My reading plans for the evening have just been changed.
If you’re jealous, you can do something about that here. My copy was 168 of 200. I don’t know if the Foundation is shipping high number or low numbers first.
But like I said, my reading plans have just changed.
The Robert E. Howard Foundation announced last week that their next book, Swords of the North, is available for preorder. I’ve ordered my copy. Is that not a great cover? The book ships in December, so it would make an excellent Christmas gift for the REH fan in your life, even if that fan is yourself. Maybe especially if that fan is yourself.
Here’s what the announcement, lifted from the REH Foundation page:
There is a clear self-consistency among all of Howard’s tales which will readily demonstrate that underlying it all is a coherent vision of a fictional history of the world and mankind, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s term a “secondary” world, internally consistent, full of strangeness and wonder, “free from the domination of observed fact,” yet quite credible, a world rooted in the familiar if populated with the unfamiliar, a world that combines the ordinary with the extraordinary. Just as Tolkien’s “Arda” is our Earth, so too is Howard’s world.
-from Rusty Burke’s introduction
The REH Foundation Press is proud to present Swords of the North, a collection of Robert E. Howard’s Celtic/Viking adventure stories. The book checks in at 540 pages, and will be printed in hardback with dust jacket, in a limited first-print quantity of 200 copies, each individually numbered. Cover art by Aaron Miller and introduction by Rusty Burke. This volume marks the first publication of the fragment that begins with, “Between berserk battle rages,” which features Cormac Mac Art’s partner, Wulfhere Skull-splitter. It also collects for the first time in one volume all of the James Allison stories and fragments, both incomplete drafts of “The Temple of Abomination,” and other rarities. The book is expected to ship in December 2014. Pre-order yours today.
Swords of the North is $45 for REHF Members, $50 for non-members (all prices in US dollars) plus shipping. (How to become a member? Look here.)
Shipping prices and additional details (such as the contents) can be found at the REH Foundation website.
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Del Rey
trade paper $18.00
ebook Kindle $11.59 Nook $13.99
I read this story for the first time recently in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy collection The Spawn of Cthulhu. (The subject of my next BAF post for Black Gate.) Just from the title, I could have sworn I’d read it before, but I think I would have remembered this one.
“The Children of the Night” was first published in Weird Tales in the April-May issue of 1931. It’s an interesting little story in that it ties two of Howard’s series characters in with H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Continue reading
In June of 1935, Robert E. Howard and his friend Truett Vinson took a road trip through New Mexico, and on the way stopped in the town of Lincoln. Howard was fascinated by the Lincoln County War. It’s easy to understand why. It was a horrible, senseless conflict fueled by greed and pride from which no one came out looking good.
A friend and I took a similar trip this past June. We’d been talking about this trip for over a year. Family considerations required him to move back to Kansas, so we knew we had to go or the trip would never happen. We managed to find a couple of days when we could both get free and headed west.
After hiking in the mountains we made our way to Lincoln, where we stayed the night at the Wortley Hotel (Where No Guest Has Been Gunned Down in Over 100 Years). The next morning, we toured the town before heading home.
Howard described his impressions of Lincoln in a letter to H. P. Lovecraft in a letter circa July 1935. My intention of this post is to comment on some of the things Howard wrote about, supplemented with my own photos from the trip. I didn’t know much about the Lincoln County War before we went, but I’ve learned a lot since then. (I hadn’t read that portion of Howard’s correspondence at the time.) Had I known more, I would taken some additional pictures.
While it’s not the most famous picture of Howard, the photo on the left has been fairly widely disseminated. It was taken in front of the Lincoln County Courthouse. Click to enlarge the image. The sign says “The house from which Billy the Kid made his fast escape after killing his two guards Bell and Ollinger before ? 1881 being later killed by Sherriff Pat Garrett. Visitors Welcome.”
I’m not sure who the person on the left is. It could be Vinson, but I have a vague memory of reading somewhere that it’s one of the locals. I just can’t remember where I read it. If I really did.
If that is one of the locals, it would most likely be Ramon Maes, who was the grandson of Lucio Montoya, one of the participants on the Murphy-Dolan side of the conflict. (Billy the Kid fought for the McSween-Tunstall faction.) Maes regaled the Texans with tales of the fighting and gave them the key to the building. At one time it was the Murphy-Dolan store and bank, and after the Lincoln County War ended, it became the courthouse and jail. When Howard was there, it was a storage building. Continue reading
There are a few used book stores here in town. Two are pretty good, one is so-so, and I’m not sure the fourth isn’t a front for something else.
Anyway, the one I consider the best is closing. The owner doesn’t have a lease but owns the storefront. As a result, he’s not in any hurry to shut his doors. This is good, because he’s got a pretty thorough inventory. It’s one of the great second hand stores where there are stacks of books in all the aisles, and a few minutes to see if a particular title is to be had turns into the better part of an afternoon.
