I’ve often lamented that, despite there being no less than four films released which claim to be based on his work, none could truly be considered an adaptation. The world of television was not much better, with the three Conan programs virtually unrecognizable as Howard’s creation. It would seem that despite the hundreds of stories and eighty years’ worth of influence on many genres of fiction, there hadn’t been a single professional adaptation of a Robert E. Howard story.

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The latest Harold Lamb volumes from Bison books, Swords from the Sea and Swords from the East, already announced last December on The Cimmerian, are now available.

Richard L. Tierney’s poetry collection Savage Menace and other poems of horror is also out now. Some additional information not included in my January 26th blog post on this promising book can be read below.

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Hippocampus Press will release this month a new anthology edited by Robert M. Price dedicated to the murderous Hounds who enter our reality through angles, The Tindalos Cycle. Evidently Frank Belknap Long, who wrote “The Hounds of Tindalos,” one of the earliest Mythos stories by anyone other than H. P. Lovecraft (it was published in 1931), is the author with the most tales in this volume, which collects yarns first published in the pulps as well as more recent stories.

From the blurb:

Frank Belknap Long first alerted the world to the those infamous other-dimensional entities, The Hounds of Tindalos. In so doing he mined a rich vein of macabre antecedents, whose devisers included Robert W. Chambers, Ambrose Bierce and others. Since Belknap’s time, others have distilled and perpetuated his prophetic vision, perhaps unwisdely affording the Hounds ongoing ingress to our dimension, as a mainstay of the Mythos.

Now, the steady hand of editor Robert M. Price gathers all the relevant Tindalos writings in one mind-blasting tome, tracing the Hounds’ lineage from the dawn of the weird tale through their first explicit revelation, to the modern day with its full flowering.

Its table of contents:

Introduction: Chock Full o’ Mutts
The Maker of Moons, Robert W. Chambers
The Death of Halpin Frayser, Ambrose Bierce
The Space-Eaters, Frank Belknap Long
The Hounds of Tindalos, Frank Belknap Long
The Letters of Halpin Chalmers, Peter Cannon
The Death of Halpin Chalmers, Perry M. Grayson
The Madness out of Time, Lin Carter
The Hound of the Partridgevilles, Peter Cannon
Through Outrageous Angles, David C. Kopaska-Merkel and Ronald McDowell
Firebrands of Torment, Michael Cisco
The Shore of Madness, Ann K. Schwader
Gateway To Forever, Frank Belknap Long
The Gift of Lycanthropy, Frank Belknap Long
The War Among the Gods, Adrian Cole
The Ways of Chaos, Ramsey Campbell
Juggernaut, C. J. Henderson
Scarlet Obeisance, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
The Horror from the Hills, Frank Belknap Long
Pompelo’s Doom, Ann K. Schwader
Confession of the White Acolyte, Ann K. Schwader
When Chaugnar Wakes, Frank Belknap Long
The Elephant God of Leng, Robert M. Price
Death Is an Elephant, Robert Bloch
The Dweller in the Pot (or, The Past out of Space Eaters) By Frank Chimesleep Short, Robert M. Price
But It’s A Long Dark Road, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
Nyarlatophis, A Fable of Ancient Egypt, Stanley C. Sargent
Mind-Pilot, William Laughlin

Survival of the Dead, the latest installment in George A. Romero’s iconic “Dead” series of zombie films, just came out through video on demand services, Amazon and Xbox LIVE, before a limited theatrical release in the United States on May 28. It is the sixth film in the series.

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Writer Adam Christopher has embarked on a very ambitious project—reading and reviewing all of Stephen King’s books in the order in which they were published. He started a Web site dedicated to the task a couple weeks ago entitled Stephen’s Lot.

Christopher certainly has a massive task ahead of him. According to his Web site, King has written 56 books, including 46 novels, seven short story collections, and three works of non-fiction. Christopher also plans to intersperse his entries with reviews of film and television adaptations of King’s works and other King esoterica. To date he’s completed reviews of Under the Dome (which he’s calling Book #0—it’s King’s latest and out of order, hence the “zero” appellation), and has since reviewed Book #1, Carrie. Next up is ‘Salem’s Lot.

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Among Steve Tompkins’ many interesting blog entries written here on The Cimmerian, there was this piece about Lovecraft-inspired motions pictures.  The movie he was looking forward to see (as I am), Del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness, is not even in production yet, but another story written by the Man from Providence should make it to the silver screen sooner. Thanks to Grim Blogger, I learned a few days ago that the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society had released a new trailer for their adaptation of  Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s horror/science-fiction short story first published in the August 1931 issue of Weird Tales, ”The Whisperer in Darkness.” The film is supposed to be released in October.

