Half the Sky: A Meditation on Battleborn Magazine #1
This is a man’s, man’s, man’s world
— James Brown
One blustery Maine spring day, I blew off class to spend an hour hanging out with a friend in the math department’s student lounge. Picture a Coke welded to my hand and a coffee to hers, as we discussed fantasy and science fiction and divers other subjects in the “wrong” lounge (we were English majors, but it was the English/Math Building and the math lounge was empty. What can I say?). Picture my friend as the reason I figured out I’m a feminist a lot sooner than I would have otherwise. Picture the talk turning to men, a gender to which only one of us is attracted.
“I’m fine with men,” she said. Then she said something I hadn’t heard before, but have heard other women echo many times since: “I just want them to remember women hold up half the sky.”
It was 1983, and, despite the recent-ish election of Reagan, we had cautious reason to hope things were getting better in the United States for (as we would have worded it then) women and lesbians and gays and bisexuals and racial and ethnic minorities, and maybe even for the deviant subculture of SF and fantasy aficionados.
Didn’t we?
Spring ahead 40+ years.
Pourin’ salt in my sugar won’t make yours any sweeter
— Kacey Musgraves
It’s the spring of 2026 and the one-time deviant subculture of speculative fiction has taken over American culture, though gains made by other disenfranchised communities are being actively pushed back. Sword & sorcery, which slipped into decades of doldrums during the ’80s, is making a comeback. I am starting the eARC of a brand-new sword & sorcery magazine, Battleborn.
First up is something written by the Commander, a fictional male mascot/host/master of ceremonies persona (like the Skull for S&S magazine Tales From the Magician’s Skull or Uncle Creepy for Creepy Magazine). The Commander, per the accompanying black & white illustration, looks more-or-less like a modern U.S. Army sergeant, though S&S is distinguished by settings in pre-industrial (or equivalent post-industrial) lands and worlds. The disjunction leaves me confused.
S&S tends toward warrior characters, but I can perceive no particular link between the modern military and S&S. If I had to name the kind of energy found in most S&S, I would say rebellious. Lone-wolfish. Even anarchic. Which is the opposite of the regimentation implied here.
Soon the Commander is inveighing against “So-called ‘cozy’ fantasy, whose highest ambitions are sitcom escapades and working in coffee shops [and w]orst of them all, romantasy – by all means, enjoy your Harlequin romances with dragons, but publishers should have the honesty for what they’re peddling and slap Fabio ripping off some lady’s corset on the cover.”
This borders on non-sequitur. But, yes, these subgenres are not like S&S. So? Besmirching another artform doesn’t add luster to the artform you are seeking to burnish.
After a pause for Kacey Musgraves’s “Biscuits” MV, I return to the fray, and the Commander returns to S&S, and well and good, although the description of “the love of chest-thumping, first-pumping, blood-and-thunder sword-and-sorcery beat[ing] like a battledrum in your chest” is an eyebrow-raiser. Chest-beating would be a painful activity for a lot of women — this is distinctly male-coded language.
Then, after the “unlucky” are threatened with a visit from the Commander, we move on to the editorial, “Welcome to the Ranks,” by Editor-in-Chief Sean CW Korsgaard. He discusses his family background and his own with pride in their military service. He talks about the men contributing to the issue, and the stories and articles they contributed. He concludes with:
“So to all of you sword-and-sorcery faithful, be you longtime fans or new, blooded veterans who’ve penned dozens of stories, or aspirants about to put one to pen for the first time, take these words to heart as I once did: Stand proud. Be brave. You follow in the footsteps of great men.”
From a later online comment by Mr. Korsgaard, I have learned he was quoting his late grandfather. I learned this because including this quote in my recent Reactor article caused him pain, and I regret that. But while reading the issue and starting this review, I did not know that, and I was simply left mystified and troubled by the monogender reference.
This happened because I had no reason to think Korsgaard, an editor and writer deeply knowledgeable of S&S, was unaware of C.L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore, who is not only the first published woman author of S&S and the creator of S&S’s first female protagonist, Jirel of Joiry (“The Black God’s Kiss,” Weird Tales, 1934) at the dawn of the S&S era — and not only the creator of the iconic planetary adventure hero Northwest Smith — but also a leading light of, and immense influence on, science fiction and fantasy in general.
It seemed unlikely that Korsgaard was unaware of Fantastic Magazine Editor Cele Lalli née Goldsmith, who in the 1960s commissioned Fritz Leiber to revive his indispensable S&S characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, and thereby sparked the storied Second Wave of S&S; or of Tanith Lee, the writer proclaimed “Goddess-Empress of the Hot Read” by the Village Voice before she’d gotten halfway through the early, S&S period of her multiple-genre-transforming, decades-spanning career in SFFH; or of WorldCon 2026 Guest of Honor Barbara Hambly, whose decades-long career in prose and media fiction began with widely acclaimed S&S novels; or of the many other women creators and editors of S&S.
My perplexity continued with the first nonfiction article, Korsgaard’s “The Devils Dogs of Belleau Wood,” which does an excellent job of describing the actions of the US 2nd Infantry Division in the titular World War I battle. However skillfully and sympathetically penned, mere words cannot, I suspect, capture the horrors of serving on a Great War front, with its catastrophic conditions and its mind-bendingly high casualty and fatality rates (“6,000 dead soldiers per day” per “World War 1 casualties“), nor capture the heroism of those with guts enough to fight there. The men of the US 2nd Infantry Division are worthy of respect, to say the least; but a specific connection to fictional pre-industrial protagonists seemed tenuous.
