As Robert E. Howard's career progressed, diversifying his writing into other markets to make more money became a larger and larger concern. As​ Weird Tales would not be published in the UK until 1942, putting a book together and selling it in England was part of Howard's plan to break into a new, untapped market. He submitted a short story collection in 1933 which was rejected, and then had several false starts on original novels before crafting The Hour of the Dragon​ in 1934.  According to Willard Oliver, he began the novel on St. Patrick's Day and wrote furiously for two months.

Howard essentially cannibalized many of his best Conan of Cimmeria stories (a practice that wasn't unique to him), especially "The Scarlet Citadel," to create his only novel-length Conan adventure, but as I've said before, it reads more like a victory lap than an annoying retread.

The UK publisher of the book went bankrupt before it could publish the story, so it was serialized in Weird Tales across five issues from December 1935 to April 1936, a mere three months before Howard died.

It would later be published in book form in 1950, acquiring the secondary title Conan the Conqueror, which it would be attached to on and off for the next seventy-five years.

Usually, I use this column to explore all the chronological markers in a story to place it in timeline order, but seeing as this story is much longer than all others and I don't want to bore you to death, I think it would be more expedient to do one thing: place it within relation to the other King Conan stories. The Hour of the Dragon obviously takes place during his kingship, so does it take place before, in-between, or after "The Phoenix on the Sword" and "The Scarlet Citadel?" Surprisingly, this is a tough question!

Let's take a look:

• Quotes like this abound in the book and place it in Conan's very-late career: "'A devilish dream it was, too. I trod again all the long, weary roads I traveled on my way to the kingship" ... The king was an enigma to the general, as to most of his civilized subjects. Pallantides knew that Conan had walked many strange roads in his wild, eventful life, and had been many things before a twist of Fate set him on the throne of Aquilonia. 'I saw again in the battlefield whereon I was born," said Conan, resting his chin moodily on a massive fist. "I saw myself in a panther-skin loin-clout, throwing my spear at the mountain beasts. I was a mercenary swordsman again, a hetman of the kozaki who dwell along the Zaporoska River, a corsair looting the coasts of Kush, a pirate of the Barachan Isles, a chief of the Himelian hillmen. All these things I've been, and of all these things I dreamed; all the shapes that have been I passed like an endless procession, and their feet beat out a dirge in the sounding dust.'"
• One section seems to refer back to "The Phoenix on the Sword" and Conan's experience with Thoth-Amon in that story: "Conan's scalp prickled. In Stygia, that ancient and evil kingdom that lay far to the south, he had seen such black dust before. It was the pollen of the black lotus, which creates death-like sleep and monstrous dreams; and he knew that only the grisly wizards of the Black Ring, which is the nadir of evil, voluntarily seek the scarlet nightmares of the black lotus, to revive their necromantic powers. The Black Ring was a fable and a lie to most folk of the western world, but Conan knew of its ghastly reality, and its grim votaries who practise their abominable sorceries amid the black vaults of Stygia and the nighted domes of accursed Sabatea." 
  • The tricky thing is that Thoth-Amon is never referred to as being of the Black Ring in that story. It does frequently refer to him as "Thoth-Amon of the Ring," but that more likely refers to the Serpent Ring of Set (like a physical jewelry ring, not a "ring" of sorcerers) from that story.
  • Another quote seems to suggest the same thing: "'Crom!' he muttered. 'The black hand of Set!' He had seen that mark of old, the death-mark of the black priests of Set, the grim cult that ruled in dark Stygia."
• Conan seems to have been king of Aquilonia for at least a few years. Zenobia tells him: "And I have loved you, King Conan, ever since I saw you riding at the head of your knights along the streets of Belverus when you visited King Nimed, years ago."
  • Additionally, we get this line suggesting a few years on the throne: "Conan's volcanic temper, never long at best, burst into explosion. Not in years, even before he was king, had a man spoken to him thus and lived."
  • Likewise, "Valerius is now the rightful heir of the throne. He had been driven into exile by his royal kinsman, Namedides, and has been away from his native realm for years."
  • If we look back to "The Scarlet Citadel" for a comparison, when Pelias is awakened by Conan, he asks what has happened to King Numedides (the spelling has changed) and realizes that he's been trapped for ten years. So "Scarlet Citadel" definitely happens within the first ten years of Conan's kingship.
• It is possible that Howard intended the cities of Tamar and Tarantia to be different cities. Some people have suggested over the years that it's not that he changed the name of the capital from Tamar to Tarantia like he sometimes changed names like "Numedides" to "Namedides" but that Conan actually had the capital of Aquilonia moved to a new city. If that was the case, it would push The Hour of the Dragon to a more certain last place. I think it's more likely that he just changed the name of the capital city.
• Finally, there is the question of Zenobia, who Conan vows to make queen of Aquilonia in the final line of the story: "She was a slave in Nemedia, but I will make her queen of Aquilonia!" It is possible that Zenobia never made it back to Aquilonia or died between stories, so it's not a sure chronological marker that she's never mentioned in any other King Conan story. However, seeing as she was a literal king's ransom and Conan appears to win The Hour of the Dragon's conflict so decisively, I think it's most likely that she got to Aquilonia safe and sound where she did indeed become Conan's wife.

