The Conan Series by Robert E. Howard
The Conan Series, created by Robert E. Howard, features the legendary character of Conan, a formidable barbarian hero set against the backdrop of the prehistoric Hyborian Age. Howard's stories, which first appeared in *Weird Tales* between 1929 and 1936, explore Conan's adventures as he evolves from a young warrior born amidst battle to the king of Aquilonia. The narratives showcase Conan's traits of strength, independence, and courage, as he navigates a world filled with both natural and supernatural challenges.
The collection also includes tales of King Kull, another barbarian figure, highlighting the shared themes of power and adventure. Conan's escapades often involve a quest for treasure or glory, but they also reveal his intrinsic values, such as loyalty to friends and disdain for tyranny. Notable stories, like "The Tower of the Elephant" and "The Queen of the Black Coast," exemplify his encounters with evil, where he faces insurmountable odds yet triumphs through a blend of bravery and luck.
This series has laid the groundwork for the "sword and sorcery" genre, influencing countless works in fantasy literature. Readers may find Conan's character an archetype of heroism, embodying a blend of primal instincts and noble impulses that resonate with the allure of adventure.
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The Conan Series
First published:The Coming of Conan (1953), Conan the Barbarian (1954), The Sword of Conan (1952), King Conan (1953), Conan the Conqueror (1950; previously published as “The Hour of the Dragon,” Weird Tales, 1935), and Tales of Conan (1955)
Type of work: Stories
Type of plot: Fantasy—heroic fantasy
Time of work: About 15,000 b.c.e.
Locale: A fictional Earth
The Plot
Robert E. Howard wrote the Conan stories (arranged above in order of internal chronology) as episodes from the life of the invincible barbarian hero. This Gnome Press collection includes all of Howard’s Conan stories, commentary regarding Conan and his world, and two tales of King Kull, another ancient barbarian king. Most of the stories were originally published in Weird Tales between 1929 and 1936, except those in the last book, Tales of Conan, which was compiled from previously unpublished manuscripts. L. Sprague de Camp edited the entire collection.
The Kull tales begin with The Coming of Conan. With his Pictish friend Brule, Kull battles the uncanny serpent men. Kull is a mighty barbarian warrior from Atlantis who has usurped the throne of the kingdom of Valusia, and Brule is a guerrilla fighter and fantastically skilled hunter. Conan is a fusion of these two characters. He is the greatest swordsman of his age, with the strength, speed, and ferocity of a beast of prey and senses so acute that he surpasses wild men and animals in tracking and stalking.
After the Kull stories begin the adventures of Conan, set in the prehistoric Hyborian Age. Although little is known of Conan’s early years, it is established that he was born in the midst of a battle, literally bred to war. At the sack of Venarium, an Aquilonian outpost in Cimmeria destroyed by the barbarians, he acquired a curiosity about the Hyborian civilizations. When he was about seventeen years old, he began the wanderings that would make him legendary throughout the world as a thief, mercenary, bandit chieftain, pirate captain, general, and ultimately barbarian king of Aquilonia itself.
The most basic plot element is Conan’s heroic character. He embodies “natural” virtues such as independence, courage, indomitability, and a simple honesty about himself and his desires. He rejects the “civilized hypocrisy” of legal abstractions, so he is often at odds with the law. Although not given to wanton cruelty, he is vengeful and merciless in his anger. This is counterbalanced by an unswerving loyalty to deserving comrades and a loathing for bullies and other cowardly types. Naturally curious and almost fearless, Conan enjoys the adventurous life and will brave any danger to help a woman in distress. These personality traits—and his mighty sword arm— impel him from adventure to adventure. His restless need for action will not allow him to enjoy times of peace, even that for which he battles as king of Aquilonia.
Conan inevitably faces situations with impossible odds against his success, but with heroic fortitude and tremendous luck he invariably succeeds. Although he frequently begins an adventure out of selfish motives, his actions always help defeat some monstrous evil. One good example is the earliest Conan story, “The Tower of the Elephant.” Setting out to steal a fabulous gem, “The Heart of the Elephant,” rumored to be kept in a mysterious tower, he braves natural and supernatural obstacles to attain his goal, only to voluntarily free a mysterious being from another planet, Yag-Kosha, who wreaks awful magical vengeance on the tower’s builder, the evil magician Yara. The jewel that Conan sought is absorbed into the spell, and he flees while the tower crashes to ruin behind him.
In what many regard as the greatest Conan story, “The Queen of the Black Coast,” the encounter with supernatural evil is again central. Fleeing the agents of civilized law, Conan forces passage aboard an Argossean merchant ship bound for the northern coast of what is now Africa. There all but Conan are massacred by black pirates, whose leader is a legendary white beauty, Belit. She falls in love with Conan and they roam the coast, pillaging and destroying, until Belit elects to search for a prehuman ruin rumored to hold great treasure.
One member of the elder race that built the city remains, now devolved into a diabolical, bat-winged ape creature. The thing craftily separates Conan and some spearmen from Belit and the rest. Conan’s men are killed when the fumes of the black lotus put Conan into an enchanted slumber. He awakes from the spell to find Belit hanged from the yardarm of her ship by a golden necklace from the horde she had intended to steal. As night falls, Conan awaits the demoniac being and his were-hyena servants atop a pyramid at the center of the city. In a terrific battle, he is saved at the last moment by the ghost of Belit, returning as she promised to save her lover. At dawn, Conan places the treasure and her body in her ship, which he makes a funeral pyre. As the flames blend with the rising sun, he vanishes into the jungle.
The hero’s encounter with the “unnatural” (evil) and his incredible triumph is the archetypal pattern of all the Conan stories. Nearly infinite variations are possible within this simple matrix, as illustrated by the above examples as well as the abundance of heroic “sword and sorcery” fantasy written since the Conan stories. Conan is the first true sword and sorcery hero.