A reader, who I will call Utahjim, asked me a great question the other day. He had been reading L. Sprague de Camp's The Spell of Seven (1965) and recognized that many of Sword & Sorcery's most famous characters appeared there. Fafhrd & Gray Mouser, Elric, Conan. He asked: If you could only have one book to sum up the superstars of the genre, which one would you pick?

I thought of de Camp first, since his four anthologies, of which The Spell of Seven was the second, were so important for establishing S&S in the 1960s. But their publication date makes them too incomplete. Plenty happened after 1970. My second thought was Sprague's partner-in-crime, Lin Carter. Surely, I need look no further than Lin. However, his S&S anthologies, Flashing Swords, were collections of new works so they would not fit the bill.

Important steps in the history of heroic fantasy but only a small interlude. Carter also did Years' Best Fantasy for six years, but again these were annual gatherings, not historical compilations. For that kind of book, you have to go back to the 1960s and the Ballantine Fantasy Series. The Young Magicians (1969) was Carter's look at Fantasy from William Morris to J. R. R. Tolkien. His focus is not Sword & Sorcery specifically, but he does include Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard , Henry Kuttner and Jack Vance.

If we were looking for a more general collection, this one might be the one. Next I turned to a couple posts I wrote gathering as many S&S anthologies as I could between 1963 and 2008. They can be found here and here.

We find therein some of my favorites like Hans Steffan Santesson's The Mighty Barbarians (1969) and The Mighty Swordsmen (1970), Robert Hoskins' Swords Against Tomorrow (1971) and Savage Heroes (1977) edited by Eric Pendragon, but they all suffer from the same problem as L. Sprague de Camp's original four, too limited to the early material.

The majority of Sword & Sorcery anthologies after this period are all original material. Which is a good thing. We got Jessica Amanda Salmon's Amazons series and Heroic Visions series, Thieves World and other shared words like Liavek and Ithkar, and the colossal Sword & Sorceress series, created and originally edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Wonderful as they are, they don't help us here.

Two odd men out are Robert Adams's Barbarians and Karl Edward Wagner's Echoes of Valor series. These saw a return to older stories but both are mixed lots, not always Sword & Sorcery, including Science Fiction from greats like Fred Saberhagen and Poul Anderson. Their intent was to draw readers to great adventure writing, not necessarily tell the history of Sword & Sorcery.

So who did put together such a book? The answer comes after 2008. In 2012, David G. Hartwell and Jacob Weisman compiled, what is in my opinion, the best book you could give to a new reader of S&S as an introduction and history of the genre. The book is The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (Tachyon Publications, June 2012) If nothing else, the introduction “Storytellers: A Guided Ramble into Sword and Sorcery Fiction” by David Drake is worth the money alone. Drake talks about how he fell into the sub-genre.

The book includes:

“The Tower of the Elephant” by Robert E. Howard

Including only one Howard story is a big challenge. Do you select “The Shadow Kingdom”, the first S&S tale? Chronologically yes, but it stars Kull, and Conan must appear in such a book. As Heroic Fantasy’s first superstar, there must be Conan. But which Conan tale? I think the editors have chosen well. “The Tower of the Elephant” is perhaps the most quintessential Conan tale. That was why it was used as the backbone of the first Conan film. Tower's not my favorite. (For that check out Rogue Blades Entertainment's Hither Came Conan.)

“Black God's Kiss” by C. L. Moore

This is the first and best of the Jirel of Joiry tales and most surely needs to be here. Moore gave us the female version of an S&S hero. Others will follow. Some are wonderful, while others like Red Sonja are problematic.

I kind of felt there should have been a Clark Ashton Smith story here. Smith may be minor in terms of heroic fantasy but he did contribute much to the feel of the sub-genre. Mind you, Henry Kuttner and Clifford Ball also fill this gap as Weird Tales writers. They don't appear either. Hartwell only has REH and C. L. Moore to represent the initial WT birthplace.

“The Unholy Grail” by Fritz Leiber

Fritz Leiber was a Weird Tales author but Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser did not appear there. They started off in Unknown with John W. Campbell. The pick of “The Unholy Grail” seems odd to me since it is a Gray Mouser story alone. It is a Cele Goldsmith pick from Fantastic and I suspect that was the reason. Some have called this period in the 1960s, the Second Sword & Sorcery Renaissance. Roger Zelazny's Dilvish and John Jakes's Brak belong here too.

The next two picks also represent what the 1950s and 1960s brought. Poul Anderson wrote the masterwork The Broken Sword (1954), which is a novel and can't be used. But the next story is another fine example of his style of historical/mythic S&S.

“The Tale of Hauk” by Poul Anderson

After Anderson comes the next S&S superstar, Michael Moorcock, publishing in England in Science Fantasy. Elric becomes Conan's white shadow. Moorcock builds his brand of S&S on the Gothic novel, not the adventure story as REH did

“The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams” by Michael Moorcock (variant of “The Flame Bringers”)

The 1970s sees Sword & Sorcery themes put to many uses. The next story appeared in Science Fiction's most literary anthology, Damon Knight's Orbit. Russ has fun exploding the masculine myth.

