Shadow Kingdom

Like for example, when we had our interview with Nicholas Eames two years ago, I said that I'd never read anything by Robin Hobb. And I still haven't read anything by Robin Hobb. And that's crazy because she's a really big name in the world of fantasy. And that's a huge gap.

I haven't touched Dark Tower and to be brutally honest, I haven't actually really finished any Mazelan books so probably do deserve my time there.

Robert E. Howard was a fantasy writer during the age of pulp fiction. He wrote ostensibly for Weird Tales and other pulp magazines of the era. This is the late 1920s, early 1930s G: This book was written in 1929. Shadow Kingdoms was. Conan didn't come along until 1932 and in this era Robert E. Howard, he was just turning the crank. He was getting out stories and he was just trying to make that sale.

And unfortunately with Kull, despite the fact that I genuinely do love the character and have really enjoyed a lot of the works, he didn't sell that well in his time, Geordie. Do you know how many Kull stories Robert E. Howard sold in his lifetime?

And eventually one day he just sat down with one of his stories that had been rejected called By This Axe I Rule, and he saw the notes from the editor that just said: less politics, less thinking, less romance subplot, more violence, more magic. And thus Conan was born. Probably paraphrasing the notes, a little bit but that is the vibe.

I haven't read By This Axe I Rule before. I can see why it wouldn't be well received and why it would go back for notes and why eventually the character of Conan who is not involved in politics would get so popular. In my personal opinion, Conan the King is the worst form of Conan except for like super duper racist Conan. He's obviously much worse.

If you go over to comics, one of the things is my start kind of look at Kull, it's on my bookshelf. So when it came to Dark Horse to collect sort of the historic Kull comic books, you can get all of the Kull works into five trade paperbacks and two omnis. Whereas Conan the Barbarian, it took something like 34 trade paperbacks and 23 omnibuses. And that's not even collecting all of it.

And to be honest, they're probably right. [Geordie laughs] But certainly for Robert E. Howard, this was the origin point for what we would later get and where the moulds were starting to form.

There is no way to tell other than killing them where they'll revert to their normal form or if you know a secret magic phrase.

It still has this massive sense of yawning history that you're at the very tail end of a whole era that's about to come crashing down under the sundering weight of ages past.

So we've talked about the world though, Geordie, but let's deal with him. What did you think of Kull? Compared to Conan, how did you interpret Kull?

The thing about it is that Conan is basically always right, even when he's wrong. He's always like, oh yeah, I can see why this guy's doing this. Everyone else should just listen to this guy. Something like Black Colossus is the best example. In this, you're like, oh, this guy's kind of lost and confused and more vulnerable, even though he's like a kick-ass warrior, super-being basically. You know, it's more understated in a way.

It doesn't spend anywhere near as much time talking about his mighty thews. It's only right at the very end that you're like, oh yeah, this guy is a total badass. I forgot.

You can be the most physically able, survivalist guy out there. Doesn't mean you're going to do a lot when you're in a society where it's like, excellent, what's your share price? You're like, what does that even mean?

He probably had a lot more in common with Kull in that way than he did with Conan.

You know, I'd like to see whether there's more of that happens because if it does, and if it isn't just wild man goes and adventures, if there is something that's really unique to it that isn't in the character of Conan, I'd be interested in seeing that. I also want to know who the fuck Thulsa Doom is because he's not here. No, Thulsa Doom, he appears in only one story. He is the kind of famous villain for Kull. That is so fucking classic.

It is so fucking classic to be like, oh, this guy is one of the quintessential villains of all fantasy. One of the most influential wizard characters to ever appear. He's in one story, he only appears at the very end. Yeah, how did you know? They don't even fight. Well, they do sort of fight, but not really. He's a bit like Thothamon. Fucking here we go, here we go. Of course, it's just like Thothamon. Honestly, don't. The rage I get.

So Thulsa Doom, he's a wizard character in one Kull story called Delicat's cat or the cat and the skull. He has multiple titles, obviously it does. And this character was then for some reason picked to appear in the Conan the Barbarian film. Played brilliantly, eh? In relation to Snake Cult. But for some reason, he just keeps running and running. And there was a comic book released by Dynamite called Robert E. Howe's Thulsa Doom. And it enrages me.

It's one of those classic cases of like, why have you dared put the author's name on top of this? This is nothing. Bram Stoker's Dracula, such an insult. Bram Stoker's Dracula is freaking loyal as all hell compared to Robert E. Howe's Thulsa Doom. Okay, I got really mad halfway through that sentence, but I got over it. Carry on. This goes many ways. The only thing that you can hold here is that he's not even properly related to the Snake Cult, but they often mesh them together. He's weird.

Again, you got to keep that Snake Cult going. It's a great idea, man. Don't drop it. I don't know. I don't know why he got picked. Lin Carter rewrote, well, edited and expanded on a lot of Robert E. Howe's stories when it first came to print.

So in 1967, Lin Carter and Glenn Lord put out King Kull as a single book, where they kind of edited all the stories together to be in chronological order, have this sense of a bit of more of a through line, and they just decided to pick Thulsa Doom to be this recurring villain. Why? I don't know. They felt like he needed one. There you go. But he's not here. No, but he is the originator of the Lich. I know! Gosh, another huge influence.

He's a skull-based sorcerer that can't be hit by mere mortal weapons. And do you know what he does in his story? Sorry, spoilers for the cat and the skull, but I'm on this one now, Geordie. Do you know what he does in that story? Do you know what his grand plan is? He disguises himself as the man-servant- nope.

