For details on why we decided to call it quits after six years, click here.

Left to Right: Barbara Barrett, Deuce Richardson, Al Harron, and Jeff Shanks accept The Stygian Award on the behalf of The Cimmerian.com

It was a bittersweet night for the Cimmerian bloggers that were on hand for Howard Days 2010. On the final day of this site’s existence as an active blog, TheCimmerian.com received the The Stygian Award for the best website at the Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards ceremony. There is something fitting about going out at the top of your game in Howardom. On behalf of all the TC bloggers past and present, thank you all so very much.

LEO SAYS: And with that announcement, we’ll bring this blog to a close. Thanks to everyone who made it such a going concern for all these years, and be sure to check out all of the other REH sites and blogs on the sidebar for all of your REH/JRRT/fantasy needs.

I admit I was a bit taken aback a few months ago when Deuce Richardson approached me about writing for The Cimmerian. My first impulse was to turn him down.

After all, I have a lot irons in the fire: I edit a weekly newspaper for a living, front a Western folk band, have a family I love dearly and jealously guard my woods-running time.

All that wasn’t really the cause of my hesitancy. I wasn’t sure I could meet the high standard that kept me coming back to TC over and over again. I wasn’t worried about the writing chops; writing is what I do. No, I was afraid I couldn’t match the analytical skills of Al Harron, the hawk-like eye for the scoop of Miguel Martins (thanks for putting the X where it belonged Miguel) or the mythic sensibilities of Brian Murphy. I told Keith Taylor that I felt profoundly under-credentialed in his company and the same goes for Bill Maynard. I wasn’t sure I could match Barbara Barrett’s erudition (thanks for the kind words Barbara) and I am noways the scholar Jeffrey Shanks is.

And, of course, over all loomed the ghost of Steve Tompkins, the man who brought me back to Howardia (you gonna let me get away with that Steve?).

Besides, I thought, I’m really a guns-and-historical-adventure kind of guy, not a sword-and-sorcery guy. Outside of REH,  Tolkien and a taste for the epic grit of A Song of Ice and Fire, I hardly touch fantasy. (I do love Conan. Named my dog Conan, though he has a hard time living up to it). Of course, Howard wrote more boxing and Western yarns than he did fantasy and the Del Rey El Borak volume was proof that REH was the master of the  Oriental adventure. I always loved best that El Paso gunfighter adventuring in Afghanistan.

For me, Howard was an historical adventure writer above all. But I figured most Howard fans and TC readers love his fantasy first and foremost and I just wasn’t sure my bent would serve the readers or the blog. I felt like a gypsy in the palace. Surely the invitation had been misaddressed?

Fortunately, my wife is much wiser than I. When I told her about Deuce’s offer and said I thought I should say no, she looked at me with that cute little “why are you so stupid” look and said, “I think it would be good for you.”

Crom! but she was right.

I’ve loved every minute of my short run on The Cimmerian. Turns out that my interest in the historical and things “frontier” was welcomed and encouraged. I should never have doubted it;  a vibrant diversity and wide-ranging intellectual curiosity are, of course, hallmarks of The Cimmerian. Nothing makes me happier than being told that I was an asset to this blog. I am proud to have ridden for the brand. And I know my friends will miss my weekly reminder to head this way for a dose of historical arcana.

The short ride brought me many joys in exploring the varied and distant fields of my historical interests, some that had lain fallow for a time. Working on TC helped me understand and reconcile the deep connections that mark my various passions — musical, historical, even spiritual. Passions I share with Robert E. Howard, the man who first inspired me to become a writer.

Studying his letters, I found proof of what I had felt in my bones since I was a youth: here was a kindred spirit. Like Howard, I have always felt out of place and time, regretted that I did not live on the American frontier. It is hard to explain, this intense, painful nostalgia for a time I never saw; yet Howard understood.

