A View From Corona #11
Jeremy Lassen | November 11th 2002 at 12:26 pm
“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”
- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness
It has been a long time since I’ve been to Corona Heights. Too long. Since I last typed words for this column, I’ve been to several conventions, and my company has released a few books. Last week, I got an email from a friend who has read this column faithfully. He did not ask me to write a new column. He DEMANDED it! My fingers have been away from the keyboard for too long! A View From Corona #11 exists because of this prodding, and because of an infuriating little fact that was pointed out to me by this demanding friend several months ago. I’m dedicating this one to you, Norm. Thanks for all the encouragement.
The Conan stories by Robert E. Howard have been a primal inspiration for many readers of weird/fantastic/speculative fiction. They were for me. I’m not going to debate the literary merits of Conan… You either get it or you don’t. But I will ask the question… If Raymond Chandler’s simple, direct, stark prose can make it into the Literary Cannon, why can’t Robert E. Howard’s? I mean really — stranger things have happened. H. P. Lovecraft is now published under the “Penguin Classic” imprint.
I can remember the first time I read Conan. I got my hands on the Ace paperbacks when I was in the fourth grade. I had already read various incarnations of Marvel Comic’s Conan, but I was eager to get to the source material — the “real” Conan, as it were. Little did I know, the Ace editions of Conan had as little to do with the original Howard Conan stories as did the Marvel Comics versions. Those ace editions were heavily edited and re-written by the editors, and also included stories that were not even written by Howard.
We’re not talking moving a comma here or there. We’re not talking about fixing spelling. We are talking about taking non-Conan stories and changing the names and places so that they are suddenly Conan stories that conveniently fill in “blank periods” in his life. We are talking about hiring writers to completely fabricate new stories to fill in the “blank periods” — and then passing off the work as if it were written by Howard.
For a long time, I took my knowledge of the corrupted Conan texts for granted, and thought everyone interested in Conan new about it. But over the last year or so, I have seen several people (most of them younger than me) come into the bookstore I work at, asking for, and trying to complete sets of these “edited” volumes. Many of these fans were surprised when I told them the dubious origins of the texts within those volumes.
I had taken my knowledge for granted because when I had reached the ripe old age of 12 years old, I ran into a beautiful, battered paperback copy of The People of the Black Circle. This was one of three Conan books, edited by Karl Edward Wagner, that collected the original, unaltered texts of Howard’s Conan stories. Unfortunately, this series did not collect all of the Conan stories, and I did not find out why until recently.
These three volumes — Red Nails, The People of the Black Circle, and The Hour of The Dragon featured gorgeous cover paintings by Ken Kelly, and most importantly, introductions by Wagner that called out L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter and took them to the mat for their editorial hubris. Karl did not mince words or beat around the bush. He did not like their “alterations” and found it despicable that pastiches were being passed off as original Howard stories.
Wagner knew all about pastiches — he had been paid to write a Conan novel of his own, but he knew enough to know that pastiches would never BE, and should not be presented as, Robert E. Howard’s Conan. He said as much in these introductions, along with a bunch of other things.
And the 12 year old me was RIVETED by those things. I was impressed. All those years of reading the Ace editions, I had been lied to by supposed “authorities” who were packaging up shit, and claiming it was perfume. Finally, here was a stand-up-kind-of-guy who was going out of his way to get the real stuff out there. From that moment on, I was a Karl Wagner fan, and sought out everything he wrote.
At the World Fantasy Convention in Minneapolis last year, I was chatting with some people, and Wagner’s Conan books came up. It was there that I learned why there had only been three books — due to the vagaries of copyright law, and the original contracts that Howard had signed, the Conan stories published in the Wagner volumes were in public domain. Though the estate of R. E. Howard, as represented by Glenn Lord, had “approved” of the Wagner books, the actual copyright to the Conan character was held by Conan Properties LTD, who, it appears, had been in bed with De Camp and Carter, trying to extend the franchise as much and as wide as possible, and had no interest in putting out editions that might draw sales away from their cash cow. “Corrected” editions of the stories under copyright were not going to be made available.
