“The analytic study of fairy-stories is as bad a preparation for the enjoying or the writing of them as would be the historical study of the drama of all lands and time for the enjoyment or writing of stage-plays.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, quoted from On Fairy Stories

Wherein John Ronald kinda craps on the whole idea of the podcast. I feel personally attacked. I happen to have enjoyed many of the works I’ve read for this project while also over-analyzing them for the dubious pleasure of my tens of listeners. I also feel it would be uncharitable to point out that we are about to discuss a 40+ page essay Mr. Tolkien himself wrote on exactly this topic, but I digress.

Welcome back, everyone, to Something About Dragons. Today, we’ll be discussing two towering titans of prewar pulp. Righteous raconteurs. Pulp provocateurs. Short story samurai. We’ll be discussing the works of Catherine Lucille Moore, the First Lady of Pulp Fantasy, creator of the inestimable Jirel of Joiry, aka C.L. Moore because sexism. And also, we shall be covering the inescapable Robert E. Howard, creator of Kull the Conqueror, Solomon Kane, and an obscure character named Conan the Cimmerian.

Content note: discussions of sexism and racism present within the texts and in the general milieu of 1930’s America.

Today, we’ll be discussing Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees, and the pulp short stories of one of the masters of the form, Clark Ashton Smith. We’ll cover the transition from fantastical literary romances to more dynamic, sword and sorcery-inspiring short fiction as the 1920’s become the 1930’s. The onset of the Great Depression means fantasy fiction becomes a little less elite, a little more populist, and a lot more scandalous. Join us on Something About Dragons, and be sure to check out the accompanying blog posts on the Something About Dragons website.