A Geek History of Time - Episode 47 - Conan and Reagan Part I

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

Like they they advertise one match when crashing a car into one of the wrestlers. Not a total victory of Russia, which now we're seeing. He goes on. He's a gigantic bag of flaccid dicks. Sorry, contidence. Which when you open them up, you find out that they're all cockroaches and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if anybody else is ever going to laugh this hard at anything we say.

Probably. We can actually both look out my window right now and see some very pretty yellow flowers that I'm going to be eradicating. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Nurgere to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm an English teacher and history teacher here in Northern California, currently on hiatus for the next two weeks, but we won't get into that too much tonight. And who are you?

I'm Damien Harmony. Number one, I'm glad that you're back. Number two, I'm upset that you dated this episode. Now it's not tight enough. We don't know, I know. We don't really are any of ours. I mean, yes. Well, okay.

All right. I am a Latin teacher and a world history teacher who has assigned a novel in his world history class. Oh, what's going on? Forgotten fire by Adam Bagdissarion. Okay, yeah. I'm going to need to find that. Yes, okay.

Yes, I left all the copies at work. Sorry. That one. But yeah, so I am also here in Northern California. I'm also a father of two who are also on quarantine now. All right. So it's going to be a fun three weeks, So tuck it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, buckle up, buttercup. So you were gone. Yes, I was on a sign mix in New Zealand. Yes. Yes.

And so that was that. And we did the dark crystal. Yes. Did you get to listen to I have not had the opportunity yet to listen to okay? I will await your reaction Really want to good and I was I cannot begin to tell you how bereft I was that you were gonna be doing that episode without me Here, you're like oh my god, yeah, you know maybe we'll do like a bonus episode where I do it with you as well Okay, and that that might just be kind of a little fun So maybe we'll do like a bonus episode where I do it with you as well. Okay. And that might just be kind of a little fun. Like light of a washamond style.

Like light of a washamond style. Oh, hey, hey, it's you making the Kurosawa reference this time, not me. And only I'm gonna be a minute and a half in. Yeah, that's gonna be a first for the cast. So, you know, in part of the reason that I was so excited about you having gotten excited about the dark crystal like that was, I actually last year in the last day of school, I showed it to my students. Oh, neat.

Like, you know, trying to teach them last day, you know, you're not going to get any, any academic, anything out of anyway. So I was, I was showing the dark crystal and, and it struck me that there was something that it had in common with a number of movies from the time period. But there was one that occurred to me in particular and that's the one that I want to talk to you about tonight. Oh, okay. And it's Kony in the Barbarian. Oh. Okay. Wow. Um, they're, they're both from roughly

the same time period. That's true. That's true. And there is wildly different directors. wildly different directors, wildly different themes. There's, there's, and all of them, I mean, I mean, they're, they're very, very different stories. They're both fantasy stories. I would classify Dark Crystal as being a very much a high fantasy story. Conan is very much a low fantasy story. Can you distinguish between those two things just real quick? Oh, okay, I've never heard that.

All right, okay. So, Game of Thrones is low fantasy. Certainly for the first season, it is low fantasy. We know that we're in a fantastical world We you know they talk about magic swords and you know they talk in historic terms about there used to be dragons and all this kind of stuff, okay, but you don't see wizards doing magic Uh-huh and All of the motivations are very rooted in real world, real politic, dynastic struggles, that kind of stuff.

Okay, so it's the mundane world in a world that previously used to be... Fantastic. Now the previously part is less important to the distinction with low fantasy than the idea that magic exists, but it's not an everyday thing. Okay, so it would be like in D&D if I just played like, we all played melee characters and nobody had magic. Yeah, essentially. If everybody played a martial type character and to use a fourth edition term, if everybody

used a martial type character and like the bad guy, the big bad, he has some lich or something like that. That would be not only very low fantasy. No, that sounds like a cool adventure. It would be actually brilliant. Not only would it be low fantasy, it would also be sword and sorcery, which is what Conan is. Okay. Okay.

Now, high fantasy, sword and sorcery can be either one. Okay. Sword and sorcery is a type. Is a subset of the genre. Okay, and the genre is divided into two camps. Okay, kind of high and low, yeah. Okay, and you can have. And you can have.

You can have high versions of anything in low version. Low version of anything. Okay, I get you now. Sword and Sorcery is easier to do in low fantasy, but you can probably do it high fantasy. So, are you familiar with the Dragon Lance series? By name, yes, but I again the only fantasy I've ever read has been Star Wars. Okay, so Yeah, and yeah, and that I assume that's high fantasy because they use the force all the time

Space opera, which is the science fiction version of high fantasy. Okay, it ain't science No, no, no. It's, yeah. But it's ray guns instead of fireballs. Right, right. You know, there are plenty of writers and publishers. Can we, I'm gonna interrupt you. Can we do an episode where we just like go through to taxonomy of all these fictions?

Fuck yes. Okay, cool. I'm, oh, all right. Shit, I'm already halfway to writing it. Just think about it. All right, cool. Less'm all right shit. I'm already halfway to writing it. Just thinking about it. All right. So let's for me to do so yeah, but but so so high fantasy Uh-huh to finish the the distinction between the two okay high fantasy is usually any any world in which magic is more commonplace in which you see

Big splashy dramatic kind of magical stuff happening. The classic example would be Lord of the Rings is very much a high fantasy. Okay. It's this, the emotional context of it is this overwrought romantic kind of thing. Oh. The stakes are the fate of the world.

The stakes are epic. The stakes are epic, whereas low fantasy is usually like the Conan stories, which I'm gonna talk about. It's, we have. We have. Yes, it's far more personal. Okay.

Like, you might get into the fate of a kingdom, but it's never gonna be like, we've gotta save the world. Right. In low fantasy, a thieves world by Robert Asperin, which if you haven't read, I really highly recommend. It's awesome.

Okay. It's an anthology edited by Robert Asperin. Some of it was written by Robert Asperin, which you haven't read, I really highly recommend. It's awesome. Okay. It's edited by Robert Asperin. Some of it was written by Robert Asperin, but it's a great anthology series that is almost the textbook definition of low fantasy. Now, is that similar to Bard's World by John Ibuprofen? Fuck you. No, good day How about a monk's world by Bill Tyler after after the way after the day we have had you bring this to me I do now

No, no, okay fair. All right So it's weird. I've never seen I be profan inflamed someone, I know. I have the opposite of its intended effect like that. Right. Yeah. Um, anyway, high fantasy, the stakes are high. Uh-huh. Scale is epic. Scale of the conflict is epic.

Okay. And you have, you tend to have more kind of black and white morality. You, you have, you have clear good guys, clear bad guys. That's very Star Wars. Yeah, yeah. Star Wars, Star Wars would be a very high fantasy kind of space. Yeah, because they're saving the galaxy. They're saving it's the whole galaxy.

It's like Black versus Dark Side. Harry Potter is a very high fantasy. Now, do you have to have the presence of magic for it to be high fantasy? Or can you have it be mundane martial stuff that is epic? Like does magic have to be high fantasy or can you have it be mundane martial stuff that is epic. Like does magic happen? There you have the romantic. Can you have the romantic?

