Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  The storyteller's sense of pace, the characterization, the richness of language and imagery, and the provocative sexual undertones, all superbly handled, indicated a talent of a very high order. Lovecraft was wrong when he said the interplan-etary setting intruded. On the contrary, in Shambleau, as well as in the many Northwest Smith stories that followed, the setting on Mars and Venus made the extraordinary happen-ings far more believable than if they had occurred on Earth. Lovecraft himself, in his later years, leaned increasingly heavily upon the science-fiction format to give his horror themes reality. Moore was at the forefront of a hybrid literature known as "science-fantasy," popularized in weird tales by Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Nictzin Dyhalis, and Frank Belknap Long, which made a slightly larger concession to science than to the supernatural in the presentation of what was otherwise unbridled fantasy. It required a rich, colorful style, which C. L. Moore possessed in common with the other masters of this genre of fantasy literature.

  The fact that C. L. Moore was a woman was carefully kept from the readers of weird tales. Farnsworth Wright may or may not have been aware of it, since the story was submitted without comment. Her sex was revealed by fan columnists Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger, writing in the May, 1934, issue of the fantasy fan. Since the fantasy fan never topped sixty in circulation, the news was slow in being passed along the grapevine. But editors frequently used the term "the author" when they referred to C. L. Moore, which seems to indicate that they were aware of her sex but avoided revealing it. While there had been many brilliant women writers of the supernatural previously—Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, May Sinclair, Gertrude Atherton, Elizabeth Bowen, and Edith Wharton among them—C. L. Moore was to become the most important member of her sex to contribute to science fiction since Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

  Born January 24, 1911, in Indianapolis, Catherine Lucille Moore claims to have been in training for a writing career ever since she could communicate. "As soon as I could talk," she recalls, "I began telling long, obscure tales to everyone I could corner. When I learned to write I wrote them, and have been at it ever since....

  "I was reared on a diet of Greek mythology, Oz books and Edgar Rice Burroughs, so you see I never had a chance.

  "Nothing used to daunt my infant ambition. I wrote about cowboys and kings, Robin Hoods and Lancelots and Tarzans thinly disguised under other names. This went on for years and years, until one rainy afternoon in 1931 when I suc-cumbed to a lifelong temptation and bought a magazine called amazing stories whose cover portrayed six-armed men in a battle to the death (Awlo of Ulm by Capt. S. P. Meek, in the September, 1931, issue). From that moment on I was a convert. A whole new field of literature opened out before my admiring gaze, and the urge to imitate it was irresistible." Both her parents traced their families in this country back before the American Revolution and were of Scotch-Irish-Welsh extraction, with a flavoring of French added to the mixture in more recent generations. A Scottish-Gaelic back-ground is given to James Douglas, hero of C. L. Moore's There Shall Be Darkness (astounding science-fiction, Feb-ruary, 1942), as well as a penchant for Scottish ballads, played on a Martian harp, to Venusian melodies.

  On her mother's side, her grandfather was a Methodist minister and on her father's side a medical practitioner. Her father was a designer and manufacturer of machine tools, a vocation still followed in Indianapolis by her only brother, who in his trade has kept pace with the complexity of technological demands that seem to be science fiction come to life.

  Illness plagued what would otherwise have been a very happy childhood, interrupting her schooling so drastically on several occasions that private tutoring was necessary. Poor health continued through her teen years, curtailing her social life and forcing her to turn to books for pleasure and to create her private dream worlds on paper.

  A dramatically attractive brunette of average height, Catherine, with improved health, was entered at Indiana Uni-versity and found herself popular with the men. Formal dances were her favorite type of date and a chow mein dinner the epitome of culinary delight. Boys of that period must have found her, as Forrest J. Ackerman, a frequent correspondent and one-time collaborator, expressed it: "Catherine the Great, toast of weird tales, is two persons! One, an austere, introspective, enigmatic woman; the other, a charming, disarming, gay young girl."

