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Saturday, September 18, 2021

Weird Tales Mar '35: Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore & Bram Stoker

I've been flipping through C. L. Moore's correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft and so feel like reading the fifth Northwest Smith story.  (I blogged about the first four of Moore's Smith stories back in March of 2020.)  "Julhi" made its debut in the March 1935 Weird Tales, accompanied by a new Conan story, "The Jewels of Gwalhur" (AKA "The Servants of Bit-Yakin") and a reprint of an 1891 Bram Stoker story, "The Judge's House."  Let's take a gander at all three.  I'm reading the Moore tale in my copy of Gollancz's Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams, number 31 of their Fantasy Masterworks series, Howard's Conan piece in my copy of Ballantine's The Conquering Sword of Conan and I guess I'll just read the Weird Tales version of Stoker's tale at the internet archive.

"Julhi" by C. L. Moore (1935)

After a night of drinking on Venus, Northwest Smith wakes up in total darkness, his weapons missing.  Someone must have drugged him and dragged him into this pitch black labyrinth!  In the dark he meets a young Venusian woman, and from her he gradually learns the complex back story to this tale.

The woman, beautiful Apri (Moore, when the two make their way out of the darkness, describes her and her attire in some detail, having already described Smith's scarred and tanned body in a sort of prologue paragraph), has psychic powers she barely understands.  Like in a Warhammer 40,000 scenario, a monstrous alien from some other dimension was able to enter our universe via contact with this  undisciplined psyker.  This alien invader, Julhi, holds court in the ruins of this ruined city, a place that was built centuries ago by a king who, it is said, worshipped unspeakable entities.  Julhi's human slaves kidnap people to feed to the monsters who now haunt the ruined city--Julhi's companions from that other dimension--and Smith was to be just such a snack for these extradimensional vampires, as was Apri, who had aroused Julhi's wrath.

Julhi, however, has relented and uses her psychic powers to guide Apri and Smith out of the dark maze of ruins to her dreamlike palace, which apparently she constructed with the power of her mind.  When Julhi appears to Smith she is reclining on a couch, and Smith finds she has an upper body much like a human's, though she has only one eye in the center of her forehead that never blinks, a mouth that never closes, and feathers instead of hair on her head.  As for her lower body, that is indescribably alien, lithe and graceful and fluid, something like a snake, but hypnotically beautiful.

These Northwest Smith stories tend to be a little repetitive, and Julhi explains in greater detail stuff we more or less already know, like how she got to our dimension, what she is doing here, the history of this ruined city, etc.  Northwest Smith stories also often revolve around some feminine alien who is like a creature from Greek mythology and who tries to seduce Smith and suck his blood or life force, an erotic act that causes Smith pleasure even as it threatens his life.  Some may find it odd that Moore, a woman herself, would repeatedly portray women as disgusting alien blood suckers who seduce men so they can selfishly drain men's life force, but there is no looking past it, and this is of course how some men see at least some women, so no doubt it can strike a chord with some male readers.  

Moore spends page after page in "Julhi" describing the seduction and ecstasy process; for long surreal paragraphs Smith feels like he is floating bodiless among the stars.  He sees the version of this island city in Julhi's dimension, where it is not ruins but a bustling community, and realizes Julhi and her comrades are evil degenerates among their people--her race does not consist entirely of evil vampires.  This sort of jogs Smith into resistance.  It is Apri's mental abilities that keep Julhi and her companions in our universe, and to send the vampires back to their native dimension Smith strangles Apri to death--Apri, guilt ridden over having brought Julhi to Venus where she murders and abuses people, and nearly insane from Julhi's meddling with her brain, welcomes death.

(You'll recall that in "Black Thirst" a woman also wanted to die and Smith killed her, and that in "Scarlet Dream" a woman sacrificed herself so that Smith might escape an alien dimension.  Moore in these Northwest Smith stories addresses the same themes again and again.)

"Julhi," too long and too wordy (Moore uses the word "volplane" twice) and hitting yet again the same notes we have already seen in Northwest Smith stories, is merely acceptable.  I like the monster Julhi, and I like that to resolve the plot Smith has to strangle some poor girl, but the long surreal section is just too tedious.  I said the same thing about H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price's "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" in my last blog post, and ages ago I said it about Clark Ashton Smith's "The Monster of the Prophecy": these "I am a bodiless mind floating through space" psychedelia sequences are mind-numbingly boring and add nothing to the plot and very little to the atmosphere of the stories in which they appear.     

