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| Fafhrd and GM going at it, for show, in "The Lords of Quarmall" |
In a time when publishers looked down upon the still-nascent
subgenre, and authors like Leiber had to abandon S&S and write SF to make a
living, Goldsmith (1933-2002) went out on a limb and published the likes of Leiber,
Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, and John Jakes in the pages of a magazine in which she
served as editor--Fantastic Stories.
From Moorcock’s introduction:
In those days the kind of
supernatural romance which dominates today’s best-seller lists had virtually no
commercial market. Leiber had done no better with his first Gray Mouser book
than I had done with my first Elric book. Not only publishers scoffed at the
notion of mass-market editions of these books, we authors scoffed equally. We
knew there were only about twenty of us—readers and writers—spread thin across
Britain and America… So Cele Goldsmith, when she commissioned Fritz Leiber to
write a new series of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories for Fantastic, was taking a big gamble with
her circulation figures.
Goldsmith had a reputation for bucking commercial trends throughout her career and so published Leiber's less-fashionable S&S. In so doing she improved the climate and conditions that allowed sword-and-sorcery to reach
full flower later in the decade with the publication of the unauthorized The Lord of the Rings, the republication
of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of
Mars, and the publication of the Lancer Conan Saga.
The great publisher Donald A. Wollheim later gave Leiber an
even greater boost by commissioning him for the now-famous “Swords” paperback series
(Swords and Deviltry, Swords Against
Death, Swords in the Mist, etc. But it’s questionable whether Leiber would
have been afforded that opportunity without first showcasing some of his best work
in Fantastic (note: I am not
discounting Leiber’s start with F&GM in the pages of the John W. Campbell
edited Unknown). Under Goldsmith’s
editorship Fantastic published a huge
number of the all-time Fafhrd and Gray Mouser classics, including the likes of
“Bazaar of the Bizarre,” “Lean Times in Lankhmar,” “Stardock,” “The Two Best
Thieves in Lankhmar,” and “Scylla’s Daughter,” the last of which was later
expanded into the 1968 novel The Swords
of Lankhmar. Again from Moorcock/White Wolf introduction:
Perhaps because [Goldsmith and
Wollheim] worked mostly as pulp fiction editors, they have never been given the
considerable credit they deserve, just as Fritz himself—who wrote so much that
was illuminating on the subject of literary fantasy and who wrote some of the
best examples there will ever be—still does not receive sufficient credit for
his enormous contribution to the genre.
It strikes me that I failed to mention the efforts of
Goldsmith in Flame and Crimson,
though I did mention Fantastic Stories
and other magazines as being important vehicles for S&S in the early 1960s,
as well as the efforts of Wollheim and his great DAW volumes. I missed a chance
to give Goldsmith her just due, and that is my error. I do not own the White
Wolf edits of Fafhrd and GM so was oblivious to the existence of this essay. An
unfortunate oversight I will rectify when I get to a second edition.
*A great watering-hole
for fans of S&S. I was unaware of the Discord platform until joining, which
in contrast to its name is a cohesive and welcoming community.
