Category Archives: Robert E. Howard

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard: “The Horror From the Mound”

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Howard HorrorThe Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Del Rey
trade paper $18.00
ebook 12.99 Kindle Nook

This is another of Howard’s weird westerns, and although published a year and a half before “Old Garfield’s Heart” (May 1932 vs. December 1933), it’s a more mature tale.  This one concerns a former cowboy, now farmer, named Steve Brill who notices that an old Mexican laborer named Juan Lopez avoids a mound on Brill’s property.  Lopez cuts across a corner of Brill’s pasture when going between his work and his shack.

Brill detains Lopez one evening and inquires as to the reason for this behavior.  Brill thinks it’s because Lopez is superstitious and the mound is an old Indian burial mound.  Lopez assures him there’s more to the situation than that, but that he isn’t free to tell.  The story has been passed down in his family from one of his ancestors who came through with the conquistadors.  Lopez has taken a sacred oath not to tell anyone but his first born son.  Since he has no children, the secret of the mound will die with him.

Brill convinces Lopez to write out what the secret is since his oath only prohibits him from telling the secret.  Lopez agrees and hurries off to his shack before the sun sets.  Brill decides not to wait but to excavate the mound by lantern.  He suspects there’s a hidden cache of gold in the mound, and he wants to get his hands on it.

Brill finds evidence of the mound being an Indian burial mound, but there it appears to have been disturbed at some point in the past.  He unearths a stone lid over a burial chamber.  Hearing rustling and fearing a den of rattle snakes, he heads off to his cabin to get a lantern.   (He’s been working by moonlight, too impatient before now to get his lantern.)

He comes back and discovers the lid is now in the burial chamber.  A figure is visible going over the hill to Lopez’s shack.  Naturally Brill suspects Lopez has beat him to the gold.  He heads towards Lopez’s shack to get what he views as his property when he hears a ghastly scream.  He finds Lopez dead, papers scattered around him.  The final sheet Lopez was working on is still clutched in his hand.  The only sign on Lopez’s body are puncture marks on his neck.

Brill returns to his cabin to find his horses have been scattered.  Wanting to avenge Lopez but not wishing to tangle with one or more killers in the dark, he barricades himself in his cabin and reads what Lopez wrote.

During the days of the conquistadors, a small expedition rescued a lone survivor from a ship.  The survivor claimed the crew and the rest of the passengers died of plague.  He accompanies the expedition to what would become Texas.  Then the men start dying, bodies left by the side of the trail drained of blood.  Eventually, they find the vampire sleeping in the brush.  He’s the survivor.  Afraid of waking the creature, they bury it in an old Indian burial mound.  Lopez was a descendant of one of the survivors of the expedition.

Brill finishes reading to discover the vampire watching him from the window.  The creature breaks down the door.  While Brill fights for his life, the lantern falls from the table and shatters.  Brill manages to impale the vampire on a broken table leg and flees the burning cabin, letting the fire finish killing the creature.

reh1

Robert E. Howard

“The Horror From the Mound” was criticized when it appeared in Weird Tales because it contained “no less than four flagrant breaches of accepted vampire tradition”.  It was the first of the regional horror stories Howard would write, and it’s one of the best, even if it didn’t respect “vampire tradition”.  Howard blazed his own trail even there.  Howard adds a level of verisimilitude by mention historical figures such as Coronado and real locations such as Palo Pinto, which is both a town near Howard’s birthplace as well as the county in which he was born.

One thing I do want to point out, and that’s Howard’s use of race.  Howard is often considered a racist in some circles because he doesn’t hold 21st Century views.  But consider how Lopez is portrayed.  While Brill does express some racist sentiments, especially when he thinks Lopez has robbed him of a treasure, his attitude towards the Mexican is largely one of respect for the man, if not for some of his beliefs.  He certainly intends on avenging the man when he discovers Lopez’s body.  These were not typical white attitudes towards Hispanics in the time and place Howard was writing nor were they typical attitudes for the setting of the story.  The respect and desire to avenge don’t fit easily into the racist label that’s often applied to the author.

“The Horror From the Mound” is one of Robert E. Howard’s best regional horror tales.  It’s easy to see why.

The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard: “Old Garfield’s Heart”

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Howard HorrorThe Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Del Rey
trade paper $18.00
ebook 12.99 Kindle Nook

Although he’s best known today as a sword and sorcery author, Howard excelled at a number of genres. One of those was horror. In fact, I would argue that part of what made his S&S so good was its infusion of horror.

Since Halloween is coming up, I thought I would look at some of his horror stories this year. (Last year I looked at some of the Halloween shorts from Cemetery Dance.) All of Howard’s horror tales, including those that feature some of his series characters such as Solomon Kane and Bran Mak Morn, are included in the Del Rey volume shown at the top of the post. I’m going to discuss them on an individual basis rather than try to review the whole book. Howard wrote quite a bit of horror, and I want to examine some of the details. While I doubt I’ll have a post every day until Halloween (I don’t have that kind of time), I intend to look at as many as possible. And just so you know, there will be spoilers.

