10 Sword & Sorcery 1960s Firsts

If you missed the last one….

This post is brought to you by the upcoming Swords of Fire 4. Here is the cover that subscribers saw two months ago, but here for the first time. (Subscribing to our newsletter gets you some perks.) Once again we will offer four Sword & Sorcery novellas. I can let slip that this will include a new Sirtago & Poet tale by Jack Mackenzie that is set in a country that resembles Japan as well as a new Bradik the Slayer yarn by M. D. Jackson. G. W. Thomas is dragging his feet but keeps playing with the idea of an Arthan tale…

The 1960s was an exciting decade for Sword & Sorcery, laying down the foundation for the 1970-1980s explosion. It is easy to forget the important firsts during this time of experimentation, when Sword & Sorcery finally received its name. Fritz Leiber dubbed it “Sword & Sorcery” in 1961 through a conversation with Michael Moorcock in the pages of Amra, the heroic fantasy fanzine.

First Anti-Conan

Michael Moorcock enters the genre with “The Dreaming City” (Science Fantasy #47, 1961) in England. This is the story that introduces Elric of Melnibone, a character in reaction to Robert E. Howard’s Conan. Where Conan is strong, Elric is weak, an albino who must use a cursed sword to fuel his adventures. Moorcock based his tale, not on Pulp Fantasy, but on the Gothic novels of the 1790s. For many decades, Moorcock was not a fan of Howard, but has more recently relented. His hatred of J. R. R. Tolkien has not changed. This element of questioning the classics of Fantasy, and its two giants in particular, was a refreshing reboot from the 1960s.

The Jewel in the Skull (1968) introduced another Moorcock S&S hero, Dorian Hawkmoon. This character does not feel as anti-Conan as Elric. At this time the two series were not connected but later Moorcock would tie these two along with the Eternal Champion together as avatars of one multiverse hero.

First New S&S Character From Fantastic

After editor Cele Goldsmith brought Fritz Leiber and his Fafhrd & Gray Mouser back to magazine fiction with “Lean Times in Lankhmar” (Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, November 1959), she sought new heroic fantasy writers. The first of these stories was “Devils in the Walls” by John Jakes (Fantastic, May 1963) featuring Brak the Barbarian. The next was Roger Zelazny’s Dilvish the Damned in “Passage to Dilfar” (Fantastic, February 1965). Fafhrd & Gray Mouser, Brak and Dilvish filled issues between 1959 and 1965, building up the number of S&S stories not from Weird Tales or Unknown. This would be important for the anthologists who will follow shortly.

First S&S Comic after Crom

“Clawfang the Barbarian” (Unearthly Spectaculars #2, December 1966) was a one-off in a Harvey comic that signaled a coming outpouring of new S&S comics. The last real one had been “Crom the Barbarian” back in 1950. The comic written by Wally Wood and drawn by Al Williamson. Roy Krenkel and Angles Torres assisted. Wally Wood was the writer but as artist and writer he would produce a number of fine S&S pieces after this date. His underground comic Witzend promoted some works.

First Warren S&S strip

Much of the 1960s S&S comic work would be published at Warren, with their black & white magazines Creepy, but more often Eerie. The Warren style S&S tale is dark (remember this was a Horror comics line). Most stories ended on a bummer, making them one-shot affairs. Later, series characters would emerge like Esteban Maroto’s Dax the Damned. The first of all these strips was “Where Sorcery Lives!” written by Archie Goodwin with art by Steve Ditko (Creepy #14, Apr. 1967). Steve Ditko and Wally Wood would return to S&S for Stalker in the 1970s. For more on that comic, go here.

First Paperback S&S Series

The first Sword & Sorcery paperback was probably Conan the Conquerer/The Sword of Rhiannon from ACE Doubles back in 1953. But Donald A. Wollheim was a smart editor, and he knew there was a market for S&S series. The first of these was Witch World (1963) by Andre Norton. The series would go on to include two dozen titles. This first novel begins with SF elements but as time goes on these fade for the most part. When Wollheim created DAW Books in 1972, Andre Norton went with him. The first DAW Book was The Spell of Witch World.

Norton was not alone. Lin Carter started his Thongor series with The Wizard of Lemuria (1965) as well as an early Giant of the World’s End (1969). He would rework the idea for a series of five books for DAW in the 1970s.

Other important series from this era include the Novaria books with  The Goblin Tower (1968) by L. Sprague de Camp and the Kothar series by Gardner F. Fox with Kothar – Barbarian Swordsman (1969) We also saw some odd volumes like the two book Kavin series by David Mason beginning with Kavin’s World (1969) . Sword & Sorcery as a paperback genre really developed in this decade.