Ultimately, there isn't a dead giveaway about this story's temporal relationship to the other two King Conan stories. Instead, we're going to have to go off vibes. Within "The Phoenix on the Sword," Conan's kingship seems relatively new. Having not adjusted to their new king, the people of Aquilonia are missing the old king and his power is tenuous. Within "The Scarlet Citadel," Conan's powers seem much more settled within the Hyborian kingdoms. He seems much more well-adjusted to the position and he is challenged only by invading armies, and we get quotes like this: "Today no Aquilonian noble dares maltreat the humblest of my subjects, and the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world."

Seeing as Conan seems to wield the full power of his kingdom and even seems to be the equivalent of a Hyborian Age superpower, I'm going to have to settle on the idea that The Hour of the Dragon is the last story. It seems most likely to me that Conan does bring Zenobia back and continues his powerful reign with her at his side. It's an all-around happy ending.

I've been playing Minecraft on and off since Beta. I understand if this admission causes you to close this tab.

My friends and I were there from when the world was still just a flat expanse, and I remember realizing that it was five in the morning and my eyes were bloodshot because I'd stayed up all night at my friend Mitch's house in college. This was before Minecraft was forever claimed by nine year-olds; for a while, it seemed to be almost exclusively engineering majors playing it and making complicated redstone circuits. Every few years my friends and I will make a server and play on it for a few weeks before we get bored.

There's this moment that happens inevitably when you're playing Minecraft. Someone's going to turn on the cheats to allow themselves flight, or infinite building materials, or invincibility or whatever. And that's the death-knell for a Minecraft game. Suddenly, the work to build something cool isn't there anymore. The fun dries up (for me, anyway) almost instantaneously.

I think that might be how Kane feels in the short story "Misericorde." I'm pretty confident I'm the first person (and probably the last) to talk about the dark sword-and-sorcery anti-hero Kane and Minecraft in the same blog post, but I promise I'm going somewhere.

"Misericorde" is maybe going to end up being a lesser Kane story for me. It's got some interesting suspense going for it as Kane operates as an assassin. A well-to-do woman approaches him with four lives she needs snuffed out, and the coin to pay for it. She remarks about criminals having their own code, and Kane replies with this:

There's that old enemy of Kane: boredom. I feel like this makes a lot of sense for someone who is immortal. When there are no stakes in your life, you must invent stakes and establish boundaries for it to have meaning. Kane, being physically imposing and nigh-invincible, wouldn't have a very fun or interesting time just shooting someone with an arrow from far away or killing someone to take their money. When you have infinite smooth cobblestone, building a gigantic pagoda isn't as fun anymore. You simply must mine.

