A Little Bronze Book of Weird Tales
Robert E. Howard
Borderlands Press $32.50 Sold Out
This one sold out fast. You pretty much need to preorder the Little Books from Borderlands Press if you want to get one. Even then, it’s not a guarantee. I missed the Joe Hill volume because I waited until the evening to preorder.
But I digress.
Borderlands Press has been publishing these small collections for quite a while. I believe they are on the fourth series of them. They are currently $32.50 and run about 130 pages. They are nice little hardbacks and are signed and numbered.
Their current series is looking at classic authors of the weird and fantastic. Previous authors include Arthur Machen, Henry S. Whitehead, Ambrose Bierce, and J. Sheridan LeFanu. I’m enjoying the heck out of them.
I don’t know about the current series, but at least some of the older titles are available in ebook for only a few bucks if you don’t want to shell out the cash for the print edition.
So, what does the Robert E. Howard volume look like?
It contains stories and poems that were originally published in Weird Tales. At least the stories were. The poems don’t have publication information on them. There’s a Solomon Kane story and a Kull story. No Conan, though.
The book is edited by P. Gardner Goldsmith, who also provided an introduction. I’m not familiar with him, so I don’t know what else he was edited or written.
The book starts off with “Pigeons From Hell” (May 1938). Every time I read this story, I am more impressed by Howard’s use of tension. This is a strong start to the collection. Set in East Texas, it is something of a southern gothic. Two travelers from New England stop to spend the night in an abandoned mansion in the Piney Woods of East Texas. Durng the night, they hear whistling coming from upstairs. One of them goes up in a trance and returns a few minutes later with his skull split by an ax, He’s carrying the ax and tries to kill his companion.
While fleeing the house, the man encounters the sheriff, who eventually comes to believe his story. My favorite scene is the one in the cabin with the snake, where the man and the sheriff found out the history of the house and the family that lived there.
The stories alternate with poems in this volume, so next up is the poem “Cimmeria”. This is as close to Conan as we get in this book other than a mention of him in the introduction.
Solomon Kane is the lead character in “Skulls in the Stars” (January 1929). Kane is attacked by a monster while crossing a moor at night. He finds the lair of the monster, after a fashion, and frees the village.
“The Vision” is a brief poem that reflects a very negative view of life.
The next story is “The Thing on the Roof” (February 1932). It is one of Howard’s Mythos tales and concerns an explorer who is looking to the Black Book edition of Von Juntz’s Nameless Cults to give him guidance in excavating a tomb he found in Central America.
He should have left wll enough alone.
There is a direct connection in this one and “The Black Stone”, which I think is a stronger story.
“The Return of Sir Richard Grenville” marks the return on Solomon Kane in poetic form.
We move on to another of Howard’s series characters, Kull, King of Valusia in “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” {September 1929). Here Kull is tricked into looking into a mirror that tries to steal his soul. It’s not the best Kull story, but it’s a good effort. It’s also short, which I suspected contributed to the selection.
The next poem is worth a little more than just a mention. “The Tempter” is one of Howard’s better known poems. It’s due to the subject matter. The Tempter of the title is Suicide. I’m not sure when Howard wrote this poem, but given the nature of his death, this one will always be read with a sense of foreshadowing.
“The Fearsome Touch of Death” (February 1930) falls into what I call the Scooby-Do type of story. There is a mundane explanation for the apparent supernatural elements in the story.
The next poem is “Recompense”. I liked it a lot. There are some good story ideas here in just a few lines. I don’t recall having read it before, but I will read it again.
The final story is “The Dream Snake” (February 1928). A man recounts a recurring dream he has about a giant snake that is hunting him. You can probably guess the ending with just that little bit of information.
A Little Bronze Book of Weird Tales is a good collection, although I would quibble about some of the selections. The poetry selections are all good, although I would have included “A Song of the Naked Lands”, even if doesn’t really have any weird elements. I really have no issue with the poetry.
The stories on the other hand, I thought fizzled out. The last two were the weakest, although I would say “The Dream Snake” is stronger than “The Fearsome Touch of Death”. As many stories as Howard published in Weird Tales, surely there were others that could have been considered. Maybe?
Or maybe not.
One thing to keep in mind is that the stories in this small book are all from Weird Tales. Some of Howard’s other, better known work in weird fiction wouldn’t be considered for inclusion based on that.
On the other hand, if the purpose was to include as many stories as possible, then the ones presented here are not bad choices. “Pigeons From Hell” is a well-known story and has even been filmed. “Skulls in the Stars” and “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” are not obscure. I think the same thing can be said about “The Thing on the Roof”, although it isn’t exaclty well-known. “The Fearsome Touch of Death” and “The Dream Snake” are probably not well known outside of serious Howard fans who have tried to read everything, or at least all the fantasy and horror.
So, in conclusion, I enjoyed spending a couple of afternoons taking a break from other things to sit and read some Howard. That’s the nice thing about this series. You aren’t investing a great deal of time to read one, and if you want to try out an author you’ve not read before, these are good vehicles for doing that, especially the ebooks.
I will say this about Borderlands Press, their customer service is top-notch. I’m going to be preordering further books in this series, and when the next series launches, I’ll be there for it.