Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by jonathan_von
The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard by Robert E. Howard
4.0
I have three salient points regarding this book: length, quality and racism. It’s certainly a value because you get so much with this book. For an author who died so young Howard was not only shockingly prolific, but held a pretty high standard of his work. Due to the chronological nature of the collection, you can actually see his writing improve, and the author trying different things (genres, etc). Another thing is the incredible amount of Lovecraft influence. Off the top of my head I’d say half the book is an alternative take of the Lovecraftian universe, when the author was still alive at the time. But where, in the other author’s stories, people go mad and try to escape the psychological horror, Howard is all about rolling up your sleeves and punching the shit out if it. It’s actually quite liberating, nearly every story has a macho protagonist whose not going to take an guff from no cosmic monster. And when Howard gets into the manly action and tough guy dialogue, it’s really fun to have such a unique take on the old horror tales.
Predictably, the stories go the more sword and sorcery route on occasion. Did I mention this was a huge book? Conan appeared as some point, cosmic horror is mixed with fantasy adventure a little bit, people fight lizard monsters in a tense cave battle. There are a few weird west stories, some with Solomon Kane that have a unique flavor and are very fine examples of cowboy horror. Some of the later stories approach a more mysterious, literary style that make me think the author was growing in his abilities before his untimely end.
And lastly, the racism. Wow! It is shocking at first. Ultimately I found the book pretty instructive about the mentality of white Americans pre-civil rights (pre-WWII!). The idea seems to be of different races being REALLY different races, like white people are humans and people of color are goblins, or orcs, or something. In fact, I’d never really given much thought to the inherent racial dynamics of fantasy races and now I think, maybe some of that stuff is weird too. Black people feature prominently in a lot of stories as caricatures that, if this were released today, could only be regarded as satirical. And if I ever see the world “oriental” used that way, it’ll be much too soon (barf). There were moments where something stupidly racist would happen and I’d just go wtf and laugh, but it’s important to remember that with was how a lot of people saw race in those days. The women of color are represented pretty wildly, but it’s no secret Howard had a fear-of-women thing going on and this turned into a natural outlet. As the stories go on, the writing seems to become more self aware and use the stereotypes less. It’s interesting that as a Texan, Howard shows a surprising respect for the native and Hispanic people; so it makes me think it’s the impossibly distant foreignness of African voodoo and “oriental mysticism” that has captured his imagination. Because it’s not so much malicious as ignorant, and there are times when he seems to admire the animal vitality of his stereotypes, that it often seems kind of innocent, like people of color are these mysterious and powerful aliens to be feared and admired. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt anyway, to think the author might have sung a different song if he’d made it to the fifties.
Predictably, the stories go the more sword and sorcery route on occasion. Did I mention this was a huge book? Conan appeared as some point, cosmic horror is mixed with fantasy adventure a little bit, people fight lizard monsters in a tense cave battle. There are a few weird west stories, some with Solomon Kane that have a unique flavor and are very fine examples of cowboy horror. Some of the later stories approach a more mysterious, literary style that make me think the author was growing in his abilities before his untimely end.
And lastly, the racism. Wow! It is shocking at first. Ultimately I found the book pretty instructive about the mentality of white Americans pre-civil rights (pre-WWII!). The idea seems to be of different races being REALLY different races, like white people are humans and people of color are goblins, or orcs, or something. In fact, I’d never really given much thought to the inherent racial dynamics of fantasy races and now I think, maybe some of that stuff is weird too. Black people feature prominently in a lot of stories as caricatures that, if this were released today, could only be regarded as satirical. And if I ever see the world “oriental” used that way, it’ll be much too soon (barf). There were moments where something stupidly racist would happen and I’d just go wtf and laugh, but it’s important to remember that with was how a lot of people saw race in those days. The women of color are represented pretty wildly, but it’s no secret Howard had a fear-of-women thing going on and this turned into a natural outlet. As the stories go on, the writing seems to become more self aware and use the stereotypes less. It’s interesting that as a Texan, Howard shows a surprising respect for the native and Hispanic people; so it makes me think it’s the impossibly distant foreignness of African voodoo and “oriental mysticism” that has captured his imagination. Because it’s not so much malicious as ignorant, and there are times when he seems to admire the animal vitality of his stereotypes, that it often seems kind of innocent, like people of color are these mysterious and powerful aliens to be feared and admired. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt anyway, to think the author might have sung a different song if he’d made it to the fifties.