I got a good laugh over at the Conan forum. Paul Berrow is the impresario  behind the Solomon Kane movie. After reading the French movie critic reviews, his response was “Masturbation or what!” Thanks Paul, that was a keeper.  That will be on your tombstone.

The Solomon Kane movie opened in France on December 23. The critics have not been kind.  REHupan Patrice Louinet has provided some translations of reviews for the movie:

http://www.ouest-fra…ondole_cine.Htm
1 star out of 4:”The character is a younger brother to Conan and Kull, members of a rather large family of fantasy characters created by Robert E. Howard, one of the founding fathers of Heroic-Fantasy in the 20s and 30s. [...] Poor James Purefoy, Pete Postlethwaite, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Alice Krige, Max Von Sydow and the rest.
They must have been very unhappy to be part of this comic-book of a script in a cold, rain and snow-drenched England. The result is an endless blue-grey background and an acting often limited to displaying an haggard or menacing face, depending on their roles as heroes or villains. The pompous score was no doubt supposed to give an epic dimension to this gallimaufry of opposite sentiments, notably revenge vs. redemption, sacrifice vs. heroism, betrayal vs. loyalty. A sense of derision is recommended to anyone who would still dare to indulge in so kitsch a movie.”

First one is from Premiere, THE major French movie-site:
http://www.premiere….ichage%29/press
0 stars out of 4 (ie worst possible rating): “Purefoy walks through the movie quite aware of the surrounding disaster… This movie seems to have been directed by a 12 year old who mistook his camera for his playstation. I would never have thought to write this, but this medieval turkey almost makes me regret Van Helsing. My God!”

Second one is from EcranLarge, second major French site:
http://www.ecranlarg…10278-57641.php
1,5 stars out of 5: “Problem is, we know from the start that he is going to make it, we know who the evil dude is, and we begin counting the minutes that separate us from the credits.. We would love to be moved by the FX, but those of our Playstation are infinitely better. We would love to feast our eyes on Kane’s barbarism but Purefoy’s over-theatrical performance reminds us that we are late for our Christmas shopping…. Bassett delivers an adaptation devoid of surprise and spice of one of REH’s most mythical heroes.

l’Express (major mag here) on their Studio Ciné Live Blog
1 star out of 5: “Solomon Kane, a failure: shamelessly “borrowing” from Conan, the 13th Warrior, or the Lord of the Rings is far far from enough to make a good movie. Especially when the only good idea of the director can be summed up that way: when the warriors take a rest, the sky is grey, when they fight, it rains a lot. Despite a promising opening scene, Kane’s quest soon becomes a bore. As to Purefoy, over-expressive clone of Jackman in Van Helsing, his captain’s armor is far too big for his shoulders and he fails to convince.”

For December 23-27, the movie finished seventh with about 125,085 people seeing the movie failing to reach a target of about double that number.  So, it appears this movie is going over like a lead balloon.

Last month Robert E. Howard fans traveled from Austin, Boston, Plano, the Sacramento area, Washington D.C., Paris (France, not Texas) and the Houston area to celebrate with and honor Glenn Lord, the Godfather of Howard Fandom on his 78th birthday. The gathering was held at Tampico Seafood & Cocina Mexicana, which is located just north of downtown Houston. At the party Glenn received cash, gift cards, books, French champagne (personally delivered by Patrice Louinet and Fabrice Tortey) and a Liberty Bowl. A good time was had by all and it was an evening those present will remember for many years to come.

Glenn has been a Howard fan and collector since his first contact with Howard in 1951 when he acquired a copy of Arkham House’s Skull-Face and Others. He then set about finding copies of the original pulps containing Howard stories. Luckily, he was able to acquire quite a few from a bookseller who specialized in old pulps at bargain prices.

