Five Sword & Sorcery Stories to Get You Started
A century ago in the pages of a pulp magazine titled Weird Tales, the genre of weird fiction was born. Pouring forth from the pens of writers such as Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, C. L. Moore, H. P. Lovecraft and others, the stories excited readers and brought forth many more writers who wanted to create similar fiction with legendary heroes.
Robert E. Howard’s story The Tower of the Elephant appeared in the March, 1933 issue of Weird Tales.
The Tower of The Elephant is a story set early in the career of Robert E. Howard’s Conan. Published in Weird Tales in March of 1933, it contains many of the elements that a lot of readers see as core to Sword & Sorcery fiction: A weird monster, exotic location, an evil wizard and a hearty and adventurous soul willing to deal with all of that. It’s a solid story and you can see Howard dialing the character of Conan in. It’s a hint of the powerhouse he’d become in future stories. (You can find it in an archive copy of that issue of Weird Tales at Archive.org by clicking here.)
Rogues in The House is another Conan story, published in the January, 1934 issue of Weird Tales. As with The Tower of the Elephant, this tale has all the requisite elements to place it solidly in the Sword and Sorcery camp. In this story the character of Conan has matured and Conan displays a handful of emotional states that pretty much define the character’s range: loyalty, nobility, savagery, humor and honor. This portrayal undercuts the notion of Conan being a dumb warrior who just smashes things, depicting him as being more complex and deeper than most parodies and pastiches would ever suggest. (You can find it in an archive copy of that issue of Weird Tales at Archive.org by clicking here.)
In the October, 1934 issue of Weird Tales, C. L. Moore debuted her character, Jirel of Joiry, in the story The Black God’s Kiss. Jirel is a ground-breaking character out to avenge herself and her nation against its conqueror. To accomplish this she embarks on a journey into an unholy and weird domain. More fanciful than Robert E. Howard’s work, and yet more grounded than the stories of Clark Ashton Smith, it forms a perfect bridge between the two writers and really expands the definition of what it possible within the realm of Sword & Sorcery. (You can find an archive copy of that issue of Weird Tales at Archive.org by clicking here. Note: that same issue included part of a Conan serial by Robert E. Howard and a tale by Clark Ashton Smith set in his world of Hyperborea.)
Clark Ashton Smith, as one can tell from reading any of his stories, was a poet at heart and had a great deal of fun playing with language as he crafted his stories. They are fanciful and wildly imaginative, ranging from whimsical adventures to dark and forbidding tales of danger. Smith doesn’t focus on a signature character, but instead populated several worlds through dozens and dozens of stories. Smith, along with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, was center stage in the world of Weird Tales. (A collection of his stories set in the world of Zothique is available for download from Archive.org by clicking here.)
The wildly popular Sword & Sorcery stories in Weird Tales inspired countless writers—and continue to inspire them today. One writer—literally the man credited with coining the term “Sword & Sorcery”—brought us a pair of rogues who came in a different vector from characters modeled on Howard’s Conan. Fritz Leiber, Jr., wrote about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and set their adventures in and around the environs of Lankhmar. Writing post World War Two, Leiber’s stories breathed new life into a genre that had retreated from the limelight after the deaths of Howard and Lovecraft in the mid-1930s. Dark Vengeance is a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story published in the Fall, 1951 issue of Suspense. (A copy of that issue of the magazine is available from Archive.org by clicking here.)
Sword & Sorcery has continue to inspire authors down through the decades, with the last ten years seeing a significant resurgence in writers providing stories and magazines springing up to publish them. They all draw on the works of those who have gone before them, and yet bring their own sensibilities and vision to these new tales. The Chain Story Project has specifically reached out to those new authors to share their work with you, to introduce you to new worlds and characters, and to honor those who first ventured into the field of Sword & Sorcery fiction.
