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The Blade of Conan
The World's Greatest Living Fantasy Writers Pay Tribute to Robert E. Howard.“Swords and Sorcery” (Richard H. Eney)“An Informal Biography of Conan the Cimmerian” (John D. Clark, P. Schuyler Miller, and L. Sprague de Camp)“Ocean Trade in the Hyborian Age” (John Boardman)“Hyborian Technology” (L. Sprague de Camp)“The Real Hyborian Age” (Lin Carter)“Lord of the Black Throne” (P. Schuyler Miller)“The Art of Robert Ervin Howard” (Poul Anderson)“Memories of R.E.H.” (L. Sprague de Camp)“Conan on Crusade” (Allan Howard)“A Gent from Cross Plains” (Glenn Lord)“Editing Conan” (L. Sprague de Camp)“Howard’s Detective Stories” (Glenn Lord)“Howard and the Races” (L. Sprague de Camp)“The Case for Solomon Kane” (John Pocsik)“Stirrups and Scholarship” (L. Sprague de Camp)“Howard’s Cthuloid Tales” (Ben Solon)“Controlled Anachronism” (Fritz Leiber)“The Novels of Eric Rücker Eddison” (John Boardman)“Hyborians, Be Seated [(The Fantasy of A. Merritt)]” (Ray Capella)“Mundy’s Vendhya” (L. Sprague de Camp)“Titivated Romance” (Fritz Leiber)“Weapons of Choice I” (W. H. Griffey)“Weapons of Choice II” (Albert E. Gechter)“On Weapons of Choice and/or Necessity” (Jerry E. Pournelle)“Son of Weapons of Choice and/or Necessity” (Jerry E. Pournelle)“Range” (L. Sprague de Camp)“Sublimated Bloodthirstiness” (Poul Anderson)“And as for the Admixture of Cultures on Imaginary Worlds” (Leigh Brackett)“Ranging Afterthoughts” (L. Sprague de Camp)“Arming the Incomplete Enchanter” (Jerry E. Pournelle)“The Complete Duelist” (L. Sprague de Camp)“Rearming the Incomplete Enchanter” (Jerry E. Pournelle)
Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 1979
70 people want to read
About the author
L. Sprague de Camp
718 books297 followersLyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, both novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 12, 2016
These articles originally published in Amra magazine and curated by L Sprague de Camp, with material split between stuff only of interest to the true Howard enthusiast, and more general subject matter pertinent to writing Howard-style stories.
It leads off with the most deadly-dull of the bunch, an "informal biography" of Conan reading like a stack of story summaries welded together and treating the Lin Carter / de Camp / etc pastiches-rewrites-fragment completions as equally valid as the Howard originals. As such, its true purpose is to show how deeply the character was mined for additional stories and how crammed full the timeline became. The same is taken in a different direction in the "Editing Conan" essay where de Camp goes from correcting Howard's continuity errors or technical errors over three mutually incompatible words for 'helmet', and ends up expanding unfinished fragments and adapting Howard's unsold westerns into Conan stories.
The essays concerning Howard's 'colleagues' (not really) are enthusiastic but shy on analysis, and don't have much of a point other than "Hey, look at this! It is also neat!" Based on them I should someday read James Branch Cabell's Jurgen and the stories of Talbot Mundy, who apparently featured a rotating cast in his adventure stories.
The oddest and most intriguing of the material is the series of back-and-forth essays, presumably taking place over several Amra issues, regarding period hand-to-hand weaponry. It is framed somewhat as a conversation of rebuttals and clarifications and partially shows, in Jerry Pournelle's real-life research in the Society of Creative Anachronism and elsewhere, an evolution of thought.
In short, the collection is most interesting when it is most general, and most boring when most specific to Howard's writing.
It leads off with the most deadly-dull of the bunch, an "informal biography" of Conan reading like a stack of story summaries welded together and treating the Lin Carter / de Camp / etc pastiches-rewrites-fragment completions as equally valid as the Howard originals. As such, its true purpose is to show how deeply the character was mined for additional stories and how crammed full the timeline became. The same is taken in a different direction in the "Editing Conan" essay where de Camp goes from correcting Howard's continuity errors or technical errors over three mutually incompatible words for 'helmet', and ends up expanding unfinished fragments and adapting Howard's unsold westerns into Conan stories.
