Season 9 Episode 9: The Recapitulation – End of The Road of Revisions!

Welcome, Cromrades! We've reached the end of The Road of Revisions, and this week we reflect on what we've learned about Robert E. Howard's revision process and discuss the implications of posthumous collaborations.

One Things
Jon: The Helmet Project - an online index of the helmets worn by various American football teams at all levels of play throughout history.
Josh: My Father, The Pornographer: A Memoir by Chris Offutt.
Luke: Blue Oyster Cult - Fire of Unknown Origin

Robert E. Howard's bedroom as it might have looked as he wrote and revised his works...

Where do we go from here? How about setting sail across the gulfs of space to the desert planet of Arrakis?

Frank Herbert's Dune is a science fiction masterpiece that blends elements of fantasy to create a rich and fully realized fictional world.  At first it may seem like this is a substantial departure for us! But fear not (fear is the mind-killer!), because we think you'll see similar themes that we've explored in other stories unfold within this work in a unique way! 

This novel, first published in 1965, finds its roots in the pulps of the day. And that is where we will begin Season 10 - The Road to Arrakis, next time! 

Questions? Comments? Curses?

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Legal Mumbo-Jumbo

Our episode is freely available on archive.org and is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Themes by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. 

Outro: "Astronomy" by Blue Oyster Cult.  All music was obtained legally; we hope our discussion of this content makes you want to go out and purchase the work!

Season 9, Episode 3: The Inspiration – "The Striking of the Gong" by Howard & Carter

Welcome back, Cromrades! We're chugging along The Road of Revisions! In this episode, which we term 'The Inspiration,' we tackle "The Striking of the Gong," which you can find in the Kull collection by Del Ray or perhaps a used copy of King Kull.

A graphic interpretation of the story from The Savage Sword of Conan comic!

Here's the One Things!
Jon: Stardew Valley!
Josh: Harvest Moon - Friends of Mineral Town!
Luke: More gardening! Specifically his zinnia planting!

NEXT TIME.... THE TRANSFORMATION!

Questions? Comments? Curses?
Email us! (thecromcast at gmail dot com)
You know you want to follow us on Twitter!
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We're posting photos on the Instagrams!
Subscribe to our feed on FeedBurner!
Or, check us out on iTunes!
We're also on Stitcher Radio and Google Play!
Finally.... Call us! (859) 429-CROM!

Legal Mumbo-Jumbo
Our episode is freely available on archive.org and is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Themes by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. Outro is "Do You Realize" by The Flaming Lips. All music was obtained legally; we hope our discussion of this content makes you want to go out and purchase the work!

Season 9, Episode 2: The Extension – "The God in the Bowl" with Mark Finn!

Welcome back, Cromrades! We're picking up steam as we head down The Road of Revisions with our guest, Mark Finn! In this episode, which we term 'The Extension,' we tackle one of the earliest-written Conan stories, "The God in the Bowl," which didn't see publication until 1952 when it appeared in Space Science Fiction.

An illustration by Mark Schultz in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian (Del Rey, 2003). 

Mark Finn is a long-standing REH and weird/pulp scholar. You may have heard of his biography, Blood and Thunder? Mark continues to blog at both 'Finn's Wake' and 'Confessions of a Reformed RPGer.' Do yourself a favor and jump over to some of his written material; it is well worth your time!

Beyond Mark's writing, we spend some time in this episode talking about the ongoing series of articles at The Black Gate entitled 'Hither Came Conan,' and discuss some of the points made by Bob Byrne in his article, 'Robert E. Howard Wrote a Police Procedural? With Conan?? Crom!!!'

Anyway, 'nuff with the jibba-jabba... Here's the One Things!

Mark: Red Dead Redemption 2

Jon and Josh: Avengers Endgame! Now showing at a theater near you :)

Luke: Fred Saberhagen's The Broken Lands / Empire of the East

NEXT TIME.... THE INSPIRATION!

Questions? Comments? Curses?
Email us! (thecromcast at gmail dot com)
You know you want to follow us on Twitter!
Did you know that we're on Facebook?
We're posting photos on the Instagrams!
Subscribe to our feed on FeedBurner!
Or, check us out on iTunes!
We're also on Stitcher Radio and Google Play!
Finally.... Call us! (859) 429-CROM!

Legal Mumbo-Jumbo
Our episode is freely available on archive.org and is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Themes by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. Outro is "Crawling King Snake" by The Doors. All music was obtained legally; we hope our discussion of this content makes you want to go out and purchase the work!

Season 9, Episode 1: The Initiation - Kull and Conan with Karen Joan Kohoutek!