Start getting into the questions. Yeah, that's part of the taxonomy discussion. Oh, that's going to be fun. Yeah. Because I love parsing. Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, give me a hair. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I would argue. I would argue it's a spectrum. Okay. And for something like that, would be closer to the midline. Okay. Because not a lot of magic, but you know, you still have to wash,

swash buckling kind of kind of fiction with a little bit of magic thrown in. Wow. Okay, cool. So yeah. All right. So we have fun asking all kinds of pictures. Sure. And then I'm really gonna have to learn how to tap dance. So, but, but Conan

is very much a low fantasy story, like I said. So the New Testament would be high fantasy. For me, not for you. For you, it's a guidebook. For me, yeah. Yes. If you're choosing to read a description, you're supposed to choosing to believe that you're us. Yes. So most Greek mythology would also be hyph... Most mythology would be higher fantasy.

Would fall under kind of higher fantasy. I mean, if you take that as your inspiration and turn it into a more novelized kind of approach because mythology is its own folklore and mythology or kind of their own thing. Okay, so those aren't fantasy. They're not, yeah, because of, I mean, they are fantastical. But they set people's beliefs there for a lot. But they set people's beliefs and...

And they weren't originally presented as a fiction. Yeah, they were. Okay, I get you now, okay. Or they were like fairy tales. Sure. Were presented for a specific reason. Right. They were a morality play.

They were a morality play kind of thing. And so they get lumped in with folklore. They were morality told in an entertaining way, not entertainment told Right, which is more to the rings. Yeah, you know, right? You can see in our intent exactly in our J our our token episodes. Yeah, yeah, so But but anyway when looking at the dark crystal again. Yes for me after I hadn't seen it in literally decades, like forever, I hadn't watched it. There was, there was an aesthetic, there were, there were these elements in it

that I was like, I got to find some way to tie this together to Conan the Barbarian because there's something going on. I'm seeing something, I can't put my finger on it, but there's something going on here. Sure. And in the process of trying to figure that out, as happens with us when we start doing research, I realized that my thesis about Conan couldn't do, or this thesis about Conan, I couldn't do that. I needed to get something else off my chest first. And so the title I have for this episode is Conan the Barbarian and Reagan the Cold Warrior. Oh, okay. Now I would like to ask you this. I don't want to steal the thunder from your title. It's a good title. Yeah. So the

other title I came up with was Conan of Samaria and Reagan of California. I like that one better. Yeah, I like that one better. It's a little bit much better. Yeah, yeah. So I could just see like both of them want on either side of a sword. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you can, you can hold on. I can see the poster now. Yeah, yeah.

So was it the clothing of the skexies that reminded you of Conan? Because I have this here picture of Conan from the comic book. Oh, I'm so happy you found that. Yeah. Yeah. So for those of you that can't see the video, Conan came back into the one. So Marvel Comics bought the property for part. Okay, cool.

Well, they got a license permit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and some of the property for part. Okay cool. Well they got they got a license spread. Yeah, yeah, yeah, licensed it and he dressed as a circa 1970s pimp with a pet jaguar. Well Jaguar leopard I can't tell but some some spotted cat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So is, I don't know for sure whether Robert E. Howard would be entertained to death by that, or if that caused him to rotate in his grave fast enough to generate electricity. And we'll get into talking about why that might be the case. Sure. So Coney and the Barbarian is an iconic film that turned a Mr. Universe into a bankable Hollywood star, who then went on to become a political figure. And it set a stamp on the science fiction fantasy genre

that has lasted ever since. OK. OK. Any kind of swashbuckling fantasy movie that has been made since Conan the Barbarian, it's like the 60s Batman series. Every Batman series that came after that is either an homage or is a reaction to that.

They're all responding to it. They're all somehow responding to it. Every sword and sorcery movie that has been made since 1982 is somehow a response to Coney on the Barbarian. Okay. Okay. And so the question is, why did that movie about that character create that level of legacy,

have that kind of impact on the national psyche? Sure. Even though at the time it was a success, yes it was. But at the time it was not a blockbuster. Right, it was a success for bikers. Yeah, like tough guys really liked it. Oh yeah, yeah.

So I have to start with this because my inner 12 year old won't let me not. Okay. Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the suns of Aries, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia

upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure. Go into the beginning of the Polydora score and like all the hairs on the back of my neck stand out it's an incredibly vocative.

And again, for those of you that didn't buy the extended package, you didn't see the video of me mouting it right along the package. So I really encourage you to buy the extended package. The extended package. Yeah. We have bills to pay. Yes. Oh boy, do we now? Woo! Woo! Boy! So we're gonna start with Robert E. Howard. Okay. Because he's... Uncle of Ron and Clint Howard. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. No. God damn it. Howard. Okay. Because he's uncle of Ron and Clint Howard. Yes.

Yes. No. No. Oh, a grandfather of Howard the Duck. That's probably not. So? But I didn't find out one way or the other. I can't prove a negative.

Can't call foul. Highly un... Oh. Fuck. That's that. You caught me flat-footed. Yeah. Without a

No. No. No. Oh Clack that that you caught me flat-footed. Yeah, that one So we're gonna start with with Bob Howard, okay, two gun Bob That was his actual nickname For the same reason as in that's listed in the unforgiven movie. No, Oh, okay. No, that would have been way cooler. Yeah, well, yeah. So we got to start with Howard. Okay. And by starting with Howard, we have to start with Pester, Texas, which is where he was

born. Okay. Tiny little fly spec of a town. And then cross planes, Texas. Okay. Okay. On a map to anybody who's not from Texas, cross-hmm cross planes looks about as central Texas as you can get Okay, it's smack like like it's a little bit of love. It's the Kansas of Texas

Yeah, it's a little bit above where the actual center of gravity of Texas looks like it ought to be Yeah, but it's basically right in the middle of just above the X. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty much but It is considered part of West Texas. Okay. Because however they determine regions. And that's the part with planes, scrub, rolling hills in some places. And most importantly for our story, oil. Okay. Now, two gun bob was born in 1906. His father was a doctor with a pension for Get Rich Quick schemes. And his mother was a doctor. Back then doctor, that was their thing.

And his mother came from a patrician family who had a lot of people in her family who were very sickly. She was their caretaker. She had a massive martyr complex. His mother developed tuberculosis after looking after a succession of relatives and was frail and sickly all of Robert's life. His family moved from Pester to cross planes in 1919, so it was 13 years old. So this is during the flu epidemic? During, yeah, yeah, still during it. He witnessed a lot of strife between his parents,

okay, rooted at least partly in money trouble, because his father's in a building. He did a number one cause of separation. Yeah, and he faced bullying as a kid. Okay. Was he the oldest, the youngest, and only? An only, oh wow. Okay.

Speaking as an only myself, I was like, I was gonna say, I can't. It's all like so much sense now. He was surrounded by the rough and violent culture of just past close of the frontier Texas. And so this is still, we're not even two decades into the 20th century yet. Yeah, I mean, Arizona.

We're not through the second decade of the 20th century. Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico had just become states by the time he's walking. Yes, yeah. And so he heard first hand accounts Arizona, New Mexico had just become states by the time he's walking. Yes. Yeah. And so he heard firsthand accounts from neighbors and friends of the family of Native American raids, gun fights, feuds between early settlers and unfortunately lynchings. Right.

