Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2016 12:50:13 GMT -5
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. That review must of made Correia's day.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 12, 2016 11:04:25 GMT -5
OK, I'm just throwing this out there to my fellow forumites. On the blurb page of King Kull (Lancer, 3rd ed.) there's this: "Beautifully told." -- A. MerrittI have to think Lin Carter (the editor) put that in there. Thing is, while I have no doubt that Merritt read and liked REH's work in Weird Tales, I've seen no confirmation of that. Ever. Anybody know where the quote (if real) came from?
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 13, 2016 18:31:40 GMT -5
'Although he had his faults as a writer, Howard was a natural storyteller.' L. Sprague de Camp, from his introduction to Conan The Conqueror (Sphere)
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 14, 2016 12:29:47 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 14, 2016 16:00:12 GMT -5
Speaking of Gene Wolfe... Wolfe is one of the most respected living authors of fantasy and sci-fi. Everybody from George R.R. Martin to Neil Gaiman admires the guy. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_WolfeWell, Gene Wolfe admires Robert E. Howard. Here's a piece where he's giving advice on life. He references REH twice, at beginning and end. books.google.com/books?id=SWaSaLyJj9wC&pg=PT75&lpg=PT75&dq=%22gene+wolfe%22+%22robert+e.+howard%22&source=bl&ots=Rg8a8RiwfI&sig=fXGHuDOyCHvJ4nv4E79o1EeUmp0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiNtaum2MDLAhWrtYMKHU0rDgk4ChDoAQg4MAY#v=onepage&q=%22gene%20wolfe%22%20%22robert%20e.%20howard%22&f=falseThen we have his essay, "The Best Introduction to the Mountains." Wolfe is mainly talking about Tolkien, but he works Howard in there. Wolfe writes that he received The Fellowship of the Ring in 1956 and inscribed a poem from Thoreau on its half-title page. He later inscribed a poem by Conrad Aiken in the The Two Towers. Wolfe then writes this: By the time I received Two Towers, I had learned my lesson — I ordered The Return of the King at once. The quotation I inscribed on its half-title page is from Robert E. Howard. You have my leave to quarrel with me, but I think it the finest of the three [poems], indeed one of the finest things I have ever read.
Into the west, unknown of man,
Ships have sailed since the world began.
Read, if you dare, what Skelos wrote,
With dead hands fumbling his silken coat;
And follow the ships through the wind-blown wrack–
Follow the ships that come not back.
If you remember the end of this last volume, how Frodo rides to the Grey Havens in the long Firth of Lune and boards the white ship, never to be seen again in Middle-earth, you will understand why I chose that particular quotation and why I treasure it (and the book which holds it) even today. Wolfe, who won a Rhysling Award for poetry, thinks that highly of Howard's verse from a Conan story. At that time, The Pool of the Black One (whence the poem) had been published twice. Ever. You had to work to find Conan tales in the 1950s. Gene Wolfe was obviously a fan and still is. He also contributed to the Cross Plains Universe collection. He certainly didn't need the exposure. He was just paying a debt to the memory of REH. Finally, I feel that Wolfe's "Latro" series about a bad-ass mercenary from early Rome (still pretty barbaric in that period) is kind of his homage to REH. While Gene has never said anything about it (he rarely does interviews), at least one reviewer sees the connection: www.emcit.com/emcit134.php?a=2So yeah, REH has some heavy hitters on his team.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 16, 2016 8:37:03 GMT -5
Speaking of Neil Gaiman... I assume y'all are familiar with him. A respected and succesful fantasy/horror author. Did you know he was a Howard fan as a kid and he still is (apparently) today? Check out this reminiscence from Neil: books.google.com/books?id=1x7mpIhjGhcC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=gaiman+%22robert+e.+howard%22+%22nine+year%22&source=bl&ots=n_FKgGoUJg&sig=wRZKzmij001wIADklgc8QXp03a0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjSm8mZpcXLAhXpvYMKHa3kApAQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=gaiman%20%22robert%20e.