“Black Thirst” (1934) by C. L. Moore

JE: Did the success of “Shambleau” generate numerous requests for additional stories?

CLM: No, not really. The editor of Weird Tales, Farnsworth Wright, simply told me that he would like to see more of my work. No other editors, at the time, wrote to me requesting additional stories. My success in the science-fiction field came gradually and only after the publication of several other stories. […] I didn’t want it to be known at the bank that I had an extra source of income. I wrote “Shambleau” in the midst of the Depression. The bank was a very paternalistic organization. It was already firing those people whose services weren’t really needed. I had the feeling that they might have fired me had they known that I was earning extra income. So I kept it a deadly secret. Using my initials was simply a means of obscuring my identity.
—“C. L. Moore: POET OF FAR-DISTANT FUTURES” by Jeffrey M. Elliot in Pulp Voices (1983) 46-47

“Shambleau” (WT Nov 1933) struck like a lightning bolt—boldly original, and meeting almost universal acclaim. Yet the pages of Weird Tales are littered with one-hit wonders, authors who sold a single story and never made another sale, or who did sell again but could never recapture the power and promise of that first story. With C. L. Moore’s second tale, readers would find out whether “Shambleau” was a lucky accident or not. Within a few months, they found out.

BLACK THIRST
by C. L. Moore

Another weird and thrilling tale about Northwest Smith, by the author of “Shambleau”—an astounding story of ultimate horror.
—”Coming Next Month,” Weird Tales Mar 1934

Between November 1933 and March 1934, C. L. Moore had not been idle. The Great Depression was still raging, she was still working in her secretarial position in Indianapolis, and she now had a new, unexpected source of income if she could continue to sell stories. According to a 1976 interview with Chacal, her second story, “Werewoman,” was rejected; whether or not this was quite the order of events is unclear as some of her later interviews are contradictory on this matter, but it seems clear that she was emboldened to write several new stories and submit them to Weird Tales; editor Farnsworth Wright bought some of them and relatively quickly brought them to press.

“Black Thirst” appeared in the April 1934 issue of Weird Tales. It is the second published tale of Northwest Smith; the one-off space outlaw was now officially a series character. Set on Venus rather than Mars, with Earth as no more than a green star in the sky, it follows a similar mix of beauty mingled with horror, ray-gun action, and alienation—not repeating the plot of “Shambleau,” but strongly evocative of the elements that had made that story work, somewhat remixed. From some subsequent comments, it is apparent that Moore was at this point more likely to write by the seat of her pants than plot, and take advantage of sudden bursts of inspiration:

You ask for manuscripts. If what you mean is the original draft, all scribbled over, the only one I have now is the medieval-lady opus. I’ll enclose it when I return your magazines. It’s not a very accurate original, tho, for when I typed it for publication I made a good many changes as I went along. And as I remember, I changed my mind in the middle a couple of times, and deflected the course of the story. You see, I never know until I’m half-way through how it’s going to end, and usually have to go back and alter the first a little to hitch up with the last. I was nearly thru with SHAMBLEAU before I had the remotest idea how I was going to rescue Smith from her clutches. And in BLACK THIRST the Alendar’s relapse into primeval ooze was as much of a shock to me as to any of the characters in the sotry. I didn’t know until I had actually begun that scene on the edge of the underground sea how I was going to overcome the Alendar. Smith’s hairbreadth escapes were quite literally harbreadth, for I’m usually breathless with apprehension as I snatch him just in time from the awful dangers that beset him. Tho that’s all past tense now, I suppose.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 1 Jun 1934, MSS Brown Digital Repository

By the way, speaking of the Alendar, I wonder how other people find the odd names they want for characters. I usually glance around ind esperation and seize on the first hting I see. Alendar is simply Calendar with the C left off. And N. W.’s friend Yarol is a transpostion of the name on the Royal typewriter I wrote the story on.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 10 Sep-9 Oct 1934, MSS Brown Digital Repository

There is also a suggestion that Farnsworth Wright, following his editorial habits (see “Bat’s Belfry” by August Derleth), was revising Moore’s manuscripts as they came in. The exact nature of these revisions is unclear, though typically he asked writers to tighten up overwordy passages or would silently remove references to sex.

