Today’s post is brought to you by The Masterless Assassin by T. Neil Thomas. This sequel to The Masterless Apprentice continues the adventures of Tin the necromancer. Along with his crew of assassins and magicians, he must face off against a new threat, a band of light-wielders who have plans to resurrect an ancient god using the body of a dracon! Only desperate action by Tin and his new ally, a young girl with powers of her own, can stall a terrible demon from destroying the world. As always, this Fantasy romp has plenty of humor, magic and thrills.
Our Ladies of Fantasy
I often focus on editors in my posts. Next to writers, they are the most important people in publishing. Farnsworth Wright, Hugo Gernsback, T. O. Conor Sloane, F. Orlin Tremaine, Harry Bates, John W. Campbell, Ray A. Palmer, Mort Weisinger, Julius Schwartz, Donald A. Wollheim. Robert A. W. Lowdnes, Howard C. Browne, Paul W.Fairman, Frederik Pohl and others all come in for comment here. Sometimes it is positive; sometimes not. These men all had something to do with how Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror developed between 1923 and 1954. But there are others who get less attention, and sometimes quite unfairly.
Cele Goldmsith (later Lalli) (1933-2002) is such an editor. Like Mary Gnaedinger (1897-1976) at Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Dorothy McIlwraith (1891-1976) at Weird Tales, Goldsmith was a woman who did as much as any of these men. Where Gnadinger reprinted old Fantasy stories from days gone by, and McIlwraith sat at WT in an era that no longer wanted Sword & Sorcery, Cele Goldsmith was an important link between the Pulps days of these older magazines and the new digest-sized magazines of the late 1950s and early 1960s. She ushered in the first non-Pulp S&S writers as well as rescued a past master from abandoning the sub-genre.
The magazine was Fantastic. Cele edited it and Amazing Stories from around 1955 to 1965. Begun as a high water mark at Ziff-Davis, the magazine slid into dreck under Howard Browne and Paul W. Fairman and their host of pseudonym production writers. These magazines became so low-brow, it took Goldsmith’s editorship to bring back self-respecting authors.
Ashley to the Rescue
Looking to my usual suspects for SF history: Lester Del Rey’s Worlds of Science Fiction (1976) and other texts, there is no mention of Goldsmith. I had to go to master historian, Mike Ashley for information. In Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines From 1950 to 1970 (2005), he speaks of her arrival thusly:
Goldsmith joined Ziff-Davis almost by accident. She had just graduated from college and was looking for a teaching position. She called for a friend who worked at Ziff-Davis and while waiting filled in a job application form. She was surprised to receive an interview and, in November 1955, started work. Goldsmith helped out on developing Dream World and Pen Pals and worked on all of the magazines’ slush-piles. Browne and Fairman were both more interested in writing than editing, and they left more and more to Goldsmith.
Sword Buddies
During that decade, Goldsmith reshaped good Science Fiction and Fantasy, bringing in new writers and working with some older ones like Fritz Leiber, who had abandoned the writing because of the drop in over-all quality in the magazines. This was following a massive boom in SF mags that burst around 1955. Cele got him to write SF again, and eventually in 1958, Sword & Sorcery as well. “Lean Times in Lankhmar” was the first new Fafhrd & Grey Mouser tale since “Seven Black Priests” (Other Worlds, May 1953). Seven stories more followed under Goldsmith, masterworks like “Bazaar of the Bizarre” and “The Lords of Quarmall”.
“Lean Times in Lankhmar” (Fantastic, November 1959)
“When the Sea King’s Away” (Fantastic, May 1960)
“Scylla’s Daughter” (Fantastic, May 1961) combined into Swords of Lankhmar (1968)
“The Unholy Grail” (Fantastic, October 1962)
“The Cloud of Hate” (Fantastic, May 1963)
“Bazaar of the Bizarre” (Fantastic, August 1963)
“The Lords of Quarmall” (Fantastic, January February 1964)
“Adept’s Gambit” (Fantastic, May 1964) originally in Night’s Black Agents (1947)
Brak the Bruiser
But Goldsmith wasn’t going to let heroic Fantasy be the domain of one writer. She brought new and exciting writers into that hold with John Jakes being the next with his Brak the Barbarian tales. “The Devils in the Walls” got things started to be followed by serials like “When idols Walked” and “The Witch of the Four Winds”. Though Brak was not innovative, being a Conan clone, these tales did establish a certain type of Sword & Sorcery that was traditional and pleasing.
