Browsed by
Category: Robert E. Howard

From Robert E. Howard to Ray Bradbury: The Literary Influence of The Bible and The Odyssey

From Robert E. Howard to Ray Bradbury: The Literary Influence of The Bible and The Odyssey

Comments 8 comments
The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fitzgerald (Vintage Classics, 1990)

College lit classes introduced me to two works that had a profound influence on my own development as a writer.

The first was the King James version of The Bible. My family was Catholic and I’d read the Catholic Bible in my teen years. We didn’t read the whole Bible for my college class but read samples from King James, which is considered — by Catholics — to be a Protestant Bible. (It doesn’t include books that are part of the Catholic Bible, such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 & 2 Maccabees, and portions of Esther and Daniel.)

My college class did not read The Bible for religious reasons. We read it as literature, and the King James version is magnificent literature. I wasn’t even religious anymore myself but I loved the language.

…

Read More Read More

What I’ve Been Reading: October, 2026

What I’ve Been Reading: October, 2026

Comments 2 comments

I listen to a dozen audiobooks a month, easy. Often, a re-listen. I fall asleep with an audiobook timer set, every night. Having bought my bungalow in June, I try to spend a little time reading on the front porch, most days. Now that Fall weather has (FINALLY) settled in here in Columbus, I’m trying to be more intentional about it. Plus, the spare bedroom is actually the reading room.

So, I’ve gotten in some reading the past month.

SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN – CHUCK DIXON

I’ve blogged about Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian a couple times. I only began reading that one during COVID, and I now have five of the Marvel Omnibuses, as well as Roy Thomas’ terrific three-volume memoirs about the first 100 issues.

And just a year or two ago, I expanded my reading to include the black-and-white Savage Sword of Conan, also helmed by Thomas. Originally I preferred CtB. But the art style, and the depth of the stories, have really made me a SSoC fan. I read the first several Marvel volumes, which were by Thomas. But I’m currently reading Volume X, with Chuck Dixon doing the writing. Gary Kwapisz seems to have done most of the artwork (inked by Ernie Chan) and I’ve adapted to his style pretty quickly.

…

Read More Read More

Cimmerian September: Five Things I Think I Think – REH Edition

Cimmerian September: Five Things I Think I Think – REH Edition

Comments 4 comments

Welcome back to the final week of Cimmerian September. I realized that I’ve never done a Ten Things I Think I Think for REH. Now THAT seems remiss of me. So, we’ll ease into that with Five Things.

1) CONAN IS A ROGUE

Of course, “Rogues in the House” (which I wrote about for Hither Came Conan) is a favorite story among fans. It’s right there in the name. I’ve been re-reading some Solomon Kane lately, and I revisited El Borak last month. Those two are honorable men, fighting for justice, or nation, or to vanquish evil. Conan has his barbarian’s sense of honor. But he’s after wine, women, and money. He does ‘noble’ things, but that’s not what’s driving him. He’s a lusty sword swinger out for an adventurous life.

Sometimes I see the makings of a Conan story while I’m reading Kane and El Borak. But the character motivation is usually different. Doesn’t make it better or worse, but it does make the heroes different.

…

Read More Read More

Cimmerian September – Conan and The Lost Valley of Iskander

Cimmerian September – Conan and The Lost Valley of Iskander

Comments 0 Comment

Welcome back to week three of Cimmerian September.

Now, El Borak rivals Conan for my favorite REH character. I REALLY enjoy those stories. And I like Kirby O’Donnell, and I’ve covered those three tales, here at Black Gate. “Sword of the Hills”/”The Lost Valley of Iskander” is one of my favorites. It’s more like a Conan tale than any of the others. In fact, back in the days before Heroic Signatures started pushing out lots of new pastiches (some good, some less so), I started turning “Lost Valley…” into a Conan pastiche.

It was just for fun, whereas I’ve been very serious about my Sherlock Holmes, Solar Pons, and Nero Wolfe fiction. But if I were going to ‘do Conan,’ it would be with this story. Here’s the opening, which mirrors the El Borak original. 

Whatever you may think of this fragment, you absolutely should check out El Borak, if you haven’t. Dave Hardy wrote a killer essay about ‘The Swift’ for Discovering Robert E. Howard (he also wrote the Del Rey intro). So, read on!

The skittering of a stone broke the stillness and instantly awoke Conan, sleeping in the shadows of a rocky crag. With almost inhuman quickness, his right arm shot up and grasped a wiry wrist, halting the descent of a curved knife that glinted not in the starless sky. Corded muscles flexed, and the newcomer hissed between his teeth as he struggled in vain to push the knife through to its destination. The attacker’s weight held the Cimmerian on his back, but Conan brought his left hand up in a fist and smashed it into the side of his attacker’s head, barely noticeable pain bursting through his knuckles as they connected with the man’s skull.

…

Read More Read More

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: The Birth of Conan Scholarship

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: The Birth of Conan Scholarship

Comments 6 comments

We’re back for week two of Cimmerian September. Hopefully you saw last week’s post on Marvel’s King Conan comic, which I read for the very first time, to write about. Having read three, it definitely ranks below the two long-running series’ it followed: The Savage Sword of Conan, and Conan the Barbarian, for me.

Some of you know I had a hand in Hither Came Conan, from Rogue Blades Foundation. It is a SUPERB collection of essays on the original Conan stories, from a veritable Hall of Fame of Robert E. Howard scholars and fans. You read some of the essays in the book here at Black Gate, first. Jason Waltz expanded it greatly, incorporating the terrific blog series done by the late, terribly missed, Howard Andrew Jones, and Bill Ward. he also commissioned some new essays, never seen before. I penned a few new ones, including a look at the foundation stone of Conan scholarship.

