Hot off the e-mail presses comes this announcement:

In a very welcome turn of events, Hippocampus Press will publish the
correspondence of famed weird fictioneers H. P. Lovecraft and Robert
E. Howard. Both sides of the correspondence will be presented,
allowing readers to follow the intense and often heady exchange of
ideas between these two titans of literature. Meticulously edited and
exhaustively annotated by reigning Howardian and Lovecraftian
scholars Burke, Joshi, and Schultz, and presented with appropriate
indices and appendices, this release marks a milestone in the study
of both Howard and Lovecraft.

The letters will be published in a limited edition two-volume
hardcover set, with Smythe-sewn signatures and illustrated dust
wrapper, and with each volume individually shrink-wrapped.

The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard
Edited by Rusty Burke, S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz
2009: 2 volume set (individual volumes not sold separately)
ISBN: 978-0-9814888- 0-6
Price $100.00 / Pre-publication discount price: $90.00

http://www.hippocam puspress. com

Looks like 2009 will continue to be a great time to be a fan of Robert E. Howard!

Mark Finn is a guest blogger to the REHupa site today. He wants to weigh in on the de Camp Controversy:

When discussing influential or gateway books into the realm of sword and sorcery fandom, I often see The Spell of Seven listed. This paperback book, first published by Pyramid in 1965, is a collection of seven stories by seven influential authors: Fritz Leiber, Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, Michael Moorcock, Jack Vance, Robert E. Howard, and like a linchpin in the middle of all this talent, L. Sprague de Camp. That’s okay, because de Camp is also the editor of the book, and so he can put one of his own stories in if he darn well wants to. De Camp also provides an introduction to sword and sorcery in general, as well as introductions to all of the authors. Finally, the cover of the book as well as seven interior illustrations are by none other than Virgil Finley. It’s no wonder this book was such a gateway for so many older fans.

But let’s take a closer look at de Camp’s contributions to the book. This is one of the few times when we have living and dead authors together with de Camp’s commentary, so that we might better see the Grand Master’s eloquence and verve in action.

In his introduction, “Wizards and Warriors,” we find de Camp extolling the virtues of sword and sorcery:

How would you like to escape to a world of wizards, warlocks, warriors, and wenches, a world where gleaming cities rise their shining spires against the stars, sorcerers cast sinister spells from subterranean lairs, baleful spirits stalk through crumbling ruins, primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets, and the fate of kingdoms is balanced on the blood blades of broadswords brandished by heroes of preternatural might and valor? And where, moreover, nobody so much as mentions the income tax, the school dropout problem, or the virtues and faults of socialized medicine?

In other words, do you feel like saying, “To hell with the world’s problems for a while! Let’s read something for fun?” Then you should read heroic fantasy…

I’ve always had a problem with de Camp’s simplistic take on sword and sorcery, and maybe it’s because the above description is merely the surface gloss to many a Howardian tale. There’s nothing wrong with de Camp’s description, per se, but it sure sounds like an ad for Dungeons & Dragons, rather than a thoughtful reading of, say, “Red Nails.”

De Camp’s first introduction is for Fritz Leiber’s “Bazaar of the Bizarre,” and in it de Camp starts with a brief summary of the world in which Fafhrd and Gray Mouser live. This is followed by some brief remarks about the author, then a contemporary of de Camp and very much alive. Regarding Leiber, he writes:

Thus Fafhrd (rhymes with “proffered”) and Gray Mouser were invented by Fritz Leiber and his lifelong friend, Harry Fischer in correspondence during the lean 1930s. After several abortive attempts, when Leiber was just beginning as a writer, he sold five novelettes about the formidable pair to the lamented magazine Unknown Worlds (1939-1943). After the Hitlerian War, he resumed work on the series and has published nine more Mouser stories in various magazines and a collection of the first seven such tales in book form (Two Sought Adventure, Gnome Press, 1957).

