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Can I talk about Kull in this thread?
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May 31, 2017 00:25
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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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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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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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