Category Archives: Robert E. Howard

Blogging Kull: Delcardes’ Cat/The Cat and the Skull

Spoiler Alert: This is not one of Howard’s best stories. The plot is fairly straightforward, if unbelievable. Kull goes with Tu, his chancellor, to see the talking cat of Delcardes. The cat is reputed to be thousands of years old. During the conversation, Delcardes asks Kull for permission to marry a nobleman from a neighboring kingdom. This sends Tu into paroxysms of fury because Delcardes is of the nobility, and it is against custom for nobility to marry foreigners. Howard seems to have developed a fondness for this plot device since he used it in the unfinished draft that precedes this tale in the Del Rey edition.

The cat, whose name is Saremes, tells Kull where he left a left (in his scabbard) and that a courtier is coming to tell Kull that a surplus has been found in the royal treasury. Tu insists that this is trickery. Kull is a little more gullible, and in the end Saremes accompanies Kull back to his palace. Attending Saremes at all times is the slave Kuthulos, who wears a veil covering his face and neck at all times. Saremes and Kull often sit up all night talking philosophy, but Saremes refuses to tell Kull much about the future. Personally I found her reasoning a little thin and had trouble believing someone like Kull could have been taken in by them. Howard even says that Kull has his doubts, yet he goes along with everything the cat says. Except the continued proddings of Saremes to try to convince Kull to let Delcardes’ marry a foreigner.

Then one day, Saremes tells Kull that his Pictish friend Brule has been captured by a monster while swimming in the Forbidden Lake. Kull immediately takes off to rescue Brule. After battling several monsters, in what are better than average action scenes, Kull is captured by a giant snake and taken deep under the lake into a cave in which the surviving members of the lake men are living. They don’t exactly buy Kull’s explanation for why he’s there. The situation is about to degenerate into a bloodbath when Kull learns that Brule was never in the lake at all. After pledging to leave the lake men in peace, Kull returns to the surface.

When he gets back to the palace, he finds the place in an uproar. Seems the king has wandered off somewhere without telling anyone where he was going. In the ensuing chaos, Kull hears a beating sound and discovers that Kuthulos has been tied up in a secret passage. The man masquerading as Kuthulos is none other than the evil sorcerer Thulsa Doom who swears to destroy Kull before he escapes. It seems Thulsa Doom is a servant of the serpent people. Yeah, those serpent people. Anyway, it turns out that Saremes can’t speak at all, but Kuthulos can literally throw his voice. He was the one telling Kull to allow Delcardes to marry her foreign lover and all the signs given in the opening scene were tricks. Only after Thulsa Doom took Kuthulos’ place was Kull told to go to the Forbidden Lake. Kull graciously pardons Delcardes for her scheming and allows her to marry whomever she wishes.

When published in the Lancer edition, this story was entitled “Delcardes’ Cat”, which is the name of the draft. There aren’t many differences between the draft and the finished story. The chancellor Tu is called Ku for the first page or so in the draft, then his name changes. The only other significant change is the late addition of Thulsa Doom. Howard added him as an afterthought in the first draft.

Several things struck me about this story. First, that the physical description of Thulsa Doom was a whole lot like that given for Skull-Face in the story of the same name. In fact even the name of the slave is similar. Skull-Face was called Kathulos. Patrice Louinet reports in “Atlatnean Genesis” (Kull, Del Rey, p. 298, 2006) that this was the original name in the first draft and was later modified for the final story. It is useful to keep in mind that this story was written at about the same time that Howard was working on “Skull-Face”.

Another thing that struck me was that this is the second story in which a woman has deceived Kull and he’s blown it off and pardoned her. The first was “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune.” That’s not something Conan would have stood for. Not even once. While he might not have killed the girl, you can be sure Conan wouldn’t have been so forgiving.

In spite of its flaws, this story definitely shows Howard at his most poetic. Consider the following quotes (page nubmers are from the Del Rey edition):

“Twilight was stealing down from the mountains of Zalgara when Kull halted his horse on the shores of the lake that lay amid a great lonely forest. There was nothing forbidding in its appearance, for its waters spread blue and placid from beach to wide white beach and the tiny islands rising above its bosom seemed like gems of emerald and jade. A faint shimmering mist rose from it, enhancing the air of lazy unreality which lay about the regions of the lake.” p. 97

“At first the king thought it to be a huge octopus for the body was that of an octopus, with long waving tentacles, but as it charged upon him he saw it had legs like a man and a hideous semi-human face leered at him from among the writhing snaky arms of the monster.” p. 98

“” ‘You come like the herald of all your race,’ said this lake-man suddenly, ‘bloody and bearing a red sword.’ ” p. 104

While not a major work, and certainly not the best plotting Howard ever did, this one is still worth reading, if only for the passages like those quoted above. “The Cat and the Skull” shows Howard beginning to master his form and hints at greater writing to come.

Blogging Kull: Untitled Draft

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Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Robert E. Howard
Del Rey, $15.95

After completing “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, Howard’s next attempt at a Kull tale was an abortive effort simply called “Untitled Draft” in the Del Rey edition. A good title would have been something along the lines of “Who Rides into the Sunrise” since that phrase is repeated in several forms at one part of the story and would have been a central theme if Howard had chosen to finish it.

The story opens with one of the Valusian nobles telling Kull about a scandal in which the Countess of Fanara, Lala-ah (surely one of the silliest names in all of Howard’s canon and certainly more fitting for a tavern girl than a countess) has jilted her fiance at the altar to elope with Felgar, an adventurer from the neighboring kingdom of Farsunia. There’s definitely some alliteration here. Normally, so many proper names so closely associated would be off-putting and confusing to the reader. A more experienced author would probably not have made this mistake. Howard was still learning his craft, although by this time he was becoming quite an accomplished wordsmith. Howard perhaps was aware on some level of the potential for confusion, because this is the only time all three names (Fanara, Felgar, and Farsunia) are used in close succession.

