Conan and friends

Reading Jeff's Game Blog recently, I came across this post (click here) which quotes the prologue of Robert E Howard's Conan stories (at least, as intoduced in the print run that had intoduction by L. Sprauge-de Camp). It evoked a lot of old stuff in me, resonated within. Check the comments on the post for what I thought, especially in response to the lit-crit of another commenter.

The old pulp genre adventures, be they by Lovecraft (horror), Doc Smith (sci-fi) or Conan (swords and sorcery), certainly have a special place in my reading history. They brought about a love of language for its sonorous effect, of tight but wild plot lines, of mystery and adventure as an escape to something rather than a retreat from.

Waylander and Druss, heroes of the worlds of David Gemmel, seem to evoke the same sorts of imaginistic adventurism amongst his fans. Trouble is, too much crossover to the 'realist' genre and the novels could transpose themselves into post 9/11 gore, too little and the books get put down by the TV generation. It's a fine balance that isn't caught by too many authors I've been reading recently.

PS: I'm a little chuffed to have turned up on Blogroll of Jerusalem Games, Yehuda is a pretty keen blogger. As he's probably into counting these things, would be nice if a little traffic went from this site to his.