Here are 48 books that The Complete Chronicles of Conan fans have personally recommended if you like
The Complete Chronicles of Conan.
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For the last decade, I’ve spent the majority of each year traveling. I’ve been to 60 countries across 6 continents and every US state. My love of travel was inspired and encouraged by my parents from a very early age. I’ve also been inspired by a wide variety of other sources, like movies, TV, photography, and, of course, books. Often, I’ll plan an adventure around a cool location I saw or read about and then just go. I’ll just show up and see what happens. All it takes is that little initial nudge, like what I found in these books.
No book has had a bigger influence on me as a person or a writer than this one. I suppose a lot of hoopy froods could say the same. It’s an adventure on a galactic scale, and yet, at its core, it’s just about a guy who wants to go home and have a cup of tea.
It’s a brilliantly funny satire and full of jokes and moments I’ll never forget. All four books in the series are amazing, and I’ve re-read them countless times. The fifth and final book is a downer worth skipping.
This box set contains all five parts of the' trilogy of five' so you can listen to the complete tales of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Bebblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android! Travel through space, time and parallel universes with the only guide you'll ever need, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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The set also includes a bonus DVD Life, the Universe and…
My dad raised me on science fiction and fantasy. At first, it was enough for me to be entertained by stories of spaceflight, of rescuing maidens in distress, and of fighting bug-eyed monsters. But over the years, as I read more, I realized that I wanted stories with a moral or ethical center, stories where murder, mayhem, and war were to be avoided if possible, and where, if they couldn’t be avoided, the protagonists struggled deeply with the moral dimensions of the actions forced upon them. I wanted to see characters growing into their ethical consciousness.
I love this book because although it seems at a casual glance to be written in the mold of 50s and 60s science fiction, with earthmen fighting bug-eyed aliens, it’s, in fact, a profound exploration of the morality of war, of chances, lost and motives misunderstood and of the ruthless use of children as combatants.
The training regimen of the children is gripping, as is the climactic space battle, but it’s the ending of the novel that gives the story its deep spiritual resonance.
Orson Scott Card's science fiction classic Ender's Game is the winner of the 1985 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race's next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn't make the cut―young Ender is the Wiggin drafted…
These characters exist outside their natural world, forced to adapt. As a white child in the Bahamas, then a foreigner in the US, and finally a gringo in Guatemala, I’m always the odd man out, wearing many different masks to fit in. Because of this background, my views have always clashed, and gave rise to some interesting conflicts that became my own books. Like these fantasy heroes, I had to stop trying to be something I wasn’t to fit in and instead embrace my own weirdness, rejection be damned. These books all push people to think empathetically, and I hope to carry on that tradition, opening the minds of others.
Another great book, this one more than a hundred years old, has also been poorly adapted by modern writers. In its original form, it is a wonderful collection of short stories set in British colonial India, a colorful but savage world teaching very adult lessons to children.
The vivid writing explores the struggles of various characters who find themselves out of their depth, but who adapt and triumph against all odds. The stories not only fascinated me with India from a very young age, but also offered me examples of how to act as a white child growing up in the Bahamas.
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The Jungle Book is a classic story of friendship between man and beast. Saved from the jaws of the evil tiger Shere Khan, young Mowgli is adopted by a wolf pack and taught the law of the jungle by lovable old Baloo the bear and Bhageera the panther. The adventures of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the snake-fighting mongoose, little Toomai and the elephant's secret dance, and Kotick the white seal are all part of Mowgli's extraordinary journey with his animal friends.
These characters exist outside their natural world, forced to adapt. As a white child in the Bahamas, then a foreigner in the US, and finally a gringo in Guatemala, I’m always the odd man out, wearing many different masks to fit in. Because of this background, my views have always clashed, and gave rise to some interesting conflicts that became my own books. Like these fantasy heroes, I had to stop trying to be something I wasn’t to fit in and instead embrace my own weirdness, rejection be damned. These books all push people to think empathetically, and I hope to carry on that tradition, opening the minds of others.
One of the lesser-known books by the acclaimed author of The Tarzan and the Princess of Mars books, this book is a more feasible adventure of a young man exploring an Asian jungle. He finds himself hopelessly lost at death’s door and nursed back to health by escaped slaves hiding from two rival kingdoms.
His survival against all odds and rise to power within those two kingdoms, isolated and oblivious to the modern world, as well as his conduct throughout, were inspiring examples to me as a young man of how to act. As unlikely as it sounds, it is one of the books to which I attribute my success in life.
