Distant Suns: a clean sword and a clean foe to flesh it in.

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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.