Recently, I have been getting back to the good stuff, namely Howard-Lovecraft-Smith. Researching something in Howard’s fiction, I was reminded of a dream sequence of H. P. Lovecraft that he wrote down in 1927 and sent off to Donald Wandrei. The dream had Lovecraft back in Roman Spain in the Pyrenees and the threat of “the Very Old Folk.”

I then remembered that Lovecraft gave it to Frank Belknap Long who incorporated that sequence into his short novel “The Horror From the Hills” which ran in Weird Tales as a two-parter in January and the February/March 1931 issues. Long was something of an also ran. His main claim to fame will always be that he was Lovecraft’s buddy. Most of his fiction is just not very good. Some early stories from Weird Tales are interesting, they are not generally very memorable. He later had a career switching to science fiction in the late 1930s and sold regularly to various magazines. Again, his fiction from that time is probably even less memorable.

“The Horror From the Hills” features Long’s contribution to the Lovecraft or Cthulhu Mythos, the monster Chaugnar Faugn. Chaugnar Faugn is described as:

“It was endowed with a trunk and great, uneven ears, and two enormous tusks protruded from the corners of its mouth. But it was not an elephant. Indeed its resemblance to an actual elephant was, at best, sporadic and superficial, despite certain unmistakable points of similarity. The ears were webbed and tentacled, the trunk terminated in a huge flaring disk at least a foot in diameter, and the tusks, which intertwined and interlocked at the base of the statue, were as translucent as rock crystal…Its forelimbs were bent stiffly at the elbow, and its hands–it had human hand–rested palms upward on its lap.”

The story is a pastiche of H. P. Lovecraft’s “Call of Cthulhu” though Long couldn’t pull it off. There is a hilarious scene of the heroes of the story chasing after Chaugnar Faugn in a New Jersey marsh so they can zap the monster with a time-space machine and destroy Chaugnar with “entropy.” This actually got reprinted as a Belmont paperback in 1964 as Odd Science Fiction.

Fast forward to 1933 and you have Robert E. Howard’s “Tower of the Elephant.” Howard was  in the Lovecraft play ground when he revisited the elephant looking alien. Yag-kosha was also an elephant looking alien this time, but Howard injected a degree of humanity making the reader feel sorry for the imprisoned and tortured alien. There is a nice sweep of cosmicism that Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei engaged in. The ending is a classic and one not forgotten.

So you have two different writers using a similar idea, one falling flat and the other creating a classic. That’s how it works sometimes.

Posted by Paul Herman on the Conan Forum:

Forthcoming from Edwin Mellen Press

More than Human: The Evolutionary Heroes of Robert E. Howard

A critical work by Justin Everett, Ph.D. and Deirdre Pettipiece, Ph.D.

Abstract:

Known best for the sword and sorcery stories he produced for the pulp fiction magazines of the 1930s, Robert E. Howard created a huge body of work that consisted of “around 3.5 million words” (Robert E. Howard Foundation, The Last of the Trunk), most of which focused on the creation of fantastic heroes of a depth and breadth unmatched by any writer before or since. Conan, King Kull, Solomon Kane and other complex characters populate civilizations Howard constructed and reconstructed in a wide-array of alternative worlds governed by competing principles of combat, survival, loyalty, and revenge. Tracing these heroes and the texts they occupy over the course of Howard’s interactions with evolutionary theories of human origin and behavior, Everett and Pettipiece reveal his dynamic and often conflicted engagement with ideas that changed the world. Howard’s interaction with the ideas of Darwin, Spencer, Freud and others who articulated fundamental principles of human behavior and social organization can be seen not only in the developing identities of his heroes, but also in the critical discussions he undertook with H.P. Lovecraft and other contemporaries. His intellectual engagement with some of the most important theories and philosophies of the 19th and 20th centuries demonstrates that Howard and his body of work are sufficiently representative of important themes and tropes to recognize him as part of the American canon. This volume therefore addresses the gap in the critical discussion of American literary production of the first half of the 20th century by presenting Howard and his heroes and the evolution they both undertook over the course of his active career.