Hmm. Not much going on there, but then again, Leiber is alive and a contemporary of de Camp. They run in the same circles. The rest of the introductions follow this format: talk about the world in which the story is set, and then talk about the author. The next introduction is for one of the best Zothique stories, “The Dark Eidolon,” and the late Clark Ashton Smith. After describing the setting, de Camp states:

On this sinister stage the late Clark Ashton Smith, a retiring, artistic, poetic, self-educated Californian and a member of the Lovecraft Weird Tales Circle laid fifteen of his ninety odd stories of fantasy and science fiction. Of Smith’s total production, over half appeared in the years 1931-1934, and over half were published in Weird Tales. In his later years, Smith wrote stories only at long intervals. The reason for this decline in output is that he had no strong desire to write prose at all, since he deemed himself primarily a poet. He wrote stories only when he needed money, and he needed it most urgently in the 1930s to support his aged parents….Whether or not Smith appreciated his own gifts as a writer of fantastic fiction, most of his Zothique stories are masterpieces of macabre horror, relieved by flashes of ironic humor and bejeweled by rare words.

Wow. What a nicely sympathetic and complimentary introduction to Smith’s work. There’s not a negative word or phrase in it. Of course, Smith had passed away just a few years ago, so it’s possible that de Camp didn’t want to seem callous. Up next is Lord Dunsany, and surely, de Camp will uncork a little vitriol here:

Dunsany was a man of towering physical stature, fiery temperament, and poetical sensitivity. He was a writer, soldier, poet, and sportsman, all rolled into one. There was a conflict between his background and upbringing, that of a conventional hunting-shooting-fishing-and-soldiering Anglo-Irish peer, and his personal literary interests and tastes. In view of this contradiction, and his wide ranges of interests, and the fact that he wrote all his long life with a quill pen, his production of sixty-odd books of fiction, verse, essays, autobiography and drama is nothing less than phenomenal.

Dunsany was a writer’s writer. That is to say, he was a careful craftsman, with strong opinions on the fine points of writing, who never attained great mass popularity, but who nevertheless, much influenced many later writers. Nearly all later writers of fantasy, for example, owe something to him.

That’s quite the little love letter, there. It’s interesting to me to think that by changing five words in the above two paragraphs, you could make it sound an awful lot like the more contemporary picture of young Robert E. Howard.

De Camp’s introduction of his own story from the Tritonium Ring world is a side-step; he displays appropriate humility and grace in including his own story and begs the readers to decide for themselves the appropriateness of the act. Ever the gent, that Mister de Camp. He similarly sidesteps saying much about Michael Moorcock other than to note the story he chose, “Kings in Darkness,” is Moorcock’s least favorite Elric story (at the time, I’m sure) and subsequently, it’s the one the fans like the best, so author’s can’t be trusted to know their best work. Pithy and droll.

Jack Vance also gets a pedestrian write up. After introducing the Dying Earth, de Camp lists the number of jobs Vance held down while trying to start his writing career. Nothing personal, but again, we’re dealing with a live contemporary. Still, the mere inclusion of someone into such a book as this is nod enough, when discussing the pillars of the genre. Certainly no one would disagree with de Camp on Vance having access to the clubhouse.

The seventh, and last, but certainly not least, is Robert E. Howard. The story selected for this collection is the all-time fan favorite…”Shadows in Zamboula.” What? Not “Tower of the Elephant?” Not “Rogues in the House?” I have no idea why de Camp picked that particular Conan tale. It’s very middle of the road, and not representative of Howard at his best. But that’s a minor niggling point compared to the introduction:

Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, was a Texan and a prolific writer of pulp-magazine fiction in the early 1930s. Despite certain literary faults (emphasis mine), Howard was one of the greatest natural story-tellers the genre has produced. Nobody has excelled him in constructing a fast-moving, smoothly-flowing tale of headlong, violent, gripping action. His stories are not only readable, but endlessly re-readable.

Unfortunately, Howard was also maladjusted to the point of psychosis. In 1936, at the age of thirty, he ended a promising literary career by suicide.

The rest of the introduction concerns what Conan stories were published, and by who, and that plans are afoot to bring all of the Conan tales out in print. But that’s not the grabber, here. Let’s go back up and look at that introduction again.

None of the other authors, living or dead, have any literary faults, either defined or undefined by de Camp. Only Howard. No one else’s death is mentioned. Only Howard. No one else is labeled “maladjusted to the point of psychosis.” Only Howard. And no one else had a “promising literary career,” but rather a full one. Only Howard. And, interestingly (because de Camp knew better), why mention that he was a writer in the early 30s? He had made his mark on Weird Tales by 1928 with the publication of “Red Shadows” and the “Shadow Kingdom,” and he was a working professional in point of fact by 1929, if not sooner. What’s so important about the early 1930s in Howard’s professional career? Go on, work it out. I’ll wait…yep, you guessed it. Conan. Reading the above introduction makes it sound as if Howard had been writing for about five years, and was on the way to making something of himself when his loony tendencies got the better of him and he killed himself.

