I’m off on my annual trip to the Pictish Heartland, so this week’s blog will be fairly short. I have a number of different editions of Howard’s unfinished novel Almuric, and as part of my New Year’s resolution to do more exploration of the story that made me a Howard fan, I plan on looking at those different volumes. I’ll start off with my most recent purchase, the Leonaur edition.
Here’s what REH Foundation mover n’ shaker, Rob Roehm, just posted over on the Official Robert E. Howard Forum:
We should start taking pre-orders soon, but I thought folks would want to see the other El Borak cover by the Keegans.
Rob also noted that it’s not too late to email the Foundation regarding this volume. The more they hear from fans, the better they’ll be able to determine the size of the print run.
Two tips which might be helpfulf to TC readers. Necronomicon Press is back open for business and is offering a fifteen percent discount on all titles bought on their site. Courtesy of Bill Thom and Coming Attractions, I learned that Wildside Press has a thirty percent off sale going on for orders of three or more books.
Book Palace Books informs us about the soon to be released third Conan volume.
I first read the name “Robert E. Howard” in the spring of 1975. I had seen a 
copy of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #38 on a spindle-rack in one of those little corner grocery stores whose place has now been taken by stores of convenience in America’s small towns. Having discovered the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs the previous year, I was primed for the sort of adventure the cover seemed to promise. My indulgent and sainted grand-mother, responding as she nearly always did to my boyish entreaties, promptly bought it for me (naked blue chick and all).
Conan #38 was Roy Thomas’ (and John Buscema’s) adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “The House of Arabu.” Howard’s yarn featured a blonde-haired Argive named Pyrrhas as the protagonist and was set during the twilight years of Sumer. Roy, as he often did with other REH tales, “freely adapted” (his own words, right on the splash page) the yarn as a story of Conan during his time in Turan, which he entitled, “The Warrior and the Were-Woman!”. Over the years, it’s been noted more than once that ”Arabu” is one of Howard’s darker tales of high adventure. In my opinion, Thomas managed to convey a lot of that while still toeing the line for the Comics Code.
Easton Press has announced the imminent publication of a hefty collection of Robert E. Howard’s Conan yarns, all in a deluxe, leather-bound format. Easton has been reticent concerning the contents of the book, but judging from the page-count, cover font and the cover illustration, the Easton volume is a high-end reprint of the Prion edition from last year (see below).
2009 will go down as an eventful year for Howardom, Tolkiendom, Sword-and-Sorcery, fantasy, history, and The Cimmerian itself. A year of final print runs and new releases, sub-literary hackwork and excellent scholarship, terrible losses and welcome debuts, bad omens and promising news, and all manner of excitement. Following fellow blogger Brian Murphy’s top five reads of 2009, mine is more an overview of all that was noteworthy this year, concentrating on the best the past twelve months had to offer.
Let’s have a look back on the year’s highlights.
The February 1934 issue of Strange Detective contained two Howard yarns.
Previous installments:
Pulp Collecting and REH, Part 1
Pulp Collecting and REH, Part 2
Pulp Collecting and REH, Part 3
Pulp Collecting and REH, Part 4
The early years of the Great Depression were not kind to the pulp industry. Several titles that had been steady markets for Howard were cancelled in 1932 and 1933. The publisher Fiction House had gone out of business taking with them two titles that had been regularly publishing Howard’s boxing yarns, Fight Stories and Action Stories. Strange Tales and Magic Carpet, two other venues for Howard also folded during this period. While Weird Tales continued to publish Howard’s work, their payments were often sporadic and late.
Howard’s response to this situation was to branch out into new genres, looking for unexplored markets in which to sell his yarns. hard-boiled detective fiction had always been a popular genre for the pulps and Howard began to try his hand at it in 1933, often mixing in the weird or supernatural elements with which he was so familiar.
His first published detective yarn, “Black Talons,” appeared in the December 1933 issue of Strange Detective Stories. This was followed by the introduction of Howard’s recurring character Steve Harrison in “Fangs of Gold” published in the February 1934 issue of the same title. That same issue contained a second Steve Harrison story, “The Tomb’s Secret,” but since it appeared in the same issue as “Fangs of Gold” the name of the main character was changed to ‘Brock Rollins’ and Howard used his pseudonym Patrick Ervin. Both Strange Detective issues are very scarce and quite pricey. The December 1933 issue guides at $300 in Very Good and the February 1934 issue guides for $200.
The ninth Wildside Press volume of the chronological collection of Robert E. Howard’s stories that appeared in pulp magazines, The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Black Hounds of Death, is now available. Only one book left and the series, which started in 2004, will be complete.
It’s a limited edition hardcover (only 900 copies printed) with restored texts by renowned scholar Paul Herman. The most excellent REH biographer Mark Finn provides the foreword. Cover art by Stephen Fabian.
Its contents:
Introduction, by Mark Finn
Black Canaan
Always Comes Evening
Red Nails
Solomon Kane’s Homecoming (original)
Black Hound of Death
The Fire of Asshurbanipal
Dig Me No Grave
The Soul-Eater
The Dream and the Shadow
Which Will Scarcely Be Understood
Futility (“Golden Goats”)
Fragment (“And So His Boyhood”)
Haunting Columns
The Poets
The Singer in the Mist
The REH Foundation has just announced the impending publication of The Early Adventures of El Borak. This volume is intended as the companion of Del Rey’s El Borak and other Desert Adventures and it should be available, more or less concomitantly, in February 2010. This book of rarities will contain Robert E. Howard’s Francis X. Gordon juvenilia stories and fragments. It will also feature Lal Singh, Yar Ali Khan and Steve Allison, the Sonora Kid.
