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Howard went on to write a great many Conan stories that came to be published in Weird Tales. Howard wrote quite a few of them before the first one was even published. Though they all described the life of the same man, they varied quite a bit in formula and setting. There were war stories, adventure stories and even at least one mystery. What’s more, they appeared in a nonlinear order. The first story with Conan as king was followed by a tale of a younger barbarian who had made his living as a thief. Various ancient cultures mixed in the background of the stories, set in a fictitious era tens of thousands of years ago that Howard referred to as the Hyborian Age.

In a series of some 25 different stories, (21 of which were completed, 17 of which were published in the author’s lifetime) Howard illustrates the life of a savage barbarian. Conan wasn’t selfless or intellectual (though he is well-traveled enough to have learned a multiple languages.) Nor was he the kind of noble savage to comically rendered in the work of James Fennimore Cooper. Over the course of two-dozen stories, Howard seems to suggest that the artifice of civilization is ultimately unsuited for the kind of adaptation that survival requires.

That which is “civilized” is often seen as being more sinister than that which is simple, savage and freed from the bonds of morality. Civilization brings with it the seeds of its own destruction - kind of a sophisticated premise for sword and sorcery fantasy to tackle. Much of the genre seems more concerned with aping the heroic stories of ancient mythology. This appears to be fantasy drawn more from Darwin than Bulfinch. Admittedly, not all of the stories reach that level of accomplishment. There’s some hack work in there as well, but the fact that the stories glance in a deeper thematic direction at ALL distinguishes them from much of the pulp adventure fiction of the era.

It’s kind of a brutal world that Howard is outlining here, but it is not without its beauty. Towards his later years, we see Conan as a patron of the arts - a man who understands that his conquests don’t amount to much and a man who has honestly come to appreciate the virtues of civilization. Jumping around as Howard’s narrative does, we never get a clear picture of the hero’s life from beginning to end. It’s all a bit muddled, but it reflects the irreverence for artificial narrative order that befits an uncivilized hero, which is actually really cool if you think about it.

Beyond the more intellectual appeal of the series, there’s a kind of a world-weary sense of adventure about those early Conan stories that made them really compelling. Conan was seen in frozen tundra, chaotic wilderness battlefields and dizzyingly complex ancient cities, both living and long dead. In a remarkably concise span of words, Howard managed what most other fantasy authors have difficulty producing in volume after volume of so many long-winded, long-running fantasy novel series. The likes of Tolkien, Lewis, Brooks, Norton and so on all have sizeable followings, but it took them quite a long time to come to a point. (It is likely that Conan would’ve hated those stories.) In short, crisp prose, Howard created a beautifully sweeping saga that leaves plenty of room for the imagination to roam without the grotesque need to over-render things that seems to afflict so many fantasy authors.

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