There’s another point to consider, here, as well. De Camp’s phrasing is intentional, and, as we’ve seen, repetitive. He’s not trying to break new ground, cover new territory, or further enlighten us. He’s only trying to drum it in: Howard was a gifted amateur who was, sadly, quite mad, but hey, aren’t these Conan stories really neat?

That this tactic can be laid up against Howard’s fellow writers (and in the case of Smith, a contemporary) introductions is all the more telling. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Now that you can see it, ask yourself: why would he do that? To what purpose? Why does everyone mentioned in The Spell of Seven, from the history of the genre itself, on down, get a pass from de Camp, except Robert E. Howard?

L. Sprague de Camp’s gamble with Lancer Books proved to be highly successful. A combination of Howard’s prose coupled with the now iconic Frazetta paintings created something new and very exciting. Other factors in the success include having a series of books that ended up topping out at 12. Having that number built some momentum so that even the later pastiche novels sold well. Distribution for Lancer must have been good at this time. Let us not forget that the layout was good for these books. The print type and size made for pleasurable reading. You can’t quibble with this kind of success, or can you?

In a letter to REHupa dated August 19, 1993 de Camp said: “When in 1966 Lancer published Conan the Adventurer, Frazetta gave Conan hair cut straight across his forehead but hanging halfway to his waist elsewhere. I objected but was overruled. At this time the great youth revolt of the 1960s was gathering stream, and long hair on men had rather suddenly become fashionable among rebellious youth as a symbol of revolt against the hated Establishment. Conan’s artists have been following Frazetta’s example  ever since.”

I dare anyone to deny the importance of Frazetta’s artwork on the Lancer Conan paperbacks. De Camp damn near screwed the pooch on this one. What if Larry Shaw had said “O.K, you can have Gray Morrow do the covers for the Conan paperbacks instead?” There may have been far fewer adolescents attracted to those books on the wire racks in the fall of 1966. De Camp failed to see the revolutionary nature of the art and instead of being excited he tried to stop it. He remained adamant on the issue decades later.

L. Sprague de Camp was able to pad out some of the paperbacks, add two novels, and have two more in the offing with the aid of Lin Carter. I intend on devoting a separate part to Carter and de Camp’s writing. Let’s just say for the time being that L. Sprague de Camp would not have gotten those new Conan stories without Lin Carter’s assistance. This partnership had strains after time. The gruesome twosome started what would eventually become Conan the Liberator in 1974 but reading between the lines, it looks that Lin Carter walked away. A friend of mine who knew Carter told me that when Liberator came out, he badmouthed the book saying it was an awful book. Carter also said all he did was flesh out de Camp’s outline after which de Camp would do the final touches. The novel does read mostly like an L. Sprague de Camp novel with little to no Carter personality contained therein. The Bantam collection, Conan the Swordsman contains three stories written by both de Camp and Carter. One story, “The Gem in the Tower,” was originally a Thongor story (“Black Moonlight,” Fantastic Nov. 1976). Two stories attributed to Carter & de Camp according to Loay Hall, a friend of de Camp’s, were actually L. Sprague and Catherine de Camp (“The Ivory Goddess” and “Moon of Blood”). Contractual obligations are supposedly responsible for the Carter & de Camp bylines for those two stories. De Camp told me in a letter that Lin Carter was supposed to help write the novelization for the movie Conan the Barbarian. Carter blew off the job and Catherine de Camp is the cowriter for the novelization. Lin Carter though collected half of the writing proceeds. De Camp seemed angry about that years later.

In the early ’90s, criticism of Lin Carter was really picking up speed, at least within the pages of REHupa mailings. In a letter February 16, 1995 to REHupa, de Camp stated “I thought my biggest mistake in reviving Conan was taking on Lin Carter as a collaborator without first trying to lure Leigh Brackett into the job.” In an earlier letter dated Jan 26, 1992 he said “I chose Carter because his natural style differed from REH’s in one direction while mine differed in just the opposite; so I thought a collaboration might produce something close to the model…Carter had many virtues and was a very likable fellow, but such faults as cocksureness and irresponsibility largely nullified them. He never grew up.”

