In addition to the twenty-one Conan stories that Howard actually wrote, there has been a plethora of Conan pastiches, written by various authors, in an effort to fill gaps in the Cimmerian’s career.
While Howard did leave a few very brief fragments and outlines for other Conan stories — which have been completed through “posthumous collaboration” — later writers have”revised” non-fantasy adventures to turn them into Conan stories, and have further diluted Howard’s Conan through a vast body of frank pastiches.
These are not Conan stories — not Robert E. Howard’s Conan — and have no more validity in relation to the stories than any Conan stories you might yourself decide to write. {…} It is a matter of spirit.

Karl Edward Wagner, forward to “Hour of the Dragon,” Berkley paperback, 1977.
It’s never been said better.

Erik Mona and Planet Stories pulled off a sweet commemoration of a diamond jubilee this last June with their reprinting of The Sword of Rhiannon. It was in the June 1949 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories that Leigh Brackett’s, “The Sea Kings of Mars,” first appeared. With Brackett’s approval, that tale has been reprinted with the title of The Sword of Rhiannon ever since (or nearly so).

Beginning with the Ace Double that featured Conan the Conqueror on the flip-side, nearly all subsequent printings of Brackett’s novel sported The Sword of Rhiannon as the title. Simple (socio-) economics. As Leigh noted in her afterword to The Best of Leigh Brackett, post-war editors were getting more leery of publishing her type of ERB-influenced tales; tales where the Red Planet supported an ancient, humanoid population amidst which Earthmen found adventure. This was due to the (at the time) recent (and dream-shattering) advances in the sciences. Apparently, faster-than-light drives were more “real” than the possibility of life on Mars (though the opposite seems just as likely today). Renaming this story “The Sword of Rhiannon” allowed a better chance of an unwitting (and lucky) reader picking up the book and then getting pulled in by Brackett’s hard-boiled, Howardian prose. The fact that Leigh persisted in writing later tales like “The Secret of Sinharat” and “The People of the Talisman” is a testament to her authorial courage and passion for the Martian “sword-and-planet” sub-genre.

Paizo’s new reprinting of The Sword of Rhiannon is the best showcase for this novel thus far assayed, in my opinion. The cover by Daren Bader is well-wrought and action-packed. Nicola Griffith’s introduction, while quite thoughtful and appreciated by yours truly, could have been a bit better, perhaps. Then again, that leaves room for the tossing-in of my two coppers, doesn’t it? On with the tale…

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When Karl Edward Wagner got “The Hour of the Dragon” into print sans editorial amendments, I was curious about the three terms for helmet that Howard had used, apparently not realizing, according to some, that they defined “three specific and different” styles.

When Conan dons the helmet, it’s a “plain morion”. Later, it’s a “basinet” and later still it is a “burganet.”
Researching this in my “Complete Encyclopedia of Arms and Weapons,” I quickly found that these are actually not very specific terms, but describe evolving trends, many of which are quite different from their predecessors. And rather than being distinct from each other, the burgonet and the morion merge in a hybrid known aptly as the burgonet-morion.

The basinet, which is commonly associated with jousting knights, actually started off as a simple cap with an attached coif, rather like Barry Smith’s depiction of Turanian helmets. It then evolved into the great bellows-visored helmet worn by knights in tourneys. A basinet offers good protection to the neck. The morion is associated with the Spanish conquistadors. Most were made of two plates joined along the middle with a mohawk-like “comb” running from front to back, but some were made with only one piece, which would make them similar to basinets.
The same is true of the burgonet, as it could also be made with one piece.

I think it is totally possible, even likely, that Howard knew exactly what these words meant when he used them. The Nemedian smith who created this helmet knew nothing of burganets, basinets, or morions when he made it — they wouldn’t be invented until our own age. Yet what he made had some basic characteristics of all, and in trying to describe what is basically an alien artifact from another age Howard used terms that would let a reader imagine something along the lines of what it was; a single-plate cap with an aventail or coif to protect the neck, a fall or eyeshade to keep the eyes sheltered, and an openable visor.

I recently received my copy of The Maze of the Enchanter: Volume Four of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith. Edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger and published by Night Shade Books, this is a sumptuous volume. Filled with sardonic, mystic and grotesque delights, The Maze of the Enchanter is a feast even for the well-read CAS aficionado. Held within its finely-bound pages are tales restored (wherever possible) to the form in which Smith envisioned them before he was prevailed upon to make emendations due to editorial fiat.

