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Post by deuce on Feb 18, 2016 20:54:28 GMT -5
EDIT: This thread carries on exactly as the one from the old forum. Its purpose is to provide a storehouse of quotes from members of the professional artistic community (authors, screenwriters, graphic artists) that are positive testimonials about the legacy of Robert E. Howard. The quotes don't have to explicitly say REH influenced that artist, just that they liked/admired his work. Except for well-documented cases or very reputable sources, there's no need for any "hearsay"-type quotes (ie, "I know a guy who said he heard Stephanie Meyer say..."). Also, just because someone mentions "Conan" doesn't mean much. They may like the character from the cartoon. They may have zero idea who REH is. Now, if a professional artist/author mentions a character like Turlogh O'Brien or Steve Costigan, then it's pretty obvious they know Howard without mentioning the man, but that situation comes up very rarely. Hopefully, if there are new Del Rey editions or whatever, those new editions will have quotes from authors more likely to move units, like GRRM or Larry Correia (Howard fans). There are Correia and GRRM quotes I'll post later. Lovecraft certainly hasn't suffered from Gaiman plugging him for 20yrs. If nothing else, you can point a friend who hasn't read REH to this thread or quote it to them. More than likely, there will be an author they like on here. Oh yeah, and you can find other, cool writers on here you might not have known about who are REH fans. Works both ways. Just like on the old forum, where plenty of people provided great quotes, I hope to see others helping out this thread. ------------------------------------------------------Mexican-born artist, Mario Guevara, is a life-long REH fan: Guevara has long been a fan of Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane: as a child growing up in Mexico, Guevara used to read "Conan" novels and comic books (...) Guevara had read some of Howard's original Solomon Kane stories, including "Rattle of Bones," but the artist said that when it came to developing the look for "Solomon Kane's" titular character, little research was required. "When Dark Horse asked me to send in Solomon Kane samples, I was able to draw him immediately, remembering the pictures that I saw as a child," Guevara said. Jeffrey Jones produced some seminal "Solomon Kane" artwork for an illustrated edition of Howard's original stories called "Red Shadows," and was cited by Guevara as an inspiration for his take on the character.(CBR)
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Post by deuce on Feb 18, 2016 22:52:09 GMT -5
Bad-ass comic scribe, Sean Fahey, loves himself some Howard: If you’re writing genre fiction and you can’t acknowledge the profound influence of Ray Bradbury and Rod Serling, you’re not being honest; “The Twilight Zone” is a graduate level course on how to write meaningful short stories with complex characters. Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft are two other very powerful influences.
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Post by deuce on Feb 19, 2016 23:34:55 GMT -5
Author/screenwriter Edward M. Erdelac puts Howard front and center: What authors or novels have influenced you the most, in your work, and in life?
Robert E. Howard, Tolkien, Richard Matheson, Joe Lansdale, Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, Larry McMurtry, Alan Moore, Mickey Spillane, Ray Bradbury, George Macdonald Fraser, Patrick O’Brian, John Steinbeck….I’m probably forgetting somebody.
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Post by deuce on Feb 24, 2016 13:03:47 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Feb 24, 2016 13:17:54 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Feb 25, 2016 19:47:46 GMT -5
"New Pulp" author, Frank Schildiner, is a big fan of Howard: DF: What writers have influenced you?
FS: Oh man, so many! Lovecraft, Howard, Ernst, Jack London, Walter Gibson, Bram Stoker, Jack Kirby, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Will Murray, Win Scott Eckert, JM Lofficier, David Gerrold, Clark Ashton Smith...I could be doing this for a very long time...
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Post by samarobrin on Feb 26, 2016 11:51:17 GMT -5
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Post by deuce on Feb 26, 2016 12:03:20 GMT -5
The President isn't a member of the artistic community in any sense. Nor did he reference Robert E. Howard. This thread is not for stray mentions of Conan (they might be referring to pastiche Conan) by plumbers or somebody on Amazon. This thread is for quotes from artists, authors and musicians in praise of Robert E. Howard and his fiction. This thread is here to demonstrate the lasting influence of REH on the artistic community. I'll edit my original post to be more clear. That quote would be awesome in a "Conan in Pop Culture" thread.