As the man-servant who has a mask over his face, who holds a cat on a pillow out in front, and he convinces Kull that the cat is talking to him through ventriloquism, and then convinces Kull- the cat tells Kull of what he thinks the future is going to behold, and then his grand plan is to convince Kull to go for a swim in a deep lake so that he drowns. Oh wow.

And then Kull comes back from the lake all wet and goes, you lied to me, and then the guy literally holding the cat in front of him whips off his mask, and he has a skull face and he goes, haha, it is me, your arch-villain, Thulsa Doom, never before mentioned, and then Kull tries to stick him with a blade and he runs away. That really sucks. That's lame. Um, I don't care for that at all.

Yeah, it's weird how these stories get expanded on over the years, and it's like the same with The Serpent Men. These are some really neat ideas that Robert E Howard had around Kull, and I think it's a shame because I think if he had more financial success he would have expanded on them, hopefully. Maybe. Who knows. So, it's been a con of style we didn't get to see that, but we did get to see Shadow King. I just remembered something. Very important. What did you remember?

I'm not going to say something now. I'm going to save it for the end of the episode, but we've got to revisit this. In the meantime, what I'd like to mention in the podcast is something which very much marks this as being written in the 1920s, and that is some of the location names which Robert E Howard chooses to use for these ancient, ancient civilizations. So, Kull is King of Volusia. Now, as far as I know, that's a made up fantasy name. I've never seen anything other than Kull contexts.

Some of the other places though, Kull is an Atlantean. There are Lemurians in the story. There is a place called Mu, and there are Picts. His chief ally in the story are the Picts. Yes, the Picts, who also then go on to appear in the Conan stories as sort of a Native American stand in. Yeah. Yeah, I hate, I hate, I hate the Picts. One of my least favorite Conan stories is Beyond Thunder River. It's so racist. It's awful.

Yes, he also goes on to use them in his, I'm going to get this name wrong, like Brynbeck Mourn stories, who is the king of the Picts. And it's more meant to be set against the backdrop of pre-Roman Britain. Well, that makes sense. Those are actual Picts. And in that story, oh, I've got to drop this one as well. In that story, Kull gets sent to the future and fights off the invading Romans in Britain. It's a beaut. Oh. I know. Oh, well, that's terrible. But okay, moving on.

Man, maybe I don't like Kull. Maybe this sucks. No, Shadow Kingdom doesn't suck. That's why it's the one we're reading. It doesn't suck, but you're telling me too much shit. Duncan, why is it important that Lemuria and Mu and Atlantis are here? I think it's because they're old sounding names and Robert E. Howard at the time. So this idea of like other world fantasy, something I think we see more with Tolkien and like Middle Earth, where it's almost not really Middle Earth.

That's actually a bad one to do. George R.R. Martin like Westeros is like completely separate to our own world. That wasn't as much of a thing when Robert E. Howard was writing. So instead, a lot of his fantasy stories he wrote into sort of prehistory civilizations. And at the time of writing Kull, he hadn't come up with Conan. So whereas in Conan, it then gets colonized as a pre prehistory civilization, originally Kull was just meant to be prehistory.

So he wanted it to tie it in, I guess, into other sort of lost myths to kind of give that feel. And the reason why that's tied in with stuff like Lemuria and Mu and Atlantis is that back in the early 20th century, there was a big pseudo, pseudo archaeology and pseudo science belief that there were all these lost civilizations. There was the lost city of Atlantis. That was somewhere out there in the Atlantic Ocean. You just had to find it.

And that there was like a land bridge between Madagascar and Asia. They called that Lemuria. There was one guy who just believed that his girlfriend was like the reincarnated spirit of like an ancient empress from a continent called Mu that was right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and was supposed to be so fucking massive. It just it's ridiculous to me that anyone could ever think it would exist. But apparently they did.

These ideas, I mean, to me, it just feeds into the same people who think about like ancient aliens. It is stupid at best and probably a little racist at worst. And I just feel like these sort of ideas, let them belong in the fantasy works of Robert E. Howard as sort of vague legends and myths. But dear God, that's- I totally agree. I love the way in which he just uses these stupid ideas. Like the idea that Kull could just walk into the hollow earth is fantastic.

And I wish more modern writers went back and were like, yeah, fuck it. Let's have this be set in Mu and Lemuria. But again, they probably won't for racism reasons. And you know, I do stand by that. I think it's okay to- and I like the idea that he sort of created this world. It's like, it gives a sense of this is the lost world of all myths. You know, anything that we now know doesn't exist, it existed in this pre-time.

Yeah. They even say like back when the serpent men ruled the world, there were goblins around. Where did the idea of goblins go around? Oh, they were back in pre, pre, pre, pre, pre-history. It gets to the point where you think, how old do you think the planet is? But that's not, that's not a point of Robert E. Howard and this story. Well, that's a good question. How old did they think the planet was? Because like, again, we've brought this up on our Monster Tier List episode.

The idea of evolution was actually pretty new, like just like a couple of decades old when Robert E. Howard was writing. That was a hot new topic, the idea that humans were descended from animals or, you know, the idea that, you know, these are serpent people and they're saying that they are breeding with actual snakes. They evolved from snakes instead of, instead of apes.

And a lot of the scientists around how old is the Earth, the idea of the great human migration of continental drift, these ideas either were extremely new or hadn't been invented yet. And so I think that really brings back to the fact that I like the fact that Robert E. Howard is using them in his fantasy work because it does give a slightly more of a grounded flavour or this lost legend feel. But also, very firmly, I'm glad it just exists in the fantasy works.

It's a lot like with H.P. Lovecraft where he says the great old ones had lived for vintage a jillion years, not knowing that the universe is 13 billion years old, which is a lot less than vintage a jillion. But clearly, Geordie, you're forgetting that they must be older than the universe. Oh, yes, of course, silly me. Right, I think we're getting a little bit off topic now. Should we just get back to the story? What is this sword and sorcery story about? Because this is what it is.

