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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron_Chef" data-source="post: 1330811" data-attributes="member: 4530">Andrew J. Offut was the president of the Science Fiction Writers of America at the time he wrote his Conan books.You know, I screwed up and read Offut's Conan books out of order. The correct order is:CONAN AND THE SORCERER (illustrated with 50 pics by Esteban Maroto)CONAN THE MERCENARY (illustrated with 50 pics by Esteban Maroto)THE SWORD OF SKELOS (illustrated by Tim Kirk, but hardly as lavishly or numerously as Marato---in fact, he only draws examples of various items---he also illustrated Poul Anderson's CONAN THE REBEL in the same way, only adding buildings to his examples, the one highlight of Anderson's lame "sequel" to Howard's QUEEN OF THE BLACK COAST)It was impossible to tell the series order from reading the backs of the books (different publishers, Ace for the first two and Bantam for the final), and I went by copyright/publishing dates, which led me astray. Anyway, each is relatively self-contained and does enough to clue the read in to the previous books adventures. So far, I'm only past Chapter 1 of THE MERCENARY (wherein Baron Sabininus of Korveka strikes a bargain with a sorcerer of Khitai to restore the appearance of his lost youth so he may intrigue in Khauran and his native Koth, gaining glory and respect before he dies. I have no problem with the book so far, although it seems perhaps not quite as good as the other two Offut books (it is shorter), but nowhere near "bad". That may be only my initial perception, as I'm disgruntled with the publishers for not doing more to tell me the order to read them in. I suppose they were broken into three short novels (205 pages, 184 pages, 249 pages, respectively, AFAIK) in order to make more money for the publisher. Keep in mind that the first two's actual text page count are dramatically reduced by perhaps 50 pages by the many full page and half page illustrations, as well as "filler" splash page chapter announcements).Unlike all other Conan novels I know of (with the notable exception of Jordan's CONAN THE INVINCIBLE, THE DEFENDER and THE TRIUMPHANT), these three form a continuing story with repeat characters that are much better when read in order. I wondered why the story of how Conan got his soul back was glossed over in THE SWORD OF SKELOS, and now I know why: it's covered in depth in THE MERCENARY.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f621.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":mad:" title="Mad    :mad:"  data-smilie="4"data-shortname=":mad:" />  I'll post more in a day or three when I finish it. The Conans I had a devil of a time getting through were the non-Howard deCamp/Carter tales in the old Ace twelve volume set, especially the further I got in the series, until they became virtually unreadable by the end. While I don't have a problem with deCamp/Carter rearranging the stories in chronological order and providing helpful notes to each previous adventure as they go along, I object to the clunky, boring way in which they aped Howard, and by the unbridled arrogance they exhibited in revising and in many cases, rewriting, Howard. But even their revisions of Howard's originals weren't so bad by way of comparison to their "originals". And surely it would have been better to make Howard's original versions available earlier? For example, I have one book from 1975, edited by Karl Edward Wagner featuring four Howard Conan originals, THE PEOPLE OF THE BLACK CIRCLE, wherein Wagner cites copyright problems in bringing more Howard Conan originals into print (perhaps due to deCamp/Carter wanting to hog all the glory by controlling the way in which Conan was given to the public through their own hare-brained pastiches). Wagner places the Conan tales in the order in which they were first published in WEIRD TALES, rather than opting for the DeCamp/Carter approach to adventure, not publishing, chronology (Conan's adventures were published in no particular chronological order, which Howard explained as the order in which Conan himself related them to Howard, LOL).</blockquote>

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