Then I saw a Facebook remark by Korsgaard that he was “Getting [out] a column about the history of science fiction in the pulps and Men’s Adventure magazines.”
Then it dawned on me. The excision of the distaff half from S&S. The male-only contributors. The putdowns of the female-coded cozy fantasy and romantasy subgenres. The invocations and semiotics of the modern military.
With Battleborn — if I have it right — Korsgaard is presenting S&S as men’s adventure.
It is not.
Men’s adventure is a different category (“genre” would be the wrong term here).
To conflate S&S with this category ignores a fairly significant chunk of S&S work, S&S history, and the S&S audience.
To be sure, S&S is read and created more by males than by females or by enbies. I’d never cavil at anyone who said so. S&S does appeal more to men.
But that’s a very different thing than positing S&S as “men’s literature.”
I have many feels over this, O my comrades-in-arms.
But you know what my dominant emotion is?
A feeling of betrayal by a sword-brother.
Wait, what? Why?
— Men reading this essay
I understand that my reaction may seem like a non-sequitur, or completely out of proportion, or worse, to many who read these words. I was initially surprised, too. It took me a while to sort out, even though it was my own reaction.
So I’m going to explain my response, which of course involves not only BB #1, but also things which are outside the pages of BB #1 (because we all bring our entire selves to our reading), things which may not be part of your experience.
My reaction happened for three reasons.
It happened because we women have been here from very nearly the beginning (or, given Kull of Valusia debuted in 1929 and Jirel of Joiry debuted in 1934 — almost a century ago — I should probably say we’ve been here from the beginning).
And because the late writer and editor Howard Andrew Jones (July 19, 1968-January 16, 2025), the initiator and leader of the 21st Century S&S revival, discussed “setting aside the sexism and racism and the suspect politics [of older S&S] but embracing the virtues of great pulp storytelling” in his essay “The Origin of the New Edge” (New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine Issue 0 Fall 2022 Epub, Kindle Locations 1785-1786), and I have seen Korsgaard discuss his efforts (and they are considerable) to carry on Jones’s legacy.
And also because, in the midst of this expanding and more expansively intended Third Wave revival which owes so much to Jones, there has also been some quite conscious pushback in some quarters against women as S&S creators. This is pushback in which I have never seen Korsgaard engage, by the way; I want to be clear about that.
But I also want to be clear that women have historically been welcome in S&S as readers and creators since the Swordsmen and Sorcerers Guild was founded mid-century, if not since the early Weird Tales era. Women have made far more contributions to S&S than the few I mentioned earlier. And modern redefinitions of S&S which narrow the subgenre to a thing women don’t do, or a thing women do far less of than women understand, rewrite history and erase women.
Consider, for example, the unsupported claim that “Marion Zimmer Bradley’s ongoing Sword and Sorceress anthologies [were] only ostensibly sword-and-sorcery fiction” (Smith, David. Arcane Arts and Cold Steel: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction (p. 58). Pulp Hero Press. Kindle Edition). What does “only ostensibly sword-and-sorcery fiction” even mean? This writing handbook offers no explanation, no explication. It simply abets the recent trend of dismissing women several S&S editors and scores of women S&S writers and thousands of women S&S readers as not knowing what S&S is, and persisting in our ignorance for decades.
This is simply incorrect.
And so, though I do not see Korsgaard engaging in active pushback, the timing of when I read the essentially all-male BB #1 meant that it felt like a door once wide-open to women was receiving the final in a recent series of masculine pushes to move it the last few inches and shut it in the female face.
What might have made the difference for me between feeling like this and not feeling like this?
A statement along the lines of “To paraphrase my grandfather, you follow in the footsteps of the greats.”
If no meaning can be given to human suffering, if our wounds are not capable of becoming sacred wounds, the human project is surely doomed to a blaming war of all against all. The future, like the past, will be full of scapegoats and victims. This is no peripheral question.
— Richard Rohr
If you are a man and still find my state of mind difficult to fathom, imagine reading a brand-new fantasy magazine which portrays and publishes fantasy as exclusively the product and idiom of women. Which was a widespread stereotype in the 1990s, by the way: women wrote fantasy and men wrote science fiction — a stereotype supported to no little extent by the changing-weekly contents of the new arrival shelf in the science fiction section. And, in that decade, the only original short S&S in your neighborhood chain bookstore might well have been found solely in the pages of the Sword and Sorceress anthology series.
And if you are wondering, “What does she want?” This is what I want: Dialogue. To move respectfully forward, with the understanding that we’re never going to all be on the same page, but that there is space for us all as full participants in S&S, as creators as well as consumers, regardless of gender and other distinctions.
Mentioning my painful experience does no good if we stop here, with me upset and others unhappy or defensive. If we stick rigidly to opposite poles of a closed loop where blame and shame are passed back and forth, a loop in which S&S gains nothing and loses much. S&S is a subgenre, of course, but it also exists as a dynamic conversation.
Howard Andrew Jones probably said this better than I ever will, when he said:
Swords together.