It's sword and sorcery. It's a man picking up glades. Sword and sorcery. And taking on some weird magic. So just to lay the scene, we open and Kull is riding back into his city ahead of his red slayers, his royal guard. As he kind of wanders in, we get the grandiosity, we get the idea that trumpets are blaring. He's on his stallion. He's not in the litter because he's a warrior king.

But it also very quickly lays in that the people are muttering, that not everyone's happy with this usurper who took the throne. And I'll be honest, I thought this was really cool because this at the time when I first read this thought, oh, is this going to be the plot? Is it about a human trying to get rid of him? You know, a mundane. That's certainly what the phoenix on the sword is about. And I'll give you another spot is that's what by this axe I rule is about.

And I actually really enjoy the fact that Robbie had was kind of creating a bit of continuity there. He was layering the idea that people didn't like him on the throne. So good there, he didn't often do that, didn't have to do that. But I like it just also gets that unsettled. It means that you don't fully trust the fact that when the magic starts happening, you're like, is this the magic? Are these the people? What's going on?

And when Kull gets back to his palace, he gets told they need to meet the ambassador of the pig. So if we mentioned earlier, and that ambassador warns him that there are serpent men about and that he's going to send one of his men, a great guy called Brawl, the spear slayer, and he's going to protect Kull when the serpent men make their move because they're going to make their move soon.

And then the rest of the story is essentially called just avoiding getting stabbed to death by the serpent men. It's totally right. The end especially is really effective where like their assassination attempt, you know, is made against him. And this is great moment of you're waiting for like one person to leap out and try and stab in the back of getting close to him. And the great twist is that everybody in the room with him is a disguised assassin.

They put him in a different room, like Mission Impossible style, and they all tried to kill him at once whilst replacing him with a serpent man. A genuine like twist on the idea of like doppelgangers being infiltrating a system. Like probably before this was even a trope. Like this is like probably one of the big progenitors and he was already like playing with your expectations. I love the fact that when he finally fights off and it's a good fight scene.

I wouldn't say it's a lot of time is given to this fight scene. But when it's well, that's very much in that style where it's just like rather than describe any kind of blow by blow. It's like this is the spirit of the fight and how cool, cool and powerful Kull is. But also how much of a good friend Bruehl is. Bruehl, Geordie, what do you think of Bruehl? I love him. What is so how is he so? He's barely this story is so short. It's ten thousand words long.

But by the end of it, these guys are like one of my all time bro TPs in a fantasy story. He's such a good wingman. Bruehl is the man sent by the pick to help defend Kull. And I love this character because immediately when Kull is surrounded by all the courtiers and the all these kind of intrigued people who is like, oh, they scheming what's going on or what are the traditions? Everyone's being nice to me. Bruehl walks in and it's just like sup, I don't care who you are.

We're going to kill some people. And he's that that breath of fresh air. And I love that the Kull is like, am I insulted or is this guy not my new best friend? There's this part in it where he's talking to that guy's boss. And I wish I could remember the exact phrasing, but it's like Kull thought to him. No, the guy says like, you probably think I'm just a slovenly woman chasing wine drinker, don't you?

The narration says Kull was so amazed by how accurate his assessment was, but he was rendered speechless and I genuinely had a chuckle was reading it. I think Bruehl was really interesting, not only in how he's used in this story, but also relative to other characters Robert E. Howard wrote, he doesn't really do this kind of strong companionship, this kind of double act outside the castaways. That's true. Like when Conan has a team up with someone, it's normally quite different.

So there's three or four examples I can think of. One we covered in Red Nails in Valeria, which is that she's allowed to be kind of cool, but eventually becomes a damsel in distress because she's a lady. There are people who are almost as cool as him, like who's the mercenary leader from Black Colossus? Oh gosh, um. I've now opened my copy of Robert E. Howard's Conan Adventures in an Age Undreamed of the RPG, because I know he's in here somewhere. Aldrich?

Aldrich. Yes, because Conan also has a general when he's king with the exact same name, completely different character. Oh sorry, it's Um, Um, Ulrich. Ulrich? I always thought it was just Ulrich. He has Um Ulrich, who's like an actual like ally, but doesn't really get to fight on screen. He just gets to lead men beside him.

And then there's, there's Valerius, not to confuse with Valeria, in A Witch Shall Be Born, where he gets his own like side mission, but he barely knows who Conan is and has to be rescued by him ultimately. The only other one I can think of is the young boy in Beyond the Black River, and although he gets a kind of an epic ending, it's really put off that he's like the newbie and he's like looking up to Conan as well. Exactly. And he dies. Yeah, and he dies.

So Brawl is really unique in this fan, also the fact that he's used throughout pretty much all the Kull stories. Brawl always makes an appearance, either at his sight- That's really surprising. And quite staggering in the Mirrors of Tussathun. I'm going to pronounce it. Alright. The Mirrors of Tussathun. No, no, Tussathun. I actually was right. Sorry, I had to look up my notes then. Well, genuinely surprising. Genuinely surprising. Duncan, this is the year of Krynic.

Correct pronunciations for you. I can, I can predict this. Oh, it's going to go downhill later. Kull's the one that needs rescuing. Brawl is the one who, essentially when Kull gets captured, someone has to run off and be like, where is Brawl? We need to get Brawl here. That's genuinely astounding. Like the number of times that Conan has been captured and needs to rescue himself.