Brief Table of Contents:

Preface
Forward by Terence McVicker
Introduction: Why American Literary Studies Need Robert E. Howard
Chapter One: Early Influences and the Little Blue Books
Chapter Two: Engaging with Ideas: What Howard Read and Its Impact on Howard’s Emerging Philosophy
Chapter Three: Sex and Sinews: Sexual Selection, Secondary Sex Characteristics and Howard
Chapter Four: Howard’s Men and Women and Their Potential Sources in Literature and Life
Chapter Five: Isolation and Community, Civilization and Barbarism: Binary Forces in Howard’s fiction
Chapter Six: Conclusions and Continuing Questions

Approx. 350 pps, approx. $150.00 hardback

Expected late 2010. I’d add, these two will be presenting on a panel at Howard Days. I’ve corresponded with these two several times, very serious REH fans, and serious academics, they have been promoting REH out there on the academic circuit. So I am looking forward to this book.

The Book of Robert E. Howard was a pivotal book for me. That book transformed me from a Conan fan into a Robert E. Howard fan. The pump had been primed already by first exposure through the Berkley paperbacks edited by Karl Edward Wagner. Wagner’s focus was squarely on Robert E. Howard and Weird Tales. Wagner is partially responsible for my pulp buying habit.

The Book of Robert E. Howard was in print when I first read it.  A guy on my floor in the college dormitory lent it to me over Christmas break. This Glenn Lord guy wrote understated introductions that were packed with information. There was no editorializing in contrast to Wagner and de Camp.  I became aware of the wide range of pulp magazines.  Weird Tales, All-Story Magazine, and the science fiction magazines were all known to me but I had no idea about detective, boxing, western, or weird menace.  Glenn did not use any story that was in print with any paperback or hardback at the time of first publication in 1976. This was the first time I ever read a fictional western (“Knife, Bullet, and Noose”) and I liked it. Ditto for boxing, weird menace, and spicy. “Pigeons From Hell” might be the first adult horror story I ever read. This book was a gateway to new worlds. “The Voice of El-Lil” was not the first first “lost race” story I ever read but it was more intense than any of Tarzan’s visitations to Opar.

I was a confirmed Robert E. Howard fan when I finished that book. The multiple solid punches of “Red Blades of Black Cathay,” “The Voice of El-Lil,” “Knife, Bullet, and Noose,” “Black Wind Blowing,” and “Curse of the Golden Skull” converted me from being a Conanist to a Howardist in 240 pages.

The Second Book of Robert E. Howard included my first introduction to Kull and Solomon Kane.  “Two Against Tyre” remains a favorite of mine to this day. I would have liked to have seen more adventures of Eithriall the Gaul. I had no use for poetry up until then. Reading “The Gold and the Gray” and “The Song of Horsa’s Galley” made me begin to rethink the worth of verse.

There were some other pulp writers who could write in various genres. The idea of an omnibus collection exploring different genres is an excellent one. The Louis Lamour collection, Yondering, comes to mind of being in a similar vein. In an alternate universe, Zebra Books continued the idea with a series of books of pulp generalists. I will investigate that idea in future posts and who could have fit the bill.

Oh–My wife can blame Glenn Lord ultimately for my pulp buying habit. Glenn really introduced me into that wonderful (and sometimes expensive) world.

Copies of this new collection of all of Howard’s poetry that appeared in Weird  Tales are currently listed on eBay by bookseller Realms of Fantasy Books.  The book is a UK publication from Stanza Press. Here are the details:

When the history of fantasy and horror fiction is being discussed, the pulp magazine Weird Tales is inevitably mentioned. Published on low-grade “pulp” paper, Weird Tales was the first newsstand magazine devoted exclusively to weird and fantastic fiction. It ran for 279 issues, from March 1923 to September 1954.

The three most important and influential writers to have their work published in the title were Rhode Island horror writer H.P. Lovecraft; the Texan creator of Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard; and the California poet, short story writer, illustrator and sculptor, Clark Ashton Smith.

“The Complete Poems from Weird Tales” series collects their verse in the order that it originally appeared in the pages of “The Unique Magazine”.

