The Lancer Conan Series: The Hand of Nergal by Robert E. Howard and Lin Carter

by Gary Romeo

“The Hand of Nergal” first appeared in Conan, Lancer Books, 1967. Lin Carter reprinted the story in his anthology, Beyond The Gates of Dream, Belmont Books, 1969. Lin goes into great detail about his approach to the job of completing REH’s unfinished tale in this book.

Lin Carter gets very comfortable in this book’s introduction and shares his childhood mania for fantasy and science fiction with his readers. Lin gives off a very relaxed vibe here that endeared him to me. His childhood was not very different from my own (regarding his love of books).

Lin tells us that Glenn Lord initially showed REH’s unfinished story to Sprague who suggested Lin Carter be given the chance to complete it. This was Lin’s first Howardian exercise. He explains that he took the job very seriously.

The REH fragment first saw print in The Last Celt, Donald M. Grant, 1976. It is more of an incomplete story than an outline. The manuscript for “The Hall of the Dead” was more of an outline that gave the whole story: beginning, middle, and end but without detail. “The Hand of Nergal” contains lots of finished prose but ends abruptly. Rather than merely starting at the point where REH left off, Lin rewrites the beginning and incorporates a good deal of REH’s prose in the following chapters. As mentioned before Lin passed a stylometric test that compared “The Thing in the Crypt” to REH’s writing style. Lin could write REH type prose; but could he write a REH type story?

“The Hand of Nergal” was adapted to comics in Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #30 and Dark Horse’s Conan #47-50. There are differences in each version. The Marvel adaptation used Carter’s version. The Dark Horse adaptation did not. The comics are beyond the scope of this article. So now it is time to see how well Lin succeeded in his goal.

The story starts on a battlefield and mention is made of “superstitious awe.” When Conan and superstitious are mentioned together I get a little shaky. If Conan carried a lucky coin, had a ritual battle-cry, or even prayed to Crom, I’d grant he was superstitious. But in a world where supernatural magic truly exists can anyone really be deemed superstitious?

I can understand Faith in God(s). I succumb to that. I don’t go into caves expecting any dead bodies therein to come alive but Conan should. That kind of thing happens in his world. So dreading supernatural horror is common-sense for Conan. It should be common-sense for everyone, barbarian or not, in fact. I suppose when any Conan author mentions superstition they are mainly trying to tell the reader that Conan is cocksure of his ability to beat any natural foe but lacks that certitude when confronting the supernatural. BUT in a world where the supernatural is natural…? I’m overthinking it obviously!

Back to the story… Conan is in the service of King Yildiz and the army is attacked by ghostly bats. The army scatters. Conan tries to assert some leadership but to no avail. Conan fights the bats but they give off a bone-chilling cold that kills. Conan is saved from death by an amulet he found previously but passes out from the effect.

When he awakes he finds a horse and an attractive young woman. She tells Conan that she was sent to find him and that he has a role to play in the city of Yaralet, the stronghold of Munthassem Khan. The man King Yildiz sent Conan and the army to defeat.

Conan is described as tall and powerfully built, burnt brown by the sun, and naked save for a loincloth and sandals. He has a great sword. Lin had more of a thing for phallic imagery than REH or de Camp apparently. Lin going on about the sword in “The Thing in the Crypt” undoubtedly was somewhat responsible for “the riddle of steel” and “the Sword of Atlantis” mentions in the first Conan movie and live-action TV show.

Conan meets Atalis and Prince Than. They entice Conan into a battle between “the hand of Nergal” and “the heart of Tammuz.” Despite what Lin said above this isn’t a blood and thunder battle. As a movie it would make a good SFX battle with lights and sound and visual imagery, but as words on paper it is not terribly gripping. Conan and the heart of Tammuz triumph. The Khan is defeated. Conan gets some gold and the girl. King Yildiz, with no personal effort and appearance in name only , is the big winner of this story. His soldiers lost the battle but Conan wins them the war (defeating Munthassem Khan.)

The question remains: did Lin write a Howardian story? I’ll grant that he did, although a lesser type REH effort. Lin covered everything mentioned in the REH manuscript, he covered all the characters, and the actions described.

The REH manuscript seems similar to another Conan story, “The Slithering Shadow,” in some ways. The women in both stories are nigh unto death, and Conan considers killing them in both (to end their suffering) but chooses not too. Yaralet (in the REH version) seems like another haunted city similar to Xuthal. That Lin resisted the temptation to turn the manuscript into a similar type of story is to Lin’s credit. Lin made the girl Brythunian in his story the same as the girl in “The Slithering Shadow.”

As a general rule I prefer Conan to be more physically engaged with the menaces he faces. I enjoyed the thievery and murder stage of his career but he is now mercenary and soldier. Lin probably went too High Fantasy here but Conan is entering a new phase of his life. It makes sense that he would go East and encounter different forms of the supernatural.

The Lancer Conan Series: Rogues in the House by Robert E. Howard

by Gary Romeo

“Rogues in the House” first appeared in Weird Tales, January 1934. It was reprinted in the British “Not at Night” series in Terror By Night, Selwyn & Blount, August 1934 (and again reprinted in the U.K. in More Not at Night, Arrow, 1961). It was also included in Skull-face and Others, Arkham House, 1946 and The Coming of Conan, Gnome Press, 1953 before being included in Conan, Lancer Books, 1967.

L. Sprague de Camp did very little editing on this story. I only noticed three changes:

REH: There followed a great turmoil in the city, but search for the killer proved fruitless until his punk betrayed him to the authorities…

De Camp: There followed a great turmoil in the city, but search for the killer proved fruitless until a woman betrayed him to the authorities…

REH: “I want you to kill a man for me.”
“Whom?”

De Camp: “I want you to kill a man for me.”
“Who?”

