Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Author Archives: Davide Mana


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Cimmerian September #4 – Black Colossus

And finally, in June 1933, Robert E. Howard and Conan finally make the cover of Weird Tales.
The story is Black Colossus, and after the cosmic wonders of Tower of the Elephant, Conan is back to his initial formula. A kingdom in peril, an evil wizard, and a mighty battle.


Awakened after 3000 years of undeath by a thief, the evil wizard Thugra Khotan, under the alias of “Nathok”, builds an army and start spreading north from the borders of Stygia. The kingdom of Khoraja is next in line, and in the absence of its young king, the rule of the land falls of young princess Yasmela, who is in the wizards sights as a potential consort. The girl consults the priests of Mithra and is told to entrust her future to the first man she’ll meet on the road. The man happens to be a Cimmerian mercenary, Conan.


All the standard elements of a Conan story are featured in Black Colossus – the evil undead wizard, the young princess that falls for Conan, a giant snake, a huge battle. Even the contempt for the aristocracy is there, and probably an in-joke about Prohibition.
Howard manages to make movement of troops and strategy as entertaining as ever, and we have the finale with the wizard killed by a sword used as a throwing weapon.
The end result is fun, and shows once again Howard’s skill in building his geography on the run.
Yasmela is a little lacking in personality, and does not shine as other female companions of the Cimmerian would.
But the story id more that OK.

Silly personal detail: the (beautiful) Margaret Brundage cover was the image we initially selected for the launch of our fantasy movie podcast, “Chiodi Rossi”; we changed it when we received some complaints by some acquaintances that were afraid Facebook would have penalized them should they share our “pornographic imagery” on the social network.


Silly, of course – but having the first episode of our podcast self-censored by nervous friends would have been a very bad start. We selected another image.
Poor Brundage – 90 years on, they still can’t tell her art from smut.


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Cimmerian September #3 – The Tower of the Elephant

The Weird Tales issue for March 1933 hits the readers with yet another installment of Otis Adelbert Kline’s Buccaneers of Venus (that by now has got me curious enough that I’ll probably read it in October), yet another novelette by Seabury Quinn featuring Jules de Grandin, and then two stories by Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith.

As luck would have it, The Tower of the Elephant and The Isle of the Torturers are two of my favorite stories by the respective authors. And I have already posted about both this year, so for today I will just link here what I wrote.

The Tower of the Elephant

The Isle of the Torturers


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Cimmerian September #2 – The Scarlet Citadel

January 1933 brings a new issue of Weird Tales, featuring the works of Murray Leinster, Edmond Hamilton, Seabury Quinn and a new installment of Otis Adelbert Kline’s Buccaneers of Venus (that again gets the cover). The letters section includes one from Jack Williamson.
And halfway through the issue we find a new Robert E. Howard story featuring Conan the Cimmerian, the novelette The Scarlet Citadel.

The story is an almost direct follow-up of the one in the previous issue. King Conan of Aquilonia again has to defend his throne, this time by two treacherous nearby kings, the rulers of Ophir and Koth, aided by the sinister Tsotha-lanti, a sorcerer born (or so they say) of a Zamoran dancing girl and a black demon.

And here we get what is for me the most interesting element of this story: while in Phoenix on the Sword Howard dropped a lot of names of conspirators and aristocrats, here the naming game has a clear worldbuilding purpose. Cited en-passant for color, we get nation and cities of the Hyborian world, and we get passing references at Conan’s career. The upstart mercenary of the first story now reveals a past as a pirate and an adventurer all over the map. That a map has not yet been drawn for the readers is incidental – Howard has clearly the whole of Hyboria sketched in his mind.

Meanwhile, Conan is trapped in a dark dungeon, meets a number of weird horrors, fights the first of many giant snakes, and frees Pelias, a suavely dangerous sorcerer that helps him get his revenge (and provides transportation in the shape of a giant bat-thing).

We get a massive, epic battle and we catch a glimpse of the politics Conan/Howard, that is clearly critical of monarchy. Conan is a king that actually cares for the well-being of his subjects – a fact that leaves himself surprised.

Random note: king Conan has a harem. Ah, the barbaric life!

The story is solid, while not being one of my favorites.
Much probably depends by the order in which I originally read the Conan series – I always found the tales of the older Conan, dealing with politics and court conspiracies rather boring when compared to the more swashbuckling adventures of his youth.

But that’s just me.
In his second outing, Conan is finding his legs, and the Hyborian world is taking shape around him.