Night Shade’s “Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith” series is ambitious, seeking to put every completed tale penned by CAS between quality covers, with the ordering dictated by date of composition. Volume Four encompasses the period from May of 1932 through March of 1933. There are many, including myself, who see this period as one of Clark Ashton Smith at his height, when his imagination, enthusiasm and word-craft were at full strength.

The jacket art for The Maze of the Enchanter, as with all others in the series, has been rendered by Jason Van Hollander. Once again, Van Hollander utilized photo reference to work in examples of of Smith’s own primitive and surrealistic art, as well as a likeness of the Enchanter of Auburn himself (in this case, standing in for Maal Dweb). I’d like to think that Klarkash-Ton would be pleased.

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This is a rather strange movie. Filmed in a street-documentary way, with lots of choppy hand-held scenes reflecting modern war footage, it is the story of an ill-advised attempt to relocate aliens from their shanty-town to concentration camps farther away from the human populace. The aliens are somewhat sullen, violent arthropods who suffered some disaster in space that left them starving and leaderless. I had to wonder how HPL would react to creatures that resemble giant, intelligent seafood. The humans call them “prawns”; it is the first sign of the disdain with which they are viewed.

The movie is set in South Africa, and obviously the alien-hate can be read as an allusion to racism, but it is not really played to excess. It is just the backdrop to an interesting drama, played at both the personal level and a world-wide level as the humans find the prawn are not all as simple-minded as they believe. Three of the prawn have been planning for twenty years to escape the prison that is earth.
In a review for SFX, Nick Setchfield remarks:

This is pure body horror in the lineage of Alien, The Thing and The Fly.

That is certainly an element. Don’t go see this if you are easily grossed out. He also has these comments which I found interesting:

Wikus van der Merwe is a nepotistically-appointed bureaucrat, a Pooterish Afrikaaner charged with overseeing the mass eviction of the alien township. Tank-top, Chuckle Brothers moustache, neat side-parting. The word dweeb is all but laser-etched on his forehead. From the moment you clock his nervous weasel features you know he’s one of those middle-management peons cinema routinely earmarks for death in a moment of grisly, crowd-pleasing black comedy.

And then there’s a moment when you realise, with sudden, amused shock, that this is the hero, that they’ve handed the movie to this man (actually, it may be the moment that he ditches the tank-top). Sharlto Copley is brilliant as Wikus, mining unsuspected reserves of heroism and furious morality beneath the nerdish exterior …

The review has some slight spoilers, which I won’t repeat, but I did think the movie needed a final scene which never comes. Director and writer Neill Blomkamp said in an interview that while Hollywood always ties up the loose ends, real life isn’t always so neat. Well, that’s why we prefer stories to real life for entertainment, Neill. Still, a thoughtprovoking and compelling movie — you’ll either love it or hate it, apparently.

Elmer Kelton died in San Angelo, Texas on August 22nd, 2009. Other than (possibly) Louis L’Amour, Kelton is the most honored writer in the history of the Western fiction genre. Born about two hundred miles west of Cross Plains and almost exactly two decades after the birth of Robert E. Howard, Kelton spent the last six decades writing novels about his native state (and its far-wandering sons). Many would say he did so better than anyone else.

Elmer Kelton’s won a Spur Award for his novel, Buffalo Wagons, in 1957. Before he was done, he’d win six more. In honor of that record-breaking achievement, and for the sheer sustained excellence of his entire body of work, the Western Writers Association voted him “The Best Western Author of All Time.”

I first became acquainted with Mr. Kelton’s work by way of the film, The Good Old Boys, which was adapted from his novel of the same name. Searching it out, I was struck by several things. This was a writer with a deep knowledge of the history of the American West. On top of that (and most importantly), the man could spin a yarn; a yarn filled with characters who acted and spoke authentically (to my mind). Kelton had this to say about the writing of The Good Old Boys: “(It) is probably the closest I have ever come to writing from sheer inspiration. Hewey Calloway and the other characters took hold of the story like a cold-jawed horse grabbing onto the bit, and about all I could do was hold on for the ride.”

The Time It Never Rained (1973), is a novel about the drought of the 1950s, a time when most Texan ranchers gave in and accepted “welfare” (in the form of hay and feed) from the government. Not much hot lead flying, but this novel burns with intensity drawn from the souls of the characters; proud people with their backs to the wall. People who see a way of life that endured for a century being changed irrevocably.

The Time It Never Rained and The Good Old Boys are the only novels by Elmer Kelton that I have ever read. There’s enough proof between the two for me to say that the man was a damned fine writer, I reckon.

