Robert Howard's "Conan"

[bropous]

Another of the older authors, Robert Howard has much to recommend his works.

Robert Howard started the entire genre of Swords and Sorcery with his "Conan" stories, about a freebooting barbarian making a living by theft, piracy and mercenary activities. Written in the 1930s, the Conan books are the wellhead from which all of the S&S tales flow. With only his wits, strength, and barbarous energies to serve him, Conan cuts a broad swath across Hyperborea and fights and claws his way to a throne.

Howard has a raw and straightforward writing style, and his stories are very readable and enjoyable. He also created other characters such as Kull, Last King of Atlantis, and Solomon Kane, the puritan with the sword.

Robert Howard died at his own hand in Central Texas, where another great swords and sorcery writer, Michael Moorcock, now lives. Howard had a tragic and short life, but created a character of far greater depth and empathetic quality than the shallow, one-dimensional portrayals of him in the Schwartzenegger/diLaurentis screen treatments.

If you've given the original Conan stories a pass, I recommend giving them another thought. I wasn't a huge fan of the later authors' treatments of Conan such as Robert Jordan's, but if you give a few of Robert Howard's original stories a chance, you will be glad you did.