I came to the REH world from the Sherlock Holmes universe, where writings about Holmes (and Arthur Conan Doyle) probably exceed that of any other fictional character. I certainly contributed my share. As Christopher Morley famously said, “Never have so many written so much about so little.” I brought that Sherlockiana feel to the works of Two Gun Bob. You can find links to all my pieces here at Black Gate, at the end of this article.

But first, read the last essay from Hither Came Conan: REH, Two Fans, and the Birth of Conan Scholarship. 

…

Read More Read More

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Marvel Does King Conan

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Marvel Does King Conan

Comments 1 comment

Even as another Summer of A (Black) Gat in the Hand ran in my Monday morning slot (nine years now!), I’ve been spending a lot of time in Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone on West 35th Street, in Manhattan. But I didn’t feel like I could miss out on Cimmerian September. A few of you may recall that last year I joined in the month-long celebration of Robert E. Howard’s mighty-thewed sword slinger.

Later this month I will be on the third and final Solomon Kane Youtube panel by the Robert E. Howard Foundation (here’s the first one). So, getting my REH on this month.

I’ve said that I came late to REH. I was in my forties and my young son would play with the wooden train sets in the kids playroom at Barnes and Noble. One day I picked up the first Del Rey Conan and read it for a bit. I ended up getting it later. And Robert E. Howard would ascend the ranks to surpass all my other favorite writers, with the exception of John D. MacDonald.

My buddy Howard Andrew Jones would stick a verbal elbow in my ribs that I was a rookie sword and sorcery fan, and never changed that opinion, as I still hadn’t shown any interest in C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry (hey – I’m interested in what I’m interested in). But I made up a lot of Conan ground (I had read Moorcock and Leiber by junior high), and I can hold my own in the REH room now.

…

Read More Read More

Neverwhens: World Building in a Shared Universe– Cormac Mac Art and The Isle of Swords

Neverwhens: World Building in a Shared Universe– Cormac Mac Art and The Isle of Swords

Comments 4 comments
Cormac Mac Art: Isle of Swords, by Matthew John (Titan Books, July 28, 2026). Cover uncredited

When Titan and Heroic Signatures announced they were bringing back Robert E. Howard pastiche, not just of Conan, but of many others of his rich panoply of heroes, I sacrificed many a reading night to take a deep-dive into the first year’s worth of stories, and chronicled the results at Black Gate. You can read about that descent into Cosmic Pastiche Horror here.

The truth was that, like most pastiche — assuming one excepts the value of pastiche at all — the results were mixed. Most was admirable attempts by authors who clearly had fond memories of REH, but didn’t really remember what made HIS fiction (not their memories of it, not their memories of it via Marvel comics, film, or even other pastiche) work. A few, namely the work by Scott Oden, John C. Hocking and James Lovegrove, “got” the characters they were writing (Oden can even sound like Howard), while an equal number could only be called… well… not worth the paper they weren’t printed on.

…

Read More Read More

David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part Two: Red Sonja

David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part Two: Red Sonja

Comments 29 comments
Red Sonja by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney (Ace Books, December 1981 – May 1983). Covers by Boris Vallejo

In addition to his Black Vulmea and Bran Mak Morn stories, David C. Smith collaborated with Richard L. Tierney (1936 –2022) on six novels in a series about Red Sonja. Though often described as Robert E. Howard pastiches, that label is not completely accurate. Red Sonja (spelled with a J), is not a Howard character, although she is based on a couple of female swordslingers Howard did create, particularly — it seems to me — on Valeria, from the Conan story “Red Nails.” (A very similar character named Valeria appeared in the first Conan movie — Conan the Barbarian.)

Howard did create a character named Red Sonya (spelled with a “y”), who appeared as a secondary character in one historical tale — “The Shadow of the Vulture,” from the collection Sowers of the Thunder. She had red hair instead of blonde like Valeria, but otherwise is less reminiscent of Red Sonja than is Valeria.

…

Read More Read More

David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part One

David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part One

Comments 12 comments

For the Witch of the Mists by David C. Smith & Richard Tierney (Zebra, January 1978) and The Witch of the Indies by David C. Smith (Zebra, June 1977). Covers by Doug Beekman and Stephen Fabian

I consider David C. Smith (1952) a friend. We’ve never met face to face but we’ve corresponded and have spoken on the phone. As with writers such as Karl Edward Wagner and Andy Offutt, I first became aware of David as an author through a connection to Robert E. Howard.

While in REHupa, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, I routinely did reviews of Howard pastiches. And so I came upon The Witch of the Indies (Zebra, 1977, cover by Stephen Fabian). Shortly after I picked up For the Witch of the Mists by Smith & Richard Tierney (Zebra, 1978, Cover by Doug Beekman).

…

Read More Read More

The Purple Prose of Robert E. Howard

The Purple Prose of Robert E. Howard

Comments 12 comments


The Sowers of the Thunder, a collection by Robert E. Howard (Zebra Books,
March 1975, and Ace Books, July 1979). Covers by Jeff Jones and Esteban Maroto

A personal rant this morning on the issue of: Purple Prose.

A criticism often leveled at Heroic Fantasy, particularly sword & sorcery and sword & planet, is that it’s full of purple prose. Purple prose is flowery and ornate, overloaded with metaphor and melodrama, and full of cliché.

We’ve all seen examples, but bad writing can be found anywhere, in any genre. It irritates me to see all writers in a genre lumped together. For example, I’ve heard Robert E. Howard called a purple prose writer. I probably turned purple in anger in response. Most of REH’s mature writing is remarkably lean, with seldom more than one, and often no qualifying adjectives for his nouns.

…

Read More Read More