Asia, vast continent of ancient civilizations and mysterious peoples, has many corners little known to the rest of the world. One such was the jungle-hidden heart of exotic Cambodia, where American explorer Gordon King stumbled upon a secret kingdom lost for a thousand years.
King faces danger, rescues a "jungle princess," and braces the perils of the lost city of Pnom Dhek. Great Stuff! One of ERB's less-known works, and a good one! Third Ace edition.
I was 12 when I first played Dungeons and Dragons. I’d always been interested in swords, armour, the fight between good and evil (thank Star Wars for that) but I’d never read fantasy. D&D introduced me to it, and I fell in love with the genre. Conan was my first reading foray into fantasy, and then The Hobbit and I was hooked. I still go to the Royal Ontario Museum and stare at armour and weapons, and love visiting medieval castles. I can’t walk in the woods without picking up a stick and it becoming a sword to fight the orcs waiting for me around the next bend.
This is a short story featuring Conan, and one of, if not, my favourite (it has tough competition from Red Nails and Wolves Beyond the Border). Simple, straight-up, sword and sorcery action. Howard’s Conan was the first real fantasy I fell in love with (before discovering Lord of the Rings). Epic character, but straightforward stories. The opposite of the sprawling epic. One of my books is a collection of sword and sorcery stories, and the first story is heavily influenced by The Tower of the Elephant. The otherworldly aspect, magic, (but not all-encompassing magic), a quest, and ultimately a choice between good and evil. I can’t not recommend a Conan story when talking about fantasy.
t is set in the pseudo-historical Hyborian Age and concerns Conan infiltrating a perilous tower in order to steal a fabled gem from an evil sorcerer named Yara. Due to its unique insights into the Hyborian world and atypical science fiction elements, the story is considered a classic of Conan lore and is often cited by Howard scholars as one of his best tales.
I became fascinated by westerns when my parents took me on vacation to Deadwood, South Dakota and I came home with a brace of toy six-shooters and a book called The Gunfighters by Lea F McCarty, which featured bios of various notorious westerners, from Billy The Kid to Calamity Jane. I eventually left Clayton Moore and The Cisco Kid behind for Sergio Leone. I had a strong interest in ghost stories, and it was Robert E. Howard that gave me the bug for the weird western genre. I wrote two straight-up western novels, Buff Tea and Coyote’s Trail, but I didn’t find an audience until I started injecting my stories with ghoulies.
Best known for creating Conan The Barbarian, Howard fathered the weird western genre with his seminal 1932 short story "The Horror From The Mound," collected here along with "The Thunder-Rider" and "Old Garfield’s Heart." Reading these early genre mashup stories of conquistador vampires, reincarnation, and Native American magic in high school was like tasting peanut butter and chocolate for the first time. They made new notions bloom like a field in my mind. You could take the gritty frontier of Lonesome Dove and introduce an element of the magical fantastic, and if you respected both genres, come up with something entirely new. I especially appreciated the culture clash of the frontier.
It’s something I explore a lot in my own work; that disparate peoples meet, mix, and come away changed by the encounter. This is an idea that Howard, who adored research and folklore, represents pretty well in "Old Garfield’s…
Robert E. Howard is celebrated as the founding father of sword-and-sorcery, the creator of Conan of Cimmeria and Kull of Atlantis. The Black Stranger and Other American Tales demonstrates that in some of his most powerful heroic fantasy and horror stories, he also explored a New World older and more haunted than that which we've seen in textbooks or museum exhibits. In Howard's Gothic America, dominion goes hand in hand with damnation and the present never ceases to writhe in the grip of the past. "The Black Stranger" spearheads the collection. Located at the extreme edge of Hyborian geography and…
I love forests. There's a particular atmosphere, a sense of being close to nature. Yet there's a mystery, you can never see too far ahead. What's around the corner? A truly atmospheric book has the quality of a forest, leading us on but never revealing too much at once. Perhaps beyond the next tree, or page, is something that may not be of our universe.
Howard's style is compelling, dragging you through the story with an inescapable inevitability. His characters possess stark, almost brutal qualities, sure of their place in the world they inhabit, even when facing the unknown. With mighty warriors such as Conan, we know they cannot lose but when it comes to Howard's horror stories, success is not so certain.
From the unsurpassed imagination of the creator of Conan, Robert E. Howard, here are twenty-one tales of suspense, high adventure and Lovecraftian horror.
