# Robert Howard Forum



## Tinsel (May 12, 2010)

Especially since the British published a lot of titles for Conan Conan Roleplaying Game and since there are plenty of stories by Robert Howard as well as over 40 - 50 misc Conan titles. Wouldn't a Robert Howard forum make sense?

I'm starting out myself with "The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian" and it is well written. I hesitate to apply any judgment at this time, because I don't have a strong sense of Robert Howard's writing but he was a contemporary with H.P. Lovecraft and they talked in letters. He was one of the more popular writers of sword and sorcery. You know, maybe it is just me though and I also thought that it was strange that there was no forum for one of the first founders of sci-fi, that is H.G Wells. I have read at least one of his books but there are a few popular ones that most people are familiar with. This might not be a popular forum but since he founded this genre (am I wrong), you would think that out of respect one should exist.


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## Connavar (May 12, 2010)

Robert.E Howard topic is pretty big in Classic SFF forum.  Many of us here have read him and rate him highly.  He is the still the best S&S,heroic fantasy writer i have read.  One of my alltime fav writers of any genre or no genre.  He had some flaws but he was great with vivid action,fantasy,his characters,his sometimes poetic prose.

Conan stories are great but my fav is Solomon Kane historical fantasy stories and El Borak contemporary adventure stories in Central Asia,Middle East.

You need to create 2,3 more topics for there to be REH forum.  Thats the simple rule in Chrons.  Any writer with that many threads will get a forum.  Fantasy legend or not.


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## Tinsel (May 13, 2010)

It would be a busy forum with lots of topic threads, as long as sense prevails, or is it the other way around. I think that it would be fairly decent and there are many books on Conan as well as Howard's stories. Both he and Lovecraft wrote a lot, but not as much as they could have, yet is it more than enough for my intelligence, or for many a wallet.


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## Connavar (May 13, 2010)

Tinsel said:


> It would be a busy forum with lots of topic threads, as long as sense prevails, or is it the other way around. I think that it would be fairly decent and there are many books on Conan as well as Howard's stories. Both he and Lovecraft wrote a lot, but not as much as they could have, yet is it more than enough for my intelligence, or for many a wallet.



HP Lovecraft fans has it much worse, he wrote like 50 stories.  Howard was prolific,wrote to many mags.  Thanks to that i can choose to read brand new  western,horror,boxning,hardboiled crime,fantasy character series collections.

You must read his horror stories, he was a master of that genre too. His stories has made alltime best horror story collections in last years.  

Im a member of Conan.com's REH forum which is huge.  Many REH fans who talk about any of stories,other pulp writers.


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## Tinsel (May 14, 2010)

I have a copy of the horror stories that I acquired only recently, and I have the iTunes audio recording of that collection as well. I have not started it yet, but I will look at a story in there very soon. I am also reading the first Conan anthology, and I have a number of the Conan graphic novels. When I am finished book one of the Penguin edition of H.P. Lovecraft, which is the main focus currently, I'll than make Conan the focus for a book or two.

The Lovecraft stories are very good, but it is nice to read sword and sorcery, and go back and forth. I intend to throw in an occasional classic or history title as well. In the case of Lovecraft, he has me interested in reading, and I hear that Howard studied history in depth. There should be room for both authors.

Anyway, I am going to read tonight, now that the day is closing.


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## J Riff (May 18, 2010)

Mercy. SciFi history...read up ! Hugo Gernsback coined the term. At first it was called 'Sciento-fiction'. It was created to stop the onslaught of ridiculous fantasies involving the moon, robots and etc. ...he asked his writers to provide an explanation, that's all, if they wrote about impossible stuff, other than the usual magic elves, lilliputians and so forth.
 Before this there were thousands of authors doing_ speculative fiction_, not just Wells and Verne.

 Howard's stuff is all pretty good - Kane, Breckenridge Elkins, the Iron man boxing stories. Real action/adventure stories primarily aimed at young men of the 30s, but somehow it holds up today.


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## j d worthington (May 18, 2010)

Yep. "Scientifiction"; then (grudgingly, as I understand it), "science fiction". Before that term came about, you had such terms as "the scientific romance" -- not necessarily indicating romance in the way we tend to think of it today (though it often did), but also in the older sense of the term:



> A long fictitious tale of heroes and extraordinary or mysterious events, usually set in a distant time or place.


 
This latter, I believe, was especially used by the Munsey magazines of the nineteen-teens and early twenties....

A good sampling of what came along before what is called "the Gernsback revolution" can be found in two anthologies by Sam Moskowitz, *Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911*, and *Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines: 1912-1920*. Others, such as Damon Knight's *A Century of Science Fiction*, are also a very good source to learn about what was going on before, during, and following the years Wells & Co. were writing....


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