The Hyborian Tales:
A Different Face on Race

        Until this point, the majority of this site has been based on high or mythical fantasy alone. However, there are other forms of fantasy where there is just as much racism, even if the races are all human-like in appearance.  The Hyborian Tales of Robert E. Howard, which feature the life and times of a barbarian hero by the name of Conan, contain even more blatant statements about the nationality and race of its characters than most any other form of speculative fiction.  While every character in one of Howard's stories may be human, the way in which his Cimmerian barbarian sees them can be described as nothing short of bestial, especially those races of darker skin.

        "Native rogues were the dominant element--dark-skinned, dark-eyed Zamorians, with daggers at their girdles and guile in their hearts" (Williamson, 257).  This is just the first of many descriptions that Conan gives about the other men that he sees upon entering a bar of some sort during carnival times in the novel The Tower of the Elephant (1933).  In fact, the barbarian proceeds to note and point out the appearance of each race in the room. He knows them by their race and judges them as he would judge any other member of their race. The hook-nosed Shemitish man is obviously a counterfeiter, while the Gunderman must be some wandering deserter from an army that that has been defeated.  Howard seems to have a preoccupation with the racial characteristics of the various peoples in his tales. There is no individuality. If you are a Stygian, then you are "tall and well-made, dusky [and] straight-featured" and are inevitably a noble. There is no way around it.  The sense of race-consciousness, whereby it is possible to know a character by their appearance or dress, is very common in the works of Howard.  It is also obvious that once a person is identified, whether by the color of their skin, the clothes that they  wear, their customs, or their behavior, and their race becomes known, that person is now known to both Conan and the reader.  For, in the stories of Howard, to know the race is to know the person.  What could be a more racist idea than that?

        Howard also spent a lot of time writing about the history of his races. He is "very much concerned with the waxing and the waning of races; for him, a new race means new vitality, a much-needed infusion of fresh life into blood stale and old and long since thinned by moral decay. . ." (Hassler, 152).  The way the works are written, it is apparent that Howard wants the blood of the barbarians to seem young, fresh, and full of life.  It alone has remained pure throughout history and it alone has not been mongrelized. "This mixing of the pure Hyborian blood, however, did not occur and could not have have occurred with black-skinned peoples" (Hassler, 153).  Unlike these pure barbarian tribes, the other "civilized" Hyborians have allowed their blood to mix over the centuries because of their own stagnation.
 

        The racism of Robert E. Howard may not be the same racism that has been discussed throughout the rest of this site, but it is just as important. While the stories of higher fantasy, with their elves and dwarves and orcs, might possibly create some barrier between themselves and the accusations of racism, that is almost impossible for the works of authors like Howard.  Where high fantasy conflicts can be accounted to myth and the reworking of stereotypes already in play--though those stereotypes had to come from somewhere--the racism and ethnocentricity of the Conan saga has no such shield.  The fact that the inclusion racism has permeated throughout the literature of the speculative fiction genre is becoming quite apparent. It is found in high fantasy, the RPG forum, and now in the lesser levels of fantasy.  The entire body of the Conan saga is ripe with racial slurs and degenerative terms. Most of the races are treated equally bad and even Conan himself is at the end of some of those comments, but this fact does not change the racist nature of the work. Just because all races are slandered just as much as any other race does not mean that it is not racist. Instead, it just means that it is indiscriminately racist against all.

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