Flame Winds was a Sword & Sorcery novel written by Norvell W. Page back in the Pulp days of John W. Campbell. It appeared in Unknown, June 1939. It had a sequel Sons of the Bear Gods (Unknown, November 1939). A third novel was planned but never written. These two novels seem like Robert E. Howard material with their daring-do and nonstop action but there is something quite different about Wan Tengri and his two confrontations with wizards. Lying behind it all, is a very un-Howardian philosophy.
John W. Campbell created Unknown as a companion to his very successful Astounding Science Fiction in 1939. The Fantasy Pulp was based on the idea that magic is just science that hasn’t been explained yet. Campbell’s belief underlies both of these novels and then presents an even bigger example in “The Elder Gods” (Unknown, October 1939) by Don A. Stuart (actually started by Arthur J. Burks, then rewritten by Campbell himself). In this story a lone human takes on the gods and defeats them to bring in Science over magic. L. Sprague de Camp would recap the idea in his The Tritonian Ring (1951).
In fact, de Camp and Fletcher Pratt were old hands at this kind of fantasy with their Harold Shea stories in Unknown. These satires poke fun at old mythologies by applying modern, realistic standards to them. And if you haven’t figure it out yet: I’m not a fan. I feel Campbell’s “Classic American Fantasy” as it has been branded, lost something. Lost a lot of something as it pokes fun at the building blocks of Fantasy. (I have to mellow a little because he did publish the Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Leiber after Farnsworth Wright changed the Weird Tales policy on S&S and rejected them. Campbell did not tinker or mess with Leiber’s mojo but let the stories stand on their own. Probably because Leiber had a semi-satirical bent of his own. But only Leiber got this pass.)
Now jump thirty years into the future…
Marvel Comics and Roy Thomas were like a hungry machine in the 1970s and 80s. Any good material that could be adapted was looked at. Sometimes it meant changing a Kull or a Turlough O’Brien story into a Conan tale. Twice it meant taking the plot of another writer’s work and changing it to Conan. That character was Wan Tengri, of course. Flame Winds was adapted in Conan the Barbarian #32-34 and Sons of the Bear God in #109-112. The cool thing is both adaptations were done by the same men: Roy Thomas doing the script, John Buscema penciling and Ernie Chan inking, even though these comics were seven years apart.
The adaptations are quite good and Thomas, though it says “loosely based on”, keeps all the best pieces. Roy calls the city Wan Tengri (in Khitai) as a way of honoring the original hero. Where things deviate is in terms of monsters. The magic of the originals books are fake. The Seven Wizards hold their cities in thrall through Science (a giant furnace devise that makes the Flame Winds and the dwarves with an electric net). Thomas needed some extra monsters to spice things up so he adds a were-octopus and a manticore. In this way Roy Thomas circumvented John W. Campbell a little, though Marvel Comics has usually held a very similar view about Magic being Science. The adaptation of Sons of the Bear Gods features only large bears like the novel.
“Flame Winds of Lost Khitai”, (Conan the Barbarian #32, November 1973)
“Death and Seven Wizards” (Conan the Barbarian #33, December 1973)
“The Temptress in the Tower of Flame” (Conan the Barbarian #34, January 1974)
“Sons of the Bear God” (Conan the Barbarian #109, April 1980)
“Beware the Bear of Heaven” (Conan the Barbarian #110, May 1980)
“Cimmerian – Against a City” (Conan the Barbarian #111, June 1980)
“Buryat Besieged” (Conan the Barbarian #112, July 1980)
This adaptation is almost an unique occurrence in the Conan Saga. Though John Jakes worked on some Conan comics, none of the Brak stories were ever co-opted. Michael Moorcock had Elric appear in Conan the Barbarian #14 and 15 but the story was created especially for the comic by Roy Thomas, Michael Moorcock and James Cawthorn. Lin Carter’s Thongor was another possibility but he received his own adaptation in Creatures on the Loose. Gardner F. Fox’s Kothar is another story. “Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse” was adapted in Conan the Barbarian #47. Roy Thomas adapted the story while John Buscema penciled again. Inks this time were by Dan Adkins.
