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Age of Conan was a pretty cool game that I think did a pretty good job (sometimes) of capturing the feel of the stories and the first movie. I mean, the character creation takes place on the rowing decks of a slave ship and the intro area has you at one point fighting your way to the top of a volcano to kill the evil sorcerer before he makes it explode or something. Very Conan. Too bad Funcom released it too early and drove out a lot of the player base pretty quickly because the game itself was quite a bit of fun, especially on PvP servers. My fondest memory is playing with a friend of mine. I was a barbarian with a kilt and a two-handed axe, and we were fighting a running battle most of the evening with another group of people while out in a frozen mountain area (The place from the story "The Frost Giant's Daughter.) We finally managed to catch them where they couldn't run away and slaughtered them with the game's pretty awesome combat soundtrack (definitely influenced by the first movie) blaring in the background. Good times.
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Oct 9, 2017 01:39
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My brother gifted me a double set of Conan stories- I think it encompasses every story Howard wrote but I'll have to check later if it included some of the extra stuff via ghostwriters. My favorite Conan moment was his battle with some other monstrous hulking dude who strangled people and ended like so:quote:"You fool!" he all but whispered. "I think you never saw a man from the West before. Did you deem yourself strong, because you were able to twist the heads off civilized folk, poor weaklings with muscles like rotten string? Hell! Break the neck of a wild Cimmerian bull before you call yourself strong. I did that, before I was a full-grown man--like this!" So metal
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Oct 9, 2017 17:53
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Arcsquad12 posted:I remember reading somewhere a few years back about Lovecraft and Howard being friends. Now I know that Lovecraft was a paranoid racist even by the time's standards, but what about Howard? There are elements of the stories which as the OP says are problematic by today's standards, but is that true of Howards personal views as well? Howard was a racist and was not progressive, at least not socially. It's just that he was the kind of racist who was tempered by actually living with the people he was bigoted toward, and didn't really want to live apart from them per se. He also disliked his society so he could emphasize with people who were treated poorly by it, despite still being racist towards them. This is clear in the stories, how they're full of noble savages. For example, Howard seemed to have respect for the Picts, even though they were going to ruin Hyboria. Conan, despite how he's pushed as this ultimate wildman, is really straddling the fence between society and wildness, and from how personally Howard seemed to identify with his protagonists, probably viewed himself in the same way. Howard only seems progressive/less racist in comparison to Lovecraft, who lived in an ivory tower and all his racism was abstracted and weird as gently caress, he was afraid of people he had next to no experience with so he conjured up crazy poo poo about them. MrMojok posted:I understand L. S. DeCamp is thought of as a hack, and he mainly just edited/added to unfinished Howard stories. BTW, while I also advise avoiding his Conan work, DeCamp and Fletcher Pratt's Enchanter stories are pretty fun and an early, pioneering example of tales of a modern man finding himself in a fantasy world and using science to figure stuff about them out. Really, if you're looking for non-Howard Conan, your best bet is the comics. Roy Thomas and Kurt Busiek are probably the second best Conan authors. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Oct 10, 2017 |
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Oct 10, 2017 12:00
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MrMojok posted:I've finished all the Howard stories, and it was time well spent. I know they vary wildly in quality and there is a lot of repetition, and I know Conan isn't a real great character in story terms, because he really has no flaws, but man, I loved it. The thing to keep in mind when reading Howard stories is, unlike Tolkien, who was crafting a story to encompass his love of language and history, Howard was writing for a paycheck. It's how he tried to make a living. So sometimes he would take a Kull, or a Brak Mon Morn story, and rework it into a Conan story if he could sell it. If some stories seemed repetitious, it's because those are what sold, so that's what he wrote.
