HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard

Reading has been a huge part of my life. And quite frankly still is. Long before I developed an interest in music, I was reading.

Don’t get me wrong. I very much enjoy music. But I was a reader long before I was a music aficionado.

When I was a kid I frequently got to spend the whole day at my grandparents’s place. My grandmother used to insist that my brother and I take a nap in the afternoon. I suppose she just wanted us out of her hair for an hour or two.

I’ve never been a napper, and I used that “quiet time” to read. I’d rummage around in my uncle’s books and find something to occupy my time. Some of the books, maybe most of them, weren’t age appropriate. But they were there and nobody said I couldn’t read them.

One of the books I treasured was Groff Conklin’s Omnibus of Science Fiction. The book was published in 1952, the year I was born, and has some absolutely fabulous stories within its covers. And it was in the Omnibus where I discovered HP Lovecraft, through his story “The Color Out Of Space”; an amazing tale of sci-fi horror.

Years later, I picked up the Beagle Books reprinting of the Arkham edition of HPL’s works and discovered HPL in full.

My introduction to Robert E Howard occurred somewhat after my purchase of the Beagle HPL paperbacks in the early 1970s.

A friend of mine at the time mentioned that he thought one of the scariest stories ever written was Howard’s “Pigeons from Hell”.

Intrigued, I went out and bought the Lancer paperback The Dark Man and Others, which contains “Pigeons from Hell” and 14 other fantastic journeys into the weird.

I fell in love with Howard. “Pigeons from Hell” is not only an excellent example of Southern Gothic, it is indeed one of the spookiest stories I’ve ever read.

There is an ongoing debate as to which of the two is the real master of weird fiction. In the circles that I traveled in, Lovecraft was acknowledged as the master. However, being the iconoclast that I am, I held out for REH. My argument was that at their very best the two were equal.

However, of the two, I argued that REH was consistently better than HPL. The overall quality of Howard’s weird fiction is higher than that of Lovecraft.

I realize my position is a minority view. And I think the debate ultimately boils down to one of taste.

When Lovecraft was on top of his game, he was the master of slowburn, atmospheric weird fiction. And there is none finer.

There’s nothing slowburn about Howard. He was the quintessential man of action. His finest weird tales are replete with action.

There’s also the differences in the main characters of the two writers. Lovecraft’s narrators often exist on the edge of sanity. They are not known for their physical prowess, and are often bookish intellectuals. Even their names tend to be unknown, or little mentioned.

Howard, on the other hand, wrote about vibrant characters. Characters that were full of life. Characters, even the women, that were physically and emotionally strong. King Kull, Conan, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Red Sonja. Perhaps this was the case because Howard wrote in series, or at least conceptualized his heroes and heroines as series characters. Lovecraft did not. His main characters for the most part make sole appearances, with the implication that they will not survive. And they don’t. We usually never see them again.

In some ways, my Pierce Mostyn series tips the hat to both of these giants of weird fiction. There is the slowburn, but there is also action. Pierce Mostyn is something of a fusion of HPL and REH. And in that perhaps he’s all CWH.

I owe a lot to HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard. The two giants of weird fiction. Both have influenced my approach to the genre, and how I think it should be written. And if Pierce Mostyn comes across to readers as a fusion of those two giants, I will be very satisfied.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!