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.

These stories are very hard to find. Their original print appearance was in 1984, when François Truchaud translated the El borak fragments en Français for the NéO volume El Borak l’Eternel. A few years later, Cryptic Publications issued chapbooks with most of the material of this upcoming volume, but in limited runs and those fragments have not been reprinted since the ’80s.

The table of contents:

The Early Adventures of El Borak

Introduction: The Making of El Borak

by David Hardy

The Coming of El Borak

The Iron Terror

Untitled, “Gordon, the American”

The Coming of El Borak

Khoda Khan’s Tale

El Borak

Untitled, “I emptied my revolver”

The Land of Mystery

The Shunned Castle

The White Jade Ring

A Power Among the Islands

North of Khyber

Intrigue in Kurdistan

Lal Singh, Oriental Gentleman

The Sword of Lal Singh (poem)

The Tale of the Rajah’s Ring

The Further Adventures of Lal Singh

Lal Singh, Oriental Gentleman

The Adventures of Yar Ali Khan

The Song of Yar Ali Khan (poem)< The Lion Gate

Untitled, “When Yar Ali Khan crept”

Untitled, “Two men were standing”

Untitled Poem, “Now bright, now red”

Steve Allison: The Sonora Kid

The Sonora Kid—Cowhand

The Sonora Kid’s Winning Hand

Red Curls and Bobbed Hair

Untitled, “Madge Meraldson”

Untitled, “The Hades Saloon”

Untitled, “A blazing sun”

Untitled, “The way it came about”

Untitled, “The hot Arizona sun”

Untitled, “Steve Allison”

Brotherly Advice

Desert Rendezvous

The West Tower

Miscellanea

Under the Great Tiger

by Robert E. Howard & Tevis Clyde Smith

Untitled, “A Cossack and a Turk”

Spears of the East

Untitled, “. . . that is, the artistry”

Untitled, “Thure Khan gazed out”

Synopsis: “Blood of the Gods”

Map for “Blood of the Gods”

Map of unidentified El Borak Story

“Thoughts of an Afghan on a Raid” – drawing

“Where East and West shall meet” – drawing

Two Sketches found on the back of typescript pages

List of Middle Eastern Rulers – typescript

List of names found in El Borak stories – manuscript

As you can see above, several maps and drawings complete this promising volume. Fans of Robert E. Howard will have a chance, with this collection of his early non-professional writings, to better understand his creative process.

DEUCE ADDS: I’m once again glad to see Dave Hardy’s name associated with an El Borak project. The man knows his Howardian desert adventures. I’m also glad to see the early Sonora Kid tales reprinted. REH, as was his wont, connected the Kid to El Borak, making Allison a cousin of Gordon. I read “Knife, Bullet and Noose” before I ever enjoyed a Howard Conan yarn, so I’m a Steve Allison fan from way back. I’ve never read the Lal Singh or Yar Ali Khan tales, but I’ve always been a fan of those characters from their appearances in the El Borak yarns, thus I’m looking forward to those as well.

Bill Thom of Coming Attractions posted this announcement to Howard fans: “Anyone interested in this volume is encouraged to send an email to the REH Foundation to help them determine the size of the print run. The email address is info@rehfoundation.org.”