REH: “Ha, a good stroke, Petreus!…”

De Camp: “Ah, a good stroke, Petreus!…”

De Camp leaves in a description of an “ornate mahogany table.” He had deleted “mahogany” in his edit of “The Gold in the Bowl.” Mahogany is indigenous to the Americas.

This story was adapted to comics in Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #11 and Dark Horse’s Conan #41-44. The film Conan the Destroyer featured a Thak-like creature and the film Conan the Barbarian featured a scene where Conan is arrested while intoxicated that is similar to a scene in this story.

In the Lancer Series, this story follows “The God in The Bowl.” A fellow thief, a Gunderman, is mentioned. Most likely this character (although unnamed) is Captain Nestor from “The Hall of the Dead.” Some have suggested this story should have immediately followed “The Hall of the Dead” because of that.

When scholars and critics call Conan an anti-hero, this is the story most cited. Conan is brutal here. He is in jail for murder, makes a deal to murder again, and dumps a woman in a cesspool! The reader admires him for his skills more-so than for any heroic code in this incarnation.

Whether Conan is a hero or an anti-hero seems a “who cares?” conversation. He is definitely the star of this series and as he ages he becomes more of a hero than not. Placing the stories in a prehistory brutal environment influences the reader’s view in these “young” Conan stories.

This could be REH’s most cynical view of civilization. The story centers on three main characters (although several other characters do appear in the story.) Represented are three classes of society: the clergy, the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat.

The story opens with Murilo, an aristocrat, receiving an ominous gift. The ear of someone loyal to him. Murilo received the gift from Nabonidus. Nabonidus, the Red Priest, is the real ruler of the city. (The Red Priest’s religion is never made clear and “Priest” could be a misnomer of sorts.)

Murilo immediately seeks to employ a member of the lower class to do his dirty work. He had heard the story of Conan’s capture and now seeks to employ this killer and thief to murder Nabonidus. Conan sees the murder for hire contract as a way out of his present predicament. He has no qualms about cold-blooded murder in this instance. It is his only means to freedom, and he accepts it. Events conspire to delay Conan and lead Murilo to attempt the deed himself. Conan eventually escapes from jail but delays his rendezvous with the Red Priest to first seek revenge on the woman who betrayed him. The cavalier attitude with which Conan kills the woman’s new lover and dumping her into a cesspool underscores the casual cruelty that Conan is now accustomed too.

Conan is described as having a mighty body and thick muscled limbs. Conan is almost feral, speaking very little, and using all of his well developed senses. He discards a tattered tunic upon escaping and is naked but for a loincloth throughout the story. He acquires a “poniard” (REH describes it as a broad, double-edged blade, 19″ long). The “maze” in this story is similar to the “maul” in “The Tower of the Elephant.” These twisting turning back alley filthy streets are Conan’s urban jungle. Conan accepts the supernatural believing the Red Priest to be a were-thing at first and accepting that Nabonidus can perform true magick.

Eventually Conan and Murilo meet up in corridors below Nabonidus’ main quarters. Nabonidus has also been trapped with them. His “pet” Thak has taken over the house. Nabonidus is clearly the most educated of the bunch. He lectures Conan and Murilo on evolution and the history of this man-like ape that now has control of his house. Nabonidus devised an elaborate system of mirrors that allows him to see throughout the house. Murilo recognizes the genius behind it all, but Conan cannot comprehend it. He dismisses it as witchcraft. He believes the priest’s blood could be black as he has heard rumors of.

While the three “rogues” watch Thak, the house is invaded by a group of men. A small group of idealists are seeking to kill Nabonidus in what is undoubtedly the first step in a rebellion. The politics of the group is described as nationalist and patriotic. Nationalism usually implies a group opposed to foreign rule or the perception of foreign rule. I don’t think REH meant for this group to be more “rogues” in the house. Nabonidus’ control of the king, Murilo’s selling of state secrets, and the use of the word patriots to describe this group make me think that REH felt the rebels had valid reasons for their ire. However the rightness or wrongness of the nationalist cause is not what’s important to this story.

Thak, having studied Nabonidus’s ways, pulls a rope to unleash gray lotus dust. The rebels go mad and start fighting and killing each other. After witnessing this, Nabonidus decides they must rush up to the room and escape while Thak is disposing of the bodies. They do this and encounter a locked door. Conan must confront Thak.

Conan kills the man-ape but does not rejoice in the victory. He senses the intelligence in the creature. Nabonidus enslaved Thak on a whim and sealed his fate. REH and Conan realize the inhumanity of this. Conan states, “I killed a man, not a beast.”

Nabonidus tries to trick Murilo and Conan but decides to boast about his cleverness beforehand. Conan reacts instantly, smashing the priest’s head with a well-thrown stool. “His blood was red after all!”

Although not overtly so, this tale is more political than any previous Conan story. REH spends a good amount of time showing the reader that civilization is full of competing classes, political factions, and double-dealing between the strata. Conan is described as the most honest of the three because he steals and murders openly. Arguably the rebels are fighting for something better, but that would be temporary at best in REH’s long term view of civilization.

Review: The Fringe of the Unknown by L. Sprague de Camp

by Brian Kunde

Today’s de Camp highlight is The Fringe of the Unknown (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1983). It’s one of his collections of nonfiction, and there was just the one edition, issued simultaneously in hardcover and paperback. Not too hard to find in the online marketplace, though. Fun fact: when I was re-reading this one for this review, my son walked and asked me what book I was engaged in. I showed him the cover. “The … Fridge of the Unknown?” he asked. Genius! Imagined plot description: on Catherine’s urging, Sprague finally gets around to cleaning out the icebox…

But of course, that’s not what this book is about at all. Rather, it’s a collection of articles that the publisher formerly claimed constitute “a fascinating study … of controversial and often little-known happenings in science and technology, with an emphasis on the wayward activities of those who dabble in fringe science.” I say “formerly claimed” because the title has vanished from the Prometheus website at some point between the time I cribbed that quote for my Wikipedia article on the book and the present day. Fame is fleeting. Evidently, Prometheus has a short memory. Not sure why; it’s not the head of the poor Titan that Zeus’s eagle pecks at daily, but his liver.

