Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the novelette...

The Scarlet Citadel by Robert E. Howard (1933)

From the anthology The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian by Robert E. Howard. See The Coming of Conan the Cimerian discussion hub for more info on the anthology and pointers to discussion of its other stories.

A second story featuring Conan the King of Aquilonia (as with The Phoenix on the Sword).

Conan is betrayed by a couple of fellow kings, his army lured into a trap, and Conan tossed in a wizard's dungeon. So we have an prison-break story (aided by a fellow inmate who's helpfully a sorcerer) followed by a vengeance story, ending with a big battle as Conan wants his kingdom back.

Along the way we learn Conan was a wise King: Fair justice, no corruption, low taxes.

Decent enough story. How come no one ever just kills a defeated hero? (At least Conan isn't Batman; when Conan beats an enemy, the enemy gets dead.)

BTW, whatever happened to that giant snake? And why is it always snakes? (OK, Tower of the Elephant is was a Giant Spider, it just felt like a Giant Snake because of the movie. :)

I enjoyed parts of this story. Pelias is one of the only magicians who helps Conan, although he does so mostly because he is interested in revenge against Tsotha-lanti.

Oh darn, back to King Conan are we? Well I enjoyed this one more than the first. And it has a Hall of Horrors, that's always good fun.

I did think it was interesting that there was a reference to kinghood changing Conan's perspective to an extent. Although I don't really feel like the morals of Conan the Barbarian vs Conan the King ever really gets explored, I thought it was interesting that it was alluded to. Maybe barbarianism isn't all that it's cut out to be. I did find myself wondering, how old is Conan supposed to be in various stages? Although I suppose Arnold Schwarzenegger is still working out... actually, I can really picture him as King Conan now. He went into politics and everything! (I've never seen the film and probably never will but I am very amused by the imagery... annnnd now Conan *is* Schwarzenegger in my imagination)

And this was the second to last of the stories in the Project Gutenberg Australia collection. I have one more, the Hour of the Dragon, which continues the King Conan storyline with another couple hundred pages, probably the longest of them all. In fact these three stories (Pheonix, Citadel, Dragon) are the only ones that clearly tie together with recurring characters other than Conan himself.

I wonder how Conan really does as a king? You hear how the nobles don't like him because he's not of noble blood, but that doesn't make him either a good or bad king. Is a barbarian a better rules than a civilized man in Howard's view? Can one uphold the barbarian ideal while ruling a civilized society? Guess we don't really find out because both in this one and Hour of the Dragon (which I just started) Conan is commanding major battles and getting captured...maybe that getting captured is a hint towards him losing his edge? :)

Anyway, it's definitely been an experience reading these stories, filling in a big gap in my fantasy background.

And talking of Schwarzenegger...I've been watching the Terminator movies (to fill in my SF movie gaps) but must admit there are moments when I think Conan instead...or when I watched that ridiculous recent Hercules movie, kept waiting for the characters to refer to Hercules as Conan (don't remember who the actor was...)

Andrea wrote: "And this was the second to last of the stories in the Project Gutenberg Australia collection. I have one more, the Hour of the Dragon, which continues the King Conan storyline..."

I take it you're reading Conan's stories re-shuffled into Conan's chronology. It's interesting that in the Introduction, one of editor's (Louinet) pet peeves is that the stories should be read in publication order (as in this collection) an never re-arranged into the hero's chronology.

I'm agnostic on the subject :)

I don't think REH ever really meant for his Conan stories to be a true series. Too many of them were written for other characters & changed to make a sale. The Lancer editions had to make changes for them to fit together properly chronologically & I think they did a great job. Of course, they were my first introduction to Conan, so that prejudices me somewhat, but I totally reject the idea of anyone, including the author, telling me how to enjoy a set of stories. Reading is a unique, personal experience that can not be dictated.

I'm reading the Recluce series by L.E. Modesitt Jr.. It's up to 19 books written over 25 years now which I've read as they came out - published order. Modesitt says the books should be read in that order since that's how he built the themes. Since I've read them as they came out, I used to think that held for the first read, but a subsequent read in chronological order was good. The last time I reread them that way was over a decade ago, though.

Now I'm rereading even more in chronological order & I think that's the best order, even for the first read. It just makes more sense to me. The growth & continuity make details stick better, so long as they are consistent. Modesitt has paid attention to the details, so it's fantastic & I don't care what he or anyone else thinks.

G33z3r wrote: "I take it you're reading Conan's stories re-shuffled into Conan's chronology. It's interesting that in the Introduction, one of editor's (Louinet) pet peeves is that the stories should be read in publication order (as in this collection) an never re-arranged into the hero's chronology."

I usually try to read things in publishing order, mainly because that's usually how writers wrote the story so the evolution of the world follows that order, and spoilers can sneak in otherwise, even unintentionally. But an e-reader is not that easy to jump around in so I just read it in the order I got it :) Though with Conan there is so little continuity in the stories, the order pretty much doesn't matter.