  The worsening economics of the depression forced her out of college after only a year and a half, and in 1930, she went to work as a secretary in an Indianapolis bank. After closing hours, she would sit on a balcony overlooking the main floor, undisturbed in the quiet solemnity of the institution, and write fiction. Her first professional try was aimed at amazing stories, according to a report in Weird Whisperings (a news column by Mort Weisinger and Julius Schwartz) in the Sep-tember, 1934, issue of the fantasy fan, and was rejected by editor T. O'Conor Sloane. They reported that she agreed the piece deserved to be turned down and went into her archives and was never seen again.

  Northwest Smith, the famous character of Shambleau, first took form in her mind as a western gunman in a ranch called the Bar-Nothing. She reports that an epic poem about North-west Smith as a space ranger was written even before the first story and it opened with the lines:

  Northwest Smith was a hard-boiled guy

  With an iron fist and a roving eye-----That, too, seems to have been filed in limbo, though there is a possibility that snatches of poetry that have appeared in Northwest Smith stories might be excerpts from that ballad. The passing years have blurred Moore's recollections of the history of the first Northwest Smith story, Shambleau. However, there was an early report so precise in Mortimer Weisinger's The Ether Vibrates column (fantasy magazine, September, 1934) that it must be seriously considered. It read: "C. L. Moore first submitted her 'Northwest' Smith stories to wonder stories on June 8, 1933. They were rejected six days later—only because of their weird theme."

  She was only 22 when Farnsworth Wright accepted and published Shambleau. The finished craftsmanship of that first story leaves little reason to doubt her claim that fifteen years of continuous writing for her own pleasure developed the artistry which made her an instantaneous success. Moore recalls that Farnsworth Wright rejected only one story of hers, the second submission. This may have been Werewoman, a Northwest Smith story that has never ap-peared in a professional magazine. It was published in the Winter, 1938-39, issue of leaves, a mimeographed fan mag-azine edited and stenciled by R. H. Barlow, a youthful poet best known as an acolyte of H. P. Lovecraft. Only sixty copies were run off by The Futile Press of Lakeport, California. Unlike the other Northwest Smith stories, it is neither science fiction nor science-fantasy, but an outright weird-fantasy set in a never-never land. Here, a wounded North-west Smith, on an unnamed world, fleeing from unspecified assailants, is surrounded by a pack of female werewolves. The wolf leader feels an affinity of spirit with him and saves him from death at the hands of her pack. In episodes of sheer dream fantasy they range tunelessly through a valley where a forgotten civilization and people, bound by an ancient curse, still carry on a ghostlike existence. Northwest Smith destroys a gravestone from which emanate the vapors that hold the valley in thrall and returns to the real world, an enigma to a group of men who find him.

  Actually the writing of the story is excellent, its weaknesses being in the inadequate plot and the fact that it is completely out of the pattern of the Northwest Smith series.

  The second published Northwest Smith story, Black Thirst, appearing in the April, 1934, weird tales, delineated the special qualities of the lead character even more sharply than Shambleau. His reactions to the menace of the Minga castle on Venus, where girls are selectively bred for their beauty, and his conviction that his ray blaster will take care of anything supernatural—a belief which is justified as he eventually suc-ceeds in destroying Alendar, last of an ancient race that feeds on beauty—clearly illuminate his special qualities for the reader. A hint that the author might be a woman is dropped when Alendar t
urns to Northwest Smith and says: "I realized then how long it had been since I tasted the beauty of man. It is so rare, so different from female beauty, that I had all but forgotten it existed. And you have it, very subtly, in a raw, harsh way . . . behind your animal shell of self-preserva-tion are depths of that force and strength which nourish the roots of male beauty."

  Scarlet Dream, which followed (weird tales, May, 1934), is really a dream fantasy, but its tableau of a land where the grass sucks vampirelike at the feet of those who walk on it; where the only food is a liquid which tastes of blood, drunk from spigots in a temple; and the only purpose of the people is to wait for the interdimensional horror who controls the bizarre place to come and feed on them, make it one of the most memorable stories in the series.

