“Before Conan, there was Kane, a Puritan swordsman on a restless search for justice.”

That’s the lead-in from Nick Owchar’s, “Man in black: Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane,” published this May 24th in his monthly column for the Los Angeles Times. Owchar, deputy book editor for the LA Times, turns in a quite respectable piece on the Man From Devonshire (and his creator). His column, “The Siren’s Call” (a title I truly dig), was a joy and revelation once I (very recently) discovered it. Dear readers, brethren, kindred and fellow travellers, Ol’ Nick is one of us. Peruse his previous columns (future blog-fodder, for me) and tell me it ain’t so. (Continue reading this post)

Muchas gracias to our amigo, Bill Thom, for informing all of us over on the Official Robert E. Howard Forum that Wandering Star has signed a deal to publish the final deluxe, hardcover volume in the Conan series.

Through an agreement with Wandering Star, Book Palace Books will bring out a deluxe hardcover of The Conquering Sword of Conan that will (presumably) match the earlier, Wandering Star editions of The Coming of Conan of Cimmeria and The Bloody Crown of Conan.

The book features 13 colour paintings and 52 tonal paintings in a
signed and numbered edition of 1000 copies.

Limited Clothbound edition of 1000 – $195
Limited leatherbound edition of 100 – $500

Publication – November 2009

Not much else is known at this time.

Part Two: ‘Tôl acharn!’

Part Three: The Long Road to Menegroth

My esteemed colleague, Brian Murphy, recently reviewed The Children of Húrin, so it seemed apposite to follow that with an account of what transpired after the death of Nienor and Túrin. Both died that fateful day above Cabed Naeramarth, but their parents, Morwen and Húrin, lived on. The curse of Morgoth upon the House of Húrin had yet to come to full fruition.

The tale of Húrin’s wanderings has come down to us, primarily, in one volume, The War of the Jewels: The Later Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Christopher Tolkien traces the evolution of the saga from the “lost continuation” of “The Grey Annals” (an account of the First Age written by JRRT in the early 1950s) to a “substantial complex of writing” which seems to have been composed in the latter half of that decade. The title that the elder Tolkien settled upon was “The Wanderings of Húrin.” All of this “substantial complex of writing” was in service of fleshing out the stories (he did the same, or began to, for his tales of Túrin and Tuor) that Tolkien had first envisioned in the ’20s and ’30s, fresh from the horrors of the Great War.

Tolkien, after the completion of his novel, The Lord of the Rings, went back to The Silmarillion with the intention of expanding it and bringing it into closer accord with his tale of the Fall of Sauron, which was, in many ways, an addendum and afterthought to the previous work. Tolkien had always intended to see The Silmarillion published, and in fact, he had submitted it to a befuddled Unwin-Ryan immediately after the unexpected world-wide success of The Hobbit. “The Wanderings of Húrin” was to play a pivotal part in Tolkien’s projected revision and expansion of The Silmarillion.

“The Wanderings of Húrin” is not The Hobbit. One tale was written (spoken, actually) in the early ’30s by JRRT to entertain his children, Christopher Tolkien chief amongst them. The other was begun by Tolkien in the late 1950s, when he saw “double-speak” (a term Orwell didn’t invent, but should have) and an Iron Curtain, with its attendant gulags (how different were Morgoth’s “Hells of Iron,” really?), spreading their influence across his world.

I will not go into the complexities regarding the composition of “Wanderings” here, other than to say Christopher Tolkien noted that his father, fairly early in the narrative, “came to a clearer understanding” of how things stood in Brethil when Húrin the Steadfast appeared at its borders with vindication and vengeance in his mind. As events would show, the shadow of Angband hung close about him.

Knowing what sorrows and horrors befell the eldest son of Galdor in the preceding six decades might allow the unitiated to better appreciate Húrin’s mind-set. (Continue reading this post)

Sometime in the late 1970s, the Rev. Jonathan Bacon (a one-time member of REHupa) came up with a fairly cool idea. Bacon was the editor of Fantasy Crossroads, a Howard-centric fanzine. Through Glenn Lord, Bacon had acquired the Robert E. Howard fragment, “Genseric’s Fifth-Born Son” (the title derives from Lord, as far as I can ascertain), a part of the “James Allison” series of reincarnation tales. Bacon thought it would be interesting to bring together many of the active fantasy authors at that time and have them “complete” Howard’s fragment in a round-robin fashion. Robert E. Howard himself had participated in something similar when he wrote a chapter for “The Challenge From Beyond,” a round-robin tale published by the fanzine Fantasy Magazine in late 1935. In some ways, Bacon was just following a trail that REH had helped blaze. However, he chose to discard the Lord title for the fragment as a title for the entire work, deciding upon Ghor, Kin-Slayer as being a better designation.

