The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian Read online

  Robert E. Howard

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Cimmeria

  The Phoenix on the Sword

  The Frost-Giant’s Daughter

  The God in the Bowl

  The Tower of the Elephant

  The Scarlet Citadel

  Queen of the Black Coast

  Black Colossus

  Iron Shadows in the Moon

  Xuthal of the Dusk

  The Pool of the Black One

  Rogues in the House

  The Vale of Lost Women

  The Devil in Iron

  Miscellanea

  The Phoenix on the Sword (first submitted draft)

  Notes on Various Peoples of the Hyborian Age

  The Hyborian Age

  Untitled Synopsis

  Untitled Synopsis (The Scarlet Citadel)

  Untitled Synopsis (Black Colossus)

  Untitled Fragment

  Untitled Synopsis

  Untitled Draft

  Hyborian Names and Countries

  Hyborian Age Maps

  Appendices

  Hyborian Genesis

  Notes on the Conan Typescripts and the Chronology

  Notes on the Original Howard Texts

  Acknowledgments

  Praise for Robert E. Howard

  Copyright Page

  For Al

  Mark Schultz

  Foreword

  Well. It’s been a long haul.

  As I sit here, reviewing the drawings and paintings I contribute to this book, the work of well over a year and a half – I must admit to mixed emotions.

  It’s easy enough to know that you are up to the job of capturing the visual essence of the most famous creation of one of your favorite authors, a literary lodestone that has repeatedly drawn you back since childhood, so long as you don’t actually have to execute those visuals. Believe me, there have been many, many times in the last thirty plus years when I’ve indulged in the “what if” game – and every time been very impressed with the perfect phantom illustrations of Conan misting through the world behind my eyelids.

  But when it comes time to belly up to the bar, put your money where your mouth is, and actually make concrete all the notions and grand designs that have previously flitted through your happily uncommitted mind – aye, there’s the rub...

  Robert E. Howard’s Conan has not been so easy to illustrate as I imagined he would be. I think this is in part because, while Conan and his Hyborian Age are nominally works of epic heroism, featuring hosts of brave warriors, fields of savage battle, and deeds of strength and bravery and derring-do as is the tradition of heroic fantasy, what makes them great is a deeper, darker context. Howard wrote them in a personalized style that is very post-heroic, is very much a part of a twentieth-century literary tradition which eschews the floridity, gallantry and nobleness of cause associated with the epic.

  Howard took the nominal elements of heroic fiction, but he did not write them with the genteel sensibilities typically associated with the form. Hell no – he took those elements as sheep’s skin under which to fit his own agenda, which included railing at his personal circumstances; letting loose with a literary snarl and bark at the limitations and frustrations of the world he knew – isolated central Texas post oak scrubland and oil field.

  What I’m trying to get at is that while Howard’s Conan stories live in the framework of classic heroic fantasy, their guts – the heart that drives the beast – is a much more personal sensibility. They are engineered and pushed forward at Howard’s famous driving pace by a gritty directness and stripped-down, take-no-prisoners attitude that is unique to Howard; an expression of his rage at his immediate world. Howard’s writing is not fast and furious and grim merely because he liked it that way, rather it is fast and furious and grim because that was a true expression of who Howard was. Howard’s genius was that he took literary forms that appealed to him and added to them and subtracted from them and molded them into entities that darkly reflected his deeply felt personal beliefs; his view of life as unending struggle and ultimate futility. But providing one hell of a ride along the way, if you were lucky.

  We are lucky because we get the Old World tradition of the heroic epic as interpreted through the sensibilities of a Texan steeped in the lore of his home state – the violent history of its blood feuds and Indian wars, as well as its rich Southern United States folk storytelling tradition, with all its ghosts and swampy horror.

  That mix made for something new, and for one hell of a ride, but it has also, for me, made Conan a bit difficult to visually interpret – to get back to my original chain of thought. On one hand I’m drawn to Howard’s vivid descriptions of pageantry and stateliness, the awesome sweep and grandeur of the Hyborian Age, Conan’s story as epic, and my desire is to do all that justice by hewing to the finest traditions of classic illustration. On the other hand, it is Howard’s New World spontaneity, his white-hot emotional explosiveness and relentless pacing that make these stories tick, that give them life far beyond that of their contemporaries, and to properly capture that calls for visuals that are bold, immediate, and raw.

  There is no mistaking a Howard story. No one will ever write Conan, or any other sword and sorcery creation, with the ferocity and terrible beauty of Howard. There will never be a true Conan that was not written by Howard. Conan is too personal a creation, all wrapped up in Howard’s own strengths and foibles and idiosyncrasies, and that makes it easy to see why Conan is by far Howard’s best known creation.

  Howard was all about story first and foremost – there’s no dishonor in that – but with Conan he seems to have arrived at a point in his growth as a fictioneer where he appreciated the importance of developing a fully-rounded lead.