Foul sacrifices are made to a reptilian God in Hungary, a werewolf prowls the corridors of a castle in strife-torn Africa, criminal masterminds on both sides of the Atlantic vie for world domination, an enchanted ring exerts a terrible influence upon its wearer...
...And, as written in the pages of the accursed Necronomicon and Unaussprechlichen Kulten, the Great Old Ones watch our world from beyond the void - and wait...
As a fantasy and science fiction artist, or imaginative realist, I have always gravitated toward works of imagination and own many books on artists in this field, and love them all. Having met many of my artistic heroes this was a tough call so I picked the five that books that resonated with me during my early life and exploration of this most fantastic form of expression. I hope they fill you with the same wonder as they did with me.
This was the first book compiled by Cathy and Arnie Fenner on the art of grandmaster fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. My first thought was to choose the Ballantine collection of his work because of its nostalgic quality (I was fifteen when I bought it), but this much later Underwood collection went way beyond a simple collection of art due to the care and love put into the production by the Fenner’s, who knew frank personally and admired his art. It's a big art book and the images fill the pages. If I have one gripe about art books in general it’s that the images are nearly always too small, not so here, this is a beautiful showcase that I have treasured and re-read hundreds of times.
This volume follows the work of fantasy artist, Frank Frazetta. Born in Brooklyn in 1928, he absorbed the colourful pulp adventures of Tarzan and Flash Gordon, and in the 50s he excited the next generation of fantasy lovers with his illustrations of Vampirella and Conan the Barbarian.
I was born and raised in Benin City, Nigeria, surrounded by storytellers who offered me a healthy diet of oral, written, and visual tales. I grew up fascinated with stories of all kinds, especially the fantastic. When I began to tell my own stories, I gravitated toward the speculative, returning to where I first learned about stories. My novels David Mogo, Godhunter and Son of the Storm offer glimpses into the way I braid history and speculation. I have an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, and am currently a professor of the same at the University of Ottawa in Ontario, where I live.
If Fagunwa offered us Africa-steeped proto-fantasy tales, then Charles Saunders brought said tales into the global mainstream of contemporary fantasy with his novels of the titular Imaro.
Saunders’ work was more in the mold of Conan the Barbarian than Lord of the Rings, but it drew on various empires of the African continent (particularly the western and southern regions) in a way that was rich and seminal for its time.
I recommend Imaro because what Saunders, as the first black author in the sword-and-sorcery genre, did back in the 1980s is what I’m trying to do for our current times: reach beyond simplistic representations of the African self in the fantastic and offer something nuanced, complex and ultimately satisfying.
Imaro is a rousing adventure... a tale of a young man's continuing struggle to gain acceptance amongst his people, and to break the cycle of alienation and violence that plagues his life.
Imaro is heroic fantasy like it's never been done before. Based on Africa, and African traditions and legends, Charles Saunders has created Nyumbani (which means "home" in Swahili), an amalgam of the real, the semi-real, and the unreal. Imaro is the name of the larger-than-life warrior, an outcast, who travels across Nyumbani, searching for a home.
Like his contemporaries, Karl Edward Wagner (Kane) and Michael Moorcock (Elric), Charles…
After devouring fantasy novels in my late teens and early twenties, I eventually hit a dead end. Where had all the good old-school fantasy gone? I wanted dashing heroes, compelling love stories, and epic battles between good and evil, but I could not seem to find it anymore–at least not as regularly as I wanted to. Eventually I set about writing my own stories, the kind of stories I always wanted to read. When I’m writing, I always go back to books on this list to rekindle my fire and remind me what good fantasy should be.
As a second-born son myself, I relate to the interesting themes of family and succession in this story. It is well-written, fast-paced, and has an interesting mix of lore, secrets, and lies. It takes a while to work out who the bad guys are and what they’re playing at, but once the lines are drawn, they are drawn in permanent ink.
As with other books in this list, the protagonist is someone I want to cheer for. They just had to win, and I had to read to the end to make sure that they did.
This first book of the Second Sons Trilogy establishes Jennifer Fallon as one of the most unique voices in fantasy fiction, as she creates full characters, and takes intelligent plotting to a whole new level in order to establish unparalleled complexity and tension.
On the world Ranadon there is no night as both suns shine brightly. The intervention of Belagren, High Priestess of the Shadowdancers, and the sacrifice of a child of royal blood, has banished the Age of Shadows from the skies. Belagren's position is unquestioned . . . until circumstances begin to tip political rivalries into a deadlier…