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Oct 13, 2017 01:05
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mllaneza posted:I really hope some ethnographer managed to record versions of those stories. I thought the same thing when I saw the documentary, which btw is an extra on the Jason Momoa "Conan The Barbarian" reboot Blu ray from 2011 (I know, I know...). I wouldn't be surprised if he somehow incorporated some of what he remembered into some of his stories. I have a paperback called "Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard", but could only speculate what may have shown the influence of the African tales from the ex-slave woman. He heard them as a child, and one could only dream of what kind of amazing stories she told that scared the crap out of him and obviously left a mark. Not a bad idea to do a little research...for the record I actually enjoyed the Kull stories more than Conan because they were much more surreal and creepy. Compared to Lovecraft, Howard at least gave credit where credit is due. I enjoy Lovecraft immensely even tho he was a racist and I'm not white, but I understand that he was bat poo poo crazy. Its not like today: he hated many other Caucasians who would be considered "white" today since they weren't Anglo-Saxon, and admired the Irish Lord Dunsany because of he was a blue blood. He obviously also hated inbred white people if you read his stories; and yet comes to terms with his hatred and even realized how wrong it is if you read "Behind The Wall of Sleep". He also hated Jews, but married one. It just seems more complicated: he was just afraid of everything and that fear translated into amazing fiction but eventually took its toll. I never took it personally. He even ended up becoming a New Deal Democrat by the time Franklin Roosevelt came around. And yet I don't understand why far right people admire him for being as psychotic as he was when it wasn't just good old fashioned American racism, but some sort of mental illness. He's not exactly someone I would want to emulate, but looking into his fear, and the fear of an unstable racist who conjures up literally insane fantasies as a result is something I find fascinating. Speaking of admirers, if there are occultists who link Lovecraft and the Necronomicon to their beliefs along the lines of Kenneth Grant's OTO, and Lovecraft shared worlds and ideas with Howard, would that mean that some of them actually believe that Conan actually existed?
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Oct 18, 2017 07:15
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Lovecraft would never in a million years had written a story with a heroi black protagonist (one who is mentored by the spirit of a legendary and much discriminated-against black boxer). Even though it is narrated by his white trainer.
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Oct 18, 2017 09:32
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Lovecraft is far FAR more classist than he is racist (and he is p. racist). Being white means nothing good in his stories if you are poor and/or degenerate. In fact Lovecraft spends rather more time sneering at white people gone bad than he ever does complaining about blacks or the yellow menace or whatever. Obviously he did not have an easy time reconciling his lifelong poverty and depressed circumstances with his faith in his status as New England gentleman. When I look at HPL's racism I see someone trying to reconcile basically humanistic convictions about what is good and normal with equally powerful conviction that nothing means anything or manners. It resolves itself in this kind of solipsistic obsession with his ideas of his upbringing and his homeland and culture as the only things he can cling to, vitriolically rejecting everything else as garbage, even though he realizes that even his own life is null and void of meaning (think about how many of his stories are about the awful poo poo that goes down in New England or protagonists that are basically him discovering that their life is a lie or whatever). Howard has a pretty opposite attitude a lot of the time. He's definitely racist to some extent but had little respect for "polite society" unlike HPL. It's hard to imagine Lovecraft lionizing such a primitive, unpolished figure as Conan so enthusiastically as Howard does -- though I guess he gave a nod in that direction with Crom-Ya in Shadow out of Time. skasion fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Oct 26, 2017 |
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Oct 26, 2017 01:34
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I know this is John Carter, not Conan, but I feel they would be a lot of overlap in readers between those series. I bought one of his collections today and -- whoo boy -- is this book old school racist. "Reds", "savages", "fiendish tortuous ways", etc. and the hero is a fictional Confederate solider who was "rightly worshiped" by Edgar Rice Bourgh's slaves in the introduction. And I'm not even done with chapter one. Just a warning to anyone considering picking up this series: this guy don't like nor respect non-whites.
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Oct 26, 2017 20:40
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Zoro posted:I know this is John Carter, not Conan, but I feel they would be a lot of overlap in readers between those series. I bought one of his collections today and -- whoo boy -- is this book old school racist. "Reds", "savages", "fiendish tortuous ways", etc. and the hero is a fictional Confederate solider who was "rightly worshiped" by Edgar Rice Bourgh's slaves in the introduction. And I'm not even done with chapter one. Just a warning to anyone considering picking up this series: this guy don't like nor respect non-whites. Burroughs grew up a long time ago, and yes his stuff is dated beyond belief, however when first published it was genre breaking and a clean break from Victorian era stories. Just remember that for Burroughs, electric lighting was only perfected when he was a kid, and telephones only became a big thing in his twenties. Radio & home refrigation were INTERNET style-world changing wonders for him.