In 1965 he became the literary agent for the heirs to Howard’s writings and that same year he located the Legendary Trunk containing thousands of pages of typescripts. Over the years Glenn single handedly tracked down and saved hundreds of stories and poems for posterity. Glenn also published 18 issues of The Howard Collector, a journal that featured previously unpublished Howard stories, published (in conjunction with Arkham House) the first volume of Howard’s poetry, edited and wrote introductions for dozens of books, and wrote and compiled The Last Celt, a bio-bibliography of Howard.

In the 1970’s he shepherded in the Howard Boom, helped create Conan Properties and brought Conan to the big screen. During that decade and into the 1980’s, hundreds of hard cover books, paperbacks, chapbooks, comics and fanzines were published. He continued working as Howard’s literary agent until 1993. If you’d like to read more about Glenn, newly-minted REHupan Lee Breakiron has authored an informative entry on him at Wikipedia.

While a lot of us have known Glenn for decades and are aware of his many achievements, newer fans may not be familiar with the man and his deeds. Way back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, long before Howard and Conan were part of an international corporation, there was one lone figure carrying the torch and protecting the legacy of Robert E. Howard. If you’ve ever read a Howard story or poem, odds are Glenn found it or contributed significantly to the process that got it into print; in many cases for the first time.

Needless to say, we all owe Glenn a debt of gratitude for all he has done in the past and continues to do for Robert E. Howard, his prose and poetry. So why not take a few minutes to drop Glenn a line at the address below and tell him how much you appreciate all his hard work throughout the years. Glenn loves to hear from fans and I’ll bet you’ll get a reply back from the Man himself.

Glenn Lord
P.O. Box 775
Pasadena, TX 77501

The uproar over Maggie van Ostrand’s “Was Conan Really a Fictional Character?” at the Fandomenia.com site has now died down. It was the most radioactive piece I have read in a long time with words and phrases such as:

“If you think you come from a dysfunctional family…Both of REH’s parents were beyond weird…fantastical madness…unsettled, repressed, and chaotic mind…tortured individual…inordinate fear…history of derangement…overbearing, pretentious attitude…Christian soldier committed to the obliteration of evil…internal reality…severe depression, fatigue, pain, and possible madness…rage, frustration, and despair…boundaries between reality and fantasy were purposely blurred…victim of malevolent forces…demented Mark Twain…dark dreams and paranoid impulses…sowed the seeds of madness…severe and lifelong sexual repression…afraid and distrustful of everyone but his parents…childhood helplessness…peopling his world with evil beings…invisible friends and make believe people…distorted reality… thought patterns tended to metaphorical and narrative sequences because he could not deal with his own emotions, his inner violence, and the repressions forced on him by his parents…tantrums…”

Well, you get the idea. Van Ostrand got called on the piece which included fabricated items. The Texas Escapes site took down the article and Fandomenia put up a disclaimer. Van Ostrand at first took a combative attitude to the first negative comments. After the piece was exposed for what it was, she started making mea culpas (or rather mea culpae). For good reason, she got caught writing a piece with fake information. From here on out, anything she writes is going to be suspect. Did she really research it or didn’t she? Can an editor ever really be sure with her from now on? This is a mini-Jason Blair at the New York Times scenario. Her alibi was she used L. Sprague de Camp’s biography Dark Valley Destiny. This is interesting. De Camp’s biography came out 25 years ago and had one printing. Blue Jay Books went out of business not long after the book came out. I picked my copy up at a B. Dalton Bookseller remainder table in 1986. Mark Finn’s biography, Blood and Thunder has been showing up at Half Price Books this year. I picked up a spare copy this summer. The book is easy to acquire. Plus Rusty Burke’s short biography is online. So we have a long out of print and not easy to find biography used over more recent works. This was a hit piece from the get-go. Van Ostrand took de Camp’s amateur posthumous psychoanalysis, used more sensational adjectives, and piled on with further extrapolation. In her post defending her hit piece, she cited an old Gary Romeo article. She found “Defending Dark Valley Destiny” but not “The de Camp Controversy?” Come on! She wrote the Robert E. Howard equivalent of  an article on Poe using Rev. Griswold as the source. I would suggest if she truly wanted a “tortured” writer, she could have written about Cornell Woolrich.  Van Ostrand’s piece is right up there with Harry Harrison’s “Conan is a crypto-homosexual and the entire school of sword-and-sorcery reflects this fact.”