The blurb still appears on the book itself, though, at least on my copy, which is the paperback version. (It may have been on one of the flaps for the hardcover.) I observe that Prometheus could have used better paper, as the pages have yellowed somewhat in the past thirty-eight years. As has the cover.

Present neglect and graceless aging aside, Prometheus Books was a good match for our author. Founded by philosopher Paul Kurtz, who was also behind the Council for Secular Humanism and the Center for Inquiry, as well as the center’s Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, PB focuses on science, free thought, skepticism, atheism, secularism and humanism (and hence, presumably, secular humanism). All interests in which de Camp shared. Over a decade later, Prometheus would go on to issue one of de Camp’s final books, The Ape-Man Within (1995).

Since I’m quoting things, I’ll also swipe from the Wikipedia article on the book to give you an idea of the content. This sounds like plagiarism, but isn’t, because I wrote the article, and if I can’t swipe from myself, who can I swipe from? Which I suppose makes me a good match for de Camp too, in the fan sense, since he also liked to reuse material. As, indeed, he does in the book., because that’s what you do when you collect up a batch of articles previously published.

The material is organized in three sections, “Our Ingenious Forebears,” “Beasts of Now and Then,” and “Scientists, Mad and Otherwise.” The articles in the first section debunk extravagant occult and pseudoscientific claims regarding ancient civilizations while highlighting these cultures’ actual accomplishments. The second section’s pieces perform much the same function in regard to biology, focusing on elephants, claims regarding survival of dinosaurs into the present day, and past extinction events. In the third, de Camp explores the distinction between science and pseudoscience as illustrated in the lives of a number of scientists holding extreme views.

The articles so bunched originally appeared from the 1950s-1970s in such periodicals (some no longer with us) as Astounding Science Fiction and its successor Analog, The Book of Knowledge Annual, Future Science Fiction, The Humanist, If: Worlds of Science Fiction, Isis, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Science Digest, and Science Fiction Quarterly. A peculiarly fiction-tinged batch of sources for a conglomeration of nonfiction, to be sure, but science fiction magazines, then as now, often mixed factual pieces in with the fancies, the better, I suppose, to claim they were not devoid of redeeming social value. And SF authors were happy to provide them. To give just a small number of the more prominent names, Willy Ley did it. L. Sprague de Camp did it. And of course Isaac Asimov did it, to the point of overkill.

For good measure, de Camp also raided a few of his own other nonfiction books to provide content here, such as Elephant and The Day of the Dinosaur. Just to demonstrate that yes, he really did reuse material. Cheating, perhaps, but on the other hand, those books were probably out of print by then, he plainly liked what he reused, and how better to get it before the eyes of new readers? So if you want to read about such things as the use of elephants in warfare, or whence King Xerxes got his Okapi, or the sordid details of the Cope-Marsh fossil-hunting feud, or how you would (if you could) hunt dinosaur, all for the umpteenth time, this is one of the places you can do it!

A handful of illustrations repeated from the original articles clarify one point raised or another, such as the interior of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, relationships within organizations, ancient catapults, Alexandrian inventions, Claudius Ptolemaeus’s oddball notion of the Indian Ocean as a landlocked lake, the curiously canoe-like appearance of the Daedalus sea serpent, extinct species of elephant relatives, Diego de Landa’s wrong-headed Mayan alphabet, and the Mayan glyphs from which the name of the bogus lost continent of Mu were derived. All most entertaining!

I’m having a bit of fun at this book’s expense, but seriously, it’s a good one to have fun with, because it’s a fun book. All those fascinating little facts, the dropping of which makes the reading of de Camp such a rewarding experience, are here. Well, not all of them, of course. He spills plenty of them elsewhere, so don’t expect to fill up on them here alone. Let this book whet your appetite, and then go ye forth and graze on more in other such tomes. Like The Ragged Edge of Science (1980) or Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants (1996), to name merely the two most similar, in that they, too, are collections of his nonfiction. And then, by all means, branch out more broadly. There are those assemblages of Conan-related erudition from Amra, for instance, and the more monolithic monographs on dinosaurs, elephants, ancient engineering, antique cities, human evolution, Darwin, the Scopes Trial, mythical geography, lost continents, occultism and such.

The cover design is by Gregory Lyde Vigrass, whom I’d otherwise never heard of. A modicum of research revealed him to be an instructor, still very active, at The Art Students League of New York, with a broad background in illustration and academe. His work here, I imagine, was an early instance of the former. I find his design striking, but not very imaginative. Still, if you happen to like white converging lines on a purple background, this is where to get your fix.

Atypically, there is no dedication. Plenty of room for one; the occasional excuse of “maybe there wasn’t space” won’t wash. Surely he couldn’t have run out of people?

###

The Lancer Conan Series: The God in the Bowl by Robert E. Howard

by Gary Romeo

“The God in the Bowl” appeared for the first time in Space Science Fiction, September 1952 and was edited by L. Sprague de Camp. That version was reprinted in The Coming of Conan, Gnome Press, 1953. It was rewritten and made closer to REH’s original story when it appeared in Conan, Lancer Books, 1967.

The story was adapted to comics in Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #7 and Dark Horse’s Conan #10 and 11.

De Camp made several edits to this story. I’m only going to discuss a few of them. Most of the changes are simply matters of style, as typified by this example of de Camp’s changes in the second paragraph of the story.

