As the publication date of El Borak and Other Desert Adventures draws closer each day, a companion volume titled The Early Adventures of El Borak is also looming on the horizon. This hardcover edition from The Robert E. Howard Foundation Press not only contains all the El Borak juvenilia, but related material such as the early Sonora Kid, Lal Singh, Yar Ali Khan stories and fragments and a big batch of obscure material including “Under the Great Tiger” by Howard and Tevis Clyde Smith. So rather than having all of these yarns scattered throughout a dozen different chapbooks, fanzines and paperbacks, they will be in two volumes, freeing up space on your bookshelf for other forthcoming Howard books.
Soon you will be able to put on your khakis, pith helmet, pistol and sword and ride your trusty steed across the wild, windswept deserts of the Middle East with Francis X. Gordon and his companions, kicking bad guy butt along the way.
Meanwhile, if you’d like to whet your appetite for desert adventure and get a sneak peak at the never-before-published original beginning and ending of the short version of “Three-Bladed Doom,” you can read “The Swift and the Doomed,” an article that exposes the corruption of the text by fanzine editor Byron Roark.
