< previous page page_153 next page >

Page 153
often to read with pleasure, and to ponder, the myriad stories they produced singly and in collaboration.
It is difficult and dangerous to try to figure out who wrote what in the Kuttner-Moore canon. Apparently, virtually everything that either one published from the time of their marriage until Kuttner's early death in 1958 was to some extent a joint work. The byline is no clue. Most of their work was published under pseudonymsLawrence O'Donnell, Lewis Padgett, Keith Hammond, and a dozen more. It is easy enough to say that the richer, warmer stories are Moore's and the quick clever ones are Kuttner's, but it seems more probable that scarcely any story left their household without having been jointly planned, written, and revised. Trying to identify distinctive Kuttner or Moore traits is almost hopeless. Fury, a novel that bore the O'Donnell pseudonym when it was serialized in a magazine, is thought by students of this remarkable team to be largely Kuttner's work, and was published under Kuttner's name alone when it appeared in book form. It is a sequel to the O'Donnell story "Clash by Night," which is thought to have been written mainly by Moore. Yet Fury has more of a Moore tone to it than the earlier story. Had he so fully absorbed her style by then that he could speak in her voice or did she have a hand in the story? We'll probably never know.
Robert Silverberg, "The Silverberg Papers," Science Fiction Chronicle 9, No. 2 (November 1987): 46
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Sarah Gamble
As well as exploring the difficulties of communication between the sexes, within her stories Moore symbolically hints at the possible discovery of a kind of écriture féminine. This is mainly expressed through the recurring motif of some type of random configurationmost commonly a pattern or design, although sometimes music or (as in the case of Julhi) colour. Whatever form it takes, it is a system of non-linguistic representation which holds no meaning at all for (Northwest) Smith, but which is understood well enough by the alien women he encounters. The pattern is often linked to Smith's descent to the other world in which all his patriarchal values are reversed. In 'The Tree of Life', when Thag's priestess runs into the shadow of the grille, Smith sees a hidden significance revealed in the pattern that

 
< previous page page_153 next page >