As Kane completes his contracts, he does so in an interesting way each time. Instead of a brutal kill scene, he ends each one by telling his mark to "come with" him. There's some sorcery involved that keeps it interesting.

It's compelling to me that when Kane is doing normal things like having a girlfriend or conversing with a poet, he can be incredibly cruel. But when killing people and stealing their souls, he's remarkably civilized about it. The word "misericorde" means "compassion," so I supposed that makes sense.

I don't think I liked "Misericorde" as much as some other Kane stories, but it still has some good, horror-themed adventure in it. It's just a bit more tropey and predictable than most. 

"The Man-Eaters of Zamboula," published under the revised title "Shadows in Zamboula" in the November 1935 issue of Weird Tales, was the third-to-last Conan story that would see publication during Robert E. Howard's lifetime. In-between "Beyond the Black River" and "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula," he'd penned "The Black Stranger," but the public wouldn't see that story for some time, and not until L. Sprague de Camp had heavily edited it and re-titled it "The Treasure of Tranicos."

By mid-1935, Howard was noticeably tiring of Conan the Cimmerian. He said so in letters and to friends, and he in particular grew resentful of the fact that WT editor Farnsworth Wright owed him about $860 (multiple thousands of dollars in today's cash) because the magazine had had financial troubles. He was ready to move on. But letter-writers in "The Eyrie" liked the story, and it did grace the cover of the November issue.

There are not a ton of chronological clues in this story, but there are enough that you can place in pretty firmly on one side of "A Witch Shall Be Born:"

• Conan has recently been with the Zuagir raiders, which were introduced to us in "A Witch Shall Be Born," and he's been with them for some time: "You have dwelt for many moons in the tents of the Zuagirs, and you are our brother! Go not to the house of Aram Baksh!"
• Conan has been with the Zuagirs long enough to absorb some of their culture and folk tales: "All the tales he had heard in the Zuagir tents of devils and goblins came back to bead his flesh with clammy sweat. Now the monster slid noiselessly into the room, with a crouching posture and a shambling gait; and a familiar scent assailed the Cimmerian's nostrils, but did not reassure him, since Zuagir legendry represented demons as smelling like that."
• Conan has been in Zamboula for a week: "He had ridden into Zamboula from the desert a week before."
• This appears to be the only appearance of the golden lotus, apparent revitalizing cousin of the black lotus: "He drew a phial from among his robes. 'This contains the juice of the golden lotus. If your lover drank it he would be sane again.'"
• Conan rides out of Zamboula westward, appearing to leave the Zuagirs behind: "The noise followed Conan as he rode westward beneath the paling stars."

Because Conan is in the deserts between Shem and Turan and is familiar with the Zuagirs, this story seems to need to take place either right before "A Witch Shall Be Born," or right after it. Since Conan begins the story with the group but seems to be leaving them behind without word at the end, it makes more sense to me to place it afterword.

Jirel of Joiry, one of the most stunningly original sword & sorcery characters I've ever read, seems to have come about by a series of accidents.

Accident the first: author Catherine Lucille Moore, eventually known under her pen name C.L. Moore, was sick a lot as a kid. Without really knowing how she came into contact with them, the magazine Weird Tales became her hospital reading companion. Moore remembers that, like most literate people of her day, her family thought Weird Tales was trash, the absolute bottom of the barrel when it came to literary quality. But she loved them. And as she got older, she continued to read in that vein, if not WT itself, as her father would sneak her Barsoom and Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, away from her mother's disapproving eye.

Accident the second: Moore was working on her typing speed at work one day when a proto-Jirel came dashing out of her imagination to her. After having to quit college after three semesters and find a job, most likely due to the Great Depression, Moore was lucky to find work at a bank, for jobs were hard to come by. One afternoon, when she had nothing to do but desperately wanted to look busy, she began practicing some typing exercises. She quickly grew bored with quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs, so she started to type up fragments of poetry she remembered from class. And then, she typed a few sentences about a "red, running woman," imagining a figure from 13th century France. It amused her. Why's she running?, she asked herself.

