A while back, I wrote a series of posts on speculative fiction – Distant Suns. Commenter patrickg liked the posts and wanted to try his own hand at one. So I’m happy to host the first of his continuation of the series! – MB
Distant Suns: a clean sword and a clean foe to flesh it in.
Image of a Conan comic courtesy of j_phillipp at Flickr, reproduced under a Creative Commons licence.
Conan is arguably the most iconic figure of the fantasy era, but he’s a somewhat enigmatic one, too. So widely sampled and replayed, you could talk about the character that Schwarzenegger immortalised, or Marvel’s Conan, or the L. Sprague De Camp Conan of the fifties. It’s easy to forgot the original, which is why I took the time to wade through 1000-odd pages of un-bowdlerised Conan recently.
And the original is a much more complicated, interesting figure than the subsequent versions. Robert E. Howard’s Conan represents a weird combination of ubermensch and bestial throwback. A petty thief, a pirate, a king and a soldier, the only thing he’s not good at is magic.
His physicality is almost parody: Whilst the popular conception of Conan is a bit reductionist, do prepare for mighty thews, steely thews and rippling thews; a veritable bestiary of thews. Some critics have used Howard’s near-fetish for the barbarian’s body as demonstration of repressed homosexuality, but in my opinion that’s a long bow to draw (the kind of bow you need thews for!). Howard certainly worships Conan – as does everyone in these stories that isn’t trying to kill him – but his pantherish body is merely one facet.
Howard takes great pains to demonstrate Conan’s smarts and natural cunning. These stories have the barbarian commanding armies, exposing spies and planning heists. It’s a natural intelligence – more an instinctive cunning and foresight than wisdom or shrewd intelligence. And it’s relatively believable, and surprisingly appealing.
Having read some of Howard’s other stories, I was prepared for powerful, but unlikable characters and prose. The popular vision of Conan – helped in no small part by John Milius’ film – is both misogynist and racist. I don’t want paint the Conan oeuvre as politically sensitive and progressive but compared to some of Howard’s other work, and the work of his contemporaries – and sadly much fantasy published today – it’s really not too bad.
Certainly, every woman lusts after Conan as surely as they need rescuing, but he does meet his equal on more than one occasion. Women rescue Conan, fight with Conan and sometimes even leave Conan; they’re always secondary characters, but frankly so is everyone to the barbarian.
And yes, the black characters are frequently evil, perverted sorcerers from the desert, but there are also black characters that are allies. Howard reserves his strongest disdain not for primitive civilisations worshipping ape or snake gods in the jungle, but the arrogant white men who think they can conquer them.
More than any other theme, Howard’s disgust and exasperation with civilisation ring out in the Conan stories. Reflecting his strong confederate family history, Howard has little positive to say about the ‘cultured’ races of Hyborea, highlighting treatment that civilisation metes out casually, but would be unthinkable to the barbarian cultures.
And Conan represents the ultimate defeat of civilisation. His instincts are faster, righter than his over-thinking, under-using enemies, and despite their superior weapons, black magic, armies and slaves, they fall to his sword surely as the abyssal beasts he sometimes slays.
But perhaps this is ultimately confirming, rather than questioning your image of Conan. What really did surprise me, as I was reading the chronicles was their astonishing influence. Howard is largely credited with inventing Sword and Sorcery, a genre subsequently taken up by writers likeFritz Leiber, C.L. Moore, and more recently Steven Brust and a host of others. But as I worked my way further into the stories, I honestly believe that in Conan, Howard has invented modern fantasy as we know it.
These stories include magic, odysseys, truly cinematic battle scenes involving thousands, comedy, tragedy, stories of castle life and rebellion. J.R.R Tolkien is frequently credited as the father of fantasy, but Lord of the Rings was published over ten years after Howard killed himself, and without taking anything away from him, LOTR has definitely dated. The Chronicles of Conan – bar the thews, perhaps – could have been written yesterday. Howard’s prose is astonishingly vivid and punchy; astonishingly contemporary.
It’s a prose that bears far more in common with modern fantasy – even modern high fantasy – than much of Tolkien, and this is especially apparent as the stories go on, leaving us with a tantalising glimpse of what a forty or fifty year old Howard could have done with Conan.