This brings us to the main point- L. Sprague de Camp’s biography is a corrosive book and de Camp’s legacy is a toxic one. There is no arguing the matter. The de Camp & Carter and Sprague & Catherine pastiches are now gone and unlamented except by a few fringe lunatics. Those who live in glass houses should not throw rocks. De Camp was not without his own idiosyncrasies and a very unflattering biography could be put together about him. His theory that all writers had unhappy childhoods, his refusal to talk on the phone, his using of a fake southern accent at conventions for the “rubes,” domination by his wife in their marriage etc. He presented two writer’s lives as freak show disguised as biography. The tables could be turned.

Luckily we have a wonderful bullet for his unlicensed psychoanalysis by no other than Dr. Frederic Wertham, M.D, an actual psychiatrist:

“(The article) reduces Conan to a composite cliché of Freudian terminology. That is not the image Howard created and thousands of readers enjoy. The real Conan is anything but that. He cannot be reduced to such a lifeless formula …Psychoanalysis of living people and of literary figures requires not the labeling with Freudian terms but an interpretation based on concrete data. This article represents a misunderstanding of both psychoanalysis and Conan. Howard and Conan deserve better.”

I would suggest anyone researching Robert E. Howard get the Collected Letters volumes. You have an unfiltered look into the man with no cherry picking of information by L. Sprague de Camp.

Well, as visions of sugarplums dance out of your heads and start to two-step towards the warm (very warm!) thoughts of Texas in June, I’m here to let y’all know that we at REH Central (REHupa and the REH Foundation) are in the early stages of working with Project Pride and gearing up for Robert E. Howard Days 2010.

As the bloom wears off the rose of our new Holiday toys, we can now turn our attention to the activities of REH Days. Set aside June 11th and 12th, check your ammo and point your pony in the direction of Cross Plains, Texas, for at least two (and usually four) days chock full of Howard Mania.

The 2010 version of HD is geared towards The Illustrators of Robert E. Howard, and to that end we’ve invited Jim & Ruth Keegan to be our Guests of Honor. Jim & Ruth, in additon to being the fantastic Art Duo responsible for illustrating the Del Rey two-volume set of THE BEST OF ROBERT E. HOWARD and the upcoming EL BORAK The Desert Adventures, are the creators of The Adventures of Two-Gun Bob, the wonderful biographical graphic comic strip that appears in every edition of a REH title from Dark Horse Comics.

There is much more planned on the art side of programming, including an REH art display, at least one book, original drawings from pros like the Keegans, Gary Gianni, Mark Schultz (et al) to be auctioned off at the Banquet and sold at the Swap Meet – all for the benefit of the Howard House and Project Pride.

All the regular Howard activities are there as well: The REH House is open to all (as is the Gift Shop), there’ll be Walking and Bus Tours, Celebration Banquet & Silent Auction, Swap Meet, Caddo Peak BBQ, plus the great fellowship we afford each other in gathering and Talking ’bout Bob. The Poetry Throwdown is coming back in a revised, insect-free fashion, and this year we will present the First Annual Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards. Also, not all the panels are slanted to REH art, so there’ll be plenty of things going on to satisfy your Howard cravings.

The Robert E. Howard Days 2010 Information Page will be updated soon, and we’ll keep you posted as we revise it along the way. I wanted to get y’all to be thinking about the warmer days coming, filled with that good REH Fellowship we partake of every year. In the meantime, most of the basic information is still on the ’09 version (like hotels & such), so check that out. (A heads up: the folks who run the 36 West Motel in Cross Plains asked us this past HD to not contact them until March 1st for reservations, so be sure to mark that on your calendar – don’t everyone call at once!)

So start making your plans, check flight info, gather items to send to the Silent Auction and get ready for the Best Two Days in Howard Fandom. I’m looking forward to seeing y’all come to Texas in June!

