonia upon his troubled brow (my least favorite phase of Conan’s chronology, personally). Interestingly, the first tranche of three stories that REH submitted to Weird Tales included “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” which had Conan as a young wanderer up among the viking-flavored berserkers of Hyboria; it was rejected by Farnsworth Wright, however, and wouldn’t be published until the 70s, if I recall correctly. “The Phoenix and the Sword” story is a reworking of an unsubmitted Kull story anyway, swapping out Kull for Conan and expanding the evil sorcerer Thoth-Amon a bit, but still it’s mostly concerned with Conan’s tenuous hold on the throne as a barbarian usurper. “Scarlet Citadel” is a similar (but better) story, this time with King Conan betrayed and imprisoned (in a legitimately cool-as-hell dungeon full of awesome monsters) while his kingdom totters.

Both are fun and all, and they certainly have good sword-and-sorcery action, but for my money Conan is at his most interesting when he’s just a rogue and a reaver, a barbarian wandering among “civilized” people, relying on his wits and his strength to survive. According to some histories I’ve read, following the positive response to the first two Conan stories, Wright encouraged Howard to work up an essay on the world of “Hyboria” that he’d created and glancingly mentioned; the result of that work would be important for Howard, who got interested in exploring more of these lands in greater detail, leading him to write “The Tower of the Elephant,” a very different sort of Conan story from those he’d written previously.

But, as always, before we can get into that let’s take a look at the cover! And damn if it ain’t a spicy one this time!

That’s a Brundage, of course, still obscuring her gender behind the semi-pseudonym of “M. Brundage.” Just a straight-up buck-ass naked lady hanging out her wolf pack, what’s it to ya buddy, huh? You some kinda prude or something!? The story is a perfectly serviceable Jules de Grandin adventure from ol’ Quinn, this time with some interesting werewolfery thrown in. As for the ToC, there’s some interesting stuff here too:

Kline, Smith and Ernst here too, all solid fellows, but the interesting thing here (besides from our Conan story) is the “In Memoriam” for Henry Whitehead. Whitehead is an interesting guy, an Episcopalian minister who lived and worked for most of his life in the Virgin Islands (specially St. Croix) and used that setting and island folklore for his weird fiction. He was a good friend of Lovecraft, who actually visited Whitehead in Florida after he’d retired and spent several weeks with him and his family; it’s actually HPL who wrote the “In Memoriam” here, and the affection he felt for his friend is evident, I think. Whitehead is also interesting from a horror perspective because he’s basically the guy who introduced a lot of what would become the dominant pop cultural understanding of “Voodoo” into weird literature. An interesting and important figure, though little known these days.

But enough of that, there’re Towers to be scaled, Threats to be overcome, and Fabled Gems to be plundered! Let’s get into it!

A neat title illustration to this one, by ol’ Jayem Wilcox again. As is usual in Weird Tales, this illustration is based on a scene near the climax of story; it’s a bad habit of theirs and has in the past given away too much of the story, but here it’s okay since the way the story unfolds is a bit more complex than what is shown here. But, regardless, it’s fun to see the way the artists were envisioning Conan at a time when the visual iconography hadn’t been invented yet for sword and sorcery; we’re so used to Frank Frazetta’s iconic paintings from the 70s that these early Conans can be a bit jarring. They always remind me of Douglas Fairbanks, more like a dashingly handsome swashbuckler than the dark and brooding barbarian we’re used to. In particular, the vaguely Celto-roman tunic thing is an interesting touch, especially since Conan is explicitly described as being stripped to the loin cloth for much of this story.

Like I mentioned up top, REH wrote this story hot on the heels of a personal history/geography of his secondary world, something that really comes through in the beginning of this story, I think:

I mean, c’mon; that’s just some incredible sword-n-sorc stuff, right? A thieves’ quarter called The Maul where all the rough bastards and real assholes like to party, a real grim and grimy scene; the sensory language is so rich here, and the combination of visual (torches flaring, steel glinting), auditory (roaring thieves, shrill laughter, scufflings and strugglings, fists-hammering), tactile (sloppy puddles), and especially olfactory (heaped refuse, stale wine and “rank sweaty bodies”) descriptors perfectly evoke a rough neighborhood on a Saturday night in a fantasy city. And all in a single introductory paragraph! There’s a danger of reading REH and thinking he’s cliche, but that’s simply because he invented the things that would later become cliche in the hands of lesser writers, but even so, I think everyone can appreciate the sweep and power of his writing. This is simply good sword and sorcery writing.

The second paragraph seems born from the supplementary writing that REH had been doing. He’s obviously been thinking a lot about the geography and history of his secondary world, inspired by Farnsworth Wright to elaborate and develop some coherency for his fantasy setting. Now Howard never got into the depths of codification than Tolkien did; that’s a good thing in my opinion, since he had neither the expertise nor the time that Tolkien did to do a job of that size. Also, honestly, I think Howard’s rough-sketch or thumbnailed approach is actually much richer and more productive than the strict and set-in-stone “series bible” that a lot of later fantasy writers use. I mean, Howard apparently never even made a map until some fans wrote and asked for one, and I think that kind of hazy uncertainty, in addition to having much more verisimilitude, also gives a lot more freedom to the writer. Howard could slap Conan into a high seas galleons-and-pirates adventure one story and then drop him into a ziggurat full of demon-worshipers the next, and that’s important to the freshness of a series of short stories helmed by the same character. Maybe a novel requires more secondary world discipline, although if so I’d say that’s yet another point in favor of my “short story is the superior prose format” argument.

The other thing that strikes you immediately in that second paragraph is the very obvious racial/ethnonationalist reductionism that Howard uses. The Zamorans are all dark and guileful, there’s a very uncomfortably described Shemitish counterfiter, there’re tawny-headed Gundermen, etc. It is important to acknowledge that Howard was 100% a dyed-in-the-wool and absolutely committed racist, and that it played a huge part in his writing and his world view. A lot has been made of Howard’s love of the barbarian and his belief, quite sincerely, that civilization was largely an accidental configuration of society, fragile and unstable and always temporary, and that the natural state of humanity was the noble savage. Civilization poisons the individual, makes them soft and sneaky and duplicitous and decadent, and part of that decadence for Howard is the mingling of races, both socially and, horror of horrors for a white southerner like him, reproductively.

Equally important for Howard is his belief in a Spencerian hierarchy of the races, meaning that all barbarians are not created equally. The Cimmerians, Conan’s people, represent the highest and best of the barbarians – white, rough, hardy, savage but with an inborn sense of fair-play and nobility about them. Next down the hierarchy for Howard are the Picts who, in the Conan stories, are basically an early 20th century pop cultural expression of the Native Americans, almost as good as a white barbarian but given over to superstition and cruelty. It is notable that Howard never introduced a black barbarian, and even in the stories where Conan is running around the fantastical precursor of modern Africa, the northern barbarian’s woodcraft, survival skills, and martial prowess always trump the natives, even in the depths of their own home territories. As an aside, let me pause here to plug the late Charles Saunder’s “Imaro” and “Dossouye” series of books, truly great sword-and-sorcery by a black writer who loved the genre and also thought deeply and insightfully about its history, politics, and shortcomings.

But it’s important to recognize that this racism is a big part of Howard’s writing, and it will not be going away – it is integral to how he envisions the world and creates his stories, even more so than in the works of his friend and fellow racist, Lovecraft. And here, where Howard has begun to really think about the world of Conan, those beliefs and prejudices are getting baked into Hyboria.

But anyway, let us continue. Our synoptic view of The Maul narrows down to a specific corner of a specific bar, where a Kothic slaver is giggling sloppily about the Brythunian girl he’s going to kidnap and sell into sexual slavery in Ophir – grim stuff!

And it is this mention of the Elephant Tower that causes the ears of a tall barbarian youth to perk up…

That’s our boy for sure, but this is a much different Conan than the readers’ of Weird Tales were used to. The previous stories had centered on Conan the King, a middle aged, experienced, and supremely confident ruler and warrior king. This is a youth, seemingly fresh from Cimmeria and perhaps experiencing for the first time the decadent and dangerous cities of the south. I think this is also the only time Conan is described as having an accent, a signifier of both his inexperience and his barbaric foreignness.

ALSO I might as well point out here the loving and expressive attention paid to Conan’s body, a hallmark of Howard’s sword-and-sorcery in particular. Howard’s interest in masculinity and the body is clear in all his work, but with Conan in particular it’s an important part of the stories. For one thing, diegetically it’s the key to how he makes his living; Conan as warrior, thief, and survivor relies on his body above all else, and its stamina, its strength, and its smooth and powerful functioning are all central to his adventures. Secondly, it’s a signifier of his barbarity; his body is hard and lean and disciplined from his life and background; his strength is inherent and native to his body, which is very different from the civilized people in the stories, who are either soft and weak from easy living or who, it is implied, must train and work and practice to attain physical fitness in spite of their surroundings. This is a key difference, because again, for Conan, his strength, his muscular coordination, and his reflexes are all natural, honed from the life-or-death struggle that is a barbarian’s lot. No amount of training or expertise or practice can ever match it, because even the most diligent body-builder or swordsman or thief is, at core, artificially attempting to mimic what is pure and natural to the barbarian. Finally, it’s worth pointing out the homoeroticism inherent here. I’ve never done it, but an analysis of Howard’s use of superlatives and adjectives to describe specific characters would be extremely telling; even in stories with women characters, dollars to donuts Howard lavishes at least twice as much ink on Conan’s broad hairy chest and mighty thews as on heaving bosoms and curvaceous hips. I’m not saying Howard was gay, but I am saying that it is clear from the stories that what he is interested in is masculinity, pure and simple, it’s perceived strength and ruggedness and the way it’s expressed in the idealized masculine form.

Lotta damn theorizin’ and philosphizin’ there, sorry! Let’s get back to the damn story!

This young barbarian, still unintroduced formally, has heard this the man’s strange statement, and wants to know what is the secret of the Elephant Tower? The Kothic slaver, well in his cups and enjoying the role of an in-the-know city slicker, decides to set this rube from the sticks straight.

Heedless of his danger, our Kothic drunkard gets on his high horse and deigns to explain to this Cimmerian hick that Zamora is the City of Thieves, and if someone could have stolen the Heart of the Elephant then it would already have been done. But Yara the Priest, whose magic is unparalleled, guards his prize with both steel and dangerous sorcery. But what of climbing the tower and coming in from above, asks the Cimmerian?

The threat of a fight sends the crowd surging backwards, and the single candle illuminating the scene is snuffed out. Chaos erupts, there’s shouting and screaming and a single strident yell…and when the candle is relit the barbarian is gone and the Kothic slaver lies dead, ripped open by a sword stroke unerringly delivered in the dark.

I’ve spent a LOT of time on this first section because I think it warrants it. First of all, it’s just great, thrilling stuff, full of flavor and rich descriptions that really capture the scene; it’s very visceral and exciting! But also, I think this is a key moment in sword and sorcery’s history. Remember, the previous Conan stories have been set later in his life, as a King, and while there’s some great blood-and-thunder stuff there for sure, it’s here in this opening section of the Tower of the Elephant that we are introduced to the very first Barbarian Hero in the whole of the genre, and the way it’s done is so important and impactful on what would come later that it warrants some attention.

The good stuff continues in the next section, where Conan is striding towards to the temple district and the Tower of the Elephant, reflecting on his time among civilized people. It’s pure undiluted barbarian hero backstory, and it’s great:

In particular, that last line summing up barbarian theology is basically a primer on both Howard’s view of the world as well as sword and sorcery as a genre – it’s all about a character alone and armed only with their courage and willpower taking on the world!

Conan (or, rather, the Cimmerian, because he hasn’t YET been named in this story) arrives at the Tower of the Elephant, a silvery spire with glassy outer walls and rimmed with gems that dominates the Zamoran skyline. It’s from here that Yara the Priest dwells and performs his strange magical rites.

Just fantastic evil magic stuff, really hammering home how this weird and mysterious force is quintessentially and elementally is opposed to the clean and natural strength of a barbarian. It’s also fun to see the inexplicableness of the tower AND gem’s names…they’re just named after Elephants, for some reason, and no one knows or remembers why. While Conan is musing on all this, he suddenly hears a noise from beyond the outer – the sound of someone tromping by. A guard, Conan thinks, but instead of hearing him come by again on his patrol, all is silent within.

Succumbing to his curiosity (and avarice), Conan clambers easily over the wall and drops down into the first of the inner rings surrounding the Tower. This one is wide and mostly open, with only some shrubberies near the far inner wall. Gliding pantherishly, Conan makes his way towards that inner wall, when he stumbles across the dead body of solider who has been strangled from behind. Somewhat unnerved by the uncanniness of the murder, Conan continues forward cautiously, his sword drawn and his senses alert. He spies a strange bulk near the wall, a shadowy figure who, somehow (and perhaps for the only time in any of these stories) actually hears Conan’s stealthy approach. The shape whirls around, resolving itself into a big-bellied but strangely lithe man!

There, finally, is Conan’s name. And we’re introduced to one of the first in a long-line of important and entertaining side characters in a Conan story. In this one its Taurus of Nemedia, the Prince of Thieves, but it could just as well be Balthus from “Beyond the Black River” or “Murilo” from “Rogues in the House.” Actually, it’s kind of interesting, but the very best Conan stories generally have a strong secondary character; Conan doesn’t have a lot of interiority, honestly, so it’s useful to have another POV that lets the reader see both Conan and how he fits into the world at the same time. Also, mechanically, it’s handy to have someone who can throw out exposition or explanations, which Taurus of Nemedia does here.

He quickly explains that Yara’s defenses rely on what lies beyond the inner wall, in the second garden. The human guards, like the man he killed, all hunker down for the night behind sealed doors in the lower chambers of the tower, leaving the garden to be defended by deadly, nonhuman sentinels. It’s these that baffled Taurus for so long, but he’s figured out some kind of scheme or plan for taking care of them. Once they’re neutralized, they’ll climb the tower, enter through the roof, murder Yara and take his Gem. Easy peasy!

Conan and his new best friend hop the wall and land in a lush inner garden. Conan prepares to stride forward, but Taurus, tense and on edge, pushes him back and tells him that, as he values his life, he must stay behind him. They wait; everything is silent at first, and then there’s movement in the bushes and among the trees, and terrible blazing eyes suddenly glare out at them from the foliage!

It turns out Taurus had a tube full of black lotus powder, a horrifically toxic substance that kills with the merest whiff. As an aside, Howard’s reliance on lotuses in these stories is really one of my favorite things. The black lotus shows up a lot, as does a white and (I think) a yellow lotus, all with strange and mysterious powers and properties. It’s a lot of fun, and puts Howard in a lineage with Homer and the Odyssey, as far as strange botanicals go.

Conan gets to display his prowess by killing one more lion with his sword, and then he and Taurus get to the tower itself, a metallic mass with smooth, glassy sides, seemingly unclimbable. But the wily Prince of Thieves has a solution to this problem, too!

Sometimes it seems like sword and sorcery is as much a genre about climbing as anything else – it’s such a common way to demonstrate the hero’s prowess, strength, courage, tenacity, AND their connection to wild landscapes and untamed nature. Of course a Cimmerian can climb like a cat, they live in a rocky, hilly landscape of towering precipices and foreboding cliffs! Taurus and Conan get to the tower, and that’s when Taurus gets a little tricksy. He tells Conan to go to the edge of the tower and check to see if the guards are alert. Conan is no dummy and thinks its an odd request, but he complies, and while he does Taurus slips in through the door, leaving his buddy behind. I guess he’s decided that he doesn’t want to share the spoils with Conan, but it doesn’t work out so well for our Nemedian Prince of Thieves:

With a gurgle and a dumb look on his face, poor ol’ Taurus dies, apparently without even knowing what it was that had killed him! Examining his late compatriot’s body, Conan discovers a wound on the base of Taurus’s neck, like three nails that had been driven in and then pulled out. Already the edges of these marks are turning black, and there’s a faint smell of putrefaction. Cautiously Conan prods the door open, and inside the chamber he sees a bunch of fainting couches and several chests full of glittering gems. Already he’s found more wealth than he could’ve imagined existed in all the world! But, while he’s contemplating it, the guardian of the chamber attacks!

