(04-03-2014 07:45 PM)Cormanus Wrote: Tortuga, Red Mist has previously been kind enough to tell us about the Brekenridge Elkins stories by Robert E Howard. A quick read is illuminating.
Robert E. Howard; creator of Conan the Barbarian, but wrote literally hundreds of short stories and is, in fact, the author to create the "Fantasy Adventure" genre. He put a gun to his head in 1936, the year "The Hobbit" was first published. Much that is in "The Lord of the Rings" can be seen to have been directly lifted from Howard's many stories. For example, the good-natured competition over who killed the most enemies -- Gimli or Legolas -- is extremely well-developed in one of Howard's Breck Elkins stories, with a rivalry between Elkins and his cousin.
Howard created many interesting characters and wrote in a plethora of genres:
Steve Costigan, the rough-and-tumble sailor who boxed his way to fame in ports around the world;
Breckinridge Elkins, the good-natured, guileless Nevada hill-dweller who could take on any ten ordinary men;
Francis Xavier Gordon (El Borak), a Texan transplant to the Middle East, who was deeply involved in foreign intrigues between the local tribes, Russians, and English (similar to T.E. Lawrence);
and many others.
There's a growing movement of scholarship and research on Howard now, and he's moved well up the scale and is now regarded as one of the early 20th century's best American fiction authors.