Sword and sorcery (S&S) or heroic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. Elements of romance, magic, and the supernatural are also often present. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters. The genre originated from the early-1930s works of Robert E. Howard. The term "sword and sorcery" was coined by Fritz Leiber in the 6 April 1961 issue of the fantasy fanzine Ancalagon, to describe Howard and the stories that were influenced by his works. In parallel with "sword and sorcery", the term "heroic fantasy" is used, although it is a more loosely defined genre.
Conan of Cimmeria is a collection of eight fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp, and Lin Carter and featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories were originally published in various fantasy magazines. Lancer Books first published the paperback collection in 1969, and reprinted the book in 1970, 1972, and 1973. After Lancer's bankruptcy, Ace Books took over publication. Ace published its first edition in May 1977 and reprinted it in August 1977, 1979, 1980, 1982 (twice), 1984, 1985, 1990, and 1993. Sphere Books published the first British edition in 1974 and reprinted that edition in 1976 and 1987. The book has also been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Italian. It was gathered together with Conan and Conan the Freebooter into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles.
Conan the Warrior is a 1967 collection of three fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The collection is introduced and edited by L. Sprague de Camp. The stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers, and has also been translated into Japanese, German, French, Polish, Spanish, Swedish and Italian.
Conan the Adventurer is a 1966 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writers Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers, and has also been translated into German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Dutch. It was later gathered together with Conan the Wanderer and Conan the Buccaneer into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990).
Conan the Freebooter is a 1968 collection of five fantasy short stories by American writers Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times by various publishers, and has also been translated into German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Italian, and Japanese. It was later gathered together with Conan and Conan of Cimmeria into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles (1989).
Conan is a 1967 collection of seven fantasy short stories and associated pieces written by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories were originally published in various pulp magazines. The book was first published in paperback by Lancer Books in 1967, and was reprinted in 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972 (twice) and 1973. After the bankruptcy of Lancer, publication was taken over by Ace Books. Its first edition appeared in May 1977, and was reprinted in 1979, 1982 (twice), 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1990. The first British edition was issued by Sphere Books in 1974, and was reprinted in 1977. The book has also been translated into German, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Dutch. It was gathered together with Conan of Cimmeria and Conan the Freebooter into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles.
Conan the Usurper is a 1967 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers, and has also been translated into German, Spanish, Italian, Swedish and Dutch.
Conan the Wanderer is a 1968 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writers Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Most of the stories were originally published in various fantasy magazines. The book has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers, and has also been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Italian. It was later gathered together with Conan the Adventurer and Conan the Buccaneer into the omnibus collection The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990).
Conan the Swordsman is a collection of seven fantasy short stories and associated pieces by writers L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter and Björn Nyberg featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Bantam Books in August 1978, and reprinted in 1981. Later paperback editions were issued by Ace Books. The first hardcover edition was published by Tor Books in December 2002. The first British edition was issued by Sphere Books in 1978. The book has also been translated into Italian and French. It was later gathered together with Conan the Liberator and Conan and the Spider God into the omnibus collection Sagas of Conan.
Tales of Conan is a 1955 collection of four fantasy short stories by American writers Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The tales as originally written by Howard were adventure yarns mostly set in the Middle Ages; they were rewritten as Conan stories by de Camp, who also added the fantastic element. Three of the stories also appeared in the fantasy magazine Fantastic Universe, two of them before publication of the collection and the other one after. The book has also been translated into Japanese. The collection never saw publication in paperback; instead, its component stories were split up and distributed among other "Conan" collections. "The Flame Knife" was later also published as an independent paperback.
The Flame Knife is a 1955 fantasy novella by American writers Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was revised by de Camp from Howard's original story, a then-unpublished oriental tale featuring Francis X. Gordon titled "Three-Bladed Doom". De Camp changed the names of the characters, added the fantastic element, and recast the setting into Howard's Hyborian Age. The story was first published in the hardbound collection Tales of Conan, and subsequently appeared in the paperback collection Conan the Wanderer, as part of which it has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian. It was published by itself in paperback book form by Ace Books in 1981, in an edition profusely illustrated by Esteban Maroto.
The Conan Chronicles is a 1989 omnibus collection of three fantasy collections by American writers Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring Howard's seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian, published by Sphere Books. The component collections had originally been published by Lancer Books in 1967, 1968 and 1969, and later reissued by Ace Books. The omnibus collection was followed by The Conan Chronicles 2.
The Blade of Conan is a 1979 collection of essays edited by L. Sprague de Camp, published in paperback by Ace Books. The material was originally published as articles in George H. Scithers' fanzine Amra. The book is a companion to Ace's later volume of material from Amra, The Spell of Conan (1980). Most of the material in the two volumes, together with some additional material, was reprinted from three previous books issued in hardcover by Mirage Press; de Camp's collection The Conan Reader (1968), and the de Camp and Scithers-edited anthologies The Conan Swordbook (1969). and The Conan Grimoire (1972).
The Conan books are sword and sorcery fantasies featuring the character of Conan the Cimmerian originally created by Robert E. Howard. Written by numerous authors and issued by numerous publishers, they include both novels and short stories, the latter assembled in various combinations over the years by the several publishers. The character has proven durably popular, resulting in Conan stories being produced after Howard's death by such later writers as Poul Anderson, Leonard Carpenter, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Roland J. Green, John C. Hocking, Robert Jordan, Sean A. Moore, Björn Nyberg, Andrew J. Offutt, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, Harry Turtledove, and Karl Edward Wagner. Some of these writers finished incomplete Conan manuscripts by Howard, or rewrote Howard stories which originally featured different characters. Most post-Howard Conan stories, however, are completely original works. In total, more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories featuring the Conan character have been written by authors other than Howard. This article describes and discusses notable book editions of the Conan stories.
The Blood-Stained God is a 1955 fantasy novella by American writer Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was revised by de Camp from Howard's original story, an unpublished non-fantasy oriental tale that featured Kirby O'Donnell titled "The Curse of the Crimson God". De Camp changed the names of the characters, added the sorcery elements, and recast the setting into Howard's Hyborian Age. The story was first published in the hardbound collection Tales of Conan, and subsequently appeared in the paperback collection Conan of Cimmeria, as part of which it has been translated into German, Japanese, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian. The stories elements were used on the 1976 Peter Pan Records audio drama record: Conan the Barbarian, entitled The Jewel of the Ages.
Bibliography of science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction and nonfiction writer L. Sprague de Camp:
"The Road of the Eagles" is a 1955 fantasy novelette by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, based on a story by Robert E. Howard by the same name. Usually credited to Howard and de Camp, it features Conan the Barbarian.
Robert E. Howard's legacy extended after his death in 1936. Howard's most famous character, Conan the Barbarian, has a pop-culture imprint that has been compared to such icons as Tarzan of the Apes, Count Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and James Bond. Howard's critical reputation suffered at first but over the decades works of Howard scholarship have been published. The first professionally published example of this was L. Sprague de Camp's Dark Valley Destiny (1983) which was followed by other works, including Don Herron's The Dark Barbarian (1984) and Mark Finn's Blood & Thunder (2006). Also in 2006, a charity, Robert E. Howard Foundation, was created to promote further scholarship.
"Black Sphinx of Nebthu" is a fantasy short story by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, featuring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. It was first published in the July 1973 issue of the magazine Fantastic, and was first appeared in book form by Ace Books in the paperback collection Conan of Aquilonia in May 1977, which was reprinted several times through 1994. The first British edition was published by Sphere Books in October 1978.
Conan, Lord of the Black River is a fantasy novel by American writer Leonard Carpenter, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in paperback by Tor Books in April 1996.
