Search Results for: "discovering robert e. howard"

Hither Came Conan: David C. Smith on “Pool of the Black One”

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Welcome back to the latest installment of Hither Came Conan, where a leading Robert E. Howard expert (and me) examine one of the original Conan stories each week, highlighting what’s best. Up today, it’s author and Howard literary biographer David C. Smith. I reda Oron long before I discovered Conan. Read on! By mid-1932, when Robert E. Howard wrote “The Pool of the Black One,” his tenth story to feature Conan the Cimmerian, he was well past the journeyman phase…

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Hither Came Conan: Morgan Holmes on “Iron Shadows in the Moon”

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“Shadows in the Moonlight” (editor’s note: Howard’s original title was “Iron Shadows in the Moon”) was the eighth Conan story to appear in the pulp magazine Weird Tales.  Conan had turned out to be a popular character with Weird Tales readers. The character was so popular in fact that fellow Weird Tales writer, E. Hoffmann Price, later wrote that Conan had saved the magazine more than once. “Shadows in the Moonlight” appeared in the April 1934 issue of Weird Tales….

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Hither Came Conan: John C. Hocking on “The Scarlet Citadel”

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I’m here to sing the praises of Robert E. Howard’s Conan story, “The Scarlet Citadel.”  This classic yarn first appeared in the January 1933 issue of Weird Tales and was the second Conan story to see print, following “The Phoenix on the Sword.”   This is a tale of Conan when he was King of Aquilonia, and many, Karl Edward Wagner among them, have noted it shows clear parallels to Howard’s only Conan novel, the peerless The Hour of the Dragon….

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Hither Came Conan: Jason M Waltz – “The Tower of the Elephant”

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Every Monday morning for Hither Came Conan, a Robert E. Howard expert looks at the merits of one of the original Conan stories from REH. Up this week is Jason M Waltz with “The Tower of the Elephant.” The Tower of the Elephant is #1! That’s the chant I heard rising above the darkened canopy shrouding the mighty yews and other overgrown vegetation blocking any chance I might have had to see the Pictish village. The heavy hand upon my…

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Hither Came Conan: Ruminations on “The Phoenix on the Sword”

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Bobby Derie wrote a great essay on the first Conan story, “The Phoenix on the Sword,” for this Hither Came Conan series. Certainly, better than anything I could ever come up with. But I still wanted to do a post on this tale. Because: A –I wanted to contribute more than just what is likely going to be a bottom-rung essay on my assignment (fans of “Rogues in the House” – sorry, you drew the short straw); and B –…

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Hither Came Conan: Fletcher Vredenburgh – “The Frost Giant’s Daughter”

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Submitted in 1932 to Weird Tales, “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” is possibly the first Conan story of entirely new material (read Keith West on the story’s publication history), and it is also unique in its style. It is stripped down to the bare, primal essences of sword & sorcery, and exists on the lip between reality and nightmare. There’s more of myth and dream to “The Frost Giant’s Daughter” than to any other Conan yarn. When I first encountered it…

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Hither Came Conan: Bobby Derie – “The Phoenix on the Sword”

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Our Hither Came Conan series gets well and truly underway this week with Bobby Derie presenting the case for “The Phoenix on the Sword.” Grab your loin cloth and tulwar (or zhaibar knife, if you prefer…)  and tread upon some jeweled thrones! “Know, oh prince…” The Texas pulpster sat at his typewriter, pounding away at the keys, talking the story out loud as he typed. The long novella of King Kull, “By This Axe I Rule!” written some years earlier…

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Hither Came Conan: The Best Conan Story Written by REH Was….?

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Welcome to a brand new, Monday morning series here at Black Gate. Join us as a star-studded cast of contributors examine every original Conan story written by Robert E. Howard: and tell you why THAT is the best of the bunch. Read on! “KNOW, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay…

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A (Black) Gat in The Hand: Saying Goodbye with a Black Mask Dinner

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun) This is a pretty famous photograph in hardboiled/pulp lore. It’s of the attendees of the 1936 West Coast Black Mask Writers dinner. And it’s the only known meeting of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. But…

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Hither Came Conan: The New Weekly Robert E. Howard Series at Black Gate!

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Hither Came Conan. Indeed. The iron-thewed Cimmerian trod the thrones of the earth under his sandaled feet. Usually, while wearing nothing more than a loincloth… Robert E. Howard completed twenty-one tales of Conan, as well as a few more fragments. Of course, some stories were better than others, but even those generally considered among ‘the worst’ offer evidence of Howard’s expertise as a story teller. “The God in the Bowl” rarely makes anybody’s Favorites List, but I wrote an essay, positing…

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