Sunday, October 25, 2009

The Times Takes a Look at Robert E. Howard

The strange life and death of Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian - Times Online: "When Robert E. Howard killed himself at the age of 30 in 1936 he left behind a formidable legacy — he had all but created the sword and sorcery genre, which has spawned books, comics, video games and films. There are five screen adaptations of Howard’s work in the pipeline."

Hat tip to Beth Foxwell.

7 comments:

James Reasoner said...

It's an interesting article, but full of factual errors and dubious interpretations. To take just one example, Howard "shunned society"? No. He had an admittedly small circle of friends, but he spent a considerable amount of time with them, including taking road trips to New Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley. And to claim that being "written out" may have contributed to Howard's suicide (all right, so I didn't stop with one example), I don't buy that at all. Plenty of evidence exists that he was planning to expand his Western writing and was excited about doing so. He claimed to have been through with Conan and weird fiction, but I'm not sure he even really meant that.

Unknown said...

I had a feeling someone would jump on that "written out" remark. Moorcock might not be welcome in certain circles after that one.

Gerard Saylor said...

That biopic sure was a snoozer.

Unknown said...

Hey, I loved that movie.

Randy Johnson said...

I'm with you, Bill. The DVD ranks among my favorites and I thought D'Onofrio did a good job.

Evan Lewis said...

Five movies in the pipeline? The article mentions Solomon Kane and I know about Conan. What are the others?

Unknown said...

Maybe they exaggerated.