Sword and Sorceress - ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley

   The second great wave of swords & sorcery was in the sixties and seventies making it contemporaneous with great changes sweeping Western culture.  One of those changes was feminism and as in the rest of society it made inroads into even such minor things as S&S.  

   Women had always written S&S, C. L. Moore in particular helping lay its foundations.  Still, it was dominated by men in its creation and its consumption.  That reality led to several explicitly feminist anthologies looking to open wide the doors of something seen by many as a boys-only club.  

   The first was Jessica Amanda Salmonson's "Amazons!" and the second was   Marion Zimmer Bradley's  "Sword and Sorceress".  Salmonson only managed a second volume of "Amazons" but Bradley's spawned a series that ran to nineteen sequels before her death and six more since.

   Unlike Salmonson, Bradley introduces her book not with a call to arms but by informing the reader she could not envision female themed heroic fiction as simply stories that switched "mighty Amazon warrior for a hearty hero".  In fact her introduction to "Sword and Sorceress" reads like a direct response to Salmonson's fiery broadside.  

   First she states she believes no historical basis for any sort of matriarchal or Amazonian societies exists and then she attacks the very idea of the Amazon as an empowering image.  Quoting Abby Kleinbaum, she claims that in most classical stories Amazons were defeated and or raped.  They exist, not as bold women, but instead as some sort of male creation drawn into existence to prove men could conquer them.   

   But why, asks Bradley, is the image so persistent and even popular among women.  It and other cliches exist and lay the basis for much of the woman oriented heroic fantasy submitted to her, so why?  She never comes up with an answer why but I suspect she hoped readers would simply find an answer in the material.  My own belief is that, classical tales aside, the real case is that it is an empowering and artistically inspiring image that allows authors to examine and present women as adventurous and courageous as men.  

Marion Zimmer Bradley

   Another trope she encountered and initially found distasteful was that of rape and revenge.  She actually hoped to include no submissions using it but found herself unable to.  At the outset of heroic fantasy, specifically in C. L. Moore's "Black God's Kiss" the theme was present.  She notes that she had once written that "(in heroic fiction) the seamy underside is always rape".  Her question was, and it's a significant one, what actually happens at story's end when the warrior claims his prize of treasure and the girl?  It's an good example of the sort of insights Salmson, Bradley and all the authors involved in these books were trying to impart to S&S.  In the end she included three such stories in "Sword and Sorceress".      

   Alongside Amazons and rape there are comical episodes, peaceful sorceresses and other things in "Sword and Sorceress".  What binds them together is the simple emphasis on women protagonists.  But Bradley was trying to do something more than just set the stage for female characters.  Her stated goal was to present female-centric S&S that felt real, that addressed both the female and male halves of the world.  Feminist propaganda is as awful as sexist male fiction she warns.  With tales by men as well as women she believed she reached her objective and kept it entertaining.

   Despite her excellent intentions, "Swords and Sorceress" is a surprising disappointment.  There are good, even excellent stories (would it surprise you Charles Saunder's story is one of them?) here but too many that are not.  Bradley's goal is broader and subtler than Salmonson's but the result is a book less exciting than "Amazons!".  Salmonson's punch-to-the-eye attach turned out to be just right for S&S, Bradley's less militant approach not so much.

   "Amazons!"'s authors took the traditionally male virtues of physical strength and courage and adventurousness and applied them to female characters and more often than not it worked.   Perhaps because she started from a less confrontational place, less looking to create warrior women, Bradley let in too much that's not particularly valid even by very wide definition of S&S.  She gives the reader too many stories that are simply general fantasy.  As such they too often lack the narrative drive and excitement that are among S&S chief hallmarks.  

   Eight of the stories qualify as S&S and all save one of the best are among them.  When she lets in the amazons and bold thieves the stories work better than where they're absent.   Both editors sought to bring women in from the roles of damsels in distress, maidens in need of conquering or sidekicks and out to center stage as heroes.  "Amazons!" however is true to the verve and action as well as the darkness of S&S.  Too often the tales in "Sword and Sorceress" are muted in tone and plot.

Phyllis Ann Karr

   That being said, "Sword and Sorceress" opens with the thoroughly respectable "The Garnet and the Glory" by PhyllisAnn Karr.  Her series characters, sorceress Frostflower and warrior Thorn, find themselves drawn into the Old Hills by the unknown and alien sorcerer Dathru.  More intriguing than exciting, "The Garnet and the Glory" features a struggle between differing types of magic and the different methods of fighting Frostflower and Thorn.    