L. Sprague de Camp’s gamble with Lancer fell apart when the company declared bankruptcy. The publisher that had supposedly sold “millions” of Conan paperback had magically gone under. Glenn Lord has told me that he was never allowed to audit the books and check royalty statements on de Camp’s deal with Lancer. While the Lancer series was in bankruptcy limbo, Lord himself went on to make a deal with Berkley Medallion to put out Conan this time with no pastiche stories. Three paperbacks came out in the fall of 1977 with interesting forewords and afterwords by Karl Edward Wagner. The plan was for six paperbacks. This was not to be. Hollywood was interested in making a Conan movie and wanted one entity to deal with. The two factions were united as Conan Properties, Inc. in 1978. Part of the deal included killing the Berkley Conan series and resurrection of the Lancer series.  Karl Edward Wagner was embittered about that turn of events. Someone needs to interview Kirby McCauley, the agent, had connections with both factions about details of the deal.

The Lancer version of Conan would live on for more than a decade. Ace eventually let the series go out of print in the late 1980s as sales dwindled and interest faded. CPI was more interested in pushing a new generation of pastiches from Tor starting with Robert Jordan. Robert E. Howard faded away as a new Tor Conan novel came out every few months for over a decade. The majority of these novels are held in poor regard by aficionados of sword and sorcery fiction. Worse–Baen Books wanted to reprint the Robert E. Howard Conan stories with no pastiche stories inserted. L. Sprague de Camp vetoed that idea. He kept Robert E. Howard out of print for a decade by his actions. This may be the single biggest reason that L. Sprague de Camp is viewed negatively by some today. I have to say when I was told of this back in the mid-90s, my opinion changed drastically negative.

    

 

 

 

 

 

 One of the joys of the recent Howard boom has been a revival of the semi-prozine. The late 1970s had a proliferation of great small press magazines such as Fantasy Crossroads, Dark Fantasy, Lone Star Fictioneer, Cross Plains, and REH: Two-Gun Raconteur. TGR was as good a magazine as any of them. It is historically significant for running Don Herron’s “Conan vs. Conantics,” one of the first pieces to critically look at the de Camp & Carter pastiches. The other early piece was Byron Roark’s “Vultures Over Cross Plains.”

     It was a big surprise when out of the blue a few years ago that Damon came out of limbo and started publishing TGR again. In the interest of discolosure, I have been a writer for TGR. That being said, TGR has impressed me with the improvement in the magazine. It now has color covers, the art has gotten better, the articles are better. The overall layout is professionally done. No wasted space, typos are few, the font is easy on the eye.

    This issue may be the best one yet and I am not even in it! A color painting of the Ukrainian heroine, Sonya of Rogatino, and Gottfried von Kalmbach during the first siege of Vienna by Michael L. Peters graces the cover. The back cover is by Tim Truman of Solomon Kane and one of the best depictions of the Puritan that I have ever seen. Damon has added an editorial page entitled “The Dark Lines.” The cornerstone piece in the magazine is the Robert E. Howard story “Fists of the Revolution,” which reminds me of Jack London.  Accompanying the story is art by Jim and Ruth Keegan fresh from their Best of Robert E. Howard volumes job.

     “The Robert E. Howard Medicine Wheel” by Mark Finn is a unique article using Amerindian concept of the medicine wheel. Mark looks at direction, element, aspect, totem animal, and representing characters. When I heard that Charles R. Saunders had written something called “Progeny of Conan,” I thought oh, good, he is going to write about sword and sorcery fiction influenced by REH. I was wrong. This essay is about Conan’s piccadilloes with women in various stories and the potential for children. No one has really looked at that before.

     Brian Leno is one of the premier essayists and Howard scholars of the present time. He also has a brutal sense of humor. His welcome contribution is “Jim Tully and Robert E. Howard: Beggars of Life” in which he examines one of Howard’s favorits writers, Jim Tully. Steve Tompkins compares “The Black Stranger” to Karl Edward Wagner’s “Reflections for the Winter of My Soul” with his usual erudition. The art at the end of this essay is quite nice and signed “BWS” — Barry Windsor Smith? The late Leon Nielsen has a review of the Girasol Facsimile Books and a review by Rob Roehm (another of the premier present day Howard essayists) of Paul Sammon’s Conan the Phenomenon.

