SF Gateway Author of the Month: C. L. Moore

Author of the Month for May is one of the greats of SF & Fantasy’s Golden Age – one of the first successful women writers in the then-male-dominated field of Planetary Romance, a mainstay of Weird Tales in the’30s, and the creator of Sword and Sorcery‘s first female hero, Jirel of Joiry: C. L. Moore.

Catherine Lucille Moore was already an established force when she met, and later married, fellow SF writer Henry Kuttner. The two would go on to form a formidable writing partnership, joining John W. Campbell‘s stable of writers during his legendary editorship of Astounding and producing some of their best work under the pseudonyms Lewis Padgett and Laurence O’Donnell. It is generally accepted that even their solo works were collaborative to some degree, as noted in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction:

Most of Moore’s and Kuttner’s works between 1940 and his death in 1958 were to some extent collaborations; each writer reportedly being able to pick up any story where the other had left off, and it has proved futile to attempt to determine who may have been the sole or senior author of many tales published under their own or their several shared names. It has seemed safe to assume that many titles signed as by Kuttner alone are collaborations, though somewhat less safe to assume that the reverse applies, for much of her work has a texture and emotional intensity that seems hard to think of as collaborative; and a gradual consensus has been established that Moore was in fact the stronger writer of the two. In any case, Kuttner’s wit, deftly audacious deployment of ideas and neat exposition well complemented Moore’s greater lyrical fluency and the power to evoke a Sense of Wonder in the past-haunted interstellar venues that were her specialty.

You can read more about C. L. Moore in her entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and find her work via her Author page on the SF Gateway website. For this month only, all of her individual titles will be discounted. Enjoy!

Please note that we only have influence over UK pricing. This promotion may be taken up by our colleagues in other markets, but that is at the discretion of the local distributor.