Conan of Aquilonia

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Of all the stalwart heroes of heroic fantasy, the most vigorous, virile, brawny, and mettlesome is Conan the Cimmerian. Conan was the invention of Robert E. Howard (1906-36), born in Peaster, Texas, and for nearly all his life a resident of Cross Plains, in the center of Texas. During his last decade, Howard turned out a large volume of what was called “pulp fiction”—sport, detective, western, historical, science-fiction, fantasy, weird, and ghost stories. At thirty, he ended a promising literary career by suicide. Howard is one of eight writers of imaginative fiction of whose books more than a million copies have been sold—but not, alas, during his lifetime.

Howard was a natural storyteller, whose narratives are unmatched for vivid, gripping, headlong action. His heroes—King Kull, Conan, Solomon Kane—are larger than life: men of mighty thews, hot passions, and indomitable will, who dominate the stories through which they stride. They are the polar opposite of the anti-hero of recent popularity.

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