I just know I’m going to get some outraged emails at 12:01am on September 1 from people irate that they had no adequate warning of my decision to stop selling back issues after August 31, and upset that I’m being such a hardass about my deadline (I’ve already had people vainly ask me to extend the deadline just for them, or let them keep things on layaway for days, weeks, or months, despite my very clear blog post last time about those things). So to be perfectly clear as we come down the home stretch:

August 31, 2009 is the date after which all excess unsold copies of The Cimmerian will be destroyed. If you want any after that, you’ll have to wait for already-sold copies to appear on eBay, or scavenge at the REH Museum in Cross Plains for what copies they might still have.

No, I’m not going to change my mind. No, there will be no extensions or copies held on layaway.

August 31 is the date. Get ’em while you can.

And to be assured of getting your order, your don’t just need to send me an email requesting the issues by the deadline, your money needs to be sitting in my PayPal account by midnight of the night of Aug. 31–Sept. 1, Pacific Time. Any monies sent after that time will be refunded and the orders will go unfilled. And any email conversations that we might have had before the deadline that were ultimately not sealed by a payment will be considered void.

I’ve been overwhelmed with orders the past few weeks and am slowly working through them whenever I get free time, so if you’ve sent in money and I’ve confirmed receipt, don’t worry, you’ll be getting your package soon. Any questions, feel free to ask. If you have been sitting on the fence for the last five years, you have until Monday evening to get in on the action.

I can’t make it any more clear than that.

Roland Emmerich’s much-maligned pre-historic fantasy adventure is making the rounds of the cable channels these days. It’s not a good movie, but it’s not as terrible as some claim either. Slavers capture some people from a tribe of mammoth hunters, including our hero’s love, so he sets out with a few other brave friends to track them down and effect a rescue. It turns out they are being taken to slave on massive pyramids, being erected by an advanced prehistoric civilization a la Stygia, ruled by sacrifice-demanding “gods” from Atlantis, or perhaps another world. There are other weird elements in the prophecies that move the plot and an ancient witch-woman with visionary and other powers. Obviously, complaints about historical accuracy are as off base as they would be regarding a Kull movie. The real stars of the show are the metafuana, particularly a scene stealing digital sabre-tooth and the hordes of mammoths.
Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers agrees:

The best acting comes from woolly mammoths, man-eating ostriches and a saber-toothed tiger — and those babies are digital. It’s the human actors who look fake.

Like Conan, D’leh (Steven Strait) can raise an army when needed, and he manages to recruit a tribe of black savages to his cause as well as igniting a slave rebellion among the pyramid workers.

The climactic invasion of the united barbarians and savages, sweeping into the decadent civilization of the pyramid-builders to slaughter and destroy evokes Howard; it’s like watching the fall of Acheron or the chaotic climax of “Marchers of Valhalla.”

Like “In the Name of the King,” this is an attempt to do sword & sorcery without actually crediting Howard, but his influence is there anyway. It’s also an interesting enough, if flawed, popcorn movie.

Lamb’s obituaries in 1962 barely mentioned his fiction. By then, the cheap magazines that had published his yarns were long forgotten except by a few passionate collectors. Like a burial mound’s hidden hoard of treasure, they lay undisturbed, awaiting their rediscovery by Mr. Jones — and now a growing band of admirers.

Such is the coda of John J. Miller’s article concerning Harold Lamb’s career and the publication of Swords From the West, one of a brace of (very recently published) editions collecting Lamb’s work put out by Bison Books.

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Donald M. Grant died the other day in Florida. The name might not mean much to those but recently come to Robert E. Howard fandom. To REH fans like myself, who came of age before 1990, Donald M. Grant and the publishing company he founded represented a source of quality hardcovers featuring the fiction of Howard, Harold Lamb, Karl Edward Wagner and others that was unmatched anywhere else.

It took me a few years to realize that some of the Zebra paperbacks that introduced me to Robert E. Howard’s work originated as DMG hardcovers (cut me some slack, I wasn’t even a teenager). Once I did, I tried to get hold of such when I could afford them. Grant’s publishing house printed the first collection of Howard’s verse I ever owned. Donald M. Grant, Publishing, Inc. is still the only English-language publisher to have printed One Who Walked Alone and Post Oaks and Sand Roughs. While I own a beautiful copy of The Road of Azrael published by Mr. Grant, I am sad to say that an edition of the DMG The Sowers of the Thunder, generally considered one of the finest illustrated books to ever showcase the work of Robert E. Howard, eludes me. (Continue reading this post)