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Oct 26, 2017 23:25
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Are there any modern writers that are working in a similar genre space but without the baggage of 20s racism? There's something compelling about the simplicity of the stories compared to contemporary fantasy that ends up bogged down in world building and overly detailed magic systems.
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Oct 27, 2017 09:14
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Paragon8 posted:Are there any modern writers that are working in a similar genre space but without the baggage of 20s racism? Charles Saunders is a black author who grew up reading Conan and Tarzan but got sick of the racism. So in the early 80s he created his own character Imaro, basically "What if Hyboria was fantasy Africa and Conan was a Maasai warrior?" Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Oct 27, 2017 |
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Oct 27, 2017 13:00
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Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff was pretty awesome, though it's set in the fifties. Black people trying to deal with getting tied up in pulpy nonsense. More urban fantasy than straight Lovecraft. I also got to find out that the Negro Motorist's Green Book travel guide to avoiding lynch-happy areas was actually a thing.  Also HBO is adapting it! Something to look forward to. Imaro by Charles Saunders was a pretty nice "black-Conan" series. I heard the third one was super-problematic (re the Rwandan Genocide), which is why the author took it out of print and replaced it with a new story that I need to get. EFB
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Oct 27, 2017 13:05
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Rockopolis posted:Imaro by Charles Saunders was a pretty nice "black-Conan" series. I heard the third one was super-problematic (re the Rwandan Genocide), which is why the author took it out of print and replaced it with a new story that I need to get. It wasn't really problematic per se, it's just that the story uncannily paralleled the genocide in a way that made Saunders uncomfortable in retrospect. I mean it was hard to avoid since it involved a metaphor of the traditional animosity the Hutu and Tutsi have for each other. Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Oct 27, 2017 |
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Oct 27, 2017 13:48
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I hope this isn't rude to ask, but I decided to try my hand at writing a story in a sword and sorcery style after I couldn't find a book the story collection of Conan the Barbarian at the book store nearby me. It's a little rough. This is just the first draft. It's called Sebastian The Swordshatterer and it's kind of an anthology thing where Sebastian travelers across the land, comes across some people who are dealing with a supernatural thing, gets into a series of obstacles to overcome it, and ultimately succeeds due to his wits more than his brawn. If anyone is willing to give it a read and give me some honest critique, I'd be deeply appreciative.
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Jan 15, 2018 23:53
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Covok posted:I hope this isn't rude to ask, but I decided to try my hand at writing a story in a sword and sorcery style after I couldn't find a book the story collection of Conan the Barbarian at the book store nearby me. I can't provide full commentary yet, but sword-and-sorcery parodies like this are pretty played out.
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Jan 16, 2018 01:29
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:I can't provide full commentary yet, but sword-and-sorcery parodies like this are pretty played out. Well, the fact you took it as parody says a lot. Might need to go back to the drawing board, then. It must have been too exaggerated. Edit: To be clear, I appreciate what you said and I'm not trying to make you feel bad for giving me honest criticism: I welcome that and I thank you. Covok fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 01:35
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Zoro posted:I know this is John Carter, not Conan, but I feel they would be a lot of overlap in readers between those series. I bought one of his collections today and -- whoo boy -- is this book old school racist. "Reds", "savages", "fiendish tortuous ways", etc. and the hero is a fictional Confederate solider who was "rightly worshiped" by Edgar Rice Bourgh's slaves in the introduction. And I'm not even done with chapter one. Just a warning to anyone considering picking up this series: this guy don't like nor respect non-whites. And yet - minor spoilers ahead but really between the generalness of them and the fact these books are so ancient I dont feel the need to tag them - he describes the Black Martians as the most physically perfect of all the Martian races. And the Red Martians are clearly noble savages. Don't get me wrong, ERB was definitely racist and explicitly is a Confederate apologist there, but there's actually a lot of interesting things going on with his views regarding race, for the time anyway. I haven't read any of his non-Martian stuff so I can't comment too much, but he definitely seems to me like he's even more progressive, in some ways, than Howard. Needless to say, definitely more than Lovecraft. Still awful awful awful stuff that hampers otherwise entertaining stories, though.
