Of pastiche and John C. Hocking’s Conan and the Living Plague

These dead are unquiet...

I don’t mind pastiche … which is I suppose a bit of a lukewarm way of saying I support it.

Nonetheless it’s how I feel.

I’m on record as loving SSOC and Roy Thomas stories and even (gasp) some of the old Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp Conan stories. I’m not a purist, as long as we have unadulterated Howard somewhere in print I’m good with new stories and interpretations. The Del Reys stand, so bring on the rest.

No one will ever match Howard at his own game, because he himself was of course in every story. Unless you have access via medium to his soul, or his ghost visits your shoulder like Conan did Howard and compels you to write, there will never be another REH.

While I used to indulge in Conan pastiche it’s not something I seek out anymore. I don’t read much of it these days … but once in a while I dip back in. I’ve bought the first half dozen SSOCs. I’ve read Scott Oden’s The Shadow of Vengeance and S.M. Stirling's Blood of the Serpent. I still feel a dim stir when I see the name of “Conan” in new art and stories.

What do I think makes for a good Howard pastiche? I have a few boxes I like to see checked. Here they are, and as with everything I write, YMMV.

The first and faraway most important: The story must be good, above all else. This almost covers for breaking any of the subsequent rules that follow.

The character should closely mirror the original. Conan should feel like Conan, act according to the broad parameters of his established nature. If not, why write him? That said, if a pastiche writes an immature Conan or an aged Conan reflecting on his deathbed, I would expect some new ground to be broken.

The world should feel that way too. I don’t think you should eliminate Hyborian Age countries or distort the literal map Howard laid down. The same goes for its peoples; Cimmerians should be mostly brooding and fierce, Picts savage and Pict-y. But I’m OK with adding to what is there, exploring a new island in the Vilayet or a dark and forgotten corner of Stygia, creating outlier characters and so on.

Here's what I don’t care about.

Established timelines. Because pastiche isn’t canon there is no need to connect up all the history. There is no way Conan could pack in all the adventure from every pastiche into one lifetime, so we can assume that pastiche operates independent of other pastiche—and even the originals. I don’t care how or when pastiche fits into the established storyline, even Howard’s chronology. Telling me that Conan couldn’t have done something because he was 27 at the time and a pirate might be technically accurate, but it also makes me yawn. YMMV.

Writing style. I admire when someone like Scott Oden can mirror Howard’s prose, but I don’t find it necessary. When someone covers a song I actually prefer hearing their own interpretation. Bruce Dickinson covering Sabbath Bloody Sabbath on Nativity on Black is not trying to be Ozzy … and its awesome and still honors Black Sabbath. Likewise Rob Zombie put his own unique Charles Manson inspired spin on Children of the Grave and Yungblud is fanastic covering “Changes” with his very different voice, albeit the same lyrics. Honor the original but do something new. It can sound different, whether musically or on the ear of a reader. The style should be appealing of course but it doesn’t have to sound like REH’s prose. YMMV.

***

This is a big roundabout way of saying that author John C. Hocking checks my boxes with Conan and the Living Plague, one of two complete novels published in the recent Conan: City of the Dead by Titan Books (2024).

I’m not a fan of plot summaries and I don’t feel like doing one here. But here’s what I liked about it:

Conan feels like Conan. I really like when we get to see how strong Conan is in non-combat situations. There’s a great early scene of him wielding a log-like wooden “sword” that leaves  hardened mercenaries with their mouths agape; we see him lifting stone doors of crypts that baffle other strong men, on and on. Fun. But he also comports himself with the same rough barbaric code of honor, the same ferocity in battle but not recklessness, and so on.

The writing, which includes some really fine turns of phrase and metaphor. Hocking is an underrated stylist even within the small circle that is S&S but I really enjoyed passages like this:

Pezur saw Conan bare his teeth in an unconscious snarl of defiance and felt a surge of kinship with the barbarian. He knew the Cimmerian felt the rigid touch of those distant eyes as keenly as he did.

Indeed, Conan sensed the unnatural scrutiny as well as if the dim figure had reached out across Dulcine and laid a cold hand upon his breast. The undulled instincts of the barbarian sent the same thrill along his nerves that he might have felt confronting a lion in a jungle grove. Though he could not give it a name, he knew there was danger here, a danger born of black sorcery.

“What are you, devil?” growled Conan.

It’s not Howard’s style but it doesn’t have to be.