A more complete account of how Bacon strove to get all chapters of the collaboration he envisioned published is told elsewhere. It suffices to say that only twelve out of seventeen chapters ever saw print in Fantasy Crossroads, the last being in January of 1979.

Jonathan Bacon then dropped off the map. However, Glenn Lord still retained a complete manuscript of all seventeen chapters. Nearly twenty years later, March Michaud of Necronomicon Press, learning of the complete manuscript, decided that he would publish the entire round-robin tale. Utilizing the editing talents of Rusty Burke, Michaud got Ghor, Kin-Slayer published in August, 1997. I received my copy in early 1998.

Ghor, Kin-Slayer is a chimerical beast, no way around it. The contributors to the tale range from Karl Edward Wagner and Charles R. Saunders to A. E. Van Vogt and Marion Zimmer Bradley. I intend to examine the whole story on a chapter-by-chapter basis. For those of you who tend toward spoiler-phobia, I suggest you stop reading right about now.

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Anthologies of sword-and-sorcery stories have always been thin on the ground. Credit must be given to L. Sprague de Camp for getting things rolling with collections like The Spell of Seven. In the ’70s, Lin Carter moved the concept forward with his “The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories” (DAW) anthologies. One can argue that ol’ Linwood was not much of a writer, but I would categorically state that the man had taste as an editor. He gave authors like Charles R. Saunders and Adrian Cole some of their first breaks. I recommend picking up every volume in the series edited by Carter. Don’t bother with the Saha-edited books.

Coincident with the closing days of Lin’s run, Zebra Books fired up a rival series called “Swords Against Darkness”, edited by Andrew J. Offutt. Like Carter, Offutt could be viewed as no great shakes in the authorial department, but his editorial acumen was similarly keen. David Drake, [redacted] and other worthies made the jump to paperbacks (and greater things) in the several volumes of the “SAD” series. In addition, Manly Wade Wellman’s “Kardios” series finally saw print. Once again, highly recommended. The quality was satisfactorily high from book to book.

The rest of the 1980s and 1990s deserve little mention and slight regard when it comes to S&S anthologies that published rising talents. One notable exception was Asprin’s “Thieves’ World” series. Robert Adams’ “Barbarians” books contained a few new gems. Wagner’s “Echoes of Valor” series was dedicated exclusively to republishing lost treasures from the pulp era, most notably the first ever printing of “The Black Stranger.”

Once we found out (some more pleased than others) that the “Y2K” thing wasn’t going to send us all into the depths of a “new Dark Age” (as HPL might say), the odds for fresh S&S anthologies seemed as grim as ever. Then the Robert E. Howard Del Reys hit the stands and sword-and-sorcery looked to have a fighting chance in the book marketplace. Pitch Black Books jumped into the fray with Lords of Swords and Sages and Swords, both worthy collections. However, general (and shameful) indifference on the part of sword-and-sorcery fans seems to have sounded the death knell for that particular series.

Which brings us to Return of the Sword: An Anthology of Heroic Adventure from Rogue Blades Entertainment. Featuring a stirring cover from Johnney Perkins and edited by Jason M. Waltz, this trade paperback is the newest claimant to enter the battle-circle once dominated in days of yore by DAW and Zebra.

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We live in halcyon days, my friends. Sure, there’s a global “economic downturn” grinding all and sundry ‘neath its leaden wheels and there is a possible influenza pandemic looming (or “lowering,” as REH might say), but we aficionados of the works of Robert E. Howard and John Ronald Reuel Tolkien have much to celebrate in the many coming months, gloom n’ doom notwithstanding.

Firstly, there is The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by JRRT, which is being released on May 5th. The dearly departed Steve Tompkins gave us (or, at least, myself) a much-appreciated heads-up on this project. At 384 pages, this volume outstrips the recent The Children of Hurin in pagination, though only time will tell whether it does the same in its quality of story-telling. Considering Tolkien’s deep investment in the mythic ‘Nordic’ North (far deeper than Howard’s, I would argue), I have high and lofty hopes for this publication. The dark and bloody Volsungasaga, forged in the depths of the Germanic Dark Ages, was always a well-spring of inspiration for Tollers.