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Jan 16, 2018 03:31
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I picked up a bunch of the decamps when I was younger and never realized they were apparently a watered-down version?  Also liked the maps and chronological intros Jackard fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Jan 16, 2018 |
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Jan 16, 2018 17:16
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I loved the Conan comics as a kid, though I can't remember them all that well now. That brawler game was loving ace as well and obviously everyone adores the film. Never have READ any of the stories though, which is sometimes I plan on remedying asap. So thank you, thread.
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Jan 16, 2018 18:03
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Jackard posted:I picked up a bunch of the decamps when I was younger and never realized they were apparently a watered-down version? I wouldn't say watered-down, but de Camp was notorious for taking unfinished Howard manuscripts (or finished ones, or finished/unfinished non-Conan work) and "finishing" the stories, and it is always immediately and abundantly obvious what parts are original to Howard and what de Camp added. Lin Carter is also guilty of this.
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Jan 16, 2018 19:17
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Has anyone read Howard's horror short stories? Are any of them worth going through?
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Jan 17, 2018 01:17
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DeadFatDuckFat posted:Has anyone read Howard's horror short stories? Are any of them worth going through? “The Black Stone” is a neat one. Thoroughly Lovecraftian.
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Jan 17, 2018 22:05
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Covok posted:If anyone is willing to give it a read and give me some honest critique, I'd be deeply appreciative. So, I'm wincing a little bit at the term "the Faraway". Maybe I'm looking too much into it, but it seems like when writers use terms like that, they're trying very hard to tell their readers, "Look, this is a fantasy story." Also, Sebastian seems not to do very much in the story. He visits the Tribal village, they say, "Hey, we've got a Wendigo problem because this guy's kid got killed and he's not dealing well.." Then he meets the kid from the other tribe. Then the Wendigo shows up, is about to kill the other tribe's kid, Sebastian says, "Hey, don't grieve for your dead kid by killing other kids! That's not cool!", and the Wendigo dissolves. So not very much happens in the story. Sebastian doesn't really face any obstacles or trouble in stopping the Wendigo, and he only stops it because the kid from the other tribe happened to show up to get menaced, which let Sebastian appeal to the guy's conscience. I just think the story needs more, but that could just be because the story is so short.
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Jan 18, 2018 03:05
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Epicurius posted:So, I'm wincing a little bit at the term "the Faraway". Maybe I'm looking too much into it, but it seems like when writers use terms like that, they're trying very hard to tell their readers, "Look, this is a fantasy story." Also, Sebastian seems not to do very much in the story. He visits the Tribal village, they say, "Hey, we've got a Wendigo problem because this guy's kid got killed and he's not dealing well.." Then he meets the kid from the other tribe. Then the Wendigo shows up, is about to kill the other tribe's kid, Sebastian says, "Hey, don't grieve for your dead kid by killing other kids! That's not cool!", and the Wendigo dissolves. So not very much happens in the story. Sebastian doesn't really face any obstacles or trouble in stopping the Wendigo, and he only stops it because the kid from the other tribe happened to show up to get menaced, which let Sebastian appeal to the guy's conscience. I just think the story needs more, but that could just be because the story is so short. Hm, that's a very good point. I didn't think about that. Seriously, thanks! Laying out the issues like this really helped me find out a big problem: there isn't enough conflict and there isn't enough that really shows the heroes strengths and weaknesses. I am working on a second draft and this will definitely help!
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Jan 18, 2018 03:07
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Marvel announced they got the Conan comic license. Also, has anyone seen "The Whole Wide World", the film about Robert E Howard, with Vincent D'onofrio and Renee Zellweger?
