THE DEEP ONES: "Three-Bladed Doom" by Robert E. Howard
Talk The Weird Tradition
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1gwendetenebre
"Three-Bladed Doom" by Robert E. Howard.
Discussion begins February 4, 2026.
First published in Three-Bladed Doom (1977).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?17491
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Three-Bladed Doom
El Borak and Other Desert Adventures
ONLINE VERSIONS
No online version found to date.
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No reasonable audio of the short story version found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://reh.world/stories/three-bladed-doom/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Bladed_Doom
https://reh.world/characters/el-borak/
https://heroicsignatures.com/how-el-borak-brings-the-heat-from-texas-to-afghanis...
https://tinyurl.com/5xb9s75b
Discussion begins February 4, 2026.
First published in Three-Bladed Doom (1977).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?17491
SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS
Three-Bladed Doom
El Borak and Other Desert Adventures
ONLINE VERSIONS
No online version found to date.
ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS
No reasonable audio of the short story version found to date.
MISCELLANY
https://reh.world/stories/three-bladed-doom/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Bladed_Doom
https://reh.world/characters/el-borak/
https://heroicsignatures.com/how-el-borak-brings-the-heat-from-texas-to-afghanis...
https://tinyurl.com/5xb9s75b
2gwendetenebre
That's the U.S. Zebra edition up above. I haven't read this story yet, but I am familiar with El Borak. I suspect that this Orbit chapbook cover, also from 1977, is a bit more accurate.
3paradoxosalpha
What, no pterodactyls? I have El Borak and Other Desert Adventures, and I'm putting it at my bedside now to make sure I actually read this one!
4gwendetenebre
>3 paradoxosalpha:
Even more reasonable! This story has a bit of a confusing history! See the first link under "Miscellany"...
Even more reasonable! This story has a bit of a confusing history! See the first link under "Miscellany"...
5AndreasJ
So are we supposed to be reading the long or the short version?
I’m not likely to get around to read this one before the 4th, but it doesn’t seem like it should be impossible to get hold of.
I’m not likely to get around to read this one before the 4th, but it doesn’t seem like it should be impossible to get hold of.
6gwendetenebre
>5 AndreasJ:
Even ISFDB seems to be a mess on this one. The Ace and Zebra paperback entries are referred to as "Chapbooks". Those look like their usual mass-market paperback releases to me. It's hard to believe that they published just a single novella that way. No other stories are listed in the ToC, though. I think that the Del Ray that paradoxosalpha has is the way to go. Maybe someone who has one of the "chapbooks" can explain...
ETA,
The original 12-page "short version" doesn't seem to be available anywhere. So, you basically want the short story featuring El Borak. The "long" version probably refers de Camp's Conan lift, The Flame Knife.
Even ISFDB seems to be a mess on this one. The Ace and Zebra paperback entries are referred to as "Chapbooks". Those look like their usual mass-market paperback releases to me. It's hard to believe that they published just a single novella that way. No other stories are listed in the ToC, though. I think that the Del Ray that paradoxosalpha has is the way to go. Maybe someone who has one of the "chapbooks" can explain...
ETA,
The original 12-page "short version" doesn't seem to be available anywhere. So, you basically want the short story featuring El Borak. The "long" version probably refers de Camp's Conan lift, The Flame Knife.
8paradoxosalpha
The one in the El Borak omnibus I've started reading is about 90 pages, and if it were a pocket paperback it would probably be 120 or more. In an appendix, there is a short version, clocking in at 50 pages! But no editorial explanation of the two versions that I can see ...
9housefulofpaper
>8 paradoxosalpha:
I've found my copy of the Del Rey El Borak volume. The short textual notes at the back explain that the long version (approx. 42,000 words) failed to sell, so Howard prepared a 24,000 word condensed version.
I've found my copy of the Del Rey El Borak volume. The short textual notes at the back explain that the long version (approx. 42,000 words) failed to sell, so Howard prepared a 24,000 word condensed version.
10paradoxosalpha
>9 housefulofpaper:
And that one didn't sell either! So the first publication was the long version in the deep-posthumous 1977 paperback!
And that one didn't sell either! So the first publication was the long version in the deep-posthumous 1977 paperback!
11paradoxosalpha
Long novella though it is (about perfect feature film length, in fact), I didn't have trouble reading this one over just two days.
It's not long on "weird" content, but it is an excellent example of Howard's prose, plotting, and characters. The brief reincarnation musing and the battle with the yeti were the sum of the weird elements. I was often reminded of the Conan story "People of the Black Circle," which was itself a fantasy reskin of a similar south Asian adventure yarn.
Every now and then, Howard's diction makes me wonder if he thought a word was already in use, or whether he was bravely failing to introduce it to the lexicon. E.g. typhoonic (Del Rey El Borak, p. 171).
In Howard's primeval fantasies of Conan and Kull, his open admiration of the "savage" is relatively unalloyed. In this modern Great Game story, it is far more tempered by his racism, but it still predominates.
I'm curious about Howard's sources regarding the Order of Assassins. His portrayal of them is an odd mix of accurate detail and invention. The idea that Ismailism has a sort of ecumenical promiscuity is the strangest bit. And he seems to assume unusual knowledge of the reader (as when identifying different Afghani tribes by proper names without explanation) by referring to the Order of Assassins as Batini -- probably better batiniyya, the "hidden ones" or "people of the secret."
It's cool how this 1930s tale anticipated the rivalry of the Cold War by pitting Gordon against Konaszevski!