Kull is bored by the whole thing, and comments that in Atlantis, the “women mate with whom they will and whom they choose.” Having grown up in small Texas towns, I think I can safely say that this idea was ahead of its time in 1920s Cross Plains. It’s only when a messenger informs Kull that Felgar has said: “Tell the barbarian swine who defiles an ancient throne that I name him scoundrel. Tell him that some day I shall return and clothe his cowardly carcase {sic}in the clothing of women, to attend my chariot horses.” Why Felgar would do this is never explained.

Strong words from a man who is also a foreigner, although from one of the civilized kingdoms. This, of course, sends Kull into a rage. He summons Brule and the royal cavalry, the Red Slayers. They take off in pursuit of Lala-ah and Felgar, crossing the border of the neighboring kingdom of Zarfhaana.

Howard seemed to be setting up some conflict besides that between Kull and Felgar. There are two other men in the party besides Kull and Brule who are named. Ka-yana, who led the original pursuit and is overtaken by Kull and the Red Slayers, is the first. There is definite dislilke between him and Brule.

The second man is named Kelkor. He is second in command of the Red Slayer. Instead of being Valusian, he’s Lemurian. He worked his way up through the ranks, attaining the highest rank he could as a foreigner. This prevents him from becoming the lord commander of the entire army. Kull silently laments this fact. The passage (p. 71) implies, to me at least, that this will become a plot point later. Kelkor is a warrior’s warrior. In fact Kull has something of a man-crush on Kelkor. I don’t recall any other passage in Howard’s writings in which the central hero wonders if he can ever have the self control and martial prowess another man has. There may be such a passage, but if there is, I’m not aware of it.

This is the least brooding of the Kull stories Howard had written up until this time. The emphasis here is more on pursuit. The party, all 300 strong, track the lovers to a city on the eastern border of Zarfhaana, but the pair manage to elude Kull, although just barely. It’s while Kull and Brule are secretly searching for them in the city that the comments of riding into the sunrise begin.

The pursuit continues, across the border into Grondar, a kingdom of fierce horsemen who often raid Zarfhaana and other kingdoms along their border. Kull has enough men that the Grondarians don’t molest them but do follow along behind them, watching. Felgar and Lala-ah manage to stay about a day’s ride ahead. I don’t know much about horses, but I found it a little hard to swallow that the horses Kull’s party as well as the lovers are riding don’t start dropping dead from the relentless pursuit. I realize that Howard says Felgar and Lala-ah have spare horses, but still, give me a break.

Eventually, they come to a river, the Stagus. On the western side is grassland; on the eastern, desert. At the river they meet a man, Karon the Ferryman, as he calls himself. It’s been established that many of the names Howard was using in his fiction during this period were taken from Bullfinch. Here’s a perfect example of his doing so, and I think it’s brilliant. Howard makes Karon seem a natural fit to the story, not forced. Howard even states that Karon will eventually be known as boatman to Hades. While the land on the eastern side of the Stagus isn’t called Hades, it is called World’s End and is a hot and hellish place inhabited by monsters. No one who has crossed the Stagus has ever returned.

Karon informs the group that he is a member of the Elder Race. He also knows Kull’s name, even though Kull does not give it. I’m not sure if this was an oversight on Howard’s part or not. I suspect not. It certainly works to make Karon more mysterious and a little threatening even though nothing he does or says is overtly hostile.

Felgar and Lala-ah took the ferry across the Stagus at dawn the previous day. Kull says he intends to follow to avenge the insult Felgar has given him but that the men are free to return without it being held against them. They all follow Kull. So impressed by this is Kull that he gives them the highest compliment he can: “Ye are men.” Karon ferries them across, and the party prepares to continue it’s pursuit.

And that’s where the story ends. Just as it was starting to get interesting.

It’s unfortunate that Howard chose not to finish this tale. It was probably shaping up to be the lengthiest Kull story Howard had written up to this time. Yes, the impetus to get Kull to take to the road is weak. Pursuing lovers that he would ordinarily sympathize with in order to avenge an insult is a bit thin for motivation to leave the kingdom in the hands of the nobles, who we know from “The Shadow Kingdom” are not to be trusted. Especially if you take most of your personal guard with you. It’s easier for me to see Conan in his pre-Aquilonia days doing something like this than it is for me to see Kull acting this way. But once Kull and his men are on the road, who cares why he left. This installment shows us some of the geography of Kull’s world, something we don’t get to see much of in the other stories. Once Kull and Brule are in the city looking for their quarry, Howard drops hints that they’re heading into trouble. This is confirmed when Karon tells Kull no one who has crossed the Stagus has ever returned.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what’s on the other side of that river. I want to know what monsters are lurking there. More critters from Bullfinch? It would be fascinating to see what Howard does with them. Maybe no one has ever returned because a gorgon is hiding over there. It would certainly fit with the Greek mythology motif Howard establishes with Karon. And what about the animosity between Brule and Ka-yana? Where was Howard going to take that? Yes, I know it would almost certainly have ended in Ka-yana’s blood being spilled, but half the fun is getting to that point. Let’s not forget Kelkor. Will Kull eventually go against custom and promote Kelkor to command of all the army and not just the Red Slayers?

Sadly, unless the highly unlikely happens and the rest of the story turns up somewhere, the world will never know. Even with it’s flaws and unfinished state, this draft showcases Howard’s growth and improvement as a writer. He has more characters than in any of the previous Kull tales, and their motivations appear to be more complex than any to this point. Their interactions certainly are. This could have been a major novella, especially if Howard had tweaked the story a bit to make the motivation for pursuit a little more believable. It’s our loss that he didn’t.

Blogging Kull: The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune

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This was the second Kull story published in Howard’s lifetime, and the last one to feature Kull as the viewpoint character. He would make one more published appearance, in “Kings of the Night”, but that tale is primarily a Bran Mak Morn story with Kull in a secondary role. After that, no more Kull stories would be published in Howard’s lifetime.

This is an extremely short piece, more brooding than action. In fact, Kull never draws his sword at all. Only Brule engages in any slaughter.

