Robert E. Howard Readers discussion

Read '"For the Love of Barbara Allen'", an interesting little weird story of life transference. This story can be found in a lot of books, such as The Second Book of Robert E. Howard and Trails in Darkness.

Re-read "Two Against Tyre," a historical story found also in The Second Book of Robert E. Howard. I really didn't think much of this story. I've wondered why it wasn't included in Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures.

Read the "Voice of El-Lil," a wonderfully weird tale about a magic gong, a lost African civilization based on fleeing Sumerians, with a little love thrown in. The main characters are not well developed, but the story propels itself forward well with the writing. This story is found in a lot of REH volumes, including The Book of Robert E. Howard, Pigeons from Hell, and The Exotic Writings of Robert E. Howard.

Finished "Spear and Fang", an okay story. His first story published in Weird Tales, but honestly am surprised it was picked up. He had several that were much better but rejected by Weird Tales. This is another fairly easily found story, reprinted in The Weird Writings of Robert E. Howard: Volume 1 and Eons of the Night.

Read "Black Canaan (Early Version)." Black Canaan is one of my favorite REH horror tales, and being able to read the early version was a delight. Not a lot different, some paragraphs moved around, some minor deletions here and there... I haven't done a full comparison (yet), but it's still a favorite story,

That looks like a really nice book. I agree with you on 'Black Canaan'.

I was excited to pick up this volume of rare Robert E. Howard works. It has a lot of stories & poems I didn't have.

I used a lot of the sorcery in Black Canaan when I wrote "Across Thunder River" for Mongoose's Conan RPG.

Reread "The Cobra in the Dream," a rather predictable affair featuring Costigan and John Murken. This story can also be found in Beyond The Borders and Black Canaan (among other places).

Reread "The Ghost in the Doorway," which can also be found in Swords of the North (which makes me wonder why it was included here). Written in 1929, it did not see print during his life. "The Ghost in the Doorway" features Capt. Turlough Kirowan, presumably an ancestor of Professor John Kirowan, a younger son of a titled Irish family and a scholar of the Mythos who traveled widely in search of forbidden knowledge, who featured in several of REH's modern Mythos stories. This story takes place during the 17th Century (the dating is vague, since REH used the "16__" method of obscuring the specific date). A ghost warns the main character of trouble, and the main character escapes. The story is weak in that there is no tension. The danger avoided wasn't even expected.

Read "A Thunder of Trumpets" by REH and Thurston Torbett. I am not sure how much of this is REH and how much is Thurston, but it reads like REH. I have this story in The Weird Writings of Robert E. Howard: Volume 2, but I have never actually read it before. It was a really weird tale. I liked it. It takes place in India and features an English woman and a Yogi.

If anyone has anything to add, please jump in. Even if people don't have this book yet, many of these stories are in other collections. I've tried pointing out some places they can be found if people want to refresh their thoughts on the stories.

Read "The Shadow of Doom" for the first time. I don't have this story in any other volume in my collection. It was short, with too short of a conclusion, but it definitely was weird. Although predictable as soon as Harker rented the room, it was entertaining. It's always nice to have new Howard to read.

I recognize the names, but can't really remember the stories. Your posts are just making me realize I need to reread.

You should reread!

Too many books, too little time, unfortunately.

Read "The Haunted Hut." This is the only version of this story I have, so this is a new story to me. It was a pretty good horror story, but REH wrote the dialect out, which was realistic but slowed down the reading some.

Read "Under the Boabab Tree," another story that is new to me. It isn't in any other collection I have. Predictable but fun. A story of Africans and a demon.

Re-read "The Hyena", which I also have in Pigeons from Hell, Beyond The Borders, and The Weird Writings of Robert E. Howard: Volume 1. It was first published in Weird Tales, of course. Like several of these tales in this volume, it centers around black voodoo conjure-men. Also stars another protagonist named Steve. REH really liked that name. Not a great story, but serviceable.

Read "The Black Country" for the first time, as this is the first time it has entered my collection. It was a decent horror story. I wish I had access to it when I was writing for the Conan RPGs. Anyway, it is another story about an African witch-doctor - actually a pair of them, making war on each other.

Read "Nekht Semerkeht." This is the first time I read it as pure REH. The version I had before this was completed by Andrew J. Offut in The Gods of Bal-Sagoth. This is the last story REH wrote and is incomplete - it finishes as a synopsis. This is about a conquistador encountering a lost city the New World ruled by an Egyptian necromancer.

Also re-read "Untitled 'As he approached," which I have in The Last of the Trunk. Another incomplete story with a minstrel and an evil baron.

