Sword and sorcery

Sword and sorcery (S&S), or heroic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. Elements of romance, magic, and the supernatural are also often present. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters. The genre originated from the early-1930s works of Robert E. Howard. While there is a chance example from 1953, Fritz Leiber re-coined the term "sword and sorcery" in the 6 April 1961 issue of the fantasy fanzine Ancalagon, to describe Howard and the stories that were influenced by his works. In parallel with "sword and sorcery", the term "heroic fantasy" is used, although it is a more loosely defined genre.
Sword and sorcery tales eschew overarching themes of "good vs evil" in favor of situational conflicts that often pit morally gray characters against one another to enrich themselves, or to defy tyranny.
Sword and sorcery is grounded in real-world social and societal hierarchies, and is grittier, darker, and more violent, with elements of cosmic, often Lovecraftian creatures that aren't a staple of mainstream fantasy. The main character is often a barbarian with antihero traits.
The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction records a chance example of "sword and sorcery" from 1953, where it appears in a headline of a review of an L. Sprague de Camp novel. American author Fritz Leiber re-coined the term in 1961 in response to a letter from British author Michael Moorcock in the fanzine Amra, demanding a name for the sort of fantasy-adventure story written by Robert E. Howard. Moorcock had initially proposed the term "epic fantasy". Leiber replied in the journal Ancalagon (6 April 1961), suggesting "sword-and-sorcery as a good popular catchphrase for the field". He expanded on this in the July 1961 issue of Amra, commenting:
The term "heroic fantasy" has been used to avoid the garish overtones of "sword and sorcery". This name was coined by L. Sprague de Camp. However, it has also been used to describe a broader range of fantasy, including High fantasy.
Sword and sorcery stories take place in a fictional world where magic exists. The setting can be an Earth in the mythical past or distant future, an imaginary other world or an alien planet. Sometimes sword and sorcery stories are influenced by horror, dark fantasy or science fiction. Sword and sorcery, however, does not seek to give a scientific explanation for miraculous events, unlike actual science fiction. The technological level of most sword and sorcery settings is similar to that of the ancient or medieval periods, with an absence of Firearms and an emphasis on swordplay.
The main character in sword and sorcery stories is usually a powerful warrior who fights against supernatural evil. The typical protagonist is a violent, self-respecting and emotional barbarian who values freedom. The main character often has the characteristics of an antihero. Although the main character mostly behaves heroically, he may ally with an enemy or sacrifice an ally in order to survive. A hero's main weapons are cunning and physical strength. Magic, on the other hand, is usually only used by the villains of the story, who are usually wizards, witches, or supernatural monsters. Most sword and sorcery heroes are masculine male characters, while female characters are usually underdeveloped. A recurring theme in the genre is a damsel in distress. However, some sword and sorcery stories have a female protagonist, and the genre's traditional emphasis on male protagonists has declined since the last decades of the 20th century.
In his introduction to the 1967 Ace edition of Conan the Barbarian, L. Sprague de Camp described the typical sword and sorcery story as:
The circular structure is common in sword and sorcery series: the hero stays forever young and every day is like the first for him. The main character's victory over his enemies is not final, but in the next short story a new threat arises, against which the hero has to fight once again. The world has a wide variety of exciting and exotic locations designed to act as a stage for the main character's exploits. Many sword and sorcery tales have turned into lengthy series of adventures. Their lower stakes and less-than world-threatening dangers make this more plausible than a repetition of the perils of high fantasy. So too does the nature of the heroes; most sword and sorcery protagonists, travellers by nature, find peace after adventure deathly dull.
Sword and sorcery resembles high fantasy, but is darker and more jagged, at times overlapping with dark fantasy. The scale of the struggles depicted is smaller, and the main character usually pursues personal gain, such as wealth or love. The opposition between good and evil characteristic of fantasy also exists in sword and sorcery literature, but it is less absolute and the events often take place in a morally gray area. These features are especially emphasized in newer works of the genre. The stories are fast-paced and action-oriented, with lots of violent fight scenes. Sword and sorcery is by nature a light and escapist genre whose main purpose is to entertain the reader. There is usually no deep message or social statements in the works of this genre.
It is typical for the topics that sword and sorcery deals with to be relatively limited. The genre has sometimes been criticized for excessive violence, misogyny and even fascist attitudes.
In his introduction to the reference Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers by L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter notes that the heritage of sword and sorcery is illustrious, and can be traced back to mythology, including the labors of Hercules, as well as to classical epics such as Homer's Odyssey, the Norse sagas, and Arthurian legend.