     Damon devotes a page at the end to what is going on with Howard publishing in the “Nemedian Dispatches” to keep you up to date.  So, this is a great issue, get it while it is in print. It will only cost you more later. Cost is $19.50 + 3.50 for postage for a total of $23.00. Send check or money order to:

Damon C. Sasser        6402 Gardenspring Lane                                                                                                                               Spring, Tx.  77379

Or you can order via Pay Pal: orders@rehtwogunraconteur.com

An enjoyable result from posting the de Camp Controversies has been watching the reaction from a small select group that I called de Campistas. They are fighting the last rear-guard defending the pursuit of a de Campian Lancer Conan universe. They are like the remnants of the Imperial Japanese Army retreating into the mountains and jungles to fight on refusing to acknowledge the emperor has surrendered. L. Sprague de Camp fans of the world- Unite, all three of you! One was so upset at the discussion at one board the other day, he went off to read the novelization of Conan the Barbarian by de Camp & Carter in retaliation. That really hurt!

Here are characteristics to identify a de Campista:

1. They shout to the world how great L. Sprague de Camp is despite having read nothing by the guy outside of Conan.

2. Still have a peach colored or powder blue polyester leisure suit in their closet.

3. A copy of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack in their record collection.

4. Still mad that eight track tapes were discontinued.

5. Think the Little River Band was great.

6. Hope to own a conversion van with Boris Vallejo art on the sides.

7. Argue vehemently for the existence of a powerful Nemedian Navy.

8. Thought as a kid that Lost in Space was better than Star Trek.

9. Bought the Star Wars toys in the late 70s- while in college.

10. Upset when The Six Million Dollar Man was cancelled.

11. Consider August Derleth to be as good as H. P. Lovecraft.

12. Think Burt Reynolds should have been cast as Robert E. Howard in The Whole Wide World.

If you have any of these characteristics– you might be de Campista and here’s your sign.

“Sometimes I think Howard died at just the right time to keep this repititious tendency from becoming intolerable.”- Letter L. Sprague de Camp to Lin Carter, September 10, 1963.

If you pick up an issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from the early 1960s, you might find an ad for Gnome Press Conan books. The mail order dealer- L. Sprague de Camp. Those Gnome Press hardbacks were hanging around still in print and it would be a sticking point in shopping the Conan stories to paperback publishers. De Camp appears to have had a prickly relationship with Martin Greenberg of Gnome Press. De Camp publically berated Greenberg in book reviews. Greenberg himself wanted other writers to continue Conan such as Leigh Brackett before settling on de Camp.

The Burroughs reprint boom that started in 1962 would have heartened anyone hoping for Conan reaching a wider audience. L. Sprague de Camp took it on himself to make deals for a mass market deal for Conan. There was a problem, Martin Greenberg had sold paperback rights to Bantam in order to finance a massive Conan omnibus from Gnome Press.  De Camp was fortunate in that Oscar J. Friend died in 1963 thus removing an obstacle to his ambitions. December, 1963 brought the publication of Swords and Sorcery, an anthology of heroic fantasy edited by L. Sprague de Camp. De Camp reprinted “Shadows in the Moonlight” which had gone out of copyright in 1962. In June, 1965, he reprinted “Shadows in Zamboula,” a story that had gone public domain in 1963. These were test cases to gauge reaction from Martin Greenberg. The introductory note to “Shadows” mentions “Plans are on foot to reprint the entire Conan saga in paperback form.”

According to de Camp, three publishers passed on Conan. He said one later regretted that decision. Who wouldn’t? This period is murky. You get de Camp’s version in his autobiography with Martin Greenberg portrayed as the bad guy in all this. It does appear that de Camp was making the rounds attemping to make deals when he may not have been authorized to do so. It is no coincidence he did this right on the heels of Oscar J. Friend’s death. That three publishers passed on Conan when de Camp approached them suggests that the editors at these publisher houses were unsure where this stood legally. It is a safe bet that Don Benson at Pyramid Books was one who passed as Pyramid had pubished Swords and Sorcery! What is interesting is Ace Books reprinted Almuric without any qualms. So Don Wollheim at Ace was not averse to giving Robert E. Howard a second try after the Conan the Conqueror Ace Double from a decade before. Why would he publish Almuric but not Conan?

