Robert E. Howard Readers discussion

What was your first Robert E. Howard book or story?

Mine was Conan the Adventurer. My uncle loaned me that book and Conan: Conan the Usurper, the only two Conan books he had, in 1983. I was 13.

I read "The People of the Black Circle" first. Wow. I felt like I was reading an ancient scroll of a bygone age. I was captivated. It was magic. At this point, I had not seen the movies, not read the comics. It was my first experience with Robert E. Howard.

The wonderful Frazetta cover matched with REH's words... It literally changed my life. It was also my first sword and sorcery novel. I had read Bridge to Terabithia, but no other actual fantasy, so it really was a new experience for me. I read those two Conan books and was captivated but I didn't know how to get more...

That summer, my family hauled me off camping in Brown County, Indiana. I hated camping. I really did. Everyone else in my family went off to the Flea Markets in Brown County while I stayed home and played my computerized Chess game, stewing over how unhappy I was. My brother came back and said he found MORE of those Conan books I liked. I begged my Dad to take me to the flea market and he did. I found and bought (well, my Dad bought them for me) all of the Lancer editions and devoured them (but they had the Ace editions of "Adventurer" and "Usurper", which I had borrowed from my uncle, so I now had my own copies).

And it all started with Conan the Adventurer.

So... tell me about your start with Robert E. Howard.

I was 13 as well when I read my first REH story but it was in 1967. My best friend had a couple of the Lancer Editions and told me about them. At the time Conan the Adventurer, Conan the Warrior, Conan the Usurper, and Conan the Conqueror were either on the bookshelves or soon were. Anyway I bought Conan the Warrior first because I liked the cover and my first story was "Red Nails". Needless to say I purchased the other 3 and everything else as they came out including Kull, Wolfshead, The Dark Man and other stories, etc. All were published by Lancer at the time. I repurchased them all over again when Ace took over the rights. I have been a lifelong REH fan since that first story. I took my wife to see Conan the Barbarian with Arnold when it first came out. It was our first date! She still married me and we have been married for 38 years! She even went to Cross Plains for REH Days once. But only once.

My first exposure to REH was the Marvel Comics adaptations, reprinted in the UK. I was living with my grandparents at the time, so that would have been 1971 or '72.

My first Conan book was the Sphere edition of de Camp's "Conan of Aquilonia" (don't shoot me!), which was quickly followed by the rest of those Sphere editions, which included Howard's own work, even if edited. I still have those paperbacks, as well as the unedited (less edited?) stories in the Centenary edition.

I collected lots of REH's other books in the later '70s and '80s, but unlike Michael, above, have never been able to persuade my wife to watch Arnie playing Conan. However, our first date was also a movie, an adaptation of Orwell's 1984 - and she still (eventually) married me! 😄

Those are great beginnings! Thank you!

My story is very different. I have always loved the 80s Conan the Barbarian movie. I knew nothing of Howard. While playing an online RPG game, Neverwinter Nights, I modified the files to play the movie soundtrack instead of the regular music of the game. Then a friend and I started working on a module to play the game in the Hyborian Age. We researched races and kingdoms invented by Howard on the internet. But even then, I only knew about Conan. That was around 2004 or something.

I ordered The Coming of Conan, the Del Rey. I loved it, and then read the two others. But it took me years before I finally got to read another story by Howard. I don't know why, but I was so into Conan that I just didn't have any curiosity about the author. It shows how Conan can be a way to bring new fans in but also can cast a shadow on Howard's other creations.

I chose Sword Woman, the Del Rey, from Amazon. So my first non-Conan was Spears of Clontarf. I loved that book. And his crusader stories are still my favorites. Now I enjoy so much of what Howard wrote in other genres that I can't bring myself to read about Conan again.

Interesting story, Mathieu! My first non-Conan REH books were Three Bladed Doom and Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors (bought at the same time in 1987, when I was 17, so about four years after I started reading the Conan books).

Growing up, I knew of Conan, and probably read a few random issues of the Marvel comic. My first actual exposure was probably Gary Gygax' highly critical review of the original Conan the Barbarian movie (which I was too young to see in the theater) in Dragon Magazine. I know that I saw the paperbacks (Ace black covers) on the shelf at my local bookstore, but I never picked them up -- I was more of a Burroughs fan.

In retrospect, I know I read at least a few Howard stories in random anthologies (Lin Carter's Realms Of Wizardry had "Swords of the Purple Kingdom" in it); and I also got the mid-80s Marvel Solomon Kane miniseries (and the Red Sonja series from the same era).

My first "real" Conan would have been seeing Conan the Destroyer in the theater.

And when I was a freshman in college, I stopped in the local public library and they just happened to have a copy of Conan (the first Ace paperback) on the shelf, so I picked it up, read it, and when I was back home I went to the local bookstore and bought or ordered the rest of the Ace paperbacks; although of course at that point I wasn't familiar with the de Camp/Carter thing.

I don't really recall my first Conan story, but I remember the covers clearly. My father bought several of the Lancer editions when they first came out in paperback in the 60s with the Frazetta covers. Seeing Conan astride a big snake in & swinging his axe in captured my bloodthirsty imagination. I was only about 7 at the time & the text was above me, but I remember trying. I got into trouble because Mom didn't think it was appropriate.

A few years later, my father died & I got both of those books as part of his legacy along with several others. I read them to pieces.

"The God in the Bowl"! In my opinion, the best REH tale of Conan as a thief!