It’s a good ol’ fashioned giant spider fight, an encounter appropriate for one level 3-5 barbarian! Again, a little cliched now, but remember, Howard was writing this stuff in 1933! Give him a break! Besides, it’s a fun fight – the spider is super nimble, and it’s fun to think of it swinging through the chamber, trying sink its venomous fangs into Conan. When that doesn’t work, the spider then starts darting all around, roping off the chamber with thick cords of rough, sticky webbing that threatens to trap Conan. Finally, unable to come to grips with the monster using his sword, Conan lifts a huge chest full of gems and splatters the big crawlie with it. It’s neat!

Conan is nothing if not dogged, and despite the fact that he’s twice now encountered a king’s ransom in gems just lying around, he’s committed to finding the Heart of the Elephant. After all, if Yara was willing to just leave chests of gems sitting around in his rumpus room, imagine what the Heart must be like! So on he goes, venturing through the door and deeper into the silent, uncanny tower. Eventually he finds a huge ivory door with strange markings on it. He enters, and sees something truly strange:

An elephant headed horror sits enthroned in this strange chamber, and its no mere idol…it’s a living thing! Conan is horrified, struck dumb and seemingly paralyzed by what can only be an elder demon of the old world. But then, Conan notices that the great amber eyes stare out blankly, and the trunk of the thing grope forward…the monster on the throne is blind. And then, it speaks with an unearthly voice!

It’s both a surprising reveal and an honestly moving bit of writing; Conan’s realization that this thing which he had been so horrified at has been made to suffer, has in fact been tortured, moves him to both deep pity and profound shame.

Possessed of senses beyond humankind, the elephant-heading thing senses that Conan has killed this evening, up to and including the man in the tavern. And it also knows that a man lies died above at the top of the tower. These two deaths seem to have some occult significance for the thing, who begins to share its story with Conan, explaining that he and others like him had come from a weird green planet called Yag, rebels against their king there. Seeking refuge on earth their wings withered and so they came to live in the primordial world, warring against the prehuman monsters that dwelt there. They conquered, and watched humans rise from ape-dom to the kingdoms of Valusia and Atlantis, and they saw the cataclysm that swallowed those ancient lands and gave rise to the world of Conan and his people. One by one his people died throughout the long ages, until only he, Yag-Kosha, was left, worshipped as a god far in the east. But it was there that Yara found him and, feigned to be his acolyte, learned magic from Yag-Kosha. But, like all evil wizards, he wanted to know Dark Sorcery, which Yag-Kosha would not teach him. Using forbidden magic he’d learned in Stygia, Yara was able to trap and enslave Yag-Kosha, forcing him to use his magic to fulfill Yara’s every whim.

Conan takes up the gem, a great clear crimson crystal, the Heart of the Elephant. Yag-Kosha has a plan, and Conan is now a part of it.

It’s really good, and Yag-Kosha’s story and in particular his speech here is some great, eldritch stuff, truly weird and unearthly and hinting at much stranger stuff. It also nicely demonstrates the importance of weirdness in sword-and-sorcery (which is, of course, a subgenre of the larger genre of weird fiction). Rather than just pure supernaturalism, Yag-Kosha is, basically, a Lovecraftian alien-god, made of different stuff and possessing alien powers, sure, but in a way that’s consistent with a vision of a material (if strange and magical) universe.

Conan complies with Yag-Kosha’s wishes, cutting out its heart and then squeezing the blood onto the gem, where it gets soaked up, like a sponge. As he’s leaving, he senses that there’s something strange and marvelous going on with Yag-Kosha’s remains, but he averts his eyes, not sure whether he could safely witness it.

The gem has become murky and pulses with a strange power that seems to draw and trap Yara’s attention. The wizard stoops over and grips the gem, staring into its depths, and Conan realizes with a start that the wizard is shrinking. Soon he is no larger than a child, and its only when he’s baby-sized and standing on the table that the evil sorcerer seems to realize his danger. He drops the gem and tries to flee, but some kind of weird magnetism has trapped him; he can only run in ever tightening circles around the jewel, drawing closer and closer with each circuit. Eventually, big as a mouse, Yara ends up atop the gem, and then his final doom comes upon him:

Conan turns and hauls ass out of the tower, running downward through the lower halls, seeing the guard room full of suddenly and mysteriously killed guards. Yag-Kosha had said the way would be made clear for him, and if there’s one thing weird elephant-headed space gods are, it’s honest. Conan finds it all to be a bit too much though, and decides to get out of Dodge:

And, with that crashing apocalyptic collapse, so ends “The Tower of the Elephant.”

It’s really almost the perfect sword-and-sorcery tale, inventive and thrilling and action-packed, but also moody and contemplative and a little sad. There’s real cosmic sorrow in Yag-Kosha, and Conan’s sense of humankind’s collective shame for his imprisonment is particularly poignant; it’s probably the most introspective Conan ever gets, unfortunately. Don’t get me wrong, there’re some truly great Conan stories yet to come, full of great ideas and inventive plots and fun characters, but I really think that this is my favorite of the series. It’s so effortlessly fun (and weird!), and it really lays out what makes for great sword-and-sorcery. It’s been a lot of fun re-reading it and thinking about it, and I hope ya’ll have enjoyed both it AND my ridiculously wordy musings about it too. Anyway, stay tuned, we’re only half-way through Sword and Sorcery month, and I’m thinkin’ I’ll do a fun one for the solstice next week. See ya’ll then!

Straining the Pulp beneath my sandaled feet #16: “Rattle of Bones” by Robert E. Howard, Weird Tales June 1929, V.13 n.6

3 Replies

Gathered ’round the red glow of the fire at night, its feeble flame keeping wolves (and worse…) at bay while we discuss the weighty topic of The Pulps, one name looms larger than all others, a name of ancient renown steeped in glory and deep lore: the Man from Cross Plains himself, Robert E. Howard. And while I don’t want to get bogged down JUST talking about him, it is the fact that, in addition to basically creating the genre that Fritz Lieber would later name “Sword and Sorcery,” ol’ REH is also one of its indisputable masters, having written some of the best examples of the genre ever. So, while we ARE going to be eventually talking about OTHER people, there will be at least THREE of these pieces that focus on my fellow Texan, Big Bob Howard. And for today, that story is “Rattle of Bones” from the June 1929 issue of Weird Tales.

That’s right, we’re saving Conan for later and STARTING with Howard’s first indisputably successful series-spanning character, the two-fisted, sword-swinging, berserker-Puritan himself, Solomon Kane! I’ve always liked Kane (shame about the movie though…) and I think he’s an important step in Howard’s career. In addition to being a real recurring character, he also seems to have helped Howard crystalize some of his ideas about what he was interested in as a writer, per say.

But wait, I can hear you saying, didn’t I *just* say last time that sword and sorcery wasn’t created until the Conan story “The Phoenix and The Sword” was published in 1932!? What’s this 1929 story doing here in Sword and Sorcery month!? Read on, O Prince (or Princess, as the case may be)!

Leading up to this issue of Weird Tales, Howard was already an established writer: his first professional story ever was “Spear and Fang” from ’25 in Weird Tales, a lusty, action-packed caveman yarn that was extremely well-received. He wrote some more traditional, gothic-style horror tales, in particular “Wolfshead” in ’26, which was another huge success with the readers of Weird Tales and established him as a talent in Farnsworth Wright’s stable of writers. All of these stories are very much in the vein of Howard’s early horror writing, tortured protagonists struggling manfully against a hostile world full of occult threats, rich in historical (or prehistorical) trappings and settings. Importantly, he has introduced the Picts in “The Lost Race” from 1927; these dark, gnomish figures of a forgotten age who lurk in the twilight on the edge of our world are, for Howard, a synecdoche. They represent all of his literary preoccupations: civilization and barbarism, history drenched landscapes, violence, empire, decadence, atavism, and race. While these previous stories are very much still in the weird fiction tradition, focused on moody reflections of doom-laden fate and ancient knowledge, they are nonetheless grasping towards what would eventually become sword and sorcery, where weird horrors exist to be confronted rather than merely suffered. And Kane, as a brave and violent character that can appear in different stories and different settings over and over again, is an important part of bridging that gap from the early “weird fiction” Howard to the “blood and thunder” Howard that we know and love later.

That’s a long preamble, so we’ll save REH biography talk for later. Now, let’s take a look at this issue of Weird Tales!

An excellent and very risque cover from Hugh Rankin, illustrating (vaguely) a scene from a Jules de Grandin story by Seabury Quinn. It’s got a great, almost art deco style cover to it, doesn’t it, and the nearly naked woman is particularly stylish and evocative (he said, looking respectfully). Probably way more interesting that the story it’s illustrating, I’m sure – Quinn was a HUGELY popular writer at Weird Tales, surpassing Lovecraft at this point, and his occult detective Jules de Grandin was one of the most popular characters in the magazine. The stories themselves are perfectly fine, but it’s always baffled me HOW bonkers people were for them back then. Changing tastes, I guess. Anyway, the ToC:

Not TOO much to write home about in this issue – Derleth and Whitehead are very much second-stringers in the Lovecraft Circle, and the big names at the time were definitely Quinn and Hamilton; they’re right up right up front in this issue, with a bullet. Howard is comfortably in the middle of the issue, and Wright took particular care to call out that “Rattle of Bones” is a Solomon Kane story; they’d given Howard’s first Kane story, “Red Shadows,” a cover earlier in 1928, and there’d been a second Kane story earlier in 1929, so they’re working hard to make sure people know that this is a recurring character. So let’s get into it, shall we!

Unique typesetting on the title this time, huh? It spreads across two pages too, but there’s just one word over there on the second page, kind of spaced weirdly. The title font is only used for this story in this issue, which is interesting. Weird Tales was always financially strapped, generally just skating by, so I kind of wonder if they were trying to get some visual interest on the cheap here? But, that’s not to say that they couldn’t afford an illustration!

Ah yes, Weird Tales, the magazine never afraid to spoil a story with an illustration right off the goddamn bat. Of course, this one isn’t the worst offender, but still, c’mon ya’ll, let a story breath, would ya?

Efficient and evocative, Howard wastes no time here. Two men travelling through the dark, silent, shadowy black forest approach the Tavern of the Cleft Skull. The landlord is suspicious, and demands to know who these guys wandering the deep forest are. One is, of course, the English Puritan Solomon Kane, and the other is a Frenchman with the unlikely name of Gaston l’Armon. The sullen, suspicious, secretive landlord lets them in, and we get a brief description of our characters: Kane is a goth, all in black with a black featherless hat that sets of his pallid, intense face. Gaston is of a different sort entirely; he’s very much a French Poppinjay, all in lace and finery. And our landlord?

So he’s obviously a deeply sinister motherfucker, even without that last little “few come twice,” thing which, I mean, jeez man. Way to give away the game, although when you have two small red eyes that stare unblinkingly at people, maybe there’s not much dissembling to do? Kane and l’Armon finish up their meal and head on up to bed.

This is a pretty short story with pretty spare descriptions, but I think Howard uses his words to good effect here – the wavering shadows on the walls of the long dark hall and the broad, stocky body of the weird innkeeper shambling ahead of them…it’s a really nice picture, the sparse language helping to convey the silence and the stillness and the emptiness of the Inn of the Cleft Skull.

Inside their room, Kane notices that there isn’t a bar for the lock. There’s a bit of banter between l’Armon and Kane, and we learn that the two of them met by chance a mere hour before coming across this lonely inn out in the middle of the German black forest. Still, they decide that they might like to be able to lock their door, so they go out in search of a bolt in one of the other rooms. This trope of an inn as a trap, and in particular one where the trapping is done via locks (or the absence of them) appears in two other big famous stories. One is Howard’s Conan story “Shadows in Zamboula” from 1935 (a good but controversial story that showcases some of the worst of Howard’s casual racism) and, interestingly, it plays a major part in Lovecraft’s “The Shadow over Innsmouth” from 1931 (where it precipitates one of the few action scenes in a Lovecraft, actually). It’s an effective bit of horror stuff, though – vulnerable and unprotected in your sleep, not even a locked door between you and whatever threat is out there…it’s spooky stuff! Kane and l’Armon agree that they’d like to be able to lock the door, so they set off to search the other empty rooms of the inn for a bar to lock their door with. But, they find them all similarly unlockable. And then they come to the very last room at the faaaaaaar end of the dark hallway.

They find the Inn’s murder room which of course we were all expecting. Bloodstained floors, smashed furniture, and even a secret passage!

That’s pretty wild, huh? The inn keeper cleaves some poor bastard’s head clean through AND THEN chains up his corpse in a secret chamber? Confronted with the evidence of their murderous host’s past actions and his immanent threat to them, what do they do? They start screwin’ around with the skeleton, of course:

Perfectly normal thing to say, Gaston l’Armon, I’m sure it’ll have no bearing whatsoever on the rest of the story! But Kane has had enough; he wants to confront the innkeeper with the evidence of his crimes! He turns, preparing to leave, when the unthinkable happens!

Betrayed! And now Kane recognizes him…he’s Gaston the Butcher, a famously murderous brigand! He had planned to murder Kane in the night, the treacherous dog, but a chance came along and he took it! Now he’s going to kill Kane and take his gold. It’s a solid plan, simple and straightforward, and Kane seems to be facing his imminent death (and at the hands of a Frenchman, no less) when, suddenly…

That’s right! Looming up behind Gaston in the hallway, the inn keeper cleaves himself another skull, thereby saving (albeit briefly, as we’ll see) Solomon Kane’s life! By the way, the “hanger” that the innkeeper uses to chop Gaston’s head open is a type of sword, a very short sabre that was popular with woodsmen and hunters before making the jump to the navy and artillery officers of the 17th and 18th centuries. It’s called a hanger for the way it hanged from the belt.

Kane moves forward, but is quickly menaced back by the innkeeper, who has a long-barreled pistol in his OTHER hand. If it’s not one thing it’s another, you know what I mean?

First off all, the innkeeper is a nice and effective example of escalation, one of the staples of adventure literature. Gaston was bad, sure, but now Kane is face with a worse threat, a man driven to murderous insanity by the brutality of a Continental prison. The line, “And deep in my brain, the wounds of the years…” is really great, and it instantly turns the Host of the Inn of the Cleft Skull into something wilder and weirder and more tragic than a simple homicidal maniac. He’s been broken irrevocably, to the point that he’s now hiding out in the woods and waging a murderous war on all humanity. It’s great stuff, real dire threat.

But what, you ask, of sorcery? Well, there’s that strange sound again. Gaston had heard something scrabbling around in the chamber with the shackled skeleton, noises that Kane had dismissed as rats bothering dry bones. But the innkeeper has a different interpretation of the sound.

The madman continues with his ranting, explaining that the skeleton had belonged to a Russian sorcerer who had stopped at the inn and whom he had, of course, killed. But the wizard had vowed that his dead body would rise up and avenge him, so the Innkeeper stripped his bones and shackled his skeleton to the floor in the secret chamber. “His sorcery was not powerful enough to save him from me, but all men know that a dead magician is more evil than a living one,” says the innkeeper, sidling around to check on his prisoner.

I mean, that’s a great scene, isn’t it? A door to death yawning wide, then the man suddenly toppling backwards in a panic! A gust of wind that snuffs out the candle and shuts the door to the secret room where, sealed away, all Kane can hear is muffled screaming and the rattle of bones! Just top notch stuff, really simple and direct and effective. Kane kindles a light and sees a sight that horrifies him:

And that’s the end of the story!