The first horror story we’ll look at is “Old Garfield’s Heart”. In a way, it’s a weird western, even though most of the story actually takes place in what would have been considered contemporary times when it was written.

The story is told by an unnamed narrator, a young man who is waiting for Doc Blaine to take him out to Old Jim Garfield’s house.  Garfield was thrown from a horse and isn’t expected to live.  While waiting, the narrator’s grandfather tells how he knew Garfield back in the 1870s, when he and Garfield participated in an attack on some raiding Commanches.  Garfield was seriously wounded, but an old Lipan Apache shaman appears, takes Garfield into a mesquite thicket and spends the night performing some ritual.  The men could hear owls hooting all night.  The next morning Garfield is alive and well.  He hasn’t aged a day since.

Out at Garfield’s cabin, he confirms the story is true.  He says he was given the heart of an Indian god and as long as the heart is in his chest, it will always beat.  The only way he can die is by a head injury.  Garfield makes Doc Blaine promise that if anything happens to him, he’ll remove the heart from his chest.

Much to everyone’s surprise, Garfield recovers.  The action shifts to the narrator standing up to one of the town bullies, nearly killing him with a knife.  The bully has the name of Jack KIrby.  This is a typical Howardian name.  The story was written before the real Jack Kirby began working in comics.

While awaiting trial, the narrator is picked up by Doc Blaine and taken out to Garfield’s place.  Kirby is looking to kill the narrator, and Blaine wants to protect him.  The narrator isn’t too happy.  While they’re talking about the old shaman, who knew Coronado, the men hear a horse ride up.  The narrator opens the door and is nearly killed by a rifle shot.  The only thing that saves him is Doc Blaine pushing him out of the way.  The narrator grabs Garfield’s shotgun from the wall and peppers the horse’s hindquarters as the rider tries to make his getaway.  The spooked horse takes off through an orchard and a tree branch knocks the rider off.  It’s Jack Kirby, his neck broken.

Garfield is also dead.  The bullet meant for the narrator took off the top of his head.  As Garfield’s body cools, the heart keeps beating.  The narrator assists Doc Blaine in removing Garfield’s heart.  They hear an owl while they work.  The narrator is holding Garfield’s heart when the door opens and the Lipan shaman walks in, hand outstretched.  He takes the heart and leaves without a word.  When the men rush to the door, the yard is empty.  The only living thing they see is an owl silhouetted against the Moon.

Isaac Howard

Dr. Isaac M. Howard

This story is one of the shorter horror tales Howard wrote, but in it he played to his strengths.  He peppers the tale with references to Texas history and geography, two subjects with which he was quite familiar.  The bully Jack Kirby is a type of character we see often in Howard’s fiction, and I’m sure he knew a number of people over the course of his life who could have served as models.  Oilfield workers, ranch hands, and other men who followed the boom towns of the 10s and 20s of the previous century tended to be rough, swaggering fellows.  Howard loved to talk to the older people in the community, listening to their tales of the pioneer days.  The narrator’s grandfather fits their mold perfectly.

But the thing that catch my attention on this rereading was the character of Doc Blaine.  I don’t know how much time Robert spent riding with his father when Doc Howard made his rounds.  I’m sure he went along once or twice.  He certainly had to be familiar with his father’s routine.  The senior Howard’s habits of visiting his patients for social purposes as well as medical purposes are well documented.  We’re not given a physical description of Doc Blaine, but I can’t help think Robert based the character on his father.

“Old Garfield’s Heart” isn’t a particularly scary horror story, at least not to me, but Howard’s use of detail bring the setting and period alive, giving it an atmosphere that adds to its creepiness.  Check it out.  I’ll have another look at one of Robert’s horror stories tomorrow or the next day.

Worldcon Report, Part 1

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This is going to be the written report, mostly without pictures because I haven’t had time to sort through the ones I took and see what I want to post.  It’s been one of those weeks at work and it started on the way down to San Antonio.  I spent more time than I would have liked dealing with a couple of problems that waited until I was on the road to arise.  I post some pictures in the next few days.

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James Gunn at his reception.

I had to teach class Thursday morning, so by the time I got to San Antonio, checked into the hotel and hoofed it over to the convention center to register, I just made it before registration closed.  I wandered the dealer’s room and familiarized myself with the layout before grabbing a bite.  At least I intended to.  I ran into Adrian Simmons, editor of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and ended up accompanying him to a private, invitation-only reception for James Gunn.  Adrian had been invited, and I went along as his guest.  It was a great event, and I took advantage of the opportunity to speak with him.  He’s 90, and critics are calling his new novel his best.  I picked up a signed copy before the weekend was over.  There’ll be a review going up at Futures Past and Present sometime in the next few months.  Learning of Fred Poh’s death made me extra glad I grabbed a signed copy, in spite of being a little overbudget.

