Image above from PulpFest 2012, left to right: Rusty Burke, Don Herron, Brian Leno, Indy Cavalier.
In the last two or three days Brian Leno popped in a couple of links to that panel we were on during PulpFest 2012, about the birth of Conan and Sword-and-Sorcery. Only about thirty minutes long — I explained why it didn’t run for the usual hour in my write-up on that convention just after I got back. Check out one of the links if interested — same content, different venues. Brian says the sound is pretty good.
Also sitting in were Bill “Indy” Cavalier and Rusty Burke, making for a roster of now famous Howard fans with grey beards and Hawaiian shirts, the official current dress code of Howard fandom that came in during the mid-sixties when Two-Gun Bob erupted like a volcano on the paperback racks, with those great covers by Frank Frazetta. (Although Rusty, while older than me and Brian — I’m not sure where he sits vs. Indy — didn’t actually come into Howardom until much later, maybe the early 1980s, from the comic books. Still, he looks like a typical 1960s fan these days.)
I’m thinking about heading back to PulpFest later this year, where they’re celebrating birthday 125 for H.P. Lovecraft, among other things. If I can put together a panel on Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright vs. his writers — he really screwed over Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, in particular — it could be fun.