If I could choose the age in which I was to live, I can think of no better epoch than this: to have been born about a hundred years earlier than I was, to have grown up on the Southwestern frontier, to have fought through the Texas Revolution and taken a part in San Jacinto, to have served as a soldier in the war with Mexico, to have gone to California with the ’49ers, and to have fallen in some great battle of the Civil War. If I could have grown up and lived in primitive virile surroundings, if I could have taken part in stirring events, if I could have shot straight, lived like an Indian, run like a mustang and fought like a grizzly, I would not care whether I could read a line or write my own name.

–To H.P. Lovecraft, ca. August 1931.

I want, in a word, the frontier — which compassed [sic] in the phrase, new land, open land, free land — land rich and unbroken and virgin, swarming with game and laden with fresh forests and sweet cold streams, where a man could live by the sweat of his hands unharried by taxes, crowds, noise, unemployment, bank-failures, gang-extortions, laws, and all the other wearisome things of civilization.

– To H.P. Lovecraft, ca. July 1933

No one has ever expressed the longings of my own heart more clearly. Writing here helped me figure out how I might incorporate that longing into tales of my own. For that, I am profoundly grateful.

Finally, I must make clear my appreciation for Deuce Richardson and Leo Grin. Having myself spent years in a volunteer capacity building something of great worth with no financial recompense, I am acutely aware of the mixed feelings of pride, weariness and regret that must accompany  a decision to let it go.

I will miss standing in the shield wall with my fellow bloggers. On the flank. With a rifle. I hope to see you all down the trail.

Bid ’em all adieu
We can’t turn the world about
The cowboy left the country
The campfire has gone out

– “The Campfire Has Gone Out” — Traditional cowboy ballad as performed by Don Edwards

*Art by Frank Frazetta

I came across Robert E. Howard’s writings during my early adolescence. Probably like many other readers, the barbarian with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth was first, but thanks to a public library shelving NéO books translated in French by François Truchaud (some Clark Ashton Smith volumes from the same collection were on the shelves too); I found out early that Howard had written in other genres. I read these books voraciously and was hooked. JRR Tolkien came next –The Silmarillion being my introduction to the professor’s œuvre. Also, like Howard, I ‘m fond of historical adventures. His vivid stories probably were a part in my early interest in history, which I studied later.

I realized back then that some ‘Conan’ stories were not as good as the others. Young and naive, I believed Lyon Sprague de Camp’s words when he blathered about the coherence of his chronology and how he polished Howard’s material in my translations of the Lancers. I found out that there was REH scholarship which disagreed with de Camp only at the turn of the century when I read Don Herron’s essay “Conan vs. Conantics” online. It was an eye-opener to me. Financial and personal problems as well as lack of time kept me away from delving further into Howardian scholarship until the end of 2006. Then I joined discussion boards at Conan.com and Les Chroniques Némédiennes, where some Howardian scholars frequently contributed. I read almost every single word on Frank Coffman’s REH-e-APA, REHupa, TGR, The Barbarian Keep, Dale Rippke’s website and Les Chroniques Némédiennes. And of course, on the Cimmerian blog.

I was now reading books, magazines and websites not only by Howard, but also on the author and his creations. Deuce Richardson contacted me and we exchanged some thoughts on Howard’s pseudo-history. These discussions were stimulating. I also met in person and befriended French Howardheads such as Patrice Louinet, Simon Sanahujas and Fabrice Tortey –who have all edited and/or written books by or about the Man of Cross Plains or his creations.

Later, Deuce asked me to join the Cimmerian blog. Writing under the shadow of a giant of fantasy criticism like Steve Tompkins and on a site which had hosted renowned Howardian scholars such as Mark Finn wasn’t an easy endeavor. With such a legacy… how could I not disappoint?

Thankfully, I was warmly welcomed by most of my fellow bloggers.  I was proud to work with all of them. I hope that my translation wasn’t too bad. It has been an honor and a privilege to write on this blog with all those talented people.

So the 74^th anniversary of Robert E. Howard’s sad demise coincides with the retirement from fandom of my friend, Deuce Richardson and the final day of this blog, the “House that Leo built” as Rob Roehm –another former TC blogger– put it.

Adieu, Cimmerian.

