When it comes to reading the works of Robert E. Howard (1906-1936), my first time was through his Cthulhu mythos and related works. This was via a very nice collection from Baen Books: Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors (1987) with a pretty cool cover.
It had about a dozen stories and a couple of poems. Here we have mythos tales like “The Black Stone,” “The Fire of Asshurbanipal,” “The Thing on the Roof,” and “Dig Me No Grave.” But we also got such works as “The Valley of the Worm” and the Bran Mak Morn tale “Worms of the Earth.” And it also included the gothic, haunted-house story, “Pigeons From Hell,” which has had both comic book and live-action adaptations.
A later collection of such works is Nameless Cults: The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard (2001), edited by Robert M. Price and part of Chaosium‘s excellent series of mythos fiction collections. It has 18 stories, adding more mythos tales and dropping several of the non-mythos stories from the previous collection. Among the additions are “Skull-Face” and “Challenge From Beyond,” a round-robin tale that included Frank Belknap Long, H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and C.L. Moore.
But if you want to get into these stories, your best bet is to get the excellent volume from Del Rey, which is part of their REH Library: The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard (2008). It is illustrated by Greg Staples and edited by Rusty Burke, who is part of the REH Foundation.
This book has almost 40 stories and 20 poems. Most of the works in Nameless Cults are included here, except for a handful, which are mostly fragments or outlines completed by others. Most of the mythos tales are here, as well as “Pigeons From Hell.” The rest are in other collections from either Del Rey or the REH Foundation Press.
Even though they get their own Del Rey collections, we get two Solomon Kane stories and Bran Mak Morn’s “Worms of the Earth.” Even if you don’t care for mythos tales, “Pigeons From Hell” is pretty good, making use of voodoo in the Deep South.
I will be reviewing other REH volumes from both Del Rey and REH Foundation Press. If you haven’t, check them out yourself.
