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| 1980 Grafton editions of Fritz Leiber Swords Series Covers by Geoff Taylor |
So ignoring the fact I'd already read Swords of Lankhmar I decided to put the series in chronological order and read them that way around.
Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser Publication Order:
Compiled using the data from ISFDB.
Fortunately there is quite a lot of reading to get done before I need to track down a 1990 Grafton edition of The Knight and Knave of Swords.
While ostensibly the tales have been put into story-order, much of the rearrangement appears completely arbitrary. Swords and Ice Magic in particular seems to have reordered the stories from 1973-1977 completely at random, unless Lieber for some reason decided to put important character and plot developments that would dramatically effect earlier published stories into stories written just months later, it makes little, to no sense.
The first story in the anthology - The Snow Women - was written in 1970, which is over half-way through the publication history of the series. It's about the barbarian Fafhrd in his youth escaping the clutches of his manipulative witch mother - all fur-clad snow-drenched Jungian archetypes, Howardian barbaric suspicion of civilisation, and centred on Fafhrds personal relationship to his family and home.
The first story written - The Jewels in the Forest - from 1939 is a slightly different beast, a tale of Fafhrd and Mouser uncovering an ancient fabled treasure rumoured in forgotten fragments of sorcerous scrolls, but not all is what it seems, elements of cosmic horror and Lovecraftian strangeness creep in, and the different characters perspectives on the same events provides the final hook of the story.
Both of these firsts are great, entertaining short stories, tightly focused on their themes, lightly written and full of action, adventure and a little humour. The description of the Mousers nausea in The Jewels in the Forest is an effective, visceral piece of writing, and captures the sensation very well.
Coming to Lieber mostly due to Gary Gygaxs recommendation in the infamous Appendix N. of the Dungeon Masters Guide for the 1st Edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, it is interesting that The Jewels in the Forest, on it's surface at least, is a much more D&Desque tale - and eminently playable as a short scenario - it's finale being a twist on a D&D staple. I'm not saying which, because it would give the game away. But D&Ds strict codification of monsterisms doesn't allow the literary effect of the difference of perspective that Lieber is using Fafhrd and the Mouser to achieve here. The Snow Women, focused as it is, on a single character and his personal relationships, doesn't directly lend itself to D&D all that much, although of course much of the trappings and motifs could be easily lifted.
Compare and contrast aside, the publication order allows us to just dive straight into the adventure stories - and this is the real heart of Swords and Sorcery, and fantasy short-fiction lays. it's not a character-centric soap-opera where one sits and relates to the feelings and 'development arcs' of made up people, nor yet is it an experiment in world-building with carefully mapped out pseudo-politics, pseudo-geography and pseudo-history, it's more like Haiku or Hard Sci-Fi - where all is constructed in service of a single idea, atmosphere and theme.
Of course each story, published in an initially ad-hoc manner across a number of magazines, books and journals, should stand entirely on it's own, but reading the stories in order over the 4-decade long publication should let us us see the changing themes and motifs as they emerge from the texts. Could also pace reading to match the publication schedule, but I'm not planning to take that long!
Fortunately there is quite a lot of reading to get done before I need to track down a 1990 Grafton edition of The Knight and Knave of Swords.
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| The end. |
While ostensibly the tales have been put into story-order, much of the rearrangement appears completely arbitrary. Swords and Ice Magic in particular seems to have reordered the stories from 1973-1977 completely at random, unless Lieber for some reason decided to put important character and plot developments that would dramatically effect earlier published stories into stories written just months later, it makes little, to no sense.
The first story in the anthology - The Snow Women - was written in 1970, which is over half-way through the publication history of the series. It's about the barbarian Fafhrd in his youth escaping the clutches of his manipulative witch mother - all fur-clad snow-drenched Jungian archetypes, Howardian barbaric suspicion of civilisation, and centred on Fafhrds personal relationship to his family and home.
The first story written - The Jewels in the Forest - from 1939 is a slightly different beast, a tale of Fafhrd and Mouser uncovering an ancient fabled treasure rumoured in forgotten fragments of sorcerous scrolls, but not all is what it seems, elements of cosmic horror and Lovecraftian strangeness creep in, and the different characters perspectives on the same events provides the final hook of the story.
Both of these firsts are great, entertaining short stories, tightly focused on their themes, lightly written and full of action, adventure and a little humour. The description of the Mousers nausea in The Jewels in the Forest is an effective, visceral piece of writing, and captures the sensation very well.
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| So much to answer for. |
Coming to Lieber mostly due to Gary Gygaxs recommendation in the infamous Appendix N. of the Dungeon Masters Guide for the 1st Edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, it is interesting that The Jewels in the Forest, on it's surface at least, is a much more D&Desque tale - and eminently playable as a short scenario - it's finale being a twist on a D&D staple. I'm not saying which, because it would give the game away. But D&Ds strict codification of monsterisms doesn't allow the literary effect of the difference of perspective that Lieber is using Fafhrd and the Mouser to achieve here. The Snow Women, focused as it is, on a single character and his personal relationships, doesn't directly lend itself to D&D all that much, although of course much of the trappings and motifs could be easily lifted.
Compare and contrast aside, the publication order allows us to just dive straight into the adventure stories - and this is the real heart of Swords and Sorcery, and fantasy short-fiction lays. it's not a character-centric soap-opera where one sits and relates to the feelings and 'development arcs' of made up people, nor yet is it an experiment in world-building with carefully mapped out pseudo-politics, pseudo-geography and pseudo-history, it's more like Haiku or Hard Sci-Fi - where all is constructed in service of a single idea, atmosphere and theme.
Of course each story, published in an initially ad-hoc manner across a number of magazines, books and journals, should stand entirely on it's own, but reading the stories in order over the 4-decade long publication should let us us see the changing themes and motifs as they emerge from the texts. Could also pace reading to match the publication schedule, but I'm not planning to take that long!