REH: Arus stood in a vast corridor, lighted by huge candles in niches along the walls. These walls were hung with black velvet tapestries, and between the tapestries hung shields and crossed weapons of fantastic make. Here and there too, stood figures of curious gods – images carved of stone or rare wood, or cast of bronze, iron or silver – dimly reflected in the black mahogany floor.

De Camp: The watchman stood in a vast corridor lighted by huge candles set in niches along the walls. Between the niches, these walls were covered with black velvet wall-hangings, and between the hangings hung shields and crossed weapons of fantastic make. Here and there, too, stood figures of curious gods – images carved of stone or rare woods, or cast in bronze, iron, or silver – dimly mirrored in the gleaming black floor.

These are minor changes: some style differences, some comma differences, and perhaps too much emphasis on avoiding anachronisms. Tapestries originated in Peru, Egypt, and Thailand and mahogany is native to the Caribbean and Central and South American lowlands. (De Camp later left things like tapestries, mahogany, and spurs unedited. This was one of his first rewrites and he was being overzealous probably not realizing that anachronisms are just too plentiful in these stories!)

There are some other edits that de Camp made that I think (heresy of heresies) actually made this version better.

REH: Arus licked his lips and his blood turned cold as he plainly saw indecision struggle with a murderous intent in the foreigner’s cloudy eyes.

De Camp: Arus licked his lips and his blood turned cold as he plainly saw caution struggle with murderous intent in the foreigner’s cloudy eyes.

I think de Camp’s slight changes here make Conan seem more menacing in this instance. The next change is the more discussed one:

REH: The god has a long neck! Ha! ha! ha! Oh, a long, a cursed long neck!

De Camp: The god has a long reach; ha-ha-ha! Oh, a cursed long reach!

Neck telegraphs the “surprise” ending that the murderer in the story is a large serpent. Reach is subtler. Damon Knight in In Search of Wonder, Advent Publishers, 2nd Edition, 1967 had this to say:

This story failed to sell in REH’s lifetime, I’m sure if he had the chance to revise it himself he might have made that exact same change. It is an obvious one to make in rereading the story and I don’t credit any particularly genius to de Camp for making it. When I started these blog posts my intent was to merely review the stories. In future posts I plan to spend less time discussing edits and concentrate more on the story simply as it appears in these Lancer Book collections.

“The God in the Bowl” is a particularly good story in my estimation. The story is straight forward and wastes no time. Conan enters an antique house to steal a jeweled goblet and a watchman spots a dead body and Conan almost simultaneously. He assumes Conan to be the man’s murderer and summons the town watch. They come almost immediately and Conan is surrounded by armed men.

Demetrio, the chief Inquisitorial Council of the city, is (mostly) an admirable lawman. He looks for clues and does not immediately assume Conan’s guilt. Dionus is the typical bad cop willing to torture suspects into confession, guilty or not.

REH comes across as a spokesman for Barbarian Lives Matter at times. He doesn’t hesitate to narrate the brutality of city police toward the lower classes. Dionus directs one of his men to intimidate a new suspect in the murder:

“Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Porthumo. You gouged out a girl’s eye in the Court of Justice because she would not incriminate her lover.”

The police find the nephew of the governor slinking outside. Dionus treats the man with utmost respect but unknown to the police he is the one who hired Conan to steal the goblet. When this becomes known Demitrio realizes Conan is not the murderer but tells the nephew that “we can easily hush up the matter of attempted theft. The Cimmerian merits ten years of hard labor for housebreaking; but if you say the word we’ll arrange for him to escape…” Even the somewhat fair-minded Demitrio is subservient to the rich and powerful.

The police corruption described is a powerful indictment of a class system that depression era folk could relate too. Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd had their share of sympathizers even though they were clearly lawbreakers and murderers.

But before we get too excited about REH’s sense of social justice, we need to remember his May 1932 letter to H. P. Lovecraft where he talks about the Massie Trial (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massie_Trial) using racist terms and speaking about nooses and burnings. I’m not quite ready to declare REH a SJW.

Anyway, onward…

The nephew continues to lie about knowing Conan and Conan beheads him. A melee ensues. It comes to a halt when a scream rises from a chamber. This is the scene where the victim declares the god has a long reach.

Conan is described in the story as having a long sword, mention is made of Aquilonian steel blades, Conan is described as a tall, powerfully-built youth, naked but for a loincloth and sandals and skin browned by the suns of the wastelands. Thoth-Amon is mentioned in a fore-shadowing way. Conan, for the second time, tells an unconvincing lie when confronted by the police. In this story, when questioned why he broke into the antique store, he says to steal food. In “The Hall of the Dead,” the previous adventure in this series, when confronted by the police he says “I’ve done nothing against your stupid laws!” when clearly he has. His denials are almost childlike in their simplicity. Nemedia has debtor slaves but no mention is made of chattel slavery.

The story reaches it’s conclusion: Then the full horror of it rushed over the Cimmerian. He fled, nor did he slacken his headlong flight until the spires of Numalia faded into the dawn behind him. The thought of Set was like a nightmare, and the children of Set who once ruled the earth and who now slept in their nighted caverns below the black pyramids. Behind that gilded screen had lain no human body – only the shimmering, headless coils of a gigantic serpent.

Lots of time has been spent calling this REH’s attempt at a detective story or an anti-detective story. This story is not out of place being side by side in the stories discussed so far. Like “Tower of the Elephant” it is not a stereotypical sword and sorcery tale but it is an excellent one.

The Lancer Conan Series: The Hall of the Dead by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp

by Gary Romeo

“The Hall of the Dead” appeared for the first time in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1967. L. Sprague de Camp completed the story from an outline found in 1966 by Glenn Lord in Howard’s papers. It was reprinted in Conan, Lancer Books, 1967 and in In Lands That Never Were, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004.

