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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/brothermoscow on 2024-08-28 14:16:23+00:00.
What is Sword and Sorcery
So, before we get into the drama, what hobby are we actually talking about? Sword and Sorcery is a sub-genre of Fantasy fiction, and like anything that has a small body of very passionate fans (looking at you, extreme metal) debates and arguments over what exactly is Sword and Sorcery (S&S) abound. What is mostly agreed on is that it is fantasy focusing on personal stories, full of adventure and horror, with protagonists morally grey and out for themselves, and there’s often plenty of overlap with the Mythos of HP Lovecraft.
What is definitely agreed on is that the founder of the genre was Robert E Howard, an American author from Texas, who wrote hundreds of short stories in the 1930s, selling to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, before he tragically committed suicide in 1936 at the age of only 30. You have definitely heard of his most famous character, Conan, also known as Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Cimmerian (though you may well also know Kull of Atlantis and Solomon Kane too). Perhaps more than any other genre, the single character of Conan and the short stories he stared in define S&S. Conan is a rugged, morally grey character who fights for himself and for gold, plunder and women. He fights men and monsters across a mythic ancient Earth in what Howard dubbed the Hyborian Age. He adventures are a lot of fun and continue to draw in fans today and see many spin offs such as comics, films, RPGs, video games, new novels etc.
Since Conan’s debut, S&S has enjoyed peaks and troughs of popularity. The 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Conan the Barbarian, along with the 1966 – 1977 Lancer/Ace series of paperback collections of Howard’s work, which also featured lots of fix-ups and reskins of Howard’s drafts, notes and non-Conan stories by the series editors L Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter along with some of their original pastiches (and which could be its own drama or scuffle), many featuring iconic cover paintings by Frank Frazetta, ensured that the 1970s and 80s saw the height of S&S love, and plenty of paperback originals by many authors filling bookshelves. Some of these were great, some terrible, some lead to BDSM sex cults (see Gor).
Now, the original Howard stories were definitely products of their time, and are about as racist and sexist as you would expect stories written in the 1930s for young white America men to be, unlike, say, some of the things HP Lovecraft wrote and said (though, that being considered, some such as Shadows in Zamboula, are still hard to read today due to racist language and stereotypes). However, S&S’s appeal is broader, and from nearly the beginning there were women writing S&S adventures about female heroes such as CL Moore’s excellent Jirel of Joiry. Later, reacting to their enjoyment of the pure adventure and thrills offered by S&S but rejecting the old-timey racism, authors such as Charles R Saunders pioneered S&S staring black heroes and with fantasy rooted in African history and mythology; since Saunders’ sad passing, people like Milton Davis are still carrying the banner of so called ‘sword and soul’.
I say the above to show that, while S&S started off as stories about a buff white dude fighting exotic people (and it must be said he kills plenty of civilised white people too) and having women swoon at his feet, the appeal of S&S crosses race, gender and continents (Akogun is a recent 3 part comic to come from Nigerian writers and artists, for example). But, as one may sadly expect, S&S also attracts the sort of people who hate women and POC being the stars of stories and don’t think about the multifaceted way even Robert E Howard wrote about women and POC in some of his stories; no, they love S&S because it is stories about manly (white) men doing manly (non-womenly) things (see also the sort of people Warhammer 40K attracts, along with all the normal nerds). There are certain publishers associated particularly with this more reactionary style of S&S, and more progressive fans often face a hurdle when spreading the love of their favourite genre because many non-fans associate all S&S with reactionary types.
Finally, I will mention that I do consider S&S to fall into the category of ‘hobby’ these days. There’s a fandom, of course, but in this present age S&S has fallen quite far from when its paperbacks filled racks in bookshops. A lot of the fans of S&S are also professional and amateur writers, and both kinds often mix together and contribute to the community in a way that is rare in other literary genres. I myself, a dabbler in writing in my spare time, have appeared in amateur e-zines alongside authors whose novels you could borrow from the library. And readers/writers have their own Facebook groups and Discords, publish their own ’zines and amateur magazines and anthologies, and in general the whole genre-dom has a closeknit, punky vibe to it (hence why I am posting on my ancient reddit account instead of the one with the same username as my discord!). And being that the whole community it pretty niche and closeknit, the divide between those who hold progressive ideas about the genre and society in general and those who hold conversative ideas about the genre and society in general can be pretty pronounced and lead to some drama.
Who is Robert M Price?
Robert M Price is a New Testament scholar and writer, critic and editor of speculative fiction (principally of the Lovecraftian and S&S types). He has written a number of books exploring historicity (or lack of) of Jesus (considering himself a Christian Atheist), but more importantly for us, has edited many dozens of speculative fiction anthologies and he is also the literary executor of Lin Carter. You may remember that name from earlier – Lin Carter was one of the people responsible for putting out the Conan paperbacks back in the 60s and 70s; he also wrote plenty of his own fiction, which usually falls into the cheesy but fun category, and edited magazines and anthologies. One of these was called Flashing Swords! which ran to five volumes published between 1973 and 1981. And in 2019 Robert M Price decided he was going to resurrect Flashing Swords! for a 6th anthology.
Flashing Swords! #6 part 1
This caused quite a bit of excitement in the S&S community. Afterall, getting new stories to read is always nice in such a niche fandom, and as well the Flashing Swords! series was venerable and well regarded, thought of as a key part of the S&S renaissance of the 1970s mentioned earlier, and Price was well known in the community as editor and author of many anthologies and stories (though some of those more intimately involved in S&S and Lovecraftian circles already knew of his very reactionary views and they had caused comment before). So new S&S stories were written, submitted to Price, rejected or accepted as is usual for a submission call for short stories, and soon the anthology had taken shape. It was to contain 12 stories, including a new story, written by Adrian Cole, starring Elak of Atlantis, another early S&S hero created by Henry Kuttner (husband of CL Moore who wrote the Jirel stories) in 1938. In July 2020 it was published on Amazon by Pulp Hero Press.
People were excited. People started to read the preview available (as the book was set to pre-order). And people read Price’s introduction. Authors featured in the anthology also read Price’s introduction, which they had not seen prior to publication. And suddenly a lot of people got quite upset. Because rather than the usual sort of introduction fare, in which the editor gives a brief history of the genre, praises the stories contained within, and hopes the reader enjoys them, Price instead had decided to use his introduction to deliver the sort of rant one’s Reform voting/ MAGA hat wearing uncle might deliver at the post-Christmas/ Thanksgiving dinner get together. Price criticised feminism, defended pornography (in a way that was very misogynistic*), argued against rape-culture being a thing, and railed against gender neutral language. Some sources also state racist talking points were raised, although I couldn’t confirm that (though Price is on record elsewhere, attacking Black Lives Matter and Barack Obama using familiar racist talking points).
As I mentioned, the included authors were not aware of the contents of Price’s introduction, and many of them were not best pleased to discover their name was now attached to a screed they profoundly disagreed with. Contri...
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