Howard chose to open this tale with a quote from Poe, and it’s quite appropriate. Kull is burned out when the story opens, in what Howard describes as “the time of great weariness”, and what would be called today a midlife crisis. (I’m looking forward to my midlife crisis and getting a Harley and a hottie, but I will probably ease into it slowly with the one that requires the least maintenance. That would be the Harley.) Instead of grabbing a wench and a fast horse and hitting the road, Kull merely broods about the meaninglessness of life and how nothing satisfies him now. While Howard wasn’t fond of religion and the church, I have to wonder if he had been reading the book of Ecclesiastes when he wrote this. Howard describes Kull’s daily routine as “an endless, meaningless panorama”, much like the author of Ecclesiastes describes life as “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

When no one is around, a servant girl suggests to Kull that he visit the wizard Tuzun Thune. Whereas Conan would have probably ravished the girl, Kull merely follows her suggestion. Tuzun Thune tells Kull to gaze into his mirrors and become wise.

The first mirror shows the past, and the savage battle for survival against flying dragons and other beasts. It’s a world of endless struggle, with Death the only certainty. The second mirror shows the future, in which Atlantis and Lemuria are beneath the waves, and only their mountaintops remain, islands in the vastness of the ocean. Valusia and the other Seven Kingdoms are gone and forgotten, all their splendor and treasures dust. Tuzun Thune says this is the way of the world, one tribe supplanting the previous. It’s all very depressing.

Then Tuzun Thune has Kull look in a third mirror. Kull sees only his reflection and wonders who the man is who gaze matches his own. He once knew him Kull begins to wonder who is the man and who is the reflection.

Kull visits Tuzun Thune every day, staring at his reflection in a mirror. He becomes more and more fascinated by the world in the mirror and wants to know what he would find if he passed through to the other side. He is in the process of doing so when when Brule shatters the mirror. Kull comes to his senses to find the lifeless body of Tuzun Thune on the floor before him, Tuzun Thune’s blood dripping from Brule’s sword. Brule informs Kull that he is the victim of a plot by one of the other nobles, a plot only discovered that very day. The servant girl who told Kull to visit Tuzun Thune is in on it. She’s on the floor covering in fear for her life while this exchange between Kull and Brule is taking place. Amazingly Kull says she was merely a pawn and lets her go unpunished. After the girl tells Kull about Tuzun Thune, Howard describes her this way: ” the smile of her scarlet mouth was cunning behind Kull’s back, and the gleam of her narrow eyes was crafty.” That doesn’t sound like someone who was a pawn to me. We know she and Tuzun Thune were both members of the Elder Race, who once ruled Valusia. Conan would never have dismissed her this way, although he probably would have let her live.

In a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith sometime in February 1929, Howard lists all his sales to date. He records that he got $20 for “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” and that it was “more of the Shadow Kingdom, occult and mystical, vague and badly written; this is the deepest story I ever tried to write and I got out of my depth.” [Collected Letters Vol. 1, REH Foundation Press, 2007, p. 311]

This is a deep story, but I don’t agree with Howard’s assessment. It’s not badly written at all. Some of the paragraphs are quite powerful in their descriptions and mood. Howard was in his early twenties at this time. It’s wouldn’t be unusual to feel that sense of weariness he describes. Here’s a young man who is trapped in a small town where no one understands him. He had to wonder at times if his desire to write was worth it. I spent part of my adolescence in a small town about fifty miles from Cross Plains, and I can tell you that what Howard describes is a very real sensation. Anyone who doesn’t conform to the lowest common denominator expectations of society in those towns will sooner or later experience the fatigue (the weariness) that comes from trying to be your own person when all you meet is opposition and exclusion. Instead of being out of his depth, Howard seems to me to have poured out his feelings and his experience in this story.

I think he nails it perfectly, and that’s why for all its brevity, this is a major story in Howard’s oeuvre.

The Frost King, The Frost-Giant, and Their Daughters

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It’s been bitterly cold here on the South Plains of Texas for much of the last week. Temperatures were near record lows for several days. Just when it looked like things were going to warm up again, we got more snow Sunday. And that made me think of “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter”, which made me think of “The Frost King’s Daughter”. And I knew what the next post on this blog would be.

The tale (or tales, if you prefer) concerns the lone survivor of a battle in the frozen north. Having just killed the only member of the opposing army left standing, he sees a beautiful young woman wearing only a gossamer veil walking among the dead. She taunts him with her body, and he pursues hers. Of course, this is a trap. After a time, she calls her brothers forth, two ice giants, to kill the man. Instead, he defeats them, captures the girl, and is about to ravish her when she calls on her father, Ymir. The girls is transported into the sky in a blaze of blinding light that leaves the hero unconscious. He is awakened by a band of his allies who were delayed by an ambush. After he tells his story, one of the older men in the group tells the warrior he saw Ymir’s daughter Atali, who haunts battlefields and lures survivors to their deaths so that she might present their hearts to her father. The old man claims to have seen her as a youth when he was too wounded to follow her. Everyone thinks the old man had his brains addled by a sword stroke until the hero unclenches his fist to find a veil.

This pair of stories are essentially the same, only the names have changed. “The Frost King’s Daughter” concerns Amra of Akbitana, while the “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” is an early Conan story that was rejected by Farnsworth Wright (more on that later) and wasn’t published until the August 1953 issue of Fantasy Fiction. Unfortunately, that version was rewritten by L. Sprague de Camp. It wasn’t until 1976 that Howard’s version saw print in Donald M. Grant’s Rogues in the House. This was a hardback collectible volume, not a mass market edition. “The Frost King’s Daughter”, on the other hand, was published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan. You probably couldn’t afford an original copy of that little fan publication, provided you could find one. Fortunately, the entire run has been reprinted in facsimile (details on how to order are here.)