The REH outline was first published in Fantasy Crossroads, November 1974 and later in The Last Celt, Donald M. Grant, 1978. It has been reprinted several times since then.

“The Hall of the Dead” was adapted to comics in Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #8 and Dark Horse’s Conan #29-31. Both comics used REH’s outline to create their stories. So they differ slightly from de Camp’s version and each other.

(Barry Windsor Smith drew a famous cleverly hidden message in this comic. It is shown below.)

“I must be mad to sit here drawing all these coins.” — Barry Smith, Conan #8, August 1971.

The REH outline details the plot. Conan’s thievery has reached the level of “most wanted.” Soldiers are sent to capture him. Conan is in search of treasure and the soldiers know this. Conan rigs a landslide trap that the soldiers trigger and it kills them all except Captain Nestor. Conan encounters a “monstrous being” and climbs to a higher level and drops stone structures to crush the thing. Nestor confronts Conan and Conan talks him into an alliance to share the treasure instead of battling. Conan fancies a set of matched gems and a jade serpent. They head to leave and giant skeletons try to kill them. They run into the sunlight and the skeletons crumble to dust. Conan heads back to town without Nestor to meet his “light-of-love.” The gems have turned to dust. A magistrate attempts to arrest Conan (they had encountered Nestor earlier and knew Conan had returned to town) but checks the treasure first and is bitten by the serpent come to life. In the ensuing turmoil, Conan escapes.

De Camp follows the REH outline to tell the story. In the outline and in de Camp’s story Conan is said to be wanted for “theft” not “murder.” I grew up watching Alias Smith and Jones so I’m not totally uncomfortable in thinking, “for all the merchants and caravans he robbed, he never stabbed anyone” but realistically that is doubtful. The soldiers in search of Conan are afraid for their lives.

“I fear naught, including death itself. The question is whose death? This is not a civilized man but a wild barbarian, with the strength of ten. So I went to the magistrate to draw up my will-”

Conan does indeed kill his pursuers by rigging the avalanche but there is a huge difference between readers reading about a thief indirectly booby-trapping his pursuers and reading about a thief killing an unarmed merchant. If Conan kills helpless people in pursuit of personal wealth we never read it firsthand. Any questionable behavior occurs offstage.

Conan is described as well over six feet tall with mighty thews. Conan wears a threadbare tunic. His other clothing is not mentioned (if it was I missed it).

The “monstrous being” in this version is a giant slug. In Marvel it was a giant Gila Monster, in Dark Horse it was more of a toad-like Lovecraftian horror (IIRC).

My normal view of Conan is that his sword can vanquish anything. But so far his sword has been useless (at times) in all 3 adventures so far. He needed fire to vanquish “the thing in the crypt,” a hurled heavy object to kill Yara’s spider, and now heavy sculptures dropped from on high to crush the slug. No wonder Roland Green employed so many variations of the word “wit” in his Conan pastiches. Wit is needed as often as the sword.

Conan has learned to read before this story occurs. “He could read Zamorian and write it after a fashion, and he had smatterings of Hyrkanian and Corithian…” REH and de Camp failed to tell us that story! The Conan the Adventurer animated series did do an episode where Conan learns to read.

Conan The Adventurer S02:E28 – Blood of my Blood

Conan’s “light-of-love” is given the name Semiramis in this version.

De Camp adds an ending not in REH’s outline where he meets back up with Nestor demanding Nestor share his spoils. But Nestor only has two coins left and gives Conan one of them. De Camp has Conan laugh about the failed venture displaying that “great mirth” that REH talked about.

All in all I think de Camp did a fine job here. It reads like a REH Conan story to me.

The Lancer Conan Series: The Tower of the Elephant by Robert E. Howard

by Gary Romeo

“The Tower of the Elephant” first debuted in Weird Tales, March 1933. It was reprinted in Skull-face and Others, Arkham House, 1946 and The Coming of Conan, Gnome Press, 1953 before getting its appearance in Conan, Lancer Books, 1967.

The story was adapted to comics in Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #4, Marvel’s Savage Sword of Conan #24 and Dark Horse’s Conan #20-22. Both the Conan the Barbarian movie and the Conan the Adventurer live action TV show adapted segments of this story. The animated series Conan the Adventurer adapted it twice: in Season 1, Episode 3 but changing the character of Taurus to a female named Jezmine who became a reoccurring character in the series and also in Season 2, Episode 13. The 2011 film Conan the Barbarian and it’s novelization by Michael A. Stackpole features a character extolling Conan’s accomplishment as the man “who stole the Elephant’s Heart and slew the sorcerer, Yara.” The multiverse has all these subtle differences!

“The Tower of the Elephant” is of course by Conan’s creator, Robert E. Howard. L. Sprague de Camp did make some changes to the story. Comparing the Lancer version to the “pure-text” Del Rey version, we find the following changes.

Minor changes are:

Some page breaks are different. Some hyphens are removed in the Lancer version: “drinking jack” in the Lancer version, “drinking-jack” in the Del Rey version. Some hyphenated words are treated as one word in this version: “python-like” in the Del Rey version and phythonlike in the Lancer version (although that may just be a typo or printing error.) Roman Numeral Chapters in Del Rey instead of 1, 2, 3 in Lancer. There about 10 comma changes and two semi-colon changes. Lancer has “O” instead of “Oh” sometimes. Some “Oh” is left as “Oh.”

Other changes are:

Del Rey has: Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from
the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women […]

Lancer has: Steel glinted in the shadows where rose the shrill laughter of women […]

Del Rey has:
[…] not even of the same blood as the more westerly Brythunians, Nemedians,
Kothians and Aquilonians, whose civilized mysteries had awed him in the past.