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Cimmerian September #1 – The Phoenix on the Sword

And so it begins -it’s December 1932 and Weird Tales magazine offers quite a selection to those readers willing to spend 25 cents: there’s a Jules DeGrandin story by the ever-popular Seabury Quinn, and stories by Edmond Hamilton, Vincent Starret and the second installment of Buccaneers of Venus (who gets the Allen St John cover), by Otis Adelbert Kline, plus the conclusion of a serialized reprint of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
The third story in the issue is a new novelette by Robert E. Howard, featuring a new character – Conan the Cimmerian, in his first outing, The Phoenix on the Sword.
And this is the first day of Cimmerian September.

In fact, Howard is pulling a fast one – his King Kull story, By this axe I rule has been rejected, and being a writer who pays his bills by selling stories, he has simply reworked it in a new story, featuring a new character.
Nice and smooth.

The plot is straightforward – the rogue Aquilonian aristocrat Ascalante is riding a group of upper class malcontents, who resent the fact that a barbarian, Conan, has taken the throne of the kingdom. The conspirators think they are in control, and Ascalante is their tool – but is in fact the contrary. Yet, Ascalante’s royal ambitions are undermined by his slave, the Stygian renegade wizard Thoth-Amon, who has plans of his own. In the middle of all this game of shadows sits (literally) Conan, a former mercenary turned usurper, and target of a murder plot.

This is the first Conan story, and it is a strange beast – sure, the Cimmerian is here, muscular, brooding and animated by a sort of barbaric nobility his courtiers lack. But some things are still here from Kull’s tenure; in his fight against those that would overthrow his rule Conan receive the help of a long death priest, who appears in a dream. Dreams and illusions are a common occurrence in Kull stories, while Conan will soon develop a healthy diffidence for all things magic.

It’s the priest Epemitreus that places the phoenix symbol on Conan’s sword, thus enabling him to deal with the thing that Thoth-Amon has summoned to do away with both the King and his Master.

The story is good, if somehow bogged down by two many silly names (for an Italian or anyone with a smattering of Latin, most Aquilonian names sound silly) and while the action, as Conan faces the traitors and turns them into dead meat, is strong and satisfying, the more solemn, melancholy tone of the Kull stories can still be felt. It is not necessarily a negative – but there will be better stories.

But it’s done – it’s December 1932, Conan is on the stage, and he’s here to stay.
This is the first day of the Hyborian Era.


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Gearing up for Cimmerian September

The Cimmerian September starts tomorrow – a month in which a number of Youtubers will read all the original Conan stories written by Robert E, Howard, and post videos about it.
And I thought, why not do something similar here on Karavansara?

Robert E. Howard wrote only 21 stories about Conan during his life, and those are the ones I’m going to read.The reference edition I’ll be using is the Gollancz The Complete Chronicles of Conan, Centenary Edition edited by Stephen Jones.


For reason of portability I might also check The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, published by DelRey, that collects the earliest stories of Conan, masterfully illustrated by Mark Schultz.
I’ll add a simple copybook to jot down notes while reading in bed or out in the garden, and I’ll get me lots of hot tea and treats, because, why not?

The idea is to go through the series from cover to cover, and then write a post about them – possibly collecting two or three stories in one post for practical purposes.

While there are stories that I re-read regularly, most of the series belongs to a dim and distant past, and it will be fun to revisit the Hyborian Age after all this time.
I will also try and squeeze in some extras, and do some extended cut for my Patrons.
But anyway, tomorrow we start.
Watch this space.
It’s going to be fun.


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Fantasy Piano Bar, Grand Reopening

Back in the day, when the blogsphere was alive and well, I used to do a thing on my Italian blog, called Fantasy Piano Bar. In those posts I took reader requests: book suggestion, author deep dives, odds and ends.
It was a way of getting something out of 40+ years spent reading genre fiction.
And it was pretty popular – so popular in fact, that my contents were lifted and resold as their own by other bloggers.

But then my blog was blacklisted on Facebook (because it spreads hatred, apparently), and the piano bar was closed.


Well, as of today, I am happy to announce that the Piano Bar is open again, on my Patreon.
I received a request for some reading suggestions in the field of Oriental and specifically Middle-Easten fantasy, and I accepted the request to the best of my knowledge.

The post is open for anyone to read.

Further posts of the Piano Bar will be Patrons-only – anyone supporting me with one buck a month or more will be able to make requests, and read the posts.

Think about it.

(and yes, I should have done it earlier)