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Of all the many kinds of fiction, the one that gives the purest entertainment
is heroic fantasy: the story of swordplay and sorcery, laid in an imaginary
world - either this planet as it was long ago, or in the remote future, or on
another world, or in another dimension - where magic works and all men are mighty,
all women beautiful, all problems simple , and all life adventurous. In
such a world, gleaming cities raise their shining spires against the stars;
sorcerers cast sinister spells from subterranean lairs; baleful spirits stalk
crumbling ruins; primeval monsters crash through jungle thickets; and the
fate of kingdoms is balanced on the bloody blades of broadswords brandished by
heroes of preternatural might and valor. One of the greatest writers of heroic fantasy was Robert Ervin Howard (1906-36), who was born and lived most of his short life in Cross Plains, Texas. Howard was a voluminous writer for the pulp magazines of the time. Jack London, Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. P. Lovecraft all influenced him. Howard's most memorable character was Conan the Cimmerian. Conan is supposed to have lived about twelve thousand years ago, in the Hyborian Age between the sinking of Atlantis and the beginnings of recorded history. A gigantic barbarian adventurer from the northern land of Cimmeria, Conan wades through rivers of blood and overcomes foes both natural and supernatural to become, at last, king of - the Hyborian kingdom of Aquilonia. Eighteen Conan stories were published in Howard's lifetime, and several more have been discovered in manuscript since his early death. It has been my privilege to edit these for publication and to revise and complete those that were unfinished, Lancer Books plans to bring out the entire Conan saga - which comes to nearly half a million words - in twelve volumes, of which this will be the seventh. Conan arrived as a youth in the kingdom of Zamora (see the map) and for several years made a precarious living as a thief there and in Corinthia and Nemedia. Then he was a mercenary soldier, first in the oriental realm of Turan and then in the Hyborian kingdoms. Forced to flee from Argos, he became a pirate along the coast of Kush, in partnership with a Shemitish she-pirate, Belit and with a crew of black corsairs. Here he earned the name of Amra, the Lion. After Belit's death, Conan returned to the trade of mercenary in Shem and in the adjacent Hyborian kingdoms. Subsequently he adventured among the nomadic outlaws, the kozaks, of the eastern steppes; the pirates of the Sea of Vilayet; and the hill tribes of the Himelian Mountains on the borders of Iranistan and Vendhya. Then another stretch of soldiering in Koth and Argos, in the course of which he was briefly co-ruler of the desert city of Tombalku. Then back to the sea, first as a pirate of the Baracha Isles, then as captain of a ship of the Zingaran buccaneers. When this volume takes up, he was in his late thirties. L Sprague de Camp |