The first mass market publication of Howard’s original version of “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” wasn’t available until 1989, when both stories were printed side-by-side in Karl Edward Wagner’s Echoes of Valor II. If you aren’t familiar with the series, it ran to three volumes (as far as I know; if there was a fourth I missed it). Wagner, a fan and writer of sword and sorcery who deserves to be better remembered, compiled collections of rare heroic fiction. While many of the stories Wagner selected have been reprinted in recent years, especially the Robert E. Howard and C. L. Moore pieces, there are still some tales that haven’t seen the light of day since and make the volumes worth seeking out.

In his introduction, Wagner states that Howard wrote “The Frost King’s Daughter” first and that the Conan version, “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter” was the rewrite. How he knows this to be true, Wagner doesn’t exactly say. He supports his case by saying that “The Phoenix on the Sword” was a rewrite of the Kull story “By This Axe I Rule” (documentably true), and that “Frost-Giant” was a rewrite of “Frost King”. We know Howard would recycle stories if they didn’t sell, at times changing the names of major characters, and we also know that sometimes the details of his stories would change from one draft to the next. Furthermore, there is evidence that Howard was still developing the character of Conan as well as the Hyborian Age for the first several Conan stories. Patrice Louinet, in his essay “Hyborian Genesis” (The Coming of Conan), does a thorough job of showing this development.

And here we encounter a small problem. Louinet suggests that Howard changed the title of the story and Conan’s name to Amra when he sent the story to The Fantasy Fan. His evidence seems to be the publication date of “Frost King” as well as an unreferenced letter from Howard to Charles D. Hornig, editor of The Fantasy Fan. Patrice Louinet is one of the leaders in the field of contemporary Howard scholarship. Wagner was one of the foremost authorities of his day. So who is correct? Was “Frost King” the rewrite, or was “Frost-Giant”?

As far as their respective texts are concerned the stories are almost identical. I compared them, and there was only one significant deviation I found. This one:

“Far have I wandered, from Zingara to the Sea of Vilayet, in Stygia and Kush and the country of the Hyrkanians; but a woman like you I have never seen.”

So who do you think said this, Conan or Amra? Based on the place names, which are the settings of other Conan stories, you would probably think Conan, right?

Well, you would be wrong. Amra said this. In the Conan version of the story (Frost-Giant), the wording is “Far have I wandered, but a woman like you I have never seen.” Conan’s wanderings and the Hyborian geography are never mentioned. The only reason that I can think of for Howard to add place names from the Conan stories to a rewrite of a Conan story in which he changes the name and nationality of the viewpoint character is to clue readers in that Amra is really Conan. And since it had been established by the time “Gods of the North” AKA “The Frost King’s Daughter” was published in The Fantasy Fan that Amra was one of the names Conan was known by, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that this was Howard’s motivation. But why would he do this? The only explanation I can come up with was that because Conan was a Weird Tales character, either Howard had an agreement with Farnsworth Wright not to try to sell a Conan story to another market (I’m unaware of any such agreement) or he felt that do sell a Conan story to another market would, in a sense, be dishonorable. It was standard practice in the pulp days for an author’s character(s) to only appear in one magazine.Howard may have been abiding by that practice.

On the other hand, it could be that “Frost-Giant” is the rewrite. The passage quoted above, the one with the place names, tends to disrupt the flow of the story. Certainly, its prose is more purple than the same passage without the travelogue. It could very well be, since as far as I know the exact composition date of either version of the story is unknown, that Howard was already working out the geography of the Hyborian kingdoms and simply hadn’t settled on a final name and nationality of his principle character. I will be the first to admit that the evidence isn’t conclusive either way, but this is the interpretation I favor. I’m sure if there’s information I’ve overlooked, Howard fandom will let me know about it. Quickly.

There’s one other thing I want to address. Wagner says Wright rejected “Frost-Giant” because it was too racy. Considering the sexual imagery in some of C. L. Moore’s Northwest Smith stories (another topic for another day), not to mention the sex implicit in some of the other Conan tales, I’m not sure I buy this line. If Wright was that uptight, why did he publish some of those Margaret Brundage covers? (I know, I know, racy covers on pulps had nothing to do with the contents.) Wagner says Wright’s view of Conan was of “a noble barbarian out to perform deeds of chivalrous heroism.” Again, Wagner doesn’t provide details to back this position up. In fact, Wright’s rejection of the story, which Wagner quotes, simply says Wright didn’t care for the story and gives no reasons as to why he didn’t care for it. The general consensus I’ve heard for years on this point was that Wright didn’t like the hero attempting to commit rape.

But is this what Conan/Amra really does? In the interest of stirring up trouble taking a deeper interpretation of the story, let’s look closely at what happens, shall we? Atali taunts Conan. “Spreading her arms wide, she swayed before him, her golden head lolling sensuously, her scintillant eyes half shadowed beneath their long silken lashes. ‘Am I not beautiful, oh man?’ ” Sounds to me she’s trying to entice him to pursue her. This is born out at the end of the story, when the old man Gorm tells Conan Atali lures men to their deaths. Gorm also describes her as beautiful and naked. Atali continues to taunt Conan, essentially daring him to follow her. Conan’s reaction is described as a madness that sweeps away his pain and fatigue. Howard makes the pursuit sound as though Conan were possessed.

Rather than trying to commit rape, I read the story as Conan being put under a spell of desire by Atali. Only Conan is stronger than she bargains for. When he kills her brothers, she realizes she can’t control him nor reverse the spell. Otherwise, why would she have to call on Ymir for help? Am I saying Atali was asking for it? You bet. Even a casual reading of the story would tend to show that was the case. What I’m NOT saying is that every (or even any) attempted rape victim was asking for it, so please don’t read that into my remarks. I don’t consider what Conan/Amra does here to be attempted rape because I don’t interpret his actions as being of his own free will. This is a fictional story, a fantasy, in which an evil woman’s spell goes wrong and she can’t control the desires she has deliberately cultivated in a man, with the outcome being other than what she intended. I don’t for a minute think that’s how the real world works, and in spite of some of Howard’s detractors, I don’t think Bob meant that here either. I think he was telling an entertaining story in the best way he could with a character whose personality he was still developing and exploring. And in that, he succeeded.

