A Conan Story By Any Other Name

Was it our last episode of the show where Big talked about his rule that we don't run stories that other shows have podcast? If so, then I'm a great big hypocrite, 'cause lookee what we have here.

Basically, I was over at Podcastle's site yesterday, looking through their story titles, and I came upon a Conan the Barbarian tale by Robert E. Howard they had run recently, "The Gods of the North." It didn't sound familiar, so I started to listen to it . . . upon which it sounded VERY familiar.

You see, for my birthday two years back, my buddy Jeff gave me a book of Howard's Conan stories, and the very first one in there (or it might have been the second) was one called "The Frost-Giant's Daughter," which told the same story. With the same words. Exactly.

Apparently, it was originally sent to (and rejected by) Weird Tales magazine, and Robert Howard rewrote it, changing Conan's name to "Amra of Akbitana," and changing the title to "Gods of the North." Then, Weird Tales was happy to run it.

Well, when Jeff gave me this book, it was during Big's last two week visit to Canada, and I so enjoyed the first two stories in the collection, that I decided to record a reading of them, either for our podcast, or just for the hell of it. You see, the majority of Howard's Conan stuff was written in the Thirties, and has fallen into the public domain, so I figured we could podcast as many of these stories as we wanted as episodes of our show, especially when money got tight to buy new work.

After laying down the straight read, I went back through and added tons of unnecessary sound effects. Sadly, doing the kind of stories we do takes loads of time, and though I finished "Frost Giant's Daughter," I ran out of time (and steam) in the middle of "The Phoenix On The Sword," and never finished editing it.

But in hearing the first story on Podcastle yesterday, I thought I'd grab the mp3 of my own reading, and stick it on here, just for fun.* Perhaps of the three of you that read our blog, one of you might enjoy comparing and contrasting the two readings. But we warned: MY Conan of Cimmeria tends to sound like a certain Austrian actor, Cyberdyne Model 101.

Rish Outfield of Stygia

*This is not to say that the Podcastle version, read by a friend of the show, Graeme Dunlop, is the inferior version. Hell no, I imagine there will be many that find my reading unlistenable. Still, what the devil are they doing reading my blog?