An axe age, a sword age… a wind age, a wolf age
— Vǫluspá
Of course, there’s no reason to think the contributors to Battleborn #1 have any uniform opinion about women in S&S, one way or another, so this concern is put aside for my review of the rest of the contents.
Up first, and appearing (in revised form) for the first time in physical format, is “A Stone’s Throw: A Tale of Hanuvar,” the first published story by the late Howard Andrew Jones. From the beginning, Jones — the creator of multiple S&S series and the man who would become the Twenty-First Century’s most significant writer, editor, and critic of S&S — was writing about his most important character, General Hanuvar Cabera. Hanuvar was inspired by the legendary Punic general, Hannibal Barca, and he may be read as the Hannibal of an alternate timeline, one in which the Carthaginians avoid extermination by Rome, and their leader seeks heroically to reunite and establish them in a new land.
“A Stone’s Throw” opens in media res, with Hanuvar, a hunted man, already holding an assassin-wannabe at sword’s point. Whoever hired the assassin knows Hanuvar’s appearance, even down to his newly-purchased garments — which means the man who wants Hanuvar dead is a mage. But the hireling clearly has no idea he was sent up against a wily general, dangerous fighter, and reputed necromancer. Jones delineates his protagonist’s intelligence and courage as Hanuvar solves the mystery of his own near-murder. It is not the strongest Hanuvar adventure, but it is a fine introduction for anyone new to the hero of the Volani, or to the work of Howard Andrew Jones; and it gets the fiction of Battleborn #1 off to a bang-up start. It also reminds those who knew Jones or his work of what a tremendous loss we have suffered with his untimely death.
Up next (after a moving tribute to Jones by editor Korsgaard) is “Blood of the Oni: A Tale of Shintaro Oba” by C.L. Werner, which is something of an origin story for Werner’s samurai demon-slayer, and a great starting point for newcomers to the series. Assigned to track and slay a demon, novice Oba quickly finds himself confronting a bloody-minded mob led by four of the Shogun’s own samurai, in violation of the code of the bushido. Matters complicate speedily and grimly, pushing Oba to the limit, and demonstrating why he is one of the more popular S&S characters of the new millennium. He’s a fit comrade-in-arms for S&S samurai stalwarts Tomoe Gozen and Gonji Sabatake.
“Jaguar’s Children: A Tale of Azatlán” by Gregory D. Mele is set in another S&S world new to me, one intriguingly mingling elements of ancient Greece and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and one in which the sailor Sarrumos’s problems have only begun with shipwreck on a far-away shore. He’s fleeing hot pursuit through unfamiliar jungle with a wound in his ass and the most unusual loot I’ve ever seen — loot which is distinctly uncooperative. And, oh, yeah, the locals have good cause to be hostile and are not necessarily what they seem, while Sarrumos’s own side isn’t necessarily lining up to assist him. This is a quite exciting and imaginative tale, one with unusual depth regarding appropriation and imperialism, and this series is one I intend to explore in greater depth.
“Vengeance Vow: A Tale of Jain” by TJ Marquis opens with a distinct sense of the strange and exotic (something which has been rather muted in the rising Third Wave of S&S, in my experience). A lone outlander on a sworn mission of revenge must thread the gauntlet of a loud, drunken, decadent, and debauched festival of bloody-minded, tight-fisted gods to infiltrate a well-guarded palace complex and slay a cruel conqueror. With superior strength, razor-sharp reflexes, and quick wits, Jain wins entry to the quarters of Ahmulah III, where it seems the finale should be comparatively easy. Only Jain’s not the only one on a mission, and the king possesses numerous guards, divine advice, and potent magic. A rousing tale with convincing violence.
Next is a reprint of Robert E. Howard’s classic three-quatrain poem on the price of power, “The Road of Kings.” Implicitly told in Conan’s voice, it’s as commanding as any story to come through REH’s Underwood No. 5 typewriter. I first read it in the ’70s, and the first four lines have blazed in my memory ever since.
The article “Sword & Sorcery: Weird Pulp Beginnings: Part I” by Morgan Holmes cogently sketches the origin of S&S as a pulp-era melding of the horror and adventure genres in the work of Robert E. Howard, whom most regard as the creator of S&S. Holmes discusses REH’s characters and especially his greatest and most famous creation, Conan the Cimmerian. Worth a read even for the most informed S&S fan.
Erik Waag’s “To Boast of Victory: A Tale of Skarde” opens with an amusing situation, in which a trio of intoxicated warriors (a Northern barbarian and a pair of land knights) boast, one-up, throw shade, and egg each other on to a frankly stupid (but believable for drunks) deed. This (with a little help from some friends) is to break into the castle under siege by the medieval-esque army of which they are a part. Which side will succeed is not greatly in doubt, but it’s a fun trip to the outcome.
“Temple of the River King: A Tale of Izrak the Deathless” by Lee Patton amps up (in very different manner) the Weirdness of “Vengeance Vow,” as a khan seeking restoration of his daughter summons the warrior and revenant (and possible skeleton) Izrak Laav. Matters grow only darker, moodier, more dangerous, and more unnerving as Izrak passes into and beneath the River King’s decaying fane. It’s an atmospheric work of considerable imagination, which shows influences not only from Robert E. Howard’s and Karl Edward Wagner’s S&S and horror fiction, but from the Weird tales of Clark Ashton Smith and Darrell Schweitzer — a tale which stands on its own, fit to rank with their eeriest.
