Real Life Adventures: Howard Days 2023
Our Real Life Adventures series takes a look at unique sights, interesting places, and curious landmarks in that most fabulous of realms . . . the real world! Whether they be tours of spots directly related to gaming’s rich history, or places that are just flat out amazing or weird, our Real Life Adventures can serve as inspiration for your own tabletop gaming — be sure to check out the other articles in this...
Adventures in Fiction: Robert E. Howard
Our Appendix N Archeology and Adventures in Fiction series are meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page. There may not be a more iconic character in fantasy—and particularly sword and sorcery—fiction than Conan the Barbarian. From...
Classic Covers: The Savage Sword of Conan
How do you skirt a restrictive comics code and make visual Conan stories with the requisite blood-pumping grittiness that is integral to Howard’s adventures? You make a magazine of course! Already popular in his initial comic book incarnation of Conan the Barbarian, Marvel introduced the more adult-oriented The Savage Sword of Conan in 1974, quickly achieving a wide circulation and, thanks to writer and editor Roy Thomas’...
Bran Mak Morn, The Doomed King
Bran Mak Morn, The Doomed King by Bill Ward Most new readers approach the work of Robert E. Howard from the perspective of his most famous creation, Conan. As is only natural, they tend to look at Howard’s other heroes in terms of their relation to the Cimmerian, and look for those elements that later make their way into the much more famous stories of the Hyborian age. Kull is perhaps the most well known ancestor of Conan for, after...
Classic Covers: Frank Frazetta’s Lancer/Ace Conans
Second only to Robert E. Howard in importance in the development of the perception of Conan, Frank Frazetta’s explosively elemental take on the Cimmerian achieved instant cultural cache and has become the defining image not only of Howard’s most famous creation, but of the barbaric hinterlands of fantasy fiction itself. Frazetta’s frenzied depictions of havoc and battle, his iron-muscled killers taut with violent...
Dehumanizing Violence and Compassion in Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails”
Goodman Games and Tales From the Magician’s Skull are honored to report that this essay by Jason Ray Carney, Dehumanizing Violence and Compassion in Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails,” has been nominated for a 2022 Robert E. Howard Award in the category of Outstanding Achievement, Essay — otherwise known as The Hyrkanian! The Robert E. Howard Awards 2022 will be presented this weekend, June 10 at Howard Days...
A Look at Caveman Stories
Caveman Stories by Fletcher Vredenburgh That Robert E. Howard’s first professionally published story, “Spear and Fang,” was a caveman story should mean something to the history of heroic fiction and sword & sorcery itself. Perhaps, because it’s not a very good story, it never had the effect a better one might have. But I’m not totally sure; teenage Robert E. Howard already had a sure grasp of the elements that hook a reader...
My Favorite Solomon Kane Tale: “Wings in the Night”
My Favorite Solomon Kane Tale: “Wings in the Night” by Robert E. Howard by Fletcher Vredenburgh “Wings in the Night” (1932), is one of Solomon Kane’s, Robert E. Howard’s swashbuckling Puritan, African adventures. In the face of darkness, he sees himself as Satan’s implacable foe. Kane’s a dour man, dedicated wholly to defeating evil and meting out justice. In two separate stories, he spends years hunting for the killers of...
Films of High Adventure: Robert E. Howard
The Films of High Adventure series examines the impact that the authors of Appendix N have had on the world at large. Be sure to check out the entire series, as we present the following article in celebration of the birthday of Robert E. Howard. Films of High Adventure: Robert E Howard by Bob Brinkman The wonderful thing about Appendix N is that the authors’ work often leapt off the page and into other mediums – such as film...
The Best Of The Conan Pastiche Novels
The Best Of The Conan Pastiche Novels by Howard Andrew Jones If I didn’t love the writing of Robert E. Howard I would probably never have bothered with any Conan pastiche. As a matter of fact, those Conan novels on store shelves in the ’70s and ’80s made me so skeptical of Conan that I didn’t try Robert E. Howard’s fiction until years later. I wrongly assumed that because the series looked cheap and...
Where to Start With Robert E. Howard
Where to Start With Robert E. Howard by Bill Ward Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) was a giant and a father to giants, his literary creations so potent that they have informed popular culture and permeated mass consciousness down to the present day. But their very ubiquity can obscure and deceive – if two people strike up a conversation about Conan, are they actually talking about the same Conan? What’s going on with all of these...
Ten Sword-and-Sorcery Tales For the Haunting Season
Ten Sword-and-Sorcery Tales For the Haunting Season by Brian Murphy On a blog such as this, I doubt I’m alone in my irrational love of Halloween, a holiday for me that, more than Thanksgiving or Christmas, evokes a Ray Bradbury-like level of nostalgia and anticipation. Here in New England, I find that as the leaves begin to turn and October shadows lengthen, so too do my thoughts drift from my natural sword-and-sorcery bent toward the...
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