So, first thing first, this is definitely a horror story, and not even a particularly weird one – there’s nothing cosmic or mind-bending about the monster here…it’s a wizard’s skeleton, and it literally just strangles a guy to death. In fact, the Innkeeper is a much weirder threat; he’s been brutalized so thoroughly that he’s lost all humanity, becoming an engine of destruction and murder who lays in wait for any and all who happen to come his way.

Similarly, the proto-sword and sorcery elements might seem to be thin on the ground here. Kane is mostly held at gunpoint the whole story, and he doesn’t even get a weapon of his own until the very last bit of the story. He doesn’t fight anybody or anything, and mostly just watches as the events of the story unfold around him. In fact, if you haven’t read the previous two Kane stories, you might be a little skeptical of the whole “Kane is a sword-and-sorcery hero” thing here (it’s much clearer in those stories, though – he’s sword-fighting and ranging all over the place in those, and generally a lot more active and dynamic than here, as well as menaced by sorcery and horrors).

But! I think that this story nicely illustrates Howard’s changing direction and the way he’s developing a distinct aesthetic. First of all, there’s an interesting use of the environment. The black forest setting is gloomy and threatening, and this ramshackle inn with a terrible name is, rather than a welcome sign of civilization in a wilderness, actually much wilder and more lonely than the woods themselves. The threats of the forest, wolves and weather and such, are after all natural, while the canker of the inn is wholly unnatural, a blight on the face of the earth. And the origins of that blight are sunk in the brutal degradation that Man visits of His Fellow Man, which is a very Howardian perspective that underpins many of the Conan stories.

You’re also beginning, I think, to see the tell-tale interest in the specific settings and materiality that makes for good sword and sorcery. Howard is always interested in making you believe that the places he’s setting his stories are real; now, that might be easier when the place IS real, like the black forest, but the work he’s doing is still substantial – after all, he’s just said “black forest” and “Germany,” it’s not like he’s providing an in-depth primer on the socio-economics of Baden-Württemberg. BUT I think there is an obvious interest in conveying that this landscape is real, and that the people and places in it are historically contingent. By playing around with those ideas in stories like this one, he’s practicing for the quick but evocative realizations that he’ll need to make Aquilonia or Turania seem like real places with real histories and economies and cultures, the sort of backgrounding that makes the Conan stories work.

There’s also a brutality to the characters that is interesting and important. The innkeeper, who is insane, is certainly a grim enough fellow, but Gaston’s depravity might be even worse. After all, the innkeeper at least has an ethos, man, but Gaston is straight up just a greedy murderer. Both of them have been degraded and turned into monsters, in fact; the innkeeper by a cruel and crude “justice” and Gaston by his own avarice. In the Kane stories, it’s implied that he is a volcanic, passionate man whose natural tendencies are kept in check not by his strict Puritanism but rather by his single-minded obsession with his own ideas of justice and righteous violence. In fact, over the course of the stories, you could very easily say that Kane is very similar to the poor mad murderous innkeeper, the only difference being that Kane’s endless war is being directed at the right people, brigands and murderers and inhuman monsters. That kind of psychological depth, and in particular the emphasis on the darker side of human beings, is certainly one of the poles holding up the sword and sorcery tent, and it’s in the Kane stories that Howard really starts to explore it.

I obviously really like this story – in fact, it might be my favorite Kane story. Don’t get me wrong, there’s good swash-buckling in a bunch of ’em, although you do have to prepare yourself for Howard’s paternalistic take on Africa for a lot of them (“Wings in the Night” is probably worth a read, though). And Kane is probably Howard’s first Great character, a dynamic and forceful and interesting personality, a Puritan who is, actually, a Barbarian hero, subject to gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirths. And while it’s short and Kane doesn’t get to do much in it, I still like the tone and mood of this piece – it’s a horror story, yes, much more so than sword-and-sorcery, but it’s almost there too, just teetering on the edge of a new genre. I think it really is a good key to understanding the evolution of Howard’s writing and thinking, and how all of, his interest in history and civilization and people, is going to blossom very soon into something special and epochal.

End of Moorevember #15: Sword and Sorcery edition! “The Black God’s Kiss” by C.L. Moore, Weird Tales Oct 1934 (v.24, n.4)

3 Replies

CONTENT WARNING: the story we’re talking about today includes sexual assault.

The Yuletide draws nigh, and for me, that means one thing: sword and sorcery! Growing up, for some reason or another, I would often find myself reading fantasy novels around this time of year; Lord of the Rings, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Book of the New Sun, big fat books that travelled well for holiday trips and suchlike. But one day I picked up a Fritz Lieber Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser collection, and ever since my xmas time fantasy reading has bent towards the sword-and-sorcery end of the spectrum. That might not be too surprising given that sword-and-sorcery is a subgenre of weird fiction anyway. But it’s decidedly my favorite flavor of fantasy, so it’s a unique pleasure to be able to end Moorevember and begin my annual sword-and-sorcery appreciation month with the very first Jirel of Joiry story from one of the genre’s masters, C.L. Moore! That’s right…it’s “The Black God’s Kiss” from Weird Tales, October 1934.

It’s gonna be wall-to-wall adventuring around here from now through January so we’ll talk the history of sword and sorcery as a genre later, but to lay some groundwork for you: sword and sorcery is the ONE genre that people all definitively agree began in Weird Tales. Specifically, we can point to the publication in December 1932 of the Conan story “The Phoenix and the Sword” as its definitive birthdate. It’s not the first fantasy in the magazine, of course; some of Lovecraft’s dreamlands stories veer dangerously close to the genre, Clark Ashton Smith had already published a number of fantasy-flavored horror stories (including, importantly, “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” in ’31), and REH had even had a couple of “King Kull” stories in the 20s in Weird Tales, but for most people the genre crystalized in ’32 with that Conan story. Mostly that’s because Conan as a character would come to dominate the genre, but I think there’re good literary reasons to pin it there too. A lot of the weird fantasy that had appeared previously was, mostly, very much more in the weird fiction tradition, focusing on horror or mood or lyricism; even Howard’s Kull stories were more mythic than anything else, with very little of the action or adventure we associate with classic S&S. Also, with the Conan story, we get a glimpse at the first really well developed “secondary world” in literature, a pseudo-historical approach to presenting fantastic lands as real political entities with histories and agendas and material concerns, rather than as timeless magical kingdoms. But perhaps most importantly, Howard’s Conan represents the first clear articulation of the central theme of sword and sorcery: a singular human character relying on their strength and cunning in an active struggle with unnatural and dangerously inhuman forces.

The 80s sword and sorcery revival (and backlash), particularly in the movies, has given us a very jaundiced and cynical view of the genre; you say “sword n’sorcery” and what most people envision is a meat-headed barbarian carving his way through a sea of enemies, followed by some gratuitous sex with an uncomfortably exoticized dancing girl. And I mean, sure, that’s a part of it, but in the finest examples of the genre, what you actually have is a story about a person confronting dangers with only themselves (and, in particular, their bodies) to rely on. It’s a literature preoccupied with the ways a person will push their strength, will, and courage to the limits in pursuit of a goal, despite the presence of weird inhuman threats.

That this had an appeal to both readers and writers of weird fiction is understandable, I think…even the most dyed-in-the-wool weird horror fan must eventually confront the fact that, sometimes, you want to see someone punch a gibbering horror right in its non-euclidian face, and that’s precisely the itch Sword and Sorcery scratches. The horrors are real and chilling and soul-shattering in S&S, but not every protagonist has to be a Lovecraftian character that embraces merciful oblivion by fainting at the most narratively convenient moment. And as we know from our very first entry in this year’s Moorevember, that kind of tough, no-nonsense character was something C.L. Moore specialized in writing! So let’s get to it!

Moore got the cover for this story, and it’s one of Brundage’s most famous pieces. The strange, enigmatical expression of the statue is really good, and while Brundage has of course cheesecaked up Jirel of Joiry (giving her longer and more feminine hair and putting her in lingerie), I think the picture actually does a good job at capturing some of the weirdness of Moore’s story. I wonder if there are any interviews or letters from Moore where she says what she thought of the cover?

The ToC this issue is pretty solid, too:

It’s a sword-and-sorcery smorgasbord! Moore, followed immediately by a great Hyperborean story from Clark Ashton Smith (which includes a wizard with an archaeopteryx familiar) AND there’s also the second part (of three) of a pretty great Conan tale (also with some of the raddest evil wizards he ever wrote)! Great fantasy stuff here, plus more straightforward weird fic from Ernst, Wellman, and Julius Long…hell of an issue, honestly!

The esteem that Wright and the readers felt for Moore is evident from a nifty (and atypical) little sidebar that was inserted on the first full page of text from the story. Here it is:

Some incredible praise, and puts Moore right in there with truly towering figures of weird literature. It also illustrates just how epochal “Shambleau” was for the magazine and the genre. A real shame that she ever fell off the radar of readers, since she’s absolutely one of the major writers of genre fiction from the early 20th century.

Big giant title illustration that, along with the italicized caption, UNFORTUNELY undercuts the beginning of the story by giving away the fact that Jirel of Joiry is, in fact a woman. It’s a real shame, because Moore clearly begins the story with the idea of surprising the Weird Tales audience with that fact:

Not until the fifth paragraph is Jirel identified as “Joiry’s lady,” after descriptions that paint “Joiry’s tall commander” as martial, physically powerful, and very defiant. It’s a shame that Weird Tales undercuts the reveal with the art and the intro, although hopefully some readers had sped through that and encountered the surprise naturally. It’s a great scene, one of the iconic gender reveals in literature, right up there with Éowyn confronting the Witch-King of Angmar.

Guillaume is, of course, struck by the sudden sight of this warrior woman, one who by his own admission put up a truly valiant fight against him and his men. It’s kind of funny that he besieged Joiry and went through all that without knowing who it was he was facing, isn’t it? Guess he was busy, what with the pillaging and conquest and all. And this leads into the scene that warranted the trigger warning above, because he demands a kiss from his captive. The immediate result is that Jirel curses him out and, despite having her hands bound, lashes out with her spurred boots and her knees and elbows, walloping the men holding her and even succeeding in briefly braking free. But Guillaume descends from his captured throne, grabs her, and forcibly kisses her.

Jirel is a grade-A badass, though, trying to fucking bite him to death like that. But she’s knocked unconscious and dragged away to what had been her own dungeons.

Pausing briefly, let’s talk about the sexual assault here. This is the only actually portrayed assault in the story, though the implied threat of rape looms large in the story and is explicitly discussed a little later; still, I think it’s worth pointing out that it’s not meant to be titillating to the reader, but rather is described as an actual and serious affront to Jirel’s person and dignity. Similarly, Jirel’s reaction is not typical for a woman in a pulp story facing an outrage like this; she is furious, and tries to kill Guillaume with her goddamn teeth, after all. We’ll talk about it more at the end, but I think it’s important to note that Jirel’s actions in the story are motivated by this assault, much more so than the simple fact that she lost her castle and position. Just keep that in mind as we read on.

Jirel wakes from her stupor in a lightless dungeon deep beneath her castle. She surveys the room in the dark, feeling her way along the edge of the room and finding a small wooden stool which will serve her as a weapon. Then, action-oriented as always, she makes her move:

Jirel creeps through her silent castle carefully, wracked with furious hate at the memory of Guilliaume and the kiss. Jirel, like all true sword and sorcery heroes, is always a hair’s breadth away from titanic berserker rages, and it’s only with effort that she forces her volcanic fury back down into the pit of her stomach. A plan is forming, as told by a wolfish grin she wears as she seeks out her rooms.

The Roman greaves are a nice touch, and help situate us in time and place (even if it doesn’t make a lot of strict sense). Between the name of Guillaume and the “not long past” days of Rome, we’re in France, although there’s definitely more of a high medieval feel to Jirel and her adventures than, say, a Merovingian setting. But still, there are two important points here. First, we’re in a savage age of warlords, lawlessness, and violence, the kind of thing that arises after the fall of an orderly and powerful Empire like Rome. Secondly and much more importantly, I’d argue that this brief scene subverts the important fantasy trope of the Chivalric Hero’s arming ceremony, and is in some ways the first clear and explicit articulation of sword-and-sorcery’s difference from traditional fantasy.

A chivalric hero is defined their equipment – they bear armor and arms that, in addition to signifying social status and prestige, also serve to symbolically elevate and separate their heroes from the rest of the world. A chivalric hero encased in steel contrasts with and indeed rejects the softness and vulnerability of the human body, while also placing them within a milieu of honorable and romantic combat. Similarly, the investiture of a chivalric hero with their armor and often special or ancient weapon represents a numinous, spiritual aspect of their being; again, they are transformed into something more than human.

Contrast this with the hero of sword and sorcery – yes, they have armor and weapons, but they are interchangeable, tools to be used and discarded, mere accessories to the true strength of the the S&S hero, their body and its native, inherent strength and vitality. A chivalric hero is strong, of course, but their heroism is superhuman, signified by the rejection of the body in favor of a manufactured, expensive, and inhuman carapace of metal. The S&S hero embraces their (often admittedly nearly mythic) body. And here, in this scene, we have Jirel explicitly inverting the famous arming ceremony of chivalric romances – she is unattended, and must strip her battered armor off on her own, a difficult task that requires considerable effort and contortions to achieve. You can envision her casting off her grand gothic armor, all fluted edges and glittering layers, the sort of thing that takes a lot of people to put on and take off properly. And what does she replace it with? Doeskins, utilitarian chain mail, and the greaves of a dead empire. These are the trapping of a reaver rather than a grand and noble leader of men! I think it’s a key scene in the history of fantasy in general and sword-and-sorcery in particular, a masterful and efficient expression of a break with the romantic ideal, replacing it with a grim, brutal, and hard-boiled expression of rugged heroism instead.

Emerging from her room as a true sword-and-sorcery hero, Jirel creeps through her dark and silent castle, realizing that her enemies must have spent the night feasting and partying and are now probably sleeping it off. She briefly considers just wrecking their shit while they sleep, but she puts it aside – Guillaume must’ve left SOME sentries, and she figures she wouldn’t be able to kill him without getting captured. She’s got a different plan in mind. She seeks out her priest, Father Gervase, who is praying at his shrine.

Jirel could possibly flee, but she’s chosen a different path, one that horrifies her priest.

An important fact is revealed here: Jirel is not one of these virginal sword and sorcery heroines. It’s not sex per say that she fears; rather, it’s victimization that she is fighting against. That’s an important point, I think. We aren’t told explicitly what Jirel is up to, but it’s clearly a grim and perilous thing she plans to do. Gervase says he would rather give her up to Guillaume than see her do whatever it is she is planning to do, but she is resolute; she will make a deal with the devil himself for vengeance!

Shriven, Jirel descends again to the dungeons, this time seeking out a secret passage that only she and Father Gervase know about. Both had explored it some before, the priest farther than she, and it is a terrible, unearthly place, full or horror and inhuman evil, and it is into this that Jirel will venture! Just fantastic sword and sorcery stuff, isn’t it? And Moore, who has real keen eye for weirdness, really delivers here; Jirel enters a weird corkscrewing tunnel, experiencing strange sensations, altered gravity, and weird animate clouds of darkness that seem to emanate purest sorrow. It’s a great section, and Moore spends the time necessary to convey that Jirel is not merely crawling through a tunnel – she is leaving our world behind and going someplace else.

She reaches the end of the tunnel and feels an immensity around her, as if the tunnel had opened into a great and limitless space. Everything is still perfectly and oppressively dark around her, and she actually feels a constriction around her throat when she tries to step into it, nearly choking until she removes the crucifix at her throat. And while some may balk at the mundanity of a cross having some power over this place, I think it works on a different level – it is only when Jirel rejects this symbol of the normal world and casts it aside that she can see this new, strange world, a very thematically appropriate thing for the story.

