Encountering Northwest Smith: "Black Thirst"

In the prior installment of Encountering, I discussed how C. L. Moore’s tales of Northwest Smith included elements of Space Opera and Weird Horror and pushed the envelope of what constituted a Science Fiction tale. By Space Opera I am referring to the earlier "Space Opera equals Space Westerns" description often used during the early days of the genre. As an aside, Westerns were once called Horse Operas and that expression has experienced conceptual creep ever since including a reclaiming of sorts as some academics use Horse Opera as a reference to singing cowboy Westerns rather than predictable ones.

I am far from the first to notice that Moore incorporated elements of Weird Horror into the tales of her space faring anti-hero, Lin Carter noticed her inclusion of these elements and thought it likely they were added to specifically to increase the likelihood of publication in Weird Tales. Whatever Moore's reasons for including Weird Horror elements in Shambleau, it must be noted that she was deeply enough tied to the “Lovecraftian circle” that she was one of the co-authors (in fact she was the jump start author) of a Lovecraftian "shared world" tale entitled The Challenge from Beyond (more on this in a later post).

For the modern fan of Science Fiction, the incorporation of horror elements into a Science Fiction narrative seems perfectly natural. Everything from the Atomic Horror films of the 50s and 60s to Ridley Scott's masterpiece Alien (based on A.E. van Vogt's 1939 Astounding story "Black Destroyer" which also inspired D&D’s Displacer Beast) to Joss Whedon's Firefly demonstrate how deeply saturated film and television are with the SF horror story. But for fans of "Space Westerns," Foundation, or modern Space Opera, the shift in suspension of disbelief from hard SF to Weird Horror SF isn't guaranteed.

When I read Shambleau, I was struck by how much the narrative followed the format of a classic Western and by how the monster/alien of the tale was Lovecraftian in nature -- tentacles and all. Black Thirst takes the combination of Science Fiction and horror a different direction than Shambleau. Where in Shambleau the tale was one of Weird Horror overlaying a Western, Black Thirst is a tale of Gothic Horror that contains no small elements of the Western and Weird Horror genre. Where Shambleau would be a perfect story for Embassy Pictures to adapt to film, Black Thirst oozes Hammer Studios.

Black Thirst begins with our protagonist, Northwest Smith, leaning against a warehouse wall in some unfriendly waterfront street on Venus. He soon encounters a woman, immediately recognizable as a Minga maid, who begs Northwest to visit her in the Minga stronghold in order to provide her some sort of aid. The set up here is very similar to that of Shambleau. We’ve got Smith just hanging around, only to be called upon to aid a woman. Will Black Thirst have a similar twist where the victim isn’t all that she seems?

Moore goes into some detail describing the Minga palace. She informs us that the palace pre-exists the majority of civilization on Venus and describes how the stronghold was already built by the time some great Venusian explorer had sailed the seas in search of new land. Unlike the Western town feel of Shambleau, Black Thirst begins to immerse us in the remnants of a lost civilization. C.L. Moore is drawing from Robert E. Howard’s tales of Solomon Kane and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tales of Tarzan and John Carter here.

The Minga maids themselves are as mysterious as the palace from which they are sold, they are "those beauties that from the beginning of history have been bred in the Minga stronghold for loveliness and grace, as race-horses are bred on Earth, and reared from earliest infancy in the art of charming men. Scarcely a court on the three planets lacks at least one of these exquisite creatures..." The description of the Minga tells us a lot about the setting of Northwest Smith stories and it’s not a description of a just solar system. This is a setting of oppression and suffering.

Establishing the mysterious origins of the stronghold and the maids, Moore quickly establishes the dangers associated with attempting to "lay a finger" on a Minga maid. It is a danger with no appeal as "The chastity of Minga girls was proverbial, a trade boast." The purpose of these beauty slaves seems not to be a sexual one, and this is reinforced later when the real purpose of the breeding of the maids is reveals, but a purely aesthetic one. The women are bred for their beauty, in form and manner, and the price paid is for these things alone. One cannot help but think that Moore is using the description of the Minga maids as a means to critique society’s treatment of women during her lifetime. Her stories are filled with imagery of this sort and the focus on it distinguishes her from other Weird Tales authors.

The concept of a stronghold of courtesans, trained in the art of charming men, combined with the similarities between Malcolm Reynolds and Northwest Smith leave one wondering if Joss Whedon had read this tale before creating Firefly.

