Part 1 (1/2)
Conan The Avenger.
by Robert E. Howard, Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague deCamp.
Introduction.
Conan the Cimmerian is the hero of over thirty stories by Robert E.
Howard (1906-36 of Cross Plains, Texas), by my colleagues Bjorn Nyberg and Lin Carter, and by myself. Nyberg, Carter, and I have completed a number of unfinished Howard ma.n.u.scripts and have written several pastiches, based upon hints in Howard's notes and letters, to fill the gaps in the saga.
The Conan stories are of a kind called ”heroic fantasy” or ”sword-and-sorcery fiction.” Such a story is a tale of swashbuckling adventure with a strong supernatural element, laid in an imaginary world-perhaps this planet as it is once supposed to have been, or as it will be some day, or some other world or dimension-where magic works and modern science and technology are unknown. Here all men are mighty, all women beautiful, all problems simple, and all life adventurous. The genre was developed by William Morris in the late nineteenth century and by Lord Dunsany and Eric R. Edison in the early twentieth. Notable recent examples are J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings; Fletcher Pratt's The Well of the Unicorn; and Fritz Leiber's stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
During the last decade of his short life (1927-36), Howard turned out a large volume of what was then called ”pulp fiction”-sport, detective, western, historical, adventure, weird, and ghost stories, besides his poetry and his many fantasies. At the age of thirty, he ended a promising literary career by suicide.
Howard wrote several series of heroic fantasies, most of them published in Weird Tales. Of these, the most popular as well as the longest single series has been the Conan stories.
Howard was a natural storyteller, whose narratives are unsurpa.s.sed for vivid, gripping, headlong action. His heroes-King Kull, Conan. Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane-are larger than life: men of mighty thews, hot pa.s.sions, and indomitable will, who dominate the tales through which they stride. Withal, as I have learned from editing his works, Howard had an excellent prose style: precise, straightforward, simple, un.o.btrusive, and highly readable. He had the rare knack of giving the impression of a highly colorful scene without actually using many adjectives to describe it.
Eighteen Conan stories were published during Howard's lifetime. Eight others, from complete ma.n.u.scripts to mere fragments, have been found among his papers since 1950. Late in 1951, I discovered a cache of Howard ma.n.u.scripts in the apartment of the then literary agent for Howard's estate. These included a few unpublished Conan stories, which I edited for publication.
The incomplete, open-ended nature of the Conan saga presented an irresistible temptation to add to it as Howard himself might in time have done had he lived. Besides editing the unpublished Conan stories, I undertook, in the early 1950s, to rewrite the ma.n.u.scripts of four other unpublished Howard adventure stories to convert them into Conan stories. This did not prove difficult, since the heroes were much like Conan, and I had merely to delete anachronisms and introduce a supernatural element.
Meanwhile a citizen and resident of Sweden, Bjorn Nyberg, took a further step. Introduced to Conan by his friends Ostlund and Chapman, he had been hooked, as so many others have been, in reading of the deeds of the mighty Cimmerian. Nyberg had the courage to sit down and write a whole novel about Conan, in a language that was not his mother tongue. This endeavor resulted in a collaboration between Nyberg and myself, the outcome of which was ”The Return of Conan” herein.
Howard's Conan stories are laid about twelve thousand years ago in the imaginary Hyborian Age, eight thousand years after the sinking of Atlantis and seven thousand years before the beginnings of recorded history. A gigantic barbarian adventurer from the backward northern land of Cimmeria, Conan arrived as a youth in the kingdom of Zamora (see map) and for several years mad. a precarious living there and in neighboring lands as a thief. After a gore-spattered career as mercenary soldier, pirate, treasure hunter, and chief of various barbarian tribes, he became a scout on the western frontier of Aquilonia, fighting the savage Picts. After rising to command in the Aquilonian army and defeating a Pictish invasion, Conan was lured back to Tarantia, the capital, and imprisoned by the jealous King Numedides.
