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lllllllllllllllllll posted:Not 100% related, but I read an unusual cowboy story once, where the hero finds an alien cult in a dessert cave and eventually flees. I thought to myself "hey, this is much better written than usual, lively, full of tension, fast-paced. Maybe Lovecraft's not that bad at writing after all." And then I saw "Howard" as the author's name. He is a much better writer than Lovecraft is what I wanted to say here. Howard and Lovecraft were friends and admirers of each others work, and even though Howard's stories tend to follow powerful men and Lovecraft's stories tend to feature powerless men, there stories have a lot of thematic similarities. Howard's stories, when taken as a whole, portray a cycle where mighty barbaric people slowly become more civilized, decadent, and weak, and are in turn conquered by those who stayed barbaric. Kull was a foreign mercenary who took the Kingdom of Atlantis from its native King. Conan the nationless barbarian raises an army and conquers the kingdom of Aquilonia. Solomon Kane, his latest adventurer (chronologically) left 16th century England for Africa in part because modern England couldn't provide the adventures he sought, and he struggled to rectify his puritan beliefs with his growing respect for pagan customs. In that sense, Howard's stories and Lovecraft's stories take place at opposite ends of a spectrum, with Howard's showing the fitness of the barbarian who is unencumbered by societal restrictions or concerns, and Lovecraft's showing the limits of civilized man's knowledge and artifice and the hubris of believing yourself or your society superior. gradenko_2000 posted:Where is the best place to get started on Conan the Barbarian? The Tower of the Elephant has already been mentioned, and rightly so. It's perhaps the most archetypal Conan story, and one of the most genuinely fantastic. I'd also recommend The Scarlet Citadel, which features rival rear end in a top hat wizards, and Red Nails, which features the rare character that's a match for Conan and is arguably the best of the longer Conan stories.
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May 25, 2017 17:29
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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 definitely racist, but in a much different manner than Lovecraft. His stories and writings don't really portray any fear or hatred of other races, he actually seemed to hold other cultures (as he understood them) in high regard, but everything is filtered through a flat assumption of white supremacy. Swarthy Mediterranean shipmen and Mongol steppe people may be presented positively (if unrealistically), but the greatest of both just happens to be the ethnically white Conan. The traditions of African tribes may be shown to be of equal worth to western Christianity, but the greatest African spiritualist will just happen to be English puritan Solomon Kane. Howard was a fantasist. He believed (or wanted to believe) in a mightier, freer, and a more morally wholesome measure of (white) person. So while his views and stories are unquestionably racist, they also express a disappointment, or maybe a resentment, that white people fail to live up to his ideal.
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Jul 17, 2017 16:03
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If your going to follow Howard, they have an easy framing device in a discontent King Conan reminiscing on the adventures of his younger self. Contrast young Conan's wild living and bloodlust with old Conan's misery at having realized his ambitions and been domesticated by his success.
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Feb 16, 2018 02:43
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