"Cosmic Horror From An Unlikely Source (for me)"

[decadence]

I have never really READ anything of Conan. I mean the pulp mags when I was little but not the creator's well, you know, other shit. Apparently, a cosmic horror goldmine...



http://www.rehoward.com/cosmic-horror.htm

Anyone have any input on this stuff? I wanna read it

Oh and a quote from HPL himself about the creator of Conan:

H.P. Lovecraft:
“For stark, living fear ... what other writer is even in the running with Robert E. Howard?”

also

After Howard’s death, H.P. Lovecraft said that the secret to the vividness of Howard’s stories was “that he himself is in every one of them.”


And this little tidbit from a page on his (howard's) official site:
"What if someone were to combine the sinister Fu Manchu school of pulp melodrama with Mickey Spillane’s hard-fisted private eye bravura? Someone did, and his name was Robert E. Howard. In Howard’s detective stories, the darkest alleys of the Big City teem with scheming masterminds and bizarre cults from the Far East. Opium dens and deserted warehouses conceal the strongholds of warlords who would resurrect the bloody empires of Genghis Khan and Kali, Goddess of Death. Only three men, modern-day Conans armed with .45s and blackjacks, stand in their way."

Now that is just whacky shit. Sounds fun

[decadence]

Well dammit, after posting all that shite, I find out even MORE depth on this guy..Interesting...


For the Kull stories, Howard, for the first time, created a 'Pre-Cataclysmic’ age of the earth, an age long before the dawn of recorded history. Atlantis and Lemuria had not yet vanished into the seas, but they were inhabited not by the advanced, utopian civilizations claimed by the occultists, but by savages. It was the Thurian continent that boasted grand civilizations, as well as mysterious pre-human races. The first published Kull story, ‘The Shadow Kingdom,’ deals with one of these pre-human races, and is a masterpiece of pure paranoia.

(slight interjection from me)

Wow that is fantastic in my opinion. PRE-APOCALYPTIC LIT? I never thought about it from that side. Interesting!

It (the above mentioned piece) centers upon a conspiracy by a race of Serpent Men to kill the king and, by taking on the semblances of Kull and his chief councilors, to seize control of the ancient kingdom of Valusia. In this story Kull first meets Brule, a Pictish warrior who will become his friend and comrade-at-arms throughout the rest of the series. Together they uncover and foil the conspiracy in a climax that shows Howard at his apocalyptic best. Only one other King Kull tale was published during Howard’s life, ‘The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune,’ a poetic fable heavy on metaphysical contemplation, which was published a month after ‘The Shadow Kingdom.’ Although Howard completed at least six other Kull stories, some of which are fine examples of the sword and sorcery genre, none saw publication. In 1934, when H.P. Lovecraft praised the Kull tales and urged him to write more, Howard said that he believed if he tried to write another, the “artificiality... would be apparent.” After Howard’s death, Lovecraft commented to fellow pulp scribe E. Hoffmann Price that “the King Kull series probably forms a weird peak” in the young Texan’s career, a judgment in which other writers of heroic fantasy have concurred.

[E.A. Lovecraft]

That book kicks some serious ass. Lost my copy years ago and thought it had since gone out of print. I'll go so far as to say it was the best collection of mythos stories I ever read. R.E. Howard had a serious gift for mixing adventure with the macabre.

[decadence]

I am seriously wanting to get my hands on it. Text files anyone? AL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!