The fast pace. The chapters are short and end on something of a cliffhanger, the action  almost unrelenting. Yes, we do have other characters, a small cast, which you need in a novel that doesn’t spend time inside the characters’ minds. But it’s still recognizably S&S, nothing like A Game of Thrones or its epic fantasy ilk. It reads fast.

A few particularly memorable scenes. A harrowing trip through dank underground crypts pursued by a horde of ghouls, and later an encounter with waves of plague infected living that attack in mindless zombie like hordes and whose touch brings death, are suitably hair-raising and stick with you.

Nice fights with mini-bosses. No spoilers but Conan has a nice mano-y-mano with a towering armored plague knight that was really freaking cool, a sorcerer wielding dangerous spells, and so on.

The sword-and-sorcery easter eggs (don’t think I didn’t see these, John). Two paired soldiers hold Conan at crossbow point, one named Rald and the other, Duar. A spell ripped right out of Jack Vance. Nice little nods there to the S&S faithful. And there’s also Lovecraftian menace and oblique reference, including the likes of the Hounds of “Thandalos.”

Little dashes of humor. Conan engaging in a bit of self-deprecation over his (very) short career as a sorcerer. A mercenary mutters that a sword weighs as much as his wife. And so on. It’s OK to have a little fun in S&S.

Rare 2019 Perilous Worlds edition... it's mine! mua-ha.

The plague and the characters needing to mask anticipates the COVID-19 pandemic. Prescient but happenstance because the novel was written pre-COVID (I have a rare copy of a limited printing from 2019), but it nevertheless serves as prospective commentary and evokes memories of the real-world outbreak.

I noticed a few wobbles (a side character is given a backstory late for no reason; perhaps too much description of architecture and rooms and the like, one of the big bads, a demon, is set up well but removed from the stage too quickly), but these are minor and hardly worth noting. 

What Conan and the Living Plague is not, is REH. It never will be, nor can be. And that’s OK. It’s still a hell of a lot of fun and a worthy S&S novel.

Bruce Dickinson at the House of Blues, Boston MA Sept. 11, 2025

If all Bruce Dickinson had was his solo career he’d still be remembered in the annals of heavy metal. Bruce’s best solo efforts—Accident of Birth, Tyranny of Souls, and The Chemical Wedding—comprise a power trio any metal band would be proud to have in their catalogue. 

And oh yeah, he did that Iron Maiden thing too.

I got to see Bruce solo for the first time last night at the House of Blues in Boston. My buddy Scott and I battled through brutal Boston traffic to get in but it was worth it. We met up with another friend for dinner and a couple beers before meandering in.

Bruce means a lot to me for a number of reasons and he did not disappoint. Even at age 67 he was still bringing the fire, and his air raid siren voice.

Here’s the setlist. Yes, I got see him perform the “Star Bangled Banner” (which Bruce is performing at the Pittsburgh Steelers game this weekend) and “Flash of the Blade,” a deep cut off Powerslave. Unexpected and fun. I deliberately stayed away from any reviews so as not to be spoiled, and was pleasantly surprised by it all:

1. Accident of Birth

2. Abduction

3. Laughing in the Hiding Bush

4. Shadow of the Gods

5. Chemical Wedding

6. Star Spangled Banner

7. Flash of the Blade

8. Resurrection Men

9. Rain on the Graves

10. Frankenstein

11. The Alchemist

12. Book of Thel

13. Road to Hell

Encore:

14. Tears of the Dragon

15. Gods of War

16. The Tower

I’m semi-embarrassed to admit I’ve barely listened to Bruce’s new album The Mandrake Project, released last year. But I greatly enjoyed “Rain on the Graves” and “Resurrection Men” and will work to rectify that.

Bruce is a very creative, musical dude. Last night he at turns played drums and an instrument called a theremin, which is played without touch, detecting hand movement only. Weird, and fun.

Here is a little bit of probably my favorite Bruce solo song (though “Jerusalem” and “Return of the King” are in the running), “Tears of the Dragon,” off Balls to Picasso, recorded on my cell phone. It's tinny as all cell phone recordings are but you can still get a sense of his power and presence:

I owe Bruce’s solo stuff a proper essay. When I look at the lyrics of “Chemical Wedding” and “The Alchemist” he’s telling us a story about the nature of human existence, and the possibility of transformation.

And so we lay

We lay in the same grave

Our chemical wedding day

Also I'm 99% certain I saw Jeff Talanian, creator of the Hyperborea RPG. Jeff if you're reading this let me know if you were there.

