Editrix’s Note: I did manage to publish a large print edition of Almuric, you can find it here.
One summer day in 1977 my father handed me a book “by the Creator of CONAN the BARBARIAN.” Any suspicion I had of this being a counterfeit Conan story was arrested by the exceedingly cool cover art of a great Native American-looking giant of a man battling winged black men over the possession of a well-endowed babe in peril. The title of the book was Almuric, one of only two novels written by America's best pulp writer, Robert E. Howard.
A Howard historian told me that Howard put away the book, thinking he was aping Edgar Rice Burroughs too much by way of this planetary romance, and that the last few chapters were finished by Farnsworth Wright, “Weird Tales” editor, after Howard's death.
Thank you Farnsworth.
Almuric is the kind of planetary adventure that holds up as counterculture 75 years after it was written. In our own age in which masculinity is literally taboo, when every action hero must be recast as a woman, when male testosterone levels have fallen by 25% in as many years, when even boxing focuses on female bouts, Howard's hero, Essau Cairn speaks to us like none other. Essau [Hairy] Cairn [Monument] is an honest athlete who is a throwback to the Homeric age to such a degree that he can't box or play football because his opponents might die. He is a man literally born out of time, to tough to even play rough and to honest to succeed in civilized undertakings like business.
When a crooked politician drives Esau outside the law, to be hunted by the police, he goes to a scientist friend who is working on a method of one-way interplanetary projection. Cast across the cosmos—Esau suffers the greatest irony: in a world of hairy ape men and beautifully available women, he, the brawniest man on Earth, finds himself to be the scrawniest man on Almuric.
Robert E. Howard masterfully charted a climb to masculine primacy in a barbaric world by a man rejected by the precepts of a civilized world. His hero's dream of belonging rushes upon him with fist, sword, fang and claw threatening to drown him in his own deepest desire: to be a MAN fettered by no criminal curse of law.
-James LaFond, Portland, Oregon, Thursday, November 4, 2021
…
A Note to Lynn Lockhart
Dear Lynn,
I was at Bob's in Utah when he received a small press copy of Almuric. It is simply the best entertainment for the masculine man chafing under our sissy American brand. Apparently, the winged black devil men make this story something that the Conan Properties people have let fall into the public domain.
When you are done that monstrous history book you are working on, I suggest you release a large print hardback version of Almuric so that I can actually read it. I can no longer handle mass market or small print and would like to enjoy reading this one one last time on some wintry night.
The fact that this story is the favorite Howard tale of friends so close and separate as Mescaline Franklin and Buffalo Bob must surely recommend it for the Crackpot Books imprint.
Of course, I think an audio reading by your silvery voice might suffice as well.