De Camp had informed Kittie West, Oscar J. Friend’s daughter, who was running the literary agency of a potential deal July 29, 1964. Sept 4, 1964– de Camp informed Kittie West the deal was going through. De Camp was telling her of a fait accompli. Kittie West must have had reservations as she wrote in a note to Glenn Lord, “Sprague getting a little greedy?” Kittie West took over her father’s agency mainly to shut it down. Glenn Lord took over as the Howard agent in Spring 1965.

The Lancer deal was struck September 24, 1964 and called for two Conan paperbacks at first.  Greenberg at Gnome Press started legal action claiming its contract with the Howard “heirs.” De Camp’s attorney urged he write additional stories to “strengthen the legal postion of the heirs and himself.” The lawsuit was settled out of court and delayed publication for quite a while. Lancer Books itself was founded in 1961 by Irwin Stein and Walter Zacharius. Stein had published science fiction magazines in the 1950s such as Science Fiction Adventures and Infinity edited by the very capable Larry T. Shaw. Stein also published auto magazines such as Auto Age. Lancer was a low tier publisher that used poor quality paper and in the early days published few books. There might have been a degree of desperation on de Camp’s part to get a deal, any deal, with anyone as soon as possible even if it meant with a publisher that might not be around in a year or two. The gamble paid off for de Camp in the end but it was an act that was iffy legally. It could have easily blown up in his face. Like I said, there are a lot of questions to this period that we may never know. I would like to know more about the Bantam deal that Martin Greenberg made. Technically, that was a legal deal.

On November 20, 1964 in a letter from de Camp to his agent, Barthold Fles, de Camp told him:

“If you want to handle a project of this sort, I have a suggestion. In 1929-30 Howard wrote a series of stories about a character called Solomon Kane, an English Puritan who goes adventuring in Africa and has encounters with human villainy and supernatural menaces. Some people like these stories better than the Conan series and there have been some talk from time to time about republishing them in one volume. Paperback sale, I think, offers the best possibilities, if you like to make a deal, whereby I should be paid the going author’s rate, say $1500.00 or better for collecting the stories, reading them to eliminate gross errors or inconsistencies, clearing copyright, preparing the manuscript, writing an introduction, and reading proof that would suit me. If you can make a deal more profatible than my present one with Lancer, I shall of course be delighted. Since I am told that Lancer is presently overstocked, perhaps they would not be so good a prospect as another paperback house. If you like the idea, I can tell you more about the status of these stories when I hear from you. Meanwhile, I trust that our relationship as friends and partners in the promotion of de Camp properties will continue to our mutual benefit for many years to come.”

So, de Camp had his eyes on some other targets at the time also.

Scotty Henderson has researched the de Camp papers in Austin and I would not have been able to present a good portion of the information just presented without his research.

OK, I’ve been going around and around tonight with Joe Lansdale. He’s really pissed at me, and with me being “The Friendly REHupan”, I can’t really put up with myself being mean or having someone think I am, so I’ve spent the last hour doing some damage control with personal e-mails with him. I hope it works, but this should be the last I’ll say about Dark Horse’s Pigeons from Hell. I hope.

Anyway, Joe explained to me that his version of PFH is a sequel to Howard’s story. That’s how he wrote it, and that’s how he explained it to me. And y’know what? He’s right – It totally works. I sometimes need things spelled out for me, and this time it all clicked. Joe Lansdale’s version of Pigeons from Hell, written as a sequel, makes total sense. He borrowed little bits from Howard’s original story, and if I back away from being a Howard hard-ass for a bit, I can appreciate this work. And I do.

While I wish this “sequel” business had been explained either on the cover or somewhere within the comic, I’m not above backtracking and saying this comic got a lot better for me. Sorry, Joe.

So I won’t try to promote – or demote- this comic as being a Howard story, because it’s really not. But as a sequel, with Howardian elements, I’m good to go.

So I will.

 

Ouch.

Got a personal e-mail from Joe Lansdale his own self, and he thinks I’ve gone over into personal insult with my comments about Dark Horse’s PIGEONS FROM HELL adaptation, which Joe Lansdale wrote. (See below).

Well, I don’t believe that I did insult him personally, and we could go ’round and ’round about that forever, so I’ll just end my postings about the Pigeons from Hell comic with what I wrote to him:

Hi Joe:

While I can’t and won’t apologize for what I think of Dark Horse’s Pigeons from Hell, and I obviously don’t understand what you are trying to do with Howard’s story, I can apologize to you if I have offended you personally.

