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FavoritesConan: El Borak: Horror & Cthulhuviana: Historicals: *rewritten as Hawks Over Shem Conan the Barbarian
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Would the sword and sorcery genre exist as we know it today without this man? Maybe, and maybe not, but what is certain is that Robert Ervin Howard put his stamp on the genre in his brief yet fertile writing career. There are writers, that are just writers - and there are the storytellers. If Robert E. Howard has any claim to fame, it is that he was, truly, a great storyteller. Howard was born in Cross Plains, Texas, at that time (early 1900s) still a rough oil- and cattle-town. Despite being in the boondocks, young Robert got a good education - possibly thanks to his father being a doctor, and an appetite for reading that developed early. Who would have thought that the beefy young man who worked in the oilfields was a history buff who developed a surprising amount of knowledge about the medieval Middle East? Howard began writing around 1928, and his career peaked during the 1930s, just before his death. Howard's name is inextricably tied to one particular magazine, a circle of authors whose stories also starred in that magazine, and a phenomenon that has since become an icon of the horror, fantasy and science fiction genres. The magazine was Weird Tales, to which Howard sold most of his stories, and after only a few appearances he was sharing stardom in that magazine with two other writers - Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Between them, these three kept Weird Tales going strong even through the worst of the Depression. For those who have only a passing acquaintance with Howard's work, the first thing that naturally springs to mind is the character Conan the Barbarian - especially for those who have seen the movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger. And though indeed Howard did make most of his money from sales of Conan stories, Conan was far from being his sole creation. Howard always had a strong sense of history, and unlike other fantasy authors who put their characters in purely fantastic worlds, Howard delved into the rich tapestry of the history he knew so well for a wealth of material and ideas. His winning formula was to take an idea from history, then add in a supernatural ingredient as necessary. Thus Solomon Kane, a Puritan swordsman, is thrust into battle with vampires and werewolves from New England to Africa; while El Borak, an American gunfighter who goes native in Afghanistan, fights ancient evil cults in the Himalayas; Wulfhere and Cormac mac Art, a Viking and a Gael, team together with a Viking crew to fight creatures from Hell. And Conan strides through a world that is very closely modeled on ancient and medieval history, through the supposition of an age "between the time the oceans drank Atlantis and the last Ice Age" when the Old World was home to civilizations both human and pre-human and magic was real. Sometimes when a straight historical or a fantasy story failed to sell, Howard would rewrite it as a Conan story and send it back to Weird Tales. Howard is less well-known for his straight historical pieces, most of which display his extensive knowledge and fascination with the Middle East, and for his horror stories modeled after H.P. Lovecraft's work. He also wrote a number of sports and other adventure yarns, which were well-received in his day but have faded into obscurity in comparison with his other works. In truth, I actually like some of Howard's Cthulhuvian stories and ghost stories better than Lovecraft's; Howard's style is punchier and more immediate, and the rich background of folklore that he used helps add to the frisson of fear one gets from them. Howard used simple words to tell simple stories - but told them with great power. Howard's prose is highly evocative, and his action sequences almost leap off the page into the mind's eye as though they were from a movie. Many of his scenes are so vividly outstanding that they are burned into the mind's eye as though with a hot brand. Howard's main characters were grim and gritty men, often with a pessimistic life-view, but with an indomitable spirit that always comes through in the end and raises them to the status of hero. And that, I think, is the secret of the lasting appeal of Howard's works. If you liked Howard's works, you will probably also like the works of the ff. authors:
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