These stories aren’t perfect. The early ones in particular are extremely formulaic, and there are some camp, faintly ridiculous moments, alongside some sexism and racism. But Howard’s prose hooks you like crack. One paragraph and you’re standing on the cliffs with Conan, staring down at the swarming tribes, and those fantastic clichés we’re all familiar with – messianic stable boys, lisping elves, covetous dragons, Germanic countryside and unaccountably ubiquitous stews – are nowhere in sight. It’s thrilling, even eighty years later.
The good news for Conan fans is there is no shortage of online companionship, with fantastic scholarships sites, online games, and a highly regarded blog/journal, The Cimmerian to take the journey further. Unfortunately Howard ended his life before he could advance the story himself, and the Conan that L. Sprague De Camp edited and wrote – however well-intentioned – is not cut from the same silken loin cloth; it will only disappoint you.
As I finished reading the Complete Chronicles of Conan, I was aware of two things: a major voice in fantasy that I had only listened to murmurs of previously, and a hunger for more. A lusty, vigorous hunger, by Crom, a hunger not sated by the pretty, delicate scribblings of modern bards! God help me, I might have to read The Steel Remains next.
Try the Solomon Kane stories – they’re great.
Tor.com also did a series of posts on Howard’s sword & sorcery characters: Conan; Kull of Atlantis; Brak Mak Morn>; and Solomon Kane.
As an added extra, some thoughts from several recent Conan illustrators. I particularly like the Gregory Manchess version.
I vaz jozt readink ze Conan ztories. ey are very goot yah! He iz ze man who vill dermindande you all iff you do nat poot ze biofeul in yaw HumVeez!
Seriously I was just reading conana I wasn;t a fan when I was a kid – at all. But the newer editions which are more sophisticated are interesting in portraying the archaic pre-history of times when city-states peppered the wasteland so to speak.
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Conan isn’t Nordic like he was in the film. He was a Cimmerian whatever that is.
Mmmm, but Howard’s narratives were themselves anticipated by other writers – like H Rider Haggard, and other British writers in the ‘boys-own adventure’ genre, where they would return to the same characters for book after book, and have adventures in all manner of exotic/sublime locations, against any number of vast backdrops. And wasn’t Edgar Rice Burroughs writing before Howard? (Not sure about that, and not enough time to check on the computer at the moment.)
I’ll have to have a look for this Patrick – I enjoy the Conan movies a hell of a lot, and there’s a richness there in some of the scripting and dialogue that you don’t normally get in Hollywood films. “Jewelled sands they trod,” for instance. Or “wore a troubled crown upon a troubled brow.” I suspect these may have been taken from the original Conan books (or at least one of the better written post-Howard books.)
I read “Conan”, I think “Arnie punching a camel”.
I know what you mean Tim, and I thought about Howard’s antecedents with Haggard et al. too. But to be honest the influence isn’t as strong as you would think. Those colonialist fantasies are I think far removed from both contemporary fantasy of today, but also Howard’s Conan, treading as he does the ancient world. Moreover, you could argue in many ways that those books are the opposite – the triumph of civilisation, rather than it’s inevitable failure and more importantly, failings.
To find Howard’s inspiration I truly think you would need to go back to Virgil, but also some of the less, hmmmmm, epic classcists, such as Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Livy, etc. Howard was apparently well acquainted with a lot of the classics.
By the way, I forgot to mention, but for those interested, WikiSource has virtually all of Howard’s work available for free, online, so all you have to lose is some time. I recommend Beyond the Black River. Really ticks a lot of typical Howard boxes.
Gilmae, glad I’m not the only one loving Tor.com. I really liked Mark Schultz’ illustrations.
I do find it interesting, also. In that Howard – despite the influence – is still an antithesis of much modern fantasy also, which is at pains to build and consolidate empires or systems, or replace them with better ones.
Howard ought to be more popular with the libertarian crowd, focussing as it does on the futility of empires and systems, not world building, but world destroying. I’m trying to think of modern fantasists with such a bent. Hobb’s Liveship traders perhaps, but her Assasin’s books are the opposite. Martin perhaps?
Mieville?
What, the people who worship Heinlein? They’re not against civilisation–they merely dream of counter civilisation.
Curious that you say Tolkien has “dated”, it’s a bit like saying the bible has dated. In fact there is really no comparison. For example Howard’s stories are short and sharp, I haven’t read one for a while but you could get through one in double speed. He wasn’t that interested in fleshing out the references he made to the histories and peoples of Hyborea (or whatever it was called). Frequently the reader would be dropped into an already in progress episode. IMHO This is the antithesis of Tolkien.