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Post by deuce on Feb 27, 2016 0:49:14 GMT -5
William Meikle is a Scottish author and a fine one at that. Here's his website: www.williammeikle.com/index.htmAnyway, he's a big fan of Robert E. Howard. Some quotes: Willie Meikle, what are some of your favorite pieces of fantasy fiction?
Willie: I’ve tried my hand at several works of fantasy over the years, and they almost always come out the same way — pulpy, with swords, sorcery, monsters and bloody battles to the fore. It’s the way I roll.
I may start with good intentions, of writing high fantasy with political intrigue and courtly goings on but, as in the Watchers series, my inner barbarian muscles to the fore, says "Bugger this!" for a lark, and starts hacking.
The blame for my enthusiasm can be laid squarely at several doors.
There’s Conan, of course, and Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon and the whole pantheon of Eternal Champions; there’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Solomon Kane, Jon Shannow, the princes of Amber and the shades of a thousand more by the likes of Poul Anderson, A. Merritt, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H Rider Haggard and many others.
Here’s a personal top ten.
10. Dwellers in the Mirage – A. Merritt Completely bonkers melange of lost world adventure, reincarnation, Norse Gods, faerie and pulp heroes doing what a man’s gotta do. Merritt had a wild imagination, and here he gives it full rein, and even includes a nod to the dreaming, tentacled god in the depths. Wonderful stuff.
9. The Worm Ouroboros – E R Eddison Baroque, multi-layered and demanding of concentration, here’s a proto Game of Thrones -knightly chivalry, dark deeds,threatening monsters and all. Full of strange names, archaic language and strangely compelling, sucking you into the world completely.
8. Ill Met in Lankhmar- Fritz Leiber The best double act in S&S history, and my favorite adventure of theirs. Not much to say except it’s a great read, full of wit and charm as you’d expect from one of the best genres writers of the Twentieth Century.
(...) 4. Conan the Conqueror – Robert E Howard
The granddad of the genre, and still one of my favorites. I keep hoping for the chance to submit to a Conan anthology. Hopefully someday...
----------------- [Referring to his S&S character, Augustus Seton]
The late 1590s were a time of turmoil. Scotland was on the verge of many changes that would shape its future, from religious reformation, to the union of the crowns with England. But in many ways the country was still rooted in its medieval past, and fear of witches and demons was still a large part of everyday life. Seton confronts demons, both internal and external, as he wanders on the fringes of history.
Robert Howard has covered similar ground with Solomon Kane, but I wanted Augustus Seton to be more of a pragmatist, a man set on his path through having succumbed to his baser desires, and now forced to pay the penalty. Seton's antecedents are characters from my teenage reading: the aforementioned Kane, Moorcock's Elric and Corum, and, possibly the main one, Gemmell's Jon Shannow, the Jerusalem Man, forever seeking personal redemption.
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Post by deuce on Feb 27, 2016 11:30:25 GMT -5
Stephen Jones is a very highly-esteemed editor and author in the the horror/fantasy field: www.stephenjoneseditor.com/Jones was the editor for the Orion/Gollancz collections, The Conan Chronicles and Conan's Brethren. He had this to say: I've always enjoyed his sword & sorcery and weird menace stuff, and horror stories such as 'The Horror from the Mound', 'The Black Stone' and of course 'Pigeons from Hell' are amongst some of the best the genre has to offer. In fact, I'm trying to convince Orion to launch a 'Horror Masterpieces' series so that I can put together a definitive collection of Howard's horror fiction.