“The Adventuress” by Joanna Russ

Charles R. Saunders launched Sword & Soul in the 1970s. He did have several paperbacks with DAW but most of his tales appear in the small press magazines like Dark Fantasy. Others appeared in numerous new anthologies like Swords Against Darkness, Amazons and Sword & Sorceress. He single-handedly proves that Sword & Sorcery is not necessarily a European based fiction.

“Gimmile's Songs” by Charles R. Saunders

The 1980s saw more riffing on old themes. Karl Edward Wagner had his Kane series (with excellent Frank Frazetta covers). Like Elric, Kane was another anti-Conan and one of the first truly dark milieus.

“Undertow” by Karl Edward Wagner

Another Horror writer who flirts with S&S is Ramsey Campbell who wrote the Ryre stories. Hartwell forgoes those excellent tales for a one-off featuring Topops.

“The Stages of the God” by Ramsey Campbell

The late David Drake was another, who wrote many things including one of my favorite quasi-S&S novels, Killer (1985) with Karl Edward Wagner. Drake found more love in the Military SF field but did write some really wonderful S&S collected in Vettius and His Friends (1989). Drake was one of Manly Wade Wellman's friends (as was Karl). Wellman wrote some good S&S late in his career and is not represented here, which is fair. The one I think who should be included is Keith Taylor. His Bard series was one of the best to come out in the 1970s-1980s period. Any tale of Felimid the bard is better than this Drake tale.

“The Barrow Troll” by David Drake

The 1980s also brought us the first works of the Grimdark school. Glen Cook has been the author most identified with this style of writing in heroic fantasy with his Black Company series. Following in Karl Edward Wagner's footsteps, the point of Grimdark is to show how dark and pointless the universe really is. H. P. Lovecraft would approve.

“Soldier of an Empire Unacquainted with Defeat” by Glen Cook

Others in the 1980s include Michael Shea and his Nifft the Lean series. Before this, he wrote an approved sequel to Jack Vance's The Eyes of the Overworld called A Quest For Simbilis (1974).

“Epistle from Lebanoi” by Michael Shea

The rest of Hartwell's selections include Fantasy writers of the highest quality. Jane Yolen has made a cottage industry of writing about Faerie but she also gave us the S&S series, Great Alta. Gene Wolfe wrote several odd forms of S&S with The Book of New Sun. Caitlin R. Kiernan wrote the novelization of Beowulf based on the Neil Gaiman comic. Rachel Pollock and Jeffrey Ford are not familiar to me, so something new to explore. Their work seems more literary than the Pulpier stuff of years gone by.

“Become a Warrior” by Jane Yolen

“The Red Guild” by Rachel Pollack

“Six from Atlantis” by Gene Wolfe

“The Sea Troll's Daughter” by Caitlín R. Kiernan

“The Coral Heart” by Jeffrey Ford

You can't talk heroic fantasy these days without including George R. R. Martin and Game of Thrones. This story appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 2000 so a recent magazine entry compared to those Weird Tales stories at the beginning. Martin has had huge success with his form of Sword & Sorcery that feels like The Lord of the Rings and Dune had a baby.

“Path of the Dragon” by George R. R. Martin

The final entry is by Science Fiction writer, Michael Swanwick. It shouldn't be surprising that Swanwick also writes SF. That can be said for many of those included here including Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Poul Anderson, Joanna Russ, David Drake and George R. R. Martin. Since the time of John W. Campbell and Unknown, SF has dogged Sword & Sorcery's footsteps. (Campbell would have turned Fantasy into a type of Science Fiction, for better or worse.) I think modern authors can quite easily keep these separated though writers like Roger Zelazny have enjoyed blending the two.

“The Year of the Three Monarchs” by Michael Swanwick

There are all kinds of considerations when putting a collection together that may have influenced the editors. Is the story already in twenty other anthologies? Is the copyright available? Is the story too short or too long? A balance between men and women, people of color, etc. Certainly there are plenty of anthologies filled with old white guys and the same old stories. Hartwell and Weisman do their best to provide a chronological but balanced read.

Ideally, to do the history of Sword & Sorcery justice, the editors would need a ten volumes, decade-by-decade, series. We can dream of such lovely books but I doubt any publisher would want to commit to such a venture. Until the impossible happens, volumes like Hartwell and Weisman's The Sword & Sorcery Anthology will have to suffice. I hope I answered your question, Utahjim.

G. W. Thomas has appeared in over four hundred books, websites and podcasts including Writer's Digest, The Armchair Detective and most recently, Hither Came Conan. His blog, Dark Worlds Quarterly is at www.gwthomas.org. He most recently published the first four volumes in his Sword & Sorcery series about Arthan the Bearman.