Howard Andrew Jones gives us part 3 in his continuing series, "Honing the New Edge", where he delves into and examines the sword-and-sorcery genre, past and present.

In Part 1, Howard explained the differences between sword-and-sorcery and other types of fiction, including other sub-genres such as high or epic fantasy.

Part 2 covered the state of the genre from the perspective of what’s been published both before and now, and how society has influenced sword-and-sorcery over time.

In Jones's words, part 3 takes it further:

Now I want to revisit some of the conversations I had with Bill King and John Hocking and Clint Werner and Martin Zornhau, among others, and look at what we need from sword-and-sorcery today – and what many are already striving to do.

He goes on to list the steps authors should take to gravitate sword-and-sorcery to modern times. Specifically:

I mean setting aside the sexism and racism and the suspect politics, but embracing the virtues of great pulp storytelling: The color. The pace. The headlong thrill and sense of wonder. The celebration not of the everyday and the petty, but of those who dare to fight on when the odds are against them.

No doubt sexism and racism exist in sword-and-sorcery, whether it's in the setting of the story or simply there because of the way our own society was at the time those stories were written. But one has to keep things in perspective: many stories of the past contain verbiage considered racist in today's world. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for example, hits upon the n* word more or less on the first page. In real life, Twain was a staunch advocate of emancipation, and while Adventures was number 5 on the ALA's list of "The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000", the book simply would not have stood without the realism of language fitting of the period. In fact, it wouldn't properly or accurately represent the period without such language.

In some venues of sword-and-sorcery such realism is just as necessary. The genre may take place in made-up worlds, but those fabricated places simply would not be the worlds of sword-and-sorcery if they not contain a certain flavor—the sword-and-sorcery flavor—of sexism or racism.

In any case, Jones urges us to go beyond those things, to focus on the qualities that made sword-and-sorcery great in the first place. I say think of the characters themselves: Conan, Bran Mak Morn, Elric, Kull all come to mind immediately. They're legends. While those characters may be "old", what they represent remains vibrant. There's much to learn from them and their genre still

For some further musings on the subject of sword and sorcery, check out Oh, Sword & Sorcery, Where For Art Thou? on the Monstrous Musings blog.