He developed... Texas has the needs killing law. Yeah. And which is if you can assemble 12 guys, they can act as jury. Yes. Because it's so wide open that sometimes someone needs killing. Apparently. Yeah. So he developed because of all this, he developed a sense of omnipresent violence in the world. He attached value to physical strength and prowess. And he absorbed the unavoidable kind of ugly racism,

sure as prevalent in society at the time. This last one is an unfortunate trait he shares with Lovecraft, and we're gonna come back around to it. Okay. He wrote a lot. He got published for the first time at the age of 20, which convinced him to drop out of college for a while. His father's father won a degree in accountancy.

Sure. And he did eventually finish the degree because his father was pushing him to do it. Okay. But as soon as he could make a living viably as a writer for the pulps, he flung that out the window he was done, he's one of the founding figures

of the Weird Fiction Genre and is considered the father of Sword and Sorcery. All right, back it up just in here. What is Weird Fiction compared to other Fictions? Weird Fiction. Weird Fiction is the Dow, the Dow, that you can speak of is not the true Dow. Weird Fiction is really is one of those things that the definition kind of depends on which science fiction writer you ask. It is, I would say, the easiest shorthand I can think of, and I know I've got writer friends

who are gonna tell me I'm so fucking wrong. Right. Right now off the top of my head, the best kind of way I can describe it is, if you imagine Magical realism, okay, and then make it desperately unsettling Okay, so there's like an unsettling horror come on to it. Gothic, Gothic, Eldritch, sure kind of stuff Which hunter-y, there are intelligences out in the universe and it's not that they hate us

They are just utterly coldly indifferent. Okay. Okay, yeah, I could see that. All right, so, and he's responsible, Howard, is responsible for creating a platoon of pulp characters. But the one we're here to talk about is Conan, because Conan is the one that stuck in the popular imagination.

Sure. Now, to talk about the origin of the character, Howard had been fascinated by Celtic ideas and themes for a number of years by the time he came up with Conan. He had traced and studied his own Irish heritage. Okay, okay. So, and he had written to other members of the Lovecraft Circle about Celtic cultural ideas

and concepts. Now I need to talk a little bit about the Lovecraft circle about Celtic cultural ideas and concepts. Now I need to talk a little bit about the Lovecraft circle. So, weird tales was the incubator for Sword and Sorcery. It was the incubator for Weird Fiction. It was the incubator for what has become now today, thethulhu mythos with HP Lovecraft as the guy most centrally respired for developing that. And so Howard, if I remember correctly, Lovecraft got a story published in Weird Tales. And Howard was really impressed blown away with it. And he of course, because this is the late 1920s,

early 1930s, he was in consistent correspondence with the editor. He had developed a relationship with the editor because he'd been submitting over and over in the editor, been writing back saying, yeah, it's good, but punch it up, do this, that, the other. And so he wrote to the editor and said hey this guy lovecraft You know, I'd like to talk to him about his stuff. Can you can you give me his address? Sure and of course since it was you know 1929 1930 sure was like yeah, okay cool. Yeah, and so I mean in the newspaper like if you were Interviewed in the newspaper they would say of you of this address. Yeah, you know, like that was just in the article. It was just a thing.

Yeah, they had books sitting out hanging off of telephones that were posted on streets for, you know, decades that had all of our addresses. Yeah, our current 21st century concept of, you know, privacy, data privacy is a, the paradigm is completely different. Yeah. So, but anyway. Let me just back up a second.

So he's writing and he starts, well, he's born in 06, he gets published in 26, 27. The world collapses in on itself in 29. The dust bowl is kicking up by 31-32 and he's still finding successes a writer because pulp novels are cheap. Well he was not getting published via novels. No but I mean pulp mags. So they're cheap, so they're easy. And so he's not necessarily suffering from the economic strike there, but he is,

but where he grew up is where all the yellow dust came from. Yes. So a great deal of it, yeah. Okay, so I'm just, I'm curious as to how the depression impacted him in terms of like, was there a shift in his writing? Did he escape more into us, fantasy world? I think. Were there desert escapes more?

High planes? Like, because you mentioned scrub and whatnot. Yeah. So I think looking back over his writing, I think, his what motivated him to write, and we're going to talk about that in a bit. The things that were driving his need to throw ink on the page were, the only word that comes to mind is deeper than they were rooted too deeply to really be.

It was an artistic compulsion Yeah, it really was and if you read his prose like you can tell he's just He's channeling himself channeling. Yeah, okay. It's yeah, okay. Yeah So so anyway, he he wrote to Lovecraft and Lovecraft wrote back and they became best buddies He's in he still in the meeting in Texas? He's in, he's in, dividing his time between cross planes and, I wanna say Houston. Okay, so he's staying in Texas, probably.

He's still in Texas, okay. Still in Texas, okay. And so he earned the nickname to Gun Bob from HP Lovecraft because a whole lot of the stuff that you talked about was the frontier stories of gun fighters and all that stuff that he knew about, he was an encyclopedic source of information about the Southwest. He absorbed all this stuff like a sponge

and would tell anybody who would listen. So he was to that what I am to wrestling. Basically. Okay, got it. And so, um, anyway, so he corresponded with lovecraft. And he in lovecraft had very, very deep-seated differences of worldview. Okay. About the shape of the universe, about the role of man,

and especially about civilization. Okay. And we're gonna get to it. But so, so he's writing Lovecraft, he's writing these other guys that are in this same correspondence circle. Sure. And all of these,

it's like a fraternity almost through the mail of these guys who were all submitting all this stuff to all these pulp magazines, but especially to weird tales. Okay. Okay. And so, so he'd been writing to these guys about all these Celtic themes. He was really interested in all this Celtic stuff. And in early 1932, he and a couple of his actual IRL friends were taking a road trip, kind of

a vacation across Texas. And he wound up, they hold up someplace and it was raining and he was looking out over the countryside and looking out over these rain shrouded Sullen hills. The idea came forth out of wherever it had been brewing in a subconscious of a northern land of reving barbarians called Samaria. By March, he had completed the first three Conan stories, the Phoenix on the Sword, the Frost Giants daughter, and the God in the Bowl. Cool names.

They represent three different phases of Conan's life. Okay. And all of the other Conan stories fit somewhere in between those three. Those are his set pieces. Those are kind of the set pieces. Those are as Doctor Who would say the fixed points in time. Those are episodes four, five, and six around which all the EU gets ready. Yeah, essentially. Okay.

Or three, six, and seven. Yeah, essentially. Yeah, okay. Or 36 and seven. Yeah, depending on how you want to define that. So weird tales published, the Phoenix on the Sword in December of 32 after multiple back and forth with the editor a bunch of the rights. Now are these are short stories then? These are short stories. Okay, okay, yeah.

All of these, nearly everything I'm going to talk about, when I'm talking about Howard and Conan, this short story. Okay. Yeah, all of these nearly everything I'm going to talk about when I'm talking about Howard and Conan's short story. Okay. There were a couple of novelettes. The full length novels didn't come along until after Howard was dead and. Interesting. Okay. Forward and timeline. Okay, there. So the hyborian age, which is this world that he had created in which

Samaria was this, you know, northern land of rivers. that he had created in which Samaria was this, you know, Northern land of rivers. He fleshed it out in an 8,000 word essay after those first three stories were submitted to weird tales. Now he was a history nerd, okay. Okay. But writing historical fiction means you actually have to spend time doing research.

