Science Fiction Fans Applaud A New Era—1933. Living Life As A Writer

Twenty-two-Year-Old Impacts Science Fiction Forever 

Her first published story, Shambleau, left the bleak, mechanical, and apathetic elements of the genre behind and paved the way for science fiction writers to create worlds and characters with warmth, personality, color, sexual drive, and love. 

Using the pen name C.L. Moore, many readers didn’t know if the author was a male or female. However, forty years after being published, Catherine Lucille Moore (1911-1987) was honored at a World Science Fiction Convention banquet. The speech to accompany the presentation was never made because—upon hearing the title Shambleau—the 2,000 people in attendance rose to their feet and began shouting and clapping. 

American science fiction author and editor at Del Rey books.

As a child, Moore was chronically ill and spend her days at home reading greek mythology,  the fourteen books known as the Oz books by L. Frank Baum, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of the heroes Tarzan and John Carter. 

She attended Indiana University for a year and a half until the Great Depression of the 1930s caused her to leave in search of employment. While at the university, she wrote for the student-run newspaper. The 1931 March issue of The Vagabond said of Moore, she is…”perhaps, the most promising prose writer who has been at Indiana in some time.”

She was employed as a secretary in an Indianapolis bank when Shambleau was published in Weird Tales. Though male authors dominated the science fiction scene during her time, Moore used the pen name, C.L. Moore, not because of the male dominance, but to keep her writing identity secret from her employer.

Weird Tales editor, Farnsworth Wright, is reported to have closed down the offices of the magazine the day he read Moore’s story in celebration of its break from traditional science fiction.

A promising young writer, Henry Kuttner, became a fan of Moore’s and contacted her. At the time, he didn’t realize she was a woman. They were married in 1940 and began a merger, not only of two individuals, but of their writing abilities as well. 

Kuttner and Moore were an unusual mating of talents. Her fiction was noted for its sensitivity and emotional coloration. His was essentially intellectual in its creation, based upon a firm understanding of plot structure and, initially, often more clever than moving in its developments. Somehow, the couple managed to merge their talents, so that a story by either one would display both an intellectual base and a richly colored background. —Lester Del Rey (1975)

The pair wrote under various pseudonyms—C. H. Liddell, Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell—which they are said to have shared or exchanged. It is reported that where one author left off the other could pick up and continue, to the point, that some of couple’s collaborative works are a puzzle as to true authorship.

It has been said that few stories during their marriage can, with any certainty, be attributed to Catherine Moore. 

In 1958, Kuttner died of a heart attack. Moore never returned to writing science fiction but chose to write scripts for television instead. Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip are among the more noteworthy for which she wrote.

In my opinion, Moore did what some women do once they find their soul mate. They love so profoundly they lose their identity to the person of their passion. 

Still her impact on science fiction, and her brilliance at showing a female’s ability to create the genre with extraordinary results, are legendary. Moore influenced the writers of her time who in turn influenced our modern authors. She etched her style of science fiction into the genre forever. 

Moore’s first published story, Shambleau, was never rejected but snatched up by Weird Tales for $100. A “fabulous amount” for then, she said. 

I sat at the typewriter and heard distant bells ringing somewhere on the backstairs of my mind. The situation was wide open, and with no conscious mental processes whatever I surrendered myself to it and the typewriter. (This is among life’s most luxurious moments—giving the story its head and just keep your fingers moving. They know where they’re going. )

Nothing I have ever written was given the slightest deliberation. It was there in the typewriter and it came out, a total bypassing of the brain.

Moore On Love 

Sources:

Forward by Lester Del Rey in The Best Of C.L. Moore and Afterward by C.L. Moore.