REH Day Trip
Join us for a day trip to the stomping grounds of Robert E. Howard. You will be driven to Brownwood and Cross Plains, Texas on a comfortable coach. Once there, you will visit the Robert E. Howard house and grave, and other area Howard attractions. The tour will be lead by Rusty Burke and Mark Finn, two noted and highly entertaining Howard scholars. This promises to be a day of fun and remembrance.
The bus will leave the Renaissance Hotel at 8am on Wednesday, 1 November, and return to Austin around dinnertime. The cost is $50 per person (the price of gas has made this price necessary). Because of the cost of the charter bus, if we do not receive at least 25 reservations for this trip, we may cancel it. We are still working out the details of lunch (details will be available before the trip), but you will be responsible for the cost.
If you have not yet made your reservation at the Renaissance, it is almost completely sold out, although rooms are still available for Tuesday night. Please check out our hotel page for up-to-date information about hotels.
If you have any questions about this trip, please feel free to contact us at wfcinfo@fact.org. We hope to see you there!
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Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) ranks as one of the most influential authors of fantasy, second only to J.R.R. Tolkien in originality
and inventiveness. He is less the father of heroic fantasy and more its original architect, laying down the foundations for an American
fantasy tradition that has yet to be fully explored. Howard is best-known as the author of Conan the Cimmerian, but it is his
pop cultural doppleganger, Conan the Barbarian, that has usurped much of the Howard's fame and, like Johnny Weissmuller's
Tarzan eclipsed the literary merits of E.R. Burroughs, so too has the world-famous Conan overshadowed the author who created him.
In fact, Howard wrote an incredible amount of stories in his short life, encompassing most of the genres that constituted the pulp
fiction markets of the 1920's and 1930's.
WFC2006 celebrates the life and legacy of Robert E. Howard, and the genre he defined. Mark Finn, a Howard scholar, has graciously provided
an overview of Howard's life, career, his posthumous popularity, and the pop-cultural phenomenon Howard's literary creatiion has become. You can download Mark's article,
"Robert E. Howard: Lone Star Fantasist" to learn more about Howard.
For attendees who wish to experience more of Robert E. Howard's life
and times, we are pleased to announce that a special tour will be
offered on Wednesday, 1 November, a day prior to the convention.
The tour will include a bus trip to Cross Plains, TX, a tour of the Robert E. Howard
home and museum, a visit to Howard's gravesite in Brownwood, and more. Noted
Howard scholars will act as your guide into our celebrated author's stomping
grounds for an entertaining and informative experience.
Please join us -- you will not be disappointed!
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Mark Finn is the author of two books of fiction, Gods New and Used and Year of the Hare, as well as hundreds of
articles, essays, reviews, and short stories for RevolutionSF.com, Dark Horse Comics, Wildside Press, Monkeybrain Books,
and others. Finn also does double duty as the Creative Director for the Violet Crown Radio Players,
where he writes, directs, and occasionally performs old time radio scripts. Mark is active in Robert E. Howard studies and scholarship. Recent works include: "The Chronicler
of Conan: Robert E. Howard on his Most Famous Creation,"
for Dark Horse Comics' Conan series, an interview with fellow Howard scholar Rusty Burke for UT Press' Conversations with Texas Writers,
and "Fists of Robert E. Howard in The Barbaric Triumph", which won the Cimmerian Award for best essay. Finn also contributed introductions to
Waterfront Fists: The Complete Fight Stories of Robert E. Howard and the first two volumes of The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard.
Mark is currently writing a biography of Robert E. Howard to commemorate the author's centennial in 2006.