Sure. He's writing for the pulps. He doesn't have time to do research. So by creating this world of his own, he creates this pseudo-historical setting that it feels like he's writing historical fiction, but he doesn't have to waste time going to the library. Right, right. You know, to get his details right.

Yeah. So for a pulp writer, this is the best way to go. He's very well equipped to do what he's doing. Yeah. And by the time the Phoenix on the Sword was actually published, so remember he finished the first three in March of 32. Of 32. Okay.

It was published finally in December of 32. Okay. And it was the first Conan story to get published. By the time that was actually printed, Howard had written nine more Conan stories. That's one a month. That's a hell of a compulsion. That yes, that's one a month just for Conan.

Right. He was writing and getting other stuff printed in other magazines at the same time to make bills. Okay, the output he had was the only word I can think of is frenetic. Yeah, that's a good word for yeah um and and This is the days before email. Yeah, this is this is when he had a mechanical typewriter at best Yeah, you know, oh yeah, no, it was so it was black and then black and a big ol envelope and then send it on And some simply say it was a response

to major emotional stress. Yeah, I mean, it's also, that's a very, it seems to me, that's a very spur of the moment decision. Had there been any suicide attempts prior to that? Not prior to that one. Right, I mean, it's, it's, you know, they say that people who survive suicide attempts very, very often regret them.

Yeah. You know, and they're glad the day failed at it. Yeah. You know, so... Yeah. His father and the nurse heard the gunshot, rushed out, found him in the car, and he died hours later. Never, never, never were game consciousness,

but the damage was at 30. At 30. Wow. And and the quote there's a there's a really great quote from Stephen King in dance macabre and it's not actually very complimentary about Howard. What he says is that the talent is a cheap commodity. It's as cheap as table salt. The skill, every writer is given a knife. And it's a knife that can only cut with very great force. And if you try to cut with a blunt knife,

you have to swing it all mighty hard. Right. And eventually, if you keep doing that too much, the knife is going to break into your hands and he references Howard. Interesting. In the quote, and then he says, and this is how I've always seen it as a backhanded compliment to Howard,

he says, some of us, none of us, are born with a sharp knife. Some of us are given an all mighty big knife, and those are the ones that we call geniuses. Okay. So he never sharpened his... To King. Right. Because, I mean, look at King's output for fuck's sake.

Yeah, I mean, like anybody like me, who's an armchair, like I wanna be a novelist, and you know, I start every November. I think about, okay, I'm gonna try Nanorimo and I get 15 pages in and I just can't go any further I'm done anybody who can ch out that level of work over the course of, we're talking about over the course of four years, putting out 17 public short stories

and a whole ream of stuff that got published posthumously. And again, he was still writing other characters. This Conan was 17 stories. Right. You know, Cole the Conqueror was another four or five. That was his two? Solomon, yeah, Solomon Cain was his two. Red Sonia was his two.

That I know. Okay. Just so you know, Stephen King published 61 novels, including seven under a pen name. Yeah. And over 200 short stories. He's still alive, by the way. Look how much longer he's survived, you know.

Yeah, yeah, it turns out. Yeah. He is just a few years younger than my dad. Yeah. So, the joke about Stephen King, by the way, was that when you remember he had that horrible car accident. Yeah, terrible, awful. And they said, drunk driver hit him. Yeah. by the way was that when you remember he had that horrible car accident. Oh yeah, terrible, awful.

And they said drunk driver hit him. Yeah, and he, his next novel was slowed down by about 45 minutes. You know, on the one hand, that's an awful joke. On the other hand, all, all credit to King. Yes. It's not entirely wrong. So he, he, Howard killed himself. Yes. It's not entirely wrong. No. So he, he Howard killed himself. Yes. And he created a number of powerful evocative characters, Colovid Lannis, also known as Colovid Conquer,

Solomon Kane, who I already mentioned, Red Sonia. And one of his personal favorite characters was a character nobody remembers anymore today except people who were like deep pulp fiction nerds named sailor steve castigan Whose stories were published in pulp magazines that had to do with boxing and And gritty kind of you know sailor yarn and gritty kind of, you know, sailor yarn stories. Yeah, sailor's very Irish. Yeah, and sailor Steve was this, you know, tough, rough tough sailor, merchant marine guy

who ran into misadventures in foreign ports that always involved him, you know, fighting his way out of him with his bare knuckles and, you know, very, very macho, you know, pulp stuff. Sure. Sure. And, and none of those characters had anything like the level of success that Conan did. Yeah. Okay.

Conan wound up being his big seller. Um, Sherlock Holmes was Conan Doyle's big money maker. Right. In Conan Doyle's case, he got so sick of the character he killed him off. He tried to kill him off at one point and had to bring him back because the popular demand. You know, Conan Doyle preferred his other stories, the white company, which were a couple of stories. And the, I want to say the Brigadier Gerard

I'm gonna have to look it up which was a series wonderful series of stories about a Napoleon Haasar colonel reminiscing years after the war telling stories of all his adventures that you know now that everything's over I can tell you all about all this sure sure those were his favorite characters but the one that made him all his money was Sherlock Holmes. Right. Conan was the one that made Howard all of his money. And was probably the one closest to his own ideal self. I'd yeah. Okay. And so after he died, at first his father controlled literary rights to his estate and everything. And then it went back and forth.

There were issues with ownership of the rights. And in the mid-60s, Elsprig, DeCamp, and Charles DeLint got a publishing deal to start reprinting Howard's work in the 60s. Okay. And then this led to a Howard boom in the 70s with those stories picking up in paperback. Right. And then DeCamp and Lint writing more in the style. In the style.

Yeah, in the style of In the style. Yeah, in the style of Howard. Right. With the character and selling. Like hotcakes. Yeah. Okay, so let me back it up just to here. In the 60s, they get the rights. I recall when we talked about Tolkien,

I think I'd mentioned about how there was a resurgence for Tolkien in the 60s. Because college. Talking, talking, I would, I wouldn't call Tolkien a resurgence so much as his stuff was originally published in the 50s and it was kind of hanging out. It hadn't ever really had like, it had never peaked and then like hit a valley and then back. It was, it's out here, it's out here, it's out here. And the hippies figure out about Frodo

and we're off to the race. So it's roughly the same time though. It's the same kind of time. But it's a different demographic. Oh, it is. I think that was mine. Okay, that was my next question. If you look up Conan novels on Google,

everything you're gonna see is gonna be a painting by Frank Frazzetta if you're gonna the images page Yes, Frank Frazzetta painted the covers to to Nearly all of these and the imagery of those covers came to define the character Despite the fact they don't actually look very much like the way Conan's described in the stories really yes, huh? So in in the books Conan's described in the stories. Really? Yes. So in the books, Conan was strong. Sure. He was athletic, but he wasn't a bodybuilder. He didn't look like a muscle man. He wasn't bulky or heavily muscle.

His greatest physical asset, and Howard talks about this all the time, was his cat-like grace and his speed. Oh, interesting. He was a speed bruiser. He did hit like a ton of bricks, but... Right. It was not being the big powerful guy that won things for him.

