This post is brought to you by the Swords of Fire anthology series, with the fourth book due in 2026. Like the three previous collections, this one will feature four longer Sword & Sorcery adventures with one being a Sirtago & Poet tale set in a country much like Japan. This is by Jack Mackenzie, of course. There is also the next adventure of Bradik the Slayer by M. D. Jackson. One of the other two tales is a new Arthan the Bear Man story featuring an army of mercenaries versus giant spiders. For the previous anthologies, go here.
A few years ago I did a post collecting all the magazines that published Sword & Sorcery or heroic fantasy. Starting with Weird Tales, the genus loci of the entire sub-genre to specialized magazines in the 1990s and beyond, I included all publications that used some S&S. And let’s be honest, that was pretty much all of them. Weird Tales or Fantasy Tales, the mix includes Horror fiction as well as barbarians. Others have Science Fiction, such as Fantasy & Science Fiction (it’s right in the name!) to Fantastic or the later Amazing Stories. This co-dependency makes me ask a new question: was there ever an all-Sword & Sorcery magazine, one free of supporting help from Horror or SF?
There is a second question, one I think that is easier to answer: can a magazine survive publishing Sword & Sorcery alone? The very first issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction was called The Magazine of Fantasy. With the second that “and Science Fiction” was added. Was this done because the mag wouldn’t sell without SF or was it a matter of the amount of the rarity of actual “fantasy fiction”? Thirdly, was it done simply because much of what they wanted to publish was closer to SF? Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas made the decision after only one issue. I suspect it was a matter of branding. The stories they wanted to use didn’t change just what they were called. Better branding allowed for a wider audience. That was back in 1949-1950. There have been a bunch of magazines since then, and yet…
Some of this comes down to what readers call “Fantasy”. As a genre label it is, in fact, fairly new. When William Morris wrote The Wood Beyond the World in 1894, he wasn’t thinking “I want to write a Fantasy novel.” He would have used the term “Romance”. George MacDonald’s earlier Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858) is another, using ‘Romance’ in the title. That genre label has become a woman’s tale of relationships and emotion, descended largely from Jane Austen. For centuries “Romance” meant an exciting, unrealistic tale filled with wonders and magic.
The modern use of “Fantasy” begins during the Pulp and Radio eras. A. Merritt’s Fantasy Magazine (1949-1950) is an obvious case of a Pulp at the same time as F&SF. The Pulps, through no real intention except marketing, had made genres pretty much stable and rigid. Railroad, Western, North-West, Science Fiction, Detective, Mystery, Love Stories, Horror Stories, etc., all these styles of storytelling had solidified in the garishly colored magazines of the 1930-1950s. Before the 1930s, the Soft Weeklies like Argosy used different terminology for some genres such as “Off-Trail” for SF, while Gernsback started with the ghastly “Scientifiction”. At Weird Tales, it was “Pseudo-Scientific Tales”. Blech.
Sword & Sorcery as a sub-genre of Fantasy had its own trials. Finalized by Robert E. Howard in 1929 with “The Shadow Kingdom” (Weird Tales, August 1929) it didn’t get its sobriquet until July 1961 when a letter column discussion between Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock in the Amra fanzine nailed it down. For publishers, it has never really solidified at all. You won’t find a paperback with Sword & Sorcery on the spine, only Fantasy. (Actually you won’t find paperbacks anymore, but you get my meaning.) So the idea of a magazine devoted to a specific subset of Fantasy is a hard sell. (I acknowledge that Science Fiction is just such a beast, a subset of Fantasy. It has beaten the odds.)
Just an important aside here, in book publishing, an all Sword & Sorcery anthology did not exist until December 1963 with L. Sprague de Camp’s Swords and Sorcery: Stories of Heroic Fantasy. No mistake with that title. Before this there were the Gnome Press hard cover collections of Conan stories in the 1950s that would later be revamped by Lancer into the famous purple-edged paperbacks of the 1960s and 1970s. (The Arkham House hard covers like Skull-Face And Others (1946) by Howard and Night’s Black Agents (1947) by Fritz Leiber were a mix of Horror and Fantasy.) The idea of a magazine doing this before a book seems to me unlikely. De Camp did it in paperback, as well, since these books were exploding in the 1960s. The first to get a hard cover was probably Flashing Swords #1 and #2 in 1972. And these were Science Fiction Book Club hardcovers. Later the Thieves’ World collections would do likewise.
