Northwest Smith

By C.L. Moore

From C.L. Moore, the legendary pioneer of classic sci-fi, comes the collected adventures of the iconic space outlaw, Northwest Smith.

First published in Weird Tales in the early 1930s, C.L. Moore’s Northwest Smith stories, especially SHAMBLEAU, were hailed as some of the most imaginative and vivid science fiction stories ever to come out of the golden age of sci-fi. At a time when women were heavily underrepresented in the genre, C.L. Moore was among the first to gain critical and popular acclaim, drawing comparisons to contemporaries like H.P. Lovecraft and Fritz Leiber.

Northwest Smith, now recognized by many as the archetypal space smuggler and gunslinger, is an adventurer in the classic sense of the word, and these thirteen stories chronicle the bizarre dangers, interstellar wonders, and titillating romances that captured the imagination of a generation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Release date: Sep 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682301111

Reviews for Northwest Smith

[randystafford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Shambleau", the opening story of this series, was Moore's first sale and made her reputation. With a prelude that established a back story of ancient alien civilizations on Venus and Mars and a second space age of Man, it established a romantic setting for Moore to drop her outlaw hero Smith into. Mix in prose probably about as sensual and erotic as could be published in Weird Tales at the time and some explicit ancient Earth mythology, and a popular series was born.And it's still a good, fine story. Unfortunately, it also established a formula pretty closely followed for eight out of the other nine stories in this book. So as not to spoil the enjoyment of the other stories, I won't spell out that formula, but I will say that what awed readers of Weird Tales as they were parceled out mostly from 1933-1936 will probably cloy your literary palate the way too much of a fine dessert will. Do not read these stories all at once.Two other warnings are in order. First, this collection was first published as the limited hardcover Scarlet Dream in 1981. Second, I have found out that it seems to omit two Northwest Smith stories. You will find the whole series in the cunningly titled Northwest of Earth: The Complete Northwest Smith.

[lyndatrue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of my favorite covers, of any of her books. As another reviewer notes, this is missing two of the stories, which appear in "Northwest of Earth" (which also has an introduction by C. J. Cherryh).In order:Shambleau (1933)Black Thirst (1934)The Tree of Life (1936)Scarlet Dream (1934)Dust of the Gods (1934)Lost Paradise (1936)Julhi (1935)The Cold Gray God (1935)Yvala (1936)Song in a Minor Key (1957)My favorite of these is "Julhi," but I was surprised, just now, to realize that I'd never read the "Son in a Minor Key" (I just did that, now). It was a gift from the past, and very fitting, somehow.(Published in hardcover as Scarlet Dream)