Fantastic Fiction: What’s in a Name? The Birth of the Term “Sword and Sorcery”
If you’re of a certain age, the phrase “sword and sorcery” conjures up visions of muscular barbarians and busty damsels fighting monsters or evil wizards on paperback covers illustrated by Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, or Jeffrey Catherine Jones. But did you know that the subgenre had no name for the first 30 years of its existence? And do you know how the term for the genre of “sword and sorcery” came to be?