Tag Archives: Robert E. Howard

Report on Howard Days 2017

I know I should have posted this almost two weeks ago, but I’ve been pretty swamped. I’m teaching a class at the moment that’s taking up most of my time. But since I don’t feel like grading exams on a Friday evening, I’ll blog instead.

This year’s theme was “Howard Detectives: The Ongoing Search for Undiscovered Information”. Since there weren’t any anniversaries this year, things were a little low key compared to recent years. That was fine with me. The attendance was down a little, which was disappointing.

I got in on Thursday afternoon. Like I did two years ago, I stayed at the isolated farmhouse down the hill from the cemetery. There weren’t any creepy things this time, but then I had a better idea of what to expect. There also wasn’t a working air conditioner. I slept with the windows open. At first I thought about going to a hotel, but if Two-Gun Bob could sleep without AC all his life, I could do it for a few nights. Continue reading →

Chicken Fried Cthulhu

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Hey, folks, the Chicken Fried Cthulhu Kickstarter has 25 hours left as I write this and is still a ways from funding. This is an anthology of southwestern flavored Cthulhu and Lovecraft themed stories. It’s set to premiere at the World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio this year.

If it funds. It’s from the same crew that brought you Skelos, and there’s an impressive lineup of authors listed, including Robert E. Howard and Joe Lansdale. Part of the reason the goal is so high is that the editors want to pay the authors professional rates, and that takes money.

So if you’ve been thinking about pledging, please do so. I would really like to see this project get off the ground. I am not an author in the anthology and my only connection to the project is that I’m friends with the guys putting it together. I just want to read the stories.

Blogging Bran Mak Morn: “Men of the Shadows”

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“Men of the Shadows”
First published in Bran Mak Morn, Dell 1969
written circa 1925-1926

The first of Howard’s tales of the Pictish king Bran Mak Morn, “Men of the Shadows” was rejected by Weird Tales in 1926. Upon reading it, it’s easy to see why.

The story starts out strong. Narrated by a Norseman in the Roman army, he and his companions are nearly cut down in a battle with the Picts. Five of the Roman soldiers survive, but as they make their way back to Roman territory, they are one by one cut down until only the Norseman is left.

He’s taken captive by a group of Picts and taken before their chieftan, Bran Mak Morn. (Bran is merely a chieftan in this story, not a king.) None of the soldiers knew what their mission was except the commander, and he took that secret with him to his grave. Bran introduces the soldier to his sister and tells him that a reward had been posted for whoever captured the girl and brought to a Roman merchant. Continue reading →

Blogging Brackett: “The Jewel of Bas”

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“The Jewel of Bas”
Planet Stories, Spring 1944

Note: This post became a lot more personal than I intended. Rather than rewrite it, I’ll expand on the opening paragraphs about the Ballantine Best of series in a future post.

Way back in ancient times, in other words the summer before I started high school, my parents agreed to let me join the Science Fiction Book Club, something I had been asking to do for a while. I still remember the first shipment of books contained one of the Ballantine Best of series (Frederik Pohl).

In fact, for the first six months or so I was a member, each month the catalog I received contained a different volume of that series. I bought them all. Or rather all the ones the Club offered from the time I joined onwards. (For some reason I never saw the C. L. Moore volume listed in any of the mail-outs. I bought it in paperback, although there was an SFBC edition.)

I had become aware of Ballantine’s Best of series in the seventh grade, when I found a copy of The Best of Jack Williamson at the flea market in a little book shop that sold paperbacks with missing covers for a quarter. I wouldn’t learn that such sales were illegal until a few years later. Continue reading →

Blogging Solomon Kane: “The Footfalls Within”

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Miskatonic University Press
Weird Tales compendium

“The Footfalls Within” was first published in the September, 1930 issue of Weird Tales. It’s a pretty straight-forward story, but one that has some depth if you know where to look. It seems to take place after the previous tale, “Wings in the Night” (reviewed here). Solomon Kane has continued his eastward trek.

The story opens with Kane coming across the body of a young black woman. The corpse is fresh, and there are marks where whips and shackles have torn her flesh. It doesn’t take long for Kane to catch up with the slavers who killed her. He sees a train of blacks being led away by a group of armed Arabs and other blacks who have allied with them. They’re taking their captives to a slave market. They’re also driving them hard, neither giving them rest breaks nor providing them with ample water.

