The Scale of Sword & Sorcery (or Why Conan Doesn't Suck)

There are those Fantasy writers and critics that accuse Robert E. Howard’s Conan of lacking any depth because he just hacks his way out of trouble. In fact, I think it was Robert Bloch in his intro to Wolfshead (Bantam Books, 1979) who said it, qualifying his words with the fact that he preferred Howard’s subtler characters such as Kull or Bran Mak Morn. I would hate to disagree with such a wonderful writer as Bob Bloch but I think he kinda missed the point. We want to see Conan hack his way out. Just as people pay gobs of money to be ringside at a boxing match. Howard understood this, being a fight fan, and writing many tales about the sport. Like it or hate it, the bottom line is the contest between two matched opponents fires us up. Hockey, wrestling, fencing, even golf, it doesn’t matter. If there is a fierce competition between two skilled players, people watch.

It’s why many of the top ten grossing films of all time are superhero movies. The comics, step-children of the Pulps, they get it too. You’re there to see Wolverine slice guys up with those claws, Superman fight gigantic monsters, the Avengers stop an alien invasion. It’s big, loud and splashy. Just like Conan. Some people confuse this for lunk-headedness. Not at all. Conan is the alpha male, a superhero with a sword. Like Beowulf before him, Conan is all about the fight.

But that’s not all Conan is. Howard’s writing is rich in many ways, and dark. People forget how dark it is, how Gothic in tone it is. Stories like “Queen of the Black Coast”, “Red Nails” and “The Devil in Iron” are all about the haunting past, evil lurking in stygian shadows, waiting to strike at humankind once more. You can run away screaming like a Lovecraftian bitch (“Oh, my brain is exploding!”) or you can hunker-down, get that sword ready and fight. For as J. R. R. Tolkien explains in his masterpiece of scholarship “Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics” (1936), the hero tale does more than just thrill us. It has a message as well about fighting on, fighting for what matters. Robert E. Howard, a man who committed suicide, might not be the poster child for that idea, but his character Conan is.

Ryan Harvey wrote a wonderful piece called “What If The Thirteen Year-Olds Are Right?” , identifying that teens love unreservedly what they love. I remember being an awkward teenager and loving Sword & Sorcery and the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Why? Some will call such readings nerdy “power fantasies” but that term seems unkind to me. Instead I would call them “empowering fantasies”. Like Beowulf did centuries before, the tales of ERB and REH told me, no matter how banal, nasty and crappy my life was, heroes don’t crumble. They fight on. Which would suggest that when one reaches the age of about twenty they should give up such silly stories and read Hemingway or Faulkner instead, the crutch no longer needed. I will admit for a time I put the barbarians and jungle lords aside and explored Science Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Westerns and, gasp, even mainstream stuff. But I always came back. Nostalgia? Not at all. Sword & Sorcery has much to offer those no longer thirteen as well. Ryan Harvey put it this way: “Reading tales of the fantastic transforms us back into dreaming children who love without reservation and can resist the grinding banality of the bureaucratized world where all that seems to matter is paying taxes and scraping together enough money to pay taxes again next year.” More escape? Sure, but one that is such a basic part of human life that ancient Anglo-Saxons and modern cell-phone using people share it. The Fantastic makes us bigger than we are. When well done, it expands our minds and our hearts.

I have created a thematic scale for Sword & Sorcery (and it may apply outside the sub-genre to all adventure fiction – see below*). It has three levels. The first is simply “The Fight”, combat between two opponents. The second I call “The Point”, or a fight story that has some other meaning. Not necessarily deep but it says something. And the third I call “The Message”, or a deeper meaning that can employ the fullest of themes. All of these plots would qualify as “Defeating the Monster”, one of Christopher Booker’s seven basic plot types. In the case of S&S, it may be literally true.

Let’s look at some examples: in the ancient texts of heroes this would be the stories of Grettir the Strong. Told in a bald style with little characterization, Grettir goes from challenge to challenge, defeating swordsman or ogre. Because of this sketchy style, Grettir is largely unknown except to specialists. In Sword & Sorcery, a tale that meets the barest of requirements would be the Kothar stories of Gardner F. Fox. Workman-like, they recycle the props of the Conan stories without any innovation. They read like adaptations of comic books, a medium Fox worked in for decades. (He was the first writer to create an actual S&S comic character, Crom the Barbarian in 1950. He also invented Hawkman, the most weapons-loaded superhero and Batman’s utility belt.) The stories of Kothar are all about barbarian versus sorcerer, monster, or both. The Brak stories of John Jakes and many of the Conan pastiches are similar, meant only for fun.

At the second mark we have the tales of Sinbad the Sailor. Fantastic in nature, they supplied Ray Harryhausen with material for three films, are beloved as children’s fairy tales. Despite this juvenile association, the stories of Sinbad are like those of Ullysses’ wandering adventures that make a point about resourcefulness and courage. The point is there if you want to dwell upon it but it is up to you. The majority of S&S tales fall here, with stories like Keith Taylor’s Bard series, “Demon Journey” by Poul Anderson, The Elak stories of Henry Kuttner or the Dilvish the Damned stories of Roger Zelazny.

The third level is reserved for the very special few, those tales that have something to say, strongly. Of ancient texts I have already mentioned Beowulfbut even before the Anglo-Saxon classic was the very first story ever recorded, the Babylonian myth of Gilgamesh. In Gilgamesh we get all the levels and more. We have the fight with Gilgamesh and Enkidu socking it out for days. They end up as friends afterwards in the most Marvel Comics superhero punch-up fashion (I mean Iron Man versus Thor, what else is going to happen?) Later they fight and kill Humbaba the monster, with a sad point to follow. And last, reaching the highest mark, the search for immortality, that ends in failure. In Sword & Sorcery annals this would include great tales like Emma Bull’s “The Rending Dark”, “Two Setting Suns” by Karl Edward Wagner, “The Demoness” (or just about anything) by Tanith Lee or “The Black God’s Kiss” and its sequel “The Black God’s Shadow” by C. L. Moore. I would even place “Queen of the Black Coast” by Robert E. Howard here, as his finest example.

When people criticize Sword & Sorcery they usually pick their examples from the first level. Yes, it’s trite, commercial and does not expand the boundaries of the human experience. Why would it? It’s entertainment, nothing else. (Unfortunately filmmakers often don’t rise above this level either.) When you move up the pyramid they stop calling it Sword & Sorcery and use some euphemism like “Epic Fantasy”. What else would it be? You can’t get any more epic than S&S.