“The Last Spell: A Tale of Urbarra: Part 1 of 3” by Schuyler Hernstrom is an excerpt from the Third Wave S&S star’s debut novel. Suggesting influences of Dune and the Dying Earth while embodying a unique wit and imagination, Hernstrom’s milieu is a far future which has, at least partly by design, returned to pre-industrial technology and (re)gained a magic potent enough to allow seemingly inescapable enslavement and ready multiplanar travel, at least on the part of the most powerful wizards. Said wizards are banding together in the service of creating an extraterrene library which all might access, and which must (they decide) be protected by a powerful slave. This is not necessarily good news for the one chosen — Urbarra, a northern barbarian from Thurgia — even though he’s being rescued from execution. Urbarra fiercely resists Turza, his new master, but gets nowhere (Hernstrom apparently having made an observation that’s also crossed my mind, to wit, that mighty wizards might easily outclass even the most powerful, intelligent, and ferocious barbarian). However, by the end of this self-contained excerpt, it appears barbarian and wizard might be attaining a respect for one another’s talents and a sort of rapprochement, a plot twist I have not previously seen in five decades of reading S&S. This excerpt is a very promising start to the novel.
“The Fury’s Blade: The First Tale of Gabriela de Quetar” by Robert Rhodes is probably my favorite in BB #1. The issue’s first (and only) female protagonists, the titular swordswoman and her mentor and comrade-in-arms, Bianca, are Furies: well-named female warrior-servants of the Supreme Church, entrusted with difficult and delicate missions. At this point you’re probably thinking of Inquisitors and the Catholic Church, and they’re probably the inspiration; but they are not the substance. The God of this Church is a phoenix, for example, and there is no indication the Furies deal in torture or doctrinal enforcement. Instead, they’re seeking the stolen Cloak of the Bronze Martyr, a Church treasure which grants near-invulnerability — a trait which makes recovery at least as difficult as tracking down the unknown thief. Oh, and when it comes to Fury missions, death comes before failure. Despite many obstacles, the redoubtable pair succeed in tracking down the Cloak, but victory may prove devastating.
The generous fiction of the issue concludes with a classic reprint, “The Pearls of the Vampire Queen: A Tale of Nifft the Lean” by Michael Shea. This novelette is probably the strongest fiction in a strong issue, and only in part because it’s among the longest tales. It takes the form of a letter from Shea’s classic character, as Nifft recounts his pearl-harvesting adventure with his buddy, Barnar. This description, if you haven’t read the novelette, may have you envisioning a couple of South Seas divers contending with giant, man-eating oysters, and maybe giant man-eating clams and/or man-eating sharks and/or lethally cranky kraken. Actually, these pearls come from huge, dangerous swamp polyps, which are furthermore keeping company with the lurks who love (to attack and eat) the polyps (and also love to attack and eat any passing humans). The setting — a giant swamp-lake with a great pyramid-city at its center — is suggestive of Tenochtitlán and Lake Texcoco, but I don’t get any particular Aztec or Indo-Mesoamerican vibe here.
As it’s a huge amount of work and risk just to get a handful of pearls — if not one or none — Nifft and Barnar conceive a plot to gain a thousand pearls at the expense of the local ruler, the ancient and sharp-witted vampire queen known as Vulvula (a distracting name, and not in a good way). Of course, the attempt to outfox Vulvula may make snatching pearls in ones and twos from lethal monsters look like a walk in the park. It’s a great adventure, and one which has convinced me to look further into Nifft’s adventures.
This particular Niffty adventure is followed by “The Queen Who Drinks the City: Power, Predation, and Michael Shea’s ‘The Pearls of the Vampire Queen'” by Jason Ray Carney. This work of criticism assesses the novelette’s portrayal of power with a breadth and depth which would be as much at home in an academic journal as it is here. I must admit, I never thought I’d see Marx, Foucault, and Bataille quoted in serious and non-derisive manner in a pulp magazine of apparently conservative bent. My stereotype, my mistake. This is really quite good, deepening my understanding of Shea’s novelette and making me hope Carney has penned more S&S criticism.
The final prose work is “Three to Read: Building a Better Sword & Sorcery Library” by Gregory D. Mele, contributor of the astute Azatlán tale discussed above. Astute as well is his column, which spans pulp from recent to early, and makes me eager to read all three books under discussion.
Following the review and letter columns, the issue concludes with a deftly illustrated one-page color comic, “Frug,” by another double-dipper, Schuyler Hernstrom. Since I didn’t “get” the three-panel cartoon, I initially thought it was supposed to be more than one page long. Since it’s a hat-tip, perhaps it would have helped if I were more familiar with the comix of the late Vaughn Bodē, an apparent influence.
In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us.
— Richard Rohr
So we come to the summary, and to the recommendation of whether or not to read Battleborn #1. To return to modern military parlance, this is a bit of a minefield. The fiction is excellent and abundant. The nonfiction is also strong. I haven’t seen the story illustrations. But, even without knowledge of the illos, there is much here to please S&S fans, and many readers outside of pulp, as well. In a word, the issue has depth.
However, the first issue makes the magazine seem very deliberately designed for a fairly narrow audience, to whit, cishet males. Outside that demographic, I can’t make a blanket recommendation. I have, I hope and trust, given sufficient information for the reader to make their decision.
