Tomorrow (june 18) Titan Books will finally be releaseing “Conan: City of the Dead” which we’ve been waiting for almost two years now. In the shadow of the new great comic titles that were coming when Titan Books and Titan Comics were rebooting Conan they also set out to release new pastiche novels, starting with “Conan – Blood of the Serpent” and later re-releasing L- Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter’s novelization of the classic Arnold movie. At last we get our hands on City of the Dead which is also a re-release of an old pastiche called Conan and the Emerald Lotus, but also contains a brand new (sort of) follow up novel by the same author called Conan and the Living Plague. The cool thing about this is that author John C. Hocking actually wrote this way back in the days but it never got released, and both of these novels have great stories behind them that we’re gonna touch a little upon in this article.
Pastiche novels hasn’t always gotten recieved very well within the Conan community, some hardcore fans really think that the only one who should write the legendary Cimmerian is none other than Robert E. Howard. This I can understand but come on, he’s not around anymore and there are other writers who can do Conan justices as well, but with that said I do understand and feel that nobody can ever reach the levels that Howard did for his own character. Roy Thomas and Jim Zub are two writers who can give Howard a good run for his money and they know and respect the character of Conan very well, but still there are people out there who really hate the guts out of these guys. Well at least for Zub, I’ve never heard anyone complain about Thomas. And Mr Zub might actually read this so I’m just gonna state that I’m on the side who enjoys Zub’s work and thinks he got Conan right just as Roy Thomas did. But enough about this..
John C. Hocking.. who is this schmuck I’ve never heard of? Well it turns out I don’t need to know about his other works because he too seems to have a pretty good grasp on who Conan is and are a great admirer of Howards writings. In an interview with Conan the Barbarian official Youtube page he talks for an hour about this and the story behind The Emerald Lotus and The Living Plague and if you haven’t watched it I highly recommend you do. You can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lG_aPm9h4
He talks about the story behind both of these books and it’s just so interesting and fun to hear. It basically started out as “fan fiction” which took him about 2 years to complete but all a work of passion I tell ye. Once he tried to submit it he got a letter basically saying no, that they get fan fiction all the time and that they never publish it but since he had finish a whole novel and it took 2 years to complete they would have a look at it. Days later he got a new letter saying they wanted it. Once the rest of history got done John got fired up and completed Living Plague and had planned out 6 more novels (just think if we could ever get those!), but when he was done the rights to Conan were sold to someone else who didn’t want to do pastiche novels.
I think John said that he almost got halway through a third book when he decided to scrap it and give up on it, feeling that he wasted his time on something that was never going to be read by anyone. Years later when Titan knocked on his door he simply didn’t knew if he still had The Living Plague but eventuall found it in his basement. So it’s simply been forgotten for about 30 years in a dusty old basement and in 2024 we can finally enjoy it- now that’s a legendary tale fit for Conan and fans!
There are a lot of people who seems to think that they are the only ones who get Howard and Conan as a character, but trust me when I say that there are others who knows this as well. Listening to this interview with Hocking makes me really think that he’s got it and knows exactly how to write Sword & Sorcery in a Howard-esque style, because he talks about he sorcery having a prime and eerie role in the story. That it’s something that could have grown out of some super natural nature or even having an extraterrestrial origin, grants great powers but always at a cost is exactly how Howard managed to keep the element of horror to the sorcery in his stories.
So I know that a lot of you simply don’t like pastiche novels and disregards them directly, and even though I haven’t gotten the chance to read City of the Dead yet I think you should give them at least a chance. Pastiches is basically the only way we can get new Conan stories (with an exception for the comics) and by reading and buying these we also get more content in the future. And seeing as Conan along with the rest of Howard’s characters are in an extremely good place right now I think we have a lot to look forward to if only we support it. The novels doesn’t get as much attention as the comics do and I think that’s a shame as Conan works just as well in prose as it does in comic form. After all, it’s actually it’s original form.
Once I can afford I’m definitely going to buy City of the Dead, and I truly hope that Titan Books will release more new pastiche novels in the future or re-release those old Tor books. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Most of them goes for insane prices online so that would be really cool to see 🙂
Hyborian Book Reviews 