Friday, April 17, 2009

C L Moore's Northwest Smith series of stories

These are early stories of C L Moore, featuring a hero named Northwest Smith. Smith is an interplanetary smuggler. Among the stories I've read, he's an outwardly tough man, but with a soft corner for girls in vulnerable position.

These aren't Moore's best stories, but at least "Shambleau" is noteworthy.

Series (12 stories, best first, unread last in publication order).

List below was seeded from ISFDB, then annotated with stories I've read & with download links where available. My rating (for read stories) is in brackets.
  1. [novelette] "Shambleau" (A); download; Weird Tales, November 1933: A cocktail of a vampire story & the story of Medusa from Homer's "Odyssey" - science fictionalized.
  2. [flash fiction] "Song in a Minor Key" (C); download from Project Gutenberg/Manybooks; [1940] (where?): Description of first murder at the hands of Northwest Smith when he was still merely a boy - an event that accidentally also killed his girlfriend & destroyed much else he loved.
  3. [novelette] "Black Thirst" (C); Weird Tales, April 1934: A god-like very-long-lived alien has been selectively breeding human females for beauty in a harem on Venus since forever.
  4. [novelette] "Werewoman"; download; Leaves #2, Winter 1938: Northwest Smith, unarmed, hurt, & being chased by unnamed adversaries, walks into the cursed ruins of a long dead city, & will free it from its curse.
  5. "Scarlet Dream"; Weird Tales, May 1934: Not read.
  6. "Dust of the Gods"; Weird Tales, August 1934: Not read.
  7. "Julhi"; Weird Tales, March 1935: Not read.
  8. "Nymph of Darkness"; Fantasy Magazine, April 1935: Not read.
  9. "The Cold Gray God"; Weird Tales, October 1935: Not read.
  10. "Yvala"; Weird Tales, February 1936: Not read.
  11. "Lost Paradise"; Weird Tales, July 1936: Not read.
  12. "The Tree of Life"; Weird Tales, October 1936: Not read.
Related: Stories of C L Moore.

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