   Glen Cook's "Severed Heads" is set in the faux-Arabian lands of his Dread Empire novels.  A girl is raped by a sorcerer and later he returns to steal the son born of that violent union.  In response she casts off the restrictions of her sex and takes on the skills of a warrior and seeks out her attacker and son.  Written with Cook's usual blunt brutality, "Severed Heads" is one of the better stories in the collection.   

   "Taking Heart" by Stephen L. Burns is one of the funny stories.  Slight and obvious, it's told from the perspective of Raalt.  A thief he's been imprisoned and is facing death for the theft of a jewel of great value, the Heart of Arrmik.  In the seclusion of his cell he is visited by fellow thief Clea who offers to free him for a share of the proceeds from selling the Heart.  He accepts, planning to outwit her at some point and renege on his promise of shared profit. There's no surprise in this story but the constant misperceptions of Raalt are amusing.   

   I wanted to like Emma Bull's "The Rending Dark" more than I did. It was her first professional sale. Two women, the Songsmith Kit and her more martially inclined companion Marya seek a warm bed out of the dark and snow in the town of Sallis. Marya is not a normal woman however. Her left arm is replaced with "lean bone and tendon and long, curving, cruel claws, all black and shining". That night they are forced to confront a secret darkness haunting the town that leaves Marya in fear of her own future. It's a tale with enticing sci-fi intimations but too much left unexplained (and not in a good, intriguing way).   

   Next is the second of Charles R. Saunders great woman warrior Dossouye stories, the first, "Agbewe's Sword", having appeared "Amazons!".  At the end of the first tale, Dossouye was fleeing the ruins of her old life.  At the beginning of the second she is beset by a pair of bandits.  After killing one and allowing the other to escape with his life, Dossouye encounters a strange song singer.  Soon there is love, dark magic and violence delivered in Saunder's usual vivid prose.

   Charles De Lint's"The Valley of the Troll" is another comic story.  Swords-woman Aynber and the insufficiently talented wizard Thorn Hawkwood make an attempt on the treasure of a troll.  There's humorous dialogue, a troll to outwit and bandits. Good stuff but nothing special.

   

Deborah J. Ross

   "Imperatrix" by Deborah J. Ross (written as Deborah Wheeler) has a wizard, and a hired swords-woman with the ability to tame great alien beasts called Weires.  There are strange realms of magic to be traveled by mystic roads and in the background an enemy in the form of the Imperator.  I found the story unclear, the characters less than engaging and the title a spoiler for a secret that isn't really very secret.   

   "Blood of Sorcery" by Jennifer Roberson doesn't work at all.  A prelude to her lengthy "Chronicles of the Cheysuli" series, it's a boring start.  Keely, a shape-changing princess, has been captured by an evil wizard. She has been raped repeatedly with the intent of impregnation.  Possession of their child will allow him to work his demonic magic and take control of the lands.  Tainted by his seed she is stripped of her native abilities but must still find some way to escape her captor.  It only left me sleepy.   

   Pat Murphy's "With Four Lean Hounds" is a fairy tale flavored story.  A young thief named Tarsia learns she might be the lost daughter of the Lady of the Winds, a mighty figure whose power stretches over the lands for both good and ill.  Deciding to seek the Lady out, Tarsia falls in with a minstrel she realizes has the same goal.  Really not S&S, it's an adequate story with an enjoyable heroine.  The ending's a little unclear but it works well enough.   The same can't be said for the next story.  

   Anodea Judith's "House in the Forest" is a dull, pointless story of a healer and a goddess.  It's inclusion is a mystery.

Diana L. Paxson

   The rape-revenge theme reaches its apex in Diana L. Paxson's "Sword of Yraine".  A group of girls, about to be dedicated to various goddesses, are captured by a group of bandits who invade the shrine where they live.  One of the girls is Shanna, daughter of a nobleman and a skilled if untested swords-woman. When the bandits decide to rape their prisoners Shanna sees it as her duty to free her comrades.  Despite her training, Shanna's less than bloodthirsty reactions are believably human.There is a brutality to the bandits' assault absent from Cook's or Roberson's stories and it's terrifying.   Not especially S&S but easily one of the best written stories in the collection.   

   Described in its introduction as a tall tale, Michael Ward's "Daton and the Dead Things" is delivered in colorful and snarky tones.  It is my favorite of the comical stories.  An adventurer in search of her runaway companion chases him to a ruined city and runs up against a very logically and literally minded cyclops.  It's one of the clearest S&S stories in the book.   