Conan and the Living Plague

I'm reading John C. Hocking's Conan and the Living Plague for Cimmerian September. 

Nothing else to add at the moment except that it's quite enjoyable after three chapters, with fell wizards and foul plagues and Conan in a fine demonstration of jaw-dropping strength.

I will write a full review later this month. 

This is the second of two short novels packaged together as Conan: City of the Dead, released in a single volume by Titan Books in 2024.

Reading is in trouble … what are we going to do about it?

Reading is in trouble. How deeply? There’s evidence it may be in a death spiral.

A new study published in the journal iScience found that daily reading for pleasure plummeted 40% over the past 20 years. The data was taken from a study of more than 236,000 Americans, no small sample size. Study co-author Jill Sonke called it “a sustained, steady decline” and “deeply concerning.”

Another study found if you read or listened to only one book in 2023, you read more than 46% of Americans. 

Another 20 years like this and we might have to turn out the lights. Books will be viewed like Laserdiscs or a Betamax tape, a curious and dead relic.

I’m disappointed … but not surprised. Anecdotally the data checks out; half the people I know or hang out with don’t read. A few that do read a lot. This steep decline may not be apparent if you spend all your time in insular groups. I belong to a couple sword-and-sorcery Discord groups and another S&S watering hole on Reddit where people love talking about reading and their favorite books and showing book porn.

But these places aren’t normal. If you’re reading this you’re probably like me, not “normal” either. I’m what’s known as a whale, I’ve got 1200 books or so in my library and that’s not counting digital titles and comics and the like. But we don’t need whales, a whale might buy a shit-ton but a whale is only going to buy one copy of a work (maybe super deluxe collector’s editions too, but you see my point). 

For reading to grow we need lots of people buying books and enjoying reading for pleasure. It needs to become ubiquitous and normal. People used to do this. They used to buy mass-market paperbacks off wire spinner racks. They read magazines with circulations in the hundreds of thousands or millions that supported the authors who wrote for them. 

Today they’re watching television and watching YouTube and scrolling social media. 

I do these things too but I carve out time for reading. It’s a habit like exercise that must be cultivated. Phone scrolling is unfortunately 10x easier. YT videos have 400x the views of blog posts (this is me griping).

Reading is never going to go away entirely, but it may never again hold a prominent place among pleasure activities. 

What are the consequences of this relatively recent shift?

A loss of knowledge, paradoxically at a time when we’re drowning in information. All the information you seek is readily available by asking ChatGPT … but you’re never going to remember it. Reading generic machine output about the importance of community and bravery and faith is not going to transform you like reading Watership Down.

Information does not equal understanding. We might absorb data but we make sense of it by telling stories.

I learn through sustained attention and absorbing multiple perspectives. Reading and then writing about what I’ve read. Lose that ability and we risk losing our future to others.

We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

— E. O. Wilson

But beyond utility and understanding the loss of reading also means a loss of a unique form of entertainment. As I’ve noted before books offer a different experience and reward than movies or other visual media. I hate to think of a future where no one walks the labyrinthine halls of Xuchotl with Conan, sword in hand.

What do we do about it?

If you have children, read to them, study authors say. “Reading with children is one of the most promising avenues,” said Daisy Fancourt, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and epidemiology at University College London and co-director of the EpiAtrts Lab. “It supports not only language and literacy, but empathy, social bonding, emotional development and school readiness.”

Get creative with marketing books. Here’s an example of a $1M kickstarter for a book that put its backers in its stories. 

Recommend books. Support authors that continue to write, outlets that promote writing and reading. Promote old books too.

Write. If you can master its craft and discipline you’ve mastered a skill fewer and fewer possess. Good writing requires you to read. No way around that. Hey at least your stuff might get ingested by an AI and live on that way.

And above all don’t give up. We are the hopelessly outnumbered defenders on the walls of Minas Tirith, fighting against the dark and praying for the dawn. Perhaps we will hear the unexpected sound of horns.

TL;DR, Keep reading and sharing what you love. Support other writers. Keep writing. Fight on.

Hell on Earth, Iron Maiden

Senjutsu has been out four years (Sept. 2021), long enough that I feel confident in selecting a favorite song.

That song is "Hell on Earth."

"Darkest Hour" and "The Writing on the Wall" are fantastic, but "Hell on Earth" is truly special.

When you get to be an old fart you get disgusted by the eternal hell we keep delivering unto ourselves. Steve Harris’ lyrics reflect this sad reality.

