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December 13, 2006
Conan The Barbarian, In the WSJ
Not a lot that fans don't know, but a nice little piece. This is a good way to put it:
With Conan, Howard created a protagonist whose name is almost as familiar as Tarzan's. In his influential essay on Howard, Don Herron credits the Texan with begetting the "hard-boiled" epic hero, and doing for fantasy what Dashiell Hammett did for detective fiction. Suddenly, the world--even a make-believe one such as Conan's Hyboria--was rendered seamier and more violent, and Howard described it in spare rather than lush prose.
The thing is, he actually was a pretty damn good writer.
I sure wish I had a computer with more processor speed, so that maybe I could play the first-person decapitator/massively multiplayer online eviscerator Conan game coming out this year.