Robert E. Howard’s stories about the Crusades are a treat, even to Sword & Sorcery fans. Especially to S&S readers who may not know him for anything other than Conan. These stories remind me that a writer can want to be known for one thing but end up famous for another. Robert E. Howard wanted nothing more than to write for Adventure. All his Crusades tales appeared in lesser competitors. REH never sold a single piece to the grandest Pulp of them all.
Adventure began in November 1910. It published all the big adventure writers of the day: Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, J Alan Dunn, Gordon Young, Arthur D. Howden Smith, Arthur O. Friel, Hugh Pendexter, Gordon MacCreagh and many others. This was the league that Robert E. Howard aspired to. His inability to crack the Pulp (and he might have if he hadn’t died so young) was Fantasy fiction’s gain. Tales like “Kings of the Night” and “By This Ax I Rule” would never have ended up in the Weird Tales pile if Adventure had said “yes!” By taking a failed adventure story and adding a supernatural element, Howard invented Sword & Sorcery.
Howard once wrote:
“There is no literary work, to me, half as zestful as rewriting history in the guise of fiction. I wish I was able to devote the rest of my life to that kind of work. I could write a hundred years and still there would be stories clamoring to be written, by the scores. Every page of history teems with dramas that should be put on paper. A single paragraph may be packed with action and drama enough to fill a whole volume of fiction work…”
These are not the words of someone who wants to write Sword & Sorcery for a living. That happened anyway. What stuck me about these stories is how the excitement in them is part of the Sword & Sorcery formula (I use that word not in a derogatory sense but in the wizardry sense). Howard was able to do two things well: draw color and describe action, both of which you find here. These stories made S&S better.
“Red Blades of Black Cathay” (Oriental Tales, March 1931) (with Tevis C. Smith)
“Hawk of Outremer” ” (Oriental Tales, April-May-June 1931)
“The Blood of Belshazzar” (Oriental Tales, Autumn 1931)
“Sowers of Thunder” ” (Oriental Tales, Winter 1932)
“Lord of Samarcand” ” (Oriental Tales, Spring 1932)
“The Lion of Tiberias” (The Magic Carpet Magazine, July 1933)
“The Shadow of the Vulture” (The Magic Carpet Magazine, January 1934). This story gave us Red Sonya who Roy Thomas would change to Red Sonja and give her a lot less to wear.
“Gates of Empire” (Golden Fleece, January 1939) was a special treat with seven illustrations by Harold S. De Lay. he also illustrated Conan’s last story “Red Nails” in Weird Tales. sadly, REH never lived to see them.
There are two excellent collections of the Crusades (and other adventure tales) by Robert E. Howard:
Gates of Empire and Other Tales of the Crusades (Wildside Press, 2004) which has an excellent essay by Fred Blosser at the beginning.
The Lord of Samarcand and Other Adventure Stories of the Old Orient (University of Nebraska Press, 2005) edited by Rusty Burke. This one has a good introduction as well.