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What would you eat for a book?

Later I attended the Bookswarm party, which was packed.  I got a chance to talk to Martha Wells for a few minutes, and I walked away with two free books.  The theme of the party was Eat a Bug, Get a Book.  The bugs were sanitized and freeze dried.  (I ate a mole circket and a dung beetle and got The Other Half of the Sky edited by Athena Andreadis and Exile by Betsy Dornbush.)  The highlight of the party was getting to meet Brad Beaulieu, Douglas Hulett, Courtney Schafer, and Zachary Jernigan.  If you haven’t read them, you should.  Other than a glimpse of Jernigan from across the street, the only one of that group that I saw after that night was Courtney Schafer.

The next day was one of those where there was about twelve hours of programming I wanted to attend, all of it in a three hour block.  I went to most of the Robert E. Howard panels, of which there were many.  Most of the hanging out I did with friends was with members of the Robert E. Howard Foundation or chatting with folks at parties.  Saturday was much the same, but Sunday was a little more relaxed.  Among the non-Howard panels I attended were a discussion of C. L. Moore’s “Vintage Season”, the history of firearms in the 1800s, a discussion on writing that included Michael Swanwick and James Patrick Kelly, a panel of Texas writers who have passed on, and readings by Jack McDevitt and Howard Waldrop.  I only caught part of the panel on sword and sorcery since it was up against one of the more interesting Robert E. Howard panels.  The autographing lines were either nonexistent or ridiculously long, so I only got a few signatures.

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Sword and Sorcery Panel: (l. to r.) Stina Leitch, Lou Anders, Sam Sykes, Saladin Ahmed, Chris Willrich

I went to the Alamo Saturday morning with Bill Cavalier, editor of REHupa.  He hadn’t seen it, and it had been a while since I had paid my respects.  Next to the Alamo is the Menger Hotel.  Teddy Roosevelt recruited the Rough Riders in the bar, and it’s something of a mini-museum.  I’ll do a write-up of it on Dispatches From the Lone Star Front over the weekend.

I didn’t try to attend the Hugos.  I wasn’t impressed with the slate of nominees for the most part.  But it’s a popularity contest, and currently my tastes and those of the field are in a state of moderate divergence.  The Legacy Circle of the REH Foundation went to dinner Saturday night.

There were some free books, including NESFA’s three volume Chad Oliver set.  I found the first two of the Heinlein juveniles I was missing, and picked up an extra copy of Glory Road.  This year marks the 50th anniversary of that novel.  I read it when I was about 14, and it’s about time for a reread.

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It’s good to be the king.

Some overall thoughts.  First, this was the first time I’ve been able to attend a Worldcon.  It wasn’t quite what I expected.  I’ve attended World Fantasy twice, and the density of pros in that venue is high, but then that’s a convention that’s aimed at pros.  Worldcon is more geared for fans.  I never saw some of the bigger names, although I know they were there.  Most of the ones I did see, I only saw once or twice.  The convention center is a bit too spread out for this sort of event.

I was surprised at crowded it wasn’t.  I was also a little surprised with how old the average attendee seemed to be.  While people seemed to be having a good time, I didn’t detect a great deal of excitement.  Maybe that’s because I’m getting older, but everything seemed more laid back than I was expecting.

I’d certainly attend another Worldcon, but only if it wasn’t at the same time classes started.  And only if it wasn’t too far away.  While I enjoyed it and am glad I went, I wouldn’t travel halfway around the world, or even the country, to repeat the experience.

I’ll post some more photos later in the week.

Howard Days 2013, Part 1

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I’ve been attending Howard Days for approximately a decade now.  I think this was the most enjoyable one of all.  The weather couldn’t have been better.  It was unseasonably cool, so much so that I never worked up a sweat.  Joe Lansdale was the surprise guest, and he really added to the experience.  I got to meet a reader of this blog I’d not met before (Hi, John!), renewed some friendships, and had a fantastic time.

I’ll break this post up into parts for a couple of reasons.  First, I don’t think I can get everything written tonight.  Second, I’ve got a lot of pictures, so I’m going to break things up to keep the post from getting too long.

The official events started on Friday, but there’s always an informal kickoff dinner at a steak restaurant in Brownwood.  This was the first year I’d managed to make that part of the weekend.  Robert E. Howard is buried in Brownwood alongside his parents.  I’d not visited the grave before; I’ve always stayed at my parents’ house for Howard Days and they live an hour in the opposite direction.  So I made sure I had time before dinner to swing by the grave site and pay my respects.