First off, she’s crawled down a tunnel into another world – there’s a sky and stars and topography. That tunnel has led her out of the known world into some place very different from our own. And secondly, she’s immediately attack by a bunch of horrible little freaks gnashing at her heels. Her blade goes snicker-snack and she squishes a bunch of the gross little things, disgusted at the sensation of their bursting bodies. Then she steps out into this weird unearthly world, and discovers that the gravity is indeed different; she’s soon leaping with great bounding strides that would be impossible back home, speeding away across the plains towards a weird shaft of light that she’s spotted in the distance.

This is a long section, and I hope you have the patience to enjoy it; it’s basically a description of this weird-as-shit place and the strange, horrible things that live there. Strange pale naked women with sightless and senseless eyes leap froglike through a marsh, rivers murmur with terrible voices in alien languages, and other horrors abound. It’s a very Boschian vision of Hell, uncanny and very weird. Jirel eventually arrives at a the light, which turns out to be a tower made of weird, solid light, where she finds a horrible demon-thing that takes her shape. She senses its menace but still persists in her quest and demands a weapon that she can use against Guillaume, and the mirror devil tells her that what she seeks is in a temple on an island in a lake.

There’s more travel descriptions, and she encounters more horrible things as she goes, including a herd of blind horses that scream the names of women as gallop across the plains. It’s all extremely phantasmagoric, just top-notch weirdness in my opinion. Then, she finds a lake, and spots an island with a building on it in the distance. She crosses a strange bridge of solidified darkness and comes to the temple on the island in the lake.

So this is the titular Black God: a weird, sexless cyclops carved of unearthly stone, its alien lips pursed for a kiss. Oddly phallic too, a one-eyed monster and all. But it’s pretty fuckin’ weird for all that, huh!? A strange consciousness seems to live in the statue, and a horrible compulsion steals over her. Even the architecture of the little temple seems to draw her in, towards the smoochin’ statue.

There’s the scene that inspired the cover! It’s a strange one, for sure, Jirel kissing a weird statue; good weird image, huh?

Something is given to Jirel through the kiss, something terrible and alien and deadly. She flees, sickened and terrified, sensing that she is now bearing something horrible within her from the statue’s kiss. But eventually the panic subsides, and she smiles with grim satisfaction, knowing that she has her weapon.

She flees the twilight land, fearing instinctively the coming of its alien dawn. She also seems to know that there’s a ticking clock with this weapon, that she must pass it along to its target or it will destroy her. The fuse has been lit! She arrives back at the tunnel, slaughters more horrific little things, and then clambers through the weird passage, again experiencing weird dizziness and odd gravity as she travels between worlds. Eventually, she arrives back in the dungeon of her own castle, and what does she find there?

Weak with the strange evil inside her, she stumbles towards Guillaume.

As they kiss, Jirel feels her strength and peace of mind returning as she passes on the Black God’s Kiss. And, similarly, she witnesses the effect that it has on Guillaume.

The horror spreads over Guillaume – his body grows rigid and grey, he shudders and bleeds. He utters an inhuman and unholy cry of some alien emotion as the kiss destroys him. And then, a horrible realization comes over Jirel.

And that’s the End of the Story.

Now, right off the bat, we have to confront the kind of uncomfortable nature of this ending. Jirel, in fact, had been in love with Guillaume, had confused her passion for hatred, and in so doing had destroyed the man she actually loved. It’s not an easy thing to talk about, because of course Guillaume is not a good guy, what with the unwanted kiss and all, and a woman falling in love with her rapist is, of course, a pretty vile trope. But compare it to Moore’s debut story, “Shambleau,” where the female monster and Northwest Smith share a romance that is absolutely destructive. Love as a deadly and destructive force is obviously something that Moore had thought a great deal about and was a source of much inspiration for her, so I think we have to take it seriously in this story; she’s not simply recapitulating a sexist trope here, but rather trying to dissect and examine power and love and relationships, like she does for many of her stories.

I think there’s an important resonance here between this work and Moore’s sci-fi story that we talked about last week too. In “No Woman Born,” the central conflict of the story arises out of the inability of the men in Deirdre’s life to understand or even communicate effectively with her. A similar thing is happening here, I think. Jirel, a woman, a warrior, a ruler, is in a position of absolute power, one held through sheer force of her body and will. This position is upended at the very beginning of the story, Jirel put in a position of weakness and at the mercy of Guillaume, who has led his army to victory against the castle of Joiry and its ruler, Jirel. Neither of them are capable of dealing with the other as equals in this case; Guillaume treats her as mere spoils, which of course Jirel rejects. Both are violent warlords who live lives of violence – in later stories, it’s made clear that Jirel rules through strength, and that her men (all rough warriors themselves) follow her because she is a ruthless and powerful soldier. Trapped in these roles, they cannot see that they are very much alike.

And importantly, it is not sex that Jirel fears, a departure from a lot of fantasy (and fiction), where a woman’s virginity is a sacred thing. Jirel has fucked, she says as much to her priest. What she rejects is that she would be a mere plaything for a man, used and then disposed of. The conflict here is about power and dominance, and how these two people are undone by the structure of their society and their positions in a martial culture and time. You don’t want to get TOO biography-minded when pulling apart a story, but this theme of a strong woman coming into conflict with men and the world of men is such a prominent part of Moore’s writing that it would disingenuous not to say that there’s probably something very personal there, right? An obviously powerful and talented writer having to battle her way through a very sexist industry is something that Moore certainly experienced. Perhaps there’s a message in here about not letting your rage at assholes force you into doing something you regret later.

You might understandably find the ending rough, but you can’t deny that Jirel is a fantastic character, and the fact that she was written in ’34 at the HEIGHT of Conan-mania is really truly remarkable. A woman warrior that is not some weird virginal or sexless monster and who does not rely on magic or some cop-out bullshit is rare today, let alone back then. Jirel is a fuckin’ badass warrior, strong and tough and deadly all on her own because, presumably, she’s just good at killing things. That’s incredible! No wizard or magic chastity vow has given her her powers – she’s just Jirel of Joiry, warrior and warlord, and she will straight up kill your dumb ass if you get in her way. Moore wrote six stories about her, and while they’re all good, I think this is very much the best of the bunch. There’s just something really vital and exciting about the character, and she steps fully formed into the story right away.

And as weird fiction, I think this story delivers too. The scenes of the weird hell world that she travels to are really very strange and mysterious, and they make an interesting counterpoint to the Lovecraftian alien-gods that are more common (especially now) in both weird fic and its subgenre of sword and sorcery. I mean, there’s something very alien about the statue and, phallomorphism aside, I think it’s a very successful evocation of weirdness there, genderless and puckered up in the middle of a strange temple in a lake. Moore is really unparalleled at conveying a sense of oddness without recourse to the more cliched approaches you sometimes come across in Weird Tales. Similarly, her inventiveness and thematic approaches to her stories are just endlessly interesting to me.

I’ve had a really great time with this Moorevember stuff, and have really had fun rereading these absolute classics of hers. Farnsworth Wright was very much correct about putting her name up there with Blackwood and Lovecraft – she’s really one of the 20th century’s greatest genre writers, a true master of the art of the weird! But of course adventure calls, so we’ll have to leave C.L. Moore behind as we wade into some more yuletide sword-and-sorcery in the weeks ahead! See ya’ll next time!

Pulp straining #13…MOOREVEMBER EDITION! “Dust of Gods” by C.L. Moore, Weird Tales, v.24, n.2, Aug, 1934

1 Reply

Everything seems to stand still when the pale autumnal sun shines wan through gray and misty days, but wise ones know that the millstone of time grinds on. The flight of geese, the yawping of the coyotes in the creeks, the rattle of dry leaves, all these speak the truth: Moorevember is indeed upon us! So stoke the fire, bolt the door, and prepare yourselves for a fun one! It’s “Dust of Gods” by C.L. Moore!

This story is one of MANY that Moore published in 1934, probably her most productive year in terms of publishing – by my count she put FIVE notches on her gun belt that year, all to Weird Tales. That’s three NW Smith stories (including today’s) as well as two Jirel of Joiry stories (which, don’t worry, we’ll get there!), not too bad for someone just starting out! I’m not sure about this, but I have a feeling that Moore must have one of the best batting averages of any Weird Tales author in the famously exacting Farnsworth Wright era – I can only think of one or two stories off the top of my head that got rejected and ended up in the smaller fanzines of the day. For comparison, several of what we consider Lovecraft’s masterpieces were rejected by Wright (mostly for formatting and length issues), and similarly ol’ Robert E. Howard himself had a string of “thanks, but no” from Wright, even when he was writing the immensely popular Conan stories. Moore’s approach, theme, and writing must’ve just resonated with Wright and the readers of Weird Tales, and I think “Dust of Gods” is a good illustration of why that was!

But first, let’s take a look at this issue’s cover!

A Brundage Classic! Conan (looking a LOT like Douglas Fairbanks to me) battling a huge and suspiciously phallic snake while a nearly naked blonde girl looks on. REH’s story has a great title here, but it’s only a so-so Conan yarn, in my opinion, fairly bland and straightforward with a kind of improbable deus-ex-machina-esque magic weapon resolution that is extremely unsatisfying to me, personally. BUT I think you can see that ol’ REH was a quick study and had already figured out how to ensure his story got the cover work – he’s WELL into the mode of adding a gratuitous scene of a woman being menaced, well aware that THAT was exactly the sort of thing the mag liked to have for it’s covers. And it worked!

Not a bad ToC – there’s that Mary Counselman story I mentioned last time, the one that at some point was voted by the readers of Weird Tales as the BEST STORY EVER PUBLISHED in the magazine. Honestly kind of inexplicable, to me. Got some Long and some Smith in their two, but again, for my tastes, top-o-the-heap belongs to Moore this issue! So let’s dive in!

The title illustration here is really interesting and, I think, reveals something important about Moore’s work. The composition is great, a figure hanging precariously from a rope and descending into darkness and the unknown. You get a real sense of danger and foreboding, and the menace and mystery of the cave is also well portrayed – with the man hanging helpless over the a pit and the small figure in perspective holding the light and the rope drawn, you get an almost agoraphobic sensation, a feeling that the darkness framing the scene extends on and on (and on) into illimitable gulfs just beyond the edge of the picture. It’s a fantastic illustration for an adventure story, but what’s interesting is that this particular tale is… science fiction!

“Dust of Gods” is a Northwest Smith story; it’s set on Mars, they’ve got heat guns and space ships and such, there’re aliens and planets and all that. But that illustration is a sword and sorcery scene! It wouldn’t be out of place in a dungeons and dragons adventure! They’ve got strange tunic/tabard things, there’s a dagger on his belt, and those helmets are 100% fantasy man-at-arms style basinets, you know? The one incontrovertibly “high technological” piece of equipment is the flashlight the one figure is holding, but that’s it – this is a fantasy illustration, which is fitting because the story is actually all about gods and magic. I think this illustration actually captures something that C.L. Moore did really well, which is the blending of different genres, using their conventions and approaches in interesting ways, something that’s perhaps easier to do in first decade or so after a genre’s establishment. But keep it in mind, this sci-fi/fantasy melding, because we’ll talk about it at the end of this one.

But for now, let’s get into it! We join Northwest Smith and his Venusian buddy Yarol doing what they do best: getting drunk in a Martian dive bar!

That’s the dream, isn’t it? Day-drinkin’ on Mars! What a life! Except, of course, NW and Yarol are broke as hell, carefully nursing their bottle of martian whiskey in the saloon. So great is Yarol’s thirst that he actually suggests they fuckin’ knock the bar over – his heat gun has a fresh charge, so why not? Luckily, NW calms his friend down and suggests they try and find someone to hire them instead:

But it seems like everybody in the bar is as hard up as they are, honestly. Everybody looks pretty hardscabble, especially a pair of roughnecks a table over, a “little red-faced earthman” and a one-eyed martian drylander, that Yarol seems to recognize. The two of them are “hunters,” presumably tough guys who go out into the unforgiving martian wastelands on tough and (most likely) illegal jobs. But NW notes that these two bad asses look less like hunters, and more like the hunted themselves; they’re nervous, looking over their shoulders and watching the door, generally actin’ a little squirrely. What could’ve gotten them like that, he wonders…and a mysterious stranger answers him:

Hangin’ around a bar is better than LinkedIn! Northwest gives the little man the ol’ once over, and is intrigued that he can’t place his species or origin at all – he could be human, venusian, canal-martian or drylander, and his words seems to be carefully generic, utilizing enough spaceman slang to obliterate any telltale idioms of speech that might betray his origin. All in all a mysterious guy, and hey! He’s hiring!

Credit where credit is due, this little weirdo is at least trying to make sure Northwest and Yarol know what they’re getting into. Those other guys were good, but they failed and look at them now. It’s a grim and perilous adventure that is in the offing here.

Smith asks the little guy about the job, and he gets a little bit of space theology as preamble:

These are some very Lovecraftian gods, in that they’re materially and physically real, albeit in a weird, transcosmic way – their flesh and blood ain’t like ours, and they come from Somewhere Else. Continuing with Sunday School, the little guy explains that these mighty Three reigned over the planet between Mars and Jupiter and are the ultimate source of all the gods and myths on all the other planets. Two of the triumvirate, Saig and Lsa, are long gone and forgotten, but the most powerful member of their ménage yet remains in the minds and myths of people today…Pharol!

If you read the previous story in Moorevember, “Shambleau,” then you might recognize the name “Pharol.” It was used as an explicative a couple times, and it was hinted that Pharol-worship was an evil and secretive thing that people did in the dark.

This is just some top-notch “ancient evil gods” stuff, really perfectly done. It has all the hallmarks you want in something like this, ancient mysteries, lost civilizations, hints of secret truths and dark magic…but what, exactly, is the job that this little freak wants done?

Sounds like a job for Conan, honestly, but if he’s unavailable, maybe Northwest Smith and Yarol the Venusian will do? Now, going in and dustbustering up the remains of a god SEEMS pretty straightforward, but those two hunters look pretty rough…NW asks if the little feller would mind very much if they took a moment to consult with those two about it, and the little guy shrugs and says “go ahead.”

The two hunters are a pretty ragged pair, and up close the madness that seems to be afflicting them is all the more evident – they’ve seen some shit, and even drunk as they are there’s still a sense that these two hunters have gone over the edge and won’t be coming back anytime soon. They mumble about caves and tunnels and polar mountains, and some kind of horrible “white thing” that menaced them. NW and Yarol realize that, aside from spook stories and a general sense of unease, they’re going to have to go in blind on this one. But still, Smith is interested:

Smith and Yarol do end up wanting to know exactly why this little weird dude wants the dust of a dead god, and they get a perfect “mad sorcerer” answer:

To normal folks like you or me, this answer might give us pause; perhaps the obviously insane guy should not be allowed to rend the veil between realities and enslave an ancient hell god? But for NW and Yarol, it’s just business – a guarantee of $50K for the dust, and they’re off, streaking northward to the Martian pole in search of the remains of Pharol.

Moore is great at describing environments; she imbues the Martian landscape with a lot of portentousness and significance as the two of them spend many days flying over the planet…you get a sense of the weight of time and depth of changes that’re sunk into Mars, the epic grandeur of a dying world. That Deep Time perspective is a key attribute of weird fiction, but I think Moore does a nice job giving us the chance to see and experience it through the characters eyes. I also think that sword and sorcery (a subgenre of weird fiction) is where that environmental kind of writing finds its best expression, so it’s not too surprising that she nails it here, since this is more of a S&S story than a sci-fi or straight weird tale.

