Shambling to Vintage Season pulp glory

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Shambling to Vintage Season pulp glory


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What brand of cigarette would a robot smoke?

Recognizing our need to honor our elders (however few there are that remain elder to us!), the Beamers dipped into a vintage collection of even older stories by one of the proud pulp authors in our sf/f genres, Catherine Lucille (C. L.) Moore.  Alone and along with her writing partner, Henry Kuttner, Ms. Moore blazed out a trail of classic stories that enlivened the pulp fiction publications in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s.  Given the length of time since and the evolution of both the writing and the tastes of the reading public, would Ms. Moore’s typewritten tales hold up in this hypertext-linked digital age, or would they be whited out by the accumulation of progressive views or yellowed over by the acid-laced tropes of a bygone era?

Banking on a writing career?

Catherine Moore began writing as a sideline to her work as a typist, letting her imagination free after chaining it to endless business letters.  Starting in 1933 with her first sale to Weird Tales, she continued writing in our genres until her writing partner (and husband) Henry Kuttner died in 1958.  In that 25-year stretch, she produced, alone or in combination with Mr. Kuttner, a body of work that was recognized at the time by continuing sales (forcing the use of multiple pseudonyms like “Lawrence O’Donnell” and “Lewis Padgett”), and later by inclusion in multiple “all time” anthologies such as The Science Fiction Hall of Fame (1973, volume 2A, “Vintage Season”).  Sadly, the fickle whims of publishing brought on a bit of an eclipse following her death in 1987, making the next milestone a Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery award in 2004 for both her and Mr. Kuttner.  With a bit of added recognition, her inclusion in The Future is Female! (April 2024 Beamer selection) was clearly merited, and her sword-and-sorcery tale, “Black God’s Kiss”, merited her inclusion on the Beamer reading list.

The Best of C. L. Moore (1975, edited by Lester del Rey) is a collection of 10 of her better-known works, starting with that first famous story “Shambleau” and racing to her most noted reprinted work, the time-war classic “Vintage Season” (1946).  In between, we encountered a good selection of her work, leaning heavily on pulp (Northwest Smith!) but also veering among tales with romance and deep dives into character motivation and emotion, such as the cyborg dancer of “No Woman Born” (1944).  That ability to range among the various motifs of science fiction and provide a fuller, richer character portrayal is one of her signature talents, something often invoked when fans fall to arguing over which partner (Moore or Kuttner) was responsible for which parts of what stories.  Our editor, Mr. del Rey, assures us that he picked only Moore-pure stories for his collection.  But the most famous, “Vintage Season”, was originally published under the “Lawrence O’Donnell” by-line (admittedly, usually considered primarily her work, as “Lewis Padgett” was similarly thought to be mainly Kuttner).  And we thought we might have detected the none-too-subtle hand of Mr. Kuttner in the “twist” ending of the lesser future time-war tale, “Greater Than Gods”.  But, who knows?

Word-smithing and Northwest Smithing

What we do know is that we enjoyed the lush, sensuous depth of her descriptions.  Rarely is there a generic setting; instead, we are almost overwhelmed with the sights, sounds, smells of dusty Mars or stormy Venus.  Mildred, who read only a few of the stories, was impressed by the amount of detail lavished on the characters and the landscapes.  Which may not be too surprising, given the mechanics of pulp publishing and payment by the word, I had to observe.  And the continually rising nature of the descriptions, making things more and more appealing or dangerous or uncanny, did not sit well with the more realism-minded readers like Roberto.  How much beauty could any figure hold before the beholder just blinks?  “Must have taken 5 of Mudd’s beauty pills,” he muttered, bringing in a classic Star Trek comparison. 

Plus, interior details mattered even more.  Fran noted that Ms. Moore’s characters often presented the reader with good insights into their motivations and feelings, beyond the simple “sense of wonder” that infuses much of the classic sf pulp stories. “Greater Than Gods” is centered on a choice of futures and its protagonist is forced to choose one set of his descendants over another.  What makes the choice hard is not the brightness of the future but the extinction of one set of future great-great-umptee-ump children.  Even if their future is not bright, they are, in his eyes, worthy of love and care.  Perhaps the most involved with the interior life is her story of a cyborg dancer, “No Woman Born”.  Here, a famous artist, restored as a brain in a metal body, demonstrates that she is still able to captivate an audience with her performance.  The story ends with an ambiguous note, though, as she realizes her existence will drift further and further away from her human condition as she loses touch with her companions and the sensory world of taste, touch, and smell. Even the remaining senses (sight, sound) have altered into better-than-human levels.  The ambiguity of the story, perhaps summed up neatly in the title (a blessing? a curse?), flummoxed a few of us but also brought others over to Moore’s ability to move her readers.  Chris wanted to have a better fix on how our dancer would turn out, and Roberto thought the sense of “embodiment” for humanity would obviate the ability to communicate human feeling from metal shape.  Alan, however, reveled in the ambiguity, expressed throughout the story by the other characters, making it a journey of discovery page by page, changing from tragedy to triumph and maybe(?) back.  “I wonder,” she repeated, the distant taint of metal already in her voice.”

Make up or break up?

Ambiguity may be a hallmark of Ms. Moore’s writing, as we discovered.  That first tale, “Shambleau”, featuring her hard-bitten hero of the spaceways, Northwest Smith, ends on a quavering note as well, in which, in response to his partner’s demand to avoid any contact with the titular vampiric seductress, Northwest can but affirm “I’ll – try”, in a wavering voice.  And our inspiration story, “Black God’s Kiss”, has hard-bitten swordswoman Jirel of Joiry falling into despair as she kills her arch-enemy, who is also her unexpected love interest, a pivot in emotion that none of us could see coming nor explain, aside from Hollywood cliche romance (aka “slap, slap, kiss”).

But, the overall quality of the writing kept bringing us back.  John, unable to make the meeting, noted in his e-mail that, while the stories were not his usual sf preferences (too “weird”, added Chris), he would rank the work as a ‘8’.  And it was an easy ‘8’ for the rest of us as well.  The blend of both standard sf features, mythic and fairy-tale motifs, and lively interior lives kept us from finding any “rust” on these tales, even 80 years along.  While the individual blends were sometimes off-key (like eternal soul-mates recognizing each other in record time, one-eyed snake bodies notwithstanding), the overall harmony of the flavors and the richness of the savors brought us back to Ms. Moore, even 50 years after a first reading.

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