Jirel of Joiry: "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth"

When "Hellsgarde" was published in the April 1939 edition of Weird Tales, the C.L. Moore that weird fiction readers knew was almost gone. Bobby Derie points out that "Weird Tales had been sold and the offices moved to New York City; the editor Farnsworth Wright would soon be fired and, in 1940, would die. Moore’s connections to the magazine were fraying." Her final contribution to the Jirel mythos would also be her final contribution to the magazine. 

She married author Henry Kuttner in 1940 and collaborated with her new husband, mostly under his name, until his death in 1958 at the age of just 42. She had only a few years of fiction writing left, as she turned her prospects to teaching creative writing at the university level in southern California and then quit writing entirely in 1963.
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Moore stuck around the scene for a while, receiving the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 1980 and the title of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master. She passed away in 1987 while battling Alzheimer's. And while her shelf was not completely devoid of hardware and she even has the honor of being one of the first women to be nominated for a Hugo Award, I can't help but feel like there's a dearth of C.L. Moore in the world. 

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There are no comprehensive biographies, no documentary films, no C.L. Moore House & Museum historical site in Indiana. She's certainly a big name to the insular sword & sorcery community and to retro science fiction lovers, but ever since I discovered her, I've felt like it's an injustice that she's limited to that.

Her stuff in Weird Tales was generational. She produced incredible work in a very short amount of time.

And then, for more than 80 years, Jirel sat quietly.

Art by Saprophial, from NESS #3

A few years back, publisher Oliver Brackenbury came knocking on the door of the C.L. Moore estate for his excellent New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine. There are a lot of interesting new, independent S&S mags popping up, by New Edge is the clear leader of the pack for me. Jirel's had a consistent presence in its pages; as early as the 2022 Issue #0 featured a piece from German Jirel banner-carrier Cora Buhlert entitled "C.L. Moore and Jirel of Joiry: The First Lady of Sword & Sorcery." That was actually my introduction to the character, causing me to track down and devour all of the original stories.

But the more exciting thing was that issue #3 would feature a new Jirel story, written by speculative fiction author Molly Tanzer. The Moore estate apparently gave no guidelines and had no demands about how new Jirel material needed to be written. By all accounts, they were easy to work with and just seemed excited that there was new interest in the material. The first result of these talks was "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth," which debuted in 2024.

Fret not about how difficult it might be to shake the dust of a character after so long; "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth" fully lives up to Moore's legacy. The action is exciting, Jirel's characterization is consistent, and the supernatural elements keep it grounded in the Weird Tales ballpark.

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Art by Saprophial, from NESS #3

When writing her new story, the first in over eight decades, Molly realized that Jirel had always left her world and gone to another one in her original stories: an underworld, a magic painting, Pav's Dark Land, Hellsgarde, and then came back, so she wanted to reintroduce her by having her begin in this other world and then return to her own. Our lady of Joiry begins the narrative as the Lady of Coquaigne, seemingly a queen, in love with her consort Etizenne. The name Joiry means nothing to her. 

Tanzer adds the character of Thevin, Jirel's booze-loving stewardess, and I don't really think it's a spoiler to tell you that Etizenne is yet another dashing but diabolical man in the lady of Joiry's Tinder DMs. Thevin especially adds a lot to the story. It's really the first time Jirel's had another female as a confidant.

When I first spoke to Molly about her new Jirel stories, I asked if she was trying to imitate Moore's style or just remain consistent with Moore's vision, and she said the latter. She doesn't try to ape C.L. Moore's writing style, but the change isn't jarring the way jumping from a Robert E. Howard to Robert Jordan Conan story might be. She still writes Jirel as a hothead with good intuition.

And when it comes to style, Molly says she likes sword & sorcery because you can get florid in your prose and nobody tries to fight you. We're here for it.

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Me meeting Molly Tanzer at a "And Side By Side They Wander" release event

If you've read anything by Molly Tanzer, you know she's an extremely philosophical author. Her most recent novella, And Side By Side They Wander, is basically a sci-fi art heist that masks a really heady discussion of copies, art, reproduction, and AI. So imagine my surprise when I asked if she was trying to cook deep themes into her Jirel work and she said no, that she's just swinging blades around for fun. 

Actually, I'm not that surprised. One time I told John C. Hocking I spent his whole Conan and the Emerald Lotus novel thinking it was Conan Says No to Crack and he said no, too. So I've been way off before.

Intentionally or not, Moore's work with Jirel is terribly interesting when it came to its themes, grappling with regret, bodily autonomy, revenge, and women's relationships to powerful men. I read a lot of those original stories as kind of obliquely feminist, but I'm not sure how much of that was purposefully done by C.L. Moore. It seems to me that "Jirel and the Mirror of Truth" picks up those threads. Because of the way the characters are released from a spell one by one and are originally broken from that spell through a conversation no one else can see or hear, I immediately thought that this was a depiction of whisper networks used by women to keep themselves safe from abusive men (you may knowof  those "Are we dating the same guy?" Facebook groups and the like). Sharing their experiences one at a time to clue people in breaks the spell a manipulator may have on a group. I bought this up to Molly at a brewery and she furrowed her brow, and stared past her beer for a moment before saying that wasn't what she'd had in mind, but that she didn't mind the interpretation.

I've also asked her about the ending of the story, in which (actual spoilers ahead now) Jirel is shown by the strange Mirror of Truth an image of herself covered in glistening, silvery scars. The scars do not mar her image, but add to it, each one seemingly a beautiful stitch on her. I thought that this might be tied to one discovering a more true self-image, having broken free from one where you're seen as lesser. Perhaps you can finally appreciate yourself, scars and all. But nope, that seems to be my read on the story alone.

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Even when she says she's just doing it for fun, writing her take on the slightly meatheaded jock with terrible taste in men that is our lady Joiry, I think she can't help but produce really interesting stuff between the lines. 

If you haven't checked out New Edge, the digital editions are pretty reasonable in price, and the new Jirel novella, Blue Fire, has been recently fully-funded, so that should be out soon enough.