So, to sum up. I think “Frost-Giant” is probably a rewrite of “Frost King”, and furthermore Conan has gotten a bad rap these many years, accused by some critics of attempting a crime of his own free will when in truth he had no choice about. Those are my thoughts on this cold winter night.

Happy Birthday, Bob

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Today marks the 105th anniversary of the birth of Robert E. Howard, father of sword and sorcery. Howard is most famous, of course, for creating the character of Conan, most often called the Barbarian. If you only know Conan through movies, comics, and pastiches, well, pardner, you don’t know Conan. And if Conan is the only way you know Robert E. Howard, well, you don’t know Howard very well, either.

There are a number of tributes on the web today, and if you’re in the vicinity of Cross Plains (I wish), there’s a party. If you happen to be among the Howard impaired, and only know him by reputation or through Conan, let me recommend you check out the posts by Howard Andrew Jones and Barbara Barrett over on the Black Gate website. Jones’s is a more general tribute discussing the breadth of Howard’s fiction, while Barbara examines the poetry. Both are good ~~gateway drugs~~ introductions to Howard’s work. It’s an addiction worth having.

Blogging Kull: The Shadow Kingdom

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Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Robert E. Howard
Illustrations by Justin Sweet
Del Rey
Trade Paperback, 319 p., $15.95

Just so you know, this post will contain spoilers.

“The Shadow Kingdom” was the first of the Kull stories to see print, and it appeared in the August 1929 issue of Weird Tales. In this story Kull has, with the help of some dissatisfied nobles, seized the throne of Valusia from the tyrant who’s sat on it for a while. Apparently he’s been on the throne long enough for the luster to have faded, for Kull makes it very clear he prefers the straightforward manner of his barbarian kinsmen. You know, the ones who’ve exiled him.

After a parade in his honor, Kull is holding court when an emissary from the Pictish ambassador requests a private council with him. Kull grants it and takes advantage of the opportunity to bait the man, the Picts being ancient enemies of the Atlanteans. The emissary, a warrior, requests that Kull come alone that night to a banquet with the Pictish ambassador, Ka’nu.

Kull’s suspicious, but goes. Ka’nu informs Kull that only Kull can usher in an era of “peace and goowill”, of “man loving his fellow man”, to Valusia and the Seven Kingdoms. This is somewhat ironic seeing as how Kull is a warrior king who carries deep hatreds. It’s also not what you would normally expect in a Robert E. Howard story. In order to do this, Kull has to live. The next in line to the throne is a figurehead controlled by a race of serpent men, if not actually a serpent man himself. Ka-nu will send proof of this through Brule the Spearslayer. Kull will recognize Brule by the armlet he’ll be wearing. To show he can be trusted, Ka-nu reveals to Kull that he has a jewel stolen from the Temple of the Serpent. If the priests of the Serpent knew its location, Ka-nu would have a very short life expectancy.

The next night, Brule appears. He’s the Pictish warrior who brought the message from Kan-nu in the first place. He reveals to Kull a secret society of serpent people who have the bodies of men but the heads of snakes. Through some type of sorcery they are able to assume the faces of any person they wish. When they die (read are killed by Kull or Brule), their heads revert to their natural forms.

You can probably figure out that there will be a lot of people who turn out to be other than who they appeared. It turns out the serpent men are an ancient, mongrel race who have a long history in Valusia, although it’s a history that most of Valusia’s citizens are ignorant of.

Naturally, Kull triumphs, but not easily. Brule and Ka-nu are afraid he dies from his wounds, although he only loses consciousness. The intriguing part of the story, for me at least, is the depth at which Howard shows us Kull’s thoughts. Kull wonders which is the real Kull, the monarch “who sat on the throne or was it the real Kull who had scaled the hills of Atlantis, harried the far isles of the sunset, and laughed upon the green roaring tides of the Atlentean sea.” This brooding is provoked of course by Kull’s discovery of the Serpent Men and the masks they don to deceive people for evil means, something he had already encountered in his courtiers, albeit in a less literal sense.

Evidence indicates “The Shadow Kingdom” was written, or at least begun, in 1926, the year Howard turned 20. It’s a common occurrence to many men and women around that time in life to discover that people aren’t always what they seem, but don masks to further their own ends. I think it’s safe to speculate that perhaps some of that discovery of the realities of life was making it’s way into Howard’s fiction. Many a child and teenager is dismayed to discover that becoming an adult isn’t all the fun and privilege it seems when you’re young. I know my eight year old certainly has the illusion that being an adult is more fun than being a child because it means getting to stay up late and eat and drink close to bedtime. Would that it were that simple.

Another thing common to young adults and teens is the fear that they can’t cut it as an adult. This is a fear that can return later in life when a person experiences a major upset, often but not always the loss of a job or business. Affirmation that a person can function as an accepted member of adult society is one of the purposes of a rite of passage. Entire books have been written on this topic. I have to wonder if Howard was feeling some of that uncertainty about this time in his life. I know he made a deal with his father to give writing a try for one year and if at the end of that year he wasn’t making a living, he would find a regular job. Kull has thoughts along these lines more than once in the story.

The first incident occurs during the brooding quoted in the paragraph above when Kull thinks of himself as “the futile king who sat upon the throne – himself a shadow.” The second occurs at the climax of the story when Kull and Brule have escaped a trap in which the serpent men have disguised themselves as his council in order to assassinate him. Hurrying back to the council chamber, they find the real council in session with a serpent man disguised as Kull himself. For a moment Kull wonders “Do I stand here or is that Kull yonder in very truth and am I but a shadow, a figment of thought?” Maybe I’m reading too much into the text, but it sounds to me as though Kull is experiencing a little insecurity. Not something you would expect from a Howard hero.

After all the serpent men in the palace have been dispatched, Kull swears an oath to destroy all the remaining ones. He swears this oath on his own identity as Kull, king of Valusia. While I may be stretching things a bit to interpret this ending as a metaphor for Howard striving to make his way in the world as a writer, I don’t think I’m too far off the mark.

