Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Tag Archives: Robert E. Howard


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The Swift One: El Borak

el borak 2Today is Robert E. Howard’s birthday, and it seems a nice thing to do to post something about one of the most popular and influential pulp authors of all time.

I discovered Howard – I think I already mentioned it – with Conan the Adventurer, when I was fifteen or thereabouts.
But I’m not here to praise Conan.
In his brief career Howard wrote a huge number of stories, and created an army of characters, and one in particular I always liked, and I consider fitting for Karavansara’s themes and topics.

His name is Francis Xavier Gordon, but they call him El Borak. Continue reading →


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Slapdash & Sorcery

I’m back online for good, and to celebrate I’m doing three related posts on my three blogs.
The first post is already up on GreyWorld, the next is going up later, in Italian, on strategie evolutive.
Let’s say I’m doing a blog tour of my own blogs.

wwrAnd I mentioned the late Sir Terry Pratchett, on GreyWorld.
I love Pratchett’s Discworld novels – I loved them ever since I read about Pratchett in Michael Moorcock‘s Wizardry and Wild Romance, and decided to check this new writer out.
And if it’s true that the Italian versions of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic were seriously unfunny due to some translation problems, as soon as I started reading Terry Pratchett in English, it was a cartload of laughs.
But not only that.
Which leads to the true topic of this post. Continue reading →


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The Mystery of Chapter 20

HowardBerkleyHour-1I read The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard‘s only full-length Conan novel, back when I was in high school.
I had found a copy of the 1977 Berkley edition of Howard’s novel, part of the series edited by Karl Edward Wagner that restored the original text, removing Lyon Sprague De camp‘s editorial changes.
It was reading K.E. Wagner’s introduction that I found out the mystery of chapter 20.

It’s not that complicated, mind you.
Quite simply, in The Hour of the Dragon we get from chapter 19 to chapter 21.
There is no Chapter 20.

Now, three hypotheses have been made about this fact. Continue reading →


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Swingy Thingies

One of the most entertaining and refreshing aspects of working with a great editor is sometimes you spend a whole night discussing swingy thingies.
Which disproves the old legend that authors and editors are often at odds, and engage in fiery discussions.
We were somewhat at odds, but we had a good laugh.

Consider the following contraption

shaduf-irrigation-granger

This thing appears in one of the stories that will be published in the forthcoming Aculeo & Amunet collection – The Hand of Isfet. Continue reading →


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Swords of the Four Winds

The so-called ebook revolution has brought back a number of genres and formats that for a few decades had been marginalized to say the least.
The short form is back – novelettes and novellas, novels in the 40.000-words standard of the paperbacks of old.
Pulp is making a big comeback, in all its assorted flavors – from hero pulps to adventure cliffhangers to sword & sorcery.

And for a fantasy reader, the return of sword & sorcery – the small-scale, proletarian, none-too-heroic kind of fantasy that normally involves rogues trying to save their own skin, not champions trying to save the world – is a much welcome event.

I’m currently reading – and very much enjoying – Dariel R.A. Quiogue’s Swords of the Four Winds, a highly satisfying collection of sword & sorcery stories set in the East. Continue reading →


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Providing continuity

Today I’ll mix nostalgia with hype, if you don’t mind.

conan l'avventurieroWhen I was a kid, say 15 years old, I discovered Robert E. Howard and Conan the Barbarian through the Italian editions of the Lancer Books collections edited by Lyon Sprague de Camp.
My first was Conan the Adventurer, and I was hooked.
Also, I decided this was the sort of stuff I wanted to read, and possibly to write.

The little hardback book had a wonderful dust jacket (by Dutch artist Karel Thole), and it came with a gorgeous map of the Hyborian world.
Then there was a fun introduction by Italian critic and translator Riccardo Valla, and then the stories.
And each story was introduced by a snippet of text by L. Sprague de Camp, providing some sort of continuity to the series.

Stuff like…

After escaping from Xapur, Conan builds his Kozaki and pirate raiders into such a formidable threat that King Yezdigerd devotes all his forces to their destruction. After a devastating defeat, the kozaki scatter, and Conan retreats southward to take service in the light cavalry of Kobad Shah, King of Iranistan.

It was fun, it gave me a sense of history. Continue reading →