Then off to dinner.  The food was good, and there were over two dozen people there, scattered over at least 5 tables.  I was at the largest, and as in any gathering of Howard fans, the conversation was far ranging.  Among the topics discussed were movies, the differences between male and female Howard fans (Ain’t opening that can of worms here; ya had to be there.), comics, auto repair, and the food.  We also got to see two recently uncovered photos of Howard that haven’t been published yet, although there’s some uncertainty about whether one is really him.  After dinner, people split up.  Some went to back to Cross Plains to the Pavilion while others went to the cemetery.  I went back to the cemetery with that group.  That’s most (but not all of them) in the picture. They are (l. to r.) Lee Breakiron, Jeff Shanks, Deuce Richardson, John Bullard, Tim Arney, Al Harron, Barbara Barrett, Bill “Indy” Cavalier. 

Greenleaf Cemetery is one of the old style, elegant cemeteries you don’t see much of anymore.  There are a lot of tombstones, small statues, and obelisks, but not too many of the flat markers meant for lawn mowers to run over.  It was a peaceful place.

After visiting the Howards’ gravesite, we stopped at Tevis Clyde Smith’s grave.  It was getting late by the time everyone left.  While I would have liked to have gone back to the Pavilion and socialized, I went on home and got some sleep.

Don Clark (l) leading the tour

The next morning, I made it down to the Howard House just as the tour was starting.  The tour varies every year so that it’s not the same thing all the time.  This year, local historian Don Clark (who always does an outstanding job) took us to the nearby communities of Cross Cut and Burket, where the Howards lived before moving permanently to Cross Plains.  There’s not much left of either town, although in the early part of the century they were both boom towns.  We saw the gazebo in Burket where Hester and her young son would read together.  The house is gone, the gazebo being all that remains.

Harron, Truman, Shanks, Finn

We drove back to Cross Plains, and I visited the House, bought some items in the gift shop, and head downtown to the library for the first of the panels.  The morning panel consisted of Al Harron, GOH Tim Truman, Jeff Shanks, and Mark Finn discussing the history of REH in the comics.  It was extremely educational.  I didn’t know that Conan’s first comic appearance was in the 1950s in a Mexican comic.  Conan was blond and was a supporting character.  The main character was Belit.  The comic was titled La Reina de la Costa Negra (the Queen of the Black Coast).  The comic ran for a number of years in two formats.  Not much is known about it.  When the panel was done, I headed off to lunch (fresh grilled chili dogs) at the Pavilion.

Mexican REH comics
Closeup of Mexican comics
Mark Finn defending his position at dinner.

I’ll discuss the other panels and the rest of the events in the next post.  For now I’ll leave you with some pictures. 

Blogging Conan: The Scarlet Citadel

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It’s been quite a while since I wrote a post on Conan.  All I can say, “Where did the time go?”

Anyway, there are times when you just need to get back to basics.  This weekend has been one of them.

The Frazetta art for “The Scarlet Citadel”, shown at right and originally appearing on the cover of Conan the Usurper, has always been one of my favorites.  Perhaps it’s because I don’t like snakes.  If that were me chained up, I probably be a blubbering mass of jelly.  Anyway, even though it isn’t exactly faithful to Howard’s description, it’s still a masterpiece. 

“The Scarlet Citadel” was the third Conan story published in Weird Tales, following “The Phoenix on the Sword” and “The Tower of the Elephant“, although “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” and “The God in the Bowl” were probably written before Howard wrote “The Scarlet Citadel”.  (Links are to my posts about those stories.)

This story takes place during Conan’s reign as King of Aquilonia.  It opens with him taking 5,000 of his knights and riding to the aid of King Amalrus of Ophir against Strabonus, King of Koth.  With them, and actually the one in charge, is the sorcerer Tsotha-lanti.  It’s a trap, and all of Conan’s men are killed.  Conan is captured and offered his life if he will abdicate.

If you’ve read any of the Conan stories, you should know what his answer is.  As a result, he’s chained in a dungeon in total darkness to wait for the giant snake in the above picture to have him for a snack.

I’m assuming most of the people reading this are familiar with the story, but there are probably one or two of you who either haven’t read it or haven’t read it recently, so I’ll not give much in the way of spoilers. 

It had been a few years since I last read “The Scarlet Citadel” before I reread it the other day, and the images that had most stayed with me were the opening scene and the sequence of Conan and the snake.  It was fun to refresh my memory of this tale.

Howard by this time was becoming comfortable with the character.  His identity is well established.  Howard’s prose is top notch.  There’s a portion of the story in which Howard relates the events in Aquilonia after the population learn (falsely) that Conan is dead.  Howard summarizes the series of events beautifully, painting in broad strokes the usurpation of Conan’s throne by Tsotha-lani’s pawn and giving details about the resistance of certain individuals, such as the student Athemides speaking out and having to flee the city.  This is some of Howard’s better writing, although probably not his absolute best.  It’s certainly better than the passages in “A Witch Shall be Born“, in which the soldier Valerius relates events to his lover Ivga.