Thank you Leo Grin for your outstanding contributions to Howardian fandom and for allowing me to write here. Thanks to all the other bloggers for their friendship and keen insights. Deuce, thanks for your dedication and all your deeds these last few years, my friend. Have a good life. It was great to stand in the shield wall with you, guys –and dear Barbara.

But most of all, thank you Robert E. Howard (January 22, 1906 — June 11, 1936), whose life and writings will be celebrated at Howard Days concomitantly with the publishing of this piece; thank you for your wonderful stories. They are not only fine literature, they also permitted me to meet fine people.

It’s been a privilege and a pleasure writing for The Cimmerian.

Farewell we call to hearth and hall!
Though wind may blow and rain may fall,
We must away ere break of day
Far over wood and mountain tall.

To Rivendell, where Elves yet dwell
In glades beneath the misty fell,
Through moor and waste we ride in haste,
And whither then we cannot tell.

With foes ahead, behind us dread,
Beneath the sky shall be our bed,
Until at last our toil be passed,
Our journey done, our errand sped.

We must away! We must away!
We ride before the break of day!

–J.R.R. Tolkien, Farewell Song of Merry and Pippin

Damon C. Sasser just picked up the latest issue of the Robert E. Howard: Two-Gun Raconteur journal from the printer. It will be available at Howard Days 2010 on June 11.

Since the announcement of the fourteenth issue of the TGR journal on TC last April, Damon has posted some updates on its contents, which will be detailed below.

Above, you can see Michael L. Peters’ cover featuring El Borak. Two of his drawings from a four-plate Solomon Kane portfolio based on “The Hills of the Dead” are also illustrating this blog entry.

Damon has written a blog on the portfolio and the magical staff once owned by Atlantean priests, Moses and King Solomon on TGR.

Here is the full table of contents:

El Borak Cover by Michael L. Peters
Inside Front and Back Covers: Scenes from “Nekht Semerkeht” by Terry Pavlet
Back Cover: Terence Vulmea by Robert Sankner
“The Curly Wolf of Sawtooth” by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by Richard Pace
“The Hills of the Dead: A Solomon Kane Portfolio” by Michael L. Peters
“The Old Time Radio Adventures of Sailor Steve Costigan” by Mark Finn, illustrated by John Lucas
“It Really Wasn’t a Game: El Borak and the Victorian Cold War” by Brian Leno
“From Bran Mak Morn to Beyond the Black River: The Evolution of the Picts in Robert E. Howard’s Fiction by Simon Sanahujas, illustrated by Bob Covington
“The Monster in the Jungle: “Red Nails” and the Return of the Repressed” by David Hardy, illustrated by Didier Normand
“Unmasking “The Shadow Kingdom:” Kull and Howard as Outsiders” by Brian Murphy, illustrated by Bill Cavalier
Plus additional artwork, reviews and features.

A rare humorous western story by Robert E. Howard, “The Curly Wolf of Sawtooth,” will be included in the issue, back in print in its original version for the first time since 1936 (a rewritten version featuring Breck Elkins instead of Bearfield Elston was published since several times). Richard Pace did the artwork for the story. Here is one of his preliminary sketches:

Former Cimmerian-contributor Mark Finn “details the creative process involved adapting several of Howard’s “Sailor” Steve Costigan stories into radio plays by the Violet Crown Radio Players of Austin, Texas.  The group also presented Novalyne Price Ellis’ radio play, “Day of the Stranger” over the airwaves.” Fellow blogger Brian Murphy provides and essay on Kull and Howard.

Don Herron will be reviewing The Dark Man Vol. 5, No. 1. Deuce Richardson is reviewing J. Kahan’s ” ‘Marchers of Valhalla,’ Creation, and the Cult of Castration” article specifically. Blogger Jeffrey Shanks, in his own review here on the TC blog had few good things to say on said essay (as opposed to the other articles therein).

You can order TGR # 14 here. It will debut at Howard Days 2010 on June 11, with orders shipping next week. The print run is only two hundred copies, so get them while you can.