%20howard%22%20%22nine%20year%22&f=falseAnd then we have this from ten years ago: journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/01/no-cats-allowed.htmlScroll down just a bit and you'll find this quote from Gaiman: "I enjoyed Michael Dirda writing in the Washington Post about Conan the Barbarian and Robert E. Howard..."In addition to that, we know he wrote an introduction for The Solomon Kane Sketchbook in 1997: howardworks.com/SavageTalesSolomanKaneSketchbook.htmlI don't have the text for it, but I'm pretty sure he didn't write anything like "REH? Solomon Kane? They sucked." Finally, there is this quote from Gaiman: “I love the word 'fantasy'... but I love it for the almost infinite room it gives an author to play: an infinite playroom, of a sort, in which the only boundaries are those of the imagination. I do not love it for the idea of commercial fantasy. Commercial fantasy, for good or for ill, tends to drag itself through already existing furrows, furrows dug by J. R. R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, leaving a world of stories behind it, excluding so much."Here he is obviously counting REH as one of the "Big Two" of fantasy, right alongside JRRT.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 16, 2016 9:43:57 GMT -5
I just got hold of the text, thanks to REH scholar extraordinaire, Lee Breakiron. Here it is: "All great books, as I said at the head of this piece, are illustrated books; it is just that some of them are still waiting for their artists. I hope that, for the Solomon Kane stories at least, the wait may be over.
Neil Gaiman, September 1997"Thus, we see that Gaiman counts the SK tales as being among the "great books." Case closed, in my opinion.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 16, 2016 15:56:50 GMT -5
Tim Willocks is, IMO, one of the best authors writing today. www.timwillocks.com/He's also a Howard fan. This is what he had to say over on conan.com awhile back: I am Tim Willocks. I registered on this site to thank you guys for your support, which I greatly appreciate. I am honoured that you should give Tannhauser a place in Valhalla with Conan himself.
REH's Conan was one of my great inspirations when I was but a lad. Along with Sergio Leone's 'Man With No Name', the western novel character 'Edge' by George G. Gilman (the first ten were amazing; I don't know if they are still available but worth looking for), and the novels of Sven Hassel (again, the earlier ones are best - Wheels of Terror in particular).
T's body count, by the way, is over 150 in Twelve Children, all individual deaths. The only wound he receives is from a boy with a sling. I based his fighting attitudes and style on the great karate masters I have trained with over the last thirty years. I achieved a respectable level, 2nd Dan, and won a minor competition here and there, but whenever I came across the real virtuosos I was completely stunned, dazzled, overwhelmed, by their speed, insight, foresight and above all decisiveness. A different dimension, almost supernatural. I felt like a two-year old. And no matter how hard a modern martial artist trains, he sleeps in a bed and his life is not at stake. So how much more extraordinary must the fighters of the past have been? When not just their lives were at stake but also notions of honour that are now incomprehensible.
Unlike in The Religion, where he had the janissaries to contend with, in Twelve Children he is facing, essentially, volunteer policemen and street thugs.I couldn't bring myself to let them lay a glove on him - or rather, I just didn't believe that he would let them. Personally, it often annoys me in movies when the hero gets wounded just for the sake of making his life a bit more difficult, a fake tension. If you are that good, you don't lose a single point. Why wouldn't you kill them all? Why would even cross your mind to show mercy? My main frustration in writing the action was that it takes sixty-seconds' worth of words to describe a move that would take only two seconds (or less) to execute.
I think some readers will doubt the realism of all that, but to me it is true realism. I have absolutely no doubt that such men existed. Shakespeare is full of them. I once saw a former New York state tennis champion play a former Polish national champion and Grand Slam contender. There are a lot of really good tennis players in New York State; but the Polish guy crushed him - he didn't concede a single point, let alone a game. The local crowd fell into a kind of horrified silence. The Polish champion just lived, breathed, perceived in a different dimension. Tannhauser is essentially a kind of five-times Grand Slam champion of combat. It's not that there are not others in his league, it's just that I couldn't imagine any of them being in Paris at that time - or certainly not among the packs of rabid murderers.
Anyway, thanks again for your generous and thoughtful comments.