This is one of my favorite drawings from Rick McCollum. This is from REHupa mailing #154, December 1998. Rick has done two “Santa was a Vanir” drawings. I am hoping he does more.

Today is December 23 and that means it is Festivus!

Here’s hoping when Santa Crom smashes down your door this holiday time, he’ll be leaving behind any number of Robert E. Howard presents in his wake. You can add them on the shelf next to all those Xotalancan heads in Santa hats that are already there!

A huge number of Howard and Howard-related books have been produced this year. Available from the Robert E. Howard Foundation are The Complete Poetry, the Complete Letters, Sentiment and Collected Drawings, and I know there’s still some Last of the Trunk that need homes. Plus, you can spend some of your Christmas cash on the upcoming Early Adventures of El Borak, due out in Spring 2010. This will make complete the REH El Borak package, as Del Rey will bring out El Borak: the Complete Desert Adventures also in early ’10. If you couple your REH Foundation gift giving with a Membership, you can grab up other exclusive goodies as well.

Small publisher Centipede Press is offering the pricey Conversations with the Weird Tales Circle, Subterranean Publishing has the “fancy” versions of Kull and Crimson Shadows, and you might still be able to glom onto Prius’ Conan volume. Book Palace Books will eventually publish the third Conan book all fancified up, and don’t forget a couple of new offerings at Lulu: Frank Coffman’s REH: Selected Poems and Dennis McHaney’s reproduction of the Herbert Jenkins’ version of A Gent from Bear Creek. And there’s always Hippocampus Press’ A Means to Freedom, the Collected Letters between H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.

And for those of you with extra Christmas dough, set some aside for attending Robert E. Howard Days in Cross Plains in 2010. The dates are set for June 11th & 12th, the Guests of Honor are the fabulous artist team of Jim & Ruth Keegan, and you get to hang out with Howard Heads galore, including (we hope) Glenn Lord. I guarantee a great time!

Ah, thinking about 100 degree Texas in June weather has already taken my mind off the cold and snowy wastes of – well, just about everywhere these days! Hope y’all have a great holiday season!

All right, let’s everyone take a pill. I said I wasn’t going to get into this, but I can’t help myself.

The Howard Community at large has recently been thrown into blazing-pistolas-brandishing-Bowie mode by some minor-league blogging by some woman who doesn’t have one freaking clue what she’s writing about:

http://fandomania.com/was-conan-really-a-fictional-character/

Maggie Van Ostrand wrote her Crazy Bob article based on what she read in L. Sprague de Camp’s REH Biography, Dark Valley Destiny. She read the opinions and conjecture and general b.s. Sprague brought forth in his book, further  extrapolated her own opinions and conjecture, and then went looking for support for her “facts”on the internet. Well, the article she found to prop up her hack job is right here (under CRITICISM) on the REHupa Website: Revisiting Dark Valley Destiny by Gary Romeo.

I’m not going to get into the merits or demerits of Gary’s article. Gary is well-known as a de Camp apologist/supporter – I’ve always admired him for that, and I’ve said so before - our Texas friend sticks to his guns, by gawd, and stands up to ALL the heavy-hitters in Howard Fandom! And he & I are in agreement when I say that the Lancer Conan the Adventurer is probably the book that has had the most impact in the last 43 years for the career of REH. L.Sprague de Camp and Frank Frazetta notwithstanding.

But thanks to Ms. Van Ostrand’s article, Gary Romeo is now taking an unfair whupping around the Howard internet community. So, all of you who are: get off his back. Leave him alone. Gary Romeo is NOT the problem, and he is taking unfair shit for his long-standing opinions. Get Off Gary! I’ve got news for you: Gary standing up for his opinions is Howardian Behavior that we should all admire!