They find their million-year old city, a ruin wracked by Martian tectonism. In the twisted cliffs of the polar mountains they spot a cavern and, guns drawn and “Tomlinson tubes” (Martian flashlights) ablaze, they cautiously pierce the darkness and begin their trek.

The darkness that has crashed over them is clearly unnatural; Smith feels the end of his light and notes that it is both warm and still slightly vibrating, indicating that it’s still on. Something alien has engulfed them, a pure and almost tangible darkness. Prepared in a vague way by the maddened hunters they spoke to in the bar, Smith and Yarol wait, guns drawn.

We knew we were deep into Cosmic Weirdness when Moore introduced ancient, alien, unknowable gods back in the bar, but this White Thing in the tunnel is a really perfect example of a real weird menace, isn’t it? I mean, what even is it? Preceded by a shroud of pure, almost elemental darkness, and something so bright and blazingly white that it almost sickens Smith to look at it…that’s some strange stuff!! It’s obviously dangerous, but how? What is the threat this thing represents? Smith and Yarol have, in some way, transgressed a cosmic boundary in the tunnel, leaving our world behind and entering a space where, somehow, different rules apply. Truly gorgeous weirdness.

Smith and Yarol are frozen to the spot, watching this White Thing advance through the perfect darkness towards them. Smith notes that it seems to be moving through the cave floor beneath it, extending below the rock despite have some kind of tangible form. There’s also something else, some kind of dangerous, madness-inducing aura in the thing that seems to be threatening Smith and Yarol’s very minds by being in the Thing’s presence.

Smith, noticing that there’s no shadow on the White Thing and that it seems to be moving through the real world rather than in it, does what any red-blooded amoral space smuggler would so, and blasts the thing with his heat gun. It has no effect, of course, but that’s telling in itself! The ray has NO effect, with even the deadly blue light from the gun’s blasts failing to be reflected on its surface; the cavern flashes blue, the rocks are tinged with color, but there’s no change in the White Thing’s color or form or shade or nuthin’ which, to Smith, means that the Thing is beyond our reality and incapable of interacting with it. So he grabs Yarol, shouts “come one!” and plunges INTO and THROUGH the White Thing!

That’s some solid sword-and-sorcery hero shit from Northwest Smith there – just fuckin’ GO FOR IT, what, you wanna live forever? And it succeeds, somehow! Now, this is legit kind of confusing, but I think it works thematically, and it gets reinforced by the rest of the story later on, too. What happened was that, like Smith intuited, the White Thing wasn’t physically real; it was something From Beyond, and presumably the madness effect that got the previous hunters and ALMOST got Smith and Yarol is, basically, just the incommensurability inherent to stuff from our universe experiencing stuff from another “dimension” or whatever. This jives with what the wizard at the beginning of the story said about the gods – they had to incarnate in some kind of material sense to actually interact with our worlds, and that that matter produced some kind of connection between our universe and theirs.

This is further elaborated when Smith and Yarol trek further down the tunnel. They encounter a huge stone door sealing the rest of the temple away, burn through it with their heat guns, and release a torrent of liquid-like light that flows out of the chambers and into the tunnel (which is a great, weird image, isn’t it?). Smith suddenly realizes that this inner chamber must be an asteroid, exploded off of the lost planet between Jupiter and Mars, and that that was how the gods arrived on the planet. It also explains the weird White Thing and the strange river of light that’s oozing out into the tunnel – it’s alien stuff, the last little glimmer of whatever alien dimensional weirdness that dwelled with the gods in this asteroid temple chamber.

Smith and Yarol have to contend with ANOTHER threat from beyond, this time the inverse of the White Thing; a thing of perfect and terrible darkness this time that, Smith realizes, is basically bobbing along and caught up in the flow of light pouring out as the asteroid “drains.” Then, finally, they reach the central chamber, a vast crystalline room with three strange, inhuman thrones in the middle. Two are empty, but on the largest central throne-pillar lies a mound of strange gray dust.

Yarol, irreverent Venusian that he is, scrambles up the pillar and calls to Smith to toss him up the box; he’s ready to sweep up the dust and get out of there. But Smith hesitates, and in a moment of nearly telepathic simpatico, both of them realize that they’re dealing with some Serious Shit™ here. There really is weird ultradimensional stuff in this million-year old temple, and the implication is dire. That wizard seemed kinda bonkers, right? Might not be the best guy to give absolute power to, you know? And what if he CAN’T control the dead god like he thinks he can, and instead just opens up a doorway that he can’t close to whatever bizarro hell dimension Pharol calls home?

In the end, Smith and Yarol decide this dust is too dangerous, and so they train their heat guns on it and roast the stuff. Maybe shoulda taken it outside in the open air and done it, though, because as the stuff slowly burns it releases roiling clouds of hallucinogenic smoke.

Drunk off the fumes, Smith witnesses vast psychedelic vistas of time and space, the entire history of the vanished and destroyed world that the Three ancient alien gods had ruled over for so long. Ancient cities razed by nameless weapons wielded by strange beings all in lost, distant ages, and finally the destruction of the world.

And that’s the end!

Obviously, I like this story a lot. I’m a fan of sword and sorcery, of course, and I really think that, sci-fi trappings aside, this one is absolutely a sword-and-sorcery story. It ticks all the boxes in the genre, for sure: the heroes are down on their luck opportunists just trying to make their way through a hard life; the “sorcery” in this story is 100% inimical to human life and ultimately totally alien; and the threats the heroes face are overcome through sheer will, strength, and cunning on their own. Hell, they even start their adventure in a tavern! The fact that it takes place on Mars, that they’ve got heat rays rather than broadswords…none of that really matters, because the themes are there: raw, rugged Humanity (and Venutianity, I guess, in Yarol’s case) ultimately standing bravely against an alien and unnatural force. Smith’s strength is the force of his very human will that lets him both survive the maddening alien energies of the weird monsters he meets as well as realize the correct course of action regarding the god dust at the end of the story.

That said, I think the sci-fi aspect of it DOES give it something that would be missing if it took place in Hyboria or whatever. A big part of this story is about time, particularly at a geological or astronomical scale, and the smallness of civilization in the face of that reality. Now that’s a theme that’s often in sword and sorcery; REH’s stuff, for instance, is explicitly set in a pre-Ice Age world well before anything like recorded history (a common enough idea in a lot of fantasy), and there’re often ancient ruins and lost civilizations of an elder age involved, sure, but I think there’s a difference. By setting it in the future, on another planet, you immediately anchor the story in a way that’s more concrete than just saying “eh, a long-ass time ago.” There’s also, I think, something in the way people engage with sci-fi that is fundamentally different than the way they engage with fantasy – the counternarrative aspect of fictionalized history immediately breaks absolute verisimilitude, which is fine, that’s often the point. But a story set in the future CAN’T be counterfactual since it hasn’t happened yet, and that lets the reader immerse themselves in a different and more realistic way, I think, with the events of the story.

Furthermore, I think there’s an interesting “step-up” effect going on here. Obviously, Smith lives in the future – there’s interplanetary travel, ray guns, all sorts of highly advanced technology, but more importantly there’s very little connecting the world of NW Smith to any of the political, social, or technological entities a reader would be familiar with, right? No “North American League” or “Earth-Venus War of 2122” whatever, right? I mean, they don’t even have flashlights…they have “Tomlinson tubes.” Because of all that, my brain has been eased into something where the time difference feels like many hundreds of years, maybe close to a thousand years, in the future! That’s a long time! But then in the story you’re confronted with even LONGER time frames, millions of years, which makes that first time difference paltry and, realistically, inconsequential. The Martian temple turns out to be a fragment from an exploded planet…it’s LITERALLY older than the mountains it’s trapped in. That kind of kaleidoscopic sense of temporal scale is something that I think you’d struggle to evoke in a pure fantasy story, where you’d just have to tell me “ah this temple is Atlanean” or “it’s from the ancient lost Empire of Magokai,” both of which I as a reader wouldn’t have a visceral connection to, right? There’s no reference point for me to stand on and take in the vast sweep of time there. It takes a science fiction framing, a “realer” world by default, to construct a dialectic of time that REALLY contrasts the future with the past.

There are some similarities in this story to other Moore works, even ones that came out this very same year; in particular, the “tunnel to another world, where alien rules apply” gets cranked up to eleven in the Jirel story “Black God’s Kiss” (which we’ll be doing soon, don’t worry!), but I don’t mind it. Every writer has their themes and interests, and I think Moore wants to play with the way people confront and experience the alien. As weird fiction, the story is a blast too – the strange threats are TRULY bizarre, with nothing you can really hang an interpretation on. They don’t even appear to be made of matter as we understand it, and yet they’re described seriously and hauntingly; I think it’s a real triumph of the genre, something people can spend a lifetime trying to capture in their own writing.

Whew, another long one this week, but I really think Moore is worth the effort, and that she rewards you in the end for thoughtfully enjoying her work. And, aside from the genre tropes and themes, I think honestly the writing is just really good – there’s some good descriptions and evocative language, and the way Smith and Yarol act is natural and believable and real and, honestly, fun. In conclusion, all hail C.L. Moore, I guess!

Strainin’ the Pulp, number…12, I think? “Shambleau” by C.L. Moore!!! (Weird Tales, v.22, n.5, Nov 1933)

2 Replies

Well, another Hallowe’en in the books – here we are, well into November, but BY AZATHOTH we’re STILL going to be talking about pulp stories from Weird Tales! And today’s story is, honestly, one of the best ever published in the magazine, written by one of the True Masters…”Shambleau” by the incomparable C.L. Moore herself!

Catherine Lucille Moore is one of those towering figures who emerged from the pulps and became this hugely important figure in the history of genre literature, both because of the kinds of stories she wrote as well as the fact that she was a woman while she wrote ’em. Now, she’s not the first woman to appear in Weird Tales, of course – Clare Harris had written under her own name in Weird Tales, and Greye La Spina and G.G. Pendarves had appeared in the magazine before her – but she is probably the most famous member of that early pioneering generation. Moore was extremely popular with the readers of Weird Tales (and other magazines, when she branched out), and her works have also been more durable than most of her contemporaries (regardless of their gender), and continue to be anthologized today.

This speaks primarily to the quality of her writing; in my opinion, Moore is one of the greatest genre writers of all time, capably combining complex characters and interesting ideas to make some really remarkable pieces of fiction. We WILL be talking about her sword and sorcery masterpiece “Jirel of Joiry” in December, and we’ll probably have to leap forward in time to talk about her story “No Woman Born” from Astounding (which is one of the greatest short stories of ALL TIME)…in fact, maybe we should just declare a C.L. Moore month right now!

That would be fitting because apparently, when Farnsworth Write pulled “Shambleau” out of the slush pile and read it, he declared it “C.L. Moore Day” at the offices of Weird Tales, closed up shop, and took everybody out for drinks. He thought it was that good and, honestly, he’s right, particularly when you compare it to the other stuff in the magazine around that time. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of good writing in Weird Tales – but Moore is just head-and shoulders above most of it.

Since I’ve convinced myself that we’re doin’ Moorevember this month, we’ll spread her bio and suchlike out over the next few week…so let’s get into it!

Just a Girl and her Skull, that classic pairing. It’s a Brundage, of course, although a fairly chaste one for her…lotta leg and a generous helping of sideboob, but nothing too spicy. She’s not even tied up! It’s also kind of odd that there’s no titles or authors or anything on this cover, and I don’t even think the painting is meant to reflect a story in this issue at all. I don’t know why that is, to tell you the truth. Maybe they were trying something new out? It’s a shame, because I actually would’ve liked to have seen a full Brundage take on “Shambleau.”

But, anyway, the ToC for this Nov 1933 issue:

Speaking of women writers in Weird Tales, check out Mary Elizabeth Counselman here…she’s a pretty famous pulp writer, did a lot of poetry and short stories in a lot of different magazines. Mostly she’s known for the story “Three Marked Pennies,” which was one of the most popular stories in Weird Tales history, weirdly – it’s fine, but just goes to show how hard-to-pin-down the tastes of readers can be, in my opinion. She seems like a rad lady though because she lived on a houseboat in Alabama with a zillion cats. Sounds great to me!

There’s also some Clark Ashton Smith with a (slightly silly) Averoigne tale and ol’ E. Hoffmann Price still crankin’ out some serious two-fisted cornball pulp, Yog-Sothoth bless him. But pride of place goes to Moore with this, her very first professional story! So let’s get into it!

Big ol’ title illo for this one, by Jayem Wilcox (aka J.M. Wilcox) which, while kind of giving away too much of the action from the story, is still fun. You can see why I wish Brundage had been able to take a swing at it, though – it’s a total reversal of her usual “woman in peril” scene, and it would’ve been neat to see her take on a seductive and deadly monster girl menacing a big tough space man. But Oh Well!

This story begins with a little italicized intro that I won’t reproduce here. To summarize, it basically says that Humans have been to space before now, that in the distant pass of Atlantis etc there were space ships and such, and what that means is that even after the fall of those starfaring civilizations, tales of space had influenced human culture, and that’s where our monster myths came from. It’s always struck me a little strange, but maybe it was Moore just wanting to set up that, yes, this is a “pseudo-science” story (the parlance that Weird Tales used for science fiction, which was still emerging at the time) BUT there’s weird monsters, so keep reading! I feel like it’s unnecessary though, and actually maybe detracts from the story, at least for me. A little to “here’s what we’re talking about today” for my tastes, I guess. But moving on:

Now THAT’S how you do hard-boiled space noir intros! Here we’re introduced to one of the two major, multi-story, recurring characters that Moore created. This one is Northwest Smith, a grim, cynical, hard-bitten, tough-as-hell spaceman from Earth. He’s a smuggler and a criminal, mostly amoral but with a little glint of heroism beneath all the grime that comes from fighting and surviving in an unforgiving universe. A little Hammett’s Continental Op, a little Han Solo. A great character, and also the sort of people Moore was interested in writing about: complicated but capable.

As a side-note, the name is worth talking about. Apparently Moore, who worked at a Trust Company as a Secretary, addressed an enveloped one day to a “Mr. N.W. Smith” and she just loved the name. She originally wrote him as a western hero, but kept the name (and the gun-slinger mannerisms) when he became a sci-fi hero because she thought it was funny for a guy in space to have a direction as a nickname.

So Northwest Smith is hanging out on Mars in a real frontier town, when he hears a mob shouting the strange word “Shambleau!” in the distance. An odd word, and it really seems to hit you as a reader, doesn’t it? Compared to the harsher and more guttural Martian name of the town (Lakkdarol), it stands out! Smith has no idea what it means, but he knows trouble when he hears it – he steps into a doorway and pulls his ray gun. Then, he sees a girl:

Even a rough customer like Smith can’t help but be touched by the sight of a sexy scared girl! He tucks her behind him just as the mob comes around the corner, still bellowing “Shambleau!” and obviously hunting for her.

I mean, he’s just cool as hell, you know? Anyway, this mob turns and sees that Smith has the girl. An Earther, acting as a kind of leader of the mob shouts “Shambleau!” again and they rush forwards, apparently intent on taking the girl regardless of Smith’s obvious badassery.

You can see the cowboy influence in Northwest Smith’s literary heritage pretty strongly here. The crowd seems shockingly and specifically bloodthirsty; they want the girl, and demands that ol NW give her up to them, which he resolutely refuses to do. The mob seems almost confused by his defiance.

There’s some more back and forth, and things seem to be deteriorating. Smith knows he’s not going to die for this girl, but he is preparing himself to take a beating from this mob, when something odd happens; he shout’s “She’s mine!” and the mood of the mob shifts suddenly and surprisingly.