It also has been influenced by historical fiction. For instance, the work of Sir Walter Scott was influenced by Scottish folklore and ballads. But few of Scott's stories contain fantastic elements; in most, the appearance of such is explained away. Its themes of adventure in a strange society were influenced by adventures set in foreign lands by Sir H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Haggard's works, such as King Solomon's Mines (1885) and She: A History of Adventure (1887) included many fantastic elements. Some of Haggard's characters, such as Umslopogaas, an axe-wielding Zulu warrior who encountered supernatural phenomena and loved to fight, bore similarities to sword and sorcery heroes. Haggard also wrote Eric Brighteyes (1891), a violent historical novel based on the Icelandic Sagas; some writers, (such as David Pringle) have stated that Eric Brighteyes resembles a modern sword and sorcery novel.
Sword and sorcery's immediate progenitors are the swashbuckling tales of Alexandre Dumas, père (The Three Musketeers (1844), etc.), Rafael Sabatini (Scaramouche (1921), etc.) and their pulp magazine imitators, such as Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, and H. Bedford-Jones, who all influenced Howard. Mundy in particular, proved influential: early sword and sorcery writers such as Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore and Fritz Leiber were admirers of Mundy's fiction. However, these historical "swashbucklers" lack the supernatural element (even though Dumas' fiction contained many fantasy tropes) which defines the genre.
Another influence was early fantasy fiction. This type of fiction includes the short stories of Lord Dunsany's such as "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" (1910) and "The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller" (1911). These works of Dunsany's feature warriors who clash with monsters and wizards in realms of Dunsany's creation. The Worm Ouroboros (1922) by E. R. Eddison, a heroic romance written in a mock-archaic style, was an inspiration to later writers of sword and sorcery such as Fritz Leiber. The "Poictesme" novels of James Branch Cabell, such as Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice (1919), have been cited as a stimulus to early sword and sorcery writing. Cabell's novels depict picaresque exploits in imaginary lands, and were an influence on Leiber and Jack Vance. A. Merritt's novels The Ship of Ishtar (1924) and Dwellers in the Mirage (1932) have also been cited as influences on sword and sorcery, as they feature men from the then-contemporary world being drawn into dangerous adventures involving swordplay and magic. All these authors influenced sword and sorcery for the plots, characters, and landscapes used.
Also, many early sword and sorcery writers, such as Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, were influenced by the Middle Eastern tales of the Arabian Nights, whose stories of magical monsters and evil sorcerers were an influence on the genre-to-be.
Sword and sorcery's frequent depictions of smoky taverns and fetid back alleys draw upon the picaresque genre; for example, Rachel Bingham notes that Fritz Leiber's city of Lankhmar bears considerable similarity to 16th century Seville as depicted in Miguel de Cervantes' tale "Rinconete y Cortadillo".
Sword and sorcery proper only truly began in the pulp fantasy magazines, where it emerged from "weird fiction". The magazine Weird Tales, which published Howard's Conan stories and C. L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry tales, as well as key influences like H. P. Lovecraft and Smith, was especially important. Lovecraft's fiction (especially his "Dream Cycle" of Dunsany-inspired fantasy stories) was a source of inspiration for the first generation of sword and sorcery writers.
The 1929 Weird Tales story "The Shadow Kingdom" by Robert E. Howard is often regarded as the first true "sword and sorcery" tale, because it pits a heroic warrior (Kull of Atlantis) against supernatural evil, in an imaginary world of the writer's devising.
Howard published only three stories featuring Kull in Weird Tales. He revised an unsold Kull story, "By This Axe I Rule!" into "The Phoenix on the Sword", which introduced a new character, Conan the Barbarian. When "The Phoenix on the Sword" was published in 1932, it proved popular with the Weird Tales readers, and Howard wrote more tales of Conan, of which 17 were published in the magazine.
The success of Howard's work encouraged other Weird Tales writers to create similar tales of adventure in imagined lands. Clark Ashton Smith wrote his tales of the Hyperborean cycle and Zothique for Weird Tales in the 1930s. These stories revolved around the exploits of warriors and sorcerers in lands of the remote past or remote future, and often had downbeat endings. C. L. Moore, inspired by Howard, Smith and H. P. Lovecraft, created the Jirel of Joiry stories for Weird Tales, which brought in the first sword and sorcery heroine. Moore's future husband Henry Kuttner created Elak of Atlantis, a Howard-inspired warrior hero, for Weird Tales in 1938.
Following a change of ownership in 1940, Weird Tales ceased to publish sword and sorcery stories. However, the pulp magazine Unknown Worlds continued to publish sword and sorcery fiction by Fritz Leiber and Norvell W. Page. Leiber's stories revolved around a duo of heroes called Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and dealt with their adventures in the world of Nehwon ("No-When" backwards). Leiber's stories featured more emphasis on characterisation and humour than previous sword and sorcery fiction, and his characters became popular with Unknown's readers. Page's sword and sorcery tales centred on Prester John, a Howard-inspired gladiator adventurer, whose exploits took place in Central Asia in the first century CE.