That was not my intent at all, and I will say I’m truly sorry if my words have hurt you.

One of the stories that L. Sprague de Camp told was how he fell into getting involved with Conan. He paraphrased the story several times including the first version, “Conan’s Ghost” in The Conan Reader (Mirage Press, 1968). De Camp’s story is that after reading Conan the Conqueror, he quickly tracked down and read the other Conan stories. He contacted Donald Wollheim noting “The Witch From Hell’s Kitchen” by Howard had recently appeared in The Avon Fantasy Reader. Wollheim put de Camp in touch with Oscar J. Friend. De Camp makes it sound like Oscar J. Friend had a box of Howard manuscripts and had no idea what was in them. It was then de Camp who discovered “The Frost Giant’s Daughter,” “The God in the Bowl,” and “The Black Stranger.” As de Camp put it, “I revised them all for publication.” This is the only version of this story told. There is a fly in the ointment here. If Oscar J. Friend was so oblivious to what he had – how is it he sold “The House of Arabu” to Donald Wollheim as “The Witch From Hell’s Kitchen” for The Avon Fantasy Reader before de Camp ever contacted Friend? How is it Friend could find one story in the box but not the three Conan stories? Something isn’t fitting together here.

L. Sprague de Camp wrote another review of a Conan book during the 1950s for a science fiction magazine. Science Fiction Quarterly in 1955 was still a pulp for at least another year. That was the year that Planet Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Startling Stories all died. SFQ may have been technically the last science fiction pulp. Anyway, de Camp reviewed the Gnome Press edition of Conan the Barbarian for the August 1955 issue. I checked with Scotty Henderson and John D. Clark edited Conan the Barbarian, not de Camp. You at least don’t have a case of an editor reviewing his own book though a case of conflict of interest could be made. What is interesting is de Camp publically airs his problems with Martin Greenberg, publisher of Gnome Press. Greenberg today has a horrible reputation, he didn’t pay authors and often demanded royalty money claiming copyright when a later paperback would come out. A friend of mine who has edited some mass market books once told me that all too often there are those in the small press who will publish your work for nothing and act like they are doing you a favor. David Kyle was at Pulp-Con in 1999. David Gentzel and I talked to him and tried to get some information about Gnome Press. He would talk a little about designing endpapers and maps but that was it. He wouldn’t discuss the business side of Gnome Press.

De Camp in the review complains about some paragraphs of the Conan biography being messed up and one paragraph being dropped. “This kind of slapdash editorial carelessness that has long tempted me to make a waxen image of Martin Greenberg, and stick pins in it.” Strong words from someone renowned for keeping his cool in public.

De Camp also reviewed The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien in the same magazine issue. He describes a Hobbit as “a cross between an English white-collar worker and a rabbit.” He also comments on the New York Times review, “I found too found Tolkien’s ‘dear, silly old hobbits’ too dreadfully sweet for my drier tastes at times. But the irony of Prescott’s criticism is that Prescott himself himself is as responsible as any one man for the literary fashion of ‘little people.’ For fourteen years my eminent colleague has been harping in his column on character. Few novels have a profound enough study of character to suit him. His idea of a perfect novel seems to be one of those subjective studies of an average adolescent girl, growing up in a very dull family, in some obscure small town where nothing ever happens.”

By 1954 L. Sprague de Camp was straining at the leash with Oscar J. Friend and by 1955 with Martin Greenberg of Gnome Press. More to follow.

 I went through the stories in the 1940s that were in Fight Stories and Spicy-Adventure Stories during the years Otis Adelbert Kline was the Robert E. Howard agent. In both magazines, all the stories are reprints from earlier issues. All the boxing stories in Fight Stories from 1937 on are reprints. Same for Spicy-Adventure Stories in 1942. This knocks the Kline sales total down to two poems and one story from 1940-1946. The one story, “Texas John Alden,” in The Masked Rider Western is a Howard story rewritten by Otis Adelbert Kline. He did the same with “While Smoke Rolled,” which did not appear until 1956. By rewriting these two stories, Kline not only took a 10% agent’s fee but another 50% as co-writer, netting him 60% of the proceeds at the end of the day. An analysis of these sales shows more than ever that Oscar J. Friend took far more interest in getting Robert E. Howard out there than Otis Adelbert Kline did after REH was dead.