I’ve been involved in a lot of talk, in the past weeks, about Sword & Sorcery and the definition thereof, and what makes S&S different from Heroic Fantasy and blah blah blah.
The subject is dear to my heart as I like S&S, and I both read and write it.
And as luck would have it, hot on the heels of that discussion I got a contract for a number of S&S shorts (yeah!!)1 – so it turns into a matter close to my bread-winning activities, too.
But do we really have to undersign a standard definition?
I still love the definition provided by Glen Cook (an author I love) in an old piece on the SFSignal Blog:
I see Sword & Sorcery as a species of proletarian fiction. The heroes are working class guys, within the context of the story and mores of the time when it was written. They are guys who get stuff done but you would not want them in the drawing room for high tea because they smell bad, break things, and leave bloody messes all over. Despite their class, or lack thereof, they are not much into progressive politics, seeing that sort as easy meat.
This one works fine with me, and while I am not much for definitions it was one of the bits I had in mind when I started writing Aculeo & Amunet. Continue reading
Karavansara 