   Janet Fox, another alumni of "Amazons!", turns up here with "Gate of the Damned".  Swords-woman Scorpia falls in with a crusade being led by Baucis, King of Thurgia.  The king aims to free the demon ruled lands lying beyond the town of Abzu Rii, also known as the Gate of the Damned. A central focus of the story is Scorpia's relationship with the mercenary captain Telis, rooted in the loneliness of life on the road and an intimacy with death and violence.  There is also beastmen, battle and an ancient, sorcerous queen, so good stuff.   

   The longest story in the book is Robin W. Bailey's "Child of Orcus".  Set during the reign of Roman emperor Claudius, ex-gladiator Diana serves his wife, Messalina.  Diana is sent to investigate rumors of a cult of Orcus, god of death, that has supposedly discovered the secret of immortality.  Diana does indeed discover the cult and the nature of its secret.  Ultimately she ends up waging several bets with Orcus himself.  I didn't love the story but Diana's final action did make me love her.

   "Things Come in Threes" by Dorothy J. Heydt is ostensibly a humorous short-short tale but I wasn't able to tell.  It's a disappointing end to a book that rarely rises above the average.

   "Sword and Sorceress" is nothing more than an average anthology of S&S.  Too often, like in "Blood of Sorcery" or "House in the Forest" the stories lie flat and lifeless on the pages.  There are too fairly generic duos like in "The Rending Dark" who come upon a monster and have kill it.  The comic stories are at least funny but they're all pretty much one-note tales with nothing else.  Above all, S&S needs to be exciting and a lot of these stories just aren't.

   I've read elsewhere there was a dearth of stories for Bradley to choose from but that changed with the second volume in the series.  I'll probably give that one a chance down the line but I can't really recommend this one.  The highlights are easily "Gimmile's Song" and "Severed Heads" and both are available in anthologies you should own already.  I know this book was important in sounding the call for a new approach to S&S but it's just not that good.  Of course it's available cheap and any completist should get one anyway.

Amazons! - ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson

"they came astride gray horses dappled with sun

and their hair flew behind them"

  from "Amazons" by Melanie Kaye

   In 1979, during the heady days of second-wave feminism, Jessica Amanda Salmonson created "Amazons!", a collection of original (with one important exception) heroic fantasy stories staring women warriors.  It's clearly one of the first works like it in the genre and over thirty years on it holds up very well.  It's a mix of well established authors, up and coming ones and ones who never wrote again, some were young and some were much older.  That variety helped create a book with very distinct voices with each author having clear things they wanted to say in response to Salmonson's story call.

   Salmonson opens the book with a lengthy foreword reviewing the real and mythological history of the amazon.  She describes numerous historical fighting women, from ancient legends to Vietnam's Trung sisters to disguised women in Napoleon's and American Civil War armies to WW II Soviet pilot Maj. Tamara Aleksandrovna.  While recognizing the danger of interpreting myth as fact, she does believe the wealth of such stories and the vast diversity of societies and cultures over the ages implies at least  the possibility of more matriarchal ones having existed.
   All that being said, she makes it clear the primary purpose of "Amazons!" is entertainment.  However, she writes, "...if we are the product of our myths, the ways we change our myths today will change the kinds of people we become tomorrow".   I don't know how much I believe that to be true but I don't disagree with the sentiment.  S&S, she believed, to date had suffered from offensive to non-existent portrayals of women.  By "taking up sword and shield" in male ruled worlds the heroes of "Amazons!" can been seen as revolutionary.  It's a bold statement for an editor to make for her own collection but as it's a strong and successful anthology I won't argue too much.
   Salmonson specifically set out to curate and anthology of women warrior tales and that's pretty much what you get.  Of the thirteen stories, ten are straight up fantasy.  Among them are some fairly important works, introducing several series characters with one winning awards.  Not that it needs repeating (but of course  I'll do it because I'm a blabbermouth), the seventies really were the heyday of the field.  

   Salmonson's foreword is actually preceded by the full poem I've quoted at the beginning.  By poet Melanie Kaye, it describes the call to action and adventure being raised to women open to hear it by one who's heard it.  Most of the "Amazons!" authors must have heard that same call in their lives deep in their hearts because most wrote not just straight fantasy stories but outright S&S. 

   "Amazons!" begins with "The Dreamstone" by C. J. Cherryh.  It's the first story in her Ealdwood series.  I've read tons of Cherryh's distinctive science fiction but this story of a fairy woman's dark confrontation with the iron armed world of man was my first taste of her fantasy work.  There's a strong Celtic flavor to the story.  Like her science fiction it has has sharp edges and doesn't shy away from pain and loss.   Present also is Cherryh's incredible talent at creating distinctly non-human characters.

