SWORD & PLANET

It can often be hard to tell Sword & Sorcery from its closest cousin, Sword & Planet. These tales feature the same action-filled sword-swinging adventures but they are placed on a distant planet and they usually feature things like ray guns and occasionally space travel as well. The Planetary Romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Martian adventures of Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark and C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith are some of the classics. Robert E. Howard even wrote one called Almuric.

For the most part I have tried to separate the two sub-genres in the Reader's Guide and other pages, but on this page we don't have to.

"Leigh Brackett, Queen of Space" Gallery

PLANET STORIES (1939-1955)

The magazine that bes typifies S&P was Planet Stories where writers like Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Poul Anderson and many others dished up the adventure. Planet Stories was important to Sword & Sorcery as well for where else could writers like Pou Anderson sell stories like "Witch of the Demon Seas" (basically an S&S story with just enough SF to make it acceptable to the editors) in the 1950s? The Fifties were not kind to S&S and it was Planet Stories and other magazines like Fantastic Adventures that kept the spirit of Robert E. Howard alive until the renaissance of the 1960s.