Customer Reviews

Northwest of Earth: The Complete Northwest Smith (Planet Stories Library)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Paizo's Planet Stories line gives us another classic from the "queen of the pulps" C.L. Moore. This volume focuses on Northwest Smith, hardbitten, yet strangely vulnerable, outlaw of the spaceways. Smith faces weird, and sometimes horrific, alien menances in a solar system owing inspiration to Edgar Rice Burroughs--Venus is swampy and cloud-enshrouded; Mars is an ancient desert. Moore has all the adventure of her pulp forebears, but adds to it a gift for weird imagery, an undercurrent of sensuality, and superior characterization. Moore's science fiction isn't shiny rockets, but dark and moody encounters with ancient horrors.

The volume opens with the first Northwest Smith story--the darkly sensual "Shambleau" which made her a star when it was published in 1933, just eleven months after Howard's Conan. It ends with the poignant vignette "Song in a Minor Key" which, in the words of writer/editor Karl Edward Wagner, packs a punch "Bruce Lee would have envied."

In between are tales full of adventure and strangeness waiting to bring CL Moore to a much deserved new audience.

About 75% finished with this one. I really like it but let's just say it's not what I expected.

The way I've heard it described, with Northwest Smith being a Han Solo prototype, I was expecting good pulpy action with rayguns and gross monsters. It's more like Han Solo nearly getting seduced/killed by Lovecraftian beasties (often disguised as women) and just barely surviving. The writing is much better than I expected, like Michael Moorcock at his pulpy best. The stories are fairly creepy and held my interest. The one gripe I had was that many of them are fairly similar in plot and structure.

In conclusion, creepy: yes, action-packed: no.

Northwest Smith is described on the back cover as a "quick-drawing outlaw of the spaceways", and in her Introduction, C.J. Cherryh describes him as the archetype of Indiana Jones. So you might be expecting planet-hopping tales of action and derring-do.

Think again.

The NW Smith stories consist mostly of description. Not much happens, but the inaction is luxuriously described. Here's a taste. "...it was truly dreadful. Dimly he knew it, even as his body answered to the root-deep ecstasy, a foul and dreadful wooing from which his very soul shuddered away--and yet in the innermost depths of that soul some grinning traitor shivered with delight. But deeply, behind all this, he knew horror and revulsion and despair beyond telling, while the intimate caresses crawled obscenely in the secret places of his soul--knew that the soul should not be handled--and shook with the perilous pleasure through it all."

It's like that for pages and pages and pages, all nameless horror and soul-shuddering revulsion and despair, until about five pages from the end NW finally pulls his ray-gun and blasts the obscene perilous crawling ancient evil into smithereens.

Most stories have just four characters:
(1) NW himself;
(2) a female story hook, always aluring and exotic, usually alien, always a slave to, or herself the
(3) indescribable and yet comprehensively described nameless ancient horror;
and (4) NW's best friend and partner in crime, who sometimes shows up at the end to help rouse him from the thrall/sleep of the dreadful eons-old soul-sucking obscenity.

Since all that happens in most stories is that NW runs into the alien babe, gets enslaved by the inhuman crawling madness, and eventually either summons the inner strength to draw his ray gun and blast it or gets roused by his best buddy, the stories don't occupy much physical space. Most of them take place in a single town, and most of the action in each story takes place in a single building or even a single room, as NW engages in a soul-deep struggle against the aforementioned nameless indescribable writhing ancient horror.

So if you're expecting fisticuffs, shootouts, dogfights, chases, escapes, rescues, or other forms of Plot, you may want to look elsewhere. In time it takes NW to grapple with, "...knowledge so dreadful that consciously he could not comprehend it, though subconsciously every atom of his mind and soul sickened and writhed futilely away," an Edgar Rice Burroughs protagonist would have found, rescued, and married a princess, killed a few thousand aliens with in swordfights, and been declared a planetary warlord.

But if nigh-endless descriptions of the indescribable are your bag; if you like Poe and Lovecraft but can't stand their breakneck pacing; or if you have a limit of only one weapon discharge per narrative, these stories will be right up your alley. See if you can track down one or two to test-drive before you spring for the whole volume, though.

