Pulp Review: Red Shadows

Before Conan the Barbarian swaggered onto the stage, another Robert E. Howard character graced the pages of Weird Tales. Debuting in the August 1928 issue, Red Shadows introduced the world to the unflinching morality of Solomon Kane.

Solomon Kane is a wanderer, a Puritan living in a dark 17^th Century world full of evil monsters and worse men. Driven by a burning sense of purpose to punish evil, Kane comes across a young woman dying in the French wilderness. She names her killer, a bandit captain named Le Loup, and with a single sentence, Kane sets out to avenge this nameless woman's death.

“Men shall die for this.”

And die they do. Kane tracks the bandits to their hideout, killing them off-camera one by one like he's Jason Voorhees, until he's able to storm it and confront Le Loup. The bandit tries to bribe him and is shocked to find Kane uncorruptible. A fight ensues and Le Loup escapes.

Years later, Kane lands in Africa. He has tracked Le Loup to the jungle where he is captured by a local tribe of cannibals, but finds an unlikely ally in N'Longa, a powerful ju-ju man and sorcerer.

While the world of Solomon Kane is considerably grimmer, it is incredibly atmospheric. Its an excellent horror setting of heartless villains and mysterious monsters living in the shadows where the most dangerous creature in it is a good man. Action, blood, and magic abound in the story, but what differentiates Kane from Conan is that while Conan is a freebooting adventurer looking to get rich and doing the right thing in the end because he's a decent guy deep down, Solomon Kane deliberately wanders out into the world looking for evil to smite because he's already decided to do the right thing. Also, there is no way in hell that Solomon will have extramarital sex with a scantily clad temple maid. While the Conan stories are tremendously great fun, there is something deeply satisfying about watching Solomon Kane go about his bloody business.

Robert E. Howard didn't write bad stories, and I completely recommend Red Shadows as an introduction to Solomon Kane.

Appendix N Review: Black Colossus

Margaret Brundage knew how to sell the hell out of a cover

Returning now to Hyborea, Robert E. Howard's Black Colossus was published in the June 1933 issue of Weird Tales.

It begins, not with Conan, but with Shevatas, master-thief of Zamora (the land where Tower of the Elephant took place) who is exploring a sand-buried ruin of a city called Kuthchemes in the deep deserts south of Koth. By accident he awakens the undead sorcerer-king Thugra Khotan. The Liche-like Thugra, who oversaw horrific blood sacrifices in the name of Set, goes right back to trying to conquer the world. Now assuming the disguise of Natohk, the Veiled One. First on his list of conquests is the small kingdom of Khoraja, and its nubile princess Yasmela.

Tormenting and taunting Yasmela at night through his sorcery, the princess seeks solace in Mitra, the god of her Hyborean ancestors. Guided by a disembodied voice, she is directed to go out into the streets of her city alone at night and put her trust in the first man she meets.

The instructions are bizarre, but desperate for help, Yasmela does so, and so finally Conan of Cimmeria enters the story, who is currently employed as a mercenary.

After a negotiation that was equal parts paranoia and sexual tension, Conan is made commander of Khoraja's army, which then marches forth to meet the hordes of Natohk on the edge of the desert.

What follows is a titanic battle sequence that remarkably fits perfectly within a short story. Its incredible. There is humor, humanizing details for random grunts, and actual tactics that Conan employs to take advantage of the terrain. And rivers of blood, of course, because this is Conan after all.

Through heroic effort, Conan is able to win the field, but Yasmela is taken by Natohk back to Kuthchemes where he intends to take her for himself. Conan gives chase and confronts the sorcerer in his lair, and the way the story ends deserves to be discussed, so here's the recommendation before the SPOILERS start: Its a straightforward story that is deceptive in its simplicity. Its also a rip-roaring good time. Absolutely recommended.

SPOILERS

The fight with Thugra Khotan at the end is hilariously one-sided. The undead sorcerer postures and threatens with a giant black scorpion, but Conan kills him with a single blow by throwing his sword into his chest.

From there, he rescues Yasmela and wants to take her away from this horrid place, but she's the one who initiates the romantic encounter. Thugra had obviously intended to ravish her, but now Yasmela, who has been the actual protagonist of the story who got things moving (Conan has been merely reacting to situations thrown at him), decides that Conan has earned her embrace.

“No!” she gasped, clinging with convulsive strength as barbaric for the instant as he in her fear and passion. “I will not let you go! I am yours, by fire and steel and blood! You are mine! Back there, I belong to others – here I am mine – and yours! You shall not go!”

