![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_andyRobert E. Howard (Conan)
C.L. Moore (Jirel)
Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser)
Clark Ashton Smith (pretty much everything)
I'm not sure I have enough to say to make a post if I did these individually. Also, I'm at the Portland Zine Symposium, and thus can't reference my books and have to use my faulty memory. So here we go with the pulp sword and sorcery lighting round! Also, because I'm writing this while staffing a table in the stuff zine room I'm considering this a draft. I reserve the right to come back and clean up things from spelling to paragraph organization.
Howard wrote Conan (and it seems every other manly man pulp character). That's kind of all you need to know. Ok, maybe a little more. Sometimes Conan is a thief, sometimes a pirate, sometimes a king. He's usually killing things, sometimes getting rich, but never keeping the money long. One time he fought a gorilla who thought he was a sorcerer. While the stories are problematic in a lot of ways (coughracistcough) they're still better than most of the derivatives. If you're at all interested in the genre, you should read these (make sure you're getting the original ones and not any stories “completed” by Lin Carter).
Little known fact: for as badass a warrior Conan is, he definitely has a weakness to being hit on the head and knocked out. Like in every single story.
CL Moore is one of the first, if not the first, woman writing for the pulps. I've only read her Jirel of Joiry stories because I like S&S and Lovecraftian pulp, but she also did a bunch of space stoies too. Jirel is interesting in ways I don't know how to describe, so I'm not going to try, but highly recommend them because they're so different. Jirel is a badass warrior and has her own castle, so trouble usualy ends up coming to her. The castle, for some reason, has a stairwell to hell in the basement. “Dudes” keep trying to get with her because she's so badass. One is an extradimensional being and the relationship is ruined because she wants to know what he really looks like. The other is a man who manages to defeat her. And then after she gets revenge she realizes she might have been into him too (problematic maybe?)
Depressing wikipedia fact: Moore was going to be a nominee for the first woman Grand Master of SFWA, but her husband had the nomination withdrawn as she had Alzheimer's and the ceremony would be confusing and upsetting.
During his life Fritz Leiber wrote everything, but he's here for his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. I'm not a fan of the first and last volumes (first and last in terms of story chronology, I think they were both written rather late) as the origin stories just aren’t as much fun as after our “heroes” team up. And the last book just plain isn't very good. But for the most part they're fun and playful in a way that pulp isn't always. There's tinges of Lovecraft, well, or everything really, as Leiber wasn't building a logical world so much as a kitchen sink one where he could write whatever would be fun. This aspect of Leiber's stories is the often forgotten secondary influence on D&D (the first obviously being Tolkien). The boys squabble and break up only to find themselves thrown back together again (once breaking up over the correct way to spell Fafhrd's name). They get drunk and steal a rich man's house (literally: they get a bunch of other drunks to pick it up and move it for them).
Bonus bookshelf feature: Howard Chaykin and Mike Mignola did a comic of some of the early stories that are a lot of fun. Dark Horse reprinted it a couple years ago, and while Mignola's art isn't as tight as it would become it's still worth a look.
Clark Ashton Smith is what happens with you combine Lovecraft's ideas with someone who can actually write (sick burn!). Ok, I'm not a huge fan of his poetry, but most of the fiction is great. There's a lot of it and the amount in print at anytime is spotty, but there's at least a Fantasy Masterworks volume with a bunch of good stuff in it that's fairly representative and not too hard to find. The fiction can be pretty dark at times (most dudes trying to take down evil necromancers don't succeed), but not only is it better written than HPL, there is, I think, more fun being had in many of the stories, even the dark ones. There is definitely a Dunsany influence, which is rarely a bad thing.
Also, I feel a bit sorry for Smith. He had a hard life and isn't as well known as he should be, given his talent and prolificness and usually gets tertiary billing after Howard and Lovecraft.
C.L. Moore (Jirel)
Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser)
Clark Ashton Smith (pretty much everything)
I'm not sure I have enough to say to make a post if I did these individually. Also, I'm at the Portland Zine Symposium, and thus can't reference my books and have to use my faulty memory. So here we go with the pulp sword and sorcery lighting round! Also, because I'm writing this while staffing a table in the stuff zine room I'm considering this a draft. I reserve the right to come back and clean up things from spelling to paragraph organization.
Howard wrote Conan (and it seems every other manly man pulp character). That's kind of all you need to know. Ok, maybe a little more. Sometimes Conan is a thief, sometimes a pirate, sometimes a king. He's usually killing things, sometimes getting rich, but never keeping the money long. One time he fought a gorilla who thought he was a sorcerer. While the stories are problematic in a lot of ways (coughracistcough) they're still better than most of the derivatives. If you're at all interested in the genre, you should read these (make sure you're getting the original ones and not any stories “completed” by Lin Carter).
Little known fact: for as badass a warrior Conan is, he definitely has a weakness to being hit on the head and knocked out. Like in every single story.
CL Moore is one of the first, if not the first, woman writing for the pulps. I've only read her Jirel of Joiry stories because I like S&S and Lovecraftian pulp, but she also did a bunch of space stoies too. Jirel is interesting in ways I don't know how to describe, so I'm not going to try, but highly recommend them because they're so different. Jirel is a badass warrior and has her own castle, so trouble usualy ends up coming to her. The castle, for some reason, has a stairwell to hell in the basement. “Dudes” keep trying to get with her because she's so badass. One is an extradimensional being and the relationship is ruined because she wants to know what he really looks like. The other is a man who manages to defeat her. And then after she gets revenge she realizes she might have been into him too (problematic maybe?)
Depressing wikipedia fact: Moore was going to be a nominee for the first woman Grand Master of SFWA, but her husband had the nomination withdrawn as she had Alzheimer's and the ceremony would be confusing and upsetting.
During his life Fritz Leiber wrote everything, but he's here for his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. I'm not a fan of the first and last volumes (first and last in terms of story chronology, I think they were both written rather late) as the origin stories just aren’t as much fun as after our “heroes” team up. And the last book just plain isn't very good. But for the most part they're fun and playful in a way that pulp isn't always. There's tinges of Lovecraft, well, or everything really, as Leiber wasn't building a logical world so much as a kitchen sink one where he could write whatever would be fun. This aspect of Leiber's stories is the often forgotten secondary influence on D&D (the first obviously being Tolkien). The boys squabble and break up only to find themselves thrown back together again (once breaking up over the correct way to spell Fafhrd's name). They get drunk and steal a rich man's house (literally: they get a bunch of other drunks to pick it up and move it for them).
Bonus bookshelf feature: Howard Chaykin and Mike Mignola did a comic of some of the early stories that are a lot of fun. Dark Horse reprinted it a couple years ago, and while Mignola's art isn't as tight as it would become it's still worth a look.
Clark Ashton Smith is what happens with you combine Lovecraft's ideas with someone who can actually write (sick burn!). Ok, I'm not a huge fan of his poetry, but most of the fiction is great. There's a lot of it and the amount in print at anytime is spotty, but there's at least a Fantasy Masterworks volume with a bunch of good stuff in it that's fairly representative and not too hard to find. The fiction can be pretty dark at times (most dudes trying to take down evil necromancers don't succeed), but not only is it better written than HPL, there is, I think, more fun being had in many of the stories, even the dark ones. There is definitely a Dunsany influence, which is rarely a bad thing.
Also, I feel a bit sorry for Smith. He had a hard life and isn't as well known as he should be, given his talent and prolificness and usually gets tertiary billing after Howard and Lovecraft.