The only person I can remember doing that is Olivia, and that's like supposed to be a big moment of character growth from a helpless person. Yeah, Olivia does it, and ultimately Conan's wife. Queen to be. Zarozinia. No, that's Elric's wife. Zenobia. The names do not matter at this point, but no, it's really good to see this kind of actual double act. And I think it kind of balances itself off where Kull is getting broody. He is so broody, moody.

He's getting very down and glum sometimes with the weight, the philosophical thoughts, what is the right thing to do. Brawl actually resents a bit more of the Conan spirit. He's a little bit more chipper and up and let's just fight and let's just go for it. These are the ways and don't worry about the details. Yeah, in that way he's almost a bit of a Moonglum character. You know, I've not actually drawn that comparison before, which you're right, I think that's a lot fairer to say.

In fact, I would say that Kull and Brawl probably have a lot more direct DNA to Elric and Moonglum.

Yeah, because even though Elric is riffing off the idea of Conan and creating his opposite, a lot of the stuff I was thinking was doing is like, yeah, this is quite Melnirbanayan, the Lucia, how it's ancient and old and you have the king and his throne and he doesn't feel like he really belongs and can he live up to the expectations of the past and he's very knowledgeable about his new people's history. That is quite Elric-y, isn't it?

It is and I would love to know if I ever got a chance to speak to Michael Moorcock. Was that an inspiration? I keep forgetting he's still alive. I keep forgetting he's still alive. We can ask him things, maybe he's on Instagram. I mean, Guy has been writing consistently for so long. He genuinely amazes me. I'd like to know, where was the inspiration? He probably wouldn't even know at this point. If you're like, mate, you're asking something I wrote 50 years ago, why would I even ember?

And he'd be like, yeah, and I was on a lot of drugs at the time as well. So where was the inspiration? But you can see it. I would love to know if it was a direct draw from the Kull stories or whether or not it was by inverting Conan, you sort of naturally end up closer to Kull. You re-engineered him from scratch. So we like this story. I sure did. Do you think it's, do you like it? Would you recommend this out of a pure sense of it's just good?

Do you recommend it more like it's a history thing? Like, oh yeah, if you like Conan, give this a look or if you like Elric, give this a look. It's hard. It's hard to say. The fact of the matter is I know that a lot of people just aren't going to be interested in the pulpy style. And this really has a lot of Robert E Howard strength as a pulp writer. You know, it has a lot of, I really enjoy a lot of the old fashioned language and the antiquated writing style.

I know a lot of people are going to be put off by that. It's certainly not up to anywhere near the style of modern, of modern fantasy. If you enjoy, you know you enjoy pulpy stuff or if you're interested in more pulpy stuff, or if you've read Conan the Barbarian and Elric of Mordemene and you are interested in that, yes, I do recommend it. And whilst I also recommend it to others who are interested in fantasy, I know that my words are going to fall on deaf ears.

It's certainly a very real case at the moment. It does kind of take me back to when I first sought out Robert E Howard. It was because I'd just come off reading, I believe, a Wheel of Time book and just went, I need to get away from the shadow of Tolkien. And this was sort of my way to do it. It was to go pre-Tolkien. And that's kind of a way to kind of see something from a different perspective. Geordie, actually, I didn't ask you this at the start, but what version did you read?

Wow, I have no idea. I read the version that's on Project Gutenberg Australia. Okay then. So you didn't buy a published version of this? I did not, no. It is in the, well, it's in the public domain of some countries. It's in the public domain of our country, just to make it very clear to all listeners. Hooray! No crime!

Because there are several different versions and I think that is worth noting, particularly in America where it is still under copyright, I do believe, when it came out before Conan though, so maybe it's coming up quick. Might only have a few more years left, innit? Looked it up. Turns out it's actually next year that it comes to the public domain of USA. And then we can all write our own King Kull fanfiction and publish it like so.

It'd be very funny if King Kull is in the public domain and you can write all the Kull stories you like, but you're not allowed to refer to Conan who's coming later down the line. You'd almost have to do a thing where you would write a Kull series with tons of set up for your subsequent Conan series and then wait, watching the clock, and then the moment it runs out it'd be like, and now here's my follow up series which completes my Kull series but which I had to wait for.

I mean, I would love to see that happen. And Geordie, so I actually brought that up because I wanted to just kind of bring a point here. When we're talking about Kull, there are actually two kind of versions to really grasp hold of. The original published versions as done by Robert E. Howard and you've got the kind of re-edited version put together by Lynne Carter and Glenn Lord which came out in the 1970s, 1967. There we go, that's the right date.

Oh man, okay, something might make sense now but carry on. So what's really interesting is that that version I actually holding a copy in my hand of is called King Kull. Nowhere on it does it say edited by Lynne Carter on my copy. So that's not okay. That is not okay. Now if you go and get the Dale Ray version called Kull Exile of Atlantis you can trust that that is the most pure published, not published even, good Lord they weren't published, manuscript versions.

Sure. But I am going to say, has someone who's read both collections through to completion? Geordie, don't judge me but I really like the edited version. Listen, it makes sense. Editors exist for a reason, man. They exist to make stories more cohesive and clear but also, here's an example of cohesive and clear, right? You mentioned earlier the opening promenade that describes a bit of who Kull is and why he's important.

I was researching Kull earlier to get a sense of the chronology of it and how many stories were written about him and I was really confused by a Reddit post I found where someone put together their own personal chronology and they based this off something that was written in Shadow Kingdom. But it wasn't in my Shadow Kingdom.

Like Kull never talks about having been a gladiator in the past and clearly that's because that's where Lin Carter stepped in and said, I'm placing this after the time that he was a gladiator and now I'm going to refer back to that in the start of Shadow Kingdoms even though it didn't happen in my version. That is somewhat the case. So there's only, like I said, Conan, three King stories, the rest all Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Aventurer.