Yet, as much as I enjoyed this story, I can’t help feel that Howard was never really comfortable with Conan as a king.  While he’s still king, he spends most of the story trying to regain his throne.  Most of the story that’s told from Conan’s point of view consists of his capture and adventures in the dungeon, plus the concluding portion of the final fight at the end.  We never really see him in any kingly role.  And even though he’s portrayed more like a ruler in “The Phoenix on the Sword” and The Hour of the Dragon, I can’t shake the impression that Howard is at his most comfortable with the character when he’s not a king.  Even in The Hour of the Dragon, Conan spends much of his time traveling in order to regain his throne and even reminisces about when he was a wanderer. I know the Conan stories I’ve enjoyed the most have been those in which Conan answered to no one, even if there was a woman he was protecting.

Much of this one after Conan manages to escape consists of summaries and skips over some of the details.  If filled in, those details would turn this particular adventure into a short novel.  I don’t know if Howard didn’t feel as though he could write some of the details effectively or if he didn’t think he could sell Farnsworth Wright a story of that length about this relatively new character.  Certainly on the surface the basic concept of Conan having to fight against an invading army here bears a strong resemblance to the basic plot of The Hour of the Dragon.  Perhaps Howard felt more comfortable a few years later when he wrote Dragon, or if the character was by then popular enough to sustain a serial of that length.  Of course, by the time he wrote The Hour of the Dragon, Hester’s health was in a steep decline, and he probably needed the money a novel would bring more than he did when he wrote “The Scarlet Citadel”. 

“The Scarlet Citadel” is well worth the read.  The action is broken up into two main parts, the first being Conan’s capture and subsequent escape, and the second relates what happens in Aquilonia while he’s gone and how he gets his throne back.  It’s not one of the longer Conan stories, and it’s readily available in a number of collections.

RIP, Andrew J. Offutt

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Locus is reporting that Andrew J. Offutt passed away earlier today.  No cause of death was listed.  He wrote a number of erotic novels, many of them science fiction, as well as fantasy.  Included in his fantasy works are pastiches of the Robert E. Howard characters Conan and Cormac Mac Art.

As Charles Rutledge points out in his tribute, his greatest contribution to the field was as an editor rather than an author.  He was the editor of the 5 volume Swords Against Darkness series of original sword and sorcery anthologies.  I’ve got all but volume 3 (with duplicates of 2 and 5).   I was considering doing a series of posts looking at each one when I track down volume 3.  That plan hasn’t changed with Mr. Offutt’s passing.  I’ve also got one or two of his novels around here somewhere I intend to read at some point.

Even though he hasn’t been active in sword and sorcery circles for a number of years (at least not that I know of), we’ve lost one of the major players from the sword and sorcery boom from the 70s.

Famous Fantasy Writers in a Five-Way

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Uh, story that is.  A five-way story.Get your minds out the gutter.  This isn’t that kind of blog.  It’s suitable for the whole family.  Yesterday’s post not withstanding.

And you guys in the back knock off the giggling.  Geez, what I put up with.Sam-Moskowitz-Horrors-Unknown-small

Anyway, the story I’m talking about is “The Challenge from Beyond”, the fantasy version.  I don’t have a copy of the science fiction version, which is long out of print.

I first read this story when I was in high school.  I was 14 when I discovered C. L. Moore, so I couldn’t have been any younger than that, but I doubt I was older than 15.  I found a beat up copy of the anthology Horrors Unkown at a yard sale and picked it up primarily on the strength of a couple of early Ray Bradbury stories I’d never heard of.

Everything else was just bonus, including a Northwest Smith story by C. L. Moore, “Werewoman”, which I’ll discuss in my series on Northwest Smith.

The lead story in the anthology was a round robin fantasy, “The Challenge From Beyond”, in which C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long each wrote a chapter.  I’ll discuss it with spoilers below.

The story was published in the September 1935 issue of The Fantasy Magazine, edited by Julius Schwartz.  According to the notes in Horrors Unknown written by Sam Moskowitz, who edited the anthology,  the two stories titled “The Challenge From Beyond” were written in honor of The Fantasy Magazine‘s third anniversary issue.

The science fiction story was written by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Donald Wandrei, Edward E. Smith, Harl Vincent, and Murray Leinster.  I’ve not read it, nor, as I said above, have a copy of it.  As a set, the reputations of the fantasy authors have fared better than those of the science fiction writers.

C. L. Moore

C. L. Moore

C. L. Moore opens the story by putting geologist George Campbell on a camping trip.  Awakened by a varmit getting into his supplies, he’s about to throw a stone he picked up in the dark at the animal.  He stops when realizes that what he holds in his hand isn’t a normal stone.  Shining his flashlight upon it, he discovers it’s a crystal cube.  It’s extremely old, with the corners almost rounded.  Inside is a small plate with some type of writing on it that seems to briefly glow after he turns off his flashlight. He’s fascinated and speculates on the origin of such an artifact.  He decides to wait until morning to examine the object more closely.