I backed the Battleborn Indiegogo campaign, so I will read the rest of the issues I’ll be receiving before I make any further decisions about where I spend future discretionary income. Perhaps BB #1 isn’t intended to launch a men’s adventure magazine. Maybe I misjudge this issue if I presume it predictive of future installments.
Cynthia Ward is the author of The Adventure of the Incognita Countess (Aqueduct Press, January 2017), Writing the Other: A Practical Approach (with Nisi Shawl), and more than 70 short stories and chapbooks. Her last article for Black Gate was a review of Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic.
I’m getting some serious deja-vu here. In a piece on Black Gate only last week, Matthew David Surridge quoted extensively from the editor of The Thrill Book – a sort of precursor to Weird Tales – and his concern that ‘the average magazine stooped to silly femininity’, something he assured readers he would NOT do. (This was back in 1919).
Plus ca change, huh?
I appreciate your point (woman authors have always contributed to S&S and this should continue to be the case) but in fairness, Korsgaard doesn’t define S&S. This just seems to be his editorial policy? Supposing one were to compare him with, say, Tor? Here’s a link to a recent article on their website – ’New SFF Young Adult Books Arriving in August 2026’. –
https://reactormag.com/new-sff-young-adult-books-august-2026/
28 authors are listed, only four of whom are male. And this is part of general pattern. I get it; Tor publish predominantly female authors and cater to predominantly female readers, and I’m fine with that. But how is their policy (in terms of gender bias) quantifiably different from Korsgaard’s? Other than that he makes his preferences clear from the start?
It isn’t–it is part of a certain side of progressivism believing that to right past wrongs you have to do MORE for the marginalized. It’s wrong as it punishes a current generation for past sins, but it is sadly common. At a new writer’s panel at the CHicago WorldCon, I listened to an agent from one of t he most respected SFF agencies literally tell a room that was at least half male “Look, I’m sure you all have stories to tell, but unless it is something amazing, the world has really heard enough from cishet white men from now.” And two of her copanelists agreed, while one didn’t.
As someone pretty liberal in my politics, it’s depression how “us vs them” identity politics can be.
Absolutely loved this article. The premise of holding up “half the sky” is absolutely beautiful. I am a male-presenting person with shelves of MZB and, separating art from artist, am still amazed how little her “Sword and Sorceress” anthologies are appreciated, as if S&S is only for Conan tropes. My first reading of Tanith Lee’s “The Birthgrave”, is one of my favorite weekends ever. I appreciate you putting this article out and look forward to seeking out your own work.
Tanith Lee is quite possibly my favorite S&S/dark fantasy author after REH himself. Her range and ability and VOICE was just second to none
This project looks fantastic. I’m glad to see a resurgence, or at least another outlet, for strong, male-oriented fantasy and pulp fiction to get into the hands of hungry readers.
That said, I take issue with the slant of this article. At times it treats fiction deliberately aimed at men as though its masculinity is something inherently suspect, embarrassing, or in need of justification. I find that disappointing. There is nothing wrong with fiction knowing its audience and unapologetically catering to male tastes.
I also have to wonder whether the same scrutiny would be applied to the enormous amount of BookTok slop fiction marketed very deliberately toward women. If there is room for fiction unabashedly written for female readers, surely there should be room around the fire for fiction unabashedly written for men.
LongFire,
Thanks for the comment. And in one sense, you’re absolutely right. There IS room in this vast genre of ours for fiction unabashedly written for female readers, and there is most certainly room for fiction unabashedly written for men.
However, I don’t think that’s the thrust of Cynthia’s argument. I don’t see a big FICTION FOR MEN ONLY on the cover of Battleborn. I know Sean personally, and I’m not sure it was his intention to craft a magazine exclusively by and for males. And I can tell you with complete confidence that it was not the belief of at least a few the contributors that they were going to appear in an overtly men-only publication.
In short, what Cynthia has done above is to point out what looks like a very significant blind spot in Battleborn‘s creation and identity. I don’t think Sean consciously intended to exclude women in his messaging (though it’s very clear that he did so).
We’ll have to wait for Sean to weigh in to know for sure, of course. If everything he did was entirely deliberate, and he intends to fill Battleborn‘s pages and marketing exclusively with men in the future, then I’ll admit my mistake and withdrawn my critique. Although I think Sean will end up with a very different problem explaining that to his current and future contributors, not to mention the marketplace.
If I speak with a strong conviction on this topic, it’s because this also happened to me. The first issues of Black Gate were sharply attacked for having very weak female representation. Those critiques stung me, chiefly because they were entirely correct, and the oversight was wholly unintentional.
It took some self-examination and a lot of hard work to correct the error in future issues, and get the percentage of women up to a much more equal level. The rewards for the effort were enormous, in both the quality of the mag and our reception in the marketplace.
Sean’s Battleborn is a very different beast than Black Gate. But I was very grateful to those thoughtful readers who pointed out the problems with my mag, and our own blind spots. It remains to be seen if Sean feels the same way, and how Battleborn will evolve and survive.
I’ll also let Sean speak for himself, but I do know he has several female writers he is working with for stories. The Commander was supposed to be a spoof; he even alludes to being Casca in the columns page. I think he’s perhaps a tricky sell in 2026 but reflect Sean and most of the publishers being of military backgrounds, I think.
