Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Thirteen: Robert E Howard

Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Thirteen: Robert E Howard

This is an ongoing sporadic series, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. Appendix N is the bibliography of Gary Gygax's original Dungeon Masters Guide, and lists a range of classic SF and fantasy authors that influenced his interest in the fantastical. See the first part of this series for more information.

This time around, I have reached the works of:

Robert E Howard

Robert Erwin Howard was a Texan writer, born 1906 and died at the age of 30, committing suicide. That this came soon after the death of his mother means that there’s a lot of speculation about Howard having an “Oedipus Complex” from pop-psychologists; since Freudian psycho-analytical theory is pretty dodgy itself, I’d be inclined to ignore that as just rumour-mongering. It’s entirely possible that Howard had some form of depression which would have been over-looked and undiagnosed in those times.

Because of this, it’s somewhat unfortunate that his work seems to have been analysed in the same vein – the exaggerated masculinity of his heroes supposedly some kind of wish-fulfillment for the bookish young author. And perhaps they are, but to be honest they’re also just plain entertainment. But more on that in the discussion of the works rather than the man.

Howard managed to cram a *lot* of writing in the seven years that he was actively writing and getting published. Not just the Conan stories discussed here, but Westerns, Detective stories, the Solomon Kane adventures and other assorted pulp staples. Whatever else one may say about the man and his writing, it can’t be denied that he was prolific and dedicated.

Conan The Barbarian

Of Howards prodigious output, it is the Conan stories that are recommended in Appendix N. It’s worth noting that the Trapdoor Spiders, and Appendix N alumni, Lin Carter and L Sprague deCamp have also written a boatload of Conan stories, some expanding on notes by Howard, but the anthology I got my hands on is of the Howard-only stories.

This particular anthology gives the stories in publication order, which is not chronological for Conan’s life. In fact, the first story, The Phoenix on the Sword, takes place late in Conan’s career, where he is already king of the country of Aquilonia. The stories skip around in Conan’s life, where at one time he is a young and hungry adventurer, at others a pirate captain, or a mercenary, a thief, an explorer, or a general.

Conan is a fairly simple character, a typically muscle-bound hero of swords and sorcery from the tough northern land of Cimmeria. I noticed that, oddly, we learn next to nothing about Cimmeria in the Howard-penned stories; there are other northern barbarian tribes that feature more prominently, and aside from an upbringing that has given Conan razor-sharp instincts and senses, we hear nothing about how or why or what turned him into the man that he is. Nothing of the backstory shown in the Arnie film.

He’s somewhat similar to Burroughs’ Tarzan, not only in build and “bestial senses”, but also in being a typical Man of Action who relies upon his own might to carry him through. But he also reminds me of James Bond, especially as, unlike Tarzan, Conan has a taste for fine things and beautiful women (Tarzan instead preferring to sleep rough, and being shy around women like most of Burroughs’ protagonists). Like Bond, especially the book Bond, Conan lives in a world where a macho man can indulge his thirst for violence, drinking, and wenching, with no-one to censure him. But he does, occasionally, show moments of doubt and fear and, like Bond, from time to time meets a woman who is his equal. For Bond it is Contessa Teresa “Tracy” de Vicenzo, or Vesper Lind. For Conan it’s the pirate queen Bêlit and the swashbuckler Valeria.

 

But beyond these two, the women in Conan’s life tend to be either “saucy wenches” or haughty noblewomen, who at worst come to fall for Conan’s rough charms despite their misgivings. It’s all very “alpha male” fantasy, to be honest.

Beyond being a creature of almost instinct, with a rough and sometimes sardonic sense of humour and  lust for life, there’s not much more psychological depth to Conan. And, in fact, a lot of the time he’s not even the centre of the narrative, appearing later into a story and seen as a third party. That’s not to say, however, that Howard doesn’t sometimes introduce some interesting insight via the other characters.

The Stories

The Conan stories vary widely, although overall Conan is put into some kind of peril, and ends up prevailing through physical strength and tenacity. Sometimes Conan is himself in search of treasure, such as in The Tower of the Elephant,  but sometimes he ends up simply mixed up in other people’s problems, for example ending up part of an ill-fated pirate raid on a mysterious ruin in The Pool of the Black One.

A common motif that Howard employs is for the stories to start from the point of view of another protagonist, quite often a damsel in distress, with Conan appearing at first as a side character in another person’s story; only towards the end does the barbarian become the central protagonist. In the case of Beyond the Black River, we largely follow the adventures of a young pioneer called Balthus, and even when Conan appears in the story he is largely seen through the eyes of Balthus (who, it has to be said, comports himself bravely despite lacking Conan’s superhuman abilities).