THE SINGER IN THE MIST & Others by ROBERT E. HOWARD

“ROBERT E. HOWARD (1906-1936) is best known for his series of stories about Conan the Barbarian. However, Howard was also a prolific writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, Westerns, detective, sports stories, true confessions and other genre fiction, including poetry.”
-Stephen Jones

CONTENTS

The Song of the Bats
The Ride of Falume
The Riders of Babylon
Remembrance
The Gates of Nineveh
The Harp of Alfred
Easter Island
Crete
Moon Mockery
Forbidden Magic
The Moor Ghost
Dead Man’s Hate
A Song Out of Midian
Shadows on the Road
Black Chant Imperial
The Song of a Mad Minstrel
The Last Day
Arkham
An Open Window
Autumn
The Soul-Eater
The Dream and the Shadow
Which Will Scarcely Be Understood
Futility
Fragment
Haunting Columns
The Poets
The Singer in the Mist
The Last Hour
Ships
Lines Written in the Realization That I Must Die
Recompense
The Ghost Kings
The King and the Oak
Desert Dawn

Introduction by Stephen Jones

Cover Art by Gary Gianni

47 Pages

300 Copies

For those of you who have some spare time this June while attending Howard Days, you might want to do a bit of wandering around the area surrounding Cross Plains and visit the sites of some historical and notorious events smack dab in the middle of Howard’s old stomping grounds. 

After reading about some of the real life episodes, one can see Howard lived in a part of Texas that saw more than its share of violence and sorrow back in days of the wild frontier when sudden death was cloaked in the guise of the Red Indian.  The blood that flowed through Howard’s veins was much the same as the hale and hearty settlers, soldiers and lawmen that preceded him.  While he did not have to deal with the same day to day death struggles the frontiersmen did, he was certainly made of the same mettle.

No doubt, late at night while working at his typewriter, he could hear the faint sounds of horse hooves pounding across  the plains, the cry of the Indian braves and the thunderous reports of pistols and rifles as the white man pushed the frontier further west. Howard did not have to venture far to find material to write about – the stories were all around him.

Rob looks bored, so let's give him something to do!

Right now Rob Roehm has no more ballots to tabulate for the 2008 and 2009 Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards.  He has already counted the pitiful few that have come in.

The Foundation is picking up the torch carried by Leo Grin and his Cimmerian Awards for four years  (2004-2007) and is bringing back awards for the finest contributions to Howard studies.  The only problem is, Rob needs more ballots to tabulate, a lot more. A number of people who are eligible to vote have not.  You can find the list of nominees and voting rules here.

The clock is ticking – voting ends on March 30^th.  Make your voice heard and vote for your favorite Howard scholars, publications and websites. And most important of all, let’s keep Rob off the streets and in his room where he belongs, counting those votes.

Don’t make me send members of ACORN knocking on your door.

Volume 5, Number 1 of The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies is currently at the printer and a look at the contents shown below reveals a great line-up of essays by top scholars in the field of Howard studies.

Contents include:

“‘The Shadow of the Beast’: A Closer Look” by Charles Hoffman

“‘Marchers of Valhalla’, Creation, and the Cult of Castration” by Jeffrey Kahan

“Celtic Influences in the Works of Robert E. Howard” by Philip Emery

“A Second Look: The Lost Land of Lemuria” by Morgan Holmes

“Visualizing Howard’s World: The Savage Sword of Conan” by Charles Hoffman

“The Good, the Bad, and Howard in the Cross Plains Universe” by Morgan Holmes

“Remembering Wolfshead” by Charles Hoffman

The issue will contain about 80 pages, with a cost of around $13.00 + postage and handling. Two book dealers who regularly carry The Dark Man are Mike Chomko and Gavin Smith.  Also, more details should be available shortly on The Dark Man website.

Lost cities are a theme that runs through a number of Robert E. Howard’s stories, notably those featuring Conan, Solomon Kane, Turlogh O’Brien and El Borak. Some scholars even believe the last story Howard was writing prior to his death was “Nekht Semerkeht,” which is a lost city tale set in the Southwest United States during the time Coronado was searching for the legendary Seven Cities of Gold.   He did not live to complete his final weird tale.

There is one real life drama that parallels some of Howard’s lost civilization themes which became one of the great mysteries of the 20^th century.  Recently a book on the final, ill-fated expedition of British explorer Percy Fawcett was published. “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of a Deadly Obsession in the Amazon” by David Grann explores the expedition and subsequent attempts, many of them fatal, to find the lost city and the missing Fawcett; here is Author John Grisham’s overview of the book:

In April of 1925, a legendary British explorer named Percy Fawcett launched his final expedition into the depths of the Amazon in Brazil. His destination was the lost city of El Dorado, the “City of Gold,” an ancient kingdom of great sophistication, architecture, and culture that, for some reason, had vanished. The idea of El Dorado had captivated anthropologists, adventurers, and scientists for 400 years, though there was no evidence it ever existed. Hundreds of expeditions had gone looking for it. Thousands of men had perished in the jungles searching for it. Fawcett himself had barely survived several previous expeditions and was more determined than ever to find the lost city with its streets and temples of gold.