It was his grace and his skill. Interesting, because I remember... There was a role-playing game of Cohnium. Yes. I know, because I played it a bit with my dad. Yeah. And it was the pictures were clearly based on the... Frisetta.

Right. His art. Well, because they're so evocative. Yes. I mean, one of the things Frisetta was really great at was number one, capturing idealized human figures. Yeah, the classical. The classical kindized human figures. Yeah, the classical. The classical kind of human figures.

Yeah. It is amazing. And his ability to work with light and shadow. Yes. And create an entire mood. Yes. Is absolutely amazing. Oh, absolutely.

There is not a single Frank Frizzetta painting that you don't immediately have an emotional reaction to. You know what, I'm going to come back to that in just a second because there's a hilarious story about Five-year-old me okay, um, but so that game though right so that game He was listed as a and I don't forget I don't remember exactly the mechanic But he was listed you could play like four stock characters. There was Conan and three of his buddies, right? And Conan was a fighter and a thief. Yes. And his buddy was a fighter and not a thief. And his buddy was a better fighter than Conan was, but Conan had the advantage of being a thief, too.

Yeah. And it was very much emphasized in that game that Conan was kind of the, you know, in the video games where you can play a super lightweight guy, a super heavyweight guy or the guy who's in the middle. Yeah. And the guy who's in the middle is always the star of the star on the box. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Conan was very much that, you know, so, you know, what do you want to play an extreme

or something like, yeah, covers both. All right. So, so his liveness is cat-like grace. Like you said, absolutely fits into that. Yeah. Now, I want to back up. So, I'm five years old. Okay.

And my dad has just kind of come into my life. I'm adopted by him later on. Yeah. And he lives with us. We're in our flat in San Francisco. Okay. I forget which one, because we moved literally one building over at one point.

Okay. We put down a plank and just slid stuff across to the other. Yeah, okay. So we're living in our flat. And I'm sick. really one building over at one point. We put down a plank and just slid stuff across to the other. So we're living in our flat. And I'm sick. I've got a stomach bug or something like that, or maybe it was when I got in blood poisoning

from a redwood splinter. Oh Jesus. And I didn't tell anybody for months. That was five. Oh yeah. And my mom took me to the hospital or to the doctors because I couldn't move my finger because it was swollen up like on Andre the giant finger and I had red streaks going up my arm. Oh yeah. Okay time for like intravenous antibiotics. Yeah I was given a lot of penicillin.

So, I think chalky. Good God. Yeah. I'm amazed I didn't such an IV until you you were not moving ah, you know I don't remember that much but yeah, so I think it was around that time So my mom had these really large pillows. I remember a lot of sense memory had these really large pillows that I would use as Wrestling mats for my figures, right? Okay. Yeah, yeah And I'm sitting there and I think the living room on several large pillows and there's different colors to them There's the orange and a green one and I'm sitting on there and my dad comes home from work And he's still getting to know me and he's into miniatures And there's this wonderful picture of the two of us looking at the battle waterloo that he's setting up and stuff like that

Right and so he had shown me Conan the barbarian, I think, on VHS. And we had a VHS player at this point. Okay. And I might be compressing things, but... So I knew Conan, I knew Conan, but from the TV version. So I didn't know Conan touching Sandal Bergman's boob. I didn't know Conan fighting the witch lady who bursts into flight turns out to be lady who who who burst into flight turns

turns out to be some kind of demon person to fly. You know, because you got to go the crosswords of Zamora and all that. I didn't know that part. I just knew the edited for TV version. And so they show you parts of that scene and then quickly skip on. So he's showing me these these posters that he brought home. And they're nice, like 12 by 15 posters, you know, of Conan stuff, and it's Frisetta. And he shows me, and it's Conan fighting these goblins, right? It's really cool.

And then it's Conan taking on this guy, and then he's like really talking it up, he's okay. Are you ready for the next one? I don't wanna make you upset, like this is really scary. I'm like, no, no, I can do it. And it's Conan fighting this ape man, which in Conan the destroyer, he does fight in that hall of mirrors, right?

And it's that same thing. And I'd seen the destroyer with him by this point, I think. Okay. And he shows it to me. And at that very moment, I had to throw up. And so he thought that he literally scared me to throwing up. That's funny. And so this podcast is my confession that no indeed I was just sick.

I was just, you were just sick. But I had to run to Chunder and I didn't make it very far. And it was when he'd showed me that. And the poor guy, you know, in some ways he's reaching out to me because I'm a really cool kid. But also, I'm the kid of the gal that he's digging. So, you know, there's like, oh man, how did this happen? Oh, I'm gonna be on the couch tonight. No, I'm not, because it's got vomit all over it. You know, oh, you really didn't make it. Oh, I, yeah, I threw up my body weight. It is great. So, yeah.

And you know what, with that, I'm going to ask that we take a break for a show commercial. Hello, Geek Timers. This is producer George, interrupting this podcast to let you know that we have space available. This space could be used to promote your product, book, event, group, even wish a special someone happy birthday. If you're interested in using this space, please contact us on Twitter via private message at Geek History Time. And we're back. Commercial like that. Doesn't that just make people want to like throw money at us so they can buy that space? Oh, oh yeah, just bake it rain. Oh yeah. I strongly recommend reach out to us on Twitter. Yeah, you could message us independently at

the harmony or at eH Play Lock and kind of separate deal with either of us. We're corrupt. That's fine. We're probably we're we're we're totally fine making separate piece. Yeah, or if you want you can you can email the at geek harmony on the Twitter and then you'll keep us all honest. At geek history of time. Yes, sorry. At geek harmony. Geek. So I'm trying to step up my own subsidiary. Going into business for yourself.

Love it. Love it. Like I said, work around. Like a geek harmony sounds like kind of kind of weird dating service. I don't know about that. You know, that might be something that they're advertising on the Facebook's right now. They might be. Could be. I don't know. Or at Geek Playlock.

Just there you go. Yeah, you know. Cover your bases. Send it to all of them. Yeah, shut gun it. Yeah, but you could wish somebody a happy birthday. You know, you could absolutely. Like the ads have said, like there's any number of things you could do with that space

Yes, it could be just me reading eight seconds of John Keats Or or John Keats I might I might actually pay money for that just okay just because that's weird Yeah eight seconds at a time. Yeah eight seconds at a time John Keats for the eights All right, yeah, so When when we left off yes eight seconds at a time. Yeah, eight seconds at a time. John Keats for the eights. Eric, all right. Yeah. So when we left off, we were talking about the Friseta Aesthetic. Yes. And enough to make a kid throw up.

Yeah, enough to make a kid throw up or to make an adolescent boy not throw up because Friseta did love him some lieth curvy women. Yeah, here's an example. I'm just gonna show you of, again, I think it's an homage to Howard actually, but it's very much Conan and lieth curvy women. There you go, Howard the Duck,

yes, with a red Sony impersonator in the background. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, so. And you see the background. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. So. And you see the menacing shadow that is going on. Yeah, the menacing shadow that is coming in about to kick the ducks ass.