Like many people, I felt a sense of great loss on reading that Frank Frazetta had died. The impulse to post something right away faded before the feeling that nothing I could say would be adequate, and the need to get my thoughts in order (and the words halfway right) before I wrote anything. But now, in the face of other significant news (that the Shieldwall is coming down) I had better get on with it while I can still say something on The Cimmerian.

So many things about Frazetta’s art were astounding. The vitality, the sheer sense of violent movement when he illustrated savage combat, the sensuous strength of the women he depicted, the power of his primeval beasts, the marvellous textures of cloth, metal, leather, stone — and flesh — he coveyed in his paintings so that you could feel them — were literally a marvel.

And of course, when he painted scenes that featured Conan, he did some of his best work.

Long ago, as a bachelor in a St. Kilda (beachside suburb of Melbourne) flat, I had two Frazetta posters on my walls. One was Conan battling the frost giants beneath a craggy mountain and chill blue sky, red gore on the tip of his sword, calf-deep in snow that, looking at the painting, I could feel stinging my skin with cold. The other showed that galleon sailing through the sky past a twentieth-century artificial satellite, which also and manifestly had some years upon it, dinted and tarnished but a proud achievement. It expressed beautifully what Poul Anderson called “the oneness of time” (in his story “The Pirate,” Analog magazine, 1968.

What else? That magnificent knight, The Outlaw of Torn, on his massive, rushing horse, red cloak flying and sword held forward? That other swirling red cloak, the one that surrounds the bestial form of Thak as Conan clings to his back and stabs him again and again, even his massive and powerful frame puny beside the ape-man’s? As, even through the frenzied rage in Thak’s inhuman face, Frazetta shows the pathetic budding humanity that REH described? The embodied sensuality and lust in Castle of Sin and Las Vegas? That huge spider dying impaled under bloody water? The dinosaurs? The cowboys lugging their saddles towards the red sunset? Conan, again, chained and straddling the immense snake Satha, indomitable despite his situation? The castaway huddled among aliens on a strange planet?

Once you start it’s hard to stop. These aren’t just paintings or illustrations. They’re experiences.

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.

However, there was one. Surprisingly, the first attempt to adapt Howard was also the only example which could be called a true adaptation – taking the plot, themes, title and characters, and translating them to screen. I am, of course, referring to the “Pigeons from Hell” episode of the TV series, Thriller.

The upcoming “adaptation” of “Pigeons from Hell” doesn’t look so worthwhile. Recently, the director Mark Steensland talked about his work, including his upcoming film:

Steensland and Hautala are now working on PIGEONS FROM HELL based on a short story by Robert E. Howard, the author who created Conan, the Barbarian. “It’s my favorite short story,” Steensland said. “It is the scariest thing I have ever read.” He has always wanted to film this Howard story. It took a long time to find out who owned the rights to the story. His plan is to make it into a feature-length film, with a release date in 2012.

Time will tell.

*Art by Virgil Finlay

Robert E. Howard was always a favourite writer of mine and one of the world’s great story-tellers, but I didn’t realise how very little I really knew about him until I started following this website and other REH-oriented ones.  I’ve encountered more cogent thinking and perceptive criticism here than you’d be likely to find, I suspect, in the average university lit lecture room.  And a lot less academic pretentiousness.

I think I’ll take fresh insights away with me, and fresh motivation for my own writing.  That’s quite a bit more than I was able to give, but if people enjoyed my posts, I’m very glad.  And thank you.

And all I’ve done for want of wit, to memory now I cannot recall.
So fill to me the parting glass. Goodnight and joy be with you all.

- Keith Taylor

With my days as a TC blogger winding down I thought I’d get back to the reasons why I (and perhaps if I may be so bold, extend that to the plural we) love the life and works of REH—and why he continues to enthrall us.

