Blood And Thunder The Life And Art Of Robert E Howard

Updated and expanded version of the 2006 MonkeyBrain Press release, this expanded edition is the author's "director's cut" of the popular biography of Texas writer and creator of Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard.

This is the definitive biography of Robert E. Howard, a giant of the pulp era, who created the archetypal brooding fantasy figure. To the general public, he is virtually unknown, but millions are familiar with the name and exploits of his most famous creation: Conan, the barbarian.

You may not know the name Robert E. Howard, but you probably know his work. His most famous creation, Conan the Barbarian, is an icon of popular culture. In hundreds of tales detailing the exploits of Conan, King Kull, and others, Howard helped to invent the sword and sorcery genre. Todd B. Vick delves into newly available archives and probes Howard’s relationships, particularly with schoolteacher Novalyne Price, to bring a fresh, objective perspective to Howard's life. Like his many characters, Howard was an enigma and an outsider. He spent his formative years visiting the four corners of Texas, experiences that left a mark on his stories. He was intensely devoted to his mother, whom he nursed in her final days, and whose impending death contributed to his suicide in 1936 when he was just thirty years old. Renegades and Rogues is an unequivocal journalistic account that situates Howard within the broader context of pulp literature. More than a realistic fantasist, he wrote westerns and horror stories as well, and engaged in avid correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft and other pulp writers of his day. Vick investigates Howard’s twelve-year writing career, analyzes the influences that underlay his celebrated characters, and assesses the afterlife of Conan, the figure in whom Howard's fervent imagination achieved its most durable expression.

Hither Came REH...From a single, stifling room in a small sagebrush town in central Texas, hunched over a manual typewriter, Robert E. Howard created memorable characters, exotic worlds, and glorious pulp adventures. In this new biography, Howard is firmly established as an important figure in American literature.

This anthology presents a wide range of analysis, criticism, and opinion about one of the most influential fantasy authors of the twentieth century, with contributions by such well-known writers and critics as: Poul Anderson, Fritz Leiber, George H. Scithers, L. Sprague de Camp, S. T. Joshi, Howard Waldrop, Steve Tompkins, Darrell Schweitzer, Leo Grin, Robert Weinberg, Mark Hall, Charles Hoffman, Don D'Ammassa, Robert M. Price, Gary Romeo, and Scott Connors. A "must buy" for every fan of Robert E. Howard.

The birth of modern fantasy in 1930s Britain and America saw the development of new literary and film genres. J.R.R. Tolkien created modern fantasy with The Lord of the Rings, set in a fictional world based upon his life in the early 20th century British Empire, and his love of language and medieval literature. In small-town Texas, Robert E. Howard pounded out his own fantasy realm in his Conan stories, published serially in the ephemeral pulp magazines he loved. Jerry Siegel created Superman with Joe Shuster, and laid the foundation for perhaps the most far-reaching fantasy worlds: the universe of DC and Marvel comics. The work of extraordinary people who lived in an extraordinary decade, this modern fantasy canon still provides source material for the most successful literary and film franchises of the 21st century. Modern fantasy speaks to the human experience and still shows its origins from the lives and times of its creators.