Accident the third is more of just an unintentional product. Moore began typing up a couple of stories, stating with one about Northwest Smith, a Han Solo-type (or wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that Han Solo is a Northwest Smith-type?) of space ranger she began like this:

That's the dorkiest shit ever and I'm so here for it. But, back to the accident.

Moore shopped around her first Northwest Smith story, "Shambleau," and a story called "Were-Woman." "Were-Woman" was flatly rejected by Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales, but "Shambleau" was accepted. In her kitchen in Indiana, she opened a letter from Wright, complete with the information that the story had been accepted and she would be paid $100 for it. Moore screamed her head off, causing her dad to rush into the kitchen, thinking that his daughter might be the victim of some attack. But no, just $100 dollars richer, which Moore says felt like ten thousand dollars to her.

The accident here is that "Shambleau" was accepted because it was so different than the rest of what Weird Tales was printing. It pulses with sexual tension between Smith and then gorgon he comes into contact with. A lot of pulp stories are sexual or salacious, but "Shambleau" approaches the erotic, which Moore wasn't trying to do. She always maintained that she wasn't really trying to imbue theme or specific philosophy into her stories, nor did she seem them as pure escapism, but that she just wrote what she wanted to read.

That unique fingerprint of hers, found in "Shambleau" first, would be present for the rest of her career. That brings us to the lady of Joiry.

In the October 1934 issue of Weird Tales, "The Black God's Kiss" appeared as the lead and cover story. It's the same issue featuring the second part of Robert E. Howard's "The People of the Black Circle" and Clark Ashton Smith's story "The Seven Geases." In this story, we meet Jirel, lady of Joiry, which is a fictional hegemon in France, some time in the 13th to 15th century.

Jirel is a capable leader and fighter, opening the story having been captured at the end of a battle, her helmet ripped off by the enemy to reveal her curly mop of red hair and her blazing yellow eyes. Joiry has been invaded, and it looks like they've lost.

Guilluame, the leader of the conquering force, has taken control of her throne room. After ripping off her helmet ("Unshell me this lobster" should be used more often), he kisses her right there in her own hall. As has been reported many times over the years, this was essentially as far as Weird Tales was willing to go with the salacious content, but that the kiss should essentially be read as a sexual assault. That's what it would be in real life, too.

Interestingly, the text of the story is somewhat infatuated with Guilluame and Jirel clearly thinks he's hot, but because of this violation, Jirel burns with a hatred for Guilluame and vows revenge. She goes to a priest friend of hers named Father Gervase to be blessed before essentially venturing down into Hell through the depths of her castle so that she can find an appropriate weapon with which to kill Guilluame.

This is one of my favorite "weird" elements of this story: the passage through which Jirel goes is a round tunnel that she and Father Gervase discovered some time ago. It winds deep into the earth, and whatever created it seems to have not done so for human feet. After an indeterminable amount of time in which gravity itself seems to flip-flop on her, Jirel appears in a dark land of horror and mystery shrouded in eternal night.

After a few jaunts this way and that, she finds a strange temple-like structure containing a black god statue. As Jirel kisses the statue, an upsetting evil seems to worm its way into her body. Both physically and spiritually uncomfortable, she hauls ass back up to the world of the living in order to get the toxin out of her.

As she clamors into her throne room, the story characterizes Guilluame as "magnificent" in his armor, on her throne. It repeats his name several times, unclear if it's done in an astounded or hateful way. Jirel then collapses into his arms in a way that isn't not intimate, while kissing him for a second time. This kiss passes the evil from her into Guilluame, who writhes and wretches for a moment before dying horrifyingly. The very thing that Guilluame sought from her- her sexuality- is the very weapon that she uses to turn on Guilluame to end his life. And after all of that, Jirel bows her head to hide her own tears.