Here, in this ancient ruin, Yasmela is above any societal obligations befitting her rank and sex. Here, away from civilization, she is able to choose her sexual partners according to her own will, and she chooses Conan. A lot is conveyed about her character in these last few paragraphs when she is freed of the specter of Thugra's unholy lust.

The story caps off with Conan and Yasmela implied to have consensual sex in the chamber of the evil sorcerer-king that Conan just killed to prevent from raping her. That is the most Alpha Chad ending I think I've ever read. Its a wild ride. 

Appendix N Review: The Tower of the Elephant

In a rowdy section of the “City of Thieves” in sweltering Zamoria, a young Conan stalks the streets seeking adventure. In a tavern, he hears a Kothian slaver talking about a fabulously valuable jewel: the Heart of the Elephant, which sits in the mysterious Tower of the Elephant in the heart of the city. It is the treasure of the sorcerer Yara, and all who have tried to enter the tower have met with horrible death.

Desiring to be the first to succeed, Conan gets the information he desires from the fat slaver, tensions flare and in a brief tavern brawl, the slaver from Koth lies dead on the floor and the Cimmerian stalks toward the tower.

Sneaking into the tower, Conan finds another intruder, Taurus, the self-proclaimed “King of Thieves.” Deciding that two heads are better than one, the two join forces and infiltrate the sinister tower.

Cover art by José Ladrönn

Appearing in the March 1933 issue of Weird Tales, The Tower of the Elephant was published two months after The Scarlet Citadel. Here, Robert E. Howard takes a different approach to the first two Conan stories by going back to his barbarian hero's past. Years before taking the throne of Aquilonia, young Conan is a wandering thief in a foreign land that has barely heard of Cimmeria. For his part, Conan doesn't know what an elephant looks like either, aside from knowing it has a tail on its face. The perils within the Tower are suitably perilous, and the solutions are clever and exciting, particularly how Conan and Taurus deal with several deadly lions that guard the garden at the base of the tower.

Its a good story, and short. It hits all of Howard's strengths (action, tension, descriptions of the exotic, dark humor, etc) and while a little more straightforward than The Scarlet Citadel (which I think is a slightly better story) is still absolutely recommended and worth reading.

So go read it, because the next part is going to cover BIG spoilers.

I'm not joking.

Cover by Earl Norem

Still here? Don't say I didn't warn you.

This is the story where Conan meets a space alien. Yeah, that's plenty Weird Tales right there. Trapped inside the tower is an ancient, blind, green-skinned humanoid with a giant elephant's head. Yag-Kosha, or Yogha, as he calls himself (he uses both names), is from the distant planet Yag, and he was part of a group of exiles who flew to Earth on great wings. On Earth, the Yagians slowly died out, their wings atrophied to nothing and unable to leave, with Yag-Kosha the last survivor.

Having watched humans arise over centuries, he was eventually befriended by Yara, whom he taught many powerful secrets. Yara betrayed him, and imprisoned him, and now he sees Conan as a chance at escape. And revenge.

Art by Sanjulián

Naturally Conan is confused as hell, but his solution is to accept the situation as-is. Yag-Kosha is a funny-looking weirdo, but he's a nice guy, and clearly in misery. Conan's sympathy (and dislike of slavery) makes his decision for him. He'll help the elephant-man, even if it means losing out on the jewel.

As in The Scarlet Citadel, this crude kind of virtue is what sets Conan apart from later pastiches. When the chips are down, Conan actually does the right thing, as opposed to the profitable thing, even if the results don't go quite as he intended (doubly so when magic is involved). Conan always gives off the impression of a coiled spring ready to jump, but his decision-making process is what sets him up as a fully heroic character. The weirdness and violence he finds himself surrounded by is just icing on that cake.

Art by John Howe

Appendix N Review: The Scarlet Citadel

The Phoenix on the Sword was published in December of 1932, and was an immediate success for Robert E. Howard. The following month, January 1933, Weird Tales would publish the next Conan story: The Scarlet Citadel.

Conan, King of Aquilonia, is having a very bad day. His army was drawn into a trap and he himself is captured by a band of would-be usurpers: the traitorous ally Amalrus, the king of Koth, Strabonus, and Kothian sorcerer Tsotha-lanti. The first two want to kill him and be done with it, but Tostha wants to play with him before killing him because that's what evil sorcerers do.