It is clear from Wagner’s introductions that these three volumes were originally published in paperback editions. Sometime after the original publications, however, Berkley issued hard cover editions of these books, and there were SF Bookclub editions based on these hard covers. Sometime in the last 20 years, my ratty paperbacks were replaced by bookclub editions.
Image my shock and horror when my friend from the first paragraph mentioned to me one evening that the introductions in the hard cover editions had been changed, so as to be less critical of De Camp and Carter. The long, vandalizing shadow of De Camp and Carter was sliming its way into the very books that were created to undo the damage they had done. I was pissed, and spent 6 months trying to track down paperback copies of these books so that I could see for myself what had been changed. It wasn’t pretty.
In the introduction to The People of the Black Circle (paperback), Wagner writes “…in which the Conan stories were presented with editorial emendations and buried under numerous pastiches by other writers.” In the hard cover editions, “buried under” becomes “mixed with”. That change is fairly innocuous
In the next paragraph, Karl states: “Previous editions have been marred by the work of overzealous editors, too concerned with usage of commas, spelling variants and apparent ‘inconsistencies.’” In the hard covers, this is substantively altered: “Previous editions were slightly revised and edited, mainly in the area of usage of commas, spelling variants, and apparent inconsistencies.”
It goes on and on, in all three introductions. The tone and framing of Karl’s arguments had been carefully and purposefully changed, apparently, to protect the egos of the above editors.
There are a lot of bad things, and injustices in the world. The fact that some egotistical, money grubbing assholes rewrote some pulp fiction shouldn’t be a big deal. But to me it is. The fact that the whistle blower who came forward and told everybody the emperor had no clothes… the fact that his report was white washed, and changed after the fact — That shouldn’t bother me either — But it does. It bugged me when Derleth did it to Lovecraft (and seemingly every other author he published), and it bugged me when De Camp and Carter did it to Howard.
Stuff like this still happens. Eric Flint has edited a new volume of Randal Garret’s Lord Darcy fiction. In his own words, Mr. Flint says “…I cut some repetitive background material.” I can’t comment on weather Mr. Flint’s editorial decisions were an improvement, or serious detriment, or completely innocuous, as I have not read the originals, nor the edited edition. But Mr. Flint is currently engaged in a loud, public debate with a group of purists who insist that his changes were for the worse. The details of this fight can be found on the google archive of rec.arts.sf.written. Time will tell if Mr. Flint is simply exercising sound editorial judgment, or weather his name will be mentioned in the same breath as August Derleth, Lin Carter, and L. Sprauge De Camp.
The fact that there is even discussion about Eric Flint’s editorial decision suggests times are changing. Arkham House may still be publishing white-wash trash like their recent Masters of Terror anthology/revisionist history, but everybody knows what Derleth did to Lovecraft’s (and others’) work.
Recently, Stephen Jones finished the job that Karl began. As part of the Fantasy Masterworks series, Jones edited two volumes of every known piece of Conan fiction. As much as possible, Jones used Howard’s original texts. Jones was the first to admit that it wasn’t perfect. But all things considered, those two volumes are the closest thing to perfection that Conan fans have ever had. For details on exactly why the Fantasy Masterworks Conan volumes aren’t perfect, I suggest reading this interview, and examining the textual sources used by Jones.
Very deservedly, Stephen Jones and Jo Fletcher shared the 2002 World Fantasy Award in the category of “Special Award — Professional.” Jo Fletcher is the editor at Victor Gollancz behind the Fantasy Masterworks line. In addition to the Conan books, Stephen Jones has edited several volumes in the Fantasy Masterworks series.
Two other points of interest. Wandering Star, who has previously issued several handsome volumes of Howard stories, is promising a three volume set of “textually restored” Conan stories. Details can be found at http://www.wanderingplanet.com. More important is the fact that Del Rey has purchased the rights to reprint Wandering Star’s editions of Conan, so there will be easily obtained, affordable, and textual accurate versions of the Conan stories in print in the united states for the first time.
It’s been almost 40 years since the original, corrupted texts were printed in Lancer paperback editions, but we are finally getting Conan as Howard intended. Maybe someday we will find out who shot JFK, and how much Bush knew about September 11th. We may get there eventually, one baby step at a time.
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