A really great, really weird scene, isn’t it? The furious mob turning suddenly away once NW has “claimed” this woman…it’s very sinister, something like out of one of the grimmer fairy tales, maybe. It’s also kind of upsetting, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a straight-up lynch mob, a very real and very unpleasant part of American life then. We’ll circle back around to the topic when we reach the end of the story, but it’s worth noting here, I think.

Smith is as puzzled by the mob’s reaction as we are. He particularly notes the open disgust the crowd now has for him, even as it melts quickly away. As he’s considering it, the girl rises from the slumped heap at his feet, and he gets his first good look at her.

A weird hairless alien, sharp-toothed and with cat-like eyes and claws, but hey – she’s got curves in all the right place, amirite!? She don’t speak Earth language none too good, though, and NW has a kind of strange, confusing conversation with her.

NW asks her what her native language is; he’s an adventurer, after all, and has learned enough to get by in all sorts of alien tongues. This elicits an odd reaction from the alien woman:

Gettin’ steamy in the filthy back alleys of Lakkdarol, huh? Anyway, there’s another encounter with a drunken Martian who apparently recognizes the Shambleau and reproduces in miniature the scene with the mob: fury, then disgust at NW for “claiming” the girl, with a warning to NW to keep her from “getting out.” Smith realizes that the girl isn’t safe on her own in the Martian town, and decides that the only thing he can reasonably do is get her indoors. Since she’s got no place to go, he takes her back to his lodging room. He asks if she’s eaten; she says she will not need to food “for some time” which is the space monster equivalent of dracula’s “I don’t drink…wine.” But he’s got business to attend to, so he leaves her there in his room, fully expecting her to be gone when he gets back.

There’s some great space noir writing here, so let’s just savor it, shall we?

Great stuff! Smith gets his drink on in town, and comes back feelin’ pretty darn good – he’s done the work he needed to do, drank a bunch of weird italicized space booze, and now he’s just got to wait around until his Venusian partner-in-crime Yarol comes back and they can start the obviously criminal enterprise they’re engaged in. But when he gets back to the room, he finds that the Shambleau is still there…and lookin’ pretty good…

But just as things start to get hot and heavy, Smith experiences a sudden wave of revulsion! There’s a good bit of writerly skill on display here, as Moore describes Smith’s appraisal of this sexy alien girl with appropriately sexual and sensual imagery…but then takes that same imagery and recasts it as horrible and animalistic…sure, she’s sexy like a cat, but she’s also a scary predator like a cat. And maybe there’s something deeper there too, because Smith begins to see something truly alien and, maybe, truly loathsome in her weird cat-like eyes. Suddenly squicked out, Smith pushes her away and in the sudden violence her turban shifts a little:

She’s hidin’ some weird wiggly hair under there!

Smith attributes his lust, his revulsion, AND the weird sight of independently moving hair to all the Martian liquor he’d been sucking back all afternoon. He laughs, tosses the Shambleau a heap of blankets, points her to a spot on the floor for her very own, and then decides to sleep it off in his own bed. And then he dreams…

At this point it’s no secret what, broadly, is going on – this Shambleau-girl thing’s weird hard is doing something unnatural to Smith in the night. And he kinda digs it, though he experiences the same sort of weird revulsion at the pleasure he’s experiencing…there’s something deeply existentially wrong about what’s happening, perhaps made more so because it IS so pleasurable.

The weirdness of the dream fades, leaving only Smith with only a vague sense of both wrongness and titillation. He leaves to do some more vaguely crime or crime-adjacent type work, stopping to get a collection of food stuffs for the girl who, OF COURSE, must be getting hungry, right!? There’s also a brief scene that mentions a song that is kind of famous in the world of sci-fi:

The song mentioned here, The Green Hills of Earth, inspired Heinlein to write a story of the same name, about a wandering space bard whose greatest work is that very song. Heinlein’s story was published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1947, one of the first of the genre works to break out of the pulps and into the fancy slicks, a huge deal for the sci-fi world at the time. Kinda neat to see him calling back to Moore like that!

Anyway, turns out the girl doesn’t like roast beer OR Venusian frog-broth or anything at all! She’ll eat when she’s hungry, she says, don’t worry about it. Seems fine, right? Nothing weird at all going on, I’m sure. Anyway, Smith, exhausted from his hard day of crimes, konks out…and then awakens with a horrible (and yet, somehow, exciting!) sense of foreboding…

Smith watches, hypnotized, as her weird worm hair keeps growing, lengthening and extending out of her head, writhing and squirming as it keeps growing.

Wild! And gross! Wrapped in her weird wriggling red tendrils, she turns and hits Smith with the ol’ psychic whammy from her green cat-eyes. He’s paralyzed! There’s some great lingering descriptions of this tiny girl nearly lost in a cascade of scarlet, having to part the writhing mass on her head “like a swimmer” in order to move towards him.

That “I shall speak to you now in my own tongue” is pretty great – what IS going on here!?

Doesn’t get much more sexual than that, does it? I mean, he’s literally engulfed by this cascade of red organic matter.

And we fade out to tasteful black as Northwest Smith, wrapped in the pulsating red head tentacles of a horrible space monster experiences a mingling of pleasure and horror beyond all human comprehension.

Right away at the beginning of the next section we’re introduced to a sleekly dangerous Venusian, arriving at Smith’s room. This is Yarol, his partner in a crime, and a little further on we learn that he’s arrived to find that none of the footwork he was expecting has been done, and that no one has seen Smith for THREE WHOLE DAYS. Wowzers, huh? Worried, he’s come to check on his friend. And what does he find?

Should’ve put a tie on the doorknob, man! There follows some really great, really viscid description of the scene that Yarol congronts: Smith, entangled in the writhing tendrils, slick head-to-toe from their slime, seems lost to some kind of weird drugged out reverie. Yarol calls to him, and eventually Smith shambles to his feet, still wrapped in a wriggling mass of red wormy tentacles that caress and stroke him with seeming tenderness, but all he can say is “Get out,” over and over again, the words and intonation monotone and devoid of emotion. Undaunted, the Venusian keeps calling to his friend, and apparently annoys the Shambleau enough that it too emerges from the red wiggly lovenest:

Wave after wave of psychic force crash into Yarol, but the depth of Venusian folklore have given Yarol enough sense to know he’s in danger, and that gives him a desperate courage that lets him shake off the mental domination of the Shambleau. He somehow gets a hold of Smith’s shoulder and is able to bodily rip him from the strange embrace of the slimy worm-hair-things. As he does, Yarol comes in contact with the tendrils, and experiences the same confusing blend of pleasure-horror and the secret desire to yield to the lassitude and just sink into the folds of this giant red wiggly mass.

Yarol knows they’re in deadly danger, but luckily, a cracked mirror on the walls lets him pull a Perseus; he uses the mirror to aim his ray gun over his shoulder, and kills the horrible Shambleau!

Smith has been shaken to his core; afterall, he’s been in a clinch with the Shambleau for three goddamn days! Yarol pours more steadying space liquor into him, and then he and Smith do some talking.

There’s a couple of pages of Yarol talking about the lore and history and rumors of these strange, ancient, monstrous things. They’re an ancient and terrible evil, something whispered about on different worlds and by different peoples. But what ARE they, asks Smith, and Yarol answers:

So the Shambleau is a weird life-force draining predator, something that derives its sustenance from the emotional and vital energies of its victims. It’s good and weird and creepy…but is there more to it? Remember the “now I’ll talk to you in my language!” stuff? Well, seems that while Smith was in the things thrall, he was seeing and remembering things that weren’t his memories or experiences…

How’s that little quote at the end of that section there for chilling, huh? Has Smith become, in some way, addicted (or nearly so) to the Shambleau’s darkly pleasurable illumination. He can’t remember the strange, alien things he experienced…but has he been freed, actually? Yarol shakes his friend and, since he just saved his life, basically immediately calls in the favor and demands that Smith promise him that, if he EVER runs across a Shambleau again, he’ll cut it down with his ray gun immediately! And Smith’s answer?

And THAT’S the end of the story.

Hell of a ride, huh? Really some great writing in there, too – the Shambleau is a weird-as-hell monster, and the whole horror of it is so unusual and mysterious and alien. The communication aspect of its feeding mechanism is interesting – there’s an exchange of not just life force but also information, experience, and memory that happens. Is the dark drive that makes the horror of the Shambleau so pleasurable tied up in that, a kind of personal, existential oblivion that overwhelms the need for survival in an individual? Is the Shambleau even conventionally “evil?” There’s the usual “perhaps we are as ants to them” stuff in this story, but it’s so much better developed; the Shambleau is truly and weirdly alien enough that you actually CAN much more easily begin to question whether our morals and ethics can apply to something like that.

It’s SO alien, though, that I kind of think the “ah, it is the medusa of legend” detracts a little from it, you know? I think you could yank ALL that out of here and be left with at least as good of a story (if not a better one), but maybe that’s just me. I sort of feel like that, in an attempt to make it weirder, Moore kind of undercut it by adding all that in.

The attempted lynching is a rough spot though, particularly because in the story the mob is right. The Shambleau is a dangerous monster in their midst, after all, unequivocally so! It’ll hypno you and suck out all your life force, and you’ll beg it to do it! I don’t think Moore is saying anything about lynchings or mobs or trying to make any kind of argument about actual real racial violence, but as readers we’re still forced to confront it and its place in the history of literature. In fact, it’s kind of interesting that Northwest Smith, originally a cowboy character, is introduced in an extremely cowboy story fashion. Take out all the sci-fi trappings of that early section, and you could plop that whole scene into a pulp western story and never even know it had ever been anything else.

I do think that Moore is interested in female agency, though; it’s certainly a topic that comes up again and again in her stories, as we’ll see as we move through Moorevember. Particularly in the pulps of the 30s, there’s a dearth of women characters doing much more than being menaced and/or saved (and that’s when the even show up) so to have a female character AS the menace is interesting here. And while she’s a monster, the Shambleau is also very much portrayed as a woman (even if she’s maybe really a mass of weird worms) – her positionality with regards to Smith makes that clear, and the way that Moore describes her makes her out to be elementally and animalistically female. Importantly though, the Shambleau as written is not using sex to get what she wants, as some sort of trap or lure. It seems very clear that she is, if you’ll excuse my indelicacy, getting off on the weird life force sucking/mental link up too! Now, there’s a long history in lit of portraying how women’s pleasure, when unchecked, becomes monstrous and threatening; maybe this trucks in that same sort of stuff, but it does seem different somehow, doesn’t it? But even if it is as simple as “this sexpot is destructive!” I think there IS a difference in the way that the Shambleau is written – she’s not reductively monstrous, right, meaning that she’s not just this vagina dentata running around eating men because it’s fun – she’s an ancient and alien species, with pride and dignity, and that makes her a much deeper and more interesting threat.

Speaking of sex, you can’t ignore the strange homoerotic undertones to Yarol and Smith either, can you? It’s almost passé, but there IS a kind of rough tenderness between the two of them, particularly when Yarol is nursing Smith back to health.

What’s obvious is the richness of the text, though; I can understand why Wright declared a “C.L. Moore Day” after reading it. It’s really well written and, of course, there’s a good monster in there. But there’s a lot of depth to it, and I think Smith IS one of the great sci-fi characters of that era of writing. He’s hardboiled and two-fisted, but that’s never “the point” with him, and he’s even made the victim in this story, something that I’m sure made some readers at least uncomfortable. I haven’t done it, but it might be worth going through subsequent letter sections of Weird Tales to see what people wrote in about this story.

Anyway, I obviously can’t recommend this one enough! It’s a great story that stands up to anything written today, in my opinion, and I really hope ya’ll have taken the time to read it! And, having read it, I hope ya’ll are excited as me about Moorevember!

Pulp straining, Number the 11th! Hallowe’en Eve LOVECRAFT edition! “The Music of Erich Zann” by H.P. Lovecraft, Weird Tales, v. 5 n. 5, 1925

Leave a reply

Try as you might, you can never really escape the shadow of H.P. Lovecraft when you’re talkin’ about weird fiction. Easily one of the 20th century’s most important figures in horror, science fiction, AND pop culture, his influence looms over basically everything – Borges, Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Fantasy, Joyce Carol Oates, Horror, Stephen King, Video Games, Role Playing Games, Comic books…I mean hell, there’s even a Ghostbusters cartoon with Cthulhu in it! Tentacular horrors from beyond our dimension, cosmic nihilism, insane cultists making dark deals with incomprehensible forces…while these weren’t Lovecraft’s inventions, they were certainly perfected and, I daresay, communicated most effectively in his stories – there are strange gibbering horrors and alien gods and bizarre tales of a hostile inhuman universe before him, but his unique ability to synthesize these influences while developing his own aesthetic makes him kind of unique.

And, of course, he had the pulps, giving his stories an unprecedented audience – Weird Tales had an estimated distribution of 40,000 magazines per issue at its height! Can you imagine 40,000 people reading ANY single short story now? And that’s not counting the well-documented tradition of sharing single issues among multiple people, making that audience number a definite lowball estimate. Hard to even imagine short stories being that huge of a part of popular entertainment!

His popularity means there’s a glut of Lovecraft these days, both in terms of his own stories as well as scholarship on the man. Because of this, I was generally trying to avoid talking too much about him here…but when I did a previous installment on Long’s “Men Who Walk Upon the Air” and saw today’s story on the ToC, I knew I’d have to give in. My only defense is that, like I said in that previous post, I really do think today’s story is both A) extremely good and also B) not as appreciated as ol’ Howie Lovecraft’s other, tentacle-ier writing. So let’s take fifteen, ya’ll go read “The Music of Erich Zann” and, when you’re done, come back here for a little discussion/dissection/discursion on it, okay?

Great title image of the story from good ol’ Andrew Brosnatch there. The viol, the shabby garret, the wide-open window with the dark outside and the curtains billowing and the candle flickering in the wind…it’s great stuff, an atmospheric little illustration of what is, basically, the key element of this story.

“The Music of Erich Zann” was originally published (in ’22) in one of the countless amateur magazines that Lovecraft was a part of. I’ve seen some people describe these as basically the zines of their day, but I think that’s incorrect – while these were printed and put together by hand by individuals as an act of love and artistry, I think they were a lot more similar to the online literary mags we have today. They actively solicited articles, fiction, and prose from their members, and had well established lines of editorial practice and distribution. Lovecraft was a HUGE part of the amateur press scene, and it was only with great hesitation that he got into the pulp market, considering anything you got paid for as being, by definition, not something done for art. That being said, once Lovecraft DID start selling his stories, he was fairly quick to dive into his archives and submit his previously published stuff to Weird Tales.

But let’s get in there, shall we?

For me, that’s one of the great openings in not only Lovecraft, but all of weird fiction. We get right into things and are immediately introduced to the mystery of this missing street and, more fundamentally, the idea that it was there, in the Rue d’Auseil, that this narrator encountered the music of Erich Zann, something that must’ve profoundly affected him. Great, lean, efficient writing!

The narrator goes on to explain that he knows that his time on the Rue d’Auseil was kind of a rough patch for him both physically and mentally, and maybe it had an effect on his memory. Still, he goes on to say, it’s weird that he can’t find the place, because it was SO characteristic and idiosyncratic; it was very close to the University for one thing, but it was a strange, dark neighborhood full of ancient buildings and strange, seemingly very old people. And, interestingly, the river stank in a particularly unique way, something that might help him identify it if he ever smelled it again. This story relies on some kind of unique sensory descriptions to convey weirdness – there’s that smelly river for one thing, but also the central conceit of the story is the strange properties that Erich Zann’s music has. Speaking of which:

Our student of metaphysics does manage to meet Zann one night as the musician is coming home after his shift in the orchestra pit, but it’s an odd meeting. Zann is described as lean and goatish, and there’s a shabby furtiveness to him and, in fact, at first he seems kinda pissed off that this weird college student has been listening in to his music. Still, our narrator perseveres, and eventually the musician brings him up to his room waaaaay at the top of the house and starts playin’ on his viol.

