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The Robert E. Howard Portal
Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was a prolific American author and poet. He wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres and is today most famous for the creation of the character of Conan the Cimmerian.
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Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
— The Tower of the Elephant, 1933
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Read Hawk of the Hills on Wikisource |
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L. Sprague de Camp (November 27, 1907 – November 6, 2000) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy books, non-fiction and biography. In a writing career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and notable works of non-fiction, including biographies of other important fantasy authors.
In the 1950s, he was hired to edit the remainder of the Gnome Press editions of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories; the first such collection of the Conan material. As part of his work, he altered some of the text and eventually expanded on the Conan material. At first, the expansions were made by editing some of Howard's non-Conan stories to feature the his more famous character (e.g. The Crusades-era "Hawks Over Egypt" became the Conan "Hawks Over Shem"). Later, he wrote entirely original Conan stories of his own.
He eventually acquired control over the entire Conan franchise and directed it for decades. Today, he is equally vilified and praised for his work. Vilified for altering Howard's material with inferior material of his own, and for character assassination of Howard in his biography Dark Valley Destiny. Praised for making Conan and, by association, Robert E. Howard's works so well known.
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Forbidden Magic
There came to me a Man one summer night,
When all the world lay silent in the stars,
And moonlight crossed my room with ghostly bars.
He whispered hints of weird, unhallowed sight;
I followed – then in waves of spectral light
Mounted the shimmery ladders of my soul
Where moon-pale spiders, huge as dragons, stole –
Great forms like moths, with wings of wispy white.
Around the world the sighing of the loon
Shook misty lakes beneath the false-dawn’s gleams;
Rose tinted shone the sky-line’s minaret;
I rose in fear, and then with blood and sweat
Beat out the iron fabrics of my dreams,
And shaped of them a web to snare the moon.
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