It's not long on "weird" content, but it is an excellent example of Howard's prose, plotting, and characters. The brief reincarnation musing and the battle with the yeti were the sum of the weird elements. I was often reminded of the Conan story "People of the Black Circle," which was itself a fantasy reskin of a similar south Asian adventure yarn.
Every now and then, Howard's diction makes me wonder if he thought a word was already in use, or whether he was bravely failing to introduce it to the lexicon. E.g. typhoonic (Del Rey El Borak, p. 171).
In Howard's primeval fantasies of Conan and Kull, his open admiration of the "savage" is relatively unalloyed. In this modern Great Game story, it is far more tempered by his racism, but it still predominates.
I'm curious about Howard's sources regarding the Order of Assassins. His portrayal of them is an odd mix of accurate detail and invention. The idea that Ismailism has a sort of ecumenical promiscuity is the strangest bit. And he seems to assume unusual knowledge of the reader (as when identifying different Afghani tribes by proper names without explanation) by referring to the Order of Assassins as Batini -- probably better batiniyya, the "hidden ones" or "people of the secret."
It's cool how this 1930s tale anticipated the rivalry of the Cold War by pitting Gordon against Konaszevski!
12paradoxosalpha
Oh, and can confirm: That Zebra paperback cover has zero to do with the story. It looks like repurposed Pellucidar art to me.
14paradoxosalpha
>13 AndreasJ:
I don't think so. My impression was that he really meant "in the manner of a typhoon."
I don't think so. My impression was that he really meant "in the manner of a typhoon."
15AndreasJ
That’s the only meaning of the word Merriam-Webster lists (though ”of or relating to Typhon or Seth” is certainly out there in the wild - Wiktionary prefers a capital T for this sense).
16paradoxosalpha
>15 AndreasJ:
Oh, you mean M-W defines "typhonic" as "like a typhoon"? I'm accustomed to encountering it as an adjectival form of Typhon and I wouldn't recognize it as a formation from typhoon. Anyway, I guess it's a possible typo introduced in the Del Rey edition, or a typo original with Howard. But even so, it seems like he was reaching outside of his lexical comfort zone -- as you would expect from someone in a writer's circle with HPL and CAS.
Oh, you mean M-W defines "typhonic" as "like a typhoon"? I'm accustomed to encountering it as an adjectival form of Typhon and I wouldn't recognize it as a formation from typhoon. Anyway, I guess it's a possible typo introduced in the Del Rey edition, or a typo original with Howard. But even so, it seems like he was reaching outside of his lexical comfort zone -- as you would expect from someone in a writer's circle with HPL and CAS.
17AndreasJ
Yes, M-W says ”typhonic” = ”of, relating to, resembling, or suggestive of a typhoon”.
Given your interests, I’m not surprised you’re more familiar with the other sense, though :)
Given your interests, I’m not surprised you’re more familiar with the other sense, though :)
18SRB5729
>11 paradoxosalpha: Nice reference back to "People of the Black Circle". I enjoyed that story in Howard's format.
19housefulofpaper
I'm trying to stay away from defining what is and isn't Weird or Gothic, or whatever. I'm only trying to get things straight in my own mind, but once it's written and posted, I'm worried that it looks like gatekeeping. That said, the weird elements in this story are no stronger than in, say,, some Modesty Blaise novels, in which telepathy, water divining, etc. appear at plot points.
This is the first El Borak story I've read. As >11 paradoxosalpha: notes, the reference to the Czar presumably places it prior to the Russian Revolution (1917), and the geopolitical background would therefore be the "Great Game" - the mainly 19th Century rivalry between the British and Russian empires for control of Central Asia.
Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads, if I am remembering it correctly, suggests that the mineral riches of the region would inevitably have been fought over and shaped the course of history by their mere existence, irrespective of the actors, at the individual or the national level, that were involved. The Great Game, and the Cold War and events following, up the the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war (Frankopan's book was published in in 2015) all all, in his view, manifestations of that underlying dynamic.
The idea of a Western power secretly behind an uprising in the East, against Western colonisers, is central to John Buchan's novel Greenmantle, as well as, of course, the Fu Manchu stories.
El Borak himself is immediately recognisable as a REH hero. I want to say that despite that they are not interchangeable (I took exception to a preview of the upcoming Weird Tales comic book or graphic novel that appeared on Facebook, because Solomon Kane seemed to be drawn as simply Conan in a big hat) but as many of REH's stories were rewritten by other hands to create new Conan stories, that might be a rash statement.
This is the first El Borak story I've read. As >11 paradoxosalpha: notes, the reference to the Czar presumably places it prior to the Russian Revolution (1917), and the geopolitical background would therefore be the "Great Game" - the mainly 19th Century rivalry between the British and Russian empires for control of Central Asia.
Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads, if I am remembering it correctly, suggests that the mineral riches of the region would inevitably have been fought over and shaped the course of history by their mere existence, irrespective of the actors, at the individual or the national level, that were involved. The Great Game, and the Cold War and events following, up the the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war (Frankopan's book was published in in 2015) all all, in his view, manifestations of that underlying dynamic.
The idea of a Western power secretly behind an uprising in the East, against Western colonisers, is central to John Buchan's novel Greenmantle, as well as, of course, the Fu Manchu stories.
El Borak himself is immediately recognisable as a REH hero. I want to say that despite that they are not interchangeable (I took exception to a preview of the upcoming Weird Tales comic book or graphic novel that appeared on Facebook, because Solomon Kane seemed to be drawn as simply Conan in a big hat) but as many of REH's stories were rewritten by other hands to create new Conan stories, that might be a rash statement.