Also re-read "The Abbey." This is a fragment, the start of a neat-sounding mystery. I have a version of this that was completed by C.J. Henderson in Nameless Cults: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard and I have a copy of REH's typescript from The Robert E. Howard Foundation Newsletter V7N1.

Read "Age Lasting Love," and wow... I wish REH had finished this one. It has the start to be one of his great horror stories, but alas, it is unfinished. This could be a wonderful vampire story... idk.

I've never read this one before.

I remember « Nekht... ». Read it in The Black Stranger and Other American Tales. The beginning is outstanding. You can read Howard’s thoughts on life and death and knowing he committed suicide, is a very important fragment. But as soon as he reaches the city, it falls off as a generic lost race synopsys. I can understand why he left it unfinished.

The same could be said of another tale in that same book, « The Thunder-rider ». The beginning is a unique commentary on moderm city life by REH. The rest is forgettable.

I like to read incomple stories, as I am the kind of guy who wants to read all that REH ever wrote. But in the end, I never go back to them and I prefer a book with a good selection of definitive and complete stories.

That's an interesting way to look at Nekht Semerkeht - his comments on life and death echo a lot of his stories, so that didn't make much of an impression on me; it should have though, especially if it was the last story he was working on. I don't know if he lost interest in the story, or if it was the story he was working on when he decided to kill himself, thus leaving it unfinished. I'm going to go back and re-read the beginning with that outlook in mind. Neat perspective!

The Thunder-Rider is a great story of reincarnation, but I hadn't really looked at it as commentary. I'll have to re-read it with that point in mind. (and you are right, I really don't remember much of that story - it was kind of forgettable). Thanks!

I like to read them all - and I like to re-read them. Great insights, thank you!

Vincent wrote: "Read "Age Lasting Love," and wow... I wish REH had finished this one. It has the start to be one of his great horror stories, but alas, it is unfinished. This could be a wonderful vampire story... ..."

I read this book last summer, and I am also interested how REH should have finished "Age Lasting Love". It has an outline, but it is too vague to figure out what he exactly intended.

Another regret is the incomplete state of "The Door of the World", which would have been a wonderful addition to his Lovecraft-influenced tales. The speech of the youth Xatha is mostly made up of REH’s prose poem "Medallions in the Moon".

"The Door of the World" is coming up quickly. I'm looking forward to reading that one as pure REH (the version of the story I've had before was in Nameless Cults: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard and was completed by Joseph S. Pulver).

I understand the impulse for authors to want to complete the tales because they are so intriguing but at the same time the completions tend to be so... unsatisfactory. idk. His outline for "Age Lasting Love" is super vague, as you said.

Thanks for the tip about the speech - I'll look up that prose poem in The Book of Robert E. Howard as well!

I really like the completed tales in most cases, but I also really liked DeCamp & Carter's editing in the Lancer editions. Part of the reason is that it made the stories fit together well & I was very young when I first read them. Not only were they my first Conan stories, but it made more sense to my young mind. Now I can appreciate the fragments more, but I don't find them as entertaining & that's really the only reason I read them. I'm not an REH scholar.

That makes a lot of sense, Jim. I totally get that. Of course, the first Conan stories I read were also the Ace/Lancer versions, and I still love those completions. Not sure why I love the incomplete versions also, but I always read the edits and completions also.

Just read "The Door of the World" and... wow! What an intriguing fragment! Charlie is correct that this would have been a wonderful addition to his Lovecraft-influenced tales. I may re-read the completed version that Joseph S. Pulver wrote for Nameless Cults: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard.

Read "Redflame" and "Serpent Vines," both for the first time. Redflame was an interesting fragment of a man meeting the Devil, and Serpent Vines was a pretty straightforward horror short story of an encounter in a dank jungle.

Thanks for posting about these. I've read most of the major REH tales for Conan and Kull and Solomon Kane but less on the horror side, though I enjoy them. Fragments are cool on the one hand, but too bad he didn't finish them.

Finished Draft A of "The Isle of Eons." I loved the mentions of Valusia, Valka, and other elements of REH's world. I've never had access to this draft before, although it is mentioned in the version that appears in The Gods of Bal-Sagoth, which was edited together from sections of drafts b1, b2, and a3.

The main characters in this draft are an American and a Dutchman, the only survivors from sunken warships (that sank each other) in WW1. They started the story as enemies that had to rely on each other for survival on the island.

Read Draft B1 of "The Isle of the Eons" which was better written and surprisingly different than the original draft. The ruin isn't made of silver, the door doesn't have an undulating skeleton imprint, the characters served on the same ship (instead of opposing ships), and little is made of the trip to the island. Less time is spent exploring and describing the island. All in all, it's much tighter and reads much faster - I'd say it's better.

