With this article, I’m not telling anyone what to read or write. I’m not saying absolutely all sword-and-sorcery stories are the same. I’m just expressing my opinions and noticing a prevalent impression. When I think of sword and sorcery, I’m mainly thinking about the sword-and-sorcery writings of Robert E. Howard, Clifford Ball, Karl Edward Wagner, Michael Moorcock, and Clark Ashton Smith.

I have heard it said, especially by those who are ever-eager to feign victimhood or to zealously bully someone out of their hobbies, that the sword-and-sorcery genre of literature is a power-fantasy genre, in particular a male power-fantasy; though, I’m sure those types of critics would have no objection to a female power-fantasy.

From my perspective, sword and sorcery is not power-fantasy; it is barbarian-fantasy: the longing to return to the primitive, the past, the preindustrial, the raw of terrestrial nature, the simple.

For something to be power-fantasy, especially if it is a story operating within the fantasy genre, it should portray a fight for eternal power, apotheosis, a fight for total mastery and supremacy over all things and elements of society and reality; the characters of a power-fantasy would have wealth, fame, power, beauty, and the ability to command all the natural (and unnatural) elements. As a fantasy, this power should be maintained. Why would a power fantasy show the protagonist losing power by the end? Isn’t it supposed to be a fantasy? And wouldn’t a power-hungry character obtain all kinds of power, including magical power?

But, most sword-and-sorcery stories are anti-warlock and/or anti-wizardry.

Who rules the pages of sword and sorcery? Barbarians. Thieves. Warriors. Fools!

Generally, sword-and-sorcery stories attach and associate sorcery to the monsters, villains, weird foreigners, and evil beings, of whom, most get destroyed or subjugated. The xenophobic element, taming the bizarre and the unknown, seems to be a critical attitude of most sword-and-sorcery stories. Suppression of the weird. Magic is seen as attached to wickedness and weirdness. I would say that sword-and-sorcery is closer to the intolerant fantasies of a witchfinder, of an Abrahamic zealot, or of a nihilistic malcontent than to the fantasies of someone simply seeking total power or a flexing of their puissance.

Most of the sword-and-sorcery tales I have read and/or heard about try to resist the ornate and the artificialness of complexity. Think about it: why is it that in sword-and-sorcery, magic usually is beaten by brawn? why is the magical dangerous? why are most of the protagonists of these stories brutes who renounce wealth, political power, fame, and magic? Those characters often are practically no more than gypsies, wanderers, loners, junkies, drifters, or nomads. Most prominently, the sword-and-sorcery protagonists who do use magic are usually doomed, pathetic, and/or deeply flawed. Well, is it because the spirit of this genre longs for a simpler life? Is it because the spirit of the genre wants the world to go back to some imagined past where everything was animal? Less confused, less complex, and less strange? Does the spirit of the genre carry with it a kind of self-loathing, a melancholy brooding, a grim malaise?

Sword-and-sorcery sees magic as representing the modern, the academic, the foreigner, the blasphemous, the infernal; yet for sword-and-sorcery, magic, at the same time, is a sign of the past, of decay, or of decadence. Sword-and-sorcery, it almost seems to me, pursues any reason to get its hands on an enchanted object so it can discard or shatter the poor thing.

Everything returns to the mundane, to the dust, in a sword-and-sorcery story. Battles are won or lost. Enemies are killed. Supernatural instruments are lost or destroyed. Unfathomable beings are defeated or escaped. There is no desire to change except to return to brawn and jungle. There is no desire to transform except to survive. In sword and sorcery, there is an impulse for destruction. There is a wish to hit, strike, break, scream, jump, and burn. So much more carnal and intuitive then the urge to meditate, to pray, to cast a spell, or to invoke the divine. There is no deep yearning for forbidden wisdom, fame, or long-lasting sovereignty, no want for mastery over Death or the cosmos, for such things are soon rejected by the true sword-and-sorcery protagonist (or such prizes are merely incidental to their barbaric motives). In sword and sorcery, strength is not the virtue but a means to living free, wild, alone, or unsophisticated.

There may be a sword-and-sorcery story showing characters with a desire for gold, for coffers, for wealth, for robbery; however, often that wish feels more like a vehicle for the story to reveal a hunger for adventure, more than some craving for the main characters to be all-powerful masters of the world. A mission to steal treasure is a method to get the characters to fight or to escape, thus adventure.

Stability, laws, crowns, nobility, aristocratic ancestry, money, forbidden books, magic weapons or tomes, servants, civilization, and societal norms: these things would be burdens to the basic, generalized idea of a sword-and-sorcery protagonist. Things to be hastily spent, ignored, feared, or forgotten.

Sword and sorcery is not a power fantasy; it is the savage howl of barbaric agony, full of rage and gloom. About this genre’s unhappiness, there is something Puritanical, Calvinist, iconoclastic, yet anarchic, and bleak about sword-and-sorcery.

Some people like that kind of thing. Maybe some people need to read a story like that at some point in their lives. It isn’t for me now. In the past, I had my fun reading those kinds of stories. Now, I prefer literature that doesn’t mock paganism, occultism, or the Mediterranean. Also, I enjoy more the dragons, monsters, demons, aliens, and decadent rulers in fantasy stories. I adore the dead and the undead. I enjoy seeing a ghost, a skeleton, or some macabre spectacle in a book. I favor the writings of Clark Ashton Smith. I’ve lost interest in Robert E. Howard’s work.

If a story is going to be a power-fantasy, then wouldn’t it be about a necromancer, or a sorcerer, who is awesomely powerful and conquering lands and servants?

One example of a power fantasy might be a story with a main character who is naturally perfect (or chosen by destiny), super lucky, excellent at most things, while having little to no training prior, and who defeats virtually any foe, often with little difficulty, regardless of size-difference or experience. If created handsomely, a power fantasy can be fun and splendid!

Matthew Pungitore is the author of “The Tale of Marius the Avenging Imp” (DMR Books, Samhain Sorceries, 2022). His story "Belial Regnum Ignis Fatuus" is in Aegeon Science Fiction Illustrated: Issue 4 (2022). Matthew is the author of The Report of Mr. Charles Aalmers and other stories. His story "To a Dead Soul in Morbid Love" will appear in Cirsova, Fall 2023! Buy Matthew Pungitore’s self-published books from his Bookbaby author page.