The Black Stranger: And Other American Tales (The Works of Robert E. Howard Series)

By Robert E. Howard

Book Overview

Robert E. Howard is celebrated as the founding father of sword-and-sorcery, the creator of Conan of Cimmeria and Kull of Atlantis. The Black Stranger and Other American Tales demonstrates that in some of his most powerful heroic fantasy and horror stories, he also explored a New World older and more haunted than that which we've seen in textbooks or museum exhibits. In Howard's Gothic America, dominion goes hand in hand with damnation and the present never ceases to writhe in the grip of the past. "The Black Stranger" spearheads the collection. Located at the extreme edge of Hyborian geography and human ruthlessness, this Conan novella has seldom been available until now. All of the Cimmerian's lethal skills may not be enough inside a stockade that shelters a self-exiled, pirate-plagued count, besieged from without and bedeviled from within. Against the backdrop of a demonically hostile dreadwood, Howard recreates the worst nightmares of the earliest European invaders of North America. In the tales that follow, Howard unearths sinister civilizations that have forgotten the mysteries of their origins on American soil tens of thousands of years ago. That soil is a dark and bloody ground, beneath which the monstrous heirs of ancient wrongs and unsuspected wars wait. A Comanche champion and a lone conquistador stumble upon empires carved out of the primordial Southwest by necromancers. Hot hate given cold flesh lurches on zuvembie legs in "Pigeons from Hell" and lurks in the shuddersome swamps of the Deep South in "Black Canaan." These stories, here refurbished with authoritative, unexpurgated texts, have transcended the Thirties pulps in which they first saw print. With their unflinching focus on original American sin and even more original sinners, some are sure to take their place next to dark classics like "Young Goodman Brown," "Benito Cereno," and "A Rose for Emily."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803273533
• ISBN13: 9780803273535
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

a very good introduction to re howard

pidgeons from hell is the best includes a conan story a good introduction to RE Howard

The Black Stranger & Other American Tales by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard's Pigeons From Hell was the scariest story I've ever read. Scarier than Poe and Hitchcock is putting it mildly! Per Chris Ward of Wizard Comic Magazine Pigeons From Hell was on a television show called Thriller narrated by Boris Karloff. The story is pure terror! Anytime I here a whistle now I get goosebumps and am ready to run like Hell! A must read is "Blood & Thunder - The Life & Art of Robert E. Howard" by Mark Finn. Below are comments from John Nevins and I agree totally! QUOTE With enthusiasm, skill, and expertise Mark Finn has written the new and definitive biography of Robert E. Howard. Finn not only corrects a number of errors previous biographies and biographers made about Howard and his writings, Finn also describes, with sensitivity and nuance, Howard's environment and upbringing and the context in which Howard's work should be placed. Finn neither places Howard on a pedestal nor demeans him, but instead gives Howard the credit he deserves. UNQUOTE My favorite stories that Robert Howard wrote are Pidgeons From Hell, Beyond The Black River, and Red Nails. There are so many great ones but these really stand out as the very best. Tell five other people about Robert E. Howard and enjoy his stories. There's a DVD called The Whole Wide World 1996 Sony Pictures that is about Robert E. Howard and Novelyn Price his girlfriend. Renee Zellweger stars as Novelyn and Vincent D'Onofrio as Robert. Blockbuster carries it. Enjoy Robert Howard Fans! Check out the REH Foundation and Forum!

Superb Howard Collection

In my opinion, this anthology captures the spirit of the American experience that might not seem immediately apparent in any one of Howard's works. Thanks to this collection I now see the literary parallels between Howard and other American greats such as Hawthorne, Poe, Twain, and London. Kudos to Bison for publishing this in paperback.

more thrilling stories by a literary icon

Kudos go to Bison Books for collecting several of Robert E Howard's lesser known works into some well-put-together volumes. This one focuses on Howard's stories set in America (though the title story takes place in prehistoric Europe, more on that later). Generally, the stories here are not Westerns, although Nekht Semerkeht and a few others do have Western settings. Most have supernatural occurrences, but Black Vulmea's Vengeance only hints at the supernatural without ever actually introducing that element into the story--to great effect really. Although all the stories are strong, the longest seem to be the best: Marchers of Valhalla, The Gods of Bal Sagoth, The Valley of the Lost, Black Canaan, and Pigeons from Hell. Howard clearly had a sense of wonder and awe about his native country and infused with that a sense of malevolent foreboding that can be spine-tingling at times, particularly in the a-traditional vampire story The Horror from the Mound. Finally to return to the title story, at the time he wrote this, Howard was looking more at his home country for material, so he decided to put his most famous character into a fictional milieu resembling colonial America. The Black Stranger is one of the most powerful Conan stories and serves well to indicate Howard was planning to become a local color writer before his death. It is unfortunate he did not live to continue this trend. As with anything he wrote, Howard's writing is clear and fast-paced and opens broad vistas to the imagination. It's too bad Howard didn't live long enough to write more stories, for the sampling we have here only serves to whet out appetite for more. For all who appreciate good storytelling, these stories are sure to satisfy.

Table of Contents

Since the TOC isn't available from the publisher, I thought I'd make it available here. Parenthetical comments are mine. Introduction The Black Stranger (not L. Sprague deCamp's version) Marchers of Valhalla The Gods of Bal-Sagoth Nekht Semerkeht (combined drafts & synopsis; not Andrew Offutt's version) Black Vulmea's Vengeance The Strange Case of Josiah Wilbarger The Valley of the Lost Kelly the Conjure-Man Black Canaan Pigeons from Hell Old Garfield's Heart The Horror from the Mound The Thunder-Rider "The Classic Tale of the Southwest" (excerpts from letters) The Grim Land (poem) Source Acknowledgments