In The God in the Bowl this motif is taken almost to an extreme, with Conan merely being an on-looker to the arguments between a host of other characters; only at the end does he do anything more than stand looking amused and bemused, and largely because he becomes, through various events, the last man standing.

 

Supernatural elements appear, most notably in The People of the Black Circle, set in a thinly veiled Khyber Pass region and featuring a cabal of sorcerers attempting to foment political unrest. But whether sorcerer or demon, the supernatural elements usually end up falling to a single sword blow from Conan (or, in the case of Rogues in the House, a well-aimed chair). Howard even gives an in-universe reason for this; in order to manifest in the mortal world of Hyborea, demons and gods have to take on a mortal form, and once they do that, they also take on a mortal’s vulnerabilities. Even though Howard draws on Loveraftian ideas of “things from between the stars”, in Howard’s world, extra-planar monsters are uncanny but far from unbeatable.

Howard repurposes plotlines a fair amount as well; The Pool of the Black One, Shadows in the Moonlight, The Devil in Iron, and Queen of the Black Coast all take place on islands containing ruins haunted by some kind of monstrous denizen, and Howard revisits this as well as effectively re-writing the plot of The Scarlet Citadel in his longest Conan story, The Hour of the Dragon. This is a tour de force where King Conan is deposed from his throne of Aquilonia by a conspiracy between rival nobles, a neighbouring kingdom, and an ancient sorcerer brought back to life.

There is a loose trilogy, of sorts, set in the frontier on the border of the land of the Picts, a kind of melange of white fears about “the savages”, blending the cannibalistic depiction of Africans from the Tarzan stories with elements of Native Americans as depicted in lurid Westerns. The most striking of the stories is Beyond the Black River, which reads more like a Western than a fantasy novel. The two other stories are posthumous – The Black Stranger mixes the Pictish/Western tropes with Pirate tropes to give a strange Treasure Island-y kind of story, while Wolves Beyond the Border is a fragment told entirely by a different protagonist, where Conan only features tangentially as a rumour.

These stories do contain an uncomfortable racial elements to them, with Conan identifying as a “white man” against the “savages”. Worst, probably, is Shadows in Zamboula, with the dark-skinned Stygians performing strange cannibalistic rites in the dead of night. It’s a weird story anyway, starting off with a Procrustean innkeeper, then shifting into the perils of a supposed dancing girl and a sorcerer trying to usurp the throne, only for the dancing girl to turn out to be the Queen of the City of Zamboula seeking revenge and the return of her lover. Like some other of Howard’s less focussed Conan tales, this one doesn’t feel like it knows what it wants to be.

Verdict

Putting aside the dated sensibilities on race and gender roles (which one pretty much has to accept in the pulps), one thing I do like about Howard is that he treats the Hyborian setting with absolute seriousness. Although Conan from time to time has a grim and dark sense of humour, and while sometimes some side characters are comically deluded, there is no sense of campiness or knowing winks in the writing – these may be swords and sorcery romps, but they are very much treated as if they were something a lot more worthy. And that, to be honest, is to their advantage.

Probably my favourite part is from Beyond the Black River, where the settlers attempts to tame the Pictish wilderness have been thwarted, and Conan pays homage to Balthus and the dog Slasher who have died fighting the Picts. Like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the frontier turns civilised men savage (even the dog Slasher, as noted by Balthus, has become wild and dangerous because it has been deprived of the civilised niceties). Conan channels Thomas Hobbes when he muses that “Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilisation is unnatural; it is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.”

Gaming Ideas

I didn’t find anything in the RE Howard stories that had obviously made its way into D&D canon, at least until we get to the specific Conan the Barbarian series of adventure modules. I noticed that elements of both Rogues in the House and Shadows in the Moonlight found their way into the White Dwarf scenario The Halls of Tizun Thane by Albie Fiore, and in a Carter/DeCamp story there is a creature called a “remoraz”, which actually has attributes closer to the Frost Worm than the Remorhaz. But beyond that, there was nothing which leapt out as a direct steal. Some elements of the Barbarian character class may stem from Conan, particularly the danger sense, and particularly the 1^st Edition version. Conan, however, doesn’t really do anything akin to “entering a rage” as per the Barbarian class from 3^rd Edition onwards.

You could certainly use elements and plotlines to fuel adventures, especially the wizards of the Black Circle. The forgotten city full of feuding tribes in Red Nails would also make a good adventure venue (perhaps rendered in some form in Tom Moldvay’s module B4 The Lost City).