The name of this collection is a little confusing: this has the same title and the same main character as the anthology published by Gnome Press in the 1950s, but it is not the same book. The Gnome Press collection featured the space smuggler Northwest Smith, but also included stories about C.L.Moore's other recurrent character, the fantasy-genre warrior woman Jirel of Joiry. This Planet Stories reprint includes stories from Gnome's Shambleau and Other Stories, Gnome's Northwest of Earth, as well as various other Northwest Smith stories. (Planet Stories also publishes the Jirel tales in a reprint collection titled The Black God's Kiss). Is Northwest Smith an earlier, more remote, less exuberant version of Han Solo? Northwest is a smuggler, has an alien side kick, and a ship too fast for the trudging space patrol; definitely there are some similarities. On the other hand, Northwest's Venusian partner, Yarol, is a far quieter, more thoughtful type than Chewbacca (who seemed to be designed as sort of a humanoid golden retriever) and, more significantly, Northwest Smith does not have the kind of over-the-top action adventures we associate with Star Wars. Like Jirel, Smith's conflicts are ultimately more psychological than physical; what appear to be physical challenges usually resolve through changes in mental state. Beyond that, Northwest's universe has the trappings of science fiction, but the ambience is far more like fantasy. Blaster guns and space ships are referred to, but have a generic feel; the story is more about the sense of strangeness, the weird and exotic, often beautiful, landscapes, and the pervasive sense of dread. The villains are reminiscent of horror fantasy characters, slightly evolved into science fiction form. Sometimes this "playing against type" works well, an author writing science fiction from a fantasy mindset can produce very interesting stories. It works in this case. I recommend this book even more than the Jirel of Joiry collection.

Northwest of Earth
This is science fiction by way of H. P. Lovecraft, where ancient evils meet ray guns and iron will. Northwest Smith is a smuggler and outlaw adventuring through the solar system - Mars, Venus and the moons of Jupiter. He has a Venusian sidekick, Yarol, and it is never clear whether Yarol is near or part human, or something else. That doesn't really matter though, and nor does the fact we see all of one spaceship, and that while heat-guns exist, they are rarely used.

These are tales of femme fatales, forgotten gods and lost civilisations. The imagery is superb - the fall of gardens of the moon in the light of the Earth is vivid in my mind's eye. The action is there, but the real struggle is in the character's head in almost every case.

The stories are somewhat formulaic - as other reviewers have pointed out - but to an extent, that misses the point. It's the sensual, decedent prose used to tell the story that makes us read on. Its better to read only one tale at a time, putting the book aside from time to time, as this is similar to how the stories were originally read (and written) : as monthly (or so) instalments in the pulp magazines of the 1930's.

Charge up your heat guns and get ready for other-worldly adventure. Catherine Moore penned most of her moody and edgy space yarns in the thirties. I was not in the mood for space opera when I picked this book up, but I got a good deal and the convenience of picking it up together with Black God's Kiss, so I did. I was more than rewarded for the venture. The horror of the unknown and the alien that Moore exhibited in her Jirel of Joiry stories is even more an element in her Northwest Smith stories. This brash interstellar rogue is carried through his adventures by Moore's robust prose and evocative story-telling. In sum, I must use that most infelicitous but necessary term: unputdownable.

Northwest Smith is one of the true greats of science-fiction characters, he's archetypal. That said, there are some people who will not appreciate these tales as much as I (and a lot of others) do. I wish I could say it would be a good read for everyone, sadly this is not the case.

That being said however, for the right person, these are truly gemstones of fabulous value. The tales are written in a style that is regrettably no longer seen, a pulp-Lovecraftian style that is heavy on detail, nameless horror and sensual description. If you are a fan of Lovecraft you'll probably enjoy this, if you either don't know or don't have strong feelings for HPL, I think that a good number of the stories will still be interesting and fun to read. If you hate Lovecraft, you'd probably be better to get your hands on the paper copy, scan-read a few pages and see if there is still something there that will catch your interest. It's worth the effort.