Coming in October from the Library of America is the Peter Straub-edited, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps. Nestled like a blasphemous, obsidian jewel amongst tales from Robert W. Chambers and Clark Ashton Smith (and, of course, Poe) is Robert E. Howard’s seminal Lovecraftian yarn, “The Black Stone.” Inclusion of a Howard story in a Library of America publication is always a provocation for (at least minor) rejoicing. I have Bill Thom (of Howard Works and Coming Attractions fame) to thank for this welcome news.

REHupan Frank Coffman has his much-anticipated Robert E. Howard: Selected Poems volume (in cooperation with the Robert E. Howard Foundation) slated for a release to coincide with the 2009 Howard Days. Considering the “poetry” theme for this year’s commemoration, Coffman’s is a most fitting book, one which complements the recently published A Word From the Outer Dark (Project Pride), along with The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard. A banner year for REH poetry fanatics. (Continue reading this post)

“Why or how, I am not certain, but he spent some months among a tribe of the Æsir…”

Robert E. Howard in a letter to P. Schuyler Miller.

“The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” is well-beloved by Conan fans, with good reason. While containing moments of true poetry, it still packs wain-loads of bloody action into a few short pages. Some have theorized that this yarn is the very first adventure in the Cimmerian’s career, chronologically. Such would seem to be indicated by Robert E. Howard’s 1936 letter to P. Schuyler Miller.

While I have a few niggling doubts as to that placement (such doubts to be addressed at a later time), that doesn’t stop me extrapolating therefrom. If “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” is a chronicle from that period of “some months” when Conan first ventured out of Cimmeria into Nordheim (as Howard wrote to Miller), then clues within that tale possibly cast light on the Cimmerian murkiness of Conan’s years immediately prior to his bidding farewell to his homeland.

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stylus

noun
1. an instrument for writing, marking or incising.

[Origin: from the Latin stylus, “a pointed instrument” ]

papyrus

noun
1. a writing material made of strips of the pith of the papyrus plant laid evenly across similar strips in thin layers, the whole being soaked and then dried under pressure; used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

[Origin: from the Greek papyros, “reed” ]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Now he laid down the golden stylus with which he had been laboriously scrawling on waxed papyrus, rested his chin on his fist, and fixed his smoldering blue eyes enviously on the man who stood before him.

[from “The Phoenix on the Sword”]

It seems seldom recognized or appreciated by many Conan fans (especially those who “live by the Lancers”), that in the first scene Robert E. Howard ever wrote featuring the redoubtable Cimmerian, Conan is wielding a writing utensil, not a sword. “The Phoenix on the Sword” was the first Conan tale ever written, though it takes place late in his career (and near the end of the Lancer series), shortly after he became king. The readers of the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales first saw Conan the Cimmerian at a writing-table, using a stylus to incise a sheet of waxed papyrus.

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This has been an incredibly hard post to compose for a myriad of reasons. Steve Tompkins was nonpareil. His wit, his style, his awe-inspiring intelligence, his impact on Howard studies (and weird literature studies in general), his sheer output; there simply has not been any commentator on our beloved genre(s) quite like Mr. Tompkins. Many writers have pontificated about this or that aspect of weird/fantastic literature. Not one did so in quite the way that he did, nor did they do it quite so well, in this blogger’s opinion.

I never met Steve Tompkins (though we had a near miss at WFC ’06). I corresponded with him for about right on four weeks. Many others who knew him much better have already weighed in with praise for the man and his work. I can only give my perspective as a fan and as someone who hoped to call Steve Tompkins a friend someday.

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Such is the title of this most interesting blog post from John Sweat’s site, The Anthropogene.

As can be seen from the epigram that Sweat chose for his essay, the man is a Robert E. Howard fan. I am fairly certain that REH would be a fan of The Anthropogene as well, this blog post in particular. Howard was deeply interested in the expansion of the proto-Indo-Europeans/”Aryans” out of their homeland on the Eurasian steppes. He mentions their “epic treks” in numerous yarns. In addition, he had his primitive Hyborians (and Nordheimr) recapitulate (“precapitulate”?) the cultural ontogeny of the Indo-Europeans (as he saw it), right down to the wolf-skins and horse-hide tents.

For further reading on the proto-Indo-Europeans, I recommend any of J.P. Mallory’s books on the subject. Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language is flawed, but still worth a read, in my opinion.

John Sweat’s fascination with catastrophism and lost civilizations parallels that of Robert E. Howard, so I’ll very likely revisit The Anthropogene’s treasure trove of essays for another blog, someday.

*Art by Jeffrey Jones