Yes. So speaking of comics, the friseta aesthetic got carried forward into the comics. OK. So when he's not dressed like, you know, a business manager for ladies of ill-reputed, Conan in the comics is this, he's a superhero, he's a superhero figure, because if you're a comic book artist, that's what you're best familiar with drawing. Yeah. And that sells the idea of, you know, barbarian warrior, you know, more easily, more clearly in a visual medium than, you know, drawing a guy who's kind of athletic and, you know,

but yeah. I think that's kind of what makes the movie Snatch work really well actually is the fact that Brad Pitt looks nothing like that and he's knocking people out. Yeah. You know, like that's that's kind of the juxtaposition. Yeah, it is. So it's still responding to it. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, it's that's responding to the underlying ideas and themes. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, and so talking about the comics, in 1970 Marvel published a Conan the Barbarian series. Yes.

And the success of that led to the magazine Savage Sort of Conan starting in 74, which was a black and white magazine-sized anthology of some stuff that was inspired by the Howard stories, some stuff that was inspired by the DeCamp and the Delint stories, and some stuff that was just new, you know, created for the comics, and had more adult themes in artwork. So that's 74. Yeah. Do you know when Arnold gets to America? Yeah. Do you know when Arnold gets to America? Because I think in 74 he was in a movie called Hercules in New York. I don't know if that was 70. I don't know if that was that early.

That might have been there. That was that early. Well, 74 when he did, 75's when did Pumping Iron. Yeah. 75 was Pumping Iron. Okay. So he was probably in the States. Yeah.

Okay. This is the thing that's growing in the lexicon. Yeah. So in 78, Marvel actually even started producing a daily Conan strip for newspapers that ran through 1981. Wow. So he's still out there in the public consciousness. He's still this character that's selling magazines for Marvel.

Right there under Barney Google and Mary Worse. In Prince Valiant. Yeah. Oh, Worse. And Prince Valiant. Yeah. Oh, that's right, Prince Valiant. Yeah. And Mark Trail. Yeah. Yeah.

And so when I was in junior high and high school, I discovered the reprints of the Savage Sword magazines. And how did you find them? How did I find them? I'm trying to even remember. I think on the top of my head, there was a section in the magazine section in the Navy Exchange at Miramar, had a shelf or a set of shelves, one rack essentially, that was comics comics of all and whoever was buying their comics was my all kinds of eclectic stuff

Because that was also where I first saw my where I saw my first ever copy of the nom you remember that series? Yes, they they had that on the shelf They had several Marvel superhero titles and they had seven sort of Conan and just kind of Hodgpun Kind of kind of like okay. Sounds like a PX. Yeah, you know, it does. Yeah, and outskirts of Aquilonia where the red and black legions have met each other and fought each other to a bloody stalemate. The only survivors of the battle are a Samarian mercenary who's been taken prisoner by one of the officers of the red legion. So, Cone and this lone survivor wind up having to travel through this swamp and they run

into a sorcerer in which or some monster, I don't even remember anymore. But it was just like the opening line of the intro just like grabbed me by the forebrain. It was like, no, no, no, no, you're gonna fucking read this. That's cool. And it was amazing. And then I found a couple of other copied, you know, it's time to go on.

I got copies of it and I realized that this was a way to get a hold of pictures of nearly naked women that I would be able to bring home under the cover of yeah mom can I pick up this comic cool that's like a elk quest for other people yeah yeah yeah kind of there's a local comic here in Sacramento named Keith Lowell Jensen I'm gonna drop his name. He has an album called Elf Quest Yeah, no, it's called Elf or G. I'm sorry. Oh nice because of Elf Elf quest. Yes, so So this this character is out there in the zit guys. Okay, this character is still out there pushing pushing magazines

Yes, people are still buying it This character is out there in the Zitgeist. This character is still out there pushing magazines. Yes. People are still buying it. Comic books. Yeah. And so that leads to the Hulk, by the way. He fights the Hulk at one point. In the comics. It does, doesn't he?

Yeah. Yeah. When Marvel was like, well, we got the right to this character. What are we going to do with it? Yeah. Let's put him with Conan. Yeah. It's nice.

Well done. Thank you. So, you know, and the question is, it's like of all the characters that Howard created Mm-hmm. Why was this one? This specific dude. Why was this one the one that caught fire? Well, and it had morphed so much like you said Howard created him as this life fellow Yeah, and by the time it's catching fire and the zeitgeist I mean it had pulled through yeah his his adventures I would imagine him being the protagonist. Yeah, and by the time it's catching fire in the zeitgeist I mean it had pulled through yeah his his adventures. I would imagine him being the protagonist. Yeah, very cool Yeah, but but the visual aspect you start to see it like go from like wow

He's doing really well and then suddenly a hockey sticks because it becomes yeah iconic yes, and and The the visual representations the association with friseta, all that kind of stuff is definitely part of it. Yes. My theory is that it has a lot to do with the themes embodied by. Embodied, nice. Okay. Oh, yeah. Made that.

When I wrote that in my notes, that wasn't a pun. I just want to say, so Howard's other characters are all one note sketches. Okay, Sailor Steve Costigan is a bear knuckle fighter travels the world. Solomon Kane is an avenging purist in Swordsman, which in the stories comes across as a hell of a lot more awesome that that sounds as one line pitch.

Red Sonia is a hell cat with a sword. She's female Conan. No, in the actual Howard stories, she's a semi-historical mercenary commander who was actually inspired by a real historical, no, an Italian, a female Italian conciliary in the 1500s. I don't remember, I can't remember the name of the top.

What on the beach? No, no, no. Lucretia Borsa. No. No, okay. I'm running out of ideas. A mercenary, a female mercenary commander. Wow.

So Conan is the only one of them who ever has the opportunity to develop a real personality and that personality is really compelling. Okay. The stories themselves are kinetic, and the language itself is vital. An example here. I took an excerpt. Sure. Just listen to this.

Yeah. Outside the moan of the tortured thousands, shuttered up to the stars, which crusted the sweating vendee in night, and the conks bellowed like oxen in pain. In the gardens of the palace, the torches glinted on polished helmets and curved swords and gold-chased corslets. All the noble-born fighting men of Iodia were gathered in the great palace or about it, and at each broad arched gate and door, fifty archers stood on guard with bows in their hands, but death stalked through the royal palace,

and none could stay its ghostly hand. On the dius under the golden dome, the king cried out again, racked by awful paroxysms. Again, his voice came faintly and far away, and again the devy bent to him, trembling with a fear that was darker than the terror of death. That's the opening. That is the cold open for the people of the black circle. Okay. From 1934. His, his, I've said before that I'm a sucker for pros. Yes, you are. And, and, um, Fair Knight 451 is an amazing example of, of pros that is, that just bumps right up against the edge of being poetic. And Howard, his language and the way he describes everything just like practically leaps off the page.

It's immensely evocative. And everything captures an emotion and a mood, almost immediately. Yeah, when you were reading it, I was like, you know, listening obviously to how you're reading it and the tone that you were taking with it, but it seemed like the words were almost like, like you see in movies where people step into a swamp and the darkness folds around them. Yeah.

That's what the, it feels like the world sags in the middle and pulls you in. Yeah. Not so much it leaps off the page, but it sags in the middle and pulls you in. That's actually, that's, that s a better, I like that. Yeah. Yeah. And so Conan has a code of honor. Yeah.