With the diminution of pulp magazine sales in the late 1940s, the focus of sword and sorcery shifted to small-press books. Arkham House published collections by Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber that included some of their sword and sorcery work. Writer Jack Vance published the book The Dying Earth in 1950. The Dying Earth described the adventures of rogues and wizards on a decadent far-future Earth, where magic had replaced science.
In the 1960s, American paperback publisher Lancer Books began to reissue Robert E. Howard's Conan stories in paperback, with cover illustrations by artist Frank Frazetta. These editions became surprise bestsellers, selling millions of copies to a largely young readership. The commercial success of the Conan books encouraged other publishers to put out new and reprinted books in the style of Howard's work.
From the 1960s until the 1980s, under the guiding force of Carter, a select group of writers formed the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA) to promote and enlarge the sword and sorcery genre. From 1973 to 1981, five anthologies featuring short works by SAGA members were published. Edited by Carter, these were collectively known as Flashing Swords!. Because of these and other anthologies, such as the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, his own fiction, and his criticism, Carter is considered one of the most important popularizers of genre fantasy in general, and S&S in particular.
Despite such authors' efforts, some critics use sword and sorcery as a dismissive or pejorative term. During the 1980s, influenced by the success of the 1982 feature film Conan the Barbarian, many fantasy films, some cheaply made, were released in a subgenre that would be called "sword and sorcery".
Examples of sword and sorcery films include The Beastmaster (1982), The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982), Hercules (1983), a Conan sequel, Conan the Destroyer (1984), Ladyhawke (1985) and Red Sonja (1985), which, like the Conan films, also starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. The sword and sorcery boom is said to have begun with Hawk the Slayer (1980). The sword and planet film Masters of the Universe (1987) contains elements of sword and sorcery and has been called a Conan hybrid.
Clash of the Titans (1981), Excalibur (1981) and Krull (1983) are characterised as sword and sorcery films by some writers, but this is disputed by Butler. Star Wars (1977) was influenced by sword and sorcery, and in turn influenced Legend of the Eight Samurai (1983), a Japanese sword and sorcery style film.
After the cinema and literary boom of the early to mid-1980s, sword and sorcery once again dropped out of favor, with epic fantasy largely taking its place in the fantasy genre. There was, though, another resurgence in sword and sorcery at the end of the 20th century. Sometimes called the "new" or "literary" sword and sorcery, this development places emphasis on literary technique, and draws from epic fantasy and other genres to broaden the genre's typical scope. Stories may feature the wide-ranging struggles of national or world-spanning concerns common to high fantasy, but told from the point of view of characters more common to S&S, and with the sense of adventure common to the latter. Writers associated with this include Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie, and Scott Lynch, magazines such as Black Gate and the ezines Flashing Swords (not to be confused with the Lin Carter anthologies), and Beneath Ceaseless Skies publish short fiction in the style. According to the literary critic Higashi Masao regarding Japanese works Guin Saga and Sorcerous Stabber Orphen, they were initially planned by their authors as novels that could be classified as belonging to the European sword and sorcery subgenre but had various major elements that distanced themselves from the typical novels in the genre.
In the 1990s, sword and sorcery boomed in popularity in Great Britain and other parts of the world.
Despite the importance of C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Andre Norton, and other female authors, as well as Moore's early heroine, sword and sorcery has been characterized as having a masculine bias. Female characters were generally distressed damsels to be rescued or protected, or otherwise served as a reward for a male hero's adventures. Women who had adventures of their own often did so to counter the threat of rape or to gain revenge for same. Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress anthology series (1984 onwards) tried the reverse, encouraging female writers and protagonists. The stories feature skillful swordswomen and powerful sorceresses working from a variety of motives.
Jessica Amanda Salmonson similarly sought to broaden the range of roles for female characters in sword and sorcery through her own stories and through editing the World Fantasy Award-winning Amazons (1979) and Amazons II (1982) anthologies; both drew on real and folkloric female warriors, often from areas outside of Europe.
Early sword and sorcery writer Robert E. Howard had espoused feminist views in his personal and professional life. He wrote to his friends and associates defending the achievements and capabilities of women. Strong female characters in Howard's works of fiction include Dark Agnes de Chastillon (first appearing in "Sword Woman", circa 1932–34), the early modern pirate Helen Tavrel ("The Isle of Pirates' Doom", 1928), as well as two pirates and Conan the Barbarian supporting characters, Bêlit ("Queen of the Black Coast", 1934), and Valeria of the Red Brotherhood ("Red Nails", 1936).
Introduced as the co-star in a non-fantasy historical story by Howard entitled "The Shadow of the Vulture", Red Sonya of Rogatino later inspired a fantasy heroine named Red Sonja, who first appeared in the comic book series Conan the Barbarian written by Roy Thomas and illustrated by Barry Windsor-Smith. Red Sonja got her own comic book title and eventually a series of novels by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney, as well as Richard Fleischer's film adaptation in 1985.