L. Sprague de Camp's take on Conan

[protector2814]

I've been rereading a lot of my old Conan paperbacks of late & I don't share the same opinion as many of the R.E.H.' purists. de Camp on his own, or when teamed wit Lin Carter or Bjorn Nyberg, wrote some fantastic Conan tales. I just finished de Camp's short story Legions of the Dead, which chronologically, is Conan's 2nd tale, & it was just fantastic. It ends w/ Conan being captured by Aiser warriors & will conclude w/ The Thing In The Crypt (which was semi-used in the 1st Conan movie).

de Camp's take is mixed generously in many of the old Conan' Bantam paperbacks along w/ the original Howard tales & the flow, imo, is never broken. If anything, I find the de Camp/Carter/Nyberg additions to really help in the telling of Conan's life from 15 to 75.

What do my fellow Conan readers think of these non-Howard fillers?

[Babytoxie]

It's my preferred version, for sure. My first exposure to Conan in prose form was the 12-book series from Ace, with the material from Howard, et al. I, too, feel that it all works very well together. I have no problem with their contributions and revising of Howard's non-Conan stories to fit the character. Many of Howard's characters are so similar anyway, so why not? An author can only have so many protagonists with big muscles, black hair, and blue eyes, before the stories all blend together.

The first two Bantam books are good , as well. The third Bantam book , Road of Kings by Karl Edward Wagner, was where I lost interest. The ending was utter nonsense.

I tried some of the Tor novels in the '80s - '90s and didn't like them at all.