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about "Julhi," and the most awesome, is that Moore illustrated the story herself for its debut publication in Weird Tales.  Making us ponder even more deeply what kind of nonconsent/rough sex fetishes Moore might have had, Moore's drawing depicts a shirtless Northwest Smith strangling a naked Apri in a kind of symmetrical Art Nouveau composition.  Moore's strong simple lines, bold composition, and fearless recreation of an act of eroticized violence make this illustration more memorable than many of the crummy illos we find in the pages of Weird Tales (we all love Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok, but many of the other artists who illustrated Weird Tales are totally pedestrian)--I may be unable to hail Moore for this overly long story, but I can give her drawing a hearty thumbs up!  Weird Tales readers voted "Julhi" the best story in the issue, and maybe it was because of this drawing!  (I certainly hope it wasn't because of the surreal sequence!)

(In a 1976 interview for the fanzine Chacal you can read at the internet archive, Moore, among other things, says she went to art school.  Among the other things: she loves Robert Heinlein's work, she thinks Robert Bloch is a wonderful guy, she never experienced any sexism working in the SF field or while writing for television, and never had any interest in science or pretense that she was writing science fiction and not fantasy.  She talks a lot about her and husband and collaborator Henry Kuttner's writing careers, and discusses being a writer primarily as a business venture or a profession--she and "Hank" wrote quickly so they could pay the bills, doing little polishing or revising.  I found this noteworthy and perhaps ironic as, in his letters to Moore, H. P. Lovecraft stresses with some passion that he hopes she will devote her talent to producing great literature and not squander her abilities the way Edmond Hamilton had, churning out hackwork at a rapid pace in the interest of making money.)  

(Fans of the weird and sword and sorcery should definitely check out the two issues of Chacal, which feature art by Frank Frazetta, Stephen Fabian, Richard Corben, Phillipe Druillet, and an interview of Manly Wade Wellman.) 

"Julhi" has not been anthologized, but has appeared in the many collections of Northwest Smith stories that have been published over the years.


"The Servants of Bit-Yakin" (AKA "Jewels of Gwahlur") by Robert E. Howard (1935)

The Kingdom of Keshan lies in a region where grasslands meet rainforest.  The aristocracy of Keshan are of mixed race, their subjects "largely pure negro;" the princes and priests who rule Keshan claim to be descended from white people who peopled a now extinct kingdom nearby, Alkmeenon.  Conan came to Keshan pursuing a rumor that in the ruins of Alkmeenon are to be found a magnificent treasure, the jewels known as the Teeth of Gwahlur.  Of course he didn't tell the rulers of Keshan that--he told them that he was a mercenary who had come to offer his services training and commanding their army so they might defeat their traditional rivals, the kingdom of Punt.  But Conan soon faced competition--a potentate from Zembabwei, Thutmekri, who arrived hoping to cut a deal with the leaders of Keshan--he would lead an army of Zembabwans against Punt in exchange for some of the Teeth of Gwahlur.  

(Howard loves to devise these fictional countries and their crazy politics.)

As the story begins, Conan has figured out where Alkmeenon is and is climbing up a cliff--the palace of Alkmeenon, where the jewels are, is in a valley much like a bowl surrounded by this circular cliff.  Our hero is in a hurry to get his Cimmerian mitts on the Teeth of Gwahlur before any Keshani or Zembabwans secure them--no easy task because the head priest of Keshan, Gorulga, knows where lies a secret passage through the cliff and is on his way. 

Inside the ruined palace we meet more characters that stand between Conan and the jewels.  The palace of Alkmeenon is reputed to be the site not only of those jewels but of an oracle, a white woman who died centuries ago whose body has been miraculously preserved.  Some joker Conan has dealt with in the past, Zargheba, beat Conan to the palace (he also knew the secret way through those cliffs) with one of his white slave girls, Muriela, and instructed her to impersonate the oracle.  While Zargheba is outside the palace watching for Gorulga the high priest, Conan runs into this Muriela, who can't fool Conan into thinking she is the oracle because he knows her.  She begs Conan to save her from Zargheba, and relates that Zargheba is working with Thutmekri to trick Gorulga into endorsing the handing over of the Teeth of Gwahlur to the Zembabwans.  Conan tells her to alter the plan; to impersonate the oracle but tell Gorluga that the gods want the jewels given to Conan!  

At first Conan's plan seems to be working--Gorulga and his fellow priests, clad in leopard skins and ostrich feathers, are deceived by Muriela and go off to get the jewels to hand over to our Cimmerian buddy--but additional obstacles and characters appear that threaten Conan and Muriela, while Zargheba mysteriously turns up dead.  Conan triggers (but survives) death traps, fights a huge black dude and then a hideous monster, discovers and follows secret passages, and rescues Muriela multiple times.  In the climactic scene Conan loses his chance to seize the jewels thanks to Muriela's womanly foolishness, but the Cimmerian shrugs this off--easy come, easy go is Conan's attitude.  "Never worry about what's past."  As Conan and Muriela leave the palace--now full of butchered black people--Conan begins scheming how to defraud the people of Punt; like the people of Kushan, they worship a white woman and maybe Muriela can impersonate their goddess and Conan can trick them out of their money.

