by Gary Romeo
There are several things I like in life, chief amongst them are: music, action movies, and fantasy fiction. For no discernible reason I weigh which country produced my favorites. America vs. Britain: Elvis Presley vs. The Beatles. Tarzan vs. James Bond. Robert E. Howard vs. J. R. R. Tolkien.
I like John Lennon (as a thinker and musician) more than Elvis. I love Tarzan (who is British) as much as James Bond but the Bond movies are much more re-watchable than most Tarzan films. I’m not a big Tolkien fan. So, it’s Robert E. Howard that keeps me from being a total anglophile I suppose.
Stephen Jones, a Londoner, writes the latest biographic look at Robert E. Howard (and H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith) and gets my nod as the best short biographer so far. There is nothing really new to me here. I’ve been reading about “The Weird Tales Boys” since the 1970s, so I’m fairly knowledgably. But I like the way these three geniuses were presented here.
The book consists of an introduction by Ramsey Campbell, numerous illustrations and photographs, an “About the Author” afterword, and 35 short but interesting chapters. The first chapter briefly discusses Weird Tales. Lovecraft and Howard get 14 chapters each with Smith getting 6. Of course, Weird Tales is in the background in every chapter and the three writers get co-mingled more often than not.
Chapters 2 – 15 cover the essentials of each man’s life. The basic facts are there, and the best stories are briefly discussed. Nice crisp black & white illustrations pepper the book. Chapter 16 starts to get into REH’s legacy: “Although a number of his stories – mostly pseudonymous Westerns – and some poems continued to be published over the next decade, it was not until the early 1950s that Howard’s work became popular again. This was in no small way due to the Gnome Press collections of Conan and L. Sprague de Camp’s posthumous “collaborations.”
Lovecraft’s legacy is next up. “What Lovecraft could not possibly have predicted was that, so far as his popularity as a writer was concerned, like his friend Robert E. Howard it would only be after his untimely death that his career would really begin to take off…” Chapter 18 has some decent discussion around August Derleth’s creation of Arkham House, Robert Barlow’s designation as HPL’s literary executor, and whether some of HPL’s stories were public domain or not. This isn’t a fully detailed discussion, but it did make want to learn more. Jones quotes Lin Carter, “In 1926, when he casually sent off a friendly reply to a fan letter from a seventeen-year-old reader in Sauk City, Wisconsin, Lovecraft could hardly have guessed that he had the friend who was in time to make him famous.”
Clark Ashton Smith’s legacy is discussed in Chapter 29. “1970 also saw the first mass-market paperback editions of Smith’s work. Following the revival in interest of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard’s work in the late 1960s, editor Lin Carter compiled the collections Zothique (1970), Hyberborea (1971), Xiccarph (1972) and Poseidonis (1973) for his renowned “Adult Fantasy” series from Ballantine Books.”
The concluding chapters discuss modern day criticisms, and more to my liking, the Movie, TV, and Comic Book adaptations done of the three author’s work. I enjoyed that information but would have preferred it presented as an appendix and in a checklist format. Of course, doing a complete and accurate checklist would take up more pages and require much more research. This book also lacks an index and even a works cited page. This bothers me a great deal but that seems to be standard nowadays. Scholarship isn’t what it used to be.
All in all, I enjoyed the book and recommend its purchase. Jones correctly summed up the historicity of his subjects: “[…] it is difficult to imagine any other authors from that period still having such a profound influence on horror and fantasy fiction today. Whether you love them or hate them, these “Weird Tales Boys” continue to cast their long, talented and in some ways tragic shadows over our genre. May it always remain so.”
spraguedecampfan 
Does the book discuss HPL’s blatant racism, antisemitism, and flirtation with Hitler? I must confess, learning of it took a bite out of my regard for his writing. If it did, well done. We should know those details before we commit to any one author. Mind you, I still read Tolkien, though I do suspect the ‘Orcs’ and their stereotypical overtones, along with description of elves as fair and exalted above humans. Alas, I cry foul and then carry on!
I read the book some time ago and it does not have an index for easy referral. The way I remember it, the final chapter does mention that HPL has become controversial for those things. But, no, I do not remember a discussion of HPL’s faults in those areas being a major part of the book.