It's King Kull. There are 13 King Kull stories and one, maybe two, depending who's edited it, three King stories and that is the Exile of Atlantis story. So there was an attempt to give it this more structured sense of chronology and to reference back to these events. There is actually no Kull as a gladiator story but in Exile of Atlantis it references forwarding that he would be a slave, a pirate, a gladiator, a mercenary, a warrior, a king.

And so then in Shadow Kingdoms, Lin Carter put in that as sort of a reference back to tie the two together. Bear in mind, Exile of Atlantis was never published in Robert E. Howard's lifetime so it didn't matter what it said there. There's quite a few- That is a whole podcast episode about the ethics of that and whether that's okay or not. And it's- I mean Duncan, you're the Howard historian so you'd know a lot more about Lin Carter and whether he's a swell guy or not.

I know that he just wrote a lot of Conan novels. Whether or not he's a swell guy, that's a very good question. What I would say is that the biggest problem that I have with what happened between Lin Carter and De Camp and Glenn Lord throughout the 50s and 60s and into the 70s is not that they made the changes they made. Because some of them I genuinely actually really enjoy. Some of the Robert E. Howard manuscripts that were half completed, they wrote endings to.

The Black Abyss is a Kull story that Robert E. Howard started writing and it ends on this scene where Kull looks down a passageway into a dark abyss and hears eerie music drifting up from below. And that was it. It was like a cliffhanger that was left for 60- not 60, 30 years. And then Lin Carter came along and had to write what was down the stairway. And he does a really good job. I'm like, that takes a lot. There's some skill here in what he's writing. But that's true.

It's the old Brandon Sands and Robert Geordie treatments. But what they did do is they suppressed the release of their non-edited versions and as the copy I hold in my hands released by Sphere Books attests to, they didn't always make it obvious to a reader when they were reading Robert E. Howard and when they were reading their own work. My copy in my hand says, Robert E. Howard, creator of King Conan as edited by Glenn Nord. That's it.

Okay, well, what you've got to be savvy to there is Duncan, the word created means nothing. Nothing. I mean, go look at Star Trek. So, so much of what is Star Trek today happened after the death of Gene Roddenberry because he died towards the end of, well, towards like just past the middle point of Star Trek The Next Generation. But his influence is already waning.

And immediately after his death, there's all these things that start to happen which Gene Roddenberry said should never happen in Star Trek, like the creation of space pirates. He said that shouldn't be the case. They shouldn't exist in Star Trek. And Rick Berman famously said that when he approved the episode including space pirates, he put a blindfold on the bust of Gene Roddenberry he keeps in his office. I mean, okay, why do it?

Okay. But I also don't want to say that obviously the original author, the original creator is the absolute law in terms of what's good. George Lucas can attest to that. True, true. No, no, you're right. You're right. There's something to that. Robert E. Howard is obviously a writer who never got a chance to dictate what his legacy looked like because he died pretty young. He was 30 when he died, right, of suicide. Yes, he was in his 30s when he completed suicide.

You know, a very tragic end to someone who'd written so much in such a short time span. It does really think, well, what would we get later? And obviously, because of the man's death, there is no notes. There's no real writings about how he wanted his work to be curated or carried on. I don't think he really thought it ever would. Again, he was a pulp fiction writer. The mag went out, he got his paycheck. No, of course not. Look how many of those Kull stories weren't published.

You know, what you have to understand is he wasn't a fantasy novelist. He was a pulp fiction writer. He wrote and wrote and wrote fast, fast, fast because he needed money. You don't earn a lot of money being a... Take it from the king of pulp sci-fi writers. You don't make money writing science fiction. You get it by starting a religion. I don't... Sorry, what? I'm talking about... Okay, that's... What the fuck's his name? It's Elrond Hubbard, the founder of science...

The founder of Scientology. Okay. Famous pulp sci-fi writer. A follow-up from the era of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. The next step down. The sort of Heimlen era. I love the fact you said the step down, not the next step up, the next step onwards. The step down. I may have revealed my cards there and my opinion of fucking Hubbard and Heimlen. That's very unfair of me because Isaac Asimov is also part of that generation and he was quite a successful pulp fiction writer, even though...

Douchebag. Also, foundation sucks. Okay, I just wanted a full disclaimer. Georgie's opinions do not reflect all those who work on this podcast. I am a huge Isaac Asimov fan. I really like his writing. In fact, a lot of people credit his ideas and not his writing style. I actually love his writing style. I think it's clean and direct. There we go. Moving on. I think. Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

Georgie, there's a part of Kull which we actually haven't mentioned and I really want to get your thoughts on this. I'm ready. I'm going to read you a little quote. And what, Muse Kull, were the realities of life? Ambition, power, pride? The friendship of man. The love of a woman which Kull had never known. Battle. Whoa! What? Yes! Exactly. I don't think that was in my version. Was that not in your version? I don't think so. I think I would have noticed that. Hang on. I'm getting out my laptop.

Be right back. I can't believe I'm saying it's about a 90 year old story, but huge if true. So Georgie, just so you know, that quote was taken from the version that's in my Lynn Carter book and now, because that was the easier one to grab off the shelf, so now I've got my Kull XR Atlantis book in hand and I'm furiously flicking through to see if he added it or it was from Robbie Howard. No, you're totally right. Never known. Georgie, tell me something about Conan and his relationship to women.

He's always got one on the side, maybe a couple. I can't remember the hardiest story that goes by without there being a sexy lady at his side. Georgie, I'm going to tell you now that within the very relatively small fandom of Kull, there's quite an opinion between the relationship of Kull and Brawl, the Spear Slayer. That makes sense. That makes total sense, man. Wow. Yeah, there we go. I ship it. I ship it too. It is very interesting, isn't it, for 1929?