  The general public will enjoy a particular literary concept, featuring an imaginative world revolving around a well-turned plot, once or twice, but if the author wants them to return again and again to that world, he needs it anchored by an attractive and unique character who is more than just a construct. Howard got that with Conan, pulling personality from the Texas country roughnecks he well knew, and created a series of stories that in popularity have eclipsed all his other fine worlds.

  In Conan we get that rarity in fantastic literature, a hero who actually changes and grows from story to story. The teenage, insecure Conan who kills a man for taunting him in The Tower of the Elephant is not the same headstrong bully who has his heart broken in The Queen of the Black Coast is not the same veteran mercenary who begins to understand that maybe he has it in him to go all the way in Black Colossus is not the same Conan who as king patronizes the arts (the arts, for Crom’s sake!), recognizing that poetry will live long after he is gone, in The Phoenix on the Sword.

  Conan grows and matures, and more’s the pity that the popular view of the character is largely restricted to that of a scowling, jaw-clenched, muscle-bound killing machine. Howard wrote him as so much more. Yes, he brawls and slays, but he also reflects and laughs – at himself as well as others – loves and loses, doubts and falters, acts altruistically and empathizes with alien beings. He is, above all, totally charismatic; no outsider comes to command armies and nations without inspiring trust and loyalty and devotion. He’s no simple brute; he’s a multi-dimensional character, and I’ve done my best to reflect that, depicting him in a variety of moods and attitudes.

  Not every one of the stories in this volume is great. Howard was writing for monthly publication at a white-hot pace, and perfection is never possible under those circumstances. Even so, even such minor ef
forts as The Vale of Lost Women offer passages of wonderfully turned prose – check out Livia’s view of the slaughter in the village for as compelling and compact a portrait of the horror of massacre as is seen in fiction, or the description of ghostly lunar beauty in Livia’s descent into the haunted vale.

  But the bulk of these stories are great, and The Tower of the Elephant and The Queen of the Black Coast are indisputable classics of fantastic short fiction, richly deserving recognition and appreciation outside the genre.

  The man could write, and Conan is Howard at the top of his game. My hope is that, if you do not care for my interpretations of his words, you are able to look beyond them, and enjoy Conan and his world, and Howard’s stirring prose, from the perspective of your inner eye.

  Mark Schultz

  2002

  Introduction

  When the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales appeared on newsstands, Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) probably didn’t imagine that he was making history. The Phoenix on the Sword, introducing his new character, Conan of Cimmeria, had been written in March of that year, and even if editor Farnsworth Wright thought the story had “points of real excellence,” it was not enough to warrant making it the cover story. The first Conan story was simply one tale among others in that particular issue of Weird Tales.

  Seventy years later, the character has achieved international fame. Virtually every country in the world has published the Conan tales. One success leading to another, the character has been featured in motion pictures, comic books, cartoons, pastiches, television series, toys and role-playing games. In the process, Howard’s creation has been diluted to the point that it is often nearly impossible to recognize Howard’s character in the iconic image of the fur-clad, hyper-muscled super-hero he has become in the public’s mind. Such a phenomenon is not rare in the history of popular culture. When a fictional character becomes such an icon, it is bound to escape its creator and take on a life of its own, the character taking precedence over the creator. Dracula, Fu Manchu and Tarzan are instantly recognizable figures, while creators Bram Stoker, Sax Rohmer and Edgar Rice Burroughs enjoy a popularity both inferior to and dependent upon these particular creations. As an example, many Burroughs readers had their first exposure to Tarzan by way of the movies or comic strips and were subsequently led to buy the original books. They could then judge for themselves whether the adaptations were faithful to the original. In Howard’s case, however, this has been impossible: until the present publication, Howard’s Conan stories had never been published as Howard wrote them, in the order in which he wrote them, in a uniform collection.

  While there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of establishing a character’s “biography,” no Sherlock Holmes scholar ever entertained the idea of repackaging Conan Doyle’s original stories in the order of their occurrence in Holmes’ life rather than the order in which they were written, or inserting pastiches amidst the established canon. This was, however, exactly what was done with the Conan stories: not only were they presented following someone else’s reconstruction of the character’s “biography,” but pastiches of arguable quality (to say the least) were interpolated among Howard’s tales. Further, some of Howard’s own stories were rewritten, other non-Conan Howard tales were artificially transformed into Conan ones, and Conan stories that Howard thought too little of to finish were completed by other writers. This whole concept of “posthumous collaboration,” as it was termed, made it very difficult for the casual reader to determine what was genuine Howard and what was poor aping or rewriting in those volumes. In other words, people lured to Howard’s Conan stories after encountering adaptations or pastiches simply found more of the same, not having detailed information to separate the wheat from the tares. This has made critical assessment of the Conan stories a difficult thing: the Texan has often been judged on writings that were either not his or had been tampered with.

