Unoriginality in Conan -- Adilbrand Noblesword's Hall of Warriors

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Date Posted: 19:59:00 05/23/02 Thu
Author: Adilbrand
Subject: Unoriginality in Conan
In reply to: mt. healthy mountaineer 's message, "RE: Conan" on 14:18:08 05/23/02 Thu

There is no reason for this to bother me except for its unoriginality. I probably wouldn't have cared if the book had been better.

No, it isn't the most original, but like I said earlier, Howard is assuming that the Hyborian Age is a pre-historical earth, and the cultures you named above are what remains of his Hyborian cultures. He wrote a rather lengthy essay called "The Hyborian Age" which detailed all of this.

Robert E. Howard even wrote a horror story (considered by many to be part of the Cthulhu mythos) where Thoth-Amon's ring is discovered in the 1930's. (Thoth-Amon was a sorcerer that appeared in the first Conan story, "The Phoenix on the Sword", in which Conan is King of Aquilonia.)

The idea of a wholly created fantasy planet hadn't really happened at the time Howard was writing. Even Middle Earth is still our planet (although LotR wasn't written until 20 years after Howard died).

The best Conan stories were actually horror stories. They did appear, after all, in a magazine called "Weird Tales". Conan couldn't always defeat the things that showed up in Howard's tales, especially in the earlier ones.

The later TOR books were influenced heavily by L. Sprague de Camp, who insisted that Conan be portrayed as a superhero, and that future Conan stories should be straight fantasy adventures. The horror element was removed from the stories, and is not present in the TOR series.

They also gave rise to the reputation that Conan is a superman, which is unfortunate. Conan was heroic, but the Howard Conan couldn't possibly live up his current reputation created by the comics and the movies.

If you look at the pictures of Conan from the Weird Tales books, you will see he is not even portrayed as being overly-muscular until the 1970's, four decades after the stories were written.

Another aspect of the "unoriginality" that you will discover, should you choose to read the Howard works, is that the plots will seem familiar to you. This is not because Howard was unable to come up with a neat plot. This is because everyone who wrote fantasy after the 1930's stole Howard's ideas! So, after reading modern works, and then going back to the original, the original doesn't seem as... well, original.

Anyway, I hope you give Howard's Conan stories a look. At least read one ("The People of the Black Circle" or "The Hour of the Dragon"), before proclaiming Conan not to be your cup of tea. Not everyone likes Howard's tales. But I do. Tolkien once remarked that he liked Howard's stories overall, but thought they were way to violent for his taste. His writing has a very visceral quality to them.

The last comment I'd like to say is that if you do read Howard's Conan stories, you should also keep in mind that most people do not feel the Conan stories represented his best work. They are his best known works, but not his best.

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Replies:

I checked in my branch library and they did not have a Howard Conan, but I'll keep an eye out (NT) -- mt. healthy mountaineer, 08:49:04 05/24/02 Fri
Re: Unoriginality in Conan -- Omega, 10:05:22 05/24/02 Fri
- I completely agree (NT) -- Adilbrand, 14:55:39 05/24/02 Fri
Re: Unoriginality in Conan -- mt. healthy mountaineer, 11:25:28 05/25/02 Sat
- I've seen that documentary -- Adilbrand, 22:53:38 05/25/02 Sat
Howard's Cthulhu stories -- Omega, 10:53:04 05/26/02 Sun
- Clark Ashton Smith and Others -- Adilbrand, 13:04:05 05/26/02 Sun
  - Re: Clark Ashton Smith and Others -- Omega, 13:09:20 05/26/02 Sun