Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Free Science Fiction Classic Download - C.L Moore's North West Smith



Grab It Right Over
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Read the story before preceding.
Minor spoilers ahead. 

This one of the different North West Smith stories and while it does concern itself with Smith. This one has a much darker tone then some of the other stories in the series. This story takes place and gives us a glimpse into the recesses of Venus and the strange quasi gods that once ruled our solar system in this series.
I don't think that this is an accident at all. The fact that Moore was a part of the so called Lovecraftian circle certainly has left a mark on her writing. The alien gods or monsters  of the Northwest Smith stories seem to be minor members of the Great Old Ones or the Outer God races.
According To Wiki: 
  • "Julhi" (Weird Tales, March 1935). Northwest takes a wrong turn in the ruins of Vonng, Venus.
     There's a very Lovecraftian cult in this one, and I'd swear that the aliens here are someplace right along side one of the races that Lovecraft conceived. There's another thing about this story. The antiquity of the ruins of Vonng weighs heavy in this one. There might even be more to those ruins that even Smith guessed. One of the things about C.L.Moore's work is the fact that it leaves you wanting to know more about  the background pieces of the story.
    The Ruins of Vonng might make a fantastic back setting for a mega dungeon. If they've been kidnapping Venusians for centuries who knows what other forgotten temples,relics, and what not is still waiting to be discovered. We're left at the threshold of Venus after the tale concludes.  Rereading these after a  year, I'm left with the fact that Moore has some of the best instincts in the pulp game at this time. Some of her creations would make excellent mid level adventures for old school space or science fantasy gaming.
     This is another in a line of tales that appeared in Weird Tales. This one in 1935 and followed by "The Cold Gray God" (Weird Tales, October 1935). In the polar city of Righa on Mars, Northwest meets a Venusian lady who isn't quite herself.

4 comments:

  1. Northwest Smith is good stuff.

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  2. Some of my favorite pulp stuff by C.L. Moore is her Northwest Smith material and this one's an old favorite Thanks for the comment and more coming up Trey.

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  3. Great set of stories by a truly great author. wish this stuff would get adapted to cable one of these days...if they could do it with some class. Which is probably asking for too much, I admit.

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  4. If a Netflicks or an HBO got a hold of the stories maybe. The doing the stories with class is really the issue. I'd like to see them done as a mini series instead of a regular show. Rumors are holding that we're going to be seeing a imagining of Firefly. So we might be getting these stories through a filter. We'll see. Thanks for the comments and more coming up.

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