That code is barbaric and kind of amoral, but it is unbreakable. Okay. He s a survivor first and foremost. He ll fight dirty against an enemy. He ll steal. He ll do what needs to be done, and he doesn't spend time feeling guilty about it. Sure. He's vigorous and he's fearless and he's defiant. He's a hedonist, but he's not decadent. Okay. Not decadent part is a core part of Howard's philosophy. We'll come back

around to it. And the thing is in the 30s, as you mentioned talking about the depression, everybody was struggling. At the start of nearly all of his stories, Conan is either broke or stuck somehow. And in the few stories where he isn't, he's facing the immediate threat of peril. The very first story that got published, the Phoenix on the sword, or Phoenix on the,, the Phoenix on the sword, or the Phoenix on the, yeah, Phoenix on the sword, involves an assassination plot against him after he's become King of Aquilonia. It's actually King Conan. The very first one is the last one in the story of chronology. He has, he killed the previous king when he was essentially commander of that

King's mercenary bodyguard, that King became corrupt and went mad, whatever, killed him and took the throne. And so he's King of Aquilonia and he finds out there's this assassination plot against him and their sorcery involved on both sides. Yeah. So so he's the King but people are literally at the beginning of the story trying to kill him. There's so much that you just said there that like so many movies come to mind But people are literally at the beginning of the story trying to kill him There's so much that you just said there that like so many movies come to mind because again, I don't read these kinds of books, right? So the first one I think

The very beginning like just at the start of most of these he's in trouble My name's Ash Yeah, you know where he's getting whipped. Yeah whipped and he's already in the stocks and pilloried. That starts army of darkness. Yeah. You know, the other one that it starts me thinking immediately is the Chronicles of Riddick. Okay. Um, good way to go about it.

Well, actually, come to think of it it to me it gets gets me from No, yeah, in fact he starts off in peril in all three of them But in the beginning of the third one the movie riddock which yeah me is actually Not the best movie, but my favorite of the three. Yeah, my favorite the best one is black Pish black. Yeah, oh Very good. It's just a steamy pala horshit. Yeah, but there's, it's great because it's just a steaming pile of horses. Yeah, but there's there's a very beginning It's really good really thick. Yeah, at the beginning to really good movie is awesome and then and then it's like Oh, we are gonna build a world. It's like nobody asked you to you

Don't care. Yeah, like the world your building is not one we give a shit Yeah, exactly like I don't care But at the beginning of the third one, it starts with a plot against him. Yeah. And then he ends up on that world and he's living his best life quite frankly. Yeah. But it's the same. So again, people are just constantly responding to this.

To this kind of theme. Yeah. And so this was powerful in the 30s because everybody was struggling. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Um, and seeing him face these parrots with a cynical defiant laugh. Right.

And then overcome them through speed, cunning, and ferocity. Oh, wow. That's so 1930s. Made him. This is, this is my sub-thesis. He is the id to Superman's super ego Okay, see because I'm looking at the 30s of you you mentioned he'd missed. Yeah, it's time America had a drink again Okay, yeah, you mentioned 30s. Yeah, you know, you mentioned the 30s and He's starting with struggle like you said, buddy he's starting with struggle, like you said.

But he comes through it with what three things you said, speed. Speed, cunning and ferocity. Right. All three things are essentially kind of what across the world, whether you're far left, far right or in the middle. So the Hitler-Jungen, the communist youth, or the Boy Scouts. It's this worship of youth. Vitality. Vitality.

Yeah. And we get back to my Cap and America episode. Yes. About the CCC. The CCC. And you get back to the Rose Doth ideal. And a lot of those guys, the CCC, they were reading weird tales. Exactly.

Because it's cheap, it's on sale in the town. And it's cathartic. Yes. And you got five bucks to spend for the month. Yeah. You might as well make it last, but I'll read it. You're going to spend a couple of dimes on sale in the town. And it's cathartic. Yes, and you got five bucks to spend for the month. Yeah. You might as well make it last, but I'm reading a kid. You're gonna have to go spend a couple of dimes on a multiple bottles.

So it's a very 1930s kind of thing. Yeah, very much so I can see that being really popular in the 70s because times are shit in the 70s. The 70s was just a crap decade. Yes. I mean the only good things that came out of the 70s was we were born. Yeah.

And Star Wars. Well, okay, yes. Yes, important. You're right. I see you come to think, there's a lot of good movies came out of the 70s. Well, yeah, because when times are shit, people get creative as a way to cope with it.

That's a really good point. That's a really good point. But the oil, for the United States, Yes. I'm gonna say the United States, who had been riding high through the late 40s, well, the 40s period after the war, the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, on top of the world. And then the late 60s happened and everybody went, the what? And then the 70s hit and it was like pull-axing a bull.

And so we had the oil crisis. Yep. Two of them. Yep. The hostage crisis in Iran, at the very end of the decade, there was constantly the looming threat of the Cold War, the very first beginnings of automation in industry in this country.

True. The competition with Japan, specifically in the auto industry. If you want more on that, you go back to our episode on Battle Tech. Yes. All of these things. Create a situation where Conan's target demographic felt threatened. Oh wow.

Okay. Seeing Conan overcome the pirates of the Black coast or the frost giants or the picked gave readers an outlet and a story in which an obvious threat right could be faced and overcome. With essentially I'm going to borrow 70s term macho-ness. Oh yeah, but Chizmo. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we get back to those. For us that it covers again. Right. Beyond the cheesecake female figures, which you're, you know, let's let's face the reason I really like them. Right. But the male figures are super heroic in shape. Mm hmm. They embody strength. Right.

They embody a masculine ideal. Mm hmm. And now we got to go back to talking about Howard and his philosophy. And at this point, I think we've reached a spot where we can stop. Sure. And I'll pick up with that in the next episode. Yeah. Right now, what's your take away from what we've talked about up to this point? I'm still stunned by the fact that he shot himself. Like that

hit me on a level that I was number one. I just didn't expect the story to be like and the author killed himself at 30. Yeah. Like I expected that the author wouldn't have liked John Melius' version of it or something. Yeah there would have been some some kind of right but no. And then I found it interesting that other people took up his writing. Yeah. And added to the story. To the lore.

Yeah. We tend to have a sense of propriety when it comes to an author. Yeah. We do. Which is. Except with fantasy. I'm. Because Tolkien's son.

Well, Tolkien's well, but no, Tolkien's son didn't write any of that. He edited the shit out. Okay, okay. Generally speaking, moderately in all of our fiction, we have this idea of, well, you know, that's this person's work. Right.

And you know, the whole fan fiction movement since the beginning of the internet, and the internet culture has been this kind of pushback against that idea that an author has ownership of their characters, talked a little bit about that when we did our thing about the Hogwarts houses. Yes. And I think that would be a topic for another time

that we could spend a lot of. Oh, absolutely. We could get a lot out of. But I could probably find us some fanfic writers. Oh, my best buddy from college. Oh, there you go. There you go. Is well known in fanfic circles for both his Harry Potter stuff

and his ex files. Oh, wow. Which goes back even further. Yeah. But what I wanted to get around to saying is that idea of, well, this is Tolkien stuff, this is that idea of, well, you know, this is this is Tolkien stuff, this is my stuff, this is, you know, that idea of ownership is a very modern invention. It leads to I would argue it's certainly post the invention of the printing press.

