Tales of Conan

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Tales of Conan
Tales of Conan.jpg
Tales of Conan by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, Gnome Press, 1955
Author Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp
Cover artist Ed Emshwiller
Country United States
Language English
Series Conan the Barbarian
Genre Sword and sorcery Fantasy short stories
Publisher Gnome Press
Publication date
1955
Media type Print (Hardback)
Pages 219 pp

Tales of Conan is a 1955 collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The tales as originally written by Howard were adventure yarns mostly set in the Middle Ages; they were rewritten as Conan stories by de Camp, who also added the fantastic element.[1] Three of the stories also appeared in the fantasy magazine Fantastic Universe, two of them before publication of the collection and the other one after. The book has also been translated into Japanese. The collection never saw publication in paperback; instead, its component stories were split up and distributed among other "Conan" collections. "The Flame Knife" was later also published as an independent paperback.

Chronologically, the four short stories collected as Tales of Conan represent an add-on to Gnome's Conan series, coming between stories published in the remaining volumes. The first "tale" would fall within the collection The Coming of Conan, the second between that volume and the collection Conan the Barbarian, the third within Conan the Barbarian, and the fourth between that volume and the collection The Sword of Conan.

Contents

Reception

Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale found the collection inferior to de Camp's own The Tritonian Ring, where de Camp "outConaned Conan."[2] Anthony Boucher noted that Miller's introduction "is so spiritedly infectious that one almost succumbs to his enthusiasm . . . until one tries to read the four long stories."[3]

References

  1. De Camp, L. Sprague. "Ghostly Note," Tales of Conan, p. 15.
  2. "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf", Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1955, p.102
  3. "Recommended Reading," F&SF, June 1956, p.103.
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Preceded by Gnome Conan series
(chronological order)
Succeeded by
none


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