In the genres he worked in, Howard was (and still is) a giant. It has been more than six decades since he cut his life so tragically short, and it would be impossible to guess what his reputation would be today had he lived out his natural years. I'm not sure I would subscribe to August Derleth's suggestion that he would have become a major regionalist. However, what is remarkable, is that despite his relatively brief career, and the types of publications his work appeared in, his fiction and concepts have endured and grown over the years, and he is as much of an influence now as he has ever been. That certainly proves that there is something enduring about his work and is a testament (if one was needed) to his skill as a writer.[Regarding REH's influence on later writers] Of course, far too many to mention. And who knows, maybe The Conan Chronicles will influence a new generation of heroic fantasy writers, the same way the Weird Tales, Gnome Press and Lancer printings influenced their own generations...? I certainly hope so, and to this end I wrote a 5,000-word Afterword split over both volumes which charts the careers of Howard and his most famous creation. My intention with this was to put these stories into perspective while at the same time to try and spark the same kind of enthusiasm and excitement in Howard's writing (and other members of the Weird Tales circle) that I experienced when I first discovered the Conan books around the age of 14.
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Post by deuce on Mar 9, 2016 12:12:08 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2016 15:00:51 GMT -5
I've always loved Roy Krenkel's introduction in the 'Sower of the Thunder'
Introduction
HOWARD WAS a great writer -- it has been said before -- a score of times. It bears repeating.
Listen:
When I was a fighting man, the kettle drums they beat; The people scattered gold dust before my horse's feet; Now I am a great king, the people hound my track With poison in my wine-cup and daggers at my back.
It's all there -- all the tawdry pomp of public acclaim, the empty prize of kingship, the burden of duty, the subtle treachery -- fear; in little more than a couplet! I have read lengthy novels that told it less well.
His words rang like brazen hammers on some anvil of the gods. Dark gods -- and wayward.
It is custom for artists who undertake the writing of introductory essays to acknowledge the 'privilege' attendant to illustrating the volume in question. rather, in this case at least, say it was -- a mandate! Some tales demand placement between decent bindings, along with such adornment as skill permits. (If the implications of this seem too sententious for the mid-twentieth century ego, so much the worse for that ego -- but remember, I grew up on TROS OF SAMOTHRACE!)
I am not an illustrator in the proper or classic sense of that oft-times ambiguous word, nor never shall be. The attempt here was not so much to 'illustrate' the words of the text (Howard needs no interpreter), but rather to embellish that text -- to space it out as it were -- with a kind of pictorial mood in echo of the copy.
One reads Howard distantly, as though through a mist of time -- fleeting glimpses, lightning sharp, are caught of marching men in grim armor, of battlements stormed by savage hordes, of whispered intrigues in tapestried candlelight. As from afar we hear the summons of the oliphant, the ring of steel on steel, the screams of the dying; too vast -- too terrible -- to grasp as reality, and, somehow, the more 'real' for all that! What emerges, sharp and clear, is the mood.
Which brings me to an aspect of Howard -- and of his work -- that has, so far as I can recall, been curiously overlooked: his 'feel' for tragedy, and for -- what shall I call it -- evanescence?
For my road runs out in thistles and my dreams have turned to dust, And my pinions fade and falter to the raven-wings of rust.
He was aware of this quality of 'things passing' -- of time ravelling away -- as was no other figure in the whole field of literature. It colored all his work; his best prose is built around it, his poetry is redolent of it! Futility, and the emptiness of men's dreams, the feeling of things -- of life -- slipping through one's fingers -- unbidden, ineluctable -- and wayward!
It has been said of Burroughs, and I doubt it not, that he hated death -- and by implication, loved life. Held up to Howard he was an amateur! Nothing short of Godhood, and dominion over all time, could have quenched Howard's hunger. He knew barbarism is man's natural state, that beauty is a fleeting spark in the night of eternity, that 'even the lovliest sunset fades!' and he hated it! My own thought-patterns run just close enough to understand the point of view: Howard lived with it!
On that dark day in 1936 when Howard put a bullet through his brain it was no simplistic, psychiatric 'mother-fixation,' no standard devaluation of ego peculiar to common man, nor even that weariness of mind endemic to those who know the world is mad -- but, rather, that rash, unbridled 'Gaelic Waywardness,' so much a part of his complex person, that worked the dreadful deed!
There are 'suicides' and there are 'murderers' -- the former interpret the intolerable as reflections of their own inadequacies, and expiate the fault in self-destruction -- the latter (in identical circumstance) lay blame on the artifice of fate, and strike out against an unfair universe. And, as any good, functioning egoist 'murderer' could tell you, one way to snuff out an unfair cosmos is with a judiciously placed bullet! A little less of 'gut-thinking,' a little more ego, some balance in evaluating the proportion of things, just a bit more of laughter -- and he might be with us still -- but then we might not have had this book...