   "The Wolves of Nakesht" by Janrae Frank.  Her first published story, it introduces the long running character, Chimquar the Lionhawk.  Chimquar is an amazon traveling as a man in land where women warriors are unknown and forbidden.  Self-exiled from her homeland she is traveling with two young youths and seeking her sister and a way home.   Frank's story moves along swiftly and violently and provides a clear picture of Chimquar's and her world's history.  Frank has more stories of Chimquar in collection and I'm tempted to find a copy of it at some point.

  T. J. Morgan's "Woman of the Waste" can be classified as a rape-revenge story.  Shunned by her people before and raped by invaders after the attack on and conquest of her town, Ellide escapes to the snow covered plains.  There she encounters the largely abandoned goddess of her people and is empowered to return to home.  Even reduced to a literary device rape is a potent subject to work a story around.  Here, presented in thin memories it seems robbed of its strength.  As such the story feels weak and not as substantial as it might have been.

   The only not-quite-original story in the book is "The Death of Augusta" is by Emily Bronte and edited together by the late Joanna Russ.  It's an excerpt from the poetic tales of imaginary kingdoms and their rulers created by the Bronte siblings.   "The Death of Augusta" is a story of revenge by a woman exiled in her youth against the cruel Queen who sent her away and whom she once loved.  It suffers from being only fragments of something that was once whole and complete. 

   Next is "Morrien's Bitch" by Janet Fox.   It's a fun story of a hardship toughened thief manipulating an army and its commanders to get the rewards and vengeance she wants.  In some ways the slightest story in the collection but it's thoroughly enjoyable.

   One of the book's highlights is "Agbewe's Sword", Charles R. Saunders' first Dossouye story.  As presented here, Dossouye's adventure takes place in the Nyumbai setting of Imaro, something Saunders would change later when he re-released the story as the first part of the "Dossouye" fix-up.  Dossouye's a member of a the corps of women warriors of the kingdom of Abomey.  Her homeland beset by soldiers and strong magic from the kingdom of Ashanti, Dossouye is sent by her king to retrieve the weapon of the title.

   "Agbewe's Sword" presents an almost innocent character who comes to realize she is caught up in unexpected questions of politics and beliefs.  Forced to confront these Dossouye ends her introductory story on the road to a different life.   

   Of note is Salmonson's introduction to the story.  She writes she never planned "Amazons!" to be a women-only collections by many of the stories by male writers featured amazons killing men and babies and seeming to hold their swords outwards from their crotches.  If not they too often contained comical, ineffectual or bumbling  protagonists.  Saunders alone proved able to do that.

   There are several non-traditional heroic fantasy stories in "Amazons!" and, unfortunately, I found none of them very successful.  Salmonson, in her introduction, makes a good argument for expanding the range of heroic fiction and its need to grow as science fiction outgrew the Doc Smith for exampled.  "Jane Saint's Travails (Part One)" written by Josephine Saxton is about a woman condemned to death by drowning for some sort of treason.  During her execution she is translated to a fantastic world wherein she hopes to find and rescue her daughters.

   Saxton appears to be making some wider statement about the suppression of women and their ways - "(the Bible) a book biased to half the world must be about half rubbish".  It's just never clear enough or presented in such a way that I didn't think I might not have been better off reading a non-fiction essay on the subject.  In the end she's returned to the waking-world, stripped of disabling romantic notions and "understanding a great deal less than...before, but with great futures stirring within".  I suspect there's something to calling the character Jane Saint and her having the same initials as her creator but I think I must have missed some greater meaning intended by Saxton.

   Margaret St. Clair's  legend of desire and regret, "The Sorrow of Witches" is the first story to present a woman's sexual desire in the anthology.  For all the Brundage covers and comments about wenching, mature sexuality and love has taken a backseat to manly action for much of the genre's history even when appropriate.  Couched in a removed style as if recounting a well known legend of the necromancer queen Morganor and her lust for a soldier named Llwdres.  His indifference to Morganor, a powerful woman always accustomed to being given what she desires, leads her to commit horrible acts.  Those acts in turn cause her to use her dark magics to bring about a reunion with Llwdres finally bringing about his reciprocated desire and even love until politics intrude.  In the end Morganor is forced to make terrible decisions.

   The story is gloomy and there is something spiritually disfiguring about the actions Morganor takes.  St. Clair started publishing in the forties and though written many years later, and perhaps because of that, this story  captures the darkness I attach to much of the S&S from the first bloom of the genre.