I generally agree with some of Cynthia’s critiques, but I will say this: Sean very much tried to create a spectrum of writers. Morgan Holmes represents the decided right wing of S&S with a decided view of it as men’s fiction, as Cynthia suggests, while Jason Carney writes from both a lit-crit and a decidedly left-wing PoV. Of the authors, the political bents are across the spectrum as well.
Anyway, I think it is a fair criticism, though I wish it would be taken equally so when one reads the offerings from mainstream publishers like Tor, and to some extent the new DAW and they aren’t just “balancing”, they ignore that cishet men are one of the two largest demographics–the other being cishet women. As a parent of a cishet boy, it was pretty depressing to have him come to me to borrow books because everything in the YA and later new-release section of the SFF genre that wasn’t anime was “clearly not written for me”. And..he was right. Most of it isn’t written for me either.
We’re in a breaking eggs to make omlettes era, alas, and while I have many queer friends and students, they remain in the minority of the population. It is odd to me that to find straight relationships you need to go to romantasy, so you can at least get a 50-50 split of straight characters. That is ALSO not reflective of our world. These things do go both ways, and it is sad that I so often walk through a bookstore now, spend five minutes in the SFF section and then head over to nonfiction or mystery. Hopefully, we eventually come through this to a better overall balance. But I think part of that is frank critiques like this from the feminist, queer AND masculine position — with all taking the critiques at face value and not some form of bigotry.
Thanks to Cynthia for her candor and BG for running the essay.
John, I think we may be talking past each other a little. I never argued that *Battleborn* should be “for men only,” nor that women should be excluded as readers or contributors. My point was about **orientation, not exclusion**.
A publication can deliberately cater to male tastes without being exclusively written by or for men, just as enormous amounts of romance and BookTok fiction are clearly aimed at female readers without excluding male authors or readers.
My criticism was specifically of the framing of male-oriented fiction as something that seems to require explanation or correction. If Sean never intended *Battleborn* to have that identity, that’s certainly his prerogative. But if it does appeal overwhelmingly to men, deliberately or otherwise, I don’t see that as an inherent flaw or “blind spot” that needs fixing.
There’s plenty of room in publishing for fiction unapologetically aimed at women. My point was simply that there should be equal room around the fire for fiction unapologetically aimed at men.
edit: Nothing in my comment advocated a men-only publication… why does unapologetically male-oriented fiction so readily get translated into exclusion of women?
> There’s plenty of room in publishing for fiction unapologetically aimed at women.
> My point was simply that there should be equal room around the fire for fiction
> unapologetically aimed at men.
LongFire,
You are entirely correct, and I apologize for clearly overreacting to your comment. The way I see it, this is an ongoing conversation that needs to happen in genre fiction, and when it’s finally done, there will be plenty of room for explicitly male and female-focused fiction that doesn’t trigger its readership either way.
We’re not quite there yet. There’s a lengthy history of marginalizing and downright ignoring women (and POC, and LGTBQ) writers in this field, and until that injustice has been rectified, these discussions are healthy and necessary.
But I still think that, by making the conversation about whether fiction unapologetically aimed at men or women has a place in the market, you and I are still missing Cynthia’s essential point. Which is that in his broad statements that imply S&S is men’s adventure, Sean is overlooking the essential contributions of an incredible list of talented women writers, from CL Moore to Tanith Lee to Jessica Amanda Salmonson.
The discussion we should be having isn’t whether or not it’s okay to have a male-focused magazine in the market. You and I both agree it is. The topic at hand is whether it’s okay to make the claim that you’re publishing a Sword & Sorcery magazine, and simultaneously claim that Sword and Sorcery is implicitly “men’s adventure,” when there overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Many thanks, Cynthia, for this thoughtful (and provocative!) review/essay! I applaud your frankness in addressing the misogynist bias in S&S, which I’ve noticed over my many years of reading, and simply thought of as a byproduct of stories arising from a more primitive perspective than our own (characters and settings, in particular.) That said, perpetuating stereotyped, sexist literature of any kind reveals a significant weakness in our thinking and self-awareness, especially given that it limits the possibility of writing from a more fully realized and realistic (not to mention empathic) worldview. Half the sky, indeed, and kudos to John for opening this topic for further discussion!
Just to say “Holding Up Half the Sky” is also (and I’m sure this is not a coincidence) the title of a really great collection of Celtic music by women artists.
I enjoyed this article, and I really love seeing serious discussions of sword-and-sorcery fiction.
Kudos to Cynthia Ward for making some solid, valid points about swird-and-sorcery fiction and the attitudes that often surround it, while giving fair reviews to the stories in Battleborn #1. Based on her comments about the stories, I am intrigued enough to buy issue one. I am familiar with most of the authors, so I anticipate some good reading.
That said, Ward is correct in describing some of the attitudes toward women writing S&S. I write sword-and-sorcery myself, and have read shit-tons of it over the years, and I have seen plenty of testosterone-fueled discussions on various forums that make the genre seem unwelcome to contributions from women. I find that sad, for along with all the great women authors Ward mentioned, I would add Diana L. Paxton’s “The Dark Mother” as one of the best S&S stories I have ever read (Swords Against Darkness IV, edited by Andrew J. Offut). And the THIEVES WORLD series of shared-world anthologies included many excellent stories written by women and featuring female characters.
