Archives: Sword-and-Sorcery

The Coming of Conan Re-Read: “Xuthal of the Dusk”

Bill Ward and I are reading our way through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collection The Coming of Conan. This week we’re discussing “Xuthal of the Dusk,” sometimes known under the title “The Slithering Shadow.” We hope you’ll join in!

Howard: By this or its other name, “The Slithering Shadow,” Fritz Leiber once named this story as one of the weakest Conan yarns, describing it as “”repetitious and childish, a self-vitiating brew of pseudo-science, stage illusions, and the ‘genuine’ supernatural.”

The Coming of Conan Re-Read: “Iron Shadows in the Moon”

Bill Ward and I are reading our way through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collection The Coming of Conan. This week we’re discussing “Iron Shadows in the Moon.” We hope you’ll join in!

Bill: “Iron Shadows in the Moon” (retitled “Shadows in the Moonlight” for its Weird Tales and some subsequent appearances) contains everything most readers associate with a classic Conan tale: a beautiful female sidekick, the mysterious ruins of a forgotten race, supernatural peril, the clash of civilization and barbarism, subhuman monsters, and, above all, Conan being Conan. REH is firing on all cylinders at this point in his work on Conan and, if a few subsequent stories sometimes seem a bit like formulaic echoes of this story, it’s for good reason, as these elements all come together to tell a really terrific adventure.

The Coming of Conan Re-Read: “Black Colossus”

Bill Ward and I are reading our way through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collection The Coming of Conan. This week we’re discussing “Black Colossus.” We hope you’ll join in!

Howard: Maybe it’s not as deep, or as soulful, as some that are more routinely mentioned by Howard scholars, but this is one of my favorite Conan stories.  This is the work of a master who knows exactly how far to push every moment, and understands exactly what his audience wants. Robert E. Howard is in complete control of this narrative from beginning to end.

Hyborian Map

Robert E. Howard scholar Barbara Barrett sent Bill and me copies of a nifty Hyborian Age map. She had some extra copies from Howard Days 2014 and sent some to the two of us via John O’Neill.

Note the figure in the upper left, likely searching for some jeweled thrones to trod under his sandaled feet. I’m probably going to get this map framed — it’s just danged cool. Thanks, Barb!

 

The Coming of Conan Re-Read: “Queen of the Black Coast”

Bill Ward and I are reading our way through the Del Rey Robert E. Howard collection The Coming of Conan. This week we’re discussing “The Queen of the Black Coast.” We hope you’ll join in!

Robert E. Howard Article-a-Thon

With me in the midst of about four different projects in four different stages, I’m keeping things short today and pointing visitors to some previous REH essays they might not have seen.

First, why Conan and the Emerald Lotus is my favorite Conan pastiche, with the possible exception of Conan and the Living Plague.

Second, an overview of the better Conan pastiches, filtered through my own sensibilities.

Swords in the Mist Re-Read: “When the Sea-King’s Away”

Bill Ward and I are continuing our read through of Fritz Leiber’s collection of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories, Swords in the Mist. This week we’re looking at the fourth tale in the collection, “When the Sea-King’s Away.”

Swords in the Mist Re-Read: “The Cloud of Hate”

Bill Ward and I are reading another collection of Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories, Swords in the Mist. This week we’re starting with the first story in the collection, “The Cloud of Hate.” We hope you’ll grab a copy and join in.

Swords Against Death Re-Read: Conclusion

Over the last two months Bill Ward and I have been sharing our thoughts about one of my favorite short story collections, and the first sword-and-sorcery fiction I even encountered, Fritz Leiber’s Swords Against Death.

Swords Against Death Re-Read: “Bazaar of the Bizarre”

Bill Ward and I  are re-reading a book from Fritz Leiber’s famous Lankhmar series, Swords Against Death. We hope you’ll pick up a copy and join us. This week we tackled the tenth and final tale in the volume, “Bazaar of the Bizarre.”

Bill: Let me just say right at the outset that this is one of the all time great fantasy titles — long before I’d ever read Leiber, I knew the title “Bazaar of the Bizarre” (from, I think, Dragon magazine) and it turned out to be the first story of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser I’d ever read, in some since-forgotten anthology, and I still remember the anticipation leading up to it. I wasn’t disappointed.