1. He died young. People are fascinated with talents who flash like shooting stars across the heavens and are gone just as quickly. The debate over why Howard committed suicide will probably never be settled, nor will the speculation over what he may have accomplished with another 30-40 years of writing ahead of him.
2. He was feted after his death by H.P. Lovecraft. We all dream of accomplishing enough to be remembered after we pass on; Howard’s unique talents were extolled by arguably the 20^th century’s greatest practitioner of the horror tale. In a September 1936 letter to Fantasy Magazine, “In Memoriam: Robert Ervin Howard,” Lovecraft wrote, “It is hard to describe precisely what made Mr. Howard’s stories stand out so sharply; but the real secret is that he himself was in every one of them, whether they were ostensibly commercial or not.” You could do worse than having your obituary written by the man who was Providence.
3. He was possessed of a multifaceted, complex personality that resists easy analysis. According to which biographies you read, Howard was a man of eclectic interests and contradictions—a recluse and a boisterous storyteller, possessed of a sharp, probing brain and a thirst for history, but also a love of the physical. He boxed and worked out assiduously to build up his body while stories flowed from the boundless imagination of his mind. Who was the real REH? Who knows? Howard seems to bring out the armchair psychologist in everyone, myself included.
4. His underlying themes are more relevant today than ever. As our society has become more and more secular, Howard, who adhered to an existentialist philosophy, resonates with the modern reader. Hyborian Age gods like Crom gave men the strength and will to forge their own destinies and then stepped aside to watch them succeed or fail, live or die. With no higher power controlling the strings or a safety net to catch us when we fall, life is simultaneously more frightening but also more liberating. It’s what you make of it, or in the case of Conan the Cimmerian what you can carve out with a strong sword arm. As noted REH scholar Rusty Burke wrote in the introduction to The Bloody Crown of Conan, “Our destiny, he says, does not lie in the stars, or in our noble blood, but in our willingness to create ourselves.”
5. He was so damned prolific. It’s both startling and humbling to think of how much Howard accomplished during his brief life, of which only a dozen years or so were spent as a professional writer. His most well-known characters—Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn—are only a part of his corpus. Howard also wrote boxing stories, historic fiction, hard-boiled detective tales, horror, and more. Only lately have I discovered that a rich part of his legacy is his letters, of which we now have full access thanks to the work of editor Rob Roehm. His Collected Poetry is another mine yielding vast treasures to the patient reader.
6. He was immensely talented. If none of the above were true, I believe that Howard’s legacy as a pillar of fantastic literature would still be secure because of his incomparable writing style and his ability to tell compelling stories. When you read Howard it’s impossible not to get swept up in his storytelling, including his sweeping scenes of dynamic action and color, his memorable personalities and characters, and his love of language. His tales are studded with vine-choked jungles concealing lost civilizations and lost treasures; monstrous snakes, ape-men, and crawlers of the dark; sinister wizards, scheming politicians, and blood-soaked battlefields. His Hyborian Age is simultaneously alien and recognizable, historic and fantastic. It reminds us of the sands of Egypt and the jungles of Africa and the decadence of the Roman Empire, but also transports us to places that never were and never could be.
7. He’s largely misunderstood by critics, even today. Google Robert E. Howard and you’ll find claims that he was racist (completely overblown, given the era in which he lived), sexist (untrue, he penned several strong female characters) and a simple, shallow writer of pulp. This latter is demonstrably false, as proven by the large and growing body of critical works in journals like TC, REH: Two Gun Raconteur, and The Dark Man, as well as the good work being done by the REH Electronic Amateur Press Association. Howard’s stories contain a remarkable degree of complexity beneath their brightly-painted surfaces and both stand up to and demand further analysis. Howard famously wrote about barbarism vs. civilization and the entropic nature of the universe. Reams of critical essays here and elsewhere have been written about Howard and his works, but I believe there’s much more to be explored and analyzed. The work of a Howard defender is never done.
8. Because he remains The Dark Man. Howard’s motivations and ultimate aspirations remain wreathed in mystery and the impenetrable, labyrinthine house of the human mind. He’s polarizing, complex, and resistant to psychoanalysis, a shadow from the past that we’ll never truly understand. All we can say for sure is that he was a damned good writer—and that’s enough for me.