I will sign off with this REH quotation, to which I often return for reassurance when I worry that Tannhauser is going too far (which is often):
“Let me live deep while I live. Let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.” Conan in 'Queen of the Black Coast'.
All the best
Tim Willocks
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 19, 2016 9:50:38 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 19, 2016 13:15:42 GMT -5
Author F. Paul Wilson dedicated his ground-breaking horror novel, The Keep, to "HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard".
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 20, 2016 11:23:29 GMT -5
Joe R. Lansdale is a well-known author, primarily for horror/weird tales with a Texan/Western setting. Bubba-Hotep and Hap & Leonard have both been adapted from his fiction. Joe's a Howard fan to the point of attending Howard Days 2013, where I had a chance to talk with him about Howard, the pulps and comics. He has this to say about REH... Somewhere around 1970 or so I came across Almuric by Robert E. Howard.
Man. What a killer. There was a taste of Burroughs here, and a big ole dollop of Jack London, and some other influences as well, but there was a whole lot of a guy named Robert E. Howard. Already the things that made him unique were slipping through.
His work was raw and savage and original and he was a lover of the primitive, or at least the primitive as he viewed it. But Howard was not a primitive talent. He was well read. This is proved by his correspondence with others, and by the discussions Ms. Novalyne Price, perhaps his one true love, reported in her book about Howard, One Who Walks Alone.
Howard, like Burroughs, is reaching into that part of us that is forever Huck Finn; the wild boy free of all restraints and inhibitions, out for a ride on the world, spurs dug in, riding the bucks and the jumps like a rodeo rider. And Howard is studied enough, purposeful enough, to do just that, give us that bucking, wild ride. In these kinds of fantasies, when well done, and Almuric is well done, you can project yourself into the main character, and fill him up, give him bits of yourself that are not in the narrative, become Esau Cairn.
Howard could turn a phrase, or several of them. He could engage you, excite you, and still stay on target with his theme.
Take this example:
“On his rude throne above us, old Khossuth lifted a spear and cast it earthward. Our eyes followed its flight, and as it sheathed its shining blade in the turf outside the ring, we hurled ourselves at each other, iron masses of bone and thew, vibrant with life and the lust to destroy.”
This scene is the theme of the novel, and Howard never loses this thematic intent in his adventure. It is front and foremost, the idea that being close to nature and our basic impulses is the way men and women are meant to live.
It takes a storyteller to truly take us away, to lose us inside the pages of his tale, and what makes a great storyteller is the ability to tell you a bald faced lie and make you believe it, make you part of it, make you the character.
Sure, his characters weren’t Ahab or Nick Adams or Augie March, but they were in some ways better, for they were archetypes, and Howard could make us become them. When you get right down to it, some of our finest writers fail to do that. What Howard had was something that is often overlooked. He had the ability to make the narrative the character; it was the totality of the book that was the character, all else was there to serve the story, and to finally create this wonderful, bumpy faced novel with blood in its teeth.
This, as well as the ability to convince, is more of an inborn talent than a skill, and it serves a writer well if he or she has it, not to mention it’s helpful to politicians as well. Because it is not only necessary to lie convincingly to make your stories work, but on some deeper level, the good storyteller, or politician, must somehow believe his or her own lies to the extent that they become, well, characters of a sort, a thing you can embrace that somehow goes beyond mere words.
When Howard was writing Almuric, or the bulk of his tales, I don’t doubt that he entered into a kind of trance that put him right where he was writing about. Made those worlds so real to him that they became real to us.Lansdale talks about REH and Solomon Kane here: www.johnjosephadams.com/dead-mans-hand/2014/04/16/author-interview-joe-r-lansdale/
|
|
Libaax
Wanderer
Burhan the Puntlander
Posts: 25
|
Post by Libaax on Mar 20, 2016 11:29:28 GMT -5
Landsdale is a quality author whose Hap and Leonard books i have read and i have wondered about this weird western stories i have heard so much about.