“The Shadow Kingdom” has been called the first true sword and sorcery story, a statement that is not without some controversy. I’m willing to go along with that premise, at least for the sake of this post, because it points out something that I think can’t be understated. Sword and sorcery has been dismissed by its critics as shallow and cliched, without depth, power fantasies of social misfits and closet homosexuals, and mind candy or softcore porn for adolescent boys. What “The Shadow Kingdom” is, at least as I read the story, is a reflection on identity. While this is certainly an issue of adolescence, it’s also an issue that concerns everyone at most stages of life, to a lesser or greater degree. Furthermore, I see it as a meditation on the meaning of life, especially the role one will play in that life. Until he sets out to eradicate the serpent men, Kull is lost, searching for meaning after achieving his goal of becoming king and finding it unfulfilling. I’m fairly sure Howard didn’t consciously set out to create a new form of literature when he wrote “The Shadow Kingdom”, but on some level was dealing with the issues in his life in the best way he knew how: by fictionalizing them. Creating sword and sorcery was to some degree incidental. That’s a pretty impressive legacy, to create a new genre with those themes at its core. Not bad for “escapism”, huh? So the next time you hear someone dissing sword and sorcery as not being real literature or worthy of serious consideration, give them a copy of “The Shadow Kingdom.”

Sins of the Pioneers

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Sins of the Pioneers
James Pylant
Jacobus Books
Trade paperback, 234 p., $15.95

Since my father-in-law is in both the San Angelo Community Band and a member of the Twin Mountain Tonesmen, the local barbershop group, and since both were performing in the Community Christmas Tree lighting a few weeks ago, it was only natural that I and the Adventures Fantastic Support Staff (Spousal Unit and Offspring) would be in attendance. We arrived early in order to get seats at the front, and since the Cactus Bookshop was in the middle of the next block, I wandered down to kill some time and see what I could find.

The Cactus Bookshop specializes in Texas and western writing and carries just about everything ever written by Elmer Kelton. That’s not too surprising since Kelton lives in San Angelo. It’s well worth a visit if you happen to be in the area, even if the owner doesn’t have any Robert E. Howard in stock. (I need to discuss that problem with him next time I’m in.)

What I found was Sins of the Pioneers, a history of crime and scandal in Stephenville, Texas. In addition to being home to one of the Texas A&M University System schools as well as science fiction writer Taylor Anderson, Stephenville seems to have been home to a number of murderers, thieves, scoundrels, grifters, bigamists, and at least one ghost. Not the sort of folks you would necessarily want to have over for dinner, but probably more interesting after-dinner-conversation companions than the ones who would probably be your dinner guests. I haven’t had much time to do more than peruse the book, but since many of the events are short, it’s great reading for those times when you only have a few minutes.

Over at the REH: Two Gun Raconteur site, Damon C. Sasser has been doing a series of posts about Robert E. Howard’s Texas, in which he describes in some detail the events Howard was interested in or places that had an impact on Howard’s life and work. They’re great reading. While I don’t want to try to duplicate that here, only one county, Eastland County, separates Cross Plains (in Callahan County) from Stephenville (in Erath County). I can’t help but wonder if Howard was aware of some of the incidents in the book. Stephenville was, and is, one of the larger population centers in that part of the state. Given the interest he developed in the history of the area, I find it hard to believe he wasn’t aware of at least some of the things in the book. I’m slowly working my way through Howard’s collected correspondence, and if I come across anything in the correspondence relating to Sins of the Pioneers that Damon hasn’t already written about, I’ll let you know.

Blogging Kull: Exile of Atlantis

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Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Robert E. Howard
Illustrated by Justin Sweet
Del Rey
Trade Paperback, 319 p., $15.95

It’s been a while since I read any of the Kull stories. I think the last time I read one was when I was an undergraduate, but I may have been in graduate school. (We’ve talked about that memory and age thing before. At least I think we have. I seem to recall we did.) Why it’s taken me so long to get back to these stories, I’m not entirely sure. Other demands on my reading time, mostly, including other Robert E. Howard works I hadn’t read.

Anyhoo, in the intervening years since I last read Kull, I’ve grown and (hopefully) matured. So I thought I’d take a fresh look at these tales. In some circles, Kull is often thought of as a prototype Conan, an opinion that’s only reinforced by the fact that the first Conan story was a rewrite of an unsold Kull tale. But is that really so? Howard, in spite of his critics, was quite adept at characterization. I’m not sure I buy that idea, even though I have to admit that when I was much younger, I did pick up on the similarities between the two characters more than their differences. It’s time to take a fresh look. Over the next half year or so, I’ll be examining them in some detail. I’m using the Del Rey edition with the story fragments and synopses, even though I own a copy of the Subterranean slipcased edition. That edition is out of print and probably beyond the budget of many people. The stories are the same in both volumes.

Oh, and these posts about Kull will contain spoilers. So if you haven’t read the story (or stories) under discussion, you might want to keep that in mind. You have been notified.

Howard began thirteen Kull stories between 1926 and 1930, and he completed ten of them before moving on to other characters. Of those ten, only three saw publication in his lifetime, and one of those is a Bran Mak Morn story in which Kull is brought forward in time to play a major role. The first story in the book is an untitled story that was published under the title “Exile of Atlantis” in 1967 in the Lancer paperback King Kull. Not counting the full page illustration facing the first page of text, it’s only seven pages long, and that includes the illustrations on six pages.

The storyline is simple. Kull, Gor-na, and his son Am-ra are talking over dinner at their wilderness camp. What they’re doing in the wilderness, we’re never told. The whole discussion centers around Kull’s disdain for some of the tribal traditions. It seems he’s been adopted into Gor-na’s tribe, which is the Sea Mountain tribe. Kull doesn’t know who his tribe is. Rather he “was a hairless ape roaming in the woods” who “could not speak the language of men.” If that sounds a little like Mowgli from Kipling’s Jungle Books, it shouldn’t surprise you that Kipling was one of the writers who influenced Howard. We aren’t given any details of how Kull came to live with the Sea Mountain tribe or how he learned to speak.

