Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" discussion

Short Sorcery:C.L. Moore’s "Shambleau"
by Bill Ward

LINK: https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2021/...



Blurb from Bill Ward:

“And this conflict and knowledge, this mingling of rapture and revulsion all took place in the flashing of a moment while the scarlet worms coiled and crawled upon him, sending deep, obscene tremors of that infinite pleasure into every atom . . . And he could not stir in that slimy, ecstatic embrace—and a weakness was flooding that grew deeper after each succeeding wave of intense delight, and the traitor in his soul strengthened and drowned out the revulsion—and something within him ceased to struggle as he sank wholly into a blazing darkness that was oblivion to all else but that devouring rapture . . .”

A young bank employee decides to use her free time to practice her typing skills – after so many tedious iterations of ‘a quick brown fox’ her mind wanders and she begins to play on the page, quickly describing a scene partially inspired by a poem, establishing a premise for the story that would be her first, and most renowned. The story was “Shambleau,” which debuted in Weird Tales in 1933 and won the young bank employee, writing under the semi-anonymous initialization of her full name of Catherine Lucille Moore, an instant and devoted following. Her subsequent work, both solo and in the powerhouse paring with her future husband Henry Kuttner, would guarantee her inclusion in the ranks of the Grand Masters of genre fiction.