Happy Birthday, Catherine: an appreciation of Jirel & C. L. Moore
My first introduction to Jirel of Joiry was "Jirel Meets Magic", first story in the Jirel of Joiry compilation from Ace, and it was love at first paragraph. Jirel was, as is her custom, riding toward the biggest, baddest evildoer in the land, and before she leaves her castle she curses her soldiers for cowards (again as is often her custom). As their leader she rides where they will not and cuts through anything foolish enough to stand in her way.
Moore's prose has a poetic cadence and a stunning unselfconsciousness, and I knew from the first page that I had found the taproot ancestor of magic-wielding or magic-fighting adventuresses I loved: Tarma and Kethry from Mercedes Lackey's Oathbound stories in particular, or countless other heroines from Marion Zimmer Bradley's many Sword and Sorceress volumes.
What's so remarkable about Jirel even today is her sheer limitnessness, the elemental force of her femininity and human will. She seems not to know the first thing about apologizing, for herself or anything else: when thwarted she's prone to bursting into tears, immediately before tearing the object in her way into bloody strips. How can you not fall in love?
C. L. Moore was born in 1911 and made her first professional sale in 1933, a Northwest Smith story called "Shambleau" to Weird Tales. (I haven't read the Northwest Smith stories yet, though justinhowe talks about them at the slightest opportunity. I'm almost afraid of running out of Moore's work. I don't have any other excuse.) Jirel appeared just about a year later in the same magazine. In 1936 she met her future husband and writing partner, Henry Kuttner -- whose work is also stunning and worth digging up, and who initially thought she was a dude. They married in 1940, and after Henry died in 1958, Catherine allegedly never wrote again, which is one of the saddest romantic stories I know. Together they wrote the Science Fiction Hall of Fame award-winning "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett.
So today marks the Moore centennial. Do yourself a favor and look up some of her work! "Quest of the Starstone", a Jirel story written with Kuttner, is available here for free in txt format. You can get Jirel of Joiry used on Amazon for $.01 and shipping.
"Quest of the Starstone" begins with a short poem well deserving of the legend:
Jirel of Joiry is riding down with a score of men at her back,
For none is safe in the outer lands from Jirel's outlaw pack;
The vaults of the wizard are over-full, and locked with golden key,
And Jirel says, "If he bath so much, then he shall share with me!"
And fires flame high on the altar fare in the lair of the wizard folk,
And magic crackles and Jirel's name goes whispering through the smoke.
But magic fails in the stronger spell that the Joiry outlaws own:
The splintering crash of a broadsword blade that shivers against the bone,
And blood that bursts through a warlock's teeth can strangle a half-voiced spell
Though it rises hot from the blistering coals on the red-hot floor of Hell!
Moore's prose has a poetic cadence and a stunning unselfconsciousness, and I knew from the first page that I had found the taproot ancestor of magic-wielding or magic-fighting adventuresses I loved: Tarma and Kethry from Mercedes Lackey's Oathbound stories in particular, or countless other heroines from Marion Zimmer Bradley's many Sword and Sorceress volumes.
What's so remarkable about Jirel even today is her sheer limitnessness, the elemental force of her femininity and human will. She seems not to know the first thing about apologizing, for herself or anything else: when thwarted she's prone to bursting into tears, immediately before tearing the object in her way into bloody strips. How can you not fall in love?
C. L. Moore was born in 1911 and made her first professional sale in 1933, a Northwest Smith story called "Shambleau" to Weird Tales. (I haven't read the Northwest Smith stories yet, though justinhowe talks about them at the slightest opportunity. I'm almost afraid of running out of Moore's work. I don't have any other excuse.) Jirel appeared just about a year later in the same magazine. In 1936 she met her future husband and writing partner, Henry Kuttner -- whose work is also stunning and worth digging up, and who initially thought she was a dude. They married in 1940, and after Henry died in 1958, Catherine allegedly never wrote again, which is one of the saddest romantic stories I know. Together they wrote the Science Fiction Hall of Fame award-winning "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett.
So today marks the Moore centennial. Do yourself a favor and look up some of her work! "Quest of the Starstone", a Jirel story written with Kuttner, is available here for free in txt format. You can get Jirel of Joiry used on Amazon for $.01 and shipping.
"Quest of the Starstone" begins with a short poem well deserving of the legend:
Jirel of Joiry is riding down with a score of men at her back,
For none is safe in the outer lands from Jirel's outlaw pack;
The vaults of the wizard are over-full, and locked with golden key,
And Jirel says, "If he bath so much, then he shall share with me!"
And fires flame high on the altar fare in the lair of the wizard folk,
And magic crackles and Jirel's name goes whispering through the smoke.
But magic fails in the stronger spell that the Joiry outlaws own:
The splintering crash of a broadsword blade that shivers against the bone,
And blood that bursts through a warlock's teeth can strangle a half-voiced spell
Though it rises hot from the blistering coals on the red-hot floor of Hell!