First Anthology of S&S

With all the new writers coming into the fold at this time, L. Sprague de Camp was able to put out the first all-S&S anthology, a way of promoting the genre that was increasingly becoming his bread-and-butter. Swords & Sorcery (1963) was the logical title for the first of four collections. De Camp opened the door for others to follow with The Mighty Barbarians (1969) edited by Hans Stefan Santesson being the next.

For a complete listing of S&S anthologies, go here.

First Lancer Paperback

The 1960s was the decade of huge paperback development of the fantastic. This happened first because of the unauthorized paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings in 1965 by Donald A. Wollheim as much as it was the re-issue of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ catalog, split between Ballantine Books and ACE.  Most PB publishers jumped on the bandwagon but Lancer is probably the most famous because they got the Conan books. The first of these was Conan the Adventurer (1966) by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, reprinting material from Gnome Books in the 1950s. The classic purple-edged books with the Frank Frazetta covers were a smash hit. Despite the success, Lancer would fold into bankruptcy by 1975, locking Conan of Aquilonia (1977) in limbo for several years.

First Literary Re-Working

The 1960s saw the coming of the New Wave in Science Fiction. This trend to write Science Fiction in a more literary way, with much experimentation, was a wake-up call for older writers. It is a matter of opinion whether these works hold any value decades later (I tend to side with the conservative on this, being a hopeless Pulspters) but like Moorcock’s Elric, it shook things up. And that’s not a bad thing. The first real attack at Sword & Sorcery came from Harlan Ellison with “Delusion For a Dragonslayer” (Judge, September 1966). Ellison equated the S&S fan with a fourteen year old moron. Other writers tried to find a new purpose for heroic fantasy including “Bluestocking” (Orbit 2, 1967) the first of a series by Joanna Russ. This appeared in the literary Orbit anthologies by Damon Knight. And finally in this decade, “Not Long Before the End” (Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1969) by Larry Niven, gave a Science Fictional look at the classic barbarian-versus-sorcerer plot. A parody? Not really, but a re-working that breathed fresh air into the genre.

First de Camp/Carter Pastiche Collab

L. Sprague de Camp had been “editing” Robert E. Howard since the 1950s. He even edited the Bjorn Nyberg’s fan-fiction into new Conan books. But the mid-1960s saw a derth of material and so Sprague brought Thongor scribe Lin Carter on board to begin a program of filling up paperbacks. “The Thing in the Crypt” by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp was the opening shot for Conan (1967). Many writers would “work on Conan’s farm” as Steve Perry once put it to me in an email. Sprague and Lin were the first to do it intentionally. And in my opinion, were the best at it for many years. For more on their collaborations, go here.

First SF S&S

As the 1960s went on a small trend began to creep into heroic fantasy. That was Science Fictional elements, like those found in Andre Norton’s Witchworld series. Other series felt similar but didn’t quite crossed over into Fantasy, like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover. These books helped muddy the waters. Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles (1970s) and Madwand duo (1980s) would also play in both fields.  The first series to intentionally mark off this dual nature is probably Jack Vance’s The Undying Earth back in 1950. (Jack continued the series in the 1960s with Eyes of the Overworld (1966) though this may have been more market survival than artistic intent.

The first writer to do this openly and intentionally may be Fred Saberhagen with The Broken Lands (1968), the first section of Empire of the East. In this trilogy of novels, Saberhagen has tanks alongside sorcerers. There is a long forgotten magic called technology. The series becomes more fantastical with the introduction of swords given by the gods. The cross-germination of SF and S&S will become a muddy soup by the 1970s and Heavy Metal Magazine. That trend began here in the 1960s.

Another novel of note is The Conquerors From the Darkness (1965) by Ivar Jorgenson (Robert Silverberg) which is not a Saberhagen style crossover but a leftover from a previous decade. Like the Sword & Planet tales of Poul Anderson in Planet Stories, Silverberg offers a tale of swords and action that is clearly set on another planet. This book would have appealed to the new S&S paperback market but it not really the same thing.

Conclusion

You can see the rising tide here in the 1960s. A year later in 1970 Conan the Barbarian would be a long-running comic book that would culminate in Arnie in Conan (1982) Sword & Sorcery will be big business but it is nice to pause before the plunge and appreciate the experimentation and freedom of the 1960s. So many new, fresh things happened here. And it’s all about to become The Same Old Sword of Gonad. Genrification, here we come!

Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books