Finally, I’ve gotten to read some new Robert E. Howard! Well, not new — Robert E. Howard committed suicide in 1936 — but new to me, anyway!
For those who are unfamiliar, Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) was a Texas author who wrote fantasy, adventure, and horror fiction for pulp magazines such as Weird Tales. He is best known for his creation Conan the Cimmerian, though he wrote a large body of memorable work and introduced many fascinating heroes. For instance, the title of this blog, “Skulls in the Stars”, is a title of a story of Howard’s about his character Solomon Kane, a puritan adventurer and justice-seeker.
Most of Howard’s other works have fallen into obscurity, overshadowed by the popularity of Conan, but in recent years compilations of some of them have been released. I recently picked up a compilation of Howard’s modern desert adventures, titled El Borak:
“El Borak” is the Arabic name of American adventurer Francis Xavier Gordon, and the bulk of the tales, though not all, focus on his adventures. The tales are stories of action and intrigue set in the deserts and mountains of the Middle East, stretching all the way to Afghanistan.