Jim wrote: "Too many of them were written for other characters & changed to make a sale."

It's very episodic, it was a bit like a recipe: take a villain, a monster, give Conan and job (pirate, king, etc) throw in a girl, shake/stir/whatever and out pops a story. And that works, I mean he wasn't writing a series of books, he was writing stories to be included in a magazine (not even the same ones) and he couldn't assume readers have read the previous installments.

I wondered actually why there were so many other writers writing Conan stories (saw a couple by Robert Jordan as I was poking through the library), was it something he intentionally opened up?

Andrea wrote: "It's very episodic, it was a bit like a recipe: take a villain, a monster, give Conan and job (pirate, king, etc) throw in a girl, shake/stir/whatever and out pops a story. And that works...."

I agree. Many of the stories are formulaic. Some are really good, others are not so great. That's one of the things I like about the old pulp stories though: seeing greatness pop up in unexpected areas. For Howard to build a fantasy world based on a map of Europe and some of Lovecraft's "Old Ones" ideas worked well enough to be the foundation of the Sword and Sorcery genre. And his descriptions of Conan fighting are often terrific.

Andrea wrote: "I wondered actually why there were so many other writers writing Conan stories (saw a couple by Robert Jordan as I was poking through the library), was it something he intentionally opened up?"

I think a lot of Conan purists also wonder why there are so many other writers writing Conan stories. ;-) In the 1960s L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter wrote some original Conan stories and packaged them with some of Howard's original Conan stories in a series of Ace paperback collections. de Camp and Carter also "finished" some of Howard's unfinished Conan material, to the dismay of some fans. Since then a variety of authors have written Conan stories including such notables as Poul Anderson, Robert Jordan and Harry Turtledove. Poor Conan. He's been passed around like a Sunday collection plate.

Ah, so it wasn't during Howard's lifetime? But still the copyright would be in force? Usually copyrights prevent that kind of thing. I'm sure people would have fun with LotR world but the Tolkien family still own the rights to it.

You can see when the rights go public then you get the mass of authors writing as you can see with the million variations on Sherlock Holmes and Dracula.

Andrea wrote: "But still the copyright would be in force? Usually copyrights prevent that kind of thing..."

Copyrights can be transferred, bought & sold. Jim wrote a bit about the history in another topic (Frost Giant's Daughter.)

Andrea wrote: "Ah, so it wasn't during Howard's lifetime? But still the copyright would be in force? Usually copyrights prevent that kind of thing. ..."

REH's lifetime was short. While he was frequently published for over a decade, he committed suicide when he was 30 & found his mother was dead (or very close) in 1936. His work was quite popular & his father was granted the rights, but he worked with REH's agent who passed them on to a buddy & from there they made a merry trip around the half the world. Since he was writing short stories for various magazines, had a book deal in England in the works, & other foreign interest, I don't think all the rights were the same either, but I'm not sure. I'd guess it was complicated.

Anyway, some rights got sold. In the 60s, Glen Lord took over the estate & some of the rights. Later that decade, de Camp bought some for the Lancer editions of the Conan books which he & Carter turned into a fairly chronological series of stories. They edited to make them fit together, finished some fragments, & even added some new stories. It was those Lancer editions with the Frazetta covers that relaunched the Conan craze.

Due to the copyright laws of the time some stories fell out of copyright & were snatched up by others &/or stories were just printed without the benefit of copyright. I think Zebra did the latter, but I'm not sure. They printed a lot of his stories, including the Sailor Steve Costigan stories as Dennis Dorgan ones. More pastiches were written & many of his other characters became popular. Karl Edward Wagner (author of the Kane series) did a great pastiche of Bran Mak Morn.

I think there were some pretty hard feelings among deCamp, Lord, & others involved in REH's estate. Sometime in the 80s a movement grew to clean up the REH estate. A push was on to get the copyright on all the stories back to the estate & some wanted the originals published.

It took a while for the dust to settle, but now his house is in the estate's hands along with most of his stuff. There is an annual "Howard Days" & the estate publishes limited editions of everything of his including his letters to Lovecraft, partial poems, & all sorts of trivia - if you have the purse & interest to support it.

I'm not up on it all, but if you read & ask around the Robert E. Howard group, you'll find out more than you ever wanted to know. Several of the members attend Howard Days, one or two have written some definitive stuff on REH &/or his creations. I'm just the janitor there & a lot goes by me. I just like the stories & don't really care about all the background, so I may have gotten some of the above wrong.

Thanks for the info! Somehow I managed to miss the fact that he committed suicide at 30 for thus assumed that the stories that were published in the 60's (there were a couple in the Project Gutenberg collection) were published shortly after his death, not three decades later.

Got this horrible images of all these vultures swooping in trying to get their piece of poor Conan (in fact one of the stories actually starts with him being crucified with vultures circling)