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sRobert E. Howard’s Prehistoric Beasts: The “Red Nails” Dragon
Sunday , 1, September 2024 Pulp 1 CommentRobert E. Howard’s greatest use of a prehistoric beast was the “dragon” used in the first third of the novella “Red Nails.” First, Howard’s description: Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like […]
Robert E. Howard’s Prehistoric Beasts: Saber-Tooth Tiger
Sunday , 18, August 2024 Uncategorized Leave a commentRobert E. Howard made reference to lions and tigers quite a bit in his fiction comparing characteristics of his heroes to the big cats. He also used the prehistoric saber-tooth tiger a few times. Saber-tooth cats are a sub-family (Machairodontinae) of the Felidae (true cat) family. Mammals have put out saber toothed predators in the […]
A little reading of Robert E. Howard will give you the idea he did not like snakes. Giant snakes show up in three of the Conan stories and in one of the James Allison stories. That is not counting snakes of the supernatural type in “The Cobra in the Dream” and “The Dream Snake.” Snakes […]
Robert E. Howard’s Prehistoric Beasts: The Terror Bird
Sunday , 4, August 2024 Weird Tales 3 CommentsPrehistoric animals appear in Robert E. Howard’s fiction as intrusions of creatures from past eons. They are a way to enhance the strangeness of a situation. One creature used more than once was the Terror Bird. Terror Bird is a loose term used for predatory flightless birds of the Cenozoic Era. The dinosaur extinction opened […]
The most misinterpreted Robert E. Howard story is “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter.” Winter Elliott wrote in her essay “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Women” (Conan Meets the Academy): “Women in peril flee across the wastelands and marshes depicted on Howard’s pages; frequently like Atali of the story ‘The Frost-Giant’s Daughter,’ they’re pursued by men with […]
Charles Hoffman has been one of the most perceptive writers on Robert E. Howard’s fiction. His “Conan the Existentialist” has been reprinted three times after its original appearance in Amra #61 in 1974. He has had non-fiction pieces in The Dark Man, Crypt of Cthulhu, Spectrum, The Cimmerian, and The Robert E. Howard Reader. He […]
You may have seen the movie Cinderalla Man. It was very enjoyable, Russell Crowe giving his usual high standard of acting. Renee Zellweger returned to the Depression as the wife of fighter James Braddock. I was going through The Last Celt and noted that Robert E. Howard had one story in an issue of Dime […]
In the 1990s, it seemed a new book on pulp art or lavishly illustrated books on the pulp magazines came out every year. Lee Server’s Danger is My Business was a great introduction to various pulp magazine genres with lots of color reproductions of pulp magazine covers. Robert E. Howard in the Pulps Vol. One […]
This is a guest post by Jared: Robert E. Howard’s most famous creation, Conan of Cimmeria, lives in an era called the Hyborian Age. Conan’s barbarian–king predecessor, Kull of Atlantis, hails from a prior era called the Thurian Age. The Hyborian Age is meant to be a predecessor to a world that would be familiar […]
Last week I wrote about Robert E. Howard: A Closer Look. I mentioned two lit-crit anthologies edited by Don Herron: The Dark Barbarian and The Barbaric Triumph. These are logical follow up volumes if you are interested in reading about Robert E. Howard. The Dark Barbarian is a landmark book. Published by the prestigious Greenwood […]
The Starmont Reader’s Guides were published from 1979 to 1992. The entries are numbered up through 61. There are gaps in the numbering as some failed to materialize. The idea was to provide an overview of a fantastic author. At worst, these books were just synopses of the subject author’s fiction. Some had criticism of […]
H. P. Lovecraft received direct information on Robert E. Howard’s death from Dr. I. M. Howard dated June 29, 1936. Wherein Dr. Howard wrote: “He slipped out of the house, entered his car which was standing in front of the garage, raised the windows and fired a shot through his brain. . .He shot […]