Here in these four tales -- garnered from that great old magazine Oriental Stories -- will be found the very essence of Robert E Howard in his most stark and tragic vein.
The protagonists, like figures of fate, move across a world evoked by nightmare. Black and monstrous deeds, shining heroisms, high courage and vile treachery are here -- and golden cities (with nighted dungeons) and laughter, and lovely women, and death, and -- madness!
From the first opening lines to the final denouement in some some blood-drenching vengeance these tales move to their inevitable endings with the sureness of Wagnering Libretto.
This is no fare for delicate aesthetes, or genteel old ladies -- one emerges from the reading almost as from some real and dreadful event personally encountered. You feel, along with Howard, some portion at least, of that same anguish of loss for kings and kingdoms sold to doom -- for great deeds come to naught, for beauty quenched, and laughter stilled forever.
You will not read these for tales -- you will experience them!
Read now... and see....
Roy G. Krenkel 1972
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Post by deuce on Mar 9, 2016 15:56:51 GMT -5
I've always loved that myself. I still remember where I was when I first read that. Roy was a great guy by all acounts and an excellent artist (including lots of Howardian art), but obviously he was also a very perceptive critic of Robert E. Howard. BTW, if anyone has access to Gordon R. Dickson's intro to the paperback edition of The Road of Azrael (I lost mine in the Flood), I'd be deeply grateful to whoever posts it. Gordy was One of Us, too.
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Post by deuce on Mar 9, 2016 21:41:36 GMT -5
I've always loved that myself. I still remember where I was when I first read that. Roy was a great guy by all acounts and an excellent artist (including lots of Howardian art), but obviously he was also a very perceptive critic of Robert E. Howard. I remember seeing his name in the British Sphere Conan paperbacks with Frazetta covers, and then later reading that he provided background info regarding Howard's character when Frazetta first started painting the character. We should be thankful for that if it's true. ...... It's true. Krenkel and Frazetta were tight. About the only mystery/controversy is if Roy simply consulted in an "info" sense (Frank hadn't read REH and perhaps never did), or if he also helped with a few of the compositions.
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Post by deuce on Mar 10, 2016 12:36:50 GMT -5
Larry Correia is a wildly successful (and Hugo-nominated) sci-fi/fantasy author. From Larry Correia's blog post: (show old-timey picture of HP Lovecraft, show old-timey picture of Robert E. Howard, show old-timey picture of Robert E. Howard punching out a Tyrannosaurs Rex while a woman in a chainmail bikini holds onto his leg)
Even though those guys are totally freaking awesome, and Conan the Barbarian is a thousand times more awesome than the Great Gatsby, you wouldn’t know it by listening to literary snobs.Context is an apparent kerfuffle over diversity in SF/Fantasy. Quote is from Larry Correia regarding a woman who said... “Larry Correia’s macho focused urban fantasy with a liberal dose of gun porn is message fic”
That sound you heard was the point whooshing obliviously past some minor blogger’s head, because I said in the article that she Skimmed Until Offended that we all can put message in, but we can only usually pull it off when we do story and entertainment first. Duh.
I do think she meant that as an insult. Personally, I think it would make a good cover quote. That’s sort of like that one reviewer who tried to insult me by saying that I was a “modern day Robert E. Howard.” Sweet. But that tells you something about someone when they consider comparing you to the guy who invented Conan and Solomon Kane an insult.Another quote: In the interest of full disclosure, my writing has been influenced by HP Lovecraft, because if you don’t like giant sky squids, there is something fundamentally wrong with you. I also share a birthday with Lovecraft and Ron Paul (yes, I know, this explains a lot). In actuality I’m more of a Robert E. Howard fan than a Lovecraft fan. I once got a negative review that said “though Correia uses some Lovecraftian themes, he is more of a modern Robert E. Howard” and he meant it as an insult. Personally, I wanted to use that as a cover blurb.
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