A. Merritt takes up the next section of the story.  Of all the authors who participated in this project, Merritt is the one whose name is most likely to be unfamiliar to contemporary readers.  The irony is that at the time this story was written he was the most well known, the biggest name if you will.  Recently Black Gate editor John O’Neill mentioned he had obtained a copy of Merritt’s only short story collection, The Fox Woman, and said he intended to review it at some point.  I’ve got a copy on my shelf. Maybe I can beat him to it.  (Not likely, given my time constraints.)

Abraham Merritt

Abraham Merritt

Anyway, Merritt picks up the story with Campbell, not being able to get back to sleep, deciding to investigate the crystal with his flashlight.  The thing does seem to glow briefly after he shines his light on it.  He plays around with the crystal and his light, and suddenly he finds himself being pulled into the crystal.  Merritt’s portion of the story ends with Campbell being sucked across the void.  Merritt leaves it up to H. P. Lovecraft to tell the reader where he’ll end up.

Of the writers involved in this story, H. P. Lovecraft has grown the most in reputation, although Howard is seeing a resurgence.  Lovecraft’s portion of the story is by far the longest.  All of the other writers’ contributions are between two and three pages.  Lovecraft’s is over seven.  Much of it is an info dump describing a race of beings in another galaxy or universe (Lovecraft appears to use the words interchangeably).  They resemble giant worm or catepillars, and early in their history they discover the means of space travel.  They use this ability to conquer any races they encounter.

H._P._Lovecraft,_June_1934

H. P. Lovecraft

Their method is to send small crystals into the void, programmed to activate when they land on planets.  Any life form which picks up the cube finds itself transported to the home world of the worms, while a member of that race is transported into the body of the life form.  The imposter poses as a member of whichever species it has switched bodies with.  Some species the worms destroy, some they simply take over the bodies.  Of course, Lovecraft adds a great deal of pseudohistorical gobbledygook about occult theories from human history and such.

Lovecraft ends his portion of the story with Campbell discovering he inhabits the body of one of the worms, which Lovecraft is now describing as a centipede.

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Robert E. Howard

If Lovecraft essentially inserted a Lovecraft story into the tale, Robert E. Howard did the same with his portion.  Campbell decides that the pleasures of humanity have bored him.  He wants to live a life filled with new sensations.  So he does what any Howard hero would do.  He grabs a sharp instrument which the scientist in the room with him only thinks of as a scientific instrument, not a weapon, kills the scientist, and goes on a rampage.

The god worshipped by these worms/caterpillars/centipedes/whatever is a sphere.  Campbell locates the room where the god is held, kills the priests, and holds the god captive until he’s made emperor.

And so it falls to Frank Belknap Long to resolve the story.  He takes an interesting approach.  Alternating paragraphs, he tells how the worm inhabiting Campbell’s body dies (It seems nothing can control the animal urges of a human being except a human being) and how Campbell, with the god’s aid, rules the world as a benevolent dictator.

Frank Belknanp Long

Frank Belknap Long

As a story, “The Challenge From Beyond” doesn’t work especially well.  Moore and Merritt’s portions fit together rather seamlessly.  The problem comes in with Lovecraft and Howard.  Each takes the story in an entirely different direction.  Not that there’s anything wrong with this in principle, but it can be rather jarring.  Especially if the character of the protagonist seems to change.  Howard’s portrayal of Campbell seems at odds to that presented by Moore and Merritt.

Lovecraft really doesn’t do much with Campbell, instead using his portion of the story as an infodump.  Campbell learns the history Lovecraft presents by absorbing it from the brain of the body he finds himself inhabiting.  The only real problem I have with Lovecraft’s portion is the length.  I think he could have left out some of his material and still had a strong, if not stronger, contribution.

I suspect the contributions of Lovecraft and Howard seem a little jarring to me because both writers had such strong personalities and distinct visions and authorial voices.  When writing alone these qualities are assets.  In collaboration, they can cause problems.  Still part of the fun of this type of writing is to try to leave an impossible situation for the next guy to try to resolve.

Long does a good job of tying everything together except that after Campbell has gone on a killing rampage, I find him being a good and benevolent ruler a little hard to swallow.  I will say that Long’s prose is strong.

Overall, this isn’t the greatest or best work of any of these authors.  That’s not surprising since Moore and Merritt don’t write enough to really establish a story, and Lovecraft, Howard, and Long have to deal with what the other have left them.  Still, this is a fun piece, and while definitely a product of its time, a small gem simply for who the contributors are.

“The Challenge From Beyond” is currently available in Adventures in Science Fantasy by Robert E. Howard and published by the Robert E. Howard Foundation Press.

