The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard Read Free

discussed and debated myriad topics, and inevitably the ideas found their way into each author’s work. Howard perhaps shows the influences more directly and openly, at least at first. The early stages of the epistolary friendship inspired the younger writer to experiment with stories in the Lovecraftian vein, producing “The Children of the Night,” “The Black Stone” (thought by many to be the finest Cthulhu Mythos story not written by Lovecraft), “The Thing on the Roof,” and the last of his Solomon Kane stories, “The Footsteps Within,” within a matter of months.
    Because Howard was—consciously or unconsciously—emulating the Lovecraft style, and making use of terms or concepts from Lovecraft, these stories are frequently thought of as belonging to the Cthulhu Mythos. A word about this is in order.
    The Cthulhu Mythos refers to a sort of pseudomythology that originated in the work of Lovecraft, many of whose stories are loosely linked by being set in a fictional New England (with the towns of Arkham, Kingsport, Dunwich, and Innsmouth, among others), and by their references to various cosmic entities that are entirely indifferent to man but nevertheless are worshipped as gods by some cultists (Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlethotep, etc.). Lovecraft inserted glancing references to these entities in some of the work he revised for other authors, like Adolphe de Castro and Zelia Bishop, and a few people noticed, including Robert E. Howard. In one of his early letters to Lovecraft, Howard inquired about these entities:
    “I have noted in your stories you refer to Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, R’lyeh, Yuggoth etc. Adolph de Castro, I note, mentions these gods, places, or whatever they are, only the spelling is different, as Cthulutl, Yog Sototl. Both you and he, I believe, have used the phrase fhtaghn…. Would it be asking too-much to ask you to tell me the significance of the above mentioned names or terms? And the Arab Alhazred, and the Necronomicon. The mention of these things in your superb stories have whetted my interest immensely. I would extremely appreciate any information you would give me regarding them.”
    Lovecraft was quick to disabuse Howard of the idea that there was some body of esoteric lore that his scholarship had missed:
    “Regarding the solemnly cited myth-cycle of Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, R’lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Nug, Yeb, Shub-Niggurath, etc., etc.—let me confess that this is all a synthetic concoction of my own, like the populous and varied pantheon of Lord Dunsany’s “Pagana.” The reason for its echoes in Dr. de Castro’s work is that the latter gentleman is a revision-client of mine—into whose tales I have stuck these glancing references for sheer fun. If any other clients of mine get work placed in W.T., you will perhaps find a still-wider spread of the cult of Azathoth, Cthulhu, and the Great Old Ones! The Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred is likewise something which must yet be written in order to possess objective reality…. Long has alluded to the Necronomicon in some things of his—in fact, I think it is rather good fun to have this artificial mythology given an air of verisimilitude by wide citation.” Lovecraft mentioned that Clark Ashton Smith was beginning a similar pseudomythology involving “the furry toad-god Tsathoggua,” and suggested that he might incorporate Howard’s Kathulos (from “Skull-Face”) into some future tale.
    Howard was not long in joining the fun. Within two months of receiving Lovecraft’s reply, he had submitted “The Children of the Night” and it had been accepted by Weird Tales . In it he had referred to Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” as one of the three “master horror-tales” (the others being Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Machen’s The Novel of the Black Seal ) and had made his own first contribution to the Mythos, in the form of the German scholar Von Junzt and his forbidden tome, Nameless Cults