I passed through the other day and picked up a few things. At the moment everything is half off. That percentage will increase as times goes on and the day the store shuts its doors for good draws nigh. You know I’ll be going back. Continue reading
A Means to Freedom, the Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard is currently on sale. This two volume set is normally $55.00, but for the month of April, Hippocampus Press is discounting it to $27.50.
Just in case, ya know, you might want to pick up a set if you don’t have one.
Today is the birthday of one of my literary heroes, and one of only a handful of authors who has his own shelf in my library. In fact, he’s the only one who has two full shelves devoted to his works. I’m talking of course about Robert E. Howard. You may think there’s not much still to be learned about Howard. If you read the Two Gun Raconteur blog (and if you don’t, shame on you), then you know productive research into Howard’s life is still going on.
I said in my reading goals post a few weeks ago that I want to read more Howard this year. His birthday is a perfect time to start.
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Del Rey
trade paper $18.00
ebook 12.99 Kindle Nook
When accusations of Howard being a racist are trotted out, this story is often one of the ones that’s given prominent display to back up those claims. And there are definitely aspects to the story that will be offensive to many modern readers, as well they should be.
But is that reason not to read the story? The answer to that question is going to vary from one reader to another. I can only answer it for myself.
Here’s the basic plot. Sometime after the Civil War, but no later than the late 1920s/early 1930s, probably not that recently, Kirby Buckner is summoned from New Orleans back to his home in the region known as Canaan. It’s an isolated region, surrounded by river and swamp. He’s attacked on the way there by a black woman he’s never seen before and three black men who are unknown to him. He manages to fight them off. Coming upon some of his friends, he is informed that a man named Saul Stark has taken up residence in an old cabin. Since he came the blacks in the swamp have been stirred up and the ones who live in town have fled. The whites fear an uprising.
This story is long enough that I won’t try to summarize all the details. It turns out that Stark is a conjure man. The voodoo he does is powerful, and he intends to use it to set up his own kingdom in Canaan. The woman who led the attack on Buckner places him under a spell that will draw him to his doom. There are people who’ve been turned into aquatic swamp monsters. There’s a dancing skull.
There’s also the frequent use of a certain racial slur that begins with the letter “N”. Buckner uses it, as do most of the whites who have speaking parts in the story. But Buckner seems to be of a more noble character than his companions. When some of the men catch a black man spying on the town and he refuses to answer their questions, they are going for the bull whip when Buckner intervenes. The man had worked for Buckner’s family, and Buckner reminds him they’ve always treated him fairly and assures him they’ll protect him from Saul Stark.
Howard was a product of his time, and that time included attitudes that are considered racist today. Furthermore, he was writing about a time and place in this story in which the attitudes were certainly racist by any reasonable standards. Howard always strove to give his stories a sense of authenticity, regardless of whether they were set in historical times or times that never were. To write about race relations in the deep South and not include the racist attitudes present would go against everything he strove to be as a writer.
The key to interpreting the racial aspect of this story, at least for me, is to look carefully at the attitudes of Buckner. While he would be called a racist today, he appears to respect and sympathize with the blacks in the story. He certainly treats them more nobly than the other whites. I realize this won’t matter to some who only see race through the lens of the twenty-first century. That’s their choice. I prefer to try to put myself in the mindset of the author as much as I can, even when I don’t always share the same views as the author. I found the use of a certain racial epithet disturbing, and much of my family is from the South, so it’s not like I didn’t grow up hearing it.
“Black Canaan” isn’t going to be for everyone. If you can put up with the racial attitudes some of the characters express, then give it a try. If you don’t think you can, then this is one you’ll probably want to pass on.
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Del Rey
trade paper $18.00
ebook 12.99 Kindle Nook
This probably isn’t one of Howard’s better known horror stories, and I think in part it’s because it wasn’t published in Weird Tales or any of the other pulps his supernatural tales appeared in. It was published as “The Apparition in the Prize Ring” in the April 1929 issue of the short-lived Ghost Stories.
One of Howard’s life long passions was boxing. He wrote serious and humorous boxing stories, and even in this case, a supernatural boxing story. The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press is currently in the process of publishing Howard’s complete boxing stories in 4 volumes.
This isn’t a particularly scary story, but the ghost angle is central to it. It’s narrated by the manager of boxer Ace Jessel. Jessel is an up and coming fighter, but he doesn’t have the killer instinct to be a great boxer. This is one of Howard’s stories where race is a factor. Jessel is black, as are Tom Molyneaux, the boxer from the previous century he worships, and Mankiller Gomez, the boxer he fights.
There is a clear contrast between the wild Senegalese Gomez (named after the Mexican promoter who first brought him to the ring) and the civilized Jessel. In fact the only use of the N-word is by Jessel in reference to Gomez. To say that Howard engages in the racial stereotypes of his day is to oversimplify his portrayal of race in this work.