Lancer has:
[…] not even of the same blood as the more westerly Brythunians, Nemedians,
Kothians, and Aquilonians, he had heard of whose civilized mysteries had awed
him in the past.

Del Rey has:
The edges of the wound were black, and a faint smell as of putrefaction was
evident.

Lancer has:
The edges of the wound were black, and a faint smell as putrefaction was
evident.

Del Rey has:
Stung to frenzy, Conan caught up a jewel chest and hurled it with all his
strength. It was a move the monster was not expecting.

Lancer removes that last sentence.

Del Rey has:
That he did not instantly explode in a burst of murderous frenzy is a fact that
measures his horror […]

Lancer has:
That he did not instantly explode in a burst of murderous frenzy is a fact that
measured his horror […]

None of these changes seem particularly significant. Removing “It was a move the monster was not expecting.” seems arguably correct to me. The spider shouldn’t have that level of intelligence. This story is about a human mistreating a sentient alien for his knowledge and (partly) because of the alien’s elephant-like appearance. If the spider was also intelligent and in thrall to Yara, the spider’s death would have pathos.. I don’t believe that was what REH intended. In the Conan the Adventurer TV show they did make the spider a cursed lover of Yag-kosha.

De Camp was not the only editor making changes in this era. Glenn Lord edited the King Kull stories and Donald M. Grant (with Glenn Lord’s approval) edited the Solomon Kane stories.

So ignoring any controversy lets examine this wonderful story. There is a brief intro:

(Oops! The paragraph above reminds me of another small controversy. “Arenjun” being designated as the name for the “City of Thieves” was de Camp’s doing not REH’s. De Camp gave Arenjun as the name for the “City of Thieves” in the story, “The Bloodstained God” which will be discussed later in this series. Some feel de Camp made a mistake with that. This has mainly come up in the gaming community when creating maps. It doesn’t affect the story at all.)

Describing the plot in a paragraph does little justice to the story but basically Conan hears of possible riches hidden in an evil wizard’s (Yara’s) tower. Conan teams up with a skilled thief and they attempt to plunder the place. The other thief is killed, Conan fights a huge spider, encounters an elephant-headed alien (Yag-kosha) whom the wizard had imprisoned. Yag begs for Conan to kill him so he can achieve revenge against Yara. Conan, sympathetic to his plight, kills Yag and bathes a magic sphere in Yag’s blood and proceeds to find Yara. Yara knows his time is up. Conan escapes. The tower comes tumbling down. Lots ventured, nothing financially gained, but the emotional payoff makes this story high art.

This story has great mood setting. The opening chapter is deeply cinematic. De Camp suggested REH got the atmosphere from the thieves quarter of medieval Paris as shown in the film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Universal, 1923 and speculates the giant spider could be from The Thief of Baghdad, United Artists, 1924.

Conan, like most penniless immigrants, decides to take up crime as a profession. (I’m joking!) He ended up in the “City of Thieves” so maybe its a “when in Rome” thing. Conan’s barbaric side is on full display. The oft-quoted “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” is from this story. Later Conan thinks about religion, “religion, like all things of a civilized, long settled people, was intricate and complex and had lost most of the pristine essence in a maze of formulas and rituals.” Conan seems more curious about learning than in the previous story. He listens to philosophers speak in the courtyard, but finally decides “they were all touched in the head.”

Conan is described as a “tall, strongly made youth.” Conan’s wardrobe consists of a cheap tunic (when torn in a fight, he quickly discards it), loin cloth and high strapped sandals. He has a sword (probably not the sword from the previous adventure but it could be). Conan is uncomfortable with magic, his hair prickles when remembering a story about Yara turning a man into a spider and Yara setting his heel upon the spider.

Nevertheless Conan goes to rob the tower. Conan’s encounter with the tortured Yag-kosha is described in a very moody emotional prose. Conan is portrayed as sensitive to Yag’s plight. This is not a “blood and thunder” tale.

This is my favorite REH story, Conan or otherwise. If REH only wrote this one story he would be still be the father of Sword and Sorcery. This is the story that writers of Sword and Sorcery should use as their model.

I know of one “homage” that has been published. “The Bunker of the Tikriti” by Chris Nakashima-Brown published in Cross Plains Universe, Monkey Brain Books, 2006. It updates the story into the modern world and it works.

(I also wrote an article about “The Tower of the Elephant” that was published in The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies #5, Rock Valley College, 2001. I should have another article about “The Tower of the Elephant” in an upcoming issue of that same journal. These are all completely different articles and do not repeat each other or this current review.)

33 1/3 Recording, Moondance Productions, 1975

Back Cover

The Lancer Conan Series: The Thing in the Crypt by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp

by Gary Romeo

“The Thing in the Crypt” appeared for the first time in Conan, Lancer Books, 1967. When L. Sprague de Camp sold the series to Lancer Books he was still fighting Martin Greenberg of Gnome Press over the rights to republish these literary gems that are REH’s Conan stories. Because of that this was the fifth book published even though it is the first chronologically.

“The Thing in the Crypt” is by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp. It was published here for the first time. This story introduces us to Conan and is the first story chronologically in this series. Because of that this became sort of an “origin” story for the cinematic presentations of our favorite barbarian. Later “Legions of the Dead” appearing in Conan the Swordsmen, Bantam Books, 1978 was shoehorned in as the first story and after that Conan of Venarium, Tor Books, 2003 became the first Conan adventure making “The Thing in the Crypt” third chronologically in the CPI (Conan Properties Inc.) controlled timeline.