The talk then turns to the troubles Atlantis has had with Valusia and the Seven Empires. Kull isn’t as impressed with them as Gor-na is. He even expresses a desire to one day see Valusia. Gor-na tells him if he does, it will be as a slave. There is also mention made of Lemurian pirates causing trouble. After some further discussion, the men get some sleep. During the night, Kull has a dream in which he is hailed as a king by a large crowd.

The next morning the men return to the tribe’s caves to discover a young woman is to be burned at the stake for the crime of marrying a Lemurian pirate. The only person who seems to show some sympathy is Am-ra, whose “strange blue eyes were sad and compassionate.” Even the girl’s mother screams for her death. Kull thinks this punishment is a bit much, but he isn’t in a position to rescue her. The best he can do is offer her a quick death rather than a slow painful one. He catches her eye and touches the hilt of his flint dagger. She gives him a small nod, and he throws the dagger, piercing her heart.

The enraged mob, cheated of their vengeance, turns on Kull, who has already begun to climb the cliff next to the village and escape. He is saved from being hit by an arrow when Am-ra bumps the archer’s arm.

And that’s all there is to this story. It might not look like a lot, but it seems to me the point here is to establish a little bit of Kull’s backstory and define his character. In this Howard is successful. Kull is a man who is not afraid, either of battle or of asking unpopular questions. He does the right thing as he sees it, even when he’s the only one willing to take a stand. In this story, doing so costs him his home. We know from the foreshadowing in the dream that Kull will one day see Valusia, not as a traveler but as its king.

While the action in the story is not at the level of what many readers expect from Howard, the noble barbarian is there. Remember, this was years before a certain Cimmerian made his way through the kingdoms of the Hyborian Age. Howard was beginning to develop the themes he would return to again and which would occupy a great deal of his thoughts. To return to certain themes over a period of time, developing and perfecting them, is not an uncommon thing for an author to do.

I don’t know when this story was written. I seem to recall someone (I want to say Rusty Burke) had put together a timeline of the known composition dates and best estimates of the rest of Howard’s work, but I can’t find it online. Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me. In his afterward “Atlantean Genesis”, Patrice Louinet states it was either between July 1925 and January 1926 or between August and September 1926. Whether the story was ever submitted for publication is unknown. This would make it one of the earliest stories Howard wrote in his career.

What I did find interesting is that Kull seems to have grown out of an abortive series of stories and poems about Am-ra of the Ta-an. These consist of two poems (one only five lines long) plus three fragments. All are included in this book. In a letter now lost, but quoted by Alvin Earl Perry in A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard (1935), Howard talks about a story in which a minor character takes over. “Exile of Atlantis” is the only story we know of that fits this description.

None of these things should be surprising. It has been well documented that Howard would sometimes reuse names from earlier stories, sometimes altering them slightly, sometimes not. Even a certain Cimmerian was known as Amra for a while in his wanderings. An interesting side note to this point, Amra of Akbitana appears in “The Frost King’s Daughter”, which was published in the March 1934 issue of The Fantasy Fan under the title “Gods of the North” and later rewritten as the Conan story “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter”, the second in the Conan series.

Or to put it this way, what we are seeing with “Exile of Atlantis” is Howard stretching himself as a writer. The events of the story may be dismissed as minor by the casual reader, but to do so would be a mistake. I maintain that this is an important tale, especially if it was the first Kull story written, which it seems to be. “Exile of Atlantis” is an example of Howard beginning to stretch himself and warm up, to use an track analogy, before beginning to sprint and hit his stride with his later works.

Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis: Dragon Moon

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“Dragon Moon” from Elak of Atlantis
Henry Kuttner
Planet Stories – Paizo Publishing
Trade Paperback, $12.95, 2007

“Dragon Moon” is the last of the Elak stories Henry Kuttner wrote. It got the cover of the January 1941 issue of Weird Tales. I was browsing recently on the Dark Worlds site and discovered that all but “Thunder in the Dawn” got the cover. I shouldn’t say “discovered” so much as I was reminded. I had seen all three of the covers featuring the Elak stories before and should have remembered them. Rather than reproduce the rest of them here, I’ll let you view them over at Dark Worlds. G. W. Thomas has put together an interesting website, and you owe it to yourself to check it out if you haven’t already.

“Dragon Moon” opens very much like “Thunder in the Dawn”, with Elak and Lycon becoming involved in a brawl over a tavern wench in the port city of Poseidonis. Once again the druid Dalan saves Elak and tells him his home kingdom of Cyrena is in danger. At this point, the two tales diverge in their similarities. An alien presence, not a demon or a spirit, but an alien presence (Dalan is quite clear on this point) called Karkora the Pallid One has taken over the mind of the ruler of the neighboring kingdom of Kiriath. Karkora had begun to take over the mind of Elak’s brother Orander. In order to prevent this from happening, Orander has taken his own life. Elak is now heir to the Dragon Throne and the kingdom of Cyrena. Kiriath is assembling an army to invade Cyrena.

Elak has no interest in ruling and sends Dalan away. That night Elak has a strange dream in which he finds himself on a cold mountaintop being assaulted by a presence. He is only able to escape by calling on the aid of his god. This is a complete departure from Conan, who is well documented in his practice of not calling on gods and whose deity Crom hates weaklings. Elak doesn’t give it a second thought.

This is the first dream sequence (or dream-like at least) in the story and is fairly short. Unable to find Dalan, Elak and Lycon hire a skiff to take them to a boat that is just setting sail for Cyrena. Upon climbing up the side and over the rail, they discovered the ship is captained by a man named Drezzar. The same Drezzar Elak was fighting in the opening scene of the story. He and Lycon are immediately taken captive and put to work at the oars as slaves.

This sequence, in which Elak is captured and eventually leads a slave rebellion, is the part of the story that most reminded me of Conan. It’s a straight action-adventure sequence which ends with Elak assuming the captaincy of the vessel.