Jessel is slated to fight the heavyweight champ when Gomez comes on the scene and takes the title. Soon everyone is trying to get the two men in the ring. Eventually it happens, even though it’s intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer that Jessel doesn’t stand a chance.
Jessel has a life size painting of Molyneaux. The manager comes across Jessel standing before it and asking Molyneaux for help in the upcoming fight. So unbeknownst to Jessel, he takes the painting to the fight. When Jessel is about to go down for the count, he holds it up where Jessel can see it. The painting shakes, and a cold wind blows through the arena, and especially in the ring. Jessel gets up and whips Gomez, winning the title. Only the ref, Jessel, and the manager can see Molyneaux’s ghost.
I know I’ve made the ghost aspect seem trivial and have brushed off the boxing, but I can’t do this story justice in a description. Howard is at the top of his game as he describes the boxing match. The thunder and conflict we see in Howard’s sword and sorcery are all on display. There aren’t a lot of scares in this one, but that’s not the point. The ghost is just the McGuffin that propels the boxing story. This is a different side of Howard many fans haven’t seen. If you’re not familiar with Howard’s boxing stories, this is a good place to start.
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Del Rey
trade paper $18.00
ebook 12.99 Kindle Nook
Today’s story is a shift away from the weird westerns we’ve looked at the last two days. Howard is best known for the series characters Solomon Kane, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, and Conan of Cimmeria. In more recent years, he’s also gotten recognition for El Borak, Sailor Steve Costigan, and Breckenridge Elkins. But there were other characters who appeared in multiple stories, and two of these were John Conrad and a man simply called Kirowan. They were experts on the occult, and seem to be Howard’s attempt to try his hand at the occult detective yarn. These stories are part of Howard’s Mythos tales. Yog-Sothoth is mentioned in passing in this one.
In “Dig Me No Grave”, the story is narrated by Kirowan, an approach Howard abandoned for the later stories, in which he kept the first person perspective but had an unnamed narrator.
Kirowan is awakened by Conrad in the middle of the night. Conrad has just left the side of John Grimlan, who has died in a most unpleasant manner. Years earlier Grimlan had made Conrad swear to follow the instructions in a sealed envelope after his death. Conrad was to follow these instructions no matter how much Grimlan might change his mind. As he was dying Grimlan begged Conrad not to follow the instructions but to burn the envelope.
The instructions say Grimlan is to be laid out on the table in his library with seven black candles placed about his body and an incantation in a second sealed envelope read. Fearing what the envelope contains, Conrad has sought Kirowan’s aid. Grimlan was a follower of the cult of Malik Tous, who is rumored to be an incarnation of Satan.
The men go to Grimlan’s house, which has no electricity or gas lights. (This story was published in Weird Tales in 1937 but was certainly written years earlier; it wasn’t unusual for isolated houses, as Grimlan’s is described, to have only lamps or candles for light.) As they approach the library upstairs, light comes from under the door. The men enter to find Grimlan’s body laid out on the library table, covered with a robe. Seven black candles are burning about the body. In the corner is an old Oriental man in a yellow robe, upon which is embroidered an image resembling a peacock, the symbol of Malik Tous.
The man bids Conrad to begin reading the incantation. The incantation is long and written in an archaic form of English mixed with some other language. Part of the text describes Grimlan’s pact with Malik Tous, which included an additional two hundred fifty years of life for his soul, which will be damned to Hell on his death. As Conrad reads, the candles go out one by one of their own accord.
When the final candle is extinguished, the men hear a blood chilling scream. Conrad manages to find and light a candle. The body of Grimlan is gone as is the Oriental man. Conrad and Kirowan flee the house as a fire begins somewhere upstairs and completely engulfs the structure. After they are out, they turn and see a dark shape resembling a peacock rising from the flames carrying the body of John Grimlan.
I’m not sure when this story was written, but I’m guessing it was in 1930 or 1931. Other stories featuring Conrad and Kirowan were published about that time. Howard hadn’t yet written some of his more famous horror stories such as “Black Canaan” or “Pigeons From Hell”. I intend to look at both of those in this series. The prose in “Dig Me No Grave” gets a little purple in a couple of places. Still, a Howard horror story, even if it’s not one of his best, is still a good horror story. The strength in this one lies in the atmosphere Howard imbued in the story. There’s not as much action as you might expect from Howard, but not everything he wrote was blood and thunder. He understood creeping terror as well, and it’s on display here.
I might look at another one of the Kirowan/Conrad stories in this series. I certainly want to examine another of the Mythos tales. I’m about to hit some time constraints, so I’m not sure how many more of these posts I’ll get in before Halloween. There will be at least two more, “Black Canaan” and “Pigeons From Hell”. Beyond that, I can’t say for sure.