I mean, I'm surprised, like, he's a king. Why doesn't he have a queen? It's even something that's added into the Dark Horse version of the Kull Shadow Kingdom's adaptation. It's they give him a queen because they're like, yeah, I was confused by that because I remember him having one when I read that comic book. And it's a point that's brought up. So in multiple stories, well, in By This Axe I Rule, and I believe in Swords Against the Purple Kingdom, marriage is a big issue.

There's a point where a noble woman wants to marry, I believe it's a nobleman from another land, and they're like, well, marriage tradition doesn't allow it. And Kull's like, I don't care. In Atlantis, people can marry who they want. And I think it's disgusting that here you have such rules over who people are allowed to be with. Holy shit, dude. Holy shit, we are stumbling on something big. So Geordi, what do you think? I think we are fucking querying the very start of Sword and Sorcery.

We're in the cutting edge here. This is great. Now, I will say, as someone who has read all the Kull works, it is just as fair to take an asexual reading of it. Obviously, in text reference, all that's made explicit is that Kull shows no interest in women. And he shows a very pro interest in people having sort of freedom of marriage. Now was Robert E Howard married? Robert E Howard was not married. He did have a long term on and off again relationship with, gosh, I have forgotten her name.

We apologize for that. There was actually a film about it, about Robert E Howard and his on and off again relationship. And it was it was particularly good. And she was speaking afterwards, apparently it was quite a difficult and toxic relationship that was in. But nonetheless. Hello, everyone, Duncan here. So the on and off again girlfriend of Robert E Howard mentioned before was Novelin Price Ellis. She was a school teacher living in the same town as Robert in this between 1933 and 1936.

And most of their talk about their time together comes from Evelyn's own writings at the time. She actually published a memoir called One Who Walked Alone about her relationship with Robert E Howard. This did get made into a movie called The Whole Wide World. I'm not gonna lie, I haven't seen it. Most regards that it's okay. But yeah, that's their story. They were close friends in her writings and dated for a little bit. It's really interesting for him to put in there.

It's really interesting that he took this out of all his Conan stories. Well, Conan, as you yourself has said, he was the like, the edited version. This is the I gotta make some fucking money. I gotta give the people what they want, right?

Genuinely, like the I mean, it almost would have defied my belief just an hour ago, the idea that the guy who wrote so many things about busty ladies and their threadbare torn clothing who wrote the ending to Black Colossus and invented a very quintessential image of sword and sorcery of a naked woman on a stone stair where a man standing over her with a big knife or a burly man comes to her rescue. The guy who invented that would be writing a queer narrative just a couple of years before.

That seems a little implausible. But then again, then again, who knows? Who knows? And that's the point I read in his dress. We don't know or we're doing the same. Well, this is a very interesting narrative choice for the times. And it's clearly one that his editors pushed out in later stories by saying, no, Robert books sell better. We know for a fact we sell better when there's a naked lady on the cover. So please put one in the story.

The very front cover of the copy of weird tales, which was sold and has a scantily clad lady on the cover. And I'm not sure what I'm always kind of sad that obviously we don't get to see this explored more. None of the pastiche authors really dive in on that angle. There are several attempts where they get they have like Kulls counselors be like, you really should marry and things be a lot more stable as you had an heir. And Kulls just like, nah, not today. Man, this is fascinating.

This is so good. I maybe Duncan, maybe we should write. Maybe we should write that story. I think I would like to read it. We'll write on the cover the creation of Robert E. Howard and then we'll never say that it was written by anyone else. We'll just imply that it's the original and then we'll make no money because there isn't that much interest in Kulls. I think that would definitely be the case. And I'm not saying that it is completely this was Roy Howard's maybe pure intent.

No, but I do think he must be going for something. He clearly wasn't going. He's clearly inferred that Kulls has no interest in women, which would leave you open to anything. He's asexual or gay. And I don't know which one. I think there's enough murky grayness that if someone came along and wrote fan fiction who was that took even who was Robert E. Howard's best friend, but H.P. Lovecraft, the most weird case of now. Yes, this guy had a wife, but he didn't have kids.

He was disgusted by the idea of sex. Was he gay? Was he just super closeted and he couldn't admit it to himself? And who's his best friend? His pen pal? It's Robert E. Howard. It made me reassess some of the descriptions of say, Brawl's physical competency and even Conan in a way. Yeah, exactly. What about Conan himself? There's a lot of detail and there's a lot of love and craft into how you describe it.

Again, is this something you know, this idea of accentuating the male form, the male competency? I mean, I enjoy it. I enjoy it a lot and I like reading that and it just puts a I think a very valid lens to it. That's the thing. It's not definitive, but it is I think it's completely valid to say it is to have that viewpoint on it.

Man, I'm getting rocked from the side here because I did not expect our discussion of cult going this direction, but genuinely I'm so delighted it has because this is such a fresh topic, which I'd never considered before in the world of Conan.

Like you could like you can make jokes about, you know, Conan being written and described in such a vivid way, the ways in which you might, you know, in a similar way to what you might describe these scantily clad damsels he's hanging out with and rescuing. But you know, Conan's depiction of, you know, these women, it's never caring, compassionate.

It's always so bluntly, you know, grotesquely masculine that maybe it is like a facsimile of Robert E. Howard trying to figure out what straight men see in women, you know? It definitely came to my attention when I read some of the other authors' takes on Conan. I read Robert Geordie's, Conan the Invincible, Conan the Unconquered, he wrote about seven, or he wrote exactly seven. And when he describes and talks about women, it is so unlike Robert E. Howard. It is more in a weird way sexualized.