This story was adapted to comics in Conan the Barbarian #92 and to film in both the Conan the Barbarian movie, and the Conan the Adventurer TV show.  It was also adapted as “A Golden Super Adventure” (a book for young readers). This adaptation was done by Jack C. Harris and Dan Adkins, the cover was by Gino D’Achille. It features one or two large panels of art each page with short paragraphs telling the story. A company called Hard Heroes announced a sculpt based on the story, but that was canceled for some reason. The 2022 movie The Northman directed by Robert Eggers featured a sequence that was a homage to the Conan the Barbarian film (and as such, a homage to this story.)

This story had its beginnings as an idea for a Thongor story (Lin Carter’s barbarian creation.) Robert Price (Carter’s executor) wrote the Thongor version as “The Creature in the Crypt.” It was published in two books, Young Thongor and The Sword of Thongor.

excerpt from Lin Carter: A Look Behind His Imaginary Worlds (Starmont Studies in Literary Criticism) by Robert M. Price

“The Thing in the Crypt” is a pretty good introduction to Conan. The story was put under a stylometric test (presented at Howard Days in Cross Plains long ago) and it matched REH’s style with flying colors. De Camp and Carter, in their short stories, did true pastiche.

The story isn’t very complicated. Conan was captured and escaped. Conan makes his way south and fights off a pack of wolves with a broken length of chain attached to his arm. The story is introduced with an excerpt from “The Nemedian Chronicles” setting the stage for the story:

Conan finds refuge in a cave and discovers a mummified giant of a man. Conan takes the iron sword from the throne and war cries his joy at being armed and ready to kill the wolves that are waiting outside the cave. The mummy comes alive and a battle ensues. Since this is the first Conan adventure it is no spoiler to say that he prevails.

When re-reading this story I was struck by how much geographical detail is thrown in. Referring to the map in the front of the book was helpful. Conan is described as being inches over six feet and muscular. Conan’s attire is a tunic, loincloth and sandals. He acquires a cloak at the end of the story. Conan’s motivation for going south is described as “nothing but vague dreams of desperate adventures in the rich lands of the South.” It is mentioned that he is superstitious and, at this point, unable to read or write (and at this point in his life, thought those skills effeminate.) Conan cleverly concludes that the only way to defeat this living mummy is to cripple him.

At one point Conan thinks the mummy’s blade as a sword of Kings, and the narration mentions Kull of Atlantis. I think this is a forgivable misstep, but a misstep never the less. It’s possible Cimmerians knew of Kull through oral tradition but I don’t like that idea. If Cimmerians knew that one of their fore-bearers was a King in the ancient empire of Valusia their outlook on civilization would probably be different (although Conan’s knowing this might be another influence in his southward trek.). In any case it was a nice shout-out to mention REH’s other barbarian hero even though it also brings up the possibility that the mummy was Kull. I think it is pretty clear that that is not the case. Carter, most likely, added this line to get readers to purchase the King Kull volume that he had a financial stake in.

My only other nitpick is the line about Conan disdaining reading and writings skills as he eventually masters those skills and becomes quite the linguist. All in all I think the story works to give the reader an idea of who Conan is and sets the stage for a world like our own past history in many ways but one in which magic and mystery awaits…

Update: Pierre Comtois, a Lin Carter fan and writer (pierrecomtois.com), brought to my attention that Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #31 featured an altered version of “The Thing in the Crypt.” Roy Thomas had had permission to adapt the story but L. Sprague de Camp changed his mind (later formal contracts were done and Marvel was able to adapt everything) and Roy altered the story from a giant skeleton to Conan’s own shadow. Roy Thomas explains all this in the afterword of Dark Horse’s The Chronicles of Conan: The Shadow in the Tomb and Other Stories.

Review: The Arrows of Hercules by L. Sprague de Camp

by Phil Sawyer

I have just finished re-reading The Arrows of Hercules by L. Sprague de Camp. This 297 page historical fiction novel was published in 1965.

(1.) The action is centered in the 4th Century B.C. Mediterranean World. The wily dictator of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, Dionysios, is feuding with ancient Carthage. Dionysios assembles many inventors and engineers to work in his arsenal and build him bigger and better weapons. Sprague thought this could be called the world’s first military industrial complex

(2.): Zopyros the Tarentine travels to Syracuse to be hired by Dionysios. Zopyros is a brilliant engineer. He wants to earn enough money to marry his sweetheart Korinna and is willing to work for Dionysios even if it goes against the Pythagorean values of Zopyros.

(3.): Zopyros is the genius behind ” The Arrows of Hercules.” This is a catapult which flings huge arrows far beyond the range of the arm of a mortal man. The book details many of the bureaucratic battles which Zopyros much wage to bring his dream to reality.

(4.): Zopyros the unworldly dreamer must become a man of action. He goes forth into this brutal and cruel world and tangles with pirates and slavers and hardened mercenaries who would kill a man without a second thought. Zopyros witnesses mass crucifixions and the storming and destruction of large towns. He learns and understands that in his world life is very cheap.

(5.): We learn that Zopyros is a distant descendant of the Greek Myron, who accompanied the great warrior Bessas to Africa. Both Myron and Bessas (characters from de Camp’s The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate) are mentioned in this story. Zopyros gets to expound upon the Myron theory that the world is round.

(6.): On page 271 Sprague retells the tale of the Sword of Damokles. Also at the end of the book we get to meet Plato and we find out that Zopyros in his old age also managed to make a working version of a crossbow. You also hear about Plato’s young student Aristotle.

(7.): Re-reading these tales I am struck by how many Sprague protagonists are very smart and clever and yet very reserved and shy engineering or intellectual types. I think there is more L. Sprague de Camp in characters like Martin Padway and Myron the Greek and Zopyros the Engineer than I first realized.

(8.): This is an excellent and marvelous story which illustrates the color and action and brutality of the Ancient World. Sprague never shies away from the cruelty and nastiness of the Ancient World but he also shows you that once in a while you could run into kindness and generosity.