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Jan 21, 2018 18:01
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Davros1 posted:Marvel announced they Marvel had at least 3 different Conan series running at the same time during the 1970s-80s. Illustrated versions of the Howard & DeCamp stories, Young Conan, and their own Marvel Conan stories.
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Jan 21, 2018 20:38
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NoNostalgia4Grover posted:Marvel had at least 3 different Conan series running at the same time during the 1970s-80s. Was Savage Sword of Conan the Howard & DeCamp stories? I liked those much better than the Marvel run (which I think eventually put Conan on his promised throne and then he got boring).
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Jan 22, 2018 23:27
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hatelull posted:Was Savage Sword of Conan the Howard & DeCamp stories? I liked those much better than the Marvel run (which I think eventually put Conan on his promised throne and then he got boring). Can't recall. I remember the Howard & DeCamp stories usually being printed in a larger Black&White format, the Young Conan stories having Conan as a teenage Adventurer hanging out with his male & female buddies at generic AdventuringVillage with a generic artstyle for everything notEvil(including Young Conan). Don't remember anything about the Marvel run except for a WhatIf about "What If Conan was transported to modern (1980s) times?".
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Jan 23, 2018 01:09
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Them Conan and Kull books turned up. Big bastards aren't they! Not even sure they'll fit in me pocket. Looking forward to diving in. Next payday I'll pick up the Solomon Kane book as well and take it from there when picking up the rest of his works.
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Jan 23, 2018 14:20
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Somehow I've never managed to get into Kull and Solomon Kane. Weird that, considering how much I love Howard's Conan stories. One of these days I'll totally read them, right after working through my giant queue that is constantly being added to.
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Jan 23, 2018 18:04
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Phoenix on the Sword was the first short in this book and now I'm kicking myself for having never read Conan before because it was metal as gently caress. 
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Jan 25, 2018 10:27
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You're in for a treat. I read all the original Conan stories last year, and "Vale of Lost Women" is the only one I would discourage people from reading. The rest are great.
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Jan 29, 2018 04:31
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Amazon is developing a Conan series Who knows how it will actually turn out, but it sounds like they are pretty serious about making it as much like the Howard stories as possible!
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Feb 14, 2018 23:51
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MrMojok posted:Amazon is developing a Conan series Please please please have a good budget and be faithful to the source material, and I will want for nothing.
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Feb 15, 2018 02:57
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I wonder how they're planning to turn a bunch of short stories into a coherent series. A few of the longer ones could be stretched to a full season each I guess, but there's very little connecting them.
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Feb 15, 2018 14:58
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Just have opening credits with a dramatic voice-over that says this before going to the short story in the particular episode.quote:Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. Hither came Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure! Give zero shits about continuity, because Howard certainly didn't.
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Feb 15, 2018 16:25
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There's a very loose internal chronology to the stories, largely based on Conan's apparent age during any given one. But to be honest, that's mostly irrelevant. The trap the producers of this series need to avoid is having some overarching plot. The episodes need to be a series of one-offs (or short multi-episode series) that just present an adaptation of one of the stories. Once that's finished, move on to the next.
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Feb 15, 2018 16:38
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Yep. Literally just use the titles of the Howard works as the titles of the episodes. Season 1, Episode 1, "Red Nails Part 1"
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Feb 15, 2018 19:37
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bloom posted:I wonder how they're planning to turn a bunch of short stories into a coherent series. A few of the longer ones could be stretched to a full season each I guess, but there's very little connecting them. Use the story where Conan reclaims his kingdom from the unDead-unAlive sorceror, it has the fullscale of conan's career path, and could easily be chunked into a season or two. quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Feb 15, 2018 |
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Feb 15, 2018 19:41
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bloom posted:I wonder how they're planning to turn a bunch of short stories into a coherent series. A few of the longer ones could be stretched to a full season each I guess, but there's very little connecting them. i wonder how these episodic short stories could ever be adapted into a series for television, a format known for its episodic structure. that's a tricky one
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