I've sort of explained this in the past, Geordie, why I say, wait a minute, the way Robert E. Howard writes women, it's the descriptions are there, but there is very little sense of intimacy that's not in the story. The story is about the pulp and the adventure and the idea and to keep going with that.

Whereas when I read Robert E.... gosh, I'm getting so confused now... Robert Geordie's approach, he does bring an extra lot of sort of sensualness and sexuality to the way he writes Conan the Barbarian and his interaction with his romantic interests in those novels. That does give me the feeling, well, I can't say, but I actually... it almost heightens the experience for me to think it is the case. I actually feel like I do get more enjoyment to go actually through that lens.

Maybe I can be a bit more forgiving of some of the rough bits around Conan, not completely forgiven, there are some unforgivable things in there, particularly towards sexism, but I can at least view in a way where I'm like, okay, I feel a little bit less kind of freaked out by this. It means that then when I read Kull, I can go, oh, was this your vision? Was Kull what Robert E. Howard really wanted to put out there?

And Conan is simply that mass marketed, this is what sells version, the watered down. We talked at the start, Kull is the prototype, he's the shadow of Conan, but what if for Robert E. Howard it was the other way around? What if Conan was the watered down Kull that he just couldn't sell in its kind of pure form? I fucking love it. I fucking love it. Maybe we should do more Kull stories. I certainly think it'd be a great thing for us to explore off the podcast.

If you ever get a chance to pick up the Del Rey Kull X of Atlantis is an excellent collection. It has literally every scrap and figment. Unfortunately it does mean there are sections in the book where it's literally, it's like the scorpion on the altar and there's like two paragraphs below it. You're like, cool. That was found on the back of a napkin. Yeah, someone really should have done the Christopher Tolkien treatment man. Duncan speaking of off the podcast, this has been brought up before.

Many years ago you ran a game of the aforementioned Robert E. Howard's Conan Adventures in an Age Undreamed of RPG by Modifus Entertainment. Yes I did. It ran for like five sessions and had an average playership of two. Yes it was more than five but yes it was mostly just two of us. But it was a fun time. We enjoyed it a lot. It is a fun RPG with serious, serious problems. Character creation is absolute hell. Yes character creation is just so long and confusing.

It's impossible to make a sorcerer despite them promising that you can. You just can't do it. You can't make one. And worst of all is the experience system where it just says, Game Master, just at the end of a session, just give them points. However many you think they deserve. You don't have to give everyone the same amount. And there's no way of telling what you should reward people for. Just give them points.

I actually had to create an entirely new character progression system just to fix the game. And well I think it worked out pretty well in the end. What the point is, is that it's only during the recording of this episode that I realised how much of Kull was in that adventure you gave us. I mean, I mean yeah. A lot of it. I knew you hadn't read it. You knew I hadn't read it. You knew I'd read Kona but I hadn't read Kull so you could use it. Thulsa Doom was the main antagonist.

He was the one overseeing the corruption of... Shadaza? And the corruption of Zamora. Zamora? Yes. So I'll tell you, I'll expand on this so people can get a perspective. I'd actually, I was doing a bit of a John Millis who wrote the original Conan the Barbarian film with Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you watch that movie, it's actually more of a Kull story. He's a slave in a gladiator. Conan never was a slave in a gladiator. The villain Thulsa Doom? That was Kull's villain.

He's up against a snake cult... Snake... God. What was that? He's up against a snake... Oh my god, I don't want to have a glass of water. Snake cult. The year of no mispronunciations. He's up against a snake cult. Again you've got the worshipers of Set, but it's a little bit more like a Kull story. And I was in the very similar inspiration Geordie, because I wanted to explore this all because I think it's such a cool concept.

The Serpent People not knowing who to trust is just fun from both a reader's perspective and a player's perspective. Oh is it fun from a player's perspective Duncan? Is it? So... So this is... Who should tell this story Duncan? Because what we're about to cover is easily, easily the biggest fuck up ever in an RPG I've ever seen in my life and it was by me. Yes so... Okay here's the love, here's the love, here's our RPG story guys. Settle down. RPG story. I've done this adventure.

The heroes were saving the city. The city had been overrun by the Serpent cult. They'd killed the king, put someone in his place, thought of doom with flying magic down from his tower and our heroes were running through the city. I think three of them at this point. We were up on numbers and... We were four I think. Four. Oh it was a good session. And they were fighting their way through and they got to the palace and they found the princess.

Now the princess they knew had been taken into the cult, but they didn't know if she was a Serpent person or not. Now we did not at this point know that Serpent people were real. That was the, that's an important piece of information. What we knew was a Serpent cult had taken over the city and that the royal family had been inducted. We were making our way from the sewers into the dungeons and who did we find there but the princess captured.

And Geordi in his genius concluded this was a Serpent person in disguise. No no no no you're being a bit unfair. Alright. Geordi can tell his version of the story. My version is he was a fool. No no no no no I'm telling it correctly. We rescued her. We're like oh my god the princess was locked in the dungeon. And because Duncan we still didn't know about the doppelgangers. So we thought there's been some sort of coup and the Serpent cult has taken over the city. So we take her with her.

We're rescuing her. We break into the palace. We go into the princess's room and the princess is there waiting for us. And at that moment I realize there are doppelgangers. And I drag the princess from the dungeons out and I'm like you're a doppelganger. You tricked us. Because for some reason I was like yeah. They replaced the princess and they put the replacement in the dungeon. I genuinely did not see how crazy this was. And then when she was like it's really me I can prove it.

I chopped off her head. And what was so beautiful about this is Geordi cut off the head, put it in a sack, carried it about for like the next session. And in the next session he killed other serpent people and when they died they turned back into serpents like in the cult story. Yet Geordi never thought to check why the one he killed earlier still looked human. No and the best thing is that I just didn't know for such a long time.

