Fri 27 Dec 2019
Pulp SF-Horror Stories I’m Reading: C. L. MOORE “Shambleau.”
Posted by Steve under Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading[5] Comments
C. L. MOORE “Shambleau.” Novelette. Northwest Smith #1. First published in Weird tales, November 1833, First reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader #7, edited by Donald A. Wollheim (Avon, softcover, 1948). First collected in Shambleau and Others (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1953).
It begins as a well-constructed space opera should, taking some place in the future, but somehow ineffably combined with the legends of the past:
The story than continues with Northwest Smith rescuing a strange female but still alien creature from a mob intent on destroying her. Once they are both safe, Smith sees her in the passage that hints at even more eroticism to come. This would have been heady stuff back in 1933.
The attraction between Smith and the Shambleau (for that is who she is) continues, until two nights later, as they share living (and sleeping) space, straight from pages of H. P. Lovecraft:
He was beyond wondering, but he realized that. And still it squirmed and lengthened and fell, and she shook it out in a horrible travesty of a woman shaking out her unbound hair — until the unspeakable tangle of it — twisting, writhing, obscenely scarlet — hung to her waist and beyond, and still lengthened, an endless mass of crawling horror that until now, somehow, impossibly, had been hidden under the tight-bound turban. It was like a nest of blind, restless red worms … it was — it was like naked entrails endowed with an unnatural aliveness, terrible beyond words.
Smith lay in the shadows, frozen without and within in a sick numbness that came of utter shock and revulsion.
What comes next I leave to your imagination. But read it yourself, you should. You’ll never forget it. It is difficult to believe that this was C. L. Moore’s first published story. I do not know how long it took SF fans of the day to learn that “C. L.” stood for “Catherine Lucille,” nor what their reaction was wen they did, but I am indeed curious.
December 27th, 2019 at 11:59 am
There were several women SF writers before Moore. Good one, like Leslie F. Stone. So I’m not sure fans were all that put-off by discovering that C. L. Moore was a woman. It’s not like today’s Gamersgate mentality with its toxic and reflective hostility to women.
December 27th, 2019 at 2:42 pm
Except in a very general sense, I’m not all that well versed in the ways of fandom back in the early 30s.
The range of reaction to the revelation that Moore was female, I’m guessing, might have ranged from surprise to shock, to being put out, to use your phrase, beb, to out and out hostility. Or most likely (?) somewhere in between.
December 28th, 2019 at 2:27 pm
Moore’s state of womanhood was revealed in fairly short order. On the whole, everybody was fine with it. HPL and Clark Ashton Smith were huge fans, calling her “Catherine the Great”. Robert E. Howard was also a big fan and the two corresponded near the end of his life.
Moore made it clear several times that she did NOT go with “C.L.” to hide her sex (and, thus, avoid the bogeyman of “sexist reader hostility”). She did it so her employer wouldn’t find out she was moonlighting (and using the company typewriter). Moore had nothing but good to say about her reception by SFF fandom. Leigh Brackett (a friend of Moore’s) said much the same thing about her own experiences.
Author Keith West did a fine job of shattering many of the manufactured myths (most of which originated in the last 30-40yrs by people with an agenda) regarding the participation and reception of women in early SFF in this article:
http://adventuresfantastic.com/the-women-other-women-dont-see/
December 28th, 2019 at 4:30 pm
Thanks for confirming what I suspected was true about C. L, Moore and how her true identity was greeted by fandom at the time. I did not believe she was met by any hostility, but I did not know for sure. I wish I could afford Eric Davin’s book (and thanks also for the link). He really did yeoman work on finding out the facts and making them known.
December 29th, 2019 at 6:50 pm
It would have been a great story if it had only been a one off, but Moore kept going back to Smith and the peculiar mix of Space Opera, Gothick, and Myth and mining it successfully again and again, her haunted Solar System one of the most vivid in the genre.
Leigh Brackett did something similar with her space opera and between them they produced some of the most lyrical and memorable stories and images of the era.