The Savage Sword of Conan was
Sword-and-Sorcery, not High Fantasy like Tolkien. I don’t think Tolkien or his
works were ever mentioned in the ancillary materials. Not the exact genre,
maybe even rivals for your time and attention. But there were wizards and
sorcery, half-clad babes and monsters of the week, power fantasies of conquest
and triumph, and civilizations lost even to the legendary Hyborian Age in which
the Conan tales take place. There were stories featuring Robert E. Howard’s other
creations, Kull and Solomon Kane.
Included in those ancillary
materials were essays about Howard, about the milieu of Conan’s world, about
the fandom, about sword and sorcery in general, about artists and their
work. There were adverts hawking fantasy art portfolios, back issues,
other fantastic magazines, ads for movies, paperback books, posters, even items in
the lost medium of the LP record. Frank Frazetta and rock’n’roll posters!
In the mailbag (called
‘Swords and Scrolls’) you could observe what was in effect a slow-motion
chatroom, where nerds and basement dwellers could give their opinions and
corrections and express the stunted yearnings of their souls. It made you feel
you were part of a mostly mute underground movement, that you weren’t so
unusual or alone, that ‘your people’, your fellow strugglers and fantasy fans,
were out there.
Years later I got omnibus
volumes of reprints which had all the stories I had missed or lost. I could
have gotten rid of the mags if I wanted to. But the experience was not the same,
not to mention the lack of personal and historical associations. I sold those
omnibuses (omnibii?) when I needed cash, but I feel I would never part with
these old memories. At least not willingly.
This run (#50 to #59) stretched from March 1980 to December 1980, straddling my Junior to my Senior year in high school.
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