Post originally by Milkywaster at 2004-07-09 04:11:59
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I kind of remember him from a comic
book some twenty years ago. I guess
he is Conanīs firstborn son with queen
Zenobia. Quite a Conan lookalike in
the comics, maybe thatīs what the
reviewer meant by saying Conan II. But
then again that was non-canon, and
he seems to hate that.
Post originally by camazotz at 2004-07-09 04:20:08
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I've got a complete collection of Conan books, Howard and non, and I have a relatively complete collection of all Lovecraft pastiche (plus all Loveceraft, of course).
I'm always amazed at how inclusive of pastiche the readers of Lovecraft are, but how staunchly oppositional some people are to Conan/Howard pastiche. Granted, some of the pastiche is just plain bad (I would suggest my worst Conan reading experiences stem from Roland Green, for example), but I don't recall Jordan being all that bad (though it was many years ago that I read his stuff). For that matter, I've always appreciated the fact that if Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter, and others had not saw fit to keep the Hyborian world and alive, who knows if it would be anything more than an obscure memory today (ala Talbot Mundy, Karl Edward Wagner, or Lin Carter's other works to name some examples).
I've got Road of Kings, and I agree that it's odd where some pastiche sources will be used but others will not be. My suspicion is that, once again, the participating authors are reflecting a bias for one pastiche author over another in such matters....
But I think dismissing nearly a century of inspired and derived work from the Howard original is doing the greater body of Conan as a phenomenon a disservice; but I think your idea of a "canon alert" sidebar would be an excellent solution. It seemed like that was at least partially achieved in some of the book's material where they discuss contradictory issues regarding original Howard tales and de Camp rewrites.
Post originally by BobProbst at 2004-07-09 05:27:06
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I know the author and helped edit some sections of the book. He was very careful to note in his manuscript where pastiche was used as well as included a sizable bibleography and several sidebars discussing where pastiches disagreed and his decision to use one over another.
Unfortunately, space constraints required that Mongoose remove a great deal of this material (I understand that they even were forced to reduce font sizes beyond their normal limits)
Most importantly, several nations and locations were only given a brief mention by REH. Were this book intended to be a scholarly document of REH's Conan this would have been sufficient, but gamers need the meat that the reviewer was so ready to praise. That required going outside the canon and drawing from other sources that fans might recognize.
Vincent is a great enthusiast of anything Howard and would surely be happy to help likeminded people sort through the canon vs pastiche issue. You can normally get answers to your questions by posting at the Mongoose forums:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8
Post originally by Jason Vey at 2004-07-09 07:42:46
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It was pointed out to me that my attitudes towards pastiche in this review come off as much harsher than they actually are. I'm not one of the diehards who is opposed entirely to pastiche. I like Carter, de Camp, and Nyberg's stuff. I do think that Jordan is a hack who never should've been given license to write Conan stories. Conan is far more 3-dimensional than the "Superman with a sword" that Jordan makes him out to be, and far more fallible.
So let me just clarify that I'm not entirely against the use of pastiche, and that I understood the need for it to fill the book. Personally, I'd have liked to have seen "canon alert" type notices separating pastiche from Howardian creations. But that's just me, and I do feel the book is a must-own for Conan fans of all types.
Post originally by Jason Vey at 2004-07-09 07:44:42
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Again, my views on pastiche come off more harshly in the review than I intended them to. I personally liked de Camp, Carter, and Nyberg's pastiche work.
And Conn's full name is indeed Conan the second. Conn is a nickname.
Milkywaster wrote:
-------------------------------
I kind of remember him from a comic
book some twenty years ago. I guess
he is Conanīs firstborn son with queen
Zenobia. Quite a Conan lookalike in
the comics, maybe thatīs what the
reviewer meant by saying Conan II. But
then again that was non-canon, and
he seems to hate that.
Post originally by Milkywaster at 2004-07-09 08:52:41
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I believe that "pastiche" is the main reason for the success of Conan D20.
Most of the people playing the game (and buying the book) have never even known Howardīs name and much less read any of Howardīs works. They have come in contact with the Hyborian age mostly through the comics or Schwarzenegger Conan.
I have no doubt that without the huge amount of non-howardesque material that has been available in the last decades, the Conan world would today be just an obscure niche in antique pulp sword & sorcery and certainly there would be no Moongoose Conan RPG.
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