Heroes in the Wind: Howard in Penguin Modern Classics

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j d worthington

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This is good news - thanks for bring it to our attention, JD - provided, of course, that it is textually accurate.

The Penguin Classics site suggests that it's published this Thursday (3rd September).
 
The cover sucks but its about time Howard got his mainstream classic due. I fully expected this. If HPL got it why not a fantastic great like Howard too in penguin,Library of America.

I'm a member of REH forum site a big one that has a thread about this and the people there dont think there is something wrong with the text. People who post there several of them are REH editors,biographer.

Not a book for the fans but for the library,people who dont know him.
 
Sounds good, from what you say, Conn. And let's hope plenty of the general public buy/borrow it.


I recall reading Howard's Conan for the first time and being bowled over. Before that, my only contact with the author's work was through the distorted mirror of the Schwarzeneggar films (which would, I guess, be most people only contact with Conan).
 
That, or Marvel's Conan the Barbarian comic (or its spin-offs, such as Kull the Destroyer). These were actually often quite good in their early years, but that, sadly, didn't last. (Then again, I'm partial to Barry Windsor-Smith's art....:rolleyes:)

No, probably not for the fans, unless you're one of those who likes to have various editions. And, this being a Penguin book, there are likely going to be notes as well, which will be of interest to some of the Howard fans at least (such as myself).

Thanks for bringing in that information, Connavar. I rather thought that would be the case, it being the Penguin editions, but the typos and stenographic mistakes in the Lovecraft volumes they've done does give me (slight) pause....
 
Odd on this one, as I'm getting a different description from various sites. According to one, it's to be 400 pp., according to another, 560....

And this isn't the only massive tome coming out in the next few months from REH, either:

Amazon.com: Conan's Brethren: The Complete Collection (9780575089877): Robert E. Howard, Stephen Jones: Books

Again, I've no idea of the TOC at this point, but it looks to be comparable to their Complete Chronicles of Conan, which makes it yet another very worthwhile indulgence for Howard fans (not to mention newbies)....
 
Brethren isnt news to me but its like Heroes in the Wind, good if you havent read REH other heroes. Here is a link to info about it from Stephen Jones the editor posting in REH forum.

Conan's Brethren -- Coming From Gollancz In September - The REH Forum

He is more correct, since the text are from the original pulps like Weird Tales,Oriental Stories etc and not edited by modern hands like some earlier books like this.
 
Connavar said:
Brethren isnt news to me but its like Heroes in the Wind, good if you havent read REH other heroes. Here is a link to info about it from Stephen Jones the editor posting in REH forum.

Conan's Brethren -- Coming From Gollancz In September - The REH Forum

He is more correct, since the text are from the original pulps like Weird Tales,Oriental Stories etc and not edited by modern hands like some earlier books like this.
Click to expand...

Well, no, not really. The thing is, the WT texts did sometimes involve changes from Howard's original; a lot of the more recent collections have returned to Howard's own mss. for their texts, hence are actually much closer to the author's own intent. The point Jones makes, however, is that Gollancz uses the texts from those original publications because they are now PD, which saves on costs and allows a larger amount of material, whereas (as mentioned with the story "Marchers of Valhalla") it does limit them to only those tales published so far back. Pity, as a lot of REH's work wasn't published until much later, from the 1950s on.

(And I, too, have long wanted to see a volume of all the James Allison stories published, including the fragment or two that Howard never developed.)

However, if you're interested in reading Howard's fantasy as it was read by the readers of the time, then this is definitely a good way to go -- especially at this size and price. I only wish, as is said in the thread, that it had a wider representation of Howard's other heroes as well.

Then again, considering how bloody much the man wrote, that could go into several volumes....:rolleyes:

U.M. -- thanks. I expected that (560) was the case, but when I posted, I was about to fall over from exhaustion, and hadn't checked the Penguin site itself (silly me!). That's one heck of a lot of Howard's material at one go, especially from such a publisher. Who knows? We might see more volumes come from them yet....
 
I prefer reading as REH readers read him at the time. WT might have changed Howard's original but it is still more original works than what people did to Solomon Kane,Conan books back in paperback era where they edited stories for political correctness. Thats bad to me. I have read what Donald M. Grant and some others did.

This is enough for new readers because us fans we already have stories that was never realesed in his life time.

If you become a fan reading any of these collection you can easily get better more complete collections from Del Rey,Wildside and co.
Speaking about James Allison it would be golden to have a collection with all those stories, i havent read those except Valley of the Worm because you have to get rare second hands for that. Same with many other REH heroes like Turlogh O'Brian.
Sometimes its irritating being REH fan when they keep making books with Conan,Solomon Kane,Bran,Kull 99% of the times and forget many other characters.
 
Connavar said:
I prefer reading as REH readers read him at the time. WT might have changed Howard's original but it is still more original works than what people did to Solomon Kane,Conan books back in paperback era where they edited stories for political correctness. Thats bad to me. I have read what Donald M. Grant and some others did.
Click to expand...

Yes, that was a major problem with the Howard revival of the 1960s and 1970s; more about which in a moment.

Speaking about James Allison it would be golden to have a collection with all those stories, i havent read those except Valley of the Worm because you have to get rare second hands for that. Same with many other REH heroes like Turlogh O'Brian.
Click to expand...

Connavar: do you have a list of all the James Allison and Turlough O'Brien tales? If not, PM me, and I'll see what I can do. (Though I would imagine you do, being a member of an REH forum....) You can find several of them in either the Berkley, Lancer, or Zebra books from the period mentioned. Don't know how costly it would be for you, but I see them now and again for quite low prices, so peraps worth your checking out.

Sometimes its irritating being REH fan when they keep making books with Conan,Solomon Kane,Bran,Kull 99% of the times and forget many other characters.
Click to expand...

Yes, I suppose I happened to get into REH at a nearly ideal time, in some ways. I was too young to read the Lancer REH volumes when they were first released, but then interest in Howard died down a bit for some years, reviving shortly after I first became a fan in the early 1970s. By the end of the decade, there were numerous books bearing his name in print, and an enormous amount of work which had either never been published before, or out of print for decades, was now available. Even though there were cases of adulteration, "posthumous collaboration", and the like, a great deal of it was straight from the pages of the pulps themselves, and I wouldn't trade my Howard collection for the world.

A lot of this I haven't read in many years now, but once in a while I go back and dip into a Howard collection, and the magic is still very much there. I can more easily see his flaws now than I could back then, but there's still something about the man's work which commands attention.

My point being, I suppose, that there seems to be a resurgence of interest in REH again, and we may just be on the cusp of seeing something similar once again; in which case, you may be in luck as far as seeing a wider range of his work in the next few years. At least, there are glimmerings that are quite similar to what I saw back then, and I can only hope for such an outcome for those in the position now I was back then....

EDIT: Well, as I found such a list with ridiculous ease (rather than having to go dig out my older copies), I thought I'd go ahead and include them here, for yourself and anyone else interested:

Turlough Dubh O'Brien:

http://www.howardworks.com/subject.htm#turlough

James Allison:

http://www.howardworks.com/subject.htm#allison

If you go to the links for each tale, you can find which were left in fragmentary state by Howard, which have been "completed" by others, and (where such has happened) where the original Howard fragment has been published....
 
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