The Cthulhu Stories of Robert E. Howard

by Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Paul Di Filippo (Foreword)

The Great Old Ones Return...

In the early twentieth-century, in the pages of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines, H.P. Lovecraft created the Cthulhu Mythos and offered it to his friends, creating a shared mythology for much of their weird fiction. Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, was one of those good friends.

Fresh from dusty libraries dark with forbidden knowledge, these twelve Howard tales, bring Kull of Atlantis, Bran Mak Morn, and a steady band of warriors, adventurers, and scholars into the dark to face the Nameless and that which they left behind: Elder gods, nameless cosmic horrors greater and older than the gods themselves, ancient forms of life and worship from before the dawn of humanity.

These are the Cthulhu Stories of Robert. E. Howard

Genres: Horror, Lovecraftian, Short Stories, Fiction, Collections

403 pages, Hardcover

Published September 23, 2020

About the author

Robert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, boxing, western, and detective fiction. Howard wrote "over three-hundred stories and seven-hundred poems of raw power and unbridled emotion" and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of "a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror."

He is well known for having created—in the pages of the legendary Depression-era pulp magazine Weird Tales—the character Conan the Cimmerian, a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian, a literary icon whose pop-culture imprint can only be compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond.

—Wikipedia

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[P.A. Thaddeus]

Howard still continues to be my favorite writer with his lush descriptions, outstanding use of rarely used words, and historical knowledge so advanced for his time period.
These more horror minded tales did not disappoint.

[Michael]

Meh. I've read some of these before. Howard really was a racist in his writing. There is some nasty stuff in here. I am generally not bothered by people who held noxious views 100 years ago, because....why? This is pretty extreme, though. I didn't like most of these stories. I also read them very slowly since I have been reading them before bed, and falling soundly asleep after just a few pages of each tale.

I'll stick with Conan.

[Michael Eklund]

This is mostly not really Cthulhu stories, it's some mentioning of Mythos names, but only one or two stories are what we should call "Cthulhu" stories.

Howard is amazing in painting the atmosphere, the setting. Really good. But the difference between him and Lovecraft, is in Lovecrafts stories it's mostly hopeless, and a lot of people get insane. In Howards stories, the monsters are also blubbering, horrible and disgusting, but the hero instead takes his twohanded sword and splits the monster in the middle :-) .

[Tad604]

For all the flack Lovecraft gets for being racist.... just holy crap Robert E. Howard says "hold my beer". He's better known for his sword and sorcery fantasy stuff and well yeah these are bit more like that and a bit cheesier for it. Still amusing.

[Robert]

This is all kinds of fun. It's really fascinating to see the influence that Lovecraft was already having on other writers. Howard is kind of in his own league, but it's clear he could take inspiration from Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos and use it.

Worth a read.

[Tomasz]

Many of the stories here couldn't possibly be counted among Howard's finest. They often aged badly, too. Still, it's REH, propulsive as all get out.