the definition of sword & sorcery
SFSignal did one of their “what is the definition of this genre” articles, with various writers weighing on the definition of sword & sorcery. My favorite was Glen Cook’s:
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.
He’s got a point. It’s often amusing when you see a sword & sorcery character with the attitudes of an American progressive in good standing, mostly because of the sheer anachronism of it. That, and I have a theory that progressive politics are a luxury afforded by advanced technology; take away the technology, and the progressive worldview becomes unsustainable. To site an example from a sword & sorcery story, no doubt the inhabitants of Xuchotl in Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails” were once very progressive.
But that’s an aside. Back to the main point. I think the key to understanding sword & sorcery is to remember that it’s sword & SORCERY, not “sword & the enchanting magic of wonder”. The genre could be renamed“sword & supernatural abilities employed to wicked ends”. The antiheroes of sword & sorcery make for effective protagonists because they often face sorcerers who are even worse than they are.
Magic, in sword & sorcery, is almost always a malign force, and at best manages sort of a dark neutrality. In high fantasy, or heroic fantasy, you can have heroic magic users, like the archmage Ged or the protagonists of Brandon Sanderson’s “Mistborn” books or the vast corpus of game tie-in fiction. Or you can have magic users acting as a representative of a benevolent higher power, like Gandalf in “Lord of the Rings”.
Not so in sword & sorcery. There aren’t any Gandalfs, Dumbledores, Geds, or Allanons running around in a sword & sorcery. Instead, you have Xaltotun of Acheron, Iucounu the Laughing Magician, the Limper, and scores of other wicked and cruel magicians. A barbarian hero can only kill you with a sword, but a sorcerer can do far, far worse – and will usually enjoy doing it, too.
And I think this makes sword & sorcery more realistic, in a psychological sense. Often people who attain political or financial power abuse it, sometimes horribly. Why would someone with supernatural power act any differently?
-JM