There was like a huge battle after this where I was fighting for that princess who was a snake. One of the proudest moments as a DM ever and I cannot wait now that the license has moved we are getting a new Conan the Barbarian RPG which will probably come with a coal supplement. The old one did although we never got to play it and hopefully that one will have an easier character creator because it's the biggest boundary.

Honestly it saddens me when RPGs just have tough character creators because it's like it's at the entry point. It's the guys do you want to play this? They open it up. They look at the PDF and they go no mate we're good let's stay with 5e. Great story from my biggest fuck up in an RPG that genuinely broke that character's brain. It was one of the most visceral experiences of my DMing of my RPG life. The other one that contends for that is actually one that also involves Duncan.

It was where we were playing called Cthulhu and we were trying to investigate a murder and it was just stumped. We were all just like fuck we've run out of leads we can't make any progress I don't know what to do and we were just sat almost in silence for like 5 straight minutes. And then Duncan was like maybe we should interview the victim's family and I just leapt up and was like Duncan you're a genius of course. Oh very good times.

I love playing RPGs mate it is such a great way to explore the fantasy world and have your own adventures. Even when you're not like a writer it's really nice to then have those adventures with other people and have that response. God of Cthulhu is a great game. Damn it. It sure is. Miss it now. Right back to Shadow Kingdoms. Good story. Do we need to get back to Shadow Kingdoms? I think we covered it man right? Yeah it's a good story. I really love it. It is a good story.

I highly recommend it to people who are already fans of pulp writing like Conan the Barbarian and like Elric Monibinay. I probably would recommend that if you are vaguely curious, you're a fantasy reader and you're tired of sort of the modern output and you want to dive back in the past maybe still start with something like Robert E Howard's Conan the Tower of the Elephant. Probably is still the better starting point.

And yeah Tower of the Elephant then Black Colossus then read whatever you want. But I do think if you're exploring those channels and you kind of get to the end of Robert E Howard's Conan and you've dived into Elric, Shadow Kingdoms is an excellent next place to go to. It's really good. You see the origins, you see the prototype and you see the changes and potential sacrifices that the author had to make to see his work have a degree of financial success.

And I think we really explored it here that actually there is something hidden deep in this story which expands so much on our view of both the author and his later works that I just think it's really worth experiencing. Absolutely man. Read this. Long before you read People of the Black Pool, Maneaters of Shambola, Vale of Lost Women. This is way more worth your time than any of that and the time it spends, it's 10,000 words. It's like a third of the length of Lion, Witch and a Wardrobe.

And as Shorty said, even though there are some excellent collections of this out there, it's also in the public domain in most countries and you can read it online. This is a lunch break read if you really want it to be. That's why this podcast episode is brought to you by NordVPN. You want to read something that's in the public domain in another country? Never mind, I'm kidding. We are not sponsored by them, but we would obviously love to be sponsored by someone please.

We could do with the money. Right. Thank you everyone for listening to this episode of Issues of Fantasy podcast. We are back bi-weekly every Thursday for the rest of this year. We're going to keep pace and please, could you, if you enjoyed this episode, drop us a like, a review, give us some stars. I don't know what platform you're on listening to this, but they have one of those systems. So please, if you enjoyed us...

Wherever you are, give us five stars, unless you can give us more, then give us ten. Thank you very much guys and also please do follow us on Instagram where you'll get announcements of each new episode's release. You'll also see additional posts about the other things we're reading around the podcast. So Geordie, I'm glad you enjoyed Shadow Kingdoms. My pick to kickstart the year... You said at the start of this episode you want to go new. That you don't want to just go back to the past.

You want to explore the big names. You don't want to retread your childhood. So Geordie, what have you got for me? Oh man, he fucked me already. Okay, so I did say that yes, but there was a pretty big release recently and I do feel I'm really interested to see it for the podcast. And that is, we are going to step back a little bit because I would like us to read Murtagh by Christopher Poluni, the follow up to the inheritance cycle. Okay, Geordie, you split the difference there.

That's like a retread but new, so I'll let you off on that one. Murtagh. Yes. Now, the reason why we're doing this, and I had to cover this with Duncan before this. Normally we just surprise each other on the podcast. This time I had to approach it early because I wasn't sure how many inheritance cycle books Duncan had read. And the answer to that is... Half of one? Right. So you read some of Eragon a long time ago. A long, long time ago. We're talking over 15 years.

Definitely over half my life ago. I read about half of Eragon. I wasn't a fan back then, Geordie. I wasn't a fan. That is a common sentiment. Not everyone likes Eragon. Now, astute listeners to this podcast will know and those who follow us on Instagram will know that over the past year I've been reading the inheritance cycle again and I've been enjoying it in anticipation of Murtagh's release. And I would like to read it. But of course Duncan hasn't read enough inheritance cycle books.

What is the solution? Well, fortunately we don't need one because whilst reading about like the pre-release topics I read on the publisher's website that this is the perfect place for a new reader to jump in. Also me, who has just refreshed his entire brain on the inheritance cycle, and Duncan, who read half a book 15 years ago, are both going to be reading and reviewing Murtagh and obviously we are just as prepared to read this book as one another. Oh, I hope this makes sense.

Geordie, if I have to push my way through 700 pages of absolute nonsense to me, this is going to be a challenge. Duncan, it's not 700 pages. It's much more than that. Well Geordie, it's great to be back and I can't wait for season 3 this year. It's going to be amazing. I'm looking forward to it too, man. I'll see you in two weeks time for Murtagh by Christopher Polini. See you then. Thank you everyone for listening. Goodbye. See you then.