01 - The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian (Robert E Howard)

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The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian

Robert E. Howard

BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian

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

The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian

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

The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian

For Al

Mark Schultz

The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian

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

The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian

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.

The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian

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 efforts 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

The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian

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

The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian

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

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摘要：

RobertE.HowardBALLANTINEBOOKS•NEWYORKTheComingofConanTheCimmerian1ContentsTitlePageDedicationForewordIntroductionCimmeriaThePhoenixontheSwordTheFrost-Giant’sDaughterTheGodintheBowlTheToweroftheElephantTheScarletCitadelQueenoftheBlackCoastBlackColossusIronShadowsintheMoonXuthaloftheDuskThePooloftheBl...

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