The music is good, stuff that Zann has clearly written himself, but it’s got none of the weird wildness to it that he’d overheard before.

Zann’s freakout it pretty great and unexpected, and his sudden fearfulness of the closed and curtained window when the whistling starts is pretty remarkable. He even goes so far as to try and manhandle the student out of the room, an intolerable boorishness that makes our narrator a little huffy. Mollified, Zann tries a friendlier tact, setting the student down in a chair and writing a note to explain his actions.

A pretty strange note, all in all, and the contorted explanation of being strangely sensitive about his “weirder” music is pretty funny. As is his willingness to get the student to move to another room! Whatever it is about the music, Zann is serious about it! Moved by the old man’s obvious nuttiness, the student agrees, and soon moves to a different and more expensive room on the third floor, leaving Zann alone on the fifth and no one on the fourth.

But it turns out that maybe Zann’s apparent friendliness was a bit of a front – he doesn’t ever invite the student back up, and when the student goes out of his way to invite himself up there, the music is “listless” and kind of dull. And so, to get his weird music fix, our boy starts creeping up there secretly to listen in on Zann:

The building fury of Zann’s playing, and his concomitant physical and mental deterioration, are pretty great images, aren’t they? I mean, imagine it: you sneak up to listen to this crazy music that just keeps getting crazier and crazier, and every day the guy playing it looks rougher and rougher. Extremely evocative, extremely weird!

And then, one night…

Again, good use of aural information here, you can imagine the sound of the window being closed and the sashes drawn before the old man hobbles over to the door to let in our strangely persistent narrator. Zann looks like he’s been going ten rounds with the champ, and he’s preoccupied with that window, listening hard, only finally relaxing a little when he seems satisfied that nothing is happening outside. Then, Zann writes a quick note in his execrable French, imploring the narrator to wait while he writes out a full and detailed account of what has been happening in his native German. Our narrator spends a hour just sitting there in silence while Zann writes furiously, page after page stacking up on the table as he recounts the “marvels and terrors” that he’s been experiencing. Then, suddenly, horribly, there’s a sound from the closed window, and it sends Zann into a frenzy.

Zann’s playing is furious, wild, a kind of mad noisemaking that, the narrator realizes, is inspired by fear alone, fear of something on the other side of the window, something trying to get inside, perhaps? Sweating and contorted with the effort of playing, Zann is desperately sawing at his viol when, steadily, there rises a sound from outside.

A sudden gust catches up Zann manuscript and whirls it towards the window! Oh no!

Absolutely fantastic stuff, top shelf weird writing! Chasing the papers to the open window our narrator sees not Paris, but rather a vast expanse of interstellar space full of motion and music and strange, hostile agency. And it seems like it wants to come into the room, through the window.

The horror of whatever it is that lies beyond the window fills our narrator with terror. He gropes his way in the dark towards where Zann is still madly playing. He’s struck by the bow as Zann keeps sawing, and then feels, horribly, that Zann’s skin is ice cold – he’s been dead for a while, but still he plays on. Mad with terror, our narrator escapes, and the story ends:

What a story, huh? It’s short, but it’s packed with so much fantastic stuff, perhaps the best of which is the lost story within the story that Zann’s manuscript held. There were the answers to all our questions, and they’re just gone! I mean, it’s a perfect bit of metafiction, you know? There, in Zann’s manuscript, was a Weird Tales story, but Lovecraft has written a story around that story, and the loss of it just highlights the great mysterious pleasure of weird fiction.

Unsurprisingly, this was one of Lovecraft’s favorites of his own writing. It’s a really fine piece of work, and was actually anthologized in a Dashiell Hammett edited collection in 1931 titled Creeps by Night. Apparently, this was also the only Lovecraft story that famous snob Robert Aickman liked. There’s a real and legitimate understated quality in it that’s really rare – a lot of weird fiction tries to use that kind of “what’s happening!?” approach, but often they’re only winking at it, right? Like, a character might be confused, but we, the reader, generally have a sense of what’s happening, even if that sense is just “this is a lovecraftian story.” But here there’s really NO hint at what’s happening, is there? A musician is playing crazy music to try and do something related to a window that, apparently, opens up to Another Place. Has his music attracted it, or has he done something else to bring it here? Does his music keep it away? We’ll never know, because the answers flew out the window!

It’s a really unique piece of weird fiction, evocative and strange and a lot of fun packed into a very short little bit or writing. Really one of my favorites, both of Lovecraft’s work and the genre in general! Well worth a read this Halloween eve!

Pulp Strainin’ Number Ten: Hallowe’en edition! “Notebook Found in a Deserted House” by Robert Bloch, Weird Tales v. 43, n. 4, May, 1951

Leave a reply

Well here were are again, propitiating the Gods of Halloween with another round of me scribblin’ down some thoughts about some of the best weird fiction ever published in Weird Tales. We’re still hanging out in the strange world of the latter half of the magazine’s run, this time with a story by the great Robert Bloch, “Notebook Found in a Deserted House.” Before we get to it, however, I do wanna give ya’ll a little heads up about a bit of unpleasantness in this story: at some point about half-way through or so the character transcribes a phonetic version of one of those classic Cthulhu cultist chants (you know, “Iä! Cthulhu ftagn,” things of that sort). Well, this chant in particular is to the Lovecraftian entity Shub-Niggurath, and the transliteration of the name includes the n-word. Now, it’s not being used as a racist slur but still, it’s kind of a shocking thing to just roll up on in the text, so be prepared.

Importantly, Bloch himself was emphatically and actively NOT a racist, something worth noting for both his time AND his role as a part of the Lovecraft Circle. Bloch’s parents ran a refugee resettlement house in Milwaukee, and there are numerous examples of Bloch taking explicitly anti-racist and anti-imperialist stances in his writing – there’re lots of characters who get called out for casual racism in his stories, he used evil KKK/racist groups as villains fairly often, and even wrote a weird sci-fi story explicitly condemning Apartheid in South Africa in 1960 – he was clearly of a progressive bent, an interesting counterpoint to his friend and mentor Lovecraft, who was of course a virulent racist. Why he decided to codify the pronunciation of what surely must be the unpronounceable name of an alien god thing in that particular way is a mystery.

Anyway, on to this issue’s Cover!

Yep, ol’ Bloch got himself the cover this issue by Lee Brown Coye, who did a number of covers for Weird Tales in the 40s and 50s. Generally I enjoy his work, although this one kind of leaves me a little cold, honestly. I dunno why, exactly; could just be the kind of blandly spookified house there. I kind of like the strange, ghostly figure in the sky, though, and if you envision the house and the little bearded guy as being a child’s drawing, maybe it’s better? Still, not my favorite of Coye’s work, but good on ol’ Bloch getting the cover this issue.

Interestingly, Coye got the Weird Tales work because he did some covers for August Derleth’s Arkham House anthologies that were quite spooky and good. I’ve actually got one from the 60s that Coye did the cover for, “Dagon and Other Macabre Tales,” and I think shows his talents off much better:

But back to Weird Tales! Here’s this issue’s ToC:

Not a bad list of stories – the Manly Wade Wellman is fun, one of his Appalachian stories that he’s so good at. The other thing to point out is how McIlwraith kept Weird Tales‘ dedication to publishing poetry going strong under her tenure, an underappreciated part of the history of weird fic, in my opinion. Oh, and also worth noting is how the magazine has slimmed down in these later issues: a scant 80 some pages every OTHER month, rather than the 100+ pages every SINGLE month of the previous era. C’est la magazine publishing, i guess!

And with that, let’s get into the story!

Full page title image, and holy smokes what a great monster! I really love this kind of old school comic style critter; again, this thing wouldn’t be out of place among the very DIY horrors from the original Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, you know what I mean? Mouths all over the torso, hooves AND tentacles, and I actually like the incongruously humanoid devil-head – it’s all that much weirder for having a recognizable noggin, you know what I mean? This piece of art is by Matt Fox, a VERY obscure illustrator who did a lot of internal art for Weird Tales, and I think it’s great!

Bloch makes fun use of the title, integrating it directly into the narrative. It’s a no-frills and, importantly, almost non-informative title, and that’s interesting to me. Of course there’s a long history of outré lit using this kind of metafictive titling scheme – The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Manuscript Found in a Bottle, The Statement of Randolph Carter, etc., all of them presenting the story as a document rather than a story. What’s interesting about this one is that there’s very little context given in this title; you know what you’re going to read is a text from a notebook found in a deserted house, and THAT’S IT. How old is the notebook? How long has the house been deserted? Where’s the house? All of that is kept from you, and that’s great.

And the story is true to its title – no preamble, no “this document was found among the blah blah” stuff, it’s right off the bat BAM: the notebook. And the tone and voice is great right away – the aggrieved, almost plaintive, statement that whoever is writing this ain’t never did nothin’ wrong. It’s very folksy and almost childlike, which is appropriate because we learn a little ways in that the writer of this notebook is, in fact, a child, Willie Osborne, age 12 last July. And he’s in some deep shit.

He’s been trapped by some “them” out there, and “they” have got some kind of hunt on for a gate which, if you ever find yourself in a horror story among people looking for a gate, you know you’re in for some trouble. This is just good spooky writing that plays to Bloch’s great strength, which is writing in a distinct voice in the first person. He gives lil’ Willie here a strongly realized characterization right off the bat with the way he writes and thinks. As for HORROR, it’s great, because we know from the title that despite Willie’s hopes, no help is going to be forthcoming, and this document he’s writing is going to be found in a deserted house long after he’s met his doom. It’s actually pretty chilling stuff!

Willie continues with his short little biographical sketch, explaining how he’d lived with his Grandma way out in the sticks, and how she’d tell him about them ones that lived even wayer outer in the real, deep wilderness.

The Indians by and large kept people away from this region full weirdos, and even to this very day there are only a few isolated farmsteads and such. And, it turns out, among the yeomanry hangin’ out in the strange zone are some of Willie’s relations, Uncle Fred and Aunt Lucy. And when Grandma kicks the bucket, Willie gets sent to live with them, the lucky little so-and-so.

Willie has a fun trip on a train, meets his Uncle at the station, and takes a ride through the deep still woods and ominous quiet hills to the distant farmhouse of his Aunt and Uncle. It’s an unsettling ride, because of course Willie’s Grandma told him all sorts of strange and unpleasant stories about the woods and the hills, but also because Uncle Fred seems a little scared to be in the woods himself – he drives the horse hard, like he’s trying to spend as little time out in there as possible.

A year goes by, and it sounds like a lonely one – the farm is miles from any neighbor, and they never go into town for supplies or anything, living off the things the farm provides. At first Willie steers clear of the woods, but slowly he starts to grow used to it.

Yipes, right? Willie’s out in the woods, doin’ chores one October evening, when he hears something strange stirrin’ among the trees. Now, Willie has established already that these woods are strangely silent – few birds and no larger critters, so when he hears something that isn’t the mailman or his aunt and uncle, he gets spooked. He hides and listens.

Good visceral writing of great, non-visual sensory horror, you know? The sound that reminds Willie of blood spattering in a bucket, the stench of death and decay, and the sense of it moving around, getting closer. He can’t see it, but the presence of the thing is felt strongly, isn’t it? Also, the scrabbling of lots and lots of feet, like a whole herd of people moving around. It’s spooky stuff, and then it gets worse!

This is the part with the unfortunate transcription description, which we’ll avoid, but sufficed to say it’s a full on cthulhu style chant being croaked by some unearthly and inhuman voice. And as it’s speaking the smell is getting worse and worse, until finally Willie is overcome and passes out. Eventually he wakes; night has fallen.

Weird voice chanting strange words, slimy hoofed tracks from a couple hundred feet…pretty good monster description, and it’s nicely strange and incomplete. Like Willie, we don’t have a clue what this thing looks like, but ye gods it must be weird as hell, right?

Back home, Willie doesn’t share his adventure with his aunt or uncle. However, he does get digging around in his aunt’s library – Willie doesn’t go to school, but his Aunt Lucy has been helping him do his reading in the evening, so it’s established that there’re a collection of books in the house. And, wouldn’t ya know it, Lucy happens to have a Mythos Book of the Month membership, because Willie finds a book that he thinks is relevant to all the shenanigans that’s been going on in the woods all these many thousands of years.

Willie must be some kinda comparative religion savant, the way he links Quetzalcoatl with some transatlantic Druids in the New England backwoods! At the very least, he deserves a show on the History Channel or something, alongside those “Did UFOs build the Pyramids” things. This is kinda the only false note in the story, and it’s funny to see this bad habit of overexplaining of Bloch’s (and a lot of other Lovecraftian writers, to be fair) still creeping in after all these years. Look, there’s a weird thing in the woods, there’re weird cultists, they’ve been there a long ass time…I don’t need it spelled out from the STRANGELY RELEVANT book in your aunt’s house, you know? Especially odd, because we’ve already established that Willie has a good grasp on the local lore from his Grandma. Like I said, it’s a weaker part, but oh well.

What he DOES remember from Grandma, though, is that Halloween time is the BIG time for them ones in the woods, and sure enough…it’s comin’ up!

The other thing that’s on the calendar is a visit from Cousin Osborne; there’s preparations and all, canning and carpentry in the disused spare room, and then one rainy day Uncle Fred hitches the buggy and rides the seven miles into town to get Cousin Osborne at the station. Willie is happy to stay home, since the woods are getting noisier and creepier every day.

Come afternoon though, Uncle Fred hasn’t returned. Maybe the train was late? But then it gets dark, so they go out to put a lantern by the gate. They hear some noises, it’s dark and spooky, and then suddenly the buggy appears, thudding along the road towards the farm. Aunt Lucy gives a sigh of relief…but…

Lucy faints, and Willie has to get her inside on his own. The next morning the horse has died, making a trip in to the station or to a neighbor’s house a very daunting trek. Lucy, terrified of the woods, insists that they’ll just have to wait for Cap Pritchard the mail man to come by later in the week; they can hitch a ride with him into town then.

It’s a grim scene, and the sense of dread is really something, isn’t it? This empty buggy running in on its own, the horse exhausted enough to die afterwards, and Fred and Osborne just plain vanished, no word or sign of ’em at all! Spooky stuff!

And it just gets worse, because despite having Aunt Lucy there with him, Willie is basically on his own; something has broken in Lucy. She just sits rocking, muttering that “Fred had always warned her” about the woods. Willie makes all the meals, and keeps listening for the drums from the forest, trying to stay awake because he’s been having terrible dreams about monstrous things with snaky hooves legs and countless mouths, chanting deep in the woods. But despite it all, they make it through the week, and its the night before the mail man is scheduled to come.

Rough times for lil’ Willie, huh? He decides he can’t wait around any longer, so that morning he collects a little money and gets the letter his cousin sent from Kingsport, and decides he’s going to walk to town and try to get help. But just as he’s about to leave, he hears footsteps from the road.

Ah, well, I’m sure everything is fine then, huh? Willie suspects something is off, though – where’s Cousin Osborne’s suitcase, for one thing (“oh, left it back at the station.”) But what’re you gonna do when you’re just a 12 year old kid? They head into the house and Willie tells his cousin most of what has happened, leaving out some of the stranger details, like what he heard in the woods that one time. Cousin Osborne agrees that it’s strange that Fred and Lucy have vanished, but that Willie mustn’t give in to these strange fancies about people in the woods and horrible monster, ha ha there young man, what an imagination you’ve got, why it reminds me of the nonsense I hear back in Arkham!

Waitaminute, says Willie, you live in Kingsport, don’t you Cousin Osborne. (Cut to cousin osborne pulling on his collar, saying “hamina hamina hamina”)

Willie still thinks they should go, but Cousin Osborne puts the kibosh on that plan. They hear a buggy coming up the road; it’s the mailman! Willie wants to run and meet him, but Osborne says no, you stay in here, I will go talk to him. Willie watches, and when the mail man starts to drive off, he runs out after him.