So could an all-S&S magazine exist? Fanzine, certainly possible, as fanzines have always been very nichy, but a professional mag? The possibility needed time, as Fantasy readership grew, allowing for more specialization. There was a stand-alone anthology magazine called Dragon Tales (1980) from the publisher of The Dragon, the RPG magazine. Ten stories edited by Kim Mohan, the assistant editor at the time, with a Niall of the Far Travels story by Gardner F. Fox. This certainly is the idea we are after but it only appeared once, so not really a running magazine. The Dragon was testing the waters and found them too cold, I suppose.
My next thought was Fantasy Book (1981-1987). Published by Dennis Mallonee and edited by Nick Smith, the magazine had some S&S but also softer and more varied styles so that it wasn’t an all S&S mag. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine (1988-2000) was a similar mixed bag as was the excellent Realms of Fantasy (1994-2011). The 1988 Weird Tales and the UK’s Fantasy Tales were also Fantasy/Horror hybrids, though published some individually excellent examples of S&S. Weirdbook is another.
I think the winner has to be Adventures of Sword & Sorcery (1995-2000) edited by Randy Dannenfelser. It’s right there in the title. Growing out of the RPG market, this short-lived mag proved it could be done. But not for long. Seven issues were spread over five years, but the entire contents was S&S. (I will admit I am at a handicap here as I possess none of these seven issues. If you can support or refute what I say here, it will be appreciated.) Authors include Mike Resnick, Robert E. Vardeman, Gerard Houarner, Jefferson P. Swycaffer, Brian A. Hopkins, Darrell Schweitzer, Jo Clayton, P. E. Cunningham, Stephen Baxter, Nancy Varian Berberick, D. K. Latta, George Barr, Patricia Briggs, S. M. Stirling and others. One piece is is a Warhammer 4000 fiction by Baxter, another is a Brothers Lammiat tale by John Gregory Betancourt, one is a Anwyn Baldomyr tale by Laura J. Underwood, and a Markhat tale by Frank Tuttle. The point is the roster features popular writers of paperbacks, RPG related works, and series that appeared elsewhere. It’s kinda like a snapshot of 1995 to 2000.
AOSAS did pave the way for others like Black Gate, David Farney and Adrian Simmons’ Heroic Fantasy Quarterly and the excellent Tales From the Magician’s Skull. All wonderful publications in their own right, but hardly any more mainstream than Adventures. Black Gate did seventeen cherished issues but has since become a website (a good one but still not the same thing). Heroic Fantasy Quarterly is a web magazine that is very niche-specific and great fun. And it’s still going, starting in 2009. Tales From the Magician’s Skull (2017-2024) is another to be cherished. Edited by the late Howard Andrew Jones, these are gorgeous all-Sword & Sorcery magazines. Jones had the good fortune/smarts to pair up with a game publisher, removing the almost impossible task of keeping any regular magazine alive today.
So to answer my two questions: a) is it possible to publish an all-S&S magazine? yes. b) can a magazine survive publishing Sword & Sorcery alone? I think not on a large scale but in smaller nichy web mags, yes. Heroic fantasy has a weird duality. In thick paperbacks it will become a bestseler. In short story form, it is virtually a fanzine deal. This dual state is true for novels vs. short fiction in general, but much more obvious for Sword & Sorcery.
Conclusion
Some may find this little ramble down memory lane a little hypocritical on my part as my own short-lived magazine Dark Worlds was a mix of S&S, Mythos Horror and Space Opera. (Just like this blog.) I love all of these sub-genres and many others. It is hard to work in one sub-genre alone, so hats off to Randy Dannenfelser, John O’Neil, David Farney and Adrian Simmons, and Howard Andrew Jones. And to all the editors who publish heroic fantasy in whatever guise. It is a thankless job for the most part.
Sword & Sorcery from RAGE machine Books
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