Lord Samper's Library

  This was originally going to be a post about the REH short tale ‘The Black Stone’; well, that was the plan until I realised that I’d already posted about it, way back in 2022 . No worries, I thought to myself, ‘The Little People’ is an intriguing title, I’ll give that a go. And to be honest, it wasn’t a bad tale either; for an entry in a collection of horror stories it certainly didn’t end how I’d expected it to (and that’s not a bad thing). The only problem I had with the tale is that while it’s certainly not a ‘fragment’, a page was missing from REH’s typescript and so ‘The Little People’ has a gap in the middle where the only thing I could gather was that the narrators sister was still annoyed with him. Not a bad tale to read, maybe not one for a whole post here though. I wasn’t in the mood to be beaten though so I took a chance and decided to do something that I very rarely do, if ever. Yep, I thought I’d read me some poetry :o) It might be the poetry that I had to study at s...

  Page Count: 12 Pages ‘It turns out that if I’d actually read ‘The Haunter of the Ring’, I’d know that we’re looking at three REH adaptations in one ongoing ‘Scourge of the Serpent’ tale. I really need to read ‘The Haunter of the Ring’ now…’ That’s what I said, at the end of last year , when I realised that there was yet another gap in my ‘REH Reading’. Well; it took me a little longer than planned to get round to addressing that but last night, ‘got round to it’ I finally did ;o) I’m reading a lot of ‘Warhammer 40K’, at the moment, and while that’s not a bad thing, I do need to vary things a little bit. ‘The Haunter of the Ring’ popped into my head at just the right time. If you’re looking to read ‘The Haunter of the Ring’ yourself (and no surprises but I think you really should), you can find it in ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard’ (Del Rey) or if you like your eBooks, on Project Gutenberg . I found it in the ‘Necronomicon’ collection (which I’d been meaning to pick up an...

  Page Count: Fourteen Pages, eight lines and two words (sorry, it has been one of those weeks) I was looking for something short and sweet, to end the week on, and came across ‘Dig Me No Grave’ courtesy of Paperback Warrior’s write-up . Having read it, I can attest to it being short (all of fourteen and a bit pages in ‘The Dead Remember’ collection) but sweet? Not at all and that is meant in the best possible way :o) ‘Dig Me No Grave’ was originally published in the February 1937 of ‘Weird Tales’ and while it has appeared in other collections since then, I read it in ‘The Dead Remember (The Dark Man Omnibus: Volume 2) and also found it in my copy of ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. If you’re an e-reading type, you can grab yourself ‘Dig Me No Grave’ over at Project Gutenberg. John Kirowan is woken, in the middle of the night, by his friend John Conrad, bearer of bad news and come to beg a favour. The occultist John Grimlan has just died and Conrad asks that Kirowan att...

Both tales are taken from the collection ‘The Lure of Atlantis’, edited by Michael Wheatley. But you knew that already, the cover art was probably a bit of a giveaway ;o) Anyway… Before I get onto the short stories, have a little blurb about the collection as a whole, All about us on the stairs was some of the most exquisite statuary I have ever seen... save for a few pieces carved in the form of some hideous beast, the like of which I have never seen on earth...' The sunken continent of Atlantis has dwelt in the collective imagination of writers and artists for centuries; a bejewelled paradox bubbling with themes of irrecoverable loss and quixotic faith in its rediscovery. This new anthology collects stories from the vast, yet seldom recognised, vault of Atlantean fiction from the Golden Age of Weird Tales magazine, presented in four core sections, perfect for diving into: - Atlantis Rediscovered – in which the ruins of ancient Atlantis are found again. - Atlantis Revisited –...

Page Count: Seven Pages ‘The Dream Snake’ was first published in the February 1928 edition of ‘Weird Tales’ and is the latest stop on my occasional resolution to read more of Howard’s stories that aren’t ‘Conan’. Not that there’s anything wrong with ‘Conan’ but there are so many other things that Howard wrote, I want to try some of that :o) If you don’t have a February 1928 edition of ‘Weird Tales’, don’t worry. I found ‘The Dream Snake’ in the collection ‘The Dead Remember’ and I suspect you’ll probably find it in the ‘Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard’. If I could see my copy, I’d confirm this one way or the other. If you want to read it off your computer screen, Gutenberg has you covered and also offers a number of ways to download yourself a copy as well. There’s also a comic book adaptation somewhere but don’t ask me where, it’s been a while since I last saw it. With that all said then, lets press on shall we…? At only seven pages long (in my edition), you’d be forgiven for thi...

