Shambleau

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Shambleau is a short story by the American science fiction and fantasy author Catherine L. Moore , her first commercial short story and one of her most famous. It was first published in 1933 in the fiction magazine Weird Tales and has been reprinted many times in anthologies and collections since then . The protagonist is the daring spaceman Northwest Smith , who appears here for the first time and will be the main character in a number of Moore's best-known stories. The story itself is a new edition of the legend of Medusa , it addresses sexuality and addiction.

Emergence

Moore described the origins and background of her most famous story in an epilogue to the collection of her stories published by Lester del Rey . According to her, Shambleau originated as an act of the unconscious or as a result of inspiration. She had had to leave the university because of the economic crisis, had been working as chief secretary at the Fletcher Trust Company in Indianapolis since 1930 and was practicing typing when she began to write, as if by about a "red, running figure", a half-remembered line of poetry, perhaps by William Morris , as Moore said. According to Moore, the poem in question was about a witch fleeing from an angry crowd in a medieval village - just like in Shambleau .

She went on writing, and from that fragmentary, semi-automatic writing emerged the opening scene of Shambleau . But the protagonist was still missing. Moore had written a letter to an NW Smith at one point, and the name was memorable. He would now act as a savior, but if it stayed with the rescue, that would be the end of the story. A turn had to be made, the rescued person would turn against the rescuer and he would then need a rescuer himself. The name for this sidekick was also quickly found: "Yarol" was, Moore writes, an anagram of the brand of her typewriter. Since "Yarol" is an anagram of "Royal" and the Royal Typewriter Company had been very successful in manufacturing typewriters in the USA since 1904, it can be assumed that the first few pages were typed by Shambleau on a Royal typewriter.

Moore sent her completed story to Weird Tales , since it was the only relevant magazine she knew well, and received a check for $ 100 almost immediately. Well known is the anecdote of how Farnsworth Wright , then the editor of Weird Tales , took a few pages out of the pile of junk manuscripts and threw them to E. Hoffman Price, one of his authors. He reads the story of a certain CL Moore and exclaims: “By God, Plato, who is CL Moore? He, she or it is colossal! ”Whereupon the two declare a C. L. Moore day and take time off.

action

On Mars, the space smuggler Northwest Smith encounters an excited mob trying to lynch a young woman in a tattered scarlet leather dress . Smith intervenes and saves the woman, whereupon the angry crowd turns away with disgust from him and the woman known as "Shambleau". Smith, who doesn't know what to do with this term, takes the woman to his quarters. She turns out to be very attractive, but she is not human. She has green cat eyes with slit pupils, needle-sharp teeth, retractable claws at the hands and wears a kind of turban on her head, which is why Smith assumes she is bald.

Smith leaves his quarters to go about his illegal business. When he returns, he brings her food, but she doesn't like anything. His attempts to find out who she is and where she comes from also remain unsuccessful, as she has very imperfect command of human language. Smith is attracted to her, but as he approaches her, he feels an overwhelming surge of repulsion and disgust upon physical contact. As he pushes her back, her turban slips and a curl protrudes from underneath. Smith has the impression that the curl moved on its own.

One night he wakes up and sees the strange being taking off his turban in the moonlight. It is by no means bald, rather it bears an abundance of worm-like, snakelike tentacles, which grow in size and almost envelop the body, which is now beginning to approach Smith, who at the touch of this gruesome hairstyle an inextricable mixture of abysmal horror and feels extreme pleasure.

When Smith's friend Yarol arrives days later, their business is unfinished and Smith has not been seen for days. Yarol goes to Smith's place and when he opens the door, a strange stench comes from the dark room, in which he can barely make out the figure of Smith under a mountain of twisting tentacles. The strange influence of the Shambleau threatens to overwhelm him too, when he accidentally looks into a mirror and remembers an old legend. He sees the face of the Gorgon creature in the mirror and shoots.

When Smith slowly comes to and is more like himself again, the two of them wonder whether this being comes from a distant world or more from an ancient, prehuman past, where the material of old legends like that of Medusa or the Gorgons is unparalleled educated. Yarol says that some people become addicted to the unspeakable pleasure that contact with Shambleau gives. This explains the reaction of the crowd at the beginning of the story: The persecutors of Shambleau assumed that Smith was such an addict and turned away in disgust. Yarol makes Smith promise, should he ever meet such a being again, to shoot it immediately. Smith promises to try.

reception

Shambleau was very popular with Weird Tales readers . HP Lovecraft , also a Weird Tales author, was downright enthusiastic:

“Shambleau is great stuff. It starts off great, with just the right touch of horror and dark hints of the unknown. The creature's subtle malevolence, hinted at by people's horror without being explained, is eminently effective - and the description of the creature after the covers have fallen is no disappointment either. There is really atmosphere and tension - a rarity in the midst of all the brisk, hammered booklet prose with its lifeless standard figures and images. The only flaw is the conventional science fiction framework. "

Lester del Rey describes the first reading as follows:

“Back then, in the fall of 1933, I opened the November issue of“ Weird Tales ”and found a short story with the provocative but meaningless title“ Shambleau ”by an unknown author named CL Moore - and after that, life was never quite the same for me. "

From a review by Detlef Hedderich and Thomas F. Roth:

“By that time [1933] the science fiction readership had unquestionably accepted the mechanical and dispassionate stories of other worlds and future times. After the publication of "Shambleau", however, the arid sobriety of such texts could no longer satisfy anyone. […] For 1933, sexuality was by no means a matter of course in the SF Pulp magazines , and certainly not in the complexity that was surprising for the time. "

Or even more succinctly the following summary by Anne M. Pillsworth, which does not quite do justice to the content of the story: "Tentacle porn on a fantasy Mars, in the leading role of the great-grandfather Han Solos ."

