THE DEEP ONES: "The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" by Robert E. Howard

"The Gods of Bal-Sagoth" by Robert E. Howard

Discussion begins May 19, 2021.

First published in the October 1931 issue of Weird Tales.



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0608081.txt

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?70730

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Pigeons from Hell
The Gods of Bal-Sagoth
The Weird Writings of Robert E. Howard, Volume 1: July 1925-June 1934
Nameless Cults: The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turlogh_Dubh_O%27Brien
https://www.angelfire.com/tx3/robertehoward/turlogh1.html
https://howardindex.com/recurring/turlogh-obrien/
https://conan.com/the-life-and-death-of-robert-e-howard/
https://tinyurl.com/3e7ybdv3

Nameless Cults for me. I find it strange that this one isn't included in The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard.

Nameless Cults is an excellent choice, but I'm being drawn toward my well-thumbed Ace edition of The Gods of Bal-Sagoth.

That first chapter is as fine an action sequence as I've read in a long time. It's great to have REH dealing with Vikings. He hits all the right notes. This fits right in with my recent time spent with the History Channel's truly great VIKINGS series, and Linnea Hartsuyker's "Golden Wolf" saga.

I couldn't help but picture some Ray Harryhausen stop-motion when the giant bird-monster chases Brunhild of the forest.

Howard actually fooled me with the fate of Brunhild/A-ala. I was sure that she'd suddenly turn on our heroes, assuming some kind of fearsome witch-queen mode once they had served their purpose. But, no....

I see why this one wasn't in The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard; it's an adventure story, pure and simple, monsters notwithstanding. I guess Price classed it as "Cthulhu Mythos Fiction" just because of the sonorous names of the gods and places. (His etymology for Bal-Sagoth connects the part after the hyphen with "shoggoth.") The lost kingdom stuff was redolent of Haggard and Burroughs, and I was reminded of Kipling's Man Who Would Be King in the middle passages of the story.

The end was satisfying, and nicely carries the sort of pessimism that Price also instanced as giving the story a Lovecraftian air, but one very much native to and in keeping with Howard's other work.

I'm pretty sure I must have read the Marvel comics rework of this story (with Turlogh assimilated to the more famous Cimmerian) in Conan #17.

>5 paradoxosalpha:

I liked the ending, too, although I was hoping that Turlogh would toss that bit of jade into the ocean. Outlaws gotta eat, though. Maybe next time. I noticed that the Ace Gods of Bal-Sagoth paperback contains a range of unrelated horror/adventure stories, all featuring lesser-known REH protagonists along with a brief nod to Kull. A bunch seem to take place in the 20th century. Have to read the rest of this one!

That Gods of Bal-Sagoth cover art is notable for a representation of the story.



The principal REH volume in my TBR pile at this point is El Borak and Other Desert Adventures.

>7 paradoxosalpha:

I noticed that. And it's by Sanjulian, the second best Vampirella artist after the great Jose Gonzalez.

"FIRST PUBLICATION ANYWHERE" is a bit of puffery with an implied "thus." I.e. Initial issuance of this particular anthology of previously-published stuff.

I liked this one too for being an example of Howard advocating barbaric virtues against civilized ones. As soon as Brunhild shows up, she's getting our heroes involved in another revolution.

And Athelstane's synopsis of their day and the changes it wrought is very in keeping with Saxon and Viking views of fate.

Memorable and gloomy last lines too.

>5 paradoxosalpha: It reminded me of Haggard too with two outsiders being dragged into the political squabbles of an old civilization.

I couldn't help mentally mispronouncing the priest as Gotham, which led to images of the Joker.

I'm not particularly a fan of REH nor of Sword & Sorcery and despite the demon bird, was disappointed in not having more Weird. Neither was I surprised at what I found. I do love Leiber's Lankhmar, so it was worth the time to compare.

I read the Marvel comics adaptation before encountering the original, when Marvel launched a weekly Conan comic in 1975 (in black and white, but reprinting the Thomas/Windsor-Smith stories, plus any other more-or-less appropriate back-up material they could find to fill up the page count. To be fair to them, this included some King Kull and Solomon Kane stories).

The Ace paperback turned up in the UK a little less than a decade later. Usually, copyright stopped US paperbacks being sold in the UK, but they used to turn up in Woolworths and in newsagents, at a discounted price and with a notch sawn into the bottom edge. I assume this was the last gasp of "interesting" ballast being loaded onto cargo ships (I believe to stabilise them on their return voyage across the Atlantic) and then sold on, before Containerisation became universal. (It was how Liverpool got hold of lots of Rock 'n' Roll records that weren't available (or broadcast on the radio) in most of the UK. No US pop culture ballast, no Beatles, quite possibly.)

I did pick up that same edition of The Gods of Bal-Sagoth in the early '80s and memories of the comic version did confuse me, given that "first publication anywhere" blurb.

I also had a vague memory of Fahrd and the Grey Mouser featuring in the Conan comic - a quick look online has cleared up that puzzle. Thomas and Windsor-Smith featured "Fafnir and Blackrat" as an in-joke in an earlier story. Fafnir was apparently killed in that one, but Thomas brought him back to stand in for Athelstane. so the comic's Fafnir is Athalstane but also Fafhrd.

>4 semdetenebre:
I thought of Ray Harryhausen too as well. As the films he managed to get financed and made, and that I was aware of growing up, were the mythological ones and Sinbad and The First Men in the Moon - the sort of "respectable" subjects you might find in a school library - I never realised how close in spirit he was to Weird Tales. In fact there are pre-production drawings and so on for unmade Weird Tales style stories very like this one in spirit.

Naturally, Howard whips things along at breakneck speed and although it wouldn't be in the spirit of the pulps, I think sometimes I'd like to slow down for a moment, just to vary the pace (I'll also mention here that my brain - which clearly was exposed to Marvel's Conan at an impressionable age - was trying to translate this story into 1970's style comic pages. As if the story was a translation from a different medium and I was writing to re-translate it back. Quite an odd sensation).

Howard's observations on the fickleness and potential violence of the populace, although no doubt part and parcel of his settled views on "civilisation", seemed uncomfortably to the point, rereading them now, in a way they didn't in 1975 or 1982...

Wow! Truly a 'ripping yarn'. Took me right back to childhood, somehow, but I don't know what I've got in the back of my mind there—perhaps Rider Haggard, as someone says above. And I feel a bit as if I've just watched a particularly good 'sword and sandal' film; it was all marvelously visual.

I got a strong sense of Howard throwing everything but the kitchen sink in there: adventure yarn; fantasy; Dr. Moreau sci-fi weirdness; Lovecraftian horror ... none the worse for that, though—really gripped me.

I never did get round to exploring REH and I really must.