Page Count: 9 Pages If you’re looking to read ‘The Dead Remember’ (and if not, you really should), Project Gutenberg has a copy Here while Amazon can sort you out if you have a Kindle. If you’re looking for a physical copy, ‘The Dead Remember’ can be found in Del Rey’s ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard’ collection but I found in a collection called… You guessed it ;o) I was just coming out of finishing ‘The Nest’ and fancied a quick read while I caught my breath and decided what to read next. And it really was as simple as seeing the title, on the cover, and thinking to myself, ‘I wonder if that’s the title of one of the stories?’ It was, I read it and now I get to tell you all about it ;o) Jim Gordon killed a man and his wife, in a drunken rage, and now he is a man waiting to die. The woman’s dying words were to curse him; he would die within the week and she would be there when the time came. Jim has promised his brother that he will go out fighting, but will he be given that ...

I came across this title while reading the latest update from ‘We Learn by Writing’ , a blog that I have a lot of time for (Jim’s thoughts are always worth a read and you should follow him if you’re not following him already). I’m still trying to get a broader picture of the scope of Howard’s writing and figured that ‘The Valley of the Worm’ would be a good title to check out next. It took me a little while to track down but my decision to pick up a whole load of Robert E. Howard collections, over the last year or so, paid off. You can probably find ‘The Valley of the Worm’ in a number of places ( Project Gutenberg for one ) but I finally found it in ‘Skullcrusher: Selected Weird Fiction Volume 1’. And with that, lets have a little chat about it, shall we? I will tell you of Niord and the Worm. You have heard the tale before in many guises wherein the hero was named Tyr, or Perseus, or Siegfried, or Beowulf, or Saint George. But it was Niord who met the loathly demoniac thing that craw...

Page Count: Ten and a bit pages. Work tried to swamp me yesterday… I say ‘tried’, sometimes the best thing you can do when you’re in danger of being overwhelmed is to take a step back and say, ‘nope, there’s nothing here that can’t wait until tomorrow’. Or in my case, Monday ;o) So that’s why you didn’t hear from me yesterday. I did make time for a little reading though; I’m still trying to read stuff by Robert E. Howard that isn’t ‘Conan’ (there are some big gaps in my ‘Conan’ reading but that’s one for another time) and some poring over my bookshelves led me to ‘The Thing On The Roof’. ‘The Thing On The Roof’ was originally published in ‘Weird Tales’ back in February 1932. I found it in my copy of ‘The Dark Man Omnibus Volume 2’ but it’s also in ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard’ (amongst other collections, I’m sure). If you’re more about e-reading, there is a copy available on Project Gutenberg . With all that said then, lets have a little chat about ‘The Thing On The Roof’. V...

After another intense week, I decided to give myself the day off... So of course I ended up going book shopping ;o) More on that tomorrow. For now though, I thought I'd allow myself another recycled post from way back when ( Sunday, 21st July 2013 to be precise) and yep, it's another Robert E. Howard short story. I'm bringing them back here so they don't get lost on a old, dead blog... ;o) Apparently, I found 'The Garden of Fear' in a copy of 'Conan's Brethren', I've got no idea if I still have it... I'm going to have to have a look for it. While I do that... It really shouldn't do but it still always surprises me just how much Robert E. Howard wrote in his relatively short life. Everyone here should know by now that Howard was about far more than Conan, Solomon Kane and even Kull. I just didn't realise that there were a whole load of short stories completely unconnected to any of his main characters; at least until I was looking at ...

While I try and get work sorted out, before my boss returns from holiday (tomorrow...), and while I'm trying to get my head round a possible 'Conan' re-read (and get stuck into 'Sharpe's Tiger', that's looking really good); I thought I'd enlist the help of 'past me' once more, just so this place doesn't get too empty. Past me has come up with the goods again :o) I'm not sure if I still have my copy of 'The Gods of Bel-Sagoth' (a number of book have left my possession since the original post) but I thought the post was still worth recycling here. You can find that original post over Here , I've tweaked this one just a little bit - bits of introduction that worked back then don't work so well now. Here goes... I was mooching through my bookshelves and realised that I hadn’t got round to reading anything from ‘The Gods of Bal-Sagoth’ (one of the books that I picked up at Nine Worlds). Howard’s writing output always astounds m...