It might be the printing press that did it because all of a sudden you had a written form of the story being more normal. I was gonna say it's stained on these membranes of a tree. Whereas, whereas when stories were orally transmitted, people would add their own flair. You as, you as a minstrel. If you started telling an original story about your own character, it was like, who the fuck are you? Right.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I wanna hear about Arthur. Right. Tell me about Arthur. And throw Gawain in there, because you like him here. Right, right. You know,

well, well, well, well, well, well, Odysseus. Yeah. I wanna hear about fucking Odysseus. Who is this, who is this OC you're throwing at me? I don't know this person from anybody. What the hell? Right, right.

You know, and, and that's the reason that so many of the Arthurian stories, if you really read the stuff, it reads like fanfic. Like, I'm sorry, Gawain does what? Yeah. Like, which one of the nights can become a giant? Right, right. It's like, it's like, when, when, when did you ever establish that, that ZT's and Kaleis had wings?

Yeah. What? All of a sudden? You didn't say that when like, you were, when you were booking the cruise on the Argo? Yeah. No, you didn't, you mentioned a boxer, you mentioned a menstrual, you mentioned a pretty boy, you mentioned Hercules, you didn't think guys with wings deserve mention right there. Yeah, like all of a sudden, like out of nowhere. This is a left turn.

Yeah, yeah. Yes, so yeah, so that, for me being a history of literature nerd, that's, you know, you bringing that up, is pointed for me. Yes. It's just like, okay, you know, look, if we go farther back, right, they're, they're in a way just carrying on a tradition that goes back to the beginning of storytellers.

Oh, absolutely. From the first time we gathered around fires and made oop noises at each other. Yeah, you know. I would also say that because I, you know, again, with my ancient stuff, yeah, I, I, I would also say that because I you know again with my ancient stuff Yeah, I owe I I point out to my students all the time that like The the version that we're reading is a version that we're reading and that doesn't negate the version that you grew up reading and

It doesn't subtract from it They probably came from different islands. It's Greece Or yeah, or they probably came from different valleys, it's Norse. And I point out that, and some stories, Loki is the brother of Odin, and other stories he's the adopted son of Odin, and in other stories, still, you know, and on and on.

Other stories, he's both. Right. You know, and so it's kids are like, I thought it was this way, it was. It was. And then I point out, I'm like, we're studying, because I teach Latin, we're studying the ultimate fanfic writer

mm-hmm Virgil you know it's like oh this is did that so so did I yes oh this is did that so did I yes ideas stop there so do I yes oh this is stabbed a a cyclops in the eye well I yes saw him yeah from a from a distance. From a distance, you know, saw it happen. He was there. Odysseus, this woman, so did I neus. So, where's he is? I neus was the original Marty's stew. Yes.

Well, and I think Odysseus in the many ways was the first, or not Odysseus, I neus was the first time that a fanfic writer shipped two characters. He literally shipped I neus to Dito. On a boat. This is true. He shipped him. Shipped him to her. Yes. Yes. But it is like, well, let's make this happen. Yeah. And then it blew up. Yeah. So, so yes, I found it fascinating that it was his estate that benefited not him. I just, I was stunned to find out

that the author of all this stuff burned out like Jim Morrison style, like that quickly, like incredibly prolific and then stopped. Hemingway is a good comparison. Oh, that's a better one, yeah, because he also shot himself dead. Because, yeah, well, in his case, it was a shotgun rather than a revolver but right yes good Lord

What's going on? Well, I know it's going on time but yeah and the issue the issues it's funny the issues the Hemingway shot himself over would have been the kind of issues that a Howardian protagonist would have had real problems with. Well, I can get into it in the next episode. Okay. But what are you reading right now? You know, I'm speaking of fantasy. I'm reading onslaught by Michael Stackpole. It's the second book in the Yu-Juan Vong series of Star Wars books. second book in the Yuzhon Vaughn series of Star Wars books. Okay. Chubaka is now dead. Oh yeah.

It hit me very differently the fourth time around than it did the first through third times around. Really? Oh yeah. Okay. It's interesting what age we'll do to you as a reader. And I'm seeing the turn of Jason solo way sooner Oh, you're not doing it. You're tweeting all the foreshadowing. Oh my god

But like he has these monologues where I'm like, oh, dude, you are already into absolute rule. What the hell? like yeah um, and I'm I'm seeing That Anakin is going to die Anakin solo is going to die because of his recklessness. And I'm seeing a lot of interesting things going on. And I know what happens to each of these characters,

so it's kind of interesting to see that happen. So that's kind of cool. And I'm also amazed at how prophetic Borsk Fala is to our current administration without realizing that they were. In many ways, it was Feyla was a response to late Eira Clinton, but it's very much current era. Yeah. For similar reasons, vegan narcissism getting power. So yeah, that's what I'm reading. I'm having a lot of fun with it But I also am rereading forgotten fire by Adam Bagdissarian

Yeah, yeah, which is about the Armenian genocide And I made my world history kids read it so these are softwares softwares. Yeah They're all starting with like they asked they all asked the same, like how come this book starts with a quote from Hitler? I'm like, when you read the book, you'll figure it out. So it's bleak and dark and sad. What are you reading? I'm rereading Dune for partly for research purposes for the podcast and partly because it's been a while

since last time I read it and a whole lot has changed in my life. And just like you said about rereading the Yu-Juan Vong series, I wanna see how the notes hit me this time. It's fun. When I'm in my 40s rather than my late 20s. When you're happily married married raising a child. I'm happily married. I have a kid like am I going to identify more with Duke Lito at the beginning of the story and I'm going to you know is Uey suddenly somehow going to become

less of a bastard. Sure. Like you know am I going to wind up flinging the book across the room when when Harcone says something that that reminds me too much of our current administration? Sure. You know, I give that one 70, 30 odds. There's the spine of the book is probably going to get scuffed up by the time I'm done. But yeah, so that's that's what I'm that's what I'm reading right now. I haven't had time to get very far in it, but I probably will in the next few days. Well, good. Yeah, I'll have a lot more time. Well, where can people find you on social media?

They can find me on the Twitter machine at eHblalock. Where can they find you? Can you find me on the Twitter machine at at eHBlaylock? Okay. Where can they find you? You can find me at duh harmony. That's two H's in the middle, duh, and then harmony. Both on the Insta and on the Twitter. And you can also find both of us at Geek History Time. On the Twitter machine.

On the Twitter. And please drop us lines. As you saw in the couple episodes ago, if you give us corrections, we will read them on the Twitter and please drop us lines as you saw in the couple episodes ago if you give us corrections we will read them on the air yeah because we like that stuff yeah we like interaction we appreciate being called on it when we're wrong yes and I just do want to do a quick shout out before we say goodbye there is a new fan who has been born in the last week to the the child of our pinball guest has come into the world wonderful congratulations on that awesome I won't say his name because I didn't have permission yeah but

wonderful little baby boy and I look forward to watching all kinds of wonderful journeys for the oh yeah definitely that, definitely. That's wonderful news. To Derek and to his family. Okay, so awesome. And so with that, for a geek history of time, I'm Ed Blalock. I'm Damien Harmony. And until next time, keep rolling 20s.