With new movie versions of Robert E. Howard’s black-maned hero Conan and Edgar Rice Burrough’s gentleman adventurer John Carter of Mars, it would appear that the sword & sorcery genre may be about to resurge into the public sphere.
A staple of the pulp era, sword & sorcery fiction can best be recognized by the presence of roguish, larger-than-life heroes battling supernatural and earthly foes by magic, might and mein. Usually these heroes aren’t exactly “good” guys, but many times the results of their adventures tip the scale in favor of goodness. An example: a sword & sorcery character might indeed wage battle against a powerful demon cult, but rather than doing so to benefit society, he or she will more likely be motivated by the possibility of treasure or the gain of personal power. True, society may benefit from the adventurer’s quest, but such is rarely his or her primary – or even secondary – concern. Characters like the aforementioned Conan and John Carter are exemplary examples of the type.
While epic fantasy has long maintained a hold on genre readers, Sword & Sorcery fiction has made a number of notable forays onto local book shelves as of late. Classicist and author James Enge’s tales of Morlock Ambrosius (Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way) both meet the bill, as does Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, and Jesse Bullington’s The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart. Even the grandfathers of the genre – Howard, Burroughs, Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Lieber among them – have seen a revival, with many of their long out of print works being reprinted into affordable editions for today’s reader.
Even today’s publishing atmosphere would seem to be friendly to the typically episodic adventures of the Sword & Sorcery hero. Back in the thirties there were scads of pulp magazines, all of which were hungry for stories from talented fantasy authors. Ironically, in an age where paper magazines themselves seem to be dying, e-zines and web-based magazines offer a myriad of publishing opportunities for the author. Admittedly, not all of these pay especially well, but neither did the original pulps.
Could a revival at the movie house catalyze the nascent Sword & Sorcery scene in the written world? Maybe. While there’s no guarantee that Swords & Sorcery fiction will assume a place of prominence in the fantasy genre, I have heard several authors and even a publisher or two say that they hope – even expect – it to dethrone Steampunk as the sub-genre du jour, and like Steampunk, it too could benefit from the modern sensibilities of a new generation of writers. As it stands, Steampunk – while still incredibly popular, is well-trodden territory. Sword & Sorcery is a wide-open world begging for the traditional white male hero archetype to be joined shield to shoulder by heroes of color, strong and independent women adventurers and more. This could be sword & sorcery’s moment, if only more writers – much like the heroes themselves – recognize this golden opportunity and seize it for themselves.
Sword and Sorcery coming back? It’s already back, baby!!!
THE WEIRD OF IRONSPELL
A serialized novella in 8 chapters at http://www.blackgate.com
First 7 chapters have already been posted!
Cheers,
John
Thanks for the Enge/Abercrombie shout out. But if I might direct your attention to…
Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road and King’s Dark Towers series show that sword and sorcery have never really gone out of style. Not to mention RA Salvatore, Hickman/Weis, etc.
Interesting comment, Joe. I’m led to believe that Chabon’s book was written as a sort of love letter to the genre. Does this delegitimize it as an expression of an upsurge in S&S? I don’t know. I do know I loved the book, though.
I’m certainly no expert on the form, but I’m not sure that I’d consider Salvatore and Hickman/Weis as proper S&S. Seems more epic to me. Still, it’s certainly up to interpretation, and I’m not saying you’re wrong.
I couldn’t really get into The Dark Tower, so I’ll have to take your word for it.
How can a Pulitzer prize winner author choosing to write an S&S novel and publish it in a genre imprint (with a dedication to Michael Moorcock) “delegitimize” it as an example of an upsurge in S&S? That sounds like the crest of the wave to me.
That’s a good question, comment, and it was an honest query on my part. My thoughts were that it was an homage, and the analogy that I thought of was that of an established musician doing a one-off single in another style besides the one that they’re most famous for. Would that represent legitimate growth in that style? For an extreme example, consider country musician Tim McGraw, who recorded a hip hop track (”Over and Over”)with rapper Nelly. While it certainly succeeded on its own merits (it eventually peaked on the Billboard Pop 100), I don’t think anyone would point to it as an organic outgrowth of a burgeoning country-rap movement. I loved “Gentlemen of the Road,” much like I love most of Chabon’s work, but I consider it an homage rather than a signifier of the movement’s growth in itself. This doesn’t lessen the artistic merit of the work itself.
After a certain point, I’m not sure what the difference between a resurgence and a love letter is. On the one hand, I kind of agree with Mr. Staggs. There’s a sense that Chabon is dipping into a different genre, almost like a Willie Nelson might on one of his many cover albums.
Except he’s “covering” a genre that has always been an influence on his own work. And isn’t that how some genres get started anyways? There’s a great deal of epic quest fantasy that is directly inspired by Tolkien (Terry Brooks comes immediately to mind).
I do think it’s incorrect to view Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road as part of a new “wave” of S&S, let alone it’s peak. If anything, it’s probably the first sign of the potential for something larger, and something new that isn’t quite S&S, but is damn close and satisfying in the same, as well as new, ways.
Cool timing! – I have been thinking about Gentlemen of the Road a lot lately – and just lent my copy to a friend.
My 2c: I’ve always enjoyed S&S stories more than heroic fantasy. It’s because I find the personal stakes of a S&S protagonist (no matter how flawed) more accessible than some of the more abstract concepts involved in Saving-The-World-From-the-Evil-Thing. Nothing wrong with those stories, of course. They just don’t resonate with me as strongly.
It’s really hard to LIKE Wagner’s Kane or Bullington’s Grossbarts, but I found it easier to care about what happens to them than Sam or Frodo.
plus, I love S&S’s sense of Weird Mystery. The hero and the reader are messing with powers beyond their ken.
Thanks for the mention, Matt! I’m running out the door and somehow missed this when it first went up but will meditate on it and come back with something more substantial. I do have a great deal of fondness for S&S and, though I’m not sure if it ever went away per se, agree that we’re living in a pretty awesome age in terms of new stuff–really looking forward to the antho Lou co-edited, for example, and just dug the hell out of Morgan’s The Steel Remains…or would you consider that Epic Fantasy more than S&S? I could see arguments for both–more soonish!
I think The Steel Remains definitely qualifies as S&S. I think it might blossom into something more “heroic,” but that first book was all S&S.
With the growing popularity of digital fiction, I could S&S and similar pulp genres making a comeback. More and more people are reading online (or on an e-reader or through an app), and the medium strikes me as being great for shorter works like S&S. Not that there’s anything wrong with print and movies.
Matthew–you’re probably right, I’m way out of the loop on the epic/heroic stuff, and am terrible at finding the lines we put between these things in the first place. Not to be the author that always finds a way to link things back to his own work, but I’m not even sure if I’d classify my Brothers Grossbart as S&S despite Matt’s listing it here. It is certainly informed by it, and is very much a satirical response to it, but in some way the glove fits better than others–a lot of my favorite authors do straddle sundry fences, and that’s rather how I like to operate as well. That said, the next one is a bit more straight-faced in terms of S&S, and offsets the first novel’s Sword with a capital s with more of a sorcery focus. Blather!
In general, I tend to be more attracted to stories that focus on individual struggles rather than epic ones, which could explain why Clark Ashton Smith and Howard impacted my writing way more than Tolkien and his literary descendants–I can’t relate to being the only person who can save the world, but I can certainly relate to wanting to avoid personal harm and gain personal rewards. Perhaps counter intuitively, the more personal nature of the conflict in S&S often lends it more gravitas for me than the epic stuff, where it’s all too often a foregone conclusion that the world won’t be annihilated, even if it’s shoved into a new age.