  Dust of Gods (August, 1934, weird tales) swings the pendulum back toward a purer form of science fiction as Northwest Smith and his Venusian friend Yarol search Mar-tian labyrinths to uncover the secrets of ancient "gods," who fled to Mars when their world exploded.

  All but the latter tale scored first place with the readers of weird tales in competition with superb works by Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, E. Hoffman Price, Jack Williamson, Frank Belknap Long, and Edmond Hamilton, forcing Farnsworth Wright to raise his sights in his blurb for The Black God's Kiss (weird tales, October, 1934) and rank her with "Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen and H. P. Lovecraft."

  The Black God's Kiss introduced Jirel of Joiry, a female warrior queen and spitfire of the fifteenth century, who, when captured and humbled by the conqueror Guillaume, enters a land of horror in another dimension to kiss a black image and, passing that kiss on to Guillaume, causes his death in revenge. As she views his body, she realizes that "the heady violence" that had possessed her every time she thought of him was inspired by love and not hate, and in exacting her revenge she has paid a bitter fee. In its own way, the story is as effective as any one of the Northwest Smith stories. Moore's ability at characterization launched this new character in a parallel series with North-west Smith and one almost as popular.

  C. L. Moore's introduction to the science-fiction magazines was upon the invitation of the brilliant young editor, F. Orlin Tremaine, who had taken over astounding stories and in a single year raised it to leadership in its field. He raided the other magazines for their best authors and had already bor-rowed from weird tales Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, Howard Wandrei, and Donald Wandrei. Eventually he would get H. P. Lovecraft, too, but for now the presentation of Bright Illusion, a novelette by C. L. Moore in the October, 1934, issue of his magazine was quite a coup.

  In Bright Illusion, an Earthman is whisked to another world by a powerful intelligence to overthrow a competing entity which has set itself up as a god. To permit the Earthman to function, his mind is clouded by an illusion which makes the creatures and structures of this world ap-pear in forms familiar to him. He falls in love with an alien counterpart of a female, which love is mutually sustained even when both are aware of their true forms. Eventually they choose death as the only way out of their hopeless situation. Science-fantasy, rather than science fiction, the story nonetheless appealed to the readership of astounding stories strongly enough to establish a new reputation for the author in that magazine. In the next few years, Greater Glories and Tryst in Time, tales of a similar stripe, found high favor with the readers. The literary triumphs also continued in weird tales as C. L. Moore sent Northwest Smith to pit his courage and gun against the soul-challenging entities of the near planets, while Jirel of Joiry, with a spirit of unquenchable fire, jousted with the supernatural terrors of man's emergence from the dark ages. The procession of stories— Black God's Shadow, Julhi, Jirel Meets Magic, and The Cold Gray God —were won-drously woven literary tapestries, but there were also weak-nesses. The climax of each story found Northwest Smith or Jirel of Joiry in the formless haze of spiritual battle with the un-known. The plot situations were rarely solved by a logical sequence of events, but instead by a burst of rhetorical hypnotism. A story that began as logical science fiction would be permitted to lapse into fantasy as an easy way out of a difficult situation. A story that began as an outright fantasy would be buttressed by science when the

  "willing suspension of disbelief" could no longer be sustained.

  The battle was always against evil, but the standard of light was championed by a hero and a heroine who were themselves stained with the sins of humanity. For this hon-esty in characterization, a great deal could be forgiven.

  One Jirel of Joiry story, The Dark Land (weird tales, January, 1936), was illustrated by C. L. Moore herself. Ostensibly showing Pav of Romne, prince of darkness who desires Jirel for his queen, the drawing actually was made many years previous to the writing of The Dark Land and once served as the inspiration for the gallant, dead Guillaume of The Black God's Kiss.