If there is a major problem however, it is in the repetition of the basic plotlines. Many of the other reviewers have noted that there is a kind of pattern to the stories, and I'm not going to say there isn't. This is probably the thing I like least about the series myself. In a way, this phenomenon is a "nature of the beast" thing, the common problem of the era in which it was written. That's not a cop-out, while the story structures may have some similarities, the description and the "meat" of them are still worthy of delving into. Think of them as variations of a theme. So even with that caveat, I recommend these tales highly and have bought more than one as a gift for some of my friends with similar tastes to my own.

Northwest of Earth is just a great, entertaining story. I really appreciate the publishers for bringing these stories back into print in the Planet Stories Series. I have bought 8 of these so far and have yet to be disappointed. My only complaint is that this isn't available on Kindle.

This book (we really should try to award Paizo Books for giving these classics of pulp era another lease of life) begins with the ultimate combination of fantasy-horror-science fiction: "Shambleau", which, unbelievably, was C.L. Moore's first professional sale! This story, apart from giving us a most deliciously reworked "Medusa" myth, also introduces us (and the world of adventure) to Northwest Smith, a rogue with a ray-gun in his leather dress, and desperation as well as honour in his heart. Unfortunately, as we all start devouring his subsequent adventures expecting similar jems, they all fall flat, with Smith (accompanied by his fellow thief-with-the-golden-heart Yarol) trying to rescue a damsel in distress (from some alien monstrosity) or attempting to earn some money by undertaking a difficult (dairdevil) commission, getting pretty tied up (physically or metaphysically), and finally using his ray-gun at the last minute. The book deals with almost all the themes explored by Weird Tales: vampirism, sex (subtly), dreams, decay, and death, but none of the rest are enjoyable like the first one. The pace slackens, the suspense lessens considerably, and the hints of darkness & depravity exceed those of solid adventure.

The contents of this particular volume are: -

(*) Introduction by C. J. Cherryh
1) Shambleau
2) Black Thirst
3) Scarlet Dream
4) Dust of GodsJulhi
5) Nymph of Darkness
6) The Cold Gray God
7) Yvala
8) Lost Parade
9) The Tree of Life
10) Quest of the Starstone
11) Werewoman
12) Song in a Minor Key

If you wish to revisit these classics as part of a remembrance regime, you are most wellcome. But if you are all for a whooping ride, read "Shambleau" in any other anthology of your choice dealing with vampires & monsters, since the rest are comparatively inferior stuff, in my humble opinion.

WARNING: Mild spoilers follow.

After reading about the works of C.L. Moore in a thoroughly obsolete but ceaselessly readable and still useful s-f guide, I found the prospect of reading her fiction intriguing enough to purchase this collection. The resulting experience was highly rewarding...and very surprising. I was enthralled by Moore's powers of description, engaged emotionally by her plot developments, and bedazzled by her settings.

The problem with this omnibus is its misleading presentation. Northwest Smith, the protagonist of these unscientific science fiction stories, is referred to as "the archetype of Indiana Jones," as if he stars in manly adventures brimming with heroic rescues, deadly battles, and hidden treasure. Neither the product description nor the introduction by C.J. Cherryh provides any indication that the book contains *horror* stories that happen to be set in otherworldly locales, and that Moore took more inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft (with whom she corresponded frequently) than Edgar Rice Burroughs. Moore's prose style is Lovecraftian as well; the emphasis is on atmosphere rather than action. To expect page-turning feats here would be foolish. With that in mind, the style works in the stories' favor. The prose's almost invariably sensual nature adds much to grip the reader's attention, and helps to further shock the reader at the inevitable disruption of coziness--these *are* horror stories, after all. My vote for the scariest tale goes to "Yvala."

Moreover, these stories are far less heteronormative than one might expect for fiction from the 1930s. Femmes fatale frequently dominate the gruff, muscular protagonist, both in body and mind--an element that Lovecraft never would have considered. Meanwhile, the male space vampire in "Black Thirst" does not confine his beauty-lust to women. I also find it refreshing to know that shopping is Smith's favorite pastime, which serves as the impetus for the ghastly events in "Scarlet Dream" (not a story to read when one is ill).

In summary, I highly recommend this collection. Moore, in addition to being influenced by HPL, was probably fond of DRACULA and THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (Smith's amoral Venusian sidekick resembles the title character almost perfectly). If you like vintage s-f but wish the prose and plots were more similar to Gothic novels, then this is the book for you.