Wednesday, July 21, 2010

What is Sword and Sorcery?

Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and SorceryI'm not going to tell you. That's right, I'm not going to tell you what is Sword and Sorcery. Instead, I'll let those who know what they're talking about tell you. And who would that be? Oh, no other than the many authors who have stories in the new anthology, Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery.

A recent post over at SF Signal ask this anthology's authors "How do you define the sub-genre of Swords & Sorcery?" So check out the interesting and fantastic answers, the first of which comes from no other than Michael Moorcock himself.

3 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I did a whole series of posts about this topic not long ago. I enjoy thinking about the issue. I'll have to check out the comments of others. I've read Moorcock's ideas in his book Wizardry and Wild romance.

Paul R. McNamee said...

Thanks for that.

It's so rare to find any quotes/interviews from Glen Cook. He's probably my favorite, and I like his comment (naturally.)

Ty said...

Charles, thanks for that series. I read it all and it was pretty good stuff. I find it interesting this is a question that seems to come up fairly often, "What is Sword and Sorcery?" It's one I've brought up and others blog about, but I don't notice other genres and sub-genres asking this about themselves. Are we insecure as S&S writers? I don't think so. I think it's more a matter of S&S is broader, at least today, than we tend to think it is, which leaves some writers and readers looking for a way to be able to point and say "Hey, that's S&S!'

Paul, yep, love some Glen Cook. He's not my current favorite, but he churns out some great work. Of late I've been more of a Steven Erikson fan, but my tastes tend to change every so often.