The world was watching. Fawcett, the last of the great Victorian adventurers, was financed by the Royal Geographical Society in London, the world’s foremost repository of research gathered by explorers. Fawcett, then age 57, had proclaimed for decades his belief in the City of Z, as he had nicknamed it. His writings, speeches, and exploits had captured the imagination of millions, and reports of his last expedition were front page news.

His expeditionary force consisted of three men–himself, his 21-year-old son Jack, and one of Jack’s friends. Fawcett believed that only a small group had any chance of surviving the horrors of the Amazon. He had seen large forces decimated by malaria, insects, snakes, poison darts, starvation, and insanity. He knew better. He and his two companions would travel light, carry their own supplies, eat off the land, pose no threat to the natives, and endure months of hardship in their search for the Lost City of Z.

They were never seen again. Fawcett’s daily dispatches trickled to a stop. Months passed with no word. Because he had survived several similar forays into the Amazon, his family and friends considered him to be near super-human. As before, they expected Fawcett to stumble out of the jungle, bearded and emaciated and announcing some fantastic discovery. It did not happen.

Over the years, the search for Fawcett became more alluring than the search for El Dorado itself. Rescue efforts, from the serious to the farcical, materialized in the years that followed, and hundreds of others lost their lives in the search. Rewards were posted. Psychics were brought in by the family. Articles and books were written. For decades the legend of Percy Fawcett refused to die.

The great mystery of what happened to Fawcett has never been solved, perhaps until now. In 2004, author David Grann discovered the story while researching another one. Soon, like hundreds before him, he became obsessed with the legend of the colorful adventurer and his baffling disappearance. Grann, a lifelong New Yorker with an admitted aversion to camping and mountain climbing, a lousy sense of direction, and an affinity for take-out food and air conditioning, soon found himself in the jungles of the Amazon. What he found there, some 80 years after Fawcett’s disappearance, is a startling conclusion to this absorbing narrative.

It is a fascinating story to say the least – I’ve ordered the book and am looking forward to reading it. Also, a movie is in the works starring Brad Pitt as the doomed explorer.

Generally, I’m a one-task-at-a-time kind of gal; especially when it comes to books. I’ve tried reading more than one book at the same time (and indeed, still attempt such things from time to time), but to no avail. My focus blown, I find that even though I read from page alpha to omega, I’ve retained nothing from the experience. It is this fear of non-retention that keeps me at a slow reading pace.

It helps me to have a job that allows one the leisure time to sit and read for hours on end without interruption. My old retail job was one of these. While there were no customers and I had done all the daily busy work of dusting and re-arranging shelves, etc., I would sit for hours waiting on the front doorbell to ring (letting us know that there was that all-important consumer to attend). Those glorious hours of inactivity were filled with reading up on Robert E. Howard’s works. While I, a mere clerk, awaited someone to treat me like a servant, Bob would transport me to a world where I was galloping madly through the broken bodies of men, sword in hand, ready for the challenge of that last standing warrior who, by sheer power of body and will had survived the onslaught, just as our hero had done. Swords clashing, blood spilling, cries of effort and cursing filling the air were eventually interrupted by that most unwelcome doorbell. And then it was back to real life. But the thought that kept me going was knowing that once I was finished, I could re-join the battle and lose myself once again.

My current job does not allow for such day trips into Hyperborea and it’s very upsetting. Not because the kid in me likes the adventure. Well… it’s not just that. It’s more that as a member of REHupa, I have so much I haven’t read and it’s distressing! Last year at Howard Days I won a First Edition copy of The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard and The Bear Creek Omnibus. The Omnibus, which is currently out of print, is still sitting on my dresser wrapped in plastic, untouched. I’ve ordered A Means to Freedom, the REH/ HP Lovecraft correspondence letters: both volumes untouched. Sentiment: An Olio of Rarer Works sits untouched. And now, I’ve just bought the new DelRay El Borak collection. Lots of luck on that one too, I know.

