THE BLADE OF CONAN and THE SPELL OF CONAN

We're getting into some seriously, seriously nerdy territory here. And that's coming from a guy who runs a blog about a single fantasy character that hasn't really been culturally relevant since before he was born.

Let me set some background: by the mid-1950s, L. Sprague de Camp had more or less taken the reins of Conan. In 2025, we would say something along the lines that he's now the executive producer of the intellectual property or franchise, which makes me want to walk into the ocean. He's the Cimmerian's shepherd for a time. Anyway, in 1953, de Camp went from a Conan fan to a Conan creator when publisher Martin Greenberg suggested he and Lin Carter turn four unpublished Robert E. Howard stories found in the fabled Howard trunk into Conan tales. This was actually likely less than three years after de Camp had read his first Conan story. From the 50s to the early 80s, de Camp would spearhead new Conan writing.

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de Camp in a fucking sick cowboy hat

But that doesn't mean he stopped being a fan! While writing new fiction, de Camp was also a frequent contributor to the midcentury fanzine Amra, which was focused on Robert E. Howard works. Along with de Camp, Amra was the publication belonging to The Hyborian Legion, essentially one of the first waves of superfans. In the days before message boards, in which guys in Green Lantern t-shirts and cargo shorts aggressively discuss power scaling on Reddit comment threads, there were physical, printed zines which made the rounds in which guys in sweater vests (I imagine) note how upset they were upon reading a supposed prehistoric story set thousands of years ago that has equestrians use stirrups even though stirrups wouldn't be invented until after the Roman Empire. Okay, I admit the caricatures here are too mean, but that's an actual essay within one of these books. Thankfully, the Hyborian Legion was much more erudite, measured, and interesting than the average Reddit commenter. I like to picture a person hammering away at a typewriter in a wood-paneled room with a stack of paperbacks that will eventually become vintage collector's items.

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The Blade of Conan and The Spell of Conan are both small paperback books printed by Ace Books in 1979 and 1980, respectively. Ace Books was the publishing company who put out the famous Conan the _____________ titles with Frank Frazetta covers starting in 1967. Despite sort of sounding like novels starring the Cimmerian, they're actually pretty extensive essay collections (with awesome cover illustrations!). The material's largely reprinted from the zine Amra, and then lightly edited by L. Sprague de Camp for these publications. I don't have access to full issues of Amra on the web, but it seems pretty cool- it's allegedly the publication where the term "sword & sorcery" was coined. These books are perhaps most interesting for what they betray about L. Sprague de Camp and how he saw Howard, the Hyborian Age, and himself fitting together. 

Now, I don't want to scare you off or anything, but these books are the very definition of minutia. They will delight those who read "Queen of the Black Coast" and begin wondering about how exactly Zingaran trade routes work when Belit and the Tigress are raiding them. If you're not that kind of nerd, I don't think it will be your cup of tea. 

​The Blade of Conan is split into a few sections, grouping criticism, essays, and loose thoughts together by topic. There's an introduction on sword & sorcery, the first section is about the setting of the Hyborian Age ("THE HYBORIAN AGE"), the second is about Howard's fiction more generally ("ROBERT E. HOWARD'S FICTION"), the third is about Howard's contemporaries ("HOWARD'S COLLEAGUES"), the fourth about weapons and combat in S&S stories ("THE COMPLETE SWORDPLAY-AND-SORCERY HERO"), and then one short section with just two essays about fantasy stories and their appeal ("THE HEROIC-FANTASY STORY").

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The content of Blade of Conan ranges from light, little travelogues in which de Camp visits Cross Plains to appreciations of Howard's less-celebrated works, to a four-part discussion about weaponry in the Hyborian Age and fantasy in general. I wouldn't say that most of it is too hard-hitting, but a lot of it is really enjoyable. You've probably even read some of the inclusions before, like Clark / Miller / de Camp's "An Informal Biography of Conan of Cimmeria."

There is something here from Poul Anderson that I profoundly disagree with. In his essay "The Art of Robert E. Howard," he says the following:

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"When a subject has been discussed by intelligent men for any length of time, it becomes virtually impossible to say something new about it... Thus there can be no more original praises of the immortal Sherlock, but his Canon remains an inexhaustible field for scholarly research."

As the world changes, trends come and go, critical lenses get created and re-evaluated, there's always something new to say. I'd argue there are original takes left on Sherlock, Conan, and every other "exhausted" character out there. I think essays like Stephen Graham Jones's "My Life with Conan the Barbarian" prove that.

The Spell of Conan is probably the volume out of the two that I found more enjoyable. It's not as thick, but it has a wider-ranging set of topics and seems a little more focused on entertaining than informing, whereas Blade was all business. This time, the introduction is by Lin Carter, who is the Robin to de Camp's Batman. It features a section on Howard fiction ("Robert E. Howard and His Writings") that actually has some original Howard fiction included, three original fiction pieces set in the Hyborian Age written by other writers ("Swordly Stories"), a section focusing on S&S heroes mostly not named Conan ("Literary Swordsmen & Sorcerers"), some poetry ("The Skalds of Hyboria"), and finally several pieces about historical inspirations for Hyborian Age cultures ("Swords and Sources").

Spell has some really memorable inclusions! "The Ghost Camp of Colorado" is a cool piece by the boss himself. The three fiction pieces in the "Swordly Stories" section I've covered before, but they're fun! My favorite piece in the whole book is probably P. Schuyler Miller's "Lord of the Black Throne" (which is somehow an entirely different piece than P. Schuyler Miller's "Lord of the Black Throne" included in Blade...) in which Miller explores the historical Erlik as a sort of missed opportunity god for Howard to have spent some more time with in the Conan mythos.

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de Camp in a fucking sick horned helmet

Let's go back to L. Sprague de Camp for a minute. He apologizes in the Editor's Note leading The Blade of Conan that so much of the book is his writing. He's certainly right: he writes or at least co-authors at least ten of the pieces in Blade and an addition 14 in Spell, which makes them by far mostly his writing. When de Camp already has a bit of a reputation for having a superiority complex, it doesn't really do him any favors. He includes a piece called "Conan's Ghost," which feels a little falsely modest as it details how he came to be the shepherd of the Conan estate. He says that he was just "the man on the spot" and kind of implies that it was done to him rather than chosen by him, which doesn't really fit with the story he just told. He also says that there are other people who could've done Conan more justice and bothers to include Robert E. Howard himself, which, like... duh. It's wild to see his own timeline in which he's editing unpublished REH stories for publication a mere year after becoming a fan of his. Luckily, he also details some of his process in the inclusions "The Trail of Tranicos" (from Spell) and "Editing Conan" (which is over in Blade). I'm not a de Camp hater or REH purist by any means, but I can see why he rubbed some people the wrong way. 

Last thought: is it too PoMo to do an appreciation of an appreciation? Have we reached an infinite loop of criticism when I'm writing retrospectives on what is basically a duology of retrospectives? What am I doing with my life?

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