Finished Draft B2 of "The Isle of the Eons," which restored the silver pyramid, the reincarnation theme, and the undulating door of Draft A. The outline provides a neat glimpse of what could have been.

Although it is neat because of its references to Kull stuff, I can see why REH abandoned it. It kind of meanders and doesn't really work all that well. I did like the undulating skeleton door of Drafts A and B2 though.

Re-read "The Brand of Satan," which can also be found in The Last of the Trunk, which is about a man who was turned into a tiger by a mad scientist. Not bad, but also not great. Unfinished.

"Dagon Manor" and "Dear Mrs. Shane" were two 1 page fragments that I read also. "Dagon Manor" features Conrad and Tavarel. Conrad and Tavarel are characters that feature a lot in REH's John Kirowan's Occult Investigators stories. Other stories featuring these characters include:

The Children of the Night: First printed in Weird Tales (Apr-May 1931)
The Thing on the Roof: First printed in Weird Tales (Feb 1932)
The Haunter of the Ring: First printed in Weird Tales (June 1934)
Dig Me No Grave: First printed in Weird Tales (Feb 1937)
Dermod's Bane: First printed in The Magazine of Horror (Fall 1967)
The Dwellers Under the Tombs: First printed in 1976
The Jade God: Fragment

"Dear Mrs. Shane" was new to me.

It's great reading your comments, Vincent. Thanks.

Re-read "Fate is the Killer" and "Incongruity." Both are reprints from The Last of the Trunk. The first is about a man doomed to murder someone - and he knows he is doomed to do so. The second is about an artist who is infatuated with flawed beauty to the point that he asked his gorgeous model to amputate one of her arms. Both are fragments.

Also re-read "The Jade God," a Conrad & Kirowan fragment about a neighbor being murdered.

Re-read "The Slayer" and was stunned to find out it was an unfinished sequel to "The Hyena"! Although first person this time, it referenced events in The Hyena. Too bad this was but a fragment.

"The Slayer" is also available in The Last of the Trunk.

Read several fragments and "Songs of Bastards," a raunchy play written in rhyme. It's about a knight's wife who is sleeping around. Here is an excerpt:

"I love not what is in your skull, but what is between your thighs. We have jazzed so fine and cozy since the first of the twilight fell. But now the East grows rosy and I am weary as Hell. My testicles ache with weakness from this long jazzing bout; let me take you back to your husband before he finds us out."

He does find out, but she decrees that while her heart belongs to her husband, she likes having sex with the other guy, to which is said, "Oft I see the miracle of hearts that purely stay - but the vagina's weak and like to stray."

This story is also available in The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard Volume One: 1923-1929.

Wow! That's more explicit than I would have expected.

Yes, his raunchy stuff, usually found within his letters, were often quite explicit.

Re-Read "Bastards All!" a raunchy play involving a man who needs to pay a debt, so he plans to sleep with another man's wife and intentionally get caught so he can blackmail the husband (threatening to reveal the wife's adultery) and thus pay his debt. Mishaps and hilarity ensue. It ends with all the women deciding to sleep with the black servant once they saw his penis.

Sir John: "Wilt thou not lift that veil that I may feast my eyes?"
Veiled Woman: "Hadst not rather I should lift my dress that thou mightest feast thy balls?"
Interlude.

Also available in The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard Volume One: 1923-1929

Read "Pictures in the Fire." This was a paper REH wrote for English class in high school. Although the first page is available in The Last Celt: A Bio-Bibliography of Robert E. Howard, I had never read it. It's a neat little essay on sitting back and gazing at a fire, imagining scenes within it - not unlike looking at clouds and imagining they make shapes. I wondered why this story was chosen as the title of the book - now I get it.

I've been compiling a list of SF authors for another group & I've found several authors that wrote porn. Apparently there were a couple of publishers that paid $300/book. KEW was one.

Wow! Had no idea! Did he use a pen name?

I don't know what KEW's pen names were. It was mentioned that they found 3 in his closet after he died & that's where I read the price. He drank himself to death & this was considered one more marker of how far he'd fallen by that person.

I'm not sure if it really was a low point, though. Andrew J. Offutt did it & so did Robert Silverberg. The latter as Don Elliot.
https://www.ffadultsonly.com/e/don-el...

Another one who wrote porn was Felix Salten, the author of Bambi. I've read that the sequel was furry child porn, but haven't read it. I did find & skim a copy of The Memoirs of Josephine Mutzenbacher. I about fainted. It is child porn. I reviewed it here with a link to the Wikipedia article.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...