Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. is a fantasy and science fiction small press publisher in New Hampshire that was founded in 1964. It is notable for publishing fantasy and horror novels with lavish illustrations, most notably Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and the King/Peter Straub novel The Talisman.
"The Tower of the Elephant" is one of the original short stories starring the fictional sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian, written by American author Robert E. Howard. Set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age, it concerns Conan infiltrating a perilous tower to steal a fabled gem from an evil sorcerer named Yara. Its unique insights into the Hyborian world and atypical science fiction elements have led the story to be considered a classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales.
The Hour of the Dragon, also known as Conan the Conqueror, is a fantasy novel by American writer Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Cimmerian. It was one of the last Conan stories published before Howard's suicide, although not the last to be written. The novel was first published in serial form in the December 1935 through April 1936 issues of the pulp magazine Weird Tales. The first book edition was published by Gnome Press in hardcover in 1950. The Gnome Press edition retitled the story Conan the Conqueror, a title retained by all subsequent editions until 1977, when the original title was restored in an edition issued published by Berkley/Putnam in 1977. The Berkley edition also reverted the text to that of its original Weird Tales publication, discarding later edits. Later editions have generally followed Berkley and published under the original title.
Gnome Press was an American small-press publishing company primarily known for publishing many science fiction classics. Gnome was one of the most eminent of the fan publishers of SF, producing 86 titles in its lifespan — many considered classic works of SF and Fantasy today. Gnome was important in the transitional period between Genre SF as a magazine phenomenon and its arrival in mass-market book publishing, but proved too underfunded to make the leap from fan-based publishing to the professional level. The company existed for just over a decade, ultimately failing due to inability to compete with major publishers who also started to publish science fiction. In its heyday, Gnome published many of the major SF authors, and in some cases, as with Robert E. Howard's Conan series and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, was responsible for the manner in which their stories were collected into book form.
The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian is the first of a three-volume set collecting the Conan stories by author Robert E. Howard. It was originally published in 2002, first in the United Kingdom by Wandering Star Books under the title Conan of Cimmeria: Volume One (1932–1933) and the following year in the United States by Ballantine/Del Rey under the present title. The Science Fiction Book Club reprinted the complete set in hardcover; the set presents the original, unedited versions of Howard's Conan tales. This volume includes thirteen short stories as well as miscellanea for Howard fans and enthusiasts and is illustrated by comic book artist Mark Schultz.
Tower of Shadows is a horror/fantasy anthology comic book published by the American company Marvel Comics under this and a subsequent name from 1969 to 1975. It featured work by writer-artists Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Johnny Craig, and Wally Wood, writer-editor Stan Lee, and artists John Buscema, Gene Colan, Tom Sutton, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Bernie Wrightson.
The Return of Conan is a 1957 fantasy novel written by Björn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp, featuring Robert E. Howard's sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. It was first published in hardcover by Gnome Press and in paperback by Lancer Books as part of the collection Conan the Avenger in 1968; in this form it has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers. It has also been translated into Japanese, German and Spanish.
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.
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 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 Coming of Conan is a collection of eight fantasy short stories by American writer Robert E. Howard, featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Kull and Conan the Barbarian, together with the first part of his pseudo-history of the "Hyborian Age" in which the Conan tales were set. It was first published in hardcover in the United States by Gnome Press in 1953 and by Boardman Books in the United Kingdom in 1954. The stories originally appeared in the 1930s in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. The collection never saw publication in paperback; instead, its component stories were split and distributed among other "Kull" and "Conan" collections.
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.
Bibliography of science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction and nonfiction writer L. Sprague de Camp:
Queen of the Black Coast is a 1978 collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1978 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as volume VII of their deluxe Conan set. The title story originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. "The Vale of Lost Women" first appeared in The Magazine of Horror.
Jewels of Gwahlur is a 1979 collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1979 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as volume VIII of their deluxe Conan set. The title story originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. "The Snout in the Dark" is the original fragment of a story that Howard never completed. It first appeared, completed by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, in the collection Conan of Cimmeria.
The Pool of the Black One is a collection of two fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 1986 by Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc. as volume X of their deluxe Conan set. The title story originally appeared in the magazine Weird Tales. "Drums of Tombalku" is the original fragment of a story that Howard never completed. It first appeared, completed by L. Sprague de Camp, in the collection Conan the Adventurer.
The Conan Chronicles: Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 2000 by Gollancz as eighth volume of their Fantasy Masterworks series. The book, edited by Stephen Jones, presents the stories in their internal chronological order. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines The Phantagraph, Weird Tales, Super-Science Fiction, Magazine of Horror and Fantasy Fiction.
The Complete Chronicles of Conan: Centenary Edition is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. The book was published in 2006 by Gollancz and is an omnibus of their earlier collections The Conan Chronicles, Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle and The Conan Chronicles, Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon, though the stories are rearranged. The collection is edited by Stephen Jones and was issued to celebrate the centenary of Howard's birth. Most of the stories originally appeared in the magazines The Phantagraph, Weird Tales, Super-Science Fiction, Magazine of Horror, Fantasy Fiction, Fantasy Magazine and The Howard Collector.
Conan the Barbarian is a collection of six fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his seminal sword and sorcery hero of the same name, first published in paperback by Del Rey/Ballantine Books in July 2011 as a tie-in with the movie of the same title. The stories originally appeared in the 1930s in the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. An earlier collection with the same title but different contents was issued in hardcover by Gnome Press in 1955.
Between 1952 and 1954, John Raymond published four digest-size science fiction and fantasy magazines. Raymond was an American publisher of men's magazines who knew little about science fiction, but the field's rapid growth and a distributor's recommendation prompted him to pursue the genre. Raymond consulted and then hired Lester del Rey to edit the first magazine, Space Science Fiction, which appeared in May 1952. Following a second distributor's suggestion that year, Raymond launched Science Fiction Adventures, which del Rey again edited, but under an alias. In 1953, Raymond gave del Rey two more magazines to edit: Rocket Stories, which targeted a younger audience, and Fantasy Magazine, which published fantasy rather than science fiction.
