D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

[The Firebird]

I enjoy those 80+ year old characters, but what makes them particularly "relevant"? Are there deep themes that I missed that somehow speak to 2025?

Are there deep themes? That's not really why I read Conan. I read it because it was viscerally exciting. I guess that remains relevant, though honestly there are much better contemporary writers if that's what you're in the mood for. Joe Abercrombie characters like Logen Nine-Fingers, for example.

I'll go to bat for the thematic depth in Conan, which I think is often underappreciated but explains the continued appeal.

One is Howard's framing civilization vs barbarism. While Howard's work does undoubtedly have racism in it, the depiction is more complicated than it might be because it isn't "us = civilized = good; them = barbaric = bad" the way that e.g., some Westerns might portray it. Instead he finds a kind of vitality and life-affirming force in the barbaric, with civilization leading to decadence and decay. It's reminiscent of themes Herbert explores in Dune (hardship forges strength, for the Sardaukar and the Fremen alike). Both of these are hearkening back to Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah, which presents this cycle as the universal historical cycle.

You see this most pronounced in Howard in Beyond the Black River and Red Nails.

Another is the kind of universal heroic archetype. What's really interesting in Conan is that he is always an outsider; he is presented as Conan the Cimmerian, but we never see other Cimmerians. This outsider status gives him a new perspective on conflicts and the ability to solve them in a way a local cannot. There are many other heroes of the same type--think Mad Max, think Westerns, think Samurai movies. This allows people to project all sorts of desires, hopes, fears, etc. on him (see, again Red Nails, or Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, where this happens again and again). There's this recurring idea of islands of civilization, with a messianic figure appearing from beyond the wastes who will lead us to the promised land, save us from ourselves (again, Paul Atreides...these are all the same character).

Then, there is the life-affirming vibrancy and vitality, which Howard expresses very well through his prose, and is really all about constructing and finding meaning for oneself. It simply oozes existentialism. Take his famous statement in Queen of the Black Coast:

"Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”

This brings to mind, for me, first Nietzsche's treatment of the collapse of meaning. There's an undercurrent of Conan feeling lost, adrift, unmoored, and responding to that by basically doubling down on physical pursuits, on adventure, on outrunning and outachieving this deep fear of the void that lies in his heart. (It's very easy to see the parallels to Howard's own life). Ultimately he is driven by the desire to do something, to affirm that life is for the living. I think this explains a lot of his appeal to certain readers.

But I'd also put him in conversation with Dostoevsky, especially Ivan Karamazov or the narrator of Notes from the Underground, who suffers from precisely an inability to self-define in this way. There's also a lot to say with respect to Kierkegaard...really any of the existentialists.

I've gone on long enough, but I hope that gives an overview of what I, at least, find there.

 

[Umbran]

Conan not relevant ? Robert E Howard is very relevant.

Hold on a sec. Define what you mean by "relevant"? In this conversation's context, it means, "appropriate to the current time, period, or circumstances; of contemporary interest."

When we ask if Howard is relevant, we are not asking if he's good. We are not asking if Gygax was influenced by Howard. We are asking how many people care about Howard now.

Solomon Kane, Conan, Kull, Brak Mak Morn, Turlough O'Brien.... The list goes on.

When was the last Conan movie made? Or Solomon Kane? When was the last Kull novel on a bestseller list? If the answer is, "Not recently" that means that they are not very relevant in current culture.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sure. Lots of things people do don’t help their cause. Usually there is nothing that can be done that would. but this is the UK, you can’t really say it’s “liked” here. Go after Dickens for antisemitism (true) and people would care. But Conan? Conan who? Doyle?

Maybe the country divide is part of it. I am in the US

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Maybe the country divide is part of it. I am in the US

Yeah, I know, and I think it makes a sizeable difference.

 

[The Firebird]

Sigh. Publishers picking which books they want to risk gobs of money on is not discrimination, nor is it censorship, nor is it a structural barrier. Publishers chase sales. They’re in the business of printing books that sell, if the books don’t sell well enough they go out of business. So yes, they chase trends, prefer authors with a platform, prefer authors with a good track record, etc. If they don’t they close. It’s simple as that. Markets and audiences change. No matter how much you love a given genre it will not stay popular forever. Sword & sorcery hasn’t been widely popular in decades. That’s not the fault of the publishers. Tastes change. We also have indie authors on platforms like Amazon self-publishing their work. If there’s a niche genre you like, you can find it there. Big publishing houses not risking money on genres that don’t sell isn’t some kind of conspiracy.

