Robert E. Howard Readers discussion

I've been aware for some time that Howard wrote some stories inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos corpus of his fellow Weird Tales author, H. P. Lovecraft; but until recently, I'd never read any of these. Earlier this month, though, I ran across his "The Black Stone," in the Arkham House anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. If you haven't read it, I'd recommend it very highly; IMO, it's as good as most of Lovecraft's own work, and it's whetted my interest to read more REH fiction in this vein!

"The Black Stone" is my favorite Robert E. Howard horror story, hands down without question! It's a fantastic piece of fiction, and makes me wish Howard had written more in the so-called Cthulhu mythos.

I'm not very good at picking things like this out, but I think quite a few of Howard's tales were similar. One I really enjoyed & seems similar is, "The Valley of the Worm" I think. It's S&S, but the worm is like something that would have climbed into our world from Lovecraft's hell.

I'm waiting for a collection of REH's horror stories...

Is it The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, Mike? I have that on my wish list, too.

Yes. The local public library has it. I'm on the waiting list. I'll probably try to run it down later to add to my own library. I just got The Lovecraft papers in the mail today. Thing wasn't anywhere in town. Anyway, again yes.

I'm halfway through Horror Stories by REH but it has a different cover ... Solomon Kane's on mine. I finished reading the short story, Valley of the Lost, a few days ago. The ending is quite disturbing.

I picked up the Solomon Kane collection. One of my favorite REH characters.

I've tried some H.P. Lovecraft short stories now, including Call of Cthulhu and find his works just don't resonate anywhere close to REH's. They are certainly literate and at times interesting, but I find them distant and not very compelling.

Just me?

John wrote: "I've tried some H.P. Lovecraft short stories now, including Call of Cthulhu and find his works just don't resonate anywhere close to REH's. They are certainly literate and at times interesting, but..."

Certainly not just you, but I do like H.P. Lovecraft. He was heavily influenced by Lord Dunsany, much of whose work was descriptive and impressionistic, rather than action and plot driven. Hence HPL stories, particularly his earlier works, tend to develop quite slowly, building atmosphere layer-on-layer.

Maybe it's because HPL was an anglophile that he appeals to me - we like queuing and waiting for things to happen ;-)

If you haven't read them already, you might try At the Mountains of Madness or The Rats in the Walls.

John wrote: "I've tried some H.P. Lovecraft short stories now, including Call of Cthulhu and find his works just don't resonate anywhere close to REH's. They are certainly literate and at times interesting, but..."

I agree. Roger Zelazny writes descriptive, impressionistic sections that are similar, but I like better. REH does the horror element in a more chilling way for me. With Lovecraft I tend to skim & just not get the full effect.

I enjoy Howard's "Cthulhu & Lovecraftian" tales very much. For sheer terror, they come quite close to H.P.L's own stories. Personally, though there is no Cthulhu motif in it, I think Howard's best horror yarn is "Pigeons from Hell."

Howard definitely appeals to me more than Lovecraft, though I am hard pressed to define why. It might be because Howard is from old frontier stock; whereas Lovecraft is from the cultivated environs of New England. Too, Howard can write a decent Cthulhu tale, almost as good as Lovecraft himself. Lovecraft, on the other hand, would be hard put to write about barbarians, boxing, and the Western frontier. Being the consummate writer that he is, H.P.L. probably could have written a few stories using these themes, but there would have been no passion there.

I like Robert E. Howard's horror writing, and Pigeon's from Hell was one of the best stories I read last year, but his style, even in his Cthulhu tales, is different to Lovecraft's.

What REH does so well in Pigeon's is to build a brooding sense of incipient bloody violence, which contrasts with HPL's generally more cosmic, psychological horror. That said, I haven't read REH's horror stories en masse, rather as isolated stories in collections, so it's possible they'd make a different impression on me if I read a block of them.

I love Robert E. Howard's horror stories. "Pigeons from Hell" is one of the best; I also like "Black Canaan."

As for his Mythos stories, "Worms of the Earth" (also a Bran Mak Morn story) is probably the best, IMHO. Nameless Cults: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard is an excellent collection of his Mythos tales.