The Jirel that Moore creates is such a human character that she stands head and shoulders above most other S&S protagonists. She's remarkably remorseful of some things, like Guilluame's death. There's this old Jack Stauber YouTube video where a kid asks his mom, "Why do I miss people who hurt me?" Jirel was blazing with hatred and revenge, but in the end doesn't find any satisfaction and even seems to think that she might've gone too far (when you read the sequel, "Black God's Shadow," Moore doubles down on this idea). It doesn't give you any easy themes like telling you Jirel absolutely was wrong for venturing into Hell to acquire a vile weapon and get revenge on her rapist. Instead, it lets you sit in her uncertainty with Jirel. 

I think this is what makes Jirel so compelling to me. She's powerful, brave, a sick fighter, but she's also frequently afraid, uncertain, confused, and very realistic. Jirel cries four different times in this story, each time having been moved to tears by something horrifically sad in Hell. And maybe Guilluame wasn't such a bad guy if we'd gotten to know him; maybe he was exactly the piece of shit he starts this story as. I'm not sure. Characters like Conan and Kane sometimes experience overwhelming, tough emotions (like Conan's loss of his lover Bêlit and Kane's overwhelming loneliness) but they're never nearly as realistic as Jirel. She's incredibly true-to-life and it makes her one of the best sword & sorcery characters I've ever read.

"Cold Light" unfurls itself like it's sledding down a mountain: slowly at first, gaining speed until it becomes one of the most action-packed, epic Kane stories I've read yet. I say that now, but it is so hard to pick favorites among these things. 

Genuinely, it does start a little slowly. Kane is experiencing one of his bouts of lethargy. Boredom has just about defeated him and he lazily escapes to a desolate part of the world, clopping his horse into an all but dead town in the region of Demornte. Demornte's an odd little setting: bordered by inhospitable desert on all sides, it's a stretch of lush, green country that's seemingly inhabited by one city, called Sebbei. It would be a great little place to visit except for the fact that everyone here walks around like the living dead.

That is to say, some time ago, a plague swept through Sebbei, killing all but a few hundred of its residents, and now the city is calcified in its misery. Every reaction from the townspeople is no stronger than a shrug of the shoulders.

Kane finds respite here for a while, and even companionship in the character of Rehhaile, a young blind woman with a "second sight" that allows her to tap into the minds of nearby people and see through them.

Hot on Kane's trail is a band of self-styled crusaders and avengers, ready to bring the "cold light of good" and justice to our evil wanderer. Each of them has an understandable bone to pick with the red-headed immortal as he's done them all wrong at some point or another in the past. There are nine of them against Kane's one (two if you count Rehhaile), so they're confident they can take him out.

The story paces itself well as we watch Kane dwindle the numbers against him one by one until he's got a more manageable load that he can fight with just his sword.

There's a lot going on in "Cold Light," thematically speaking. The crusaders are confident that they are arbiters of justice and uncomplicated good while they kidnap, rape, and attempt to burn the entire city of Sebbei down in pursuit of Kane. By contrast, Kane seems like the good guy here as he's done nothing but lounge by a lake and drink wine since he's arrived. He's befriended Rehhaile and they seem to have a good thing going on. Does that absolve him of his crimes? Of course not; if Putin or Netanyahu or Trump decided to spend the rest of their days sitting by a lake, not hurting anyone else, it doesn't erase the evil that they've already wrought. Still, it inverts the usual order.

It's interesting contrasting the toxic, all-consuming revenge-driven action of the "crusaders" against the toxic, do-nothing attitude of the people of Sebbei. In one climactic moment of the story, the gang closes in on Kane in an old warehouse filled with unused medicines covered in dust, symbolic of their ability to do nothing about their problems. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again: both are doomed in their own ways!

"Cold Light" was incredible. It clearly takes place later in Kane's timeline as he's wondering Lartroxia West. But because other characters mention Carsultyal, I wonder if it takes place a little earlier than some of the stories where Carsultyal is so ancient it's seemingly only remembered by Kane...

I read on a very old Dale Rippke blog post that Wagner said all the short stories appear in chronological order in each collection, so that helps me out a bit.