THE COMING OF CONAN THE CIMMERIAN

By Robert E. Howard

This anthology is part one of a three-part collection of all Robert E Howard’s Conan stories. The editors have arranged the tales in the order they were written (a major departure from the de Camp series that arranged the stories to relate to phases in Conan’s life).

Let me just say I consider Robert E Howard’s Conan series as one of about three perfect sword and sorcery series (the other two being Fafhrd and the Grey Mouserand Elric of Melnibone) so this stuff is straight up gold to me.

Which is not to say it is all that to all readers. REH was still getting his feet with the character in these early stories. "The God in the Bowl", a curious mix of sword & sorcery with the detective story, is probably the weakest of the lot. What is amazing is how many of them are so powerful. "The Frost Giant’s Daughter" manages to bring modern fantasy into myth (of the dark and ferocious kind). "Queen of the Black Coast" is perhaps the best of them all, it has adventure, wild love, battle, and the epic saga of the rise and fall, not of a civilization, but of an entire undreamed–of pre-human race.

For a fan who knows these stories well, the real bonus is to see them in the order that they came off REH’s typewriter. We see how one tale would inspire the next, from king to thief, to pirate to mercenary, not as a random agglomeration, but as a that-reminds-me-of-the-time cycle.

Extras include fragments, synopses and a very good critical essay by REH scholar Patrice Louinet. The art by Mark Schultz (Cadillacs and Dinosaurs) is excellent. The Coming of Conan is part of a growing library of REH classics released by Wandering Star in conjunction with Del Rey. Wandering Star editions are hardbound with full color illustration (publisher Marcello Anciano will occasionally pulp a run if the color balance is less that perfect). The Del Rey trade paperbacks have black and white versions of the color plates along with a plethora of line drawings. Mark Schultz’ masterpiece here is “The Dance of Belit”, barbaric and sexy.

The Coming of Conan is a must have for any fan of sword & sorcery.
 

-Dave Hardy

THREE HUNDRED SPARTANS
Dir. by Rudolph Maté

Thermopylae is the Greek Alamo. A small group of Greek soldiers held a strategic pass against overwhelming odds because it was their duty.

Before it became a controversial hit, the battle of Thermopylae was the subject of a film way back in 1962. Staring Richard Egan as Leonidas, the Spartan king, Three Hundred Spartans takes a slightly less extreme look at that critical battle.

Xerxes, the king of Persia, has determined to conquer Greece and avenge an earlier defeat of his father at the hands of the Greeks. Xerxes has two voices competing for his ear: Artemisia, the queen of Lycia, and Demaratus, an exiled Spartan king (the Spartans had two kings). While Artemisia flatters Xerxes and tells him how the Greeks are a pushover, Demaratus warns Xerxes that he’s in for a fight.

Meanwhile back in Sparta King Leonidas is working with Themistocles, an Athenian politician, to get a united Greek force to confront the Persian hordes. Unfortuntely, the Spartan elders won’t go for it and Leonidas is on his own.

Phelan, a young warrior, has an even bigger problem. Queen Gorgo herself has given him his shield, with the classic Spartan injunction: come home with your shield or on it. Phelan’s got a beautiful girl and he’s going to war, that’s heaven for a Spartan. Alas, his father was spotted in the company of Demaratus at the Persian court. Phelan is stripped of his rank. Under these trying circumstances this disparate group meets in one of Antiquity’s bloodiest battles.

Three Hundred Spartans is not exactly Spartacus. The acting is more dinner theater than Hollywood. I half expected Xerxes to twirl his mustache and say, “A curse upon these Spartans! They have foiled me again!” Well, actually that would have been cool, but you can’t get everything.

The battle scenes are actually pretty well done, considering that they did not seem to have enough extras. The troops look like guys who’ve been in a week-long hand-to-hand fight. The big problem with the lack of extras is that the Spartan phalanx is reduced to single lines with large spaces between them. The claustrophobic confines of clashing shield walls gets on screen, but rather late in the game.

Overall, the film holds rather well to history. The real virtue is not so much the rather limited storyline as the sense of drama inherent in the clash of cultures diametrically opposed in their politics and way of life. While I might not pay hard cash to add it to my collection, you can always ask your library to get it for you.

-Dave Hardy

SPARTACUS
Dir. by Stanley Kubrick

This is still the greatest of Sword & Sandal films and for my money still the best gladiator film (though Gladiator was pretty damn good). It is also one of many film triumphs by Stanley Kubrick.

The tale is about Spartacus (Kirk Douglas, in all his cleft-chin glory), a Thracian slave bought to be a gladiator. Spartacus is an odd mixture of under-class humility and iron-willed rebelliousness. On other words, he takes a lot of guff, then he snaps really violently. Spartacus takes a liking to Varinia (Jean Simmons), a beautiful slave girl. When Crassus (Lawrence Olivier) an ambitious Roman politician of the ultra-right wing variety, buys her Spartacus leads a revolt in the gladiator school and starts raising hell.

The crux of the film is the idealistic hopes aroused by Spartacus’ revolt in the downtrodden slaves of Rome. When the revolting masses start whipping the Roman troops sent against them, something like a revolution begins to rear its head. While Spartacus and his comrades are advancing the materialist dialectic in the countryside, Crassus is engaged in political battles with Gracchus (Charles Laughton) and the populist faction in the Senate.

This film has always been a favorite of mine. Though over the years I have come to a few criticisms of it. The film is an adaptation of Howard Fast’s novel. Fast was a Marxist who wanted to write about the legendary hero of revolution, in effect a Trotskyite Beowulf. His Spartacus is a slave born of slaves, a man of great humility, except when faced with class oppression. He is an instinctive Marxist. Indeed at the risk of a spoiler, he ends up nearly Christlike.

From studying the records we learn that Spartacus was actually a mercenary and a highway robber before he was a gladiator. That background helps make his phenomenal success against seasoned Roman troops more believable. Crassus was nowhere near the brilliant manipulator of politics that he appears as in the film. Although he beat Spartacus in the final battle, his triumph was stolen by the far more charismatic Pompey. Spartacus was a bit more like Conan than Che Guevara, and Crassus bore more of a resemblance to George W. Bush than Napoleon. But neither version would quite suit left-wing politics.

That’s not to say that I don’t still love this movie. The spectacle of Rome is splendid. The cast is marvelous (did I mention the amazing performances by Tony Curtis and Peter Ustinov?). In fact, Spartacus is part of what helped me develop a fascination with ancient history. It is so good, I think it may even be time for a remake of this classic tale of defiance, hope, and tragedy.

-Dave Hardy