So, direct your ire towards Maggie Van Ostrand and her stupid hack-job article – a number of us already have in the “comments” section there – and blame HER. It’s her fault for her crappy article. Besides, she writes just like L. Sprague de Camp did while writing DVD: make your conclusions first, then only use the “information” (opinions, conjecture, 3rd party accounts) that supports your conclusions. And don’t forget to make stuff up, too. Who’s gonna check your facts, anyway? Whoa – guess she didn’t know about Howard Fandom! Duck yer haid, Maggie!

OK, that’s all I got right now – don’t make me come out there.

So there you have it- Ghor Kin-Slayer.  As a novel, it is a disaster. There is a certain morbid curiosity in reading after a certain point. With each installment, you begin to think, how bad is this chapter going to be?

Some information–Richard Lupoff mentioned in The Cimmerian that Jonathan Bacon originally wanted L. Sprague de Camp to write the last chapter. De Camp wisely kept away. Darrell Schweitzer has told me that Bacon paid 2 cents a word. The call must have been put out to just about anyone who wanted to participate. I have been told that Jonathan Bacon was inquiring into if there were any Clark Ashton Smith fragments lying around for use.

Some general observations: The younger newer writers caught the spirit for the most part better than the older. There are exceptions (i.e. Schweitzer and Cole). The older established writers such as Wellman, Munn, Long, Lupoff etc just did what they wanted to. They also depended on their faulty memories hence the Set worshipping Turanians. That younger writers didn’t screw up is not set in stone as Wagner made Ghor a blond instead of redhead and Schweitzer was a neophyte.  I thought Brennan did a good job with his chapter though it completely changed the course for the rest of the novel. Interesting how Dick Tierney’s Ythillin was used in almost every chapter. Charles Saunders’ Metumenen also became a Skeletor to Ghor’s He-Man. The first six or seven chapters are not bad. The novel was irrevocably damaged with Darrell Schweitzer’s chapter.

We can talk about the hard-boiled nature of Howard’s fiction now.  Ghor was before The Dark Barbarian and The Starmont Reader’s Guide to Robert E. Howard came out to change people’s perceptions. Publishers and editors wanted wild fantasy. Who cares if there are mechanical flying men, robotic arms, magic swords, and a Tinkerbell character. It is all fantasy, right? One would hope the approach would be very different today trying to find writers of similar outlook and execution.

A big gripe about Ghor Kin-Slayer. There was not one epic battle. Manly Wade Wellman had a skirmish. Ramsey Campbell had a battle of the chaos army vs. Hyrkanians but that had no detail and also not a bona fide Howardian slug fest. I find this as a distinct lack of testicular fortitude.

Ghor Kin-Slayer is a lesson in pastichery. If, there are ever more pastiches written and that is a big if, lessons from Ghor need to be learned. Older writers are going to ignore Robert E. Howard’s back history laid out in “The Hyborian Age” and do their own thing. Getting a decent pastiche is going to be produced by someone who is young and something of a Hyborian scholarship nerd (plus some talent). Anyone who is going to write a pastiche should be made to memorize “The Hyborian Age” and be able to repeat it verbatim.

The round robin novel has inherent flaws though with an overall editor, it could have been better (as happened with the Bible). A different approach which could not be done at the time but could be done now with print on demand technology is have ten or twelve writers take the Howard beginning and create a novelette, novella, or novel from it. Rusty Burke has pointed out the various Sherlock Holmes’ pastiches called “The Giant Rat of Sumatra.”

Looking at the Howard portion, the idea came to me of using the lame smith story of Hephaestus-Vulcan-Tubal Cain for Genseric’s fifth son. Ghor is thrown out for being deformed just as Hera cast out Hephaestus. Karl Edward Wagner was obsessed with killers in and of the family and totally overlooked what Robert E. Howard was pointing to. Remember, Howard never said that Ghor joined the AEsir, only that that the AEsir called him Ghor and that many tribes had many different names for him.

Also- there is one great Vanir story waiting to be written. Towards the end of the Hyborian Age, a tribe of Vanir cut their way through the Pictish Wildnerness ultimately ending up in Stygia where they lead a revolt of the underclasses and overthrow the Stygian rulers. That is an epic waiting to be written.