Escaping, he was chosen to lead a revolution against the degenerate king. Conan slew Numedides and took the throne for his own, to become ruler of the mightiest Hyborian Kingdom.
Conan soon found that being king was no bed of houris. A cabal of discontented n.o.bles almost succeeded in a.s.sa.s.sinating him. By a ruse, the kings of Koth and Ophir trapped and imprisoned him, but he escaped in time to turn the tables on these would-be conquerors of Aquilonia.
Other enemies conjured an ancient wizard back from the grave and, with the help of this living-dead sorcerer, broke Aquilonia's armies and drove Conan into exile. But again he returned to confound and destroy his fees.
In the process, Conan acquired a queen, with whom he settled down happily, dismissing his harem of concubines. For about a year, his reign was more or less peaceful. But then another foe gathered his forces to strike...
And here the present story begins. At this time, Conan was about forty-six or forty-seven years old, showing few signs of age save the scars that crisscrossed his mighty frame and a more cautious, deliberate approach to adventure and revelry than had been the case in his riotous youth.
When Howard began writing the Conan stories in 1932, he gave serious thought to the setting-his ”Hyborian Age” civilization. To fix it firmly in his own mind, he wrote an essay in which he set forth the pseudo-history of prehistoric times that he used as a background for the stories. In the last year of his life, he submitted this essay for publication in a fan magazine, The Phantagraph, with an apologetic note explaining that this was purely a fictional device to enable him to make the Conan stories internally consistent. It was not to be taken seriously as setting forth his true beliefs about the prehistory of mankind.
The first half of The Hyborian Age was published in The Phantagraph before that periodical ceased publication. The whole essay was then published in 1938 in a mimeographed booklet, The Hyborian Age, put out by a group of science-fiction fans. The first half, which carries this pseudo-history down to the time of Conan, was re-printed in Conan, chronologically the first volume of the present series. The second half, which begins after Conan's time and continues down to the beginnings of recorded history, is reproduced here.
L. Sprague de Camp THE RETURN OF CONAN.
by Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp
For two months after the battle of Tanasul, which destroyed the Nemedian conquerors of Aquilonia and their sorcerous ally Xaltotun, Conan is kept furiously busy by the tasks of reorganizing his kingdom, repairing the damage done by the invaders, and collecting the promised indemnity from Nemedia.
Then Conan prepares to visit Nemedia, to return the captured King Tarascus to his homeland and to fetch back to Aquilonia the girl Zen.o.bia, who saved his life when he was imprisoned in the dungeons of the palace at the Nemedian capital of Belverus. Before his departure, he tactfully dismisses his harem of shapely concubines. With his usual chivalry towards women, he makes a point of finding them husbands- or at least other protectors-before bidding them farewell.
The journey to and from Belverus is a triumphal procession without unit ward incident. Back in Tarantia, Conan celebrates his wedding to Zen.o.bia with all the pomp of which a rich and ancient kingdom is capable. Between the pressure of state business and his absorption in Zen.o.bia, the next few months puss swiftly for Conan. Those who know him best are a little surprised to see the king, in middle age, turn monogamous and even uxorious; but the moody, mettlesome Cimmerian has always been unpredictable. Then, however...
-”Know furthermore, O Prince, that Conan the barbarian thus won at last to great fame and high estate as king of Aquilonia, the starry gem of the green West with its gallant n.o.bles, st.u.r.dy warriors, intrepid frontiersmen, and beauteous damsels. But dark and terrible forces were at work to rock his throne and wreck his fortune. For, on the night of the feast at Tarantia to celebrate the year of peace that followed the overthrow of the conspiracy of Valerius, Tarascus, and Amulric, and the destruction of the wizard Xaltotun, Conan's lately-wedded queen Zen.o.bia was s.n.a.t.c.hed from the palace by a winged shape out of nightmare and borne off eastward. Thinking it better to travel swiftly, namelessly, and alone than to take an army with him, Conan set out in search of his stolen mate...”
THE NEMEDIAN CHRONICLES.