I have managed to join a group of people down here in Florida who have formed their own Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror community. Best of all: they actually know who Robert E. Howard is! Holy cats! And they have a love of books that spans many genres. Books are scattered about and throughout their homes the same way other people use paint to decorate the walls. Needless to say, I love these people. But they can sometimes be enablers to one who is trying to get stuff read.

Example: One of the meetings was held at Deb’s house. Deb is a great person, energetic, eager, and helpful. Her mother had a neighbor that passed away and he was a lover of books as well. 8 – 10 cardboard boxes (huge ones) were sitting on the porch of the house and Deb pointed to them and said: “Take what you want. The rest will be given to the library. Please help yourself.” No one moved and they sat there for a month until the next meeting. Then I broke down. (I swear it’s like a disease…) There were all kinds of books there. Some historical, some entertaining (Agatha Christie, PG Wodehouse), some erotica, some downright curious. One of the curious ones is a book entitled: “The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing” and Other Songs Cowboys Sing. Written by a man named Guy Logsdon, it is a tome that contains the lyrics of hundreds of songs sung on the ranges of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, etc. It’s an inch thick hardcover and I’ve yet to crack its spine, but I thought wow! What an article this would make! Unfortunately, this is the only time I’ve had since obtaining it over a month ago to mention the thing.

So…. Add it to the pile. Looking around my room at all this unread paper it brings up a thought that I never imagined that I would ever give voice to: I wish I was back in retail!

My attempts at finding time have been fruitless, but if I’m honest, I’m not exactly dedicated to doing it. So, here’s what I propose: I PROMISE in front of the web universe that I WILL find time for Robert E. Howard! As of this day, I will read one book every two months (I’m not insane!) and come back here and report on them. This will be my equivalent of a summer reading list. And a good way to finally (!!) get all that “to do” list cleared up!

After all… there’s bound to be MORE to read in the future! It’s SO GOOD to be alive in this day and age and best of all — to be a fan of Robert E. Howard!

One item that has been on my wish list, along with a dozen other items, is a volume containing all of Robert E. Howard’s detective stories, including those classified as “strange detective” stories. In the past there have been several volumes that featured Howard’s detective tales: Lord of the Dead (Grant, 1981), Two-Fisted Detective Stories (Cryptic, 1984), Graveyard Rats (Wildside, 2003), but not one that collects all of them.

Yeah, I know Howard hated writing detective yarns and more often than not, these yarns started out as straight detective stories, but quickly morphed into something else. It almost seemed as if Howard suddenly became bored, mid-sentence, and sent the story flying off its axis into a raging two-fisted, two-gun free-for-all. Even though he loathed writing this type of tale, he had a pretty good output in this genre and more than enough for a fairly thick volume. I enjoy reading these hardboiled Howard tales mainly because I love detective and mystery novels. From the old school guys like Hammett and Chandler to contemporary authors such as Burke and Connelly, there’s nothing like a good story told by a master storyteller.

Steve Harrison appeared in the most of Howard’s detective stories, totaling nine complete yarns plus at least one left unfinished. A couple of tales featured Butch Gorman and Brent Kirby. Steve Bender, Weary McGraw and the Whale starred in three more. Of course, the strange detective and some of the weird menace could be included. The most well know of this group is “Skull-Face,” which is primarily a horror story, but still a great detective tale in the tradition of Sax Rohmer.

I doubt if there is enough interest in Howard detective stories to warrant a Del Rey volume; better suited for The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press. Ideally the volume would be illustrated by Jim Steranko whose groundbreaking Red Tide graphic novel pioneered noir in comics.

Morgan adds: Howard’s detective stories are really not that out of the norm for the time. Fiction in Ten Detective Aces and Clues had stories by Howard’s colleagues in Weird Tales that had bizarre plots. Donald Wandrei’s “I.V. Frost” series, Arthur J. Burks’ midget detective, “Harlan Dyce,” E. Hoffmann Price’s “Pawang Ali,” and Cleve Adams’ “Violet McDade” series are not that different from Howard’s Steve Harrison stories. Black Mask was really out of the norm, Howard was really writing pretty mainstream pulp detective stories for the time.