Is it possible to be a great writer without being a good writer? I guess it depends on what you mean by great and good.

I consider Robert E. Howard one of the great fantasy writers, on a level lower than Tolkien but higher than most of the others. And yet his writing has many, many weaknesses. The whole, however, is greater than the sum of the parts.

Like most Baby Boomer Howard fans, I first discovered Conan – warrior, thief, pirate, mercenary, and king – through the old Lancer series of paperbacks, most of them with amazing Frazetta covers. That series printed all the Conan stories in what the editors considered proper biographical order. What purists don’t like about them is that the publishers, sensing a cash cow, padded the series out. Unfinished Conan stories were “completed.” Non-Conan Howard stories that could be wedged into the timeline were rewritten to make them Conan stories. And they added pure pastiches done by the editors.

This present collection, Conan the Barbarian, takes a bibliographical approach. All the Conan stories published in Howard’s lifetime are here, in the order published. That means that we begin with two stories of Conan at his pinnacle, as king of Aquilonia, then turn aside to a number of stories about his earlier adventures, and finally conclude with the novel The Hour of the Dragon, a last tale of King Conan (and in my opinion the best Conan story). The collection concludes with Howard’s essay, “The Hyborian Age,” in which he explains the rise and fall of the imaginary prehistoric world in which Conan lived, loved, and slew. Continue reading ‘Conan the Barbarian,’ by Robert E. Howard →