What Dead Author Should A.I. Steal From? How about… Robert E. Howard!

I don’t condone Artificial fiction, but if I did (and I don’t), I’d like to see what A.I. could do with the works of 1930s pulp fiction writer Robert E. Howard.

Robert E. Howard was hitting his stride (in my opinion) as a writer when he died in 1936 at the age of 30 (and I’ll leave it at that).  Reading his stories can be frustrating because readers can see flaws in his writing but a lot of potential, and we wonder what he would have accomplished if he had lived ten or twenty or thirty  (you get the idea) years longer.

Robert E. Howard’s most famous character is Conan the barbarian (or Conan the Cimmerian), and over the last several decades, many authors who are not Robert E. Howard have tried writing their own Conan stories. Some of these stories aren’t necessarily bad, but any Conan story that isn’t written by Robert E. Howard is just about some other barbarian who happens to also be named Conan.  Even the Conan in comic books isn’t quite the same as Robert E. Howard Conan.

Robert E. Howard wrote some decent adventure stories and horror stories and boxing stories and even some westerns.  My favorites, though, are his sword & sorcery stories.  Very few authors can get the right combination of adventure, battle, horror, and magic/sorcery (and sometimes sexuality) necessary in a good sword & sorcery story (I think Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane stories come the closest).

I’m not saying A.I. would do a good job with Robert E. Howard.  I’m betting the A.I stories would be a mess.  To be fair, many of Robert E. Howard’s stories were messy, written more like rough drafts than final copies, but they were still definitely Robert E. Howard, and the stories were still entertaining.

I’m not sure there’s any other story quite like “Red Nails.”  The same goes for other Robert E. Howard Conan stories like “Beyond the Black River” or maybe even “The People of the Black Circle.”  Even some of his non-Conan stories are unique (as far as I know).  I don’t think there’s anything else quite like “Kings of the Night” or “Worms of the Earth.”  I’d be interested to see what A. I. could come up with if it spun together a new Conan story or even a new mash up of all of Robert E. Howard’s genres.

Of course, it would be a mess.  But I’d still like to read it.

As I’ve stated earlier, I’m not a fan of Artificial Intelligence being used in fiction. I don’t want A. I. to steal from current authors because they (and their corporate publishers) should benefit from the authors’ hard work.  But dead authors whose copyrights have expired or whose rights are owned by corporations that had nothing to do with the original work?  Let’s see what happens! It could be kind of fun.

For more about Robert E. Howard and/or sword & sorcery see…

The Famous Author Who Thought His Stories Were Junk

Robert E. Howard’s Letter to Two Nerds in the 1930s

What was the deal with…? Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner

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Was my novel A. I. generated, or did I write it myself?  There’s only one way for you to figure that out.

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