Anyway, thank you, Cynthia Ward and Black Gate, for getting the discussion going. Good stuff.
Good fiction is good fiction, whatever the gender of the author (or characters). Ignoring those who hold up half the sky also runs the risk of alienating half the potential readers, or even the majority of potential readers, considering who most of the readers are, these days. Dumping on other categories or genres doesn’t sit right with me, either. I have read a certain amount of cozy fantasy and romantasy with an enjoyment that in no way lessens my enjoyment of sword and sorcery. So I am sympathetic to your position here. On the other hand … hmm. Nope. Having trouble with the opposite notion. S&S appealing to men is fine. S&S appealing just to men as the be all and end all, not so much.
Excellent article, Cynthia! Maybe I’m just getting old and burned out, but I find myself losing interest in Heroic Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery. I toss away most of my story ideas nowadays because everything I come uop with has been done before and I cannot find something new to bring to the table. Maybe I’ve read too much of it all since the 1960s. Maybe I need to try writing in other genres. It would be nice if I can return to space opera and sword & planet. But nothing is happening. BB is a series I am not interested in. Not my cup of grog and I do not wish to be influenced. Now Seth Lindberg’s new book, “Grave’s Daughetrs,” I am looking forward to reading because Seth’s series is qite unique and hard t define, which is good. But I must say, you certainly wrote a very detailed, knowledgable and in-depth article. Bravo!
Thanks for the call out Joe! Graves Daughters certainly overlaps, but goes by beyond, traditional S&S.
BB has more issues coming and Sean CW Korsgaard is trying to blend the old with the new. So BB is not 100% focused on past tropes and expectations. I view it as a means to show the contrast of newer voices with the anchors of interesting classics.
Im anxious for BB2 and BB3 to roll out so readers can get a better feel for Sean’s BB vision.
Actually, he accepted a Dyscrasia Fiction story for issue #3. And that story is as weird and boundary pushing as anything.
Like Cynthia, I bounced off The Commander – it didn’t strike my funny bone at all. All the macho posturing rather put me off the magazine. Cynthia’s honest review of the contents make me consider buying it, as there looks to be mostly good stuff in BB. Her article was well- balanced I thought, and I agreed with most of it.
I’m a 68 year old het white male and I love Conan and most of the original 1930s S&S stories. But the past is the past, and Howards Andrew Jones and other current writers show that there are other ways to write S&S. I find I can enjoy both and like Greg Mele I dislike the urge of modern society to try to put people and art in silos and find some good and others bad rather frustrating.
I am not keen on Romantasy fiction, but I don’t feel the need to run it down. I don’t like most Victorian literature either. If publishers are pushing Romantasy I think that’s more about hunting profits rather than ‘woke’ agendas – if people stopped reading Romantasy, the publishers would drop it like hot brick. And finding Jane Austen unreadable (as I do) doesn’t make me a mysogynist – it just means I don’t like Jane Austen. People should read what they enjoy and being mean to Romantasy readers and authors is silly.
If coupled with ‘chest-beating’ and saying there is only one way to skin the S&S/Fantasy cat, well…that just shouts insecurity to me.
Talk about a hand grenade to wake up to!
First, kudos to Cynthia for a fair review of the fiction and columns… even if we may politely disagree about other aspects of her critique, she gave the whole magazine a shot, gave the authors their flowers, and I’m looking forward to the dialogue we’re gonna have right here at Black Gate, soon!
I don’t even begrudge her for being wary of exclusionary efforts towards women, given her own track record of fighting for women’s place at the table. Where I take issue is her implication that I or Battleborn are at all on opposite sides here… and some more liberal interpretations of some of our columns.
She asks if “if I have it right”, and respectfully, she doesn’t.
Take our mascot, The Commander. He’s a mascot, meant to be taken in good fun. His columns are no doubt base and aggressive, because in addition to being a cantankerous old cuss, he’s meant to represent the Id of sword-and-sorcery and heroic fantasy with mine own more serious and heartfelt column directly following it as the Ego/Superego/voice of reason. Yin and yang, balance, and showing different approaches to the genre from the opening of each magazine.
I am perplexed how she seemingly takes the Commander as a sign of the magazine’s paramilitary tone. Within this issue alone, he is implied to have been the basis of Casca the Immortal Mercenary, gambles vast sums of money on dachshund racing, is said to have lived forever, and his last comments in the letter column involve how to achieve sword-and-sorcery book cover level waxing routines. Even the comment about “the “unlucky” are threatened with a visit from the Commander” is taken from the letter column, and is a riff on how Stan Lee used to end letter columns for Marvel heroes like The Hulk and the Thing, usually with saying they’ll clobber particularly bothersome letter writers.
I’ll also note she left out that his harshest critique – and only DIRECT critique – was not directed at women, but at two men, those being George Martin and Patrick Rothfuss. Also compared to light jabs at cozy fantasy and romantasy – this is Coke riffing on Pepsi, not a blood vendetta – is the only one with actual venom behind it. They did lasting harm, and I make no apologies for calling them out for the damage done by them. Nor any potshots taken at Marion Zimmer Bradley, who remains the ONLY author in genre I will ever attack by name, we all know why, and they deserve far worse. I digress.