(9.): The book has splendid maps and I will post photos. The dedication is to Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov in memory of their days at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. Sprague contributes a splendid afterword where he tells you about the reality behind the novel.

Be sure to read this book! It is a superb tale which whisks you to long ago and far away. This is L. Sprague de Camp at his best!

The Palest Shadow (The Shadow by James Patterson and Brian Sitts)

by Gary Romeo

I never realized how lucky Conan fans were until I read James Patterson and Brian Sitts, The Shadow.

Never having read Patterson before I have no idea of his writing style. This book may be 99% Sitts and 1% Patterson, or even a 50/50 split. No matter, it is 100% awful.

Patterson is the most successful author ever. According to Wikipedia: “His books have sold more than 300 million copies, and he was the first person to sell 1 million e-books. In 2016, Patterson topped Forbes’s list of highest-paid authors for the third consecutive year, with an income of $95 million. His total income over a decade is estimated at $700 million.”

Wow!

For him to write (or lend his name) to this new series of Shadow novels is amazing. He clearly doesn’t need the money. Maybe Conde Nast (the owners of the property) gave him such a sweetheart deal it was too hard to just say no. Patterson, to his credit, is a large philanthropist. Hopefully some money will be donated to pulp preservationists.

I like most pastiche and think overall Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian was served fantastically well by the Lancer/Ace series and fairly well (particularly in the books by John Maddox Roberts and Leonard Carpenter) in the Tor Conan series. Patterson and Sitts’s only saving grace is perhaps getting new readers interested in the original series.

In this book Lamont Cranston is The Shadow. There is no mention of Kent Allard at all. This doesn’t bother me. I always thought the Kent Allard identity was a mistake. The Shadow should be millionaire Lamont Cranston. The Shadow being Kent Allard is like The Batman being, I dunno, Kent Allard. The millionaire crime-fighter is a great trope.

This book actually does have a scene with The Shadow calling The Batman a copycat.

Funny enough, but The Shadow actually turns into a cat in this book! You read that right. The Shadow now has the ability to turn into a cat!

The whole book is a mess. Apparently it is geared toward younger readers. Its 378 pages, in 101 chapters. Yep, chapters are about 3 pages long, making this geared for the short attention spanned I suppose.

The story puts The Shadow and Margo Lane in the year 2087 in a dystopian New York and introduces a new hero, Maddy Gomes. Shiwan Khan (The Shadow’s deadliest foe) is “World President” but seems to really only rule NYC. The Shadow and Margo Lane are revived after a 150-year sleep by Maddy Gomes who has powers of her own. Khan’s evil plan is to kill off poor people.

I’m glad The Shadow, Margo, and Maddy prevail. Even in the worst fiction it is best that good prevails and evil loses. And this book qualifies as the worst fiction.

Review: The Great Fetish by L. Sprague de Camp

by Phil Sawyer

I have just finished re-reading The Great Fetish by L. Sprague de Camp. Here’s my review. Wish me luck! Here it goes:

(1.): The Great Fetish was published as a book in 1978. I have the old SF Book Club edition and it comes in at 177 pages. This tale was first serialized in Isaac Asimov Science Fiction Magazine under the title “Heretic in a Balloon.”

(2.): Marco Prokopiu is 32 years old in Earth years. He lives on the planet Kforri. Kforri has about 1/3rd stronger gravity than Earth so after 50 generations or so everybody is powerfully built with strong hearts.

(3.): Marco is powerfully built even by the standards of Kforri. Marco, however, is introverted and withdrawn. He may look like a blacksmith but he is actually a intellectual and a academic.

(4.): Marco is put on trial for teaching evolution and that men are descended from Earth. After 50 generations the people of Kforri have forgotten how they came to Kforri. Marco’s correct ideas are considered heresy and Marco is sentenced to 4 years in jail.

(5.) As soon as Marco is in jail his wife Petronella runs off with a man Marco had supposed was a friend. Marco’s mother helps break Marco out with the time honored file in the cake trick. Marco lives in a society based on honor and is duty bound to catch up with his faithless wife and friend and kill them. As his mother tells Marco, “Put them to a terrible death; something I can be proud of.”

(6.) Marco journeys across Kforri in pursuit of the faithless couple. Marco soon meets the philosopher Boert Halran, who has finally invented a people carrying balloon that works! After many philosophic discussions Halran convinces Marco that there is more to life than revenge killings.

(7.) Marco and Halran end up riding the balloon to many different countries and meet many exotic people. Marco learns tolerance and “different countries, different customs.”

(8.):It’s fun re-reading this novel when I am almost 66 and not a teenager. I notice many more things. Marco on trial is a Kforri version of the Scopes Trial. And you get to see Sprague’s love of Engineering with the balloon. Also there is a echo of The Arrows of Hercules when Marco helps build a giant crossbow.

(9.): I wish Sprague had drawn a map of Kforri. It would have given me a better picture of Marco’s travels.

(10.): “The Great Fetish” are some relics which prove that man came from Earth. I personally liked the “Heretic in a Balloon” title better but that is pretty subjective.

(11.) I remember that Sprague was very pleased with the Frank Kelly Freas illustrations in Isaac Asimov Science Fiction Magazine for his story. It’s a shame they couldn’t have been in the book.

(12.): A e-book was published in 2011. Wikipedia also says this book was published in Germany.

All in all this is a solid de Camp story. I don’t think it is quite up to his very best but it is well worth reading. Sprague always teaches you things and this story has plenty of thrills and color. I think it was Brian Kunde who wrote that Sprague very much liked dedicating his works but curiously The Great Fetish lacks a dedication. Marco Prokopiu is a fine character. A burly, huge introverted withdrawn intellectual who wields a wicked battle-axe!

As Sprague used to sign his letters to me, Yours in Crom!