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jcovey 's review for:
The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian
by Robert E. Howard
Reading these stories all I could think is Robert E Howard did all of fantasy right at its beginnings. Everything that people turn to sword and sorcery for is here in these pages. The quality of the stories is not uniformly great, a couple in here were clearly meant to earn some money and little more, delivering lackluster plots that heavily feature scantily clad ladies, but the first few stories here spark and crackle with a living energy. They could have come out yesterday, not almost a hundred years ago.
It is of course sad that Robert E Howard could imagine such a fully realized imaginary world, so different from our own, but yet could not imagine a world without 1930s American racism. But they say the worst of people is of their time, and their best is for all time. I can imagine a day when the evil of racism has vanished from the world, and its echoes here are nothing more than a historical oddity, but as long as man has blood in his veins it will thrill to these tales of savage combat and glorious adventure.
It is of course sad that Robert E Howard could imagine such a fully realized imaginary world, so different from our own, but yet could not imagine a world without 1930s American racism. But they say the worst of people is of their time, and their best is for all time. I can imagine a day when the evil of racism has vanished from the world, and its echoes here are nothing more than a historical oddity, but as long as man has blood in his veins it will thrill to these tales of savage combat and glorious adventure.