Weird Fiction discussion

No coverage of Weird authors could possibly be complete without a mention of this most famous son. Sam Moskowitz sums up Howard's significance to the Weird genre really well in the Summer 1973 issue of Weird Tales in the introductory notes to a Howard tale he was reprinting there: "Spear and Fang."

One of the most popular and appreciated literary discoveries WEIRD TALES ever made in its long and distinguished life, was that of Robert E. Howard whose works appear everywhere on the paperback stalls, whose characters are featured in a number of comic magazines and whose followers have become a cult. It is a simple matter to read his works and determine the basis for his posthumous success. For this first issue of the newly-revived WEIRD TALES, we have decided to bring our readers the first story he ever sold this or any other magazine, Spear and Fang. It appeared in the July, 1925 issue when Howard was 19 years old and in that issue he was already in the company of the greats. H. P. Lovecraft poured one of his favorite monstrosities out of an ancient house in The Unamable, Henry S. Whitehead told of a man and a woman who simultaneously at a distance dreamed the same dream in The Wonderful Thing, H. Warner Munn's classic The Werewolf of Ponkert was featured on the cover, and Seabury Quinn was playing the part of a reporter of New England witchcraft in The End of the Horror. Howard's story, though not a masterpiece to ring down the ages, showed the basic elements of primitive civilizations, bloody combat and erotic implication that would be hallmarks of so many of his works in the years ahead. There would not be many years, for Howard would commit suicide on June 11, 1936 on learning that his mother would never regain consciousness from a coma she had lapsed into.

Psychological and psychiatric explanations of Howard’s behavior have been given and they seem to make sense except for the omission of one factor. AM reports of Howard tell of a lusty 195 pound man, of ready temper, big fists, and gun-carrying proclivity. His fictional characters are nothing if not extraordinarily robust. His appearance and his fiction give the impression that there could be no physical reason why he would ever want to take his own life. However, there is reference in one of his letters to a heart condition. Perhaps Howard's medical record prior to his death should be explored as well as his fiction to determine if there were physical as well as mental reasons for his suicide.

In a letter to Farnsworth Wright, editor of WEIRD TALES in 1931 Howard did make a prophetic statement when he wrote: "Every now and then one of us finds the going too hard and blows his brains out, but it's all in the game, I reckon."

I've been powering through The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian and at some point in his life, during "The Vale of Lost Women," Conan is so blasé about weird shit. "Ah, a demon of the Outer Dark, these MFs again," he seems to say.

The book is full of tales which pit Conan against the supernatural, but the adventures between, against mundane foes, would probably fly off the shelves, as well. I wish there were more of those stories.

Conan: Sigh. Not again.

My 5* review:

"This isn't my first exposure to Robert E. Howard or to the literary version of Conan, but this is my first purely-REH event, if you will. All my other Conan reading came by way of the collections which took these stories and some other which were originally Kull stories or whichever other similar (or different) REH hero and turned into Conan stories, and then set in a timeline which told the tales in the order they were assumed to have happened.

Turns out, I'm not a Howard purist, because I think I enjoyed those other versions just as much as these, for various reasons. These are, to be honest, probably punchier, a little more dynamic, and more adventurous than the pasted-together versions by Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, and Robert Jordan, but I also appreciate the effort it took to put together a cohesive backstory for the sprawling, epic life which Conan led. I would probably read a collection of non-supernatural Conan stories, as well, because a lot of these either start with Conan stumbling away from a mundane battle where everybody was killed but him, or into the company or leadership of another group as they got away from some supernatural foe, and I'd read the hell out of the adventures which bookend these here."

It's funny you should be writing about Howard just now. I just ordered and received (yesterday) the 12th issue of Avon Fantasy Reader (1950) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avon_Sc...). The nine stories it contains are all reprints, I think, mostly from the 1930s and '40s. The first story is by Howard and is in fact the cover story, titled "The Blonde Goddess of Bal-Sagoth. (1931)" (That's not quite the same as the Yog-Sothoth mentioned 13 times in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, but close). Howard's story features a Celtic Gael hero named Turlogh O'Brien (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turlogh...) who may as well have been named Conan for all the difference it would have made. Anyhow, I'm having mindless fun reading it.

Incidentally, Miles John Breuer who featured on the cover of Amazing Stories (Septemeber 1927) while Lovecraft's story "The Colour out of Space" did not also had a story reprinted in this same Avon Fantasy Reader issue. Ah, the changing tastes of time. The Breuer story in this Avon issue, "The Captured Cross-Section" (1929), about the fourth dimension, for which it provides a clever mathematical basis tied into reality in a convincing way, is surprisingly good.

Mark wrote: "Conan: Sigh. Not again."

For some, Conan is the gift that keeps on giving. For others, he's the STD you can't get rid of.