Fascism and Science Fiction

On the other hand, there is stupid racism in "valle of the lost women" which was pretty cringe worthy.

but meh, that was bad anyway.

Howard did a pretty good job of it himself. The only Stygians we ever encounter are sinister. Thoth-Amon may be the Unknown Rival rather the Big Bad but he's still an evil sorcorer. Thalia in The Crawling Darkness is definitely evil. The only Stygians who might not be evil are downtrodden peasantry.'

Definitely unintentional. Howso hilarious?

edited 14th Oct '17 3:38:22 PM by tricksterson

I don't think there's any real argument Howard was a progressive for his time. However, I should note Howard treated just about every upper class noble or wizard in his books as sinister monsters...unless they were women in which case they wanted to sleep with Conan.

No, even then there was a hierarchy or ladder of sinister-ness. For example, the witch and the priest from "Hour of the Dragon" are on the outskirts of "proper" civilization, white, and pro-Conan, so they're treated pretty sympathetically. My favorite is Pelias, who's both an ally to Canan, and constantly creeps Conan out.

I just find the image of a bunch of Italians attacking Howard with poison gas funny.

"Thalia in "The crawling darkness is definitely evil."

on the other hand she have a pretty sympathic backstory, also there is citara and the sorcers parner in people of the black circle who are pretty damn good, shame what happen to them.

"unless they were women in which case they wanted to sleep with Conan."

that can be takled to formula Howard used to make money of conan, is clear he dislike and take shot at it when he could(villian in the house for example).

About the only thing that can be said for Stygia is that it's interesting to have the most powerful nation in the setting be run by black people—a lot of the racist thinkers of the day wouldn't have believed that Africans could ever run anything more complex then a tribal society, and maybe not even that, so Stygia being a Magocracy run by an intellectual Sorcerous Overlord is a serious departure from the racist tropes of the era.

Of course that doesn't mean that Stygia isn't a staggeringly racist construct, because it absolutely is. It just happens to be a different kind of staggeringly racist construct from what many of Howard's peers would have built.