Sword and sorcery. The name says it all. Action meets magic. If high fantasy is about vast armies divided along the lines of obvious good versus ultimate evil, epic struggles to vanquish dark lords bent on world domination, then sword and sorcery is its antithesis. Smaller-scale character pieces, often starring morally compromised protagonists, whose heroism involves little more than trying to save their own skins from a trap they themselves blundered into in search of spoils. Sword and sorcery is where fantasy fiction meets the western, with its emphasis on traveling swordsmen wandering into an exotic setting and finding themselves thrust into unanticipated conflicts there. As high fantasy concerns itself with warring nations and final battles, sword and sorcery focuses on personal battles, fought in the back alleys of exotic cities, in the secret chambers of strange temples, in the depths of dark dungeons. If high fantasy is a child of The Iliad, then sword and sorcery is a product of The Odyssey.

J. R. R. Tolkien is the undisputed father of high, or epic, fantasy.

Like the gunslingers whose exaggerated exploits form the bedrock of Howard’s childhood entertainments, Conan was an opportunist, a self-serving fortune seeker with a fatalistic outlook, albeit a man loyal to his friends, often given to penetrating psychological insights. Between 1933 and his death in 1936, Howard placed eighteen stories of Conan in the pages of Weird Tales. An instant success, the character’s most immediate influences were writers C. L. Moore and Fritz Leiber.