Beware, Howard fans, viewing the video embedded in this blog post (thanks to shieldbrother Al for helping out someone who is only semi-literate with computers) might be painful. To see the (impressive) effort of a bunch of enthusiasts, who are genuinely caring for the source material, with this attempt to adapt their favorite’s author creation into film format, is something we’re not accustomed too. No compromise, no update of the story to a contemporary setting in a lame effort to please a modern audience; just the honest attempt to adapt faithfully on the silver screen what was written in the tale. In short, a purist’s dream come true. Exactly what has always been needed for movies based on Robert E. Howard’s stories, and never been supplied. When will the Texan’s tales get this kind of treatment?

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I still remember many years ago reading the admonition that serves as the preface to Harlan Ellison’s Deathbird Stories (1975). I had never encountered a “buyer beware” message in a book and its three simple lines chilled me almost as much as the short stories that followed (what was I getting into? I remember thinking):

Caveat Lector

It is suggested that the reader not attempt to read this book at one sitting. The emotional content of these stories, taken without break, may be extremely upsetting. This note is intended most sincerely, and not as hyperbole.

I will vouch for the fact that Ellison’s warning is no cheap ploy, like a horror film declaring itself the most terrifying or gruesome ever to hook in a big gate. Rather, it lets the reader know that he or she is about to embark into a group of short stories whose combined effect is to deaden the spirit. This is the net effect of Deathbird Stories.

Written over a span of ten years, the tales of Deathbird Stories are tied together by the concept that gods are real only as long as they have followers. “When belief in a god dies, the god dies,” writes Ellison. Old gods like Thor and Odin dissipated when Vikings took up the cross; Apollo was reduced to rubble when his temple fell, Ellison says in the book’s introduction. I’m not sure whether this idea of religious belief preceding divine essence was Ellison’s creation, but it may be (Neil Gaiman’s much-hailed American Gods also employs this concept, but Deathbird Stories, published more than twenty-five years prior, did it first and better). All I know is that thirty-five years later, its stories still resonate, and disturb.

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Author John Pelan, editor of Centipede’s Conversations with the Weird Tales Circle, has included Robert E. Howard “Pigeons from Hell,” H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Outsider,” C.L. Moore’s “Shambleau,” Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Dark Eidolon,” Fritz Leiber’s “Horrible Imagings,” Lord Dunsany’s “Thirteen at Table,” H. G. Wells “The Valley of the Spiders,” Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks“ and Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” in The Century’s Best Horror Fiction.

This massive (one hundred stories, nearly sixteen hundred pages and over seven hundred thousand words of fiction!) two-volume set anthology by Cemetery Dance Publications is heading to the printer this summer. John Pelan did only one selection per author and has chosen one tale per each year of the twentieth century (1901-2000) as the most notable story of that year. Robert E. Howard’s masterpiece fits right in.

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Friend of The Cimmerian G.W. Thomas is publishing Masters of Adventure, a public domain anthology. It is fully illustrated by M. D. Jackson and the multi-talented Mr. Thomas himself.

The title isn’t exaggerated since the line-up is simply incredible, as you can see for yourselves in the table of contents. I think that ‘Grandmasters of Adventure’ would not have been a too strong a superlative.

“Ms. Found in a Bottle” by Edgar Allan Poe
“Smith and the Pharaohs” by H. Rider Haggard
“The Brazilian Cat” by A. Conan Doyle
“The Grove of Astaroth” by John Buchan
“Tarzan Rescues the Moon” by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“A Thousand Deaths” by Jack London
“A Tropical Horror” by William Hope Hodgson
“The Breath of Allah” by Sax Rohmer
“The People of the Pit” by A. Merritt
“Wings in the Night” by Robert E. Howard

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The next REH volume published by Subterranean Press in Limited Edition will be The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. It is scheduled for this fall. Fellow blogger Jeffrey Shanks recaps the history of Subterranean’s Howard-related limited editions here on The Cimmerian.

Greg Staples has done the black-and-white illustrations and Subterranean promises some never before published full-color plates.

The Limited run is of 750 numbered copies, signed by the artist, housed in a custom slipcase for $150. The Deluxe edition consists of 50 numbered copies, signed by the artist, bound in leather, housed in a leather slipcase for $400.

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