Even if it has some aspects of a crime or mystery story with its convoluted plot of competing con men trying to pull a heist and mysterious murderers who are not revealed until the end, "The Servants of Bit-Yakin" is a solid Conan tale.  There are plenty of weird aspects, like a lost city and people who have the ability to live for centuries, and, as if he is in a Lovecraft story, Conan learns the history of the lost city by looking at old wall paintings and old documents--our boy from Cimmeria is practically an archaeologist in this one!  The scenes of violence are also good, quick and gruesome.

Of course by today's standards the story is shockingly racist--all the black characters are villains or dupes, and their religion revolves around worshipping hideous monsters and white women.  And while Howard doesn't push the nonconsensual sex theme as hard as does Moore in this issue of Weird Tales, there are rough sex aspects to the story, like men pulling off or ripping away women's clothes.  Don't let anybody from the HR or DEI departments catch you reading this baby!      

I don't think "Jewels of Gwahlur"/"The Servants of Bit-Yakin" has ever been anthologized, but of course it has been reprinted in countless Howard collections and I thought it was quite fun.  


"The Judge's House" by Bram Stoker (1891)
     
I still remember reading Dracula in the periodicals room at The New York Public Library Research Division when I was supposed to be reading some academic article that was putting me to sleep.  Like everybody, I love Dracula, but I have never read anything else by Stoker.  Today that changes!  "The Judge's House," according to isfdb, was first published in the 1891 Christmas supplement to the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, a British newspaper.  Since then it has been reprinted in a million places, Weird Tales being one of those places.

Malcolm Malcolmson is a college student back when college was hard!  He has a big math examination coming up, so he needs to get away from all his friends to a remote location to study for a few days.  He takes the train to some town he's never been to before and rents a brick house with a wall around its yard.  Local people are scared of this place, which is known as "The Judge's House" because over a century ago it was home to a judge famous for passing harsh sentences, and it is almost never tenanted, but Malcolmson is not dissuaded.

During the day the student walks around the countryside reading math books, and at night he drinks tea and sits in the Judge's House and reads math books.  The remarkable thing about the house, the element of it upon which many of the story's gimmicks and effects rely, and something I have to admit I don't quite understand, is that it has an alarm bell on its roof, and the rope to the bell hangs down into the room where Malcolmson gulps down tea and reads books with titles like Conic Sections, Cycloidal Oscillations, and Quaternions.  Did 17th and 18th century homes customarily include alarm bells?  Is this a former government or ecclesiastical building?   

The house is full of rats, and as Malcolmson is pulling his all-nighters he can hear the vermin scampering in the walls and see them peeking at him through holes.  One rat is the biggest, and seems to rule the others through fear.  Over a series of nights, it climbs down the alarm bell rope and, when Malcolmson attacks it, runs back up that rope to escape.  There are clues that suggest that the rat is a manifestation of the devil, and then clear indications it is the ghost of the judge or the reincarnation of the judge or something of that nature.  Further querying among the locals digs up the fact that the alarm bell rope is the same rope used to hang criminals condemned by the judge over a hundred years ago.  In the climactic scene the Judge himself appears, apparently coming out of a portrait painting depicting him, to tie the rope around Malcolmson's neck and hang the math student from the bell.  I suppose Stoker is leaving open the faint possibility that Malcolmson was driven insane by overworking his brain and committed suicide.

This story is alright, no big deal.  I guess it is interesting that the villain is an agent of law and order who achieved some kind of sadistic satisfaction from meting out the death penalty to people.  Also interesting is that the conventional rats, groaning under the tyranny of the judge rat, seem to sympathize with Malcolmson and try to help him.  Is the "point" of this story that we are all just rats ruled by even more disgusting and evil rats?  And of course I laughed to see conic sections crop up in Weird Tales again.

A missed opportunity in the story is, I think, represented by the fact that Stoker offers no particular reason why the judge should want to destroy Malcolmson.  Sure, the judge is a sadist and Malcolmson is an interloper in his house, so there is enough reason for him to kill Malcolmson, but wouldn't it be a more powerful story if Malcolmson, who as written is a pretty innocuous guy, was some kind of sinner with some guilt weighing on his mind who feared the judge was hounding him because he had cheated on a test or stolen a book or toyed with some young woman or something?  Of course, if the story's theme is arbitrary and cruel government, then making Malcolmson worthy of punishment might undermine that theme.    


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The Howard story is a winner in my book, and the Moore and Stoker stories are certainly worth reading.  A pleasant leg in the long journey that is my quest to read at least one story from every issue of Weird Tales published in the 1930s.  Stay tuned for more dispatches from this expedition into the precincts of the horrible and uncanny!

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