Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, and Hawks

This year marks a number of anniversaries in Robert E. Howard fandom:  25 years of Howard Days in Cross Plains, 50 years since the first publication of Glenn Lord's The Howard Collector, 75 years of Robert E. Howard's Legacy, and 100 years since the founding of Cross Plains.  In addition to these, this year is the 40th anniversary of Marvel Comics bringing Conan to comics and the 45th year since the Lancer publication of Conan the Adventurer.  It's the last that's of interest to us in this post. 

Or to be more precise, it's the stories that L. Sprague de Camp either finished or rewrote that we're going to take a look at.  Specifically, "Hawks Over Shem", which was a rewrite of an unsold historical adventure entitled "Hawks Over Egypt".  Those of you who are familiar with the Lancer (later Ace) editions might be saying, "Wait a minute, that story is in Conan the Freebooter", and you'd be correct.

I was reading "Hawks Over Egypt", remembered it was one of the stories de Camp had rewritten, and thought a post about the changes he'd made might be of interest to some of you, especially since this was the 45th anniversary of the Lancer editions.

So let's take a look at what de Camp changed.  As you might suspect, there will be spoilers.

Blogging Kull: The Screaming Skull of Silence

Kull:  Exile of Atlantis
Robert E. Howard
Del Rey
trade paperback, $17.00, 317 p.

This is the first of four extremely short stories in the annals of Kull, or at least first in the order of arrangement in this volume.  This one is different from any of the Kull stories that have come before it. It was submitted to Weird Tales, but Farnsworth Wright obviously didn't care for it since it wasn't published until 1967 in the Lancer Books volume King Kull.

The tale opens with Kull listening to Brule, his chancellor Tu, Ka-nu the Pictish ambassador, and the slave and scholar Kathulos discussing philosophy (nothing new there).  Kathulos is saying that what we perceive as reality is an illusion.  To make his point, he gives an example of sound and silence, saying that sound is the absence of silence, while silence is the absence of sound.  Kathulos mentions that Raama, the greatest sorcerer who ever lived, thousands of years ago locked a primordial silence in a castle in order to save the universe.