7 thoughts on “Episode 42 – Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, & Lin Carter’s “Conan the Wanderer” with special guest Jon from the Cromcast”

  1. Great episode!

    It will be interesting to hear Jeff’s take on clerics in Conan the Conqueror/The Hour of the Dragon.

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  3. I was surprised how much time you fellas spent discussing ideas you found distasteful in 2019. Of course we’ve developed as a society but I’m not interested in that podcast.
    Furthermore, I’m not sure how much of this Howard believed personally, but upon my first reading, I was reminded that this was “pulp” when he wrote it. I mean, the target audience were a group of lower class, white men who wanted to read about a “barbarian” who took what he wanted and murdered anybody who got in his way. Pretty typical power fantasy stuff and hardly Faulkner or Fitzgerald.
    On a personal note, I’ve just discovered your podcast and (despite this little hiccup) think it’s cool as F@ck.

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    1. Thanks for the comment! Whenever out-dated and potentially offensive depictions of race or gender appear in the text, we usually bring it up. Sometimes it’s a small portion of the episode, sometimes it’s a larger one. It usually depends on how much the guest has to say or how “bad” the depictions are. But since we live in 2019 and Hoi and I don’t view black people as savages and subhumans, we feel its worth discussing it when the text describes them that way. Like we said in episode 0, there’s a lot of racism and misogyny in the Appendix N and we will talk about it. Whether Howard was a product of his time or a tried-as-true racist, I personally can’t say. But I know I love reading Conan stories! Lovecraft is definitely a racist and even a racist for his time. But I also still love reading Lovecraft. And since that’s a potentially problematic stance for a white person like me to take, I think it’s always worth discussing.

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