Conan refuses an offer to let him abdicate, and Tsotha has him thrown into the dungeon of his bright red fortress (a scarlet citadel, if you will). Chained to a wall and facing down a giant snake, Conan escapes partly by luck, and wanders the dark recesses of the dungeon, encountering one of the sorcerer's horrific experiments after another.

Eventually he rescues another prisoner from a giant plant monster. The grateful man recovers and reveals himself as another sorcerer: Pelias, and old rival of Tsotha-lanti's who was imprisoned for a decade.

Conan, knowing that Aquilonia would be thrown into chaos, needs to get back in a hurry, but has no way of getting there. Pelias has a solution. He magics up a strange flying beast and tells Conan not to think too hard about where it came from. Conan reluctantly does, and it flies him back to his capital where the beatings commence.

The story segues into the chaos engulfing Aquilonia and how Conan's loyal retainers tried and failed to maintain order against a group of grasping nobles, and then a would-be usurper named Prince Arpello, who turns out to be an instant tyrant. Conan drops down onto a roof ready to go and after a very brief fight, grabs Arpello and throws him off the roof with a mighty heave, causing the usurper to smash on the stones below “like a mangled beetle.”

Sort of like A Song of Ice and Fire, only actually satisfying and not wasting your time with pages and pages of awkward sex and food descriptions.

But we're not done yet. We're going into SPOILER territory because the ending is really worth discussing.

Conan rallies his army for a pitched battle that deals with the mortal usurpers, and he runs down Tsotha-lanti on horseback and beheads the wizard.

Being a sorcerer, this doesn't stop him from trying to re-attach his body, but suddenly an eagle swoops down and carries the head off, laughing with Pelias' voice. The headless body takes off after it, and Conan is left wondering what the hell is wrong with wizards and their feuds and he just wants a drink.

Both here and in The Phoenix on the Sword, there are moments of dark comedy, and Howard delivers them exceptionally well. After the high tension of the entire story and the catharsis of the battles, dipping into screwball comedy doesn't hurt. It has to be deliberate comedy, since Conan's deadpan “I hate wizards” reaction is completely in character with a man used to dealing in concrete situations.

That said, The Scarlet Citadel features a similar plot to Conan's debut: King Conan has to deal with a plot to overthrow him. The solution involves stabbing many men. The execution is different. The fighting is larger scale and the Weirdness factor is ramped up dramatically. Tsotha-lanti's dungeon is a carnival of horrors, from plant monsters, invisible creepy things, a bloated monstrosity that weeps with a woman's voice, and deep pit leading down that feels wrong. The giant snake is mundane by comparison.

The Scarlet Citadel expands the scope of the Hyborean Age in every direction. Conflict is bigger, magic is stranger, and there's a bit of continuity discussing the “Mad Bard” Rinaldo from the first story.

Come for the badass fighting, stay for the weird magic. Its Robert E. Howard. Its Conan. Its a good time.

Appendix N Review: The Phoenix on the Sword

In December of 1932, Weird Tales Magazine, arguably the premier supernatural horror pulp of the 30s, published a story from a young but regular contributor to the magazine named Robert Ervin Howard. Howard had been appearing in Weird Tales since 1925, contributing a wide variety action stories, from the stern-faced Puritan hero Solomon Kane to more straightforward horror that was part of fellow Weird Tales contributor H. P. Lovecraft's mythos.

This story was Phoenix on the Sword, and it introduced the world to Conan of Cimmeria, barbarian conqueror, king, and indelible archetype.

Set in an ancient, antediluvian age before recorded history, a conspiracy to assassinate the new king of Aquilonia festers in the kingdom's heart. Ascalante, a disgraced noble and outlaw, has banded together a group of powerful men to topple the crown. Most unique among them is Thoth-Amon, a black-skinned exile from Stygia, formerly a powerful sorcerer, now enslaved by Ascalante as a henchman.

The new king, Conan, is miserable. He's a fighting man, a wanderer and adventurer now saddled with the responsibilities of rule. Despite his inconvenience, he is a fair ruler. He's lowered taxes, ensured that the people of Aquilonia aren't enslaved, and generally leaves people alone. But despite his benevolence, people like the bard Rinaldo sow discontent among the people. Conan's advisors have urged him to execute the rebellious poet, but Conan has resisted. He genuinely likes Rinaldo's skill, and is aware that killing him would make a martyr of him.

Meanwhile, Ascalante moves ahead. Conan's guards will be drawn away from his bedchamber at midnight, and the conspirators (including Rinaldo) will attack. He sends one of them, the fat rich fool Dion to his estate to prepare to become the new king, with Thoth-Amon to keep watch over him.