We’re unfortunately never going to have a heaven on this earth—I don’t think it’s possible, even though I think we could be doing far better as a species. We know how to live ethical lives; we have the wisdom of the ancients at our hands.

Yet we don’t bother to acknowledge it, let alone strive to learn it or live by it. 

You dance on the graves who bled for us

Do you really think they'll come for us?

Knowledge and virtue, taken by lust

Live on the edge of those that you trust

You think that you have all the answers for all

In your arrogant way only one way to fall

Burning a lamp that is fire in your hands

Taking you further from these lands

We still have children waging wars for old men’s ambitions, vanity.

Despite its bleak outlook it’s a beautiful song. The composition is fantastic; at more than 11 minutes it takes you on a journey. It features some of Bruce’s most inspired singing of the album (“Lost in anger, life in danger”). And it offers hope that one day we’ll see our loved ones again, after death. We sense there is something better beyond, from our past, deep in our memories… far away from this hell on earth.

I wish I could go back

I'll never be the same again

Bled for all upon this hell on Earth

And when I leave this world

I hope to see you all again

On the other side of hell on Earth

Upon the eyes of good

I'm following the light again

In between the dark of hell on Earth

On the other side, I'll see again in heaven

So far away from this hell on Earth

Celtic Adventures wrapup and on into Cimmerian September

Worth your 10 cents...

I just closed the cover on DMR Books’ latest release, Celtic Adventures, and had to say a few words about the final entry collected therein: “Grana, Queen of Battle,” by John Barnett.

Because it’s damned good. 

Were it anthologized amid a dozen modern S&S/historical adventures it would not be out of place—except it would likely be the best story in the collection. And it was written in 1913 for The Cavalier. That’s pre-World War I for those keeping score at home, and yet it is in no way dated. In fact, it is burning with life in these pages.

“Grana, Queen of Battle” is a novella comprised of six chapters and 94 pages. Each chapter is a standalone story with minor reference to the preceding chapter, the same type of thing Howard Andrew Jones was doing with the first book in his Hanuvar series. Clearly this is the stuff from which sword-and-sorcery would be made. Short, episodic stories building on one another, action-packed, relatively small stakes (save to Grana herself of course).

Grana O'Malley is a badass S&S style heroine. Per the introduction she was a real person, a formidable Irish pirate whom the English dubbed Grace O’Malley. She comes alive in these pages thanks to Barnett’s skill. REH dedicated “Sword Woman,” his story of Dark Agnes, to the man. No wonder; you can feel the influence.

In the barest space imaginable—the first three pages—we meet a dying Irish chieftain, Dubhdara. Sonless, his lands and castle must pass to his daughter Grana. We meet Grana’s sidekick, a rawboned and lean fool in motley named Bryan Tiege, deadly with a sword. And we meet Grana, “a woman whom Fate restricted to a petty stage, but who might have ruled a kingdom. A woman who mastered men, whom men followed because she was stronger, bolder, and more daring than themselves.” And we get the setup for the conflict of the first chapter, a brewing coup by Red Donell, who with his lord on his deathbed schemes to take the castle for himself--even as Dubhdara breathes his last, and Grana offers her dying father a few comforting final words.

All of this is done with incredibly deft strokes of detail and emotion in just three pages. The economy is worth studying for anyone writing this stuff.

It’s positively wonderful and reminds me why I read S&S and classic historical adventure.

***

It’s Cimmerian September, the equivalent of the high holy days for sword-and-sorcery and all things REH.

I don’t typically participate but the enthusiasm I’m seeing feels around the interwebs is contagious. I might have to get in on it, either with something by Howard or a Conan pastiche. Or both. 

What are you planning to read?

Celtic Adventures: Of Conan, a chasm, and “People of the Dark”

This cover makes me want to drink Guinness and fight.

When I read I don’t go looking for symbols … but sometimes they just hit me in the face. Or in the case of Robert E. Howard’s “People of the Dark,” plunge me into their depths.

DMR’s Celtic Adventures has been a good read so far. I’m a poem and a few stories in, having finished the poem “The Druids” by Kenneth Morris, “The Devil’s Dagger” by Farnham Bishop and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, and Fiona MacLeod’s “The Harping of Cravetheen” … plus a long overdue re-read of Howard’s story.