His presence and paramilitary regalia is no more to be taken seriously than other entries in that grand magazine mascot tradition, be it EC Comics’ Cryptkeeper engaging in necromancy, 2000AD’s Tharg the Mighty claims to be using the magazine to subvert humanity and conquer Earth, or Tales of the Magician’s Skull’s titular Skull regularly using underperforming interns for human sacrifice… although officially, Seth Lindberg IS the only surviving intern of the Skull… what happened to Timmy, Seth? DEAR GOD, WHAT HAPPENED TO TIMMY?
(ahem)
As for the military flourish in the magazine? It’s flavoring and branding. For the most part the authors and readers seem to be having good fun with it – treating the slush pile as a gladiatorial arena, giving ranks to our editorial team and nicknames to the authors – and the connection should have been obvious I thought. This is sword-and-sorcery, a genre of daring-do and heroism, valor and glory. Real life heroic tradition steeps the genre, from classical myth, to Audie Murphy being one of the inspirations for HAJ’s Hanuvar. Top off our given flavor of the genre – character driven and action heavy – its all to help us stand out in the marketplace. Plus, “From the Frontlines of Fantasy” makes a hell of a motto, doesn’t it?
The only critique I admit actually cuts was Cynthia claiming both here and in her column for Tor – where she used Battleborn as Goofus to NESS’s Gallant – was using “Stand proud. Be brave. You follow in the footsteps of great men.” as some exclusionary rallying cry, rather than what it is: A direct quote from my late grandfather, one of the last things he said to me when I shipped out to BCT… something I spell out VERY clearly in the column. Taking a word of comfort I offered as one of welcome and twisting it into a weapon by removing it from its context entirely.
To her credit, Cynthia DID reach out and apologize when I pointed that out, and that’s why we’re having a dialogue here, later. Still stings to see it repeated here, once more without context.
Likewise her claims I think sword-and-sorcery is a men’s adventure genre… which by the content of the magazine alone should be abundantly clear isn’t the case. The Facebook comment in question, one entirely unrelated to Battleborn, I’m talking about an article I’m writing for an upcoming issue of Men’s Adventure Quarterly, detailing the long list of science fiction and fantasy authors who also contributed to the lad mags. It’s a solid article, I actually think a lot of people here, Cynthia included, would like it when it drops in a month. Among other things, John Jakes wrote western historical for them before he did either Brak the Barbarian or Kent Family Chronicles, Harlan Ellison and a number of New Wave authors wrote there before bringing that edge to the New Wave, and Robert Silverberg actually wrote under a dozen pennames to write every article that appeared in one magazine. Fun stuff and genre history, nothing malicious… and again, entirely unconnected to Battleborn.
I don’t begrudge Cynthia’s caution about playing down the role women in the genre have – she’s one of many who have fought long and hard to see that recognized. So was my boss at Baen, the talented Toni Weisskopf, whom I promise, if I didn’t come in knowing how important the likes of CL Moore, Tanith Lee, Leigh Brackett and Anne McCaffrey were to the genre, she would have made sure of it.
Hell, let my own words speak for themselves – from interviews I’ve given at Howard Days to the Arcanist, I’ve loudly praised Moore and Lee, and very proudly hype up the work of authors in upcoming issues of Battleborn like Alyssa Hazel, Violette Malan and Sarah Newton.
And I welcome the challenge – one of the things Howard and I talked about conceiving Battleborn is we didn’t want to play entirely safe. The New Edge movement has plenty of “New” but needs just a smidge more “Edge” – a hint of danger, so readers get that same thrill they did that first time they picked up Conan. The goal of Howard’s vision of New Edge was to knock the rust off the cherished old blade, not sand off the edges entirely. A blade with no edge is useless to anybody but as a bauble. This is a sword, not a safety razor after all… it should retain enough edge to draw blood.
And frankly that edge is what allows sword-and-sorcery to grow leaps and bounds in today’s fantasy market. While I don’t bear genuine grudge towards cozy fantasy or romantasy or its fans, they do play it… safe. Sanitized, at least outside the sex scenes. There’s room for a genre that has adventure, danger, blood and thunder, and yes, just a hint of scandal to it. Crown is in the gutter, and our genre can pick it up with our swords.
And that’s not just for men, never has been – sword-and-sorcery at its peak in the 70s had 40 percent female readership. Plenty of women prefer dragon slayers to dragon fornicaters, and I aim to satisfy all comers.
I don’t doubt this won’t be the last time there will be some row over Battleborn – I wouldn’t step into the arena if I wanted to play it safe – but I want to make my mission statement VERY clear. It ain’t exclusion – it’s expansion. Growth. To see gold and glory heaped upon our genre, and lead the charge to turn readers who had given up on fantasy to the power, glory and majesty of sword-and-sorcery.
My blade isn’t turned against friends. That includes you Cynthia.
I’ve received some questions about comment moderation here, so I’ll cover this again for those who are relatively new to Black Gate.
This isn’t a public forum. Think of it as my back porch. A place where I invite my friends over to chat and share fascinating ideas. Visitors are more than welcome to drop by and comment, as long as they’re respectful to my guests and to other visitors.
So if you’re one of those wondering what happened to your comment, I deleted it. If, for example, you’re the fellow who said “feminism is worse than both fascism or socialism,” or who told the author of this article to “Get over it,” then the frank truth is that I’m not interested in what you have to say, and it’s easier for me to just delete your future comments unread.
Hope that clears it up.