“The Devils in the Walls” (Fantastic, May 1963)
“The Witch of the Four Winds” (Fantastic, November December 1963)
“When Idols Walked” (Fantastic, August September 1964)
“The Girl in the Gem” (Fantastic, January 1965)
“The Pillars of Chambalor” (Fantastic, March 1965)
“The Silk of Shaitan” (Fantastic, April 1965)
Dilvish the Determined
Roger Zelazny was another new writer with his Dilvish the Damned stories.These begin with the very Dunsanian “Passage to Dilfar” (Fantastic, February 1965) and “Thelinde’s Song” (Fantastic, June 1965). Later under another editor, Zelazny would add the more action-oriented “The Bells of Shoredan” (Fantastic, March 1966). The later stories, written for other magazines, including some RPG mags, drop most of the high language for more familiar daring-do.
Zelazny thanked Goldsmith for the chance to develop his own style as a writer:
You were what encouraged my writing during that first, difficult year when I began to sell. If I had not been able to market some of those early stories, I probably would never have had the confidence to try some of the later, more complicated ones. Most of anything I have learned was stimulated by those first sales; and then I learned, and possibly even learned more, from some of the later rejections. (From an unpublished letter, Zelazny to Lalli, March 20, 1965).
Earthsea Dry-Run
Mike Ashley offers us the next author:
Sandwiched between Zelazny and Disch was Ursula K. Le Guin, who debuted with ‘April in Paris’ (Fantastic, September 1962). Her first five appearances were all in Fantastic, where she developed a line of magical fantasies that now look like training runs for her Wizard of Earthsea sequence which emerged later in the decade…Le Guin perhaps said it best when she described Goldsmith as that ‘kindly and outrageous editor’,15 because she was not fettered by past sf requirements. She let it all hang loose, and let Amazing and Fantastic become a cauldron of experimentation, exploration and temptation.
Le Guin was doing many wonderful things at this time, besides writing excellent short stories. She developed her Hainish universe for her SF novels that would eventually include the brilliant, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). Of importance here are the two stories Ashley refers to: “Word of Unbinding” (Fantastic, January 1964) and “The Rule of Names” (Fantastic, April 1964), stories set in Earthsea but not featuring anyone from the later novels.
Moorcock and Elric
Michael Moorcock needs a brief mention here. His “Master of Chaos” appeared in the May 1964 issue alongside Fritz Leiber’s “Adept’s Gambit”. Moorcock’s tale doesn’t feature albino, Elric, but will eventually be incorporated into the over-arching universe. “Master of Chaos” was the only Elric-adjacent story to appear under Goldsmith though he would sell actual Elric tales to Ted White in the 1970s. Fantastic was an important proving ground to Zelazny, Jakes and Le Guin, and perhaps to a lesser degree Moorcock, but the magazine that really allowed Elric and friends to flourish was the British zine, Science Fantasy, where such tales as “The Dreaming City” and “The Eternal Champion” appeared for the first time. While Fantastic may not have been the same haven for Moorcock, it did serve as a platform from which to introduce American readers to his brand of Sword & Sorcery.
The End is Nigh
All good things must come to an end, I suppose. For Sword & Sorcery and Cele Goldsmith, now Cele Lalli, that came in March 1965. Ziff-Davis was making some shifts in their marketing plan with bigger and flashier slicks. This did not include Fantastic, which was sold to Sol Cohen along with the old Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures backlist. Cohen’s plan to make cash was to use almost all reprints (with one new story for the cover). It was a betrayal to all that Goldsmith and her authors had achieved. For the writers, they would migrate to other magazines like Fantasy & Science Fiction, while Laili would remain with Ziff Davis, editing women’s publications. Elric, Fafhrd & Grey Mouser (along with Conan), they would have to wait for Cohen to hire Ted White in the 1970s and a return of sorts in Fantastic.
Conclusion
Mike Ashley one last time:
Between them, Amazing and Fantastic during 1961–64 were almost as exciting as Galaxy and Beyond ten years before and Astounding and Unknown twenty years before. Like Campbell, though with no particular grand plan, Goldsmith allowed science fiction and fantasy to rejuvenate themselves. When we trace the re-creation of science fiction in the mid-sixties, we find that it owes a huge debt to Cele Goldsmith.
And this is no less true for Sword & Sorcery, in particular. Fritz Leiber would go on to win a Hugo for “Ill-Met in Lankhmar” in 1970. (Oddly, he published this one in F&SF, not Fantastic, which seems a little unkind.) Leiber would add three more volumes to the saga after 1965. John Jakes would collect the Goldsmith Brak with new material for five paperbacks. Ursula K. Leguin would go onto write the original Earthsea trilogy (more books added later). Roger Zelazny would collect the Goldsmith stories and add more for Dilvish the Damned (1982) and write a Dilvish novel, The Unchanging Land (1981). This Fantasy apprenticeship can be seen in later fantasy such as The Amber Chronicles and the Madwand series. Michael Moorcock would combine all of his Fantasy into a gigantic multiverse that sold as well in America as it did in England. All these achievement of the 1970s and 1980s, and beyond, started with a little digest called Fantastic, and the wonderful lady who edit it.
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
Great article
Thanks.