Short Sorcery: Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Seven Geases”
Short Sorcery: Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Seven Geases” by Bill Ward Hearken back to one fine day in prehistoric Hyperborea as the proud hunting party of Lord Ralibar Vooz, “high magistrate of Commoriom and third cousin to King Homquat,” scours the flanks of Mount Voormithadreth in the Eiglophian Range for rare quarry. Lesser sportsman might content themselves with the sabertooth cats that stalk the jungle girding the great...
Short Sorcery: C.L. Moore’s “Hellsgarde”
Short Sorcery: C.L. Moore’s “Hellsgarde” by Bill Ward C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry is the kind of character a writer can build a series of stories around, sharply defined in ways that make her both immediately compelling and comprehensible to an audience, but with enough nuance to not only keep a reader engaged, but to ground the character in believability. And believing in Jirel – a flame-haired Medieval Lady with a temper...
Short Sorcery: Robert E. Howard’s “The Tower of the Elephant”
Short Sorcery: Robert E. Howard’s “The Tower of the Elephant” by Bill Ward “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” – Robert E. Howard, “The Tower of the Elephant” The above is one of the most famous lines Robert E. Howard ever wrote, and it occurs as a young, somewhat naive Conan is mocked by a group of city dwellers in the...
Short Sorcery: Leigh Brackett’s “The Moon That Vanished”
Short Sorcery: Leigh Brackett’s “The Moon That Vanished” by Bill Ward From the start, from the very title itself, the reader is presented with a mystery in Leigh Brackett’s “The Moon That Vanished.” For one thing the story’s setting of Venus – think the Venus of Edgar Rice Burroughs rather than that of NASA probes – has no moon. But there is much more going on than that. The protagonist, David Heath, is himself...
Short Sorcery: Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Last Incantation”
Short Sorcery: Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Last Incantation” by Bill Ward Clark Ashton Smith’s first great literary love, his calling even, was poetry. His artistic inclinations, the themes and images that fired his blood, were for the fantastical, the mythic, and the wildly imaginative. But fever dreams of baroque lands and sinister sorcery were fast becoming passe among the literary mainstream of his time, and so...
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