Also, I found it interesting that "Phoenix on the Sword" found in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian almost qualifies as a Mythos story, in that it mentions the Nameless Old Ones in Epemitreus' tomb. Just a name-drop, but it lends some atmosphere to the scene all the same, particularly for those familiar with Lovecraft's work.

Interesting stuff, all.


Michael wrote: "f you haven't read them already, you might try At the Mountains of Madness or The Rats in the Walls. "


Both are part of this Horror and Macabre Tales Anthology I have of H.P.'s. http://www.amazon.com/Best-H-P-Lovecr...

I've read Rats, which was entertaining, but not Mountains yet.

Haven't read much Zelazny, though I think I tried a book of his that opens with an assassin smuggling a king's head out of the palace ... in a gourmet tray. Or is that something else?

I was reading REH's Pigeons on the Kindle just last night and found it dark and superb. I didn't finish it but will tonight. Excellent creep factor.

John wrote: "...Haven't read much Zelazny, though I think I tried a book of his that opens with an assassin smuggling a king's head out of the palace ... in a gourmet tray. Or is that something else?..."

I don't recall that story & I'm pretty familiar with his work. I haven't read all of the books he wrote with others, though. It could be one he did with Robert Sheckley. I never made it through the first book of that trilogy.

If you're really interested, you could try asking in the Zelazny group.
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/2...
It's not a very active group as the moderators are a lazy bunch, but Chris Kovacks checks it regularly & he's an editor of the 6 volume 'Collected Works of Roger Zelazny'.

While Zelazny wrote quite a few novels & is probably best known for his Amber series, he really shined with his short stories, too. He has half a dozen or so books of them: Unicorn Variations, A Rose for Ecclesiastes (aka "Four For Tomorrow"), Frost & Fire, The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, The Last Defender of Camelot, & Manna from Heaven. That's off the top of my head, so he might have more. They're all worth reading. The last has all the Amber short stories in it.

To chime in, I too think that 'Pigeons From Hell' is REH's best non-Conan short story. I prefer Howard's action-driven plots to Lovecraft's tales of atmospheric suspense.

I discovered Howard's horror stories when I was 15 years old and living in rural north Texas (nearest town was 811 people, and that was 8 and 1/2 miles away from our home). Howard's stories caused me to view every abandoned country house with fear, to study every second story window for shapes of alien forms. Sunset found me pedaling home on my bicycle, racing the shadows of dusk as fast as I could.

Rather than Twilight or Harry Potter, I had zuvembies and nameless, faceless gods that caused madness at a glance. Quiddich? No, thanks. Pistols, bloody sands and demigods? Oh, yeah... count me in.

So, yes, I guess you could say I'm a fan of REH's Cthulhu and horror genre.

p.

PS) Michael: I laughed at your line of "we (British) like queuing and waiting for things to happen". Funny lot, you all.

We had an "old dark house" near us when I was a kid. It was as run-down and dishevelled as the crooked old man who lived there, and we made up all sorts of murderous tales above what he was doing in there. Of course, he was just an old man, living alone who couldn't really look after himself. My step-mum said he was a nice old fellow, and she used to look after him a bit.

I think the roots of horror, that is, the feeling of horror, comes from children, and the children we used to be. Not a particularly original thought, I suppose.

Pere: We do seem to be a rather peculiar little island :-D

There was a small wood near where I lived when I was very small. In the wood there was the basement and some remains of an old house. We were all sure that something terrible had happened there and had to be haunted...surrounded by the woods, no lane, walk or road leading to it. We were scared to death of the place....

It was great we used to "find ourselves there" all the time. :)

Michael wrote: "Of course, he was just an old man, living alone who couldn't really look after himself. "

Another of life's true horrors. And why fiction really doesn't scare like the real world.

If you like HP Lovecraft you should all check out the MYTHOS GROUP its awesome

I've tried to get through an anthology of HP Lovecraft tales, the most recent story being The Dunwich Horror, and I'm giving it up. As famous as his stories seem to be, Lovecraft's style just doesn't click with me.

H.P. Lovecraft's style is certainly different to that of REH, but I like it. I guess it's just a matter of taste. Did you try The Rats in the Walls? That's one of my favourite HPL's and, I think, one of his more accessible stories.

I like/liked both. Howard wrote in a lot of different genres where Lovecraft created a "mythos" that still gets copied. They were contemporaries and corespondents.

Michael wrote: "H.P. Lovecraft's style is certainly different to that of REH, but I like it. I guess it's just a matter of taste. Did you try The Rats in the Walls? That's one of my favourite HPL's and, I think, o..."

Yes, thought Rats in the Walls and the one with the strange violinist were pretty good, but the others just didn't draw me into the story much.

Lovecraft is not for all readers, his style can be difficult. That said I like his work. Especially the Dreamland stories.

I don't know if anyone mentioned this upthread, but there's a Cimmerian cameo in The Shadow Out of Time.

I have the same problem with Lovecraft. I've been hearing about how great he was for such a long time, and I've read a ton of works with scary atmosphere and characters inspired by his mythos, so I finally decided I'd read some of his stories. I read The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Temple, and The Dunwich Horror. None of them did I find particularly scary. They certainly had description of what would be scary situations, but none of them had an impact strong enough to scare me. The Dunwich Horror was the worst for me. It all seemed like it would be scary had I been there, but there was no atmosphere. The entire thing was a summary of events with large chunks of dialogue clumped together. I kept thinking, yeah that would have been scary to be there, but I didn't feel like I was experiencing it. It's like he had really good ideas and truly scary concepts and ideas for what would make scary atmosphere, but the execution of those ideas was just a summary of what happened. So instead of being immersed in the story, I was coldly told about it with lots of purple prose and antiquated language. Lovecraft seemed to be 5% show 95% tell, though I'm not sure how long the show don't tell rule in writing has been around, so perhaps there's a lot more older writing like that.

Jeff look, a lot of people don't agree with your take on Lovecraft, I'm one. Possibly it's taste or maybe we just found he resonated with us in a way he doesn't with you. I think you missed a lot that's there, but then many feel as you do. Whet you are expressing is a personal opinion. That's great. But it's not universal.

I frequently (here at Goodreads) review and rate low books others have loved, it's just the way of things. What touches me will not touch others, what speaks to me will not speak to certain others and of course what they like often won't be what I like.

I find a depth of horror in many of Lovecraft's work that I don't find often in more contemporary writers or for that matter in many classic writers, even the ones writing is inspired by him.

So, hope you find more of what you like as I hope other who will like Lovecraft find him.

Generally speaking, I can't say that I find Lovecraft "scary" per se --though the denouement in "The Rats in the Walls," and the point in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" where he starts to lead up to the denouement, were both unexpected enough to creep me out. Interestingly, though, for me scaring myself with a supernatural or "horror" read isn't usually why I read it. (As some other readers have observed, it's hard to be genuinely very frightened by something you know perfectly well is a harmless fictional story! :-) ) For me, that sort of reading, if it's well-written, offers the same satisfactions any other kind of well-written fiction does, plus some of the special kinds of appeal that are discussed over in the Supernatural Fiction Readers group on the "Why the appeal of supernatural fiction?" thread --don't have the link at my fingertips, but I can post it if anyone wants it. (Okay, technically Lovecraft wrote science fiction, but it's as close to supernatural fiction as SF is ever likely to get.) So I can regard HPL as one of my favorite writers even without (usually :-) )being scared silly by his work!

He wrote a sort of mixture. Some were pure fantasy others would probably be closer to what we call science fantasy (Cool Air for instance). I suppose that's what I meant. I found something in his writing that reaches down into the primal. I guess others don't.

Well I know that people have found Lovecraft inaccessible, even at the time a lot of the language he used wasn't in common usage since the 18th century. So that may have been part of it, and I'm not a huge horror afficinado anyway, but I have read horror stories that genuinely gave me the creeps, and many others have said they had a hard time sleeping after a Lovecraft story, so I picked a few I'd heard that about, and I was disappointed. I really wanted to like Lovecraft, cause I'm actually a huge fan of the mythos he created, and as I said I've read several stories with concepts he inspired that I just love. What I'd like to do is read some of REH's Cthulhu stories and see how they compare.

I would recommend "Pigeon's from Hell" as an excellent REH horror, though it's probably not a Cthulhu mythos stories, so perhaps I shouldn't recommend it. Oh, read it anyway - it's really good!