Ages since I read any but when I saw the first film I noticed that Arnie didn’t pull his hand out through the nail as Howard described it. Then it really fell apart at the end with some pathetic pointed stake work. Another big deal was some of the accents. Often books beat movies. Often.
Politically the barbarians at the gates metaphor keeps cropping up but one I personally like and use is the conquistador destruction of the Aztec civilization.
Now that is a metaphor that’s perfect for today. Even some of the architecture in DC supports it – as do the tribes surrounding we can use as our allies. I’m sure many of us have a little barbarian blood in them so how about we end this ‘civilized’ daily ritual of human-sacrifice? And if you can’t be there in person just send as many white powder envelopes and false alarms to 9-11 as you can.
Thanks in advance. We burn our boats and leave at dawn. The password is ‘Crom’.
Hey Mentock, I wasn’t meaning to knock Tolkien with that line – he is what he is – though I do wish Conan had found a Peter Jackson rather than a Milius. And the bible has dated…
But in regards to not ‘fleshing out’ his story, you honestly couldn’t be any further from the truth – for example, read Howard’s The Hyborian Age here (if you like, to be honest it’s a bit of a slog). It’s his positioning statement for the world of Conan, if you will, outlining what happened for thousands of years before, and a hundred/two hundred or so after. Every bit as contextually rich as Tolkien.
I feel like you are judging Tolkien somewhat by only LOTR. He himself wrote a lot of shorter works, and also had a large range of posthumous publications. I do agree with you that a comparison between them as authors – as opposed to influencers – is unfair.
Howard was a working writer, with deadlines and editorial preferences governing his work. He never went to university, killed himself by thirty and never was never anything but a writer. Tolkien wrote primarily for himself, was a soldier, an academic, an historian and folklorist, lived to his eighties, I think.
As influencers though, I think that Howard’s style is a watermark underlying so much modern fantasy – almost omnipresent – whereas it is Tolkien’s concepts that remain: the elves, the hobbit-like creatures, the myth-y class-filled universe. The battle between good and evil. The stew.
Perhaps I’m not doing Tolkien enough justice because those ideas have been incorporated into some – thousands – of truly shitty novels consequently. And also because so much of his work reflects his background as a folklorist.
Gilmae – good call on the Mieville! You know he’s got a new one coming out this year? I do feel that in Mieville’s collapsing systems there is an implicit promise of a better system, but I don’t think we’ll ever see it, and I wonder if he does, too.
The new Mieville book is another Un Lun Dun story, right?
K J Parker is another writer who does collapsing systems. He/She – I can never keep straight the various theories/truths about Parker’s secret identity – is explicitly about finding the breaking point of everything and then applying the right pressure. And when the system is done being broken, there’s nothing better left for the protaganists and in at least one series there’s nothing left at all.
In a way I find them really depressing because I see in them a reflection of my own cynicism. There really is nothing better behind our broken systems, there’s no utopia and arguably we are already living in the dystopia; we just don’t realise it because somehow we lucked out and are sitting at the top of the food chain.
It didn’t help that I used to have this nasty, self-destructive habit of only reading Parker in the middle of winter when I was already stressed. It wasn’t a deliberate thing but it invariably came out that way and I’d spend a week or two half out of my gourd; wandering about like a lost soul wondering what’s the point of it all.
As for Tolkien being dated…there are two kinds of Tolkien readers in this world. Those who though Moorcock was onto something with the Epic Pooh essay and those that think he’s taken one too many tokes on the hookah. Actually, I guess I should be honest and count myself part of the third group who believe he’s right *despite* being a little nuts.
Gilmae, I don’t think so – I think it’s another Bas Lag book (hurray!). Ahh Mieville, I’m always a bit disappointed when actualyl reading the books, but afterwards I forget the somewhat pedestrian plots and only the amazing ideas remain. You can read about the new one here.
Haven’t read any Parker don’t think. Will have to give it a shot while the weather’s still warm.
Yeah I don’t love Moorcock wholeheartedly – the idea that somehow everything he touches turns to gold is demonstrably untrue – but do believe he’s an icon of 20thC fantasy, and Epic Pooh certainly chimes several bells for me.