This is from your link and about REH:
"The Red-Headed Dead” is dedicated to Robert E. Howard and Mercer seems like a relative of Howard’s Solomon Kane. Am I overthinking it to see this story as a tribute to Howard’s weird westerns (like “The Horror from the Mound”) and to his boxing stories (with the Reverend pummeling the vampire)? Are there other works–perhaps out of speculative fiction—that helped inspire this story?
This was an all out tribute to HORROR FROM THE MOUND and to Howard in general. I wanted to ring some of the same bells without having it be exactly the same. But it is a tribute to him."
I didnt know he was such a big fan of REH and that he had influnce on Landsdale. Respect for Lansdale good taste and i have to find theser Mercer stories mentioned seeing as Solomon Kane is my fav S&S stories ever.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 20, 2016 15:28:31 GMT -5
Landsdale is a quality author whose Hap and Leonard books i have read and i have wondered about this weird western stories i have heard so much about. This is from your link and about REH: "The Red-Headed Dead” is dedicated to Robert E. Howard and Mercer seems like a relative of Howard’s Solomon Kane. Am I overthinking it to see this story as a tribute to Howard’s weird westerns (like “The Horror from the Mound”) and to his boxing stories (with the Reverend pummeling the vampire)? Are there other works–perhaps out of speculative fiction—that helped inspire this story?This was an all out tribute to HORROR FROM THE MOUND and to Howard in general. I wanted to ring some of the same bells without having it be exactly the same. But it is a tribute to him."I didnt know he was such a big fan of REH and that he had influnce on Landsdale. Respect for Lansdale good taste and i have to find theser Mercer stories mentioned seeing as Solomon Kane is my fav S&S stories ever. I had a chance to eat some BBQ with Lansdale. Very witty, talkative guy. JRL doesn't idolise REH, but he definitely respects him in an irreverent way.
|
|
|
Post by deuce on Mar 20, 2016 17:43:54 GMT -5
I'm one of the heretics who considers Greg Staples' illos for The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard to be the best, overall, in the entire Del Rey run. Here is what Staples said in the foreword: I have been a professional illustrator for nearly twenty years and was inspired, like many artists, by the work of Frank Frazetta. I first saw his Conan paintings when I was eight years old, and I can still remember where I stood and what the furniture in my neighbor's house looked like at the time--and twenty years later, Howard's writing still has the same effect. Howard is a master of atmosphere and detail, and when I read his stories, I am in them; I can see the buttons on the costumes, smell the dank air, and feel the foreboding. So, although illustrating his work has been a dream project, it has not been an easy one! For doing such a master justice is no small task--but, nevertheless, it's incredibly rewarding.
To follow in the footsteps of the mighty Frazetta is one thing, but to follow in Howard's is quite another.
I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed illustrating it.
Greg Staples 2008A very cool guy. Here is a phone interview with Greg from 2008 where he talks about the "Horror" project and his love for REH: bookotron.com/agony/audio/2008/2008-news/112108-greg_staples.mp3
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2016 13:26:40 GMT -5
I'm one of the heretics who considers Greg Staples' illos for The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard to be the best, overall, in the entire Del Rey run. Here is what Staples said in the foreword: I have been a professional illustrator for nearly twenty years and was inspired, like many artists, by the work of Frank Frazetta. I first saw his Conan paintings when I was eight years old, and I can still remember where I stood and what the furniture in my neighbor's house looked like at the time--and twenty years later, Howard's writing still has the same effect. Howard is a master of atmosphere and detail, and when I read his stories, I am in them; I can see the buttons on the costumes, smell the dank air, and feel the foreboding. So, although illustrating his work has been a dream project, it has not been an easy one! For doing such a master justice is no small task--but, nevertheless, it's incredibly rewarding.
To follow in the footsteps of the mighty Frazetta is one thing, but to follow in Howard's is quite another.
I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed illustrating it.
Greg Staples 2008A very cool guy. Here is a phone interview with Greg from 2008 where he talks about the "Horror" project and his love for REH: bookotron.com/agony/audio/2008/2008-news/112108-greg_staples.mp3I have to agree, Greg Staples art in ' The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard' was fantastic.
|
|