This leads to one of the funniest scenes in the book, where the Stygian tells the noble his history, how he had a ring that gave him phenomenal magic powers and what kind of status he enjoyed as a worshipper of Set. Dion, in his self-absorption, hasn't heard a word of it, only perking up when Thoth-Amon mentions his ring. By coincidence, it happens to be THE ring Thoth-Amon lost years ago. Comedic interlude over, the Stygian murders the hapless idiot, reclaims his treasure, and summons a demonic monster to murder Ascalante and anyone around him.

In the meantime, Conan dreams of a black stone temple and the tomb of the ancient sage Epemitreus, dead for several thousand years, but even in death an enemy of the dark god Set. The sage marks Conan's sword with a phoenix marking, a holy symbol of Aquilonia's patron god Mitra, and warns him that Set's power is still active in the world.

The stage is set for one hell of a battle.

As always, Howard has a genius for describing action sequences. There is a choreography that flows beautifully even as blood and brain matter are splattered across the walls. The characters are lightly sketched out, but Conan is immediately likable as a wise, experienced adventurer with a wry sense of humor. Thoth-Amon himself stands out as a great villain, even though he doesn't ever interact with Conan nor really act against him. He gets his ring back, begins his vengeance against Ascalante, and disappears from Howard's Conan stories. He would appear again in later pastiches by other authors, but here he's an intelligent, strong, admirable (well, for a villain at least), nuanced, clearly Black character who demands respect from the reader. In 1932.

*Disclaimer: I'm friends with the guy who edited the above edition of Phoenix on the Sword. He's a good guy. The cover artist is cool too.

The story itself is straightforward, almost simple in places, and was itself a re-work of a Kull the Conqueror story that didn't sell (Howard's other, less successful, Barbarian Hero). Yet the blueprint is right there: a heroic loner pitted against the hazards of civilization and eldritch sorcery.

It works, and it works well. Absolutely recommended.

Pulp Review: The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (pt 1)

The poetically unimaginative but accurately titled The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard is a book of short fiction from 2008 that collects a massive number of short stories from arguably the best writer of the Pulp Era. 

I've been reading the collection on and off for several months now, and while there's a very good reason why Conan is Howard's most enduring creation, this book provides an excellent survey that hammers home just how damn good he was as a writer.

Some of the stories are better than others, with some I would call essential fantasy reading, but there isn't a single one I would say is “bad.” The theme being horror, that's what you end up with: spooky tales, the genesis of the Weird West genre, monster hunters, and eldritch abomination slayers. Action and imagination are the cornerstones of Howard, and every single genre he puts his hand to spins something enjoyable.

Rather than dwelling on a single story, I'll review them in smaller chunks because while they've all been enjoyable, some have more meat on their bones than others.

In the Forest of Villefère (Weird Tales, August 1925)

A traveler named de Montour is passing through a forest on the way to the village of Villefère. He meets a fellow traveler, Carolus le Loup. With a name like that, he's obviously a werewolf and attacks de Montour when the moon rises. A slight tale, but atmospheric with explosive action at the end.

Wolfshead (Weird Tales, April 1926)

The sequel to the above story, this time a new narrator travels to Africa and the fortress of one Dom Vincente da Lusto, a trader and slaver who has carved himself a small empire there. Among the guests there is de Montour, who is himself a werewolf now and tries to lock himself away from others when the moon rises, but of course that doesn't work 100% and a couple people in the castle start dying. Then one of Vincente's courtiers starts a slave revolt as a power play against him and it ends in some literal explosive action. The slavery issue (which makes sense given that its set during the Age of Sail, also Dom Vincente isn't a very good man in the first place) will be a turnoff for some but the action is top notch and an early example of a “heroic werewolf” in fiction. De Montour's desire to lock himself away during the full moon notably prefigures Larry Talbot from the Wolfman movies.

The Dream Snake (Weird Tales, February 1928)

On a warm summer night down South, an old man named Faming explains his horrific dreams of being hunted by a gigantic snake. Every night its the same dream, only the snake gets closer. A short and simple creepy tale.

Sea Curse (Weird Tales, May 1928)

Now we're getting somewhere. The first of the “Faring Town” stories about a small coastal town that suffers from weird incidents. This is about two drunken scoundrels and pirates named John Kulrek and Lie-lip Canool. Kulrek did wrong by one of the girls of the village, and when she died at sea, her old mother, Moll Farrell, places a curse on the two. I'll say no more, since the payoff is fantastic.