The next truly weird part of the story occurs after Elak has been instructed by Dalan in a dream to leave the ship at a certain location. He eventually ends up seeking aid from a sorceress named Mayana. She is the mother of the current Kiriathan king and a descendant of Poseidon. In reaching her, Elak has to swim across a lake inhabited by the shades of a drowned city. This is the closest Kuttner comes to including a bizarre otherworldly sequence of the intensity of the ones seen in the earlier stories.

Mayana is by far the most interesting character. She fell in love with the former king of Kiriath and bore him a son with the aid of a sorcerer named Erykion. He’s ultimately responsible for the Pallid One possessing the current king of Kiriath, who is Mayana’s son. She holds the key to stopping her son, but is reluctant to aid Elak because it will mean her son’s death. Yet, she also realizes that this is the right thing to do. She withholds her aid but promises to give it to Elak in his hour of greatest need. Mayana, in spite of being a child of the sea and not human, has fallen in love with the forests and fields of the land and longs to be able to walk them once again.

There’s more, but I won’t spoil it for you, except to say this. It appears that Kuttner was intentionally ending the series with this installment. Elak ascends the Dragon Throne and agrees to change his wandering ways, to settle down and rule. While kings can certainly have adventures, (Kull and Conan did, after all) the tone implies Elak the king will have a more quiet reign than his predecessors in Weird Tales. The ending of the story is the most bittersweet one of the entire series.

Whatever reasons Kuttner had for terminating Elak’s adventures, he ends the series on a high note. The writing is probably the most polished of all the Elak stories. The action flows smoothly. I found the characters to be better developed, especially Mayana, who is by far the most complex of any of the characters in the series, especially given the amount of time she is actually in the story.

“Dragon Moon” was published in the January 1941 issue of Weird Tales. “Beyond the Phoenix” made its appearance in the October 1938 issue. That’s a gap of over two years. All of the preceding Elak stories were published in 1938. I’m not sure why there was such a long break. The two Prince Raynor stories were published in Strange Tales during those two years. It appears as though Kuttner left the character and came back to him, although that’s entirely speculation on my part. Did Kuttner feel that his writing had matured since the first Elak story (it had) and want to try his hand at a different sword and sorcery setting? Did Raynor not connect with the readers? Did Kuttner submit “Dragon Moon” in late 1938 or early 1939 and Farnsworth Wright delayed in scheduling it so that Kuttner had to create Prince Raynor for another market? Hard to swallow considering all but one of the Elak stories got covers and Wright published Conan in a number of consecutive issues. I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they’re interesting to think about. If anyone out there knows why “Dragon Moon” was published later, I’d like to hear the answer.

So, to sum up the Elak of Atlantis series. While the first has some definite flaws, the quality improves over the series. While comparisons to Conan are inevitable, and most of them will probably be unfavorable comparisons, Elak is his own character. He seeks help from the gods. He is an adventurer by choice. You can argue that Conan is as well, but the backgrounds of the two men are vastly different. Elak turns his back on a throne before ascending it. Conan, who has no such prospects due to his birth, makes his own opportunity. This series, while maybe not a major sword and sorcery series, is certainly one worth reading. Kuttner was expanding the genre, giving it a more weird and bizzare feel through the scenes where Elak goes to another realm, be it extra dimensional or in a dream. To my knowledge, at this time only C. L. Moore had done that with her Jirel of Joiry adventures. So, in conclusion, if you haven’t read the Elak stories, check them out, especially the second, third, and final tales.

We’ll look at the Prince Raynor stories next and see how they compare to both Conan and Elak.

The Fantasy Fan

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Over at the REHupa and REH: Two Gun Racontuer sites, Damon Sasser recently made an announcement about Lance Thingmaker’s publication of the entire run of The Fantasy Fan in facsimile. This was one of the earliest fanzines, running for 18 issues from September 1933 to February 1935. The list of contributors reads like a Who’s Who of fantasy from the heydey of Weird Tales. People like Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Forrest J. Ackerman. The editor, Charles D. Hornig was a high school student at the time. His work on The Fantasy Fan caught the attention of Hugo Gernsback, who hired him to edit the pulp Wonder Stories. Eric Lief Davin published two interviews with Hornig in Pioneers of Wonder (Prometheus Books,1999 ).

Damon quotes from Lance’s introduction, so I won’t repeat that here. My copy came a couple of days ago, so instead I’ll talk about the book itself. Original copies of the zine were scanned and have been reprinted as they appeared, with only minor touch-ups to improve legibility. All the typos and errors are still in place. The binding is hand-sewn. This is clearly a labor of love.

It’s a common practice of libraries to collect runs of periodicals and have them bound in hardcover. The bindings are usually plain, with simple lettering. That’s the effect here, except the result looks much better than the typical library binding. I know partly because I’m looking at two examples on the shelf as I’m writing this: Unknown October 1941-April 1943 and Astounding Stories January-November 1932. (Yes, some of the old pulps did manage to make it into library bindings.)

So, what’s it like to read old copies of one of the most influential fanzines of all time? Well, I can’t rightly say because I haven’t read the thing. It just arrived a couple of days ago, and I’ve been swamped this week. I have perused it, however. This is not a book I’m going to rush through. It’s one I’m going to savor. Robert E. Howard’s “God’s of the North” was first published here. (This was a rewrite of “The Frost Giant’s Daughter”, an early Conan storied that had been rejected by Farnsworth Wright.). Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature is here as well. Poetry by Lovecraft and Smith. Fueds in the letter columns by names you would recognize, such as Ackerman. Columns by Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger. A cornucopia of great stuff.

If you’re interested in Robert E. Howard, or H. P. Lovecraft, or Clark Ashton Smith, or Robert Bloch, or the history of early fandom, then this is probably the must-have book of the year. The book is limited to 200 copies and only costs fifty-five bucks, including shipping. A bargain at twice the price (no, Lance, that doesn’t mean I’m going to send you more money), I can’t imagine this one staying in stock long. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait for Santa to bring one. That might be too late.

There’s no web page for The Fantasy Fan, but you can order it directly from Lance Thingmaker. Just send him a email. You’ll be glad you did.