Since the writers on this board seem to focus on fantasy, I thought many of you have heard at least once of the creator of Conan the Barbarian.

What I find most inspiring about this author is that he created the character and the Hyborian world he inhabited in a series of short stories. I say it is inspiring because it shows that you don’t have to write a whole novel with hundreds of pages to become an influential writer. As someone who doesn’t feel that he can maintain motivation to write a big novel, that is relieving.

I do have one criticism of Howard, however. Whenever he has black characters in his stories, he notes their “ebony” color virtually every opportunity he gets. It nakes me want to shout, “OK, Howard, those people are black, we get it!”

Well, they were written in the 1920s. Still, Howard’s stories are still being published in collection format.

I think the fact that Howard wrote a ‘history’ of the Hyboiran age and then wrote the Conan stories as historical fiction (try wrapping your brain around that) helped him a bit.

As for your criticism, BP, again, 1920s. Even having semi-major characters who were black was kinda ‘out there’.

This thread is simply to awesome to die. I mean come one we're talking about _Conan_ and Solomon Kane here!

So I read somewhere that the Hyborian stories are part ot the Cthulhu Mythos, any thoughts on that?

^^Ah, I see. Truth be told I was never a big Kull fan, don't get me wrong I liked his stories, but I think that if I'd read them before I read Conan I would have liked them better

bq. I do have one criticism of Howard, however. Whenever he has black characters in his stories, he notes their “ebony” color virtually every opportunity he gets. It nakes me want to shout, “OK, Howard, those people are black, we get it!”

I think that can be attributed to the writing style more than anything else and like Apep said having black characters that were portrayed as human beings (In Solomon Kane at least) at that time was pretty far-out.