Blogging Northwest Smith: Scarlet Dream

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“Scarlet Dream”
C. L. Moore

This post contains content of an adult nature and is not suitable for younger readers.  You have been warned.

“Scarlet Dream” is the third Northwest Smith story.  In terms of sexually charged imagery, it’s the most explicit of the ones so far, hence the warning above.  (My discussions of “Shambleau” and “Black Thirst” can be found here andhere.)  There will be spoilers, as well.  You’ve been doubly warned.

When the story opens, Smith is wandering through the Lakkmanda Market on Mars.  The name has a decidedly Leigh Brackett feel to it.  “Scarlet Dream” was published in 1934, predating Brackett’s Mars by a few years, but still I can’t help wondering if Brackett was influenced a bit by the name.

Smith spies a shawl with an intricate pattern consisting of a scarlet thread woven in a blue and green background.  The Martian vendor displaying tells Smith the thing gives him a headache, and he sells it to Smith for a good price.

After he returns to his quarters, Smith tries to trace the pattern on the shawl, gives up, covers himself with it, and goes to sleep.  Sometime in the night he begins dreaming that he’s walking up a mist enshrouded stair.  He soon loses sight of the bottom.

Eventually he is nearly run over by a young girl with long orange hair, wearing a short shift, and covered in blood.  She babbles something about some type of monster killing her sister.  Smith manages to calm her enough to carry her to the top of the stairs.  Once there he takes her into a side room, sets her on a stone bench, and gets a little more explanation from her.

The girl, who is never named, tells Smith that he’s dreaming but that he’s entered a dream world that can only be exited by death or by a fate worse than dying.  Most of Smith’s questions are answered along the lines of “We find it best not to think/ask/do that.”  This includes trying to leave or learn new things.  Indeed, it’s only when Smith eventually decides to leave that the monster shows up and attacks him.  But that comes later.

One of the things she tells him is that no one has ever gone down the stairs he came up.  She only went down the stairs in a panic.  Why Smith doesn’t at some point try to retrace his steps is never explained.  But if he did, then there would be no story.

Smith and the girl are in giant temple, and she leads him outside to a lake and a small shrine containing two cots, two blankets, and a few clothes.  It’s completely open to the air, but since the temperature never changes, that’s not a problem.

The trees seem to bend towards them, and the grass certainly does.  Smith eventually learns that if a person stands barefoot in the grass for long, it will begin sucking blood through the feet.  The trees are implied to be flesh eating.

Smith sits with the girl beside the lake, drifts off, and comes to as night is falling.  Moore implies that at this point Smith engages the girl in sex.  Regular sex between them is implied, with the word “kiss” and its variations being a euphemism for more than a kiss.  In spite of the raciness of the covers Farnsworth Wright selected for Weird Tales, the contents tended to be squeaky clean.  One of Robert E. Howard’s early Conan stories was rejected because Wright felt Conan took too many liberties with a young lady.  (My opinion of that can be found here.)

Where Moore engages in some serious sexual imagery is when the girl shows Smith the only source of food.  She takes him to a hall in the temple in which there are people “eating”.  That there are other people present is mentioned more than once, but this is the only time we see them.  Smith has no interaction with them.  In fact, they’re only mentioned in a few sentences, basically as backdrop.

The way people eat is they kneel before spigots in the wall, spigots that curve upwards.  What they drink from the spigots is blood, with the hint that it contains some addictive substance.  Once Smith realizes what he’s drinking, he’s repulsed but finds himself returning the next day.  Moore goes into details describing how pleasant and yet repulsive feeding is, dwelling on the taste.

Now I don’t know what mental picture you get, but what comes to my mind now is the same thing that came to mind when I was 15.  Fellatio, although I had not encountered that word at the time.  It’s hard to escape that image.  The posture of kneeling, along with Moore deliberately stating that the spigots curve upward from the wall, leave little room for any other conclusion.  What I have to wonder is what Wright thought about this imagery, or if he even noticed it.  I doubt we’ll ever know.  Smith comes to enjoy the feeding more than the girl, although he never completely overcomes his revulsion of it.

Smith eventually spies mountains through the surrounding mist, attempts to leave, is attacked by the monster, and drives it off with his blaster.  It’s at this point that the girl tells Smith she would rather lose him to the fate worse than death than through death at the hand of the monster.  She helps him get home, although he doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late.

Smith awakens to find his partner Yarol and a doctor leaning over him.  Smith has been in a coma for a week.  Seems Smith can’t be left alone to wander about on Mars without getting into trouble.  Yarol gave the shawl away while Smith was out.  The pattern was giving him a headache.

This is the third Northwest Smith story, and other than “Shambleau”, it’s the one that has stuck out the most in my mind since I first read the series nearly 30 years ago.  Again, I’m struck by how graphic the sexual imagery is in these stories.  If my parents had known what I was reading….