Jean-Claude Forest , the creator of Barbarella , provided a French edition of the story published in 1955 with numerous congenial illustrations.

At one point it is mentioned how Northwest Smith - with "an amazingly good baritone " - hums the song The Green Hills of the Earth to himself. This song is mentioned in some detail in the story Quest of the Star Stone , where some verses are also quoted. This fictional song with its memorable title inspired Robert A. Heinlein to write the short story of the same name, The Green Hills of the Earth , which is also the cover story of a Heinlein collection published in 1951.

expenditure

  • First printing: Weird Tales. Vol. 22, No. 5 (November 1933).
  • First edition: Shambleau and Others. Gnome Press, 1953.
  • Current English edition: Catherine L. Moore: Shambleau. A Northwest Smith Adventure. Wildside Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-4344-5897-1 .
  • E-book: Northwest of Earth. Gateway / Orion, 2011, ISBN 978-0-575-11936-9 .
  • German translations:
    • Shambleau. Translated by Christian Nogly. In: Michael Parry (ed.): Devilish kisses. Pabel (Vampire Paperback # 64), 1978.
    • Shambleau. Translated by Irene Holicki. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (ed.): Science Fiction Jahresband 1982. Heyne Science Fiction 3870, Heyne, Munich 1982. pp. 37-80. Also in: CL Moore: The kiss of the black god . Heyne Science Fiction 3874, Heyne, Munich 1982. Also in: CL Moore: Shambleau. Stories. With a foreword by Lester del Rey and an afterword by the author. Heyne (Library of Science Fiction Literature # 77), 1990, ISBN 3-453-03929-7 .
    • Shambleau. Translated by Andreas Diesel. In: HR Giger (Ed.): Vampirric. Festa (Festa Nosferatu # 1404), 2003, ISBN 3-935822-58-8 .

In addition to the German translation, Shambleau was also translated into French, Italian, Dutch and Polish.

literature

  • Thomas A. Bredehoft: Origin Stories: Feminist Science Fiction and CL Moore's “Shambleau”. In: Science Fiction Studies , Vol. 24, No. 3 (Nov. 1997), JSTOR 4240642 , pp. 369-386, online .
  • Sarah Gamble: "Shambleau ... and others": The Role of the Female in the Fiction of CL Moore. In: Lucie Armitt (Ed.): Where No Man Has Gone Before: Women and Science Fiction. Routledge, New York & London 1991, pp. 29-49.
  • CL Moore: Footnote to "Shambleau" ... and Others. In: (dies.): The Best of CL Moore . Edited by Lester del Rey . Nelson Doubleday / SFBC, 1975.
  • Natalie M. Rosinsky: CL Moore's 'Shambleau': Woman as Alien or Alienated Woman? In: Selected Proceedings of the 1978 SFRA National Conference 1979. pp. 68-74.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ CL Moore: Footnote to "Shambleau" ... and Others. In: (dies.): The Best of CL Moore . Edited by Lester del Rey . Nelson Doubleday / SFBC, 1975. See Susan Gubar: CL Moore and the Conventions of Women's Science Fiction. In: Science Fiction Studies , Vol. 7, No. 1, Science Fiction on Women, Science Fiction by Women (March 1980), JSTOR 4239307 , p. 17.
  2. ↑ In the poem The Haystack in the Floods (1858) by William Morris, verses 34 to 36 read: "That Judas, Godmar, and the three / Red running lions dismally / Grinn'd from his pennon [...]". The ballad from the Hundred Years War tells the tragic end of a love story and the "three running lions" are the three lions in the coat of arms of England . But that does not fit with the content of the poem, which Moore recalled.
  3. ^ Known in Anglo-Saxon publishing as the "slush pile".
  4. ^ "Plato" was Farnsworth's nickname.
  5. ↑ Sam Moskowitz: Seekers of Tomorrow. Hyperion, 1974, p. 303 f.
  6. ↑ "Shambleau is great stuff. It begins magnificently, on just the right note of terror, and with black intimations of the unknown. The subtle evil of the Entity, as suggested by the unexplained horror of the people, is extremely powerful — and the description of the Thing itself when unmasked is no letdown. It has real atmosphere and tension — rare things amidst the pulp traditions of brisk, cheerful, staccato prose and lifeless stock characters and images. The one major fault is the conventional interplanetary setting. ”Quoted from: Sam Moskowitz : Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction. Hyperion, Westport, Conn. 1974, ISBN 0-88355-158-6 , p. 304.
  7. ^ Foreword by Lester del Rey to CL Moore: The kiss of the black god, Heyne Verlag 1979, p. 7.
  8. ^ In: Franz Rottensteiner , Michael Koseler (ed.): Werkführer durch die utopisch-fantastische Literatur. Loose-leaf collection. Corian, Meitingen 1989–1997, 10. Erg.-Lfg. June 1992.
  9. ↑ […] tentacle-porn starring Han Solo's great-grandfather on a fantasy Mars : Ruthanna Emrys, Anne M. Pillsworth: Not Sublimated, Not Fading to Black: CL Moore's “Shambleau” , posted on February 17, 2016 on tor.com , accessed April 19, 2018.
  10. ↑ V Magazine summer 1955 [1]