I trust your revisions may make Mrs. Moore’s second story as striking and interesting as this one.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Farnsworth Wright, 21 Nov 1933, Letters to Woodburn Harris 86

The story is slightly more daring than typical Weird Tales entries. The third paragraph includes a bald reference to “Venusian street-walkers,” and the story deals with human-trafficking and eunuch-guarded harems in a way strongly reminiscent of Yellow Peril stories of white slavery and seraglios, an alien eugenics that treats the breeding of human beings like humans breeds cows or cats, and an almost homosexual element when the Alendar considers Northwest Smith:

“I realized how long it had been since I tasted the beauty of a man. It is rare, so different from female beauty, that I had all but forgotten it existed. And you have it, very subtly, in a raw, harsh way…”
—C. L. Moore, “Black Thirst”

More than “Shambleau,” the expanding Interplanetary setting that C. L. Moore sketches echoes fantasy as much or more than science fiction. She speaks of the three planets (Mars, Venus, and Earth), but there are kings, castles, courts, and courtesans; payment is expected in gold coins; and Smith looks for swords and daggers as much as rayguns. If “Shambleau” was drawing heavily on Westerns, then “Black Thirst” seems to draw as much from her quasi-medieval fantasy setting in her pre-pulp writing. If there is a criticism to the story, it might be that it hews a little too close to the plot of “Shambleau.” Once again, Northwest Smith finds himself facing an almost spiritual as well as physical peril from a vampiric alien. While not quite formulaic, readers could definitely see how strongly it echoed some of the notes of Moore’s first tale.

Yet they loved it.

Donald Allgeier, of Springfield, Missouri, writes: “This letter is written primarily because of Black Thirst. I have a thirst (black or not) for more like it. I hope the next story by Moore is as good as this. . . . Who is C. L. Moore, anyway? Surely he’s not a brand-new author—not when he can write as he does. Could he perhaps be a new pseudonym for some famous writer? I thought he had just about reached the ultimate in his first story, but the second proved my mistake. Most authors would carefully avoid description of all those beautiful girls, but Moore handles it beautifully, delicately, and marvelously. The Alendar, too, is a worthy creation. I’d like to see a novel by Moore.
—”The Eyrie,” Weird Tales June 1934

There were many more fan-comments in that vein, and Wright had already seen the promise of his new discovery and bought more stories from Moore–and Wright was careful at this point to follow her wishes and not reveal her gender, though that bit of gossip would soon make the rounds in fan-circles. Even her pulp peers were impressed by Moore’s sophomore effort; Lovecraft praised it to many of his friends. Though most of Lovecraft’s comments are brief, a few are fuller:

The present issue, I think, is far above the average—with your tale, the splendid Bruks reprint, the powerful Smith yarn with self-drawn illustration, and the strikingly potent, original, and distinctive “Black Thirst”.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Robert E. Howard, 3 Apr 1934, A Means to Freedom 2.727

The recent WT is distinctly above average—“Black Thirst” perhaps leading because of the utter originality of its conception, the vividness of its unfolding, & the ever-brooding air of hidden, transcendent horror just beyond one’s sight. A little less conventionality of the popular-romance setting & mood would increase the power of the tale.
—H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, 10 Apr 1934, O Fortunate Floridian 129

“Black Thirst” has a lot of conventional stuff, but the atmosphere of utterly unknown evil & menace is extremely distinctive.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [13 Apr 1934], Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 552

In 1935 when R. H. Barlow was thinking of re-printing the story for Moore through his small press, he apparently considered revising the tale—which Lovecraft disagreed with:

As for revision—some of the tales would take careful thought indeed. “Black Thirst” couldn’t be revised except by striking at its very core—cutting out the vapid idea of human-looking beauties on another planet (unless descent from a remote terrestrial source is suggested, &c.), &c. It might be wisest to let some of the tales alone, & hope that later specimens will avoid the flaws which they possess. But all that is for later consideration.
—H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, [25 Mar 1935], O Fortunate Floridian 229

As a young man, Lovecraft had grown up on adventurous “planetary romances” like Edgar Rice Burrough’s A Princess of Mars, which featured lots of action and improbably human-looking aliens with princesses that could procreate quite readily with Earth-born heroes. Biologically, this is as bunk as Star Wars and Star Trek‘s rubber-forehead aliens, and as an adult Lovecraft was very critical of the idea of Earth-like worlds that evolved Earth-like humanoids, as expressed in Lovecraft’s “Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction.” So Lovecraft was not strongly drawn to the Burroughs-esque elements that may have appealed to Weird Tales fans; for him, it was the sheer alien weirdness and horror that was the true appeal of Moore’s first couple stories.

There is every indication that Wright knew he had another hit on his hands with “Black Thirst,” because he had already bought other stories that was destined to appear in subsequent issues of Weird Tales. Yet the Unique Magazine brought with it more than acceptances and (eventually) welcome checks; Moore also made new friends, as fan-letters from Weird Tales turned into correspondences with folk like R. H. Barlow.

I hope you will not be too much disappointed in the stories that follow. Perhaps, when you have read those appearing in the April and May issues, you will write again to tell me what you thought of them.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 8 Mar 1934, MSS Brown Digital Repository

Through Barlow, Moore would come to correspond with Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith, among others. It connected her to a wider community of writers, whom she would both influence and be influenced by. If “Shambleau” marked C. L. Moore’s arrival on the scene, “Black Thirst” helped her swiftly gain acceptance into the world of weird and science fiction pulp writers.

C. L. Moore’s “Black Thirst” can be read for free online here.

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Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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