Talk:The Hour of the Dragon

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[edit] Revisions by de Camp, etc.

I am surprised to read here--but this is not questioning the accuracy of--statements that this novel was published under its alternate title, Conan the Conqueror, as early as 1950. In more recent years, that title has been associated with the Lancer/Ace Books series (all reports and the few Lancer copies I've seen indicate that the Aces were just reprints of the Lancers, down to Frank Frazetta's cover paintings), where a number of Howard's stories were altered somewhat by L. Sprague de Camp and/or Lin Carter for consistency with their own original additions to the series (completions of Howard fragments and totally new stories; for the first several years of Marvel's comic book license, Roy Thomas was obligated to fabricate completions of the fragments that totally avoided the contents of de Camp and Carter's versions, and the same held true for filling in gaps between stories). This situation is implied in the 1977 Berkley edition's description of that as restoring "the original magazine text and title" (which also implies that these alterations were present in the 1950 one, which doesn't seem likely to me; perhaps other textual changes were made then). Whatever the truth, it really should be made more clear here, and by somebody with a better grip on the specifics than myself (obviously). I hope this catches such a person's attention. Ted Watson 20:27, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

The 1950 Gnome Press hardbound edition was the first publication of the novel in book form. The title change was made by the publisher to capitalize on the name of the protagonist, since the book was expected to appeal mainly to Howard fans from the Weird Tales days, and the name of Conan would of course be immediately recognizable by them. It was the Gnome press edition that L. Sprague de Camp first read, and which first got him interested in Conan. His involvement in editing and writing Conan began with later volumes of the Gnome Press series.

The Lancer/Ace paperback series was merely the continuation of the trend begun with the Gnome Press series. More Howard Conan fragments had been discovered by this time, and de Camp took on the task of reorganizing the whole corpus into what was then considered to be the correct chronological order (the last few volumes of the Gnome Press series, which themselves consisted of newly discovered material and additions to the saga, were not in chronological order as represented by the earlier volumes). He and Carter also wrote new Conan material to intersperse among the pre-existing stories at this time, and he served as editor for the series. All of his edits to Conan the Conqueror were made for the Lancer/Ace edition, the Gnome edition having pre-dated his involvement. He was thus not responsible for retitling The Hour of the Dragon as Conan the Conqueror, though he did perpetuate the new title.

Popular opinion notwithstanding, de Camp's edits were almost all minor except when he was rewriting a non-Conan Howard story as a Conan one, or completing a Conan fragment. There are a few notorious exceptions to this rule, most notably his editing of Howard's The Black Stranger (which de Camp retitled The Treasure of Tranicos). When this story was discovered it was found to indicate a course of events prior to Conan becoming king of Aquilonia wildly out of sync with the then-accepted chronology, and rather than modifying the chronology in accord with the story, de Camp modified the story in accord with the chronology, even though the story, having been written by Howard, was more authoritative than the chronology, which had been constructed by fans. BPK 04:56, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I assume that I over-estimated Lin Carter's participation in the editing. On the other hand, your description of events seems to contradict the article's indication that the text was altered, however little, even for the Gnome edition, which as I said above didn't seem likely. Should the article be so amended? Ted Watson 21:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

No contradiction at all. The Gnome Press editor edited the magazine text for book publication; de Camp reedited it later. Wagner went back to the magazine text and title. BPK 23:25, 11 October 2007 (UTC)