John Miller offers an appreciation of one of the greatest authors of pulp fiction and his greatest creation: Robert E Howard and Conan:
... the stories share a fundamental power because Howard was a skilled action-adventure storyteller. So were a lot of other pulp writers, of course. What ultimately set Howard apart was a dazzling imagination that dreamed up the sword-and-sorcery subgenre of fantasy literature before anybody had heard about J.R.R. Tolkien and his hobbits.
... Since 2003, Del Rey has issued definitive texts on each of these heroes, based on Howard's own manuscripts rather than the edited and bowdlerized versions that have appeared elsewhere. Three of these collections contain everything Howard ever wrote on Conan, including previously unpublished story fragments. ... A small industry of armchair scholars has made it possible. "We've gone pro," says Leo Grin, the editor of a journal and blog called "The Cimmerian." Yet they've also had to battle for respectability. "The comics and the movies have brought in fans, but they've also been an albatross," says Rusty Burke, an editor of the Del Rey books. "We're maybe 10 or 20 years behind H.P. Lovecraft."