Osborne at first refuses, but in the face of Willie’s intransigence and the Mail Man’s skepticism, Cousin Osborne says fine, HE’LL come along too.

When he insists, Cap pulls a goddamn gun on him!

Cap ain’t fucking around!

They ride off, leaving an angry “Cousin Osborne” behind, and as they go Willie brings Cap up to speed. But it’s late in the day, and the woods are growing dark. A storm builds, there’s thunder and lighting, and something else…drums. The storm crashes over them, and they’re hurrying along in the rain and lightning. Cap has his pistol out, and Willie is trying to get answers from him about the things in the woods.

Willie is thrown from the buggy when they smash into the Thing squatting in the middle of the road. He runs, panicked, through the woods, and finds himself climbing a hill with a fire and an alter and lots of robed people with knives. He witnesses a horrible human sacrifice that summons something from the Hills.

Willie flees screaming into the night and, through luck or instinct, finds his way back to the farm. Afraid of the storm and the night, he runs inside, finds his uncles tools, and boards up the windows and doors. He hopes he can wait it out and try to escape come dawn, BUT next morning “Cousin Osborne” is outside, calling for Willie. He tries the doors and windows, but Willie’s carpentry is sound and he can’t get in. Then he hears “Cousin Osborne” talking to something…something with a strange, droning, buzzing, inhuman voice.

Willie realizes that they know he’s there in the farm house…who else would’ve boarded it up like that. All he can do is try and wait it out and hope that someone, investigating the disappearance of Cap or the real Cousin Osborne, comes and helps him. That catches us up to the beginning of the story, when Willie found the notebook and began writing all this down.

And that’s the End!

One of those famous weird fiction “I’m still writing this even as a horror is happening to me oh no it’s in the room argh it’s got me i’m being kil – ” sort of endings. Some people find those very silly, like the idea that you’d keep on scribbling away, and often times they CAN be a little odd, but I feel like this one works pretty good. Willie knows he’s trapped, he knows he’s not going to get away; he overheard the cultists planning to get him come dark, so all he can do is try and write everything down, leave some kind of record and warning for others. So it doesn’t bother me in that regard.

It’s a kind of lonely, grim story, and you really feel for poor ol’ Willie, trapped there, everyone he knows dead at the pseudopods of something awful. As far a Lovecraft homage go, I think it’s a pretty effective – it draws on a lot of the themes and styles of Lovecraft, but it diverges enough to keep it interesting, and making the narrator a little kid helps to break up what would otherwise be a fairly run-of-the-mill pastiche. I mean, if the main character was like a professor or an antiquarian, or even just an adult, I think this story wouldn’t work at all. It’s the helplessness of a child that makes this story interesting.

Bloch would eventually leave his Lovecraftian days behind him, finding his voice more in the psychologically twisted slashers-and-murderers kind of horror. But it is neat to see him, even as late as the 50s, still going back to the Lovecraftian fiction that he started with, way back in the 30s. Bloch, of course, began as a READER of Weird Tales first, writing letters to the editor and becoming something of a senior fan before trying his hand at fiction. His earliest attempts are straight Lovecraft mimics, and he would work in that vein (with varying success) on and off for much of his early career. “Notebook Found in a Deserted House” is interesting because, while it draws very heavily from Lovecraft, you can get glimmers of the later Bloch, including a focus on the deeper interiority of characters experiencing the horror, like poor Willie here. There’s also an explicit sense of the UNFAIRNESS of the horror, and while that is certainly something in Lovecraft and cosmic horror in general, I think Bloch REALLY hones in on it in his work.

I reckon I’ve gone on long enough, but to wrap it up, I think this story has some interesting lessons for any WRITERS of cosmic horror out there, especially of the explicitly Lovecraftian variety. I think you can see some interesting mechanical and story-telling decisions that Bloch has made in this one. He’s threading a needle through both the slimy (and fun) shoggoth-and-cultist stuff that Lovecraft was so good at AS WELL AS finding his own voice in there, and telling a story that is true to both.

Strained Pulp #9 (Halloweeeeeeen edition): “The Automatic Pistol” by Fritz Leiber, Weird Tales, v.35, n.3, May 1940

1 Reply

Folks, we’re drawing near to the Big Day itself…as I write this, Halloween is less than a full week away. Here, in Texas, it’s been rainy and muggy, although there’s a promise of a powerful cold front that’ll blow in over the weekend and bring temps down low. I like a crisp, wintery pumpkin day; we usually have a fire out in the front yard and hand-out candy, drink some beer, have a nice ol’ time, and I much prefer it to be cold than mosquito-y and sweaty. So, in honor of this gift from the dark gods of halloween, today we’re going to talk about a fantastic story from one of the greatest writers to have ever graced the pages of Weird Tales magazine. Fritz Leiber, Jr., and his story, “The Automatic Pistol.“

But, before we get into the Leiber, it’s important to take a moment and note the changes that have come to dear ol’ Weird Tales. Most of the previous stories have been from it’s earlier incarnation; the first and second installments were from the Baird days, while the rest have all been under the (hugely important and very influential) editorship of Farnsworth Wright. But now, in the 40s, the magazine has been bought by Short Stories, Inc, and Wright, suffering from rapidly declining health (he dies in June of 1940 from complications related to Parkinson’s disease) has been replaced by Dorothy McIlwraith.

McIlwraith is an interesting character. A Canadian, McIlwraith had been the editor of Short Stories magazine for several years, successfully running a magazine that operated in a lot of different genres. When she comes in to Weird Tales, she’s confronted with an immediate problem – the magazine was perennially just skating by, always nearly running out of money. Additionally, the late 30s had been rough – Lovecraft died in 1937, Robert E. Howard died in 1936…these had been THE heavy hitters, the authors that, by and large, had defined Weird Tales artistically. Similarly, there were competitors in the weird fiction market; magazines like “Strange Stories,” “Unknown Worlds,” and the various sci-fi pulps has all bitten into the market that Weird Tales had dominated. Add to that the paper shortages of World War II and the general collapse of the magazine market post war, and you can appreciate the work McIlwraith did in keeping the magazine going all the way to 1954!

Now, I’ll admit that I do think there’s a real enormous importance to Wright’s work at Weird Tales; the fact of the matter is, before him, there really wasn’t a genre of “weird fiction,” and it was under his powerful editorship that the genre took shape and was defined. For that alone, his run editing Weird Tales is historically and literarily important (for more on this, see my Introduction in the forthcoming Night Fears from Paradise Editions…stay tuned for more info soon!) Interestingly, Wright was given a much freer hand during his tenure at the helm. McIlwraith was forced to “tone down” some of the scarier and gorier stuff at the orders of the publisher, and so the magazine she oversaw was a different one. That said, she DID exercise her power in interesting ways: she had a serious interest in science fiction, and made a concerted effort to bring it back into Weird Tales. Similarly, there were a number of prominent authors whose work she edited: Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Margaret St. Clare, and today’s author, Fritz Leiber all appeared in the pages of McIlwraith’s Weird Tales.

Additionally, she also went all in on Hannes Bok for covers and interior art, and that’s surely gotta be worth something, right!? I mean, look at that cover up there – it’s incredible, and Bok’s style is so dynamic and vibrant and just plain weird, you know? In terms of illustrations and covers, I don’t think Weird Tales was ever better than the 40s run, for sure!

But I’ve rattled on too long! Let’s get stuck in to some two-fisted weird crime with Fritz Leiber’s “The Automatic Pistol!”

Lookit that spread, gosh! Weird menacing hands, the smoking pistol, the first paragraphs of the story sanwhiched in there between em…a great composition, and a great way to start Leiber’s very first story in Weird Tales magazine.

Leiber wrote in a number of genres, but he’s` probably most famous for his contributions to Sword & Sorcery, a term that he (according to some) actually invented. His Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories are legitimately some of the most important and influential fantasy of the 20th century, on equal footing with Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien, although he hasn’t had the same popular appeal as either of them. We’ll talk more about that come my Xmas Sword & Sorcery series that I’m planning out, so we’ll leave it alone for now, but just know: Leiber is a big deal.

But before Lankhmar and Nehwon, Leiber was (briefly) a Lovecraft correspondent and wrote some great pure weird fiction. This is actually his FIRST story in Weird Tales, and immediately you know it’s great. Leiber has a wonderful style, more muscular than a lot of “classical” weird fiction. It’s also distinctly and vibrantly modern – right off that bat we’re talkin’ about a gun. And not just ANY gun…it’s that classic of the pulp detective mags, the .45! And it belongs to another classic of the pulps, an indeterminately foreign criminal!

Inky, whose gun it is, is partners with a rough character named Larsen; they run booze, and have hired the the narrator (who will be introduced as “No Nose” later on) and a semi-egghead named Glasses to help them, loading and unloading and driving, basic prohibition stuff. They’re all introduced in a real classic, hard-boiled bit of writing that is, simply, a pleasure to read:

Gosh that’s good stuff, isn’t it? “I was a local small-town policeman until I determined to lead a more honest life.” Fantastic writing. This whole first section in particular is just a really nice, tight little crime story told from the perspectives of the crook, and it’s rich with excellent world-building – there’s corrupt cops, there’s the business of rum running, all of it dropped casually and naturally and efficiently into the story.

As established, Inky loves his gun. He’s always fiddlin’ with it, even when they’re out on the job, running booze he’ll take it out, pet it, coo to it with words nobody can understand…

The thing is, this fascination with the gun seems to rub Larsen, Inky’s partner in rum running, the wrong way.

Eventually this leads to an altercation where Larsen suddenly loses his temper and tries to grab the gun; if it weren’t for a motorcycle cop looking for a bribe, there might’ve even been blood spilled over it. It’s the first sign that Larsen is strangely obsessed with Inky’s pistol.

A fair bit of this half of the story is concerned with the ups and downs of the business as the years go by. Our narrator and Glasses keep working for Inky and Larsen, and we learn about the dangers of hijacking and of rival bootlegger gangs. We also get a glimpse of the money involved, and the ways the men spend it:

This sets up nicely the latter half of the story. Glasses reads in the newspaper that Inky has been rubbed out; interestingly, there was no weapon on the body when the police found it, and that gives both Glasses and No Nose pause; feels kinda wrong for someone else to have the automatic that Inky had so doted over all those years. Eventually, Glasses and No Nose are called up by their old boss Larsen, who says his rival Luke Dugan had Inky killed and is now gunning for him. And Larsen wants the two of them to meet him at a safehouse.

Neither No Nose nor Glasses are particularly enamored of the idea, but Larsen ain’t the sorta guy you say “no” too, so they hunker down with him in a farmhouse way the hell out in the country. After a supper of canned corned beef hash and beer, they’re sitting around the table drinkin’ coffee, just hanging out, when Larsen reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gun. The Gun, in fact.

Right away Glasses, No Nose, and us, the readers, have got a bad feelin’ about all this. There’s more great hard-boiled stuff in here – unvoiced (and unwritten) suspicion that practically shouts at you the whole time, the threat of violence, claustrophobia, fear. And while Larsen is fuckin’ around with Inky’s gun, it suddenly goes off, nearly taking off one of No Nose’s toes. After some panic, Larsen sets the gun on a side table and goes to a back bedroom to sleep. Glasses and No Nose are a little wound up, though, so they stay there in the front and play some cards…and after an hour, they notice somethin’ strange…

No matter how they adjust it, the gun always ends up swinging itself around to point towards the back of the house, where Larsen is sleeping. They fiddle around with is some more and eventually Glasses decides that what’s happening, see, is that the safety right? It juts out a bit, and so it kinda pivots around whenever its set down, yeah? Perfectly reasonable explanation, but No Nose decides that maybe it’d be better if the wiggly gun wasn’t loaded, so he takes the rounds out and pockets em.

Eventually, the boys tire of their card game and go to sleep. Then, in the dark, No Nose hears something…a kinda metallic clicking…

The image of this gun rotating around and then repeatedly trying to fire, all on its own, is great isn’t it? And the fact that it’s empty makes it all the more menacing; the hate propelling this gun must be getting even hotter for all the futile attempts its making! Glasses tries to calm No Nose, telling him it’s nothing, and then laughing that No Nose is ascribing supernatural agency to a dumb gun.

Now that’s the classic Leiber twist – he’s always ziggin’ when you expect him to zagg! You might’ve expected that Inky’s ghost or something was animating the gun, pretty standard ghost story shit, but not when Leiber is writing it! How neat is he instead introduces the idea that the gun is some kind of malevolent thing in its own right, a liaison between Inky and the Dark Side with its own ideas and agency! Later, when No Nose is handling the gun, he notices that the metal feels strange, smooth and slick and strangely alluring in his hand…kinda makes you wanna keep touching it too.

No Nose and Glasses read in an early morning paper that Larsen is, unsurprisingly, wanted for the murder of Inky. Just as they’re discussing this, Larsen wakes up and comes back into the room. There’s more fantastic noirish writing here – the nervousness of the two men, trapped in a situation with a guy who they’re pretty sure killed his partner but who they don’t want to let know that they think that, is really well executed, taut and tense and fun. Larsen seems weirdly listless, like he’s preoccupied with something, or maybe like something is gnawing at his mind. He only really rouses himself when he finds the gun has been emptied and moved. He doesn’t want anybody else to touch the gun but him, see! He demands the bullets back from No Nose too, and reloads the gun. That part is fun – does he want the gun loaded and for himself because he’s planning on killing his two hired hands, or is he jealously fascinated by the weapon. No Nose remembers the weirdly seductive way the gun felt in his hand, and is certainly worried.

But there’s nothing they can do, really – Larsen has the gun, and they’re unarmed. They gotta stick with him and try and keep him calm. Larsen shaves and gets dressed, and then decides that they all oughta play some cards. It seems like things are coming to head:

They play poker, but its clear that both Glasses and No Nose aren’t really focusing on they game – understandably, since Larsen seems to have become real menacing, real fast. While they’re playing, No Nose hears a noise, a kinda faint scrabblin’ or rustling that he can’t place. They keep playing, Larsen winning from both of them. Then, dammit, there’s that noise again!

The guns wrigglin’ around in the suitcase, trying to orient itself properly! Glasses, whose kind of a chatterbox when he’s nervous, nearly fucks up big time by mentioning the sound:

They keep on playing, and it’s a horrible visual, isn’t it? Like there they are, crazily playing cards, two of them trapped with a fully murderous and crazed guy, all while the gun of a dead man is writchin’ around in a suitcase. It’s a great, weird image, a real horrible situation!

As they’re playing, Larsen finally starts to break down, whispering to No Nose that he did kill Inky because he wanted all that money he’d been putting away. He hadn’t brought it with, though, but Larsen knew where it was. How about him and No Nose go and get, it’ll be a cinch for two people, see…

And that’s the end of the story!

It’s just a peach, ain’t it? I mean, it’s a real straight forward story of betrayal and vengeance from beyond, but 1) it’s written really well, with a great tone and voice that successfully blends crime and weird fiction together, and 2) the weirdness is elevated by the whole “gun-as-familiar” bit. It’s maybe not as well developed as it could’ve been, but it’s enough to turn the story into something just *that* much weirder than it would’ve been if, like, Inky’s ghost was doing it, you know, or his lingering psychic obsession were to blame. I think you really get a good taste of Leiber’s style and sensibilities from this story too – his interest in lowlifes and crime, the morally grey quality of his characters, and the truly sinister tinge to his kind of weirdness all come through very strongly here. You get good character work, too – everybody is sharply and quickly drawn and distinguished from one another, something that a lot of writers have a surprisingly hard time doing. I guess don’t have much more to say about the story, really, except that I like it a lot, and it’s worth a read!