Welcome back, Cromrades! We're excited to get rolling down The Road of Revisions, and we go big with our first episode! Here we tackle the roots of Robert E. Howard's brand of sword and sorcery by going deep with the Kull/Conan dichotomy, and we call in our friend and Howard Scholar Karen Joan Kohoutek to provide us with her insight into this topic. Karen authored an insightful essay comparing "By This Axe I Rule!" and "The Phoenix On The Sword" which was published on On An Underwood #5  July 22, 2018. Read that, and prepare for an epic exploration of these two stories!

The text analysis we discuss toward the end of the episode is below.

Fig. 1 - The Phoenix on the Sword - Most Common Words

Fig. 2 - By This Axe I Rule - Most Common Words

Fig. 3 - Most Frequent Words in "Axe" and "Sword" Combined. 

Fig. 4 - Frequent Word Pairs - Arrows Point to Second Word of the Pair, Increasing Shade of Arrow = Increasing Frequency of the Word Combination

Fig. 5 - Sentiment Scores by Section of "Axe" and "Phoenix"

Fig. 6 - Words Contributing Most Heavily to Sentiment Analysis in "Axe" and "Phoenix". 

One Things
Karen: Star Wars Celebration in Chicago!
Jon: Monster - The Zodiac Killer podcast
Josh: Joining The Appendix N Book Club Podcast for a series of episodes! Luke joined in for a discussion of L. Sprague De Camp's The Goblin Tower on Episode 41, Jon was up next for Conan The Wanderer on Episode 42, and Josh joined in for a Leiberian conversation about Swords Against Wizardry on Episode 43.
Also, we joined Trick or Treat Radio for Episode 350 and discussed The Head Hunter.
If you haven't subscribed to these great shows, you absolutely should!
Luke: Death Metal Gardening! Spring renewal, green growth, and renewal by raiding the soil's nutrients for your crops!

Growth and Graves

Next: A long-awaited story, and an old friend returns... 

"In Mitra's name what is in that chamber?"

Questions? Comments? Curses?

Email us! (thecromcast at gmail dot com)

You know you want to follow us on Twitter!
Did you know that we're on Facebook?
We're posting photos on the Instagrams!
Subscribe to our feed on FeedBurner!
Or, check us out on iTunes!
We're also on Stitcher Radio and Google Play!
Finally.... Call us! (859) 429-CROM!

Legal Mumbo-Jumbo

Our episode is freely available on archive.org and is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Themes by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0. 

Outro: "Steel and Silver" by Visigoth.  All music was obtained legally; we hope our discussion of this content makes you want to go out and purchase the work!

Season 9 Story List - The Road of Revisions

The planning is finished and it is time to walk down another road!

Here we go!

Season 9 – The Road of Revisions: An exploration of Robert E. Howard’s revised works, as edited by him and others.

• The Initiation – "By This Axe I Rule!" vs "The Phoenix on the Sword" by Robert E. Howard
• The Extension – "The God in the Bowl" by RE Howard vs "The God in the Bowl" by L. Sprague de Camp
• The Inspiration – "The Striking of the Gong" by RE Howard vs "The Striking of the Gong" amended by Lin Carter
• The Adaptation – Representations of "Queen of the Black Coast" in Comics
• The Transformation – "The Black Stranger" by RE Howard to "Swords of the Red Brotherhood" by RE Howard  to "The Treasure of Tranicos" by L. Sprague de Camp.
• The Progression – "The Spears of Clontarf" to "The Grey God Passes" to "The Cairn on the Headland", all by Robert E. Howard
• The Weirdification – The Weird/Mundane Dichotomy of "The Fire of Asshurbanpal" by Robert E. Howard
• The Expansion – "Nekht Semerkhet" by RE Howard vs "Nekht Semerkhet" expanded by Andrew J. Offutt
• The Recapitulation – What can we learn from exploring the revisions of Howard’s work and comparing them to the original stories and fragments?

Oh, the places we'll go!

As you can see, our path takes us back through the Hyborian Age kingdoms, to the headland near Clontarf, and into territories yet unexplored by our merry band of pulp podcasters! We hope to learn more about Howard's writing process via his editorial efforts on his own writings, and the approach that others have taken to expand upon his ideas. 

We hope you'll join us! 

Questions? Comments? Curses?

Email us! (thecromcast at gmail dot com)

You know you want to follow us on Twitter!
Did you know that we're on Facebook?
We're posting photos on the Instagrams!
Subscribe to our feed on FeedBurner!
Or, check us out on iTunes!
We're also on Stitcher Radio and Google Play!
Finally.... Call us! (859) 429-CROM!