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Conan the Cimmerian is the hero of over two dozen, stories by Robert Ervin Howard
(1906-36). Howard lived most of his short life in Cross Plains, Texas. There
he turned out a huge volume of fiction for the pulp magazines: sport,
detective, western, and Oriental adventure stories. But the yarns for which he
is most renowned are his heroic fantasies, especially the Conan tales. Heroic fantasy is a type of story of the supernatural, laid in an imaginary world - either this planet as it is once supposed to have been, or as it will be long hence, or some other world or dimension - where magic works and all men are mighty, all women beautiful, all problems simple, and all life adventurous. The genre was developed by William Morris in the late nineteenth century and by Lord Dunsany and Eric R. Eddison in the early twentieth. Writing in the early 1930s, Howard was one of its strongest formative forces. Eighteen Conan stories were published during Howard's lifetime; several others, from complete manuscripts to mere fragments, have been found among his papers since 1950. It has been my fortune to edit these last for publication and to complete some that were incomplete or in the form of an outline only. Of all Howard's Conan stories, the present one is the only book-length novel. It is one of the last that he wrote before his lamented suicide and forms a fitting climax to the series. It is worthy to stand beside such comparable works of heroic fantasy as E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, Fletcher Pratt's The Well of the Unicorn, and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring series. While it may be inferior to some of these in literary grace or philosophical profundity, it yields to none in action, color, excitement, and headlong drive. Although he had his faults as a writer, Howard was a natural storyteller. In reading the Conan stories, the reader gets the illusion that he is listening to the mighty adventurer himself, sitting before a fire and reeling off tales of his exploits. In fiction, the difference between a writer who is a natural storyteller and one who is not is like the difference between a boat that will float and one that will not. If the writer has the quality, we can forgive many other faults; if not, no other virtues can make up for this lack, any more than gleaming paint and shiny brass fittings on a boat make up for the fact that it cannot float. The present novel was originally published as a serial in Weird Tales - a magazine that carried, mixed with a lot of ephemeral trash, many stories of notably high literary quality. The present Conan story appeared under the title, The Hour of the Dragon. When it was reprinted as a book, the name was changed to Conan the Conqueror. I have kept the latter title because, while The Hour of the Dragon is intriguing, it has practically nothing to do with the narrative. I have made a few very small editorial changes in the story to eliminate inconsistencies in the original version. Conan lived, loved, and fought in Howard's imaginary Hyborian Age, about twelve thousand years ago, between the sinking of Atlantis and the beginnings of recorded history. A gigantic barbarian adventurer from the backward northern land of Cimmeria, Conan arrived as a youth in the kingdom of Zamora (see map) and for several years made a precarious living there and in neighboring lands as a thief. Then he served as a mercenary soldier, first in the oriental realm of Turan and then in the Hyborian kingdoms. Forced to flee from Argos, Conan became a pirate along the coasts of Kush, in partnership with a Shemitish she-pirate, Belit, and with a crew of black corsairs. After Belit's death, he returned to the trade of mercenary in Shem and the adjacent Hyborian kingdoms. Subsequently he adventured among the nomadic outlaws 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. After another stretch of soldiering in Koth and Argos, Conan went back to the sea, first as a pirate of the Baracha Isles, then as captain of a ship of the Zingaran buccaneers. When other buccaneers sank his ship, he returned to adventuring ashore in the black countries. He worked his way north and became a scout on the western frontier of Aquilonia, fighting the savage Picts. After rising to cornmand in the Aquilonian army and defeating a Pictish invasion, Conan was lured back to Tarantia, the capital, and imprisoned by the jealous King Numedides. Escaping, he was chosen to lead a revolution against the worthless king. Conan slew Numedides on his own throne and became the ruler of the mightiest Hyborian kingdom. Conan soon found that being king was no bed of houris. A cabal of discontented nobles almost succeeded in assassinating him. By a ruse, the kings of Koth and Ophir trapped and imprisoied him, in order to have a free hand in the conquest of Aquilonia. With the help of a fellow prisoner - a wizard - Conan escaped in time to turn the tables on the invaders. And the next adventure of Conan is the one chronicled in this present work. L. Sprague de Camp |