Tell us Your Introduction to Howard Story!
Sept 30, 2019 9:10:44 GMT -5
Post by keith on Sept 30, 2019 9:10:44 GMT -5
This is a story I've told again and again online, cackling toothlessly into my gruel and making younger people groan, I'm sure. But I can't resist another repetition. My discovery of Robert E. Howard came through Conan, when I was fourteen, which places it in 1960. In Hobart, Tasmania, a nerdy high school kid in love with science, science fiction, pulp generally (but Shakespeare and Dickens as well, and weren't they the pulp of their day?) I haunted the library and the second hand bookshops. There was one just across the street from the Hobart Library. In that I discovered (oh, joy!) THE SWORD OF RHIANNON by Leigh Brackett. It was one half of the old Ace Double, but it had been cut in half and rebound by the library. Then it had been swiped from the library, the page with the library stamp on it pasted down, and sold to the second-hand bookshop just across the road.
What perfidy!
But in accordance with Ace Double Novel custom, the name of the other half of the double was printed opposite the title page. It was, of course, CONAN THE CONQUEROR by Howard. I promptly went looking for it in the library, found it still there, rebound in stiff cardboard like THE SWORD OF RHIANNON. Right away I dove into the Hyborian Age and never really emerged. THE COMING OF CONAN and THE SWORD OF CONAN from Gnome Press were on the same shelf. The former contains, as I guess we all know, "The Tower of the Elephant" "Rogues in the House" and "Queen of the Black Coast" as well as King Kull stories, "The Shadow Kingdom" and "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" along with the poem "The King and the Oak."
Then came the big Howard revival, with Lancer Books and then Ace and Zebra, reprinting all the Howard they could get, through the '60s and '70s.
That, I can tell you, was some kind of time for me.
What perfidy!
But in accordance with Ace Double Novel custom, the name of the other half of the double was printed opposite the title page. It was, of course, CONAN THE CONQUEROR by Howard. I promptly went looking for it in the library, found it still there, rebound in stiff cardboard like THE SWORD OF RHIANNON. Right away I dove into the Hyborian Age and never really emerged. THE COMING OF CONAN and THE SWORD OF CONAN from Gnome Press were on the same shelf. The former contains, as I guess we all know, "The Tower of the Elephant" "Rogues in the House" and "Queen of the Black Coast" as well as King Kull stories, "The Shadow Kingdom" and "The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune" along with the poem "The King and the Oak."
Then came the big Howard revival, with Lancer Books and then Ace and Zebra, reprinting all the Howard they could get, through the '60s and '70s.
That, I can tell you, was some kind of time for me.