Had to study it for class ( )

Get the Del Rey editions, if you are interested in reading the original Conan stories, because they contain the complete, unedited versions.

These Conan stories are a very refreshing change from the usual fantasy faire. Somehow, even though they're classic sword and sorcery they manage to feel a lot like they could be real live historical fiction.

Every one of the short stories here ha something very good going for it and they always seem to be to draw you into what feels very much like a real life situation even if it does involve a huge serpent or a magical squishy type of creature.

I loved it, an I know you Will too. ( )

By Crom!! ( )

This collection of stories was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. I originally picked it up for historical reasons--to learn more about the history of genre fiction. However, aesthetically, I expected the content to be pretty weak: a sexist, racist male-power fantasy. And there was quite a bit of that stuff. For example, Conan fights a giant snake in order to get the girl a number of times. I figure either Howard had a hilariously overt Oedipal complex, or a very Freudian sense of humor. Neither would surprise me.

But I was surprised how often Howard moves beyond these sorts of limitations. For example, he's obsessed with describing the 'race' of all the characters, but I couldn't find any reference to one race being superior to another. The 'darker' races are more often than not Conan's allies, not enemies. Maybe there is some more pronounced racism in his correspondence or other works, but for the most part he escapes from it in these stories.

It was the same with the sexism. Very often, women are reduced to objects, 'princessess' in need of rescue, sometimes even literally Conan's 'prize' for defeating a villain or monster. But one story in particular stuck in my mind: "The Vale of Lost Women". At first glance, it was one of the worst stories in the anthology, in terms of the 'princess' problem. But then I noticed that, while that is certainly the plot, the story is in fact told from the princess's point of view. (In this particular story, Conan is a minor, inessential background character.) While we all know countless stories involving princesses in need of rescue, this is the first time I ever noticed that the princess (not the rescuing hero) was the voice of the story. What would have been nice to see in some 1970s fantasy novels seems remarkable for a story written in 1932.

Howard's style is as interesting as the content, in the same sense, i.e. when he's transcending his limitations. For the most part, I thought the prose was overwrought, but the plot's were well-paced. Howard tended to repeat certain descriptions, but sometimes he manages passages that are quite evocative. For example, I'm not particularly frightened of snakes, but reading some of Howard's stories, I definitely had the feeling for what that might be like. He handles the exposition problem deftly. By the end, and with seemingly minimal effort, we have a sense of Conan's (and Howard's) world.

It's easy enough to make fun of Conan stories. But when I thought about the circumstances under which they were written (i.e. very quickly, during the Depression, for money), their relative quality is striking. Basically: yes, they're silly, but they're not only silly. If Howard had written at this level under those circumstances, I wonder what might have been had he had lived past 30. ( )