When another young woman collapses and can’t get up, the slavers decide to skin her rather than give her water or put her out of her misery. It’s more than Kane can stomach, and he shoots the man with the skinning knife. This brings the rest down on him, but he kills several before they can subdue him. The leader of the group, Hassim, realizes he can get a great deal of money from Kane after he learns his captive’s identity, so Kane is treated better than the rest of the slaves. As they march, Kane is approached by an old man named Yusef, who has retrieved Kane’s ju-ju stick from where Hassim had discarded it. Continue reading →

Statistics Are Interesting Things

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And no, this post isn’t going to be about math. So come back here and quit running in terror. The screaming is disturbing the neighbors.

Things have gotten rolling full speed at the day job, the offspring has gotten back into the swing of things, and I’m trying to juggle numerous (figurative) flaming chainsaws.

So while trying to kill time between interruptions at work this afternoon (there was too much going on to be able to shut the door and work on tasks that require extended concentration), I looked at the top posts for this blog.

It was rather interesting. I didn’t compare or combine the numbers from when I was on Blogger, just looked at things since I set up my own domain. I didn’t look at the other blogs, only Adventures Fantastic. I ignored the most viewed page, which is the homepage, and looked at only individual posts, wherein a pattern quickly emerged. Continue reading →

Another Robert E. Howard Birthday

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This is a good thing. It’s Howard’s eleventy-first birthday. I’ve been writing these tribute posts for a few years now, and I’m at the point I’m about to start repeating myself if I haven’t already.

So for those of you who may have stumbled in here from someplace else and aren’t quite sure what’s going on, Robert E. Howard was born on January 22, 1906. He was one of the greatest and most influential writers of fantasy and horror of the 20th Century, although those genres constituted only a small portion of his writings.

Rather than regurgitate biographical details or wax eloquent about his greatness, I’m going to pay tribute by looking at one of his works. This is a practice I’ll be engaging in for other writers about whom I regularly read and blog. Continue reading →

Reading A. Merritt on the Occasion of His Birthday

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Well, sort of. Merritt’s birthday was actually yesterday, but classes started the day before yesterday. I was kinda busy.

Abraham Merritt was born on January 20, in Beverly, New Jersey. He died in 1943. Merritt was arguably the most highly regarded fantasy author of his day, with a fantasy magazine named for him after his death. He was an assistant editor and later editor of The American Weekly, a position which apparently left him little time to pursue his own writing. Even so, his work cast a long shadow over the field and his influence is still felt today, although most readers are probably unaware of that influence. Continue reading →

Blogging Brackett: “Enchantress of Venus”

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“The Enchantress of Venus”
Originally published in Planet Stories, Fall 1949

I first read this story in high school in the SFBC edition of The Best of Leigh Brackett. It was my first introduction to Eric John Stark, arguably Brackett’s greatest creation. In my opinion it is arguably her best work at shorter lengths.

Stark is an Earthman, raised by a tribe of aboriginals in Mercury’s twilight belt. (The astronomy geek in me is compelled to point out this story was written before Mercury’s 3:2 rotational/orbital resonance was discovered. Mercury doesn’t have a twilight belt because it doesn’t keep the same face towards the Sun.)

Stark is black, although whether he’s of African descent or permanently burned by the Sun, Brackett never explicitly says anywhere (that I can recall). His tribal name is N’Chaka, which implies the former rather than the latter. Continue reading →

It’s Margaret Brundage’s Birthday

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I wrote a post last year on Margaret Brundage. I don’t really have anything to add. But given all the brouhaha about art lately (see Daughter of Naked Slave Girls, Illustrated Edition as an example of what I’m talking about), I thought I would put up a few scans of some of her work to mark the occasion.

Note to those who are uptight or only want other people to enjoy/like/appreciate the same things they like: Brundage’s work is about as politically incorrect as you can get and often features nubile young women wearing little to no clothing and being threatened or bound (or both) in some manner. If this might offend you, then rather than clicking the READ MORE link, do us both a favor and go somewhere else.

Continue reading →