   "Falcon Blood" by Andre Norton is a part of the vast tapestry of stories and novels making up Witch World.  Tanree, a member of the sexually equal, ship-sailing Sulcarfolk is forced into an alliance with an unnamed Falconer following the wreck of the Kast-Boar.  I have only dipped a toe (a very happy toe) into the vast waters of Witch World.  The Falconers are a strange, off-putting patriarchal legion of mercenaries bonded to great falcons.  They live apart from their women, only coming out of their mountain keeps to their purdah-villages once a year for procreation.  They are one of several, iconic residents of Norton's world.   In "Falcon Blood" the ancient cultural barriers imposed on themselves by the Falconers are explained and thinned.  It might have been the second or third Witch World story I read and I loved it then and still do.   

   "The Rape Patrol" by Michele Belling is another of the "experimental" stories seeking to expand the boundaries of the genre.  Unfortunately it is so outside them it fails in that respect.  Another failure, and this is not intrinsic to the story but to our changed times, is its subject, rape, and how it is approached.

  Salmonson writes that the story was recommended to her by Joanna Russ but she warned her it was "too unsettling to the the status quo to find an easy market".  As it concerns a squadron of modern-day hunters of rapists and their decidedly violent choices I guess that might be possible but it seems hard to imagine.  I admit that might be a limitation of my own age and perceptions.  Maybe it was outrageous three decades ago.  That aside, I didn't dislike the story, in fact there's something viscerally attractive about the characters and their deeds.  However, even with one explicitly fantastic element, it feels incredibly out of place in the context of a book with a cover caption reading "High adventure in heroic fiction".

   "Bones for Dulath" is Megan Lindholm's first published fantasy story and the first Ki and Vandien story.  I've been meaning to read the Ki and Vandien novels for some time (okay, I've been meaning to read LOTS of books for sometimes) and this story has reinvigorated that desire.  It's not an especially exciting story but Ki's voice and the easy camaraderie between the two feels real and comfortable.  Ki and Vandien find themselves face to face with a strange, dangerous mountain creature and a town of people who've come to see it as a god.  I've read a few of Lindholm's novels under the Robin Hobb name and enjoyed them but they're more mainline fantasy than this good slice of S&S.

   Second to last is the inestimable Tanith Lee's "Northern Chess".  It's a short bit of adventure about how the woman warrior Jasiel came upon an army besieging a dead alchemist's last remaining stronghold.  By dint of some unknown and baleful magic the fortress has remained inviolate and has killed most of the knights and soldiers who have tried to overwhelm it.  Jasiel, following confrontations, generated by chauvinism, with the commanders of the army, is forced by her own feelings of personal honor to try her hand at defeating the castle and its defenses.  At the end "Northern Chess" is a funny, very feminist joke that sticks a splendid little barb in the edifice housing too much S&S.  

   The closing story of "Amazons!" is " The Woman Who Loved the Moon" by Elizabeth A. Lynn which tied for the World Fantasy Award for short fiction in 1980.  It is presented as a legend long told and being retold again to the reader.  Three powerful warrior sisters are confronted by an even more powerful woman warrior.  For claims about the sisters' beauty in comparison to the Moon she brings death and anguish to them over two consecutive years.  The third of the sisters finally undertakes an arduous journey of vengeance and encounters love instead.  Only the second story to make romantic or sexual feelings a part of its plot, it is also the only one with a gay character.  Like the rest of the book it doesn't feel particularly groundbreaking today, but it must have been like a loud kick at the door of a genre that does have a history of at least a noticeable reactionary component.  The gay aspect (I can't think of a nimbler way to put that) 

isn't a gratuitous bit of soap box preaching but an important and integral story/character element.  I don't love the story, but more than "The Rape Patrol" or "Jane Saint's Travails (Part One)", this is a boundary shoving story that still remains true to the precepts of S&S.

   It really is hard for me to say how important this book was at the time and to the ongoing development of S&S.  By which I mean I just don't know.  I would suspect in field that was, and still is clearly, dominated by male writers it was an exciting development for women who loved S&S but rarely saw themselves on its pages. For writers clearly bursting with ideas and characters it offered a market and a book published by the stalwart DAW Books, which meant it would be widely distributed.  

   For any fan of S&S I suspect they would have been at least curious.  Were they expecting female versions of the worst tropes of male genre characters?  Were they worried about it being nothing but a bunch of lesbian castrators?  If so I hope they were happily surprised by the absence of anyone like that and instead an array of amazons from protectors to mercenaries to revenge seekers but none who were just men with breasts.  I would love to hear from women writing today about whether they're familiar with the book and if they drew anything from it, particularly if they read it when it first came out.