The essays concerning Howard's 'colleagues' (not really) are enthusiastic but shy on analysis, and don't have much of a point other than "Hey, look at this! It is also neat!" Based on them I should someday read James Branch Cabell's Jurgen and the stories of Talbot Mundy, who apparently featured a rotating cast in his adventure stories.
The oddest and most intriguing of the material is the series of back-and-forth essays, presumably taking place over several Amra issues, regarding period hand-to-hand weaponry. It is framed somewhat as a conversation of rebuttals and clarifications and partially shows, in Jerry Pournelle's real-life research in the Society of Creative Anachronism and elsewhere, an evolution of thought.
In short, the collection is most interesting when it is most general, and most boring when most specific to Howard's writing.
December 21, 2020
This is a non-fiction collection of articles and essays about the heroic fantasy/swords & sorcery genre, many of them focusing on Conan and his creator, Robert E. Howard. Most of them are reprinted from a small circulation magazine, Amra, that George H. Scithers founded in 1959 and published for many years as a labor of love. Many of the pieces appeared subsequently in one or another of the three collections that Jack Chalker's Mirage Press published of pieces from Amra edited by Scithers and de Camp. This Ace edition lacks the luscious artwork that appeared in Amra and that Mirage preserved in their editions, but it was nice to have the text available in an affordable and accessible edition. I suspect that one of the criteria for the selection of inclusion in this mass market edition was the recognition of the name of the authors, rather than the worth of the works themselves-- there are pieces from Fritz Leiber, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Jerry Pournelle, Lin Carter, Poul Anderson, and many from de Camp himself, and I can't help but think there were some more worthwhile pieces that were excluded because the authors weren't known as professionals in the field. Still, it's a good choice for die-hard Cimmerian buffs.
June 14, 2009
essays about the character of Conan, created by Robert E. Howard. Over the years I've read a lot of such articles, which are mostly fan based ones. This book has some articles by pro writers who have worked in the Conan series and some good stuf about backgrounds. Enjoyable. Didn't light me on fire.
December 30, 2012
This is an collection of essays an articles from Amra, a fan magazine devoted to REH and sword and sorcery. Most of them are at least interesting and more than a few are downright excellent. What distinguishes these articles from the run of the mill fan written stuff is the number of established pros that contributed pieces out of an obvious love of the genre. There's follow up entitled The Spell of Conan that's almost as good.
April 10, 2019
Not a novel, but a collection of articles written in the 60's by several of Howard's fans, peers, and admirers. The few that actually had anything to do with Conan or Robert E Howard were great, but sadly that wasn't much of the book.
July 29, 2023
An interesting read. A compilation of articles from Amra. Some good stuff that made the book worthwhile and some questionable choices but overall entertaining. And not surprisingly heavy on articles submitted by the editor.
March 24, 2013
The Blade of Conan is a collection of articles reprinted for Arma, an early R. E. Howard literary review. These articles were written by the men who would have been Howard's contemporaries, had Howard lived beyond his thirty years. Howard fans are probably fans of these writers' works as well; Poul Anderson Fritz Leiber, Jerry Pournelle, L. Sprague De Camp, Lin Carter, Leigh Brackett, Marion Zimmer Bradley. Many of these articles an analysis setting of the Conan tales, as well as other lesser know Adventure, Historical, Horror and Westerns penned by Howard. Spargue De Camp contributes a brief article on Howard's adult life, later articles examine De Camp's hero; Harold Shaw of The Incomplete Enchanter series. Enjoyable and informative reading.
October 1, 2015
Just reading de Camp's excuses for grave robbing Robert E. Howard's legacy for decades is stomach-churning. Some adequate zine articles from better writers sprinkled throughout, but a waste of time in light of recent, superior Howard studies.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews