Patrice Louinet's intro to Bison's
Lord of Samarcand...
“There is no literary work, to me, half as zestful as rewriting history in the guise of fiction. I wish I was able to devote the rest of my life to that kind of work. I could write a hundred years and still there would be stories clamoring to be written, by the scores. Every page of history teems with dramas that should be put on paper. A single paragraph may be packed with action and drama enough to fill a whole volume of fiction work,” explained Robert E. Howard in 1933. He immediately added that he “could never make a living writing such things, though; the markets are too scanty, with requirements too narrow, and it takes me so long to complete one.” Indeed, by 1933 Howard’s historical fiction was behind him; between 1930 and 1933 he had completed only eleven Oriental tales. Several of these, however, are regularly mentioned on lists of his best fiction. It is no coincidence that those four years also correspond to the dates of publication of the Farnsworth Wright-edited pulp magazine
Oriental Stories.
Farnsworth Wright, as editor of
Weird Tales, the era’s most influential weird fiction magazine, had in large measure contributed to the ascension of Howard’s career. Under Wright’s tutelage, Howard blossomed from an amateur Texas writer to one of the magazine’s most important contributors. It was partly thanks to Wright’s willingness to let his authors explore new forms of fiction that Howard was allowed to develop the stories of Kull of Atlantis and later of Conan the Cimmerian which were so markedly different and original. In June 1930, when Wright informed Howard that the company was launching Oriental Stories, he naturally asked the Texan to contribute. Howard was sufficiently interested at this prospect to come back home from vacation to start working on a tale, or so he wrote a friend. Howard had been interested in historical fiction since at least 1921, when he discovered
Adventure, the best adventure fiction magazine of its time. It was in the pages of this magazine that Howard first encountered the writings of several authors who were to influence his historical fiction, most notably Harold Lamb. However, Howard had never succeeded in selling fiction to
Adventure, and Wright’s proposition must have been a welcome one.
After a few false starts, and after writing an adventure story set in an eastern locale, Howard hired his friend Tevis Clyde Smith to do the research on his first historical tale, “Red Blades of Black Cathay.” Soon after these two stories had been accepted, Howard completed his first solo Oriental story. He evidently appreciated—and took advantage of—the creative freedom he knew he could find in a Wright-edited magazine. Commenting on that story, he wrote: “I lately sold a tale to
Oriental Stories in which I created the most somber character I have yet attempted. The story is called ‘Hawks of Outremer,’ and I got $120 for it. The character is Cormac Fitzgeoffrey. . . . One of the main things I like about Farnsworth Wright’s magazines is that you don’t have to make your heroes such utter saints. I took Cormac Fitzgeoffrey into the East on a Crusade to escape his enemies and am considering writing a series of tales about him.”
Howard’s series about the exploits of Cormac Fitzgeoffrey was an abortive one, as only one other tale was completed (a third was begun but left unfinished). This is an interesting feature of Howard’s Oriental tales. Although he is best known for his series centered on characters such as Kull, Conan, Bran Mak Morn, or Solomon Kane, in this case he soon realized that the times, places, and historical events that held his interest were far too numerous and scattered for a single character; the possibilities were too interesting to ignore. In 1931, just after completing “The Sowers of the Thunder,” he wrote a friend about possible subjects for Oriental tales:
And Babar the Tiger who established the Mogul rule in India—and the imperial phase in the life of Baibars the Panther, the subject of my last story—and the rise of the Ottomans—and the conquest of Constantinople by the Fifth Crusade—and the subjugation of the Turks by the Arabs in the days of Abu Bekr—and the gradual supplanting of the Arab masters by their Turkish slaves which culminated in the conquest of Asia Minor and Palestine by the Seljuks—and the rise of Saladin—and the final destruction of Christian Outremer by Al Kalawun—and the first Crusade—Godfrey of Bouillon, Baldwin of Boulogne, Bohemund—Sigurd the Jorsala-farer—Barbarossa—Coeur de Lion. Ye gods, I could write a century and still have only tapped the reservoir of dramatic possibilities. I wish to Hell I had a dozen markets for historical fiction—I’d never write anything else.From mid-1931 to late 1932, Howard wrote the best of his Oriental tales, all aimed at Farnsworth Wright’s magazine. “The Sowers of the Thunder” was written in June 1931, “Lord of Samarcand” around October of that year, “The Lion of Tiberias” in June 1932, and “The Shadow of the Vulture” in the fall of 1932. The other stories in this volume were also written about the same time but were either left unfinished or rejected by Wright and sold only years later.
Reading these stories and examining Howard’s list of the subjects and characters that interested him, one can see the strong affinity between Howard’s and Harold Lamb’s fiction. In the tales of both men the favorite subject is the confrontation between the East and the West. Whether the protagonists be Crusaders, Cossacks, or renegades; the times the eleventh or the seventeenth century; the places Aleppo, Damas, or Vienna, these stories are linked by a common denominator: all take place near that symbolic and ever-fluctuating line that marks the frontier between an East and West forever grappling at each other’s throats.
It was thus not a coincidence that Howard’s first attempt at writing an Oriental story was contemporary to his reading Lamb’s “The Wolf Chaser” (
Adventure Magazine, April 30, 1922). Lamb’s tale deals with an exile who leaves Christendom, trying to find relief in the land of the Tatars, fighting, dying and finding redemption in the wars which tear those lands—themes dear to Howard’s Oriental stories. The Texan first wrote a short recap of Lamb’s story, then proceeded to write a short story, or rather outline of a story, which apparently didn’t go beyond the second page. These fascinating documents were identified as such only very recently (they are not listed in
The Last Celt, Glenn Lord’s authoritative biography of Howard) and are published in this volume for the first time.
One should not mistake Howard’s conception of this frontier for that of Kipling, however: the line drawn by the Texan is significantly muddier and darker. Howard’s vision is a pessimistic one, to say the least. His Crusades are never the early ones, never portray a conquering Christianity; in his tales, the early victories of the Crusaders and of the empire of Outremer are but distant memories. Division, strife, and corruption are the common lot of the survivors, barely holding on to their last fortresses, waiting for the inevitable final onslaught of their Oriental enemies. Howard’s subjects for his stories reveal his fascination with the idea of the end of civilization—of Western civilization in the Oriental stories—illustrating his oft-quoted assertion that civilization is “a whim of circumstance” and that “barbarism must always ultimately triumph.” “The Sowers of the Thunder” thus depicts the fall of the last fortress of the Crusaders, vanquished by the armies of Baibars. At Howard’s hands, the event takes on giant proportions: “The sun sets and the world ends,” declares a character; it is not a mere defeat, it is a cataclysm. A similar situation is found in “The Shadow of the Vulture.” This story takes place several centuries later, in 1529, but the situation is the same: outnumbered, besieged, famished, and exhausted, the armies and people of Vienna can only hope to survive long enough for a miracle to happen. Civilization in these tales is always on the brink of annihilation, a fluttering candle at the mercy of the next gust of barbaric wind. Howard’s pessimism permeates the tales. Commenting on “Lord of Samarcand” to Tevis Clyde Smith, he wrote: “I don’t believe the readers will like it. There isn’t a gleam of hope in it. It’s the fiercest and most sombre thing I ever tried to write. A lot of milksops—maybe—will say it’s too savage to be realistic, but to my mind, it’s about the most realistic thing I ever attempted. But it’s the sort of thing I like to write—no plot construction, no hero or heroine, no climax in the accepted sense of the word, all the characters complete scoundrels, and everybody double-crossing everybody else.”
Faced with hopeless odds and cataclysmic events, Howard’s protagonists are broken men, leading hopeless lives of violence. Most of them are exiles; all have led tragic lives. Cormac Fitzgeoffrey is a bastard son. John Norwald (“The Lion of Tiberias”) has experienced only “one kindly act” in his life, when Achmet saved his life—only to see that same Achmet butchered before his eyes. Red Cahal, in “The Sowers of the Thunder,” was robbed of his kingly heritage and fled to Jerusalem “to forget the past, losing himself in the present.” Readers expecting “escapist fun” from these stories are in for a shock. There are no real successes in these tales, only the futility of bitter victories: “Alas for kingly ambitions and high visions! . . . Death is a black horse that may halt in the night by any tent, and life is more unstable than the foam of the sea!” (“The Lion of Tiberias”). The only character who would seem to escape this fate is Gottfried von Kalmbach in “The Shadow of the Vulture.” Commenting on the tale, Howard wrote: “A more dissolute vagabond than Gottfried never weaved his drunken way across the pages of a popular magazine: wastrel, drunkard, gambler, whore-monger, renegade, mercenary, plunderer, thief, rogue, rascal—I never created a character whose creation I enjoyed more. They may not seem real to the readers; but Gottfried and his mistress Red Sonya seem more real to me than any other character I’ve ever drawn.” It is the second time Howard uses the word “realism” to describe the characters of his historical tales. However, Gottfried is a kind of Conan the Cimmerian without the gigantic mirth, and his alcoholism seems to be just another means to escape reality, in this instance the armageddon that is taking place around Vienna. If Howard’s characters in these tales all know that tomorrow they will die, Gottfried at least tries to drink and be merry before.
Howard ceased writing historical fiction in 1933, probably when he learned that
Oriental Stories—retitled
The Magic Carpet Magazine—was on indefinite hiatus. The magazine ceased publication with the January 1934 issue, which contained “The Shadow of the Vulture.” One wonders why—and regrets that—Howard never tried to sell his stories to
Adventure; perhaps his long history of rejections from the magazine intimidated him. Another important factor also probably explains Howard’s decision to stop writing historical fiction. At the time he was writing “The Shadow of the Vulture,” Howard was also completing a Conan tale, “Black Colossus,” a story, replete with large-scale battles, that details the ascension of a southern ruler bent on conquering Hyborian kingdoms. Here was lurking, without the need for lengthy research, another of Howard’s historical epics, transferred from one of Wright’s magazines to the other. That Howard’s fascination for the confrontation between barbarism and civilization was as intense in later years as when he was writing for Oriental Stories will be evident to all Conan readers.
Collected in this book is the entirety of Howard’s historical Oriental fiction (including what few surviving fragments have come to us). These tales are probably among the most somber ever written by Howard; among his best, too. Prepare to embark on a journey unlike any other in the field of historical fiction. The place is Outremer, the time the early thirteenth century. . . .