  Howard himself suggested why the stories should not be presented in the order they occurred in the character’s life: “In writing these yarns I’ve always felt less as creating them than as if I were simply chronicling his adventures as he told them to me. That’s why they skip about so much, without following a regular order. The average adventurer, telling tales of a wild life at random, seldom follows any ordered plan, but narrates episodes widely separated by space and years, as they occur to him.” Consequently, the stories in this volume are published as they “occurred” to Howard, in the order they were written and as they were written by Howard – no pastiches, no changes for the sake of “consistency,” no rewriting. Such a presentation not only respects Howard’s intentions, it also casts a very different light on the character and his evolution, and provides us with new insights to some of the major themes of the series.

  At the time the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales went on sale, Howard was becoming one of the magazine’s pillars. The magazine had published the Texan’s first professional story, Spear and Fang, in July 1925, and over the years his tales had been appearing with increasing frequency between its covers. He had won his first cover with Wolfshead in the April 1926 issue and had introduced the fan-favorite character Solomon Kane with Red Shadows in August 1928, again featured on the cover. A year later Howard had won the admiration and respect of his peers, most notably Howard Phillips Lovecraft, with his two stories about Kull of Atlantis, The Shadow Kingdom and The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune, published in the August and September 1929 issues.

  It can be said that Robert E. Howard had been a protégé of Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright. Wright nurtured the young Texan’s burgeoning talent and would later describe him as one of his “literary discoveries,” as well as a “genius” and a “friend.” Wright was indeed an unusual editor. In a world of formula and cliché-ridden pulp magazines, Weird Tales often lived up to its subtitle, “The Unique Magazine,” walking a fine line between the magazine’s commercial imperatives and Wright’s literary inclinations. While Lovecraft would often have his tales rejected, unable or unwilling to submit to Wright’s editorial requirements or suggestions, Howard was more flexible. Studying and anticipating his editors’ needs, he had no problem turning out dozens of formula stories – with the occasional gem here and there – for such generic magazines as Fight Stories or Action Stories. On the other hand the Texan had genuine literary leanings, most evident in his poetry, but for which there was no viable market. Weird Tales came at the right time for the young writer. This atypical magazine published a large number of Howard’s poems as well as the cream of his fiction: the tales of Solomon Kane, Kull, Bran Mak Morn and Conan the Cimmerian. Not coincidentally, of all his rather numerous characters, Howard wrote poems about only those four (if we accept Cimmeria as a poem about Conan’s homeland). The Texan was evidently more involved when writing Conan tales than he was when writing for more generic markets.

  It is significant to note that the first Conan story was a rewrite of a Kull story, By This Axe I Rule!, completed in 1929. Like the Conan tales, the Kull stories were centered around the exploits of a barbarian adventurer in exotic countries of Earth’s mythical past, but there ends the similarity: between 1929 and 1932, Howard had developed new ambitions for his fantasy stories. He had, first of all, succeeded in selling some historical fiction, which gave him the occasion to write on the epic scale. Howard infused those stories with an intensity that has been rarely equaled, delivering memorable tales of the later Crusades. He excelled at depicting the slow decay of the once-powerful empire of Outremer, crumbling under internal divisions and external attacks, a prevalent theme of the future Conan stories.

  Selling historical fiction on a regular basis, however, proved to be an arduous task. Of his interest in the genre and difficulties in the market Howard wrote in 1933 : “There is no literary work, to me, half as zestful as rewriting history in the guise of fiction. I wish I was able to devote the rest of my life to that kind of work…. I could never make a living writing such things, though; the markets are too scanty,
with requirements too narrow, and it takes me so long to complete one. I try to write as true to the actual facts as possible, at least, I try to commit as few errors as possible. I like to have my background and setting as accurate and realistic as I can, with my limited knowledge; if I twist facts too much, alter dates as some writers do, or present a character out of keeping with my impressions of the time and place, I lose my sense of reality, and my characters cease to be living and vital things; and my stories center entirely on my conceptions of my characters. Once I lose the ‘feel’ of my characters, I might as well tear up what I have written.”

  All these elements were probably at the back of Howard’s mind in February 1932 when he transformed By This Axe I Rule! into The Phoenix on the Sword. By dropping the love-interest of the former story and adding a weird touch to his revision, Howard knew what he was doing: unlike his previous series, the first Conan tale was tailored specifically to meet Weird Tales’ requirements. However, taking control of the marketing aspects of the story was one thing; keeping in check the creative forces that brought the barbarian character to life was another entirely: “the man Conan seemed suddenly to grow up in my mind without much labor on my part and immediately a stream of stories flowed off my pen – or rather, off my typewriter – almost without effort on my part. I did not seem to be creating, but rather relating events that had occurred. Episode crowded on episode so fast that I could scarcely keep up with them. For weeks I did nothing but write of the adventures of Conan. The character took complete possession of my mind and crowded out everything else in the way of story-writing.”

  With a first story featuring Conan as the middle-aged king of Aquilonia, a second as a young barbarian in the northern fringes of the world and a third as a young barbarian thief in the civilized city of Numalia, different periods of the character’s life and widely scattered geographic locations in each case, Howard was running the risk of losing himself in this character and his universe. This had happened with the Kull stories, in which the loss of Howard’s “sense of reality” is discernible. He thus decided to have his “background and setting … accurate and realistic.”