  Romance came often to Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry, and it was always a very strange and unusual romance. Now, something of a storybook nature was to happen to C. L. Moore. The March, 1936, weird tales carried a shocker of a tale, The Graveyard Rats by a science-fiction fan named Henry Kuttner. Kuttner greatly admired the work of Moore but, shy by nature, did not possess the courage to strike up a correspondence. H. P. Lovecraft's request that he return some books to Moore after reading them gave him the excuse he needed, so he sent a letter to weird tales to be forwarded to Mr. C. L. Moore. The reply from Miss Catherine Moore was a tremendous surprise to him. A native of Los Angeles, Kuttner was then living in New York to further his ambition of becoming a full-time writer, but made frequent trips by car to the West Coast. They met for the first time in 1938, when Moore came to California on a vacation trip. In all they saw each other about five times in two years, as Henry Kuttner motored back and forth between New York and California, the rest of their courtship being conducted by mail. "His letters were a delight," Moore recalls, "and I. still have all of them." Out of one of these meetings sprang the idea for a collabo-ration, a story in which Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry would be brought together. C. L. Moore had collaborated once before, with Forrest J. Ackerman on Nymph of Dark-ness, a Northwest Smith story published in fantasy maga-zine for April, 1935, and a collector's item today, since it was also illustrated by Moore. In that previous collaboration, Ac-kerman had supplied the idea of an invisible girl who enlists Smith's aid, and Moore had done the writing. In this new collaboration, Moore and Kuttner would share both the plot-ting and the writing. The result appeared as Quest of the Star Stone in the November, 1937, weird tales. Though it won first place in the issue, it was not a very good story, possessing the previous-ly mentioned flaws more glaringly than usual. Through necromancy, a magician brings Northwest Smith and his Venusian friend Yarol back through time to the fifteenth century, to wrest from Jirel a star stone which she wears around her neck. Memorable was the prelude to adventure in which Northwest Smith in a "surprisingly good baritone" expresses the homesickness of his exile by singing The Green Hills of Earth, which begins: Across the seas of darkness

  The good green Earth is bright—

  Oh, star that was my homeland

  Shine down on me tonight....

  and inconclusively ends:

  ... and count the losses worth

  To see across the darkness

  The green hills of Earth.....

  When Robert Heinlein read the story, he never forgot the phrase which became the title of one of his most famous short stories and of a collection, The Green Hills of Earth. C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner hit it off from the start, but it was anything but a whirlwind romance. Henry, in person, scarcely personified Northwest Smith. He was slight of build and ordinary in feature, with a retiring nature. Economically, things were anything but conducive to romance. Henry was only beginning as a writer and the country was in a state of acute depression.

  Nevertheless, every time he traveled between Los Angeles and New York, Henry Kuttner stopped at Indianapolis. C. L. Moore eventually decided that "Northwest Smith
would have been a very boring man to be married to. Henry Kuttner, as his writing must show and his friends could testify, was wonderfully resourceful, perceptive, fresh in his viewpoints and very, very funny. I think it's his humor that most of us remember most vividly. But he also had a quality of quiet strength and discipline that I have sensed in very few other people and for which I have enormous respect on the few occasions I do encounter it. In this area, I suppose, you could find a likeness between the real man and the fictional one." They were married June 7, 1940, in New York and lived in that city about a year before they moved to Laguna Beach, California. When war came, Henry Kuttner, with a heart murmur that kept him from being assigned to overseas duty, entered the Medical Corps and was stationed at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey; Catherine lived at nearby Red Bank from 1942 to 1945.

  Since their first meeting, new C. L. Moore stories had been few and far between. After the collaboration in Quest of the Star Stone, only one more Jirel story appeared, Hellsgarde (weird tales, April, 1939); and a brief fragment, Song in Minor Key, in the fan magazine scienti-snaps (February, 1940), about the return of Northwest Smith to Earth, rang down the curtain on that character. An era was coming to a close for C. L. Moore. There would be some transition stories, but romance for the sake of romance was dead.