As the Minga maid, named Vaudir, leaves Smith she does so with a warning. She warns Northwest about the evil that is the Alendar. She also provides a hint regarding his origins when she tells Smith that there are "elemental" things that don't sink back into the darkness from which they came if a civilization develops too swiftly. "Life rises out of dark and mystery and things too strange and terrible to be looked upon." Here she hints at the history of the Minga and the Alendar and Moore evokes Weird Horror imagery in her discussion of the Alendar. The concept of elemental evil is a Weird Horror trope and the concept of elemental evil is used to describe the Alendar.

As we might expect, Smith agrees to help the maid and approaches the stronghold as she told him he should. What follows is a series of scenes reminiscent of Bram Stoker's Dracula in which our hero plays, a much braver version, of Jonathan Harker. Smith wanders the hallways of the palace sensing, but not seeing, the great evil that awaits him. He arrives at Vaudir's room, but it is not long before he encounters the Alendar him/itself. The Alendar is a manlike creature possessed of great psychic powers, powers which overwhelm our protagonist and that we are told could kill him in an instant. But a quick death is not to be for Smith as he possesses something of value that the Alendar desires.

The Alendar, it seems, is -- like the Shambleau -- a kind of vampire. Unlike the Shambleau the Alendar does not feed on sexual/physical pleasure. The Alendar feeds on beauty, and for the Alendar beauty is a tangible thing. It is an objective thing that provides real nourishment. The only way in which beauty is subjective regarding the Alendar's hunger is in its "form." What is beauty for a human female isn't beauty in a human male. The Alendar has spared Smith because like the Minga maid, Smith can provide sustenance. Smith possesses the quality of male beauty which must be fully developed before the Alendar can feed on him. As the Alendar describes his method of nourishment, Smith is given glimpses of unimaginable beauty and it is a beauty that can cause madness.

I often read discussions about whether or not psionics are appropriate in Dungeons & Dragons games and whether there are literary references where psionics better describes what is happening than magic. I think Black Thirst is a perfect example. It is true that vampires often have the power to control minds, and we could pass that off as magical, but what the Alendar does here is something different and it’s something that I think is best covered by some form of psionics being in the mechanics of the game.

How the tale unfolds from here I will leave for you to discover on you own, but I would like to spend some time discussing some of the interesting concepts Moore threw into this story.

One of the things that I love about Moore’s writing is that it contains deeper elements than the narrative might suggest. Just as Robert E. Howard’s first Conan tale includes a discussion of the importance of art and artists, Moore’s tale presents a discussion of beauty and what constitutes true beauty. Let’s look at an example. The Alendar describes beauty in the following manner:

"Beauty is as tangible as blood, in a way. It is a separate distinct force that inhabits the bodies of men and women. You must have noticed the vacuity that accompanies perfect beauty in so many women... the force so strong that it drives out all other forces and lives vampirishly at the expense of intelligence and goodness and conscience and all else...

For beauty, as I have said, eats up all other qualities but beauty."

The beauty that Moore has the Alendar describe is in itself horrifying, yet it is also an interesting spark for discussion. C. L. Moore uses Vaudir as a living critique of the Alendar’s description of beauty. We know from the description of Vaudir when she asked Smith for assistance that she is beautiful. We also know that it was Smith’s attraction to her that increased his desire to help her and put him into his current state of danger. As beautiful as Vaudir is, she possesses something more. She possesses and intelligence and free will that make her more desirable to the Alendar than her beauty alone would demand. This is in direct contrast to what the Alendar described as beauty. Vaudir is not vacuous.

Smith too possesses this combination of independence and beauty, a combination that the Alendar seeks to use in order to overcome the boredom which results from the consumption of his current fare of pure beauty. Moore is simultaneously critiquing the "cult of beauty" and proffering an alternative. She is telling the reader that there is also beauty that combines intelligence, independence, and appearance. There may even be beauty without appearance. There is a strong feminist spirit underlying the story and it is this spirit that separates this tale from what one might expect from a pulp tale.

As before, Moore combines elements from a variety of literature in this piece in a manner that is fluid. The discussion of elemental evil has ties to Weird Horror. The Alendar, his stronghold, and the equation of beauty itself with the horrific echo Gothic Horror as well as the writings of Howard and Burroughs. The manner in which Smith is encountered and the stories resolution are straight from a Western, one could easily see Black Thirst as an episode of Wild, Wild, West. With all that Moore combines genre elements one might expect to become lost in some residual narrative clutter, but that never occurs. Moore has a story she wants to tell, of a vampire who consumes beauty yet seeks something more, and it makes for quite an entertaining ride.

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