Howard wrote “People of the Dark” in 1931 and it was published in the June 1932 Strange Tales. It’s been reprinted a few times since, including in DMR Books’ new anthology, which collects six old-school short stories and two poems (all published between 1895-1948) about swashbuckling tales of adventure and magic set in old Ireland.

So far all of have been good but it’s hard to top REH. Here’s the major beats of the story: A modern man, John O’Brien, enters Dagon’s Cave (portentous name) where he plans to kill Richard Brent. Brent has won the heart of O’Brien’s love, Eleanor; O’Brien, jilted, learns Brent is en route to the cave and pursues with a revolver in his pocket and vengeance in his heart. But this is no ordinary cave; it was once known as the Cavern of the Children of the Night, reportedly once home to the (now extinct?) ancient race of Little People that lived in the underworld of Ireland and Britain, preceding the Celts.

The story takes a major twist when O’Brien falls down a flight of ancient stairs, strikes his head heavily on the stone floor, and awakes to find himself… Conan. Not Conan of Cimmeria, but Conan of Eireann, the Irish Reaver. Deuce Richardson, who contributes a colorful introduction to the anthology, places the tale at roughly 100 BC—millennia after The Hyborian Age. Conan of Eireann however is not very far removed in mien from Howard’s greatest creation—muscular, black-haired mane, wields a sword, swears by Crom. Even more strange, O’Brien remembers being Conan, so has apparently awakened some ancestral memory.

Nearly 2000 years before Conan of Eireann entered this very cave in pursuit of his lost love, Tamera, who has fallen in love with the blonde Gael warrior Vertorix. Vertorix and Conan bury their quarrel as they find themselves confronted by a blood-mad horde of the Little People.  A great combat ensues, and Conan is separated from Vertorix/Tamera. And here’s where it gets heavy.

Conan is pursuing something he cannot grasp, in darkness. So far beneath the earth he passes underneath a river, water dipping overhead. Then back up the stairs and out, into daylight. And finds himself standing on a precipice, staring down into an impassible chasm.

On the other side, Vertorix and Tamera, confronted by horror.

The contrast is striking. The chasm is positioned in the story immediately after Conan emerges from labyrinthine, shadowed tunnels. Below is Howard’s subconscious thinking; above in the light an insurmountable barrier, a clear vision of his own life. He describes it as both a cleft and a gorge; a narrow valley of sheer rock walls, at the bottom of which is a rapid river, the source of the great carving.

A chasm is a primordial image, literally and figuratively. Deep time because water has carved it out, over millennia. But a chasm can also represent spiritual and moral divides, an insurmountable gap in relationship or experience. This chasm is both a gulf between modernity and the past, time that we cannot bridge, and the relationships we cannot consummate. “Howard” on one side, unrequited love on the other. 

Read that as you will; characters aren’t always the author, and of course Howard wrote “People of the Dark” three years before he’d meet Novalyne Price Ellis (and lose her to Truett Vinson). But of his own admission he was a man born out of his time.

This thought exercise and striking (to me at least) literary symbol prompted me to dig a little deeper. At reh.world I found a link to an essay by Ståle Gismervik noting that Howard composed two drafts of “People of the Dark.” In the revision Howard added a depth and richness not in the first draft, which was a barer bones, straightforward, and incomplete adventure. 

Perhaps he sensed something more profound lay in its stark outlines.

“People of the Dark” was adapted by Roy Thomas and Alex Nino in Savage Sword of Conan #6 (April 1975) … which I happen to have. Images follow. Pretty awesome … but the story has been “freely adapted” (aka., heavily modified) from Howard’s original. Instead of Conan the Irish reaver, the narrator John O’Brien wakes to find himself transformed into the real deal, Conan of Cimmeria. The change is drastic but I suppose reasonable given that this is Savage Sword of Conan, although the mag did do faithful non-Conan adaptations. The ending (which I won’t spoil here) is also quite different than the prose story, with a different outcome for our narrator.

Maybe Howard himself would have anticipated Thomas had he written the character prior to 1932. At the time of “People” Conan was a nascent figure, almost ready to evolve from Kull and Conan of Eireann, and whatever other combination of prize fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers and honest workmen with which he had come in contact. Conan of Cimmeria eventually stalked fully formed into the Dec. 1932 Weird Tales, in “The Phoenix on the Sword.” But his ghost is here in “People.” Conan the Irish Reiver separated from his full becoming by a chasm, ready to be bridged.

TL;DR, read Celtic Adventures for wild Irish adventure and more.

The chasm...