Moore seems to have a theme of vampirism going as well.  In the first story, the vampire fed on life essence, in the second beauty, and now the grass actually drinks blood.

I’m going to continue this series.  The post on “Black Thirst” is in the top 10 most viewed posts I’ve done.  Stay tuned.  There’s more to come.  Or should that be Moore to come?

Blogging Northwest Smith: Shambleau

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“Shambleau” is the first of the Northwest Smith adventures, and the first published story by C. L. Moore.  According to Lester del Rey, in his introduction to The Best of C. L. Moore (1975), she had been writing for 15 years before she submitted anything for publication.  I’d like to know where he got that information, but I’m not questioning it.  Since he’d known Moore personally for decades, I’m inclined to believe him.  Of course, what I’d like even more is to get my hands on some of those unpublished stories.  I suspect they’ve long since ceased to exist.

I don’t remember if “Shambleau” was the first story I read by C. L. Moore, but it certainly made the strongest impact on me.  Here’s a synopsis of what happens (spoiler alert):

A young woman is being chased by a mob down a street in a spaceport town on Mars.  The mob is closing in on her when she runs into Northwest Smith, a notorious criminal.  He intervenes on her behalf to the bafflement of the crowd.  Smith takes her back to his room, tells her she’s welcome to stay for the few days until he gives up the room and leaves.  This girl isn’t human, and Smith doesn’t recognize her race.  She’s dressed only in a shift and a turban.  Smith assumes she’s bald.  He realizes later she’s not when he sees her tuck what he thinks is a lock of hair under her turban.  He’s sure he saw the lock move on its own.  But he must be mistaken…

While Moore points out that sexual temptations don’t have much hold on Smith, he does find her attractive enough to make advances.  At least until he takes in his arms, at which point he finds her repulsive.  He doesn’t really understand why that is, only that the repulsion he feels is almost primal in nature.

Smith is in town setting up some type of criminal venture.  We’re not ever told what.  Over the next few days, Smith experiences a back and forth attraction and repulsion.  He struggles with it, but ultimately he succumbs.  Only when Smith’s partner Yarol shows up does Smith have a chance of escape, and even then it’s not easy.

Moore is playing with the concept of a gorgon, and goes so far as to state that the ancient Greeks had some knowledge of the Shambleau, which is the name of the race rather than of the girl.  She even takes her resolution from that myth.

One of the things that’s so interesting about this story is that for all its length (~30 pages), not much actually happens.  Other than the initial confrontation, which takes less than 5 pages, and Yarol’s rescue of Smith and the conversation that follows, about half of the story revolves around the Shambleau’s seduction of Smith.  Yet Moore’s prose is so rich that you hardly notice that that many pages have passed.

Caedmon Records recording of “Shambleau”

And it’s the seduction that is the heart and soul of the story.  Moore makes it very clear that Smith’s fall into the Shambelau’s clutches is a very bad thing, but she also makes it clear that it’s also an intensely pleasurable thing.  And it’s described as the Shambleau caressing and touching Smith’s soul more than his body.  It’s how she feeds, essentially a type of psychic vampire.

Moore also stresses Smith’s internal conflict, attracted by the pleasure and repulsed by the unnaturalness of it.  It’s a struggle he ultimately loses, giving in to the temptation while the whole time being repulsed by his actions.  It’s a struggle that on some level most people can probably relate to.  The desire for something that you know is wrong or harmful, the momentary pleasure of something that will ultimately destroy you.

The imagery is definitely sexual in nature.  While tame by today’s standards, I suspect this was pretty potent stuff back then.  It was certainly powerful to the teenage boy I was when I first read it.  Awash as I was in hormones, this story had a major impact on me.  It was almost like Moore was reading my mind at times as I struggled to understand and contain the natural changes I was undergoing and the accompanying urges.  And while the emotional impact when I reread the story the other night wasn’t nearly that intense, echoes were still there.

The reason “Shambleau” had such an impact on me, and why its popularity and acclaim has endured for over 75 years, is simple.  What Moore deals with here, as I mentioned in a previous paragraph, is something that most people can relate to on some level.  She’s dealing with what it means to be human, what it means to struggle with what’s right and what’s convenient.  Unlike many writers obsessed with their own self-importance, she does it by telling a compelling story, and telling it well.right up to the end.

Much has been made of Moore’s introduction of emotion and sexuality into the science fiction and fantasy fields in the 1930s.  I’m not going to rehash that here.  I have neither the time nor the patience for the literature search.  And I’m certainly not going to get into amateur psychoanalysis, a la L. Sprague de Camp with Robert E. Howard, and try to interpret Moore’s emotional and mental state.  I have too much respect for her to ever do that.

One last bit of trivia.  At one point in the story, Smith hums the tune of a song, “The Green Hills of Earth.”  Robert Heinlein has gone on record saying this was the inspiration of his classic story by that name.