I think this 'the market will always ensure there is no discrimination' take is very naive given the history of discrimination. The market is not always right, and it can lock into certain preferences that are not the best for ideological reasons. This is most obvious in sport (because easiest to objectively measure), where whole leagues were not taking advantage of talent for decades on end. Eventually the market may win out, especially if the incentives become extreme, but this can take a long time. Not relying on the market to do this motivated all sorts of nondiscrimination law in the US.

I know. You were opaque about what you meant, so I had to guess.

I was quite precise that I meant the sales of the median book, not the sales of the genre overall.

Ah, but there's a rub - How are the expectations determined? Who has unbiased expectations about book performance?

You raise some good questions in this post, and yeah, I don't think we can really do them justice here. Yeah, it is hard to measure exactly what is going on, because we can't do a randomized trial of different practices. To what extent do publishers shape demand vs respond to it? How does marketing play a role? How does the greater cultural context? It isn't easy to point to a particular title and show evidence of discrimination.

However:

Personally, I think the contention that publishers in general are so ideologically driven that they won't follow the demand is pretty ludicrous. As if an entire industry of large corporations are going to knowingly leave money on the table... for shared principle? Really? Since when does that happen? Doesn't his notion fail a basic sniff test?

If we know how discrimination has manifested historically, no this doesn't fail a sniff test. See above.



I want to be very precise about what I'm claiming here. I'm not saying that there is some big conspiracy against works of a certain valence. I haven't seen definitive positive evidence to that effect. There is some suggestive evidence both for and against. But the arguments that have been offered in this thread asserting that there is certainly not, and that there could not be such discrimination because of market mechanisms and because Correia is still getting published do not hold water.

 

[Bedrockgames]

When was the last Conan movie made? Or Solomon Kane? When was the last Kull novel on a bestseller list? If the answer is, "Not recently" that means that they are not very relevant in current culture.

there might not be a very recent film (probably because of how bad the last film was) but I just saw a mortal combat video game trailer with Conan, and there was a comic put out in 2023 that is still going. Also Conan did host the Oscar’s and that still counts for something in my book

 

[overgeeked]

I think this 'the market will always ensure there is no discrimination' take is very naive given the history of discrimination. The market is not always right, and it can lock into certain preferences that are not the best for ideological reasons. This is most obvious in sport (because easiest to objectively measure), where whole leagues were not taking advantage of talent for decades on end. Eventually the market may win out, especially if the incentives become extreme, but this can take a long time. Not relying on the market to do this motivated all sorts of nondiscrimination law in the US.

Huh. That’s not at all what I said.

 

[SteveC]

Might be all the alt-Reich hate.

I didn't want to quote your whole post, but I think this is the issue right here. I don't read Larry's books for politics. I read them as really solid adventure fiction, with surprising depth. I can't have a discussion on the subject without violating the board rules, so I just won't.

I'll say that I recommend the Grimnoir Chronicles and the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior as being excellent reads. They have amazing action sequences, really engaging plots, and some surprise twists. They also have incredibly good world-building. I've recommended them to hundreds of people, many (most!) of whom have very different politics from Larry, and I've gotten positive reactions nearly universally. I'll do the same here. These are really solid books written by a gamer, that will give you some great ideas for your own games.

 

[The Firebird]

Huh. That’s not at all what I said.

My apologies for misreading you and for mischaracterizing your position.

I took "Big publishing houses not risking money on genres that don’t sell isn’t some kind of conspiracy" to imply that if there were demand for (e.g.) S&S, then the publishers would be there. Therefore, the fact that they weren't publishing S&S demonstrates that there wasn't demand. Is that not what you meant by it? Or did I overgeneralize in jumping from that to a general statement about markets?

 

[nyvinter]

I’d never heard of her so just looked her up, found her blog, and cannot post about anything I saw there because it would violate the “no politics” rule. Suffice it to say, she’s definitely on side with the Sad Puppies. It’s weird how people with regressive and hateful views always think they’re persecuted. Maybe try not being regressive and hateful. Might help.

For real yes. And she was not on the side of the Sad Puppies as much as being a core of them. If one want to read about how that all happened with a lot of receipts from the SP themselves, I really recommend Camestros Felaptron's Debarkle. (Exists as a free ebook as well as his website with a lot of discussion in the comments — not linked because there's an abundance of politics there as well.)

And I do think it's hard to talk about any of the Sad Puppies books without violating the no-politics rule. Even if one ignores the authors themselves, the prose is so full of present day politics it's impossible.