Hairy Monument is a look at the soul of a writer through an obscure work of his, unpublished in his lifetime, which this writer suspects was a deeply personal—even elemental—experience for its author. Since first purchasing a later mass-market edition of Almuric as a 14-year-old boy, and finding it to be my favorite Robert E. Howard tale, I have often considered this story in the elemental context. To begin with I wish to examine the edition of Almuric that has recently been donated for this cause by Nero the Pict.

How did I first decide to read Almuric?

By a glance at its cover, of course, which was a different one than this but shall be given its due in this treatment of the story, for Howard’s popularity in the 1970s was largely due to his unique ability to excite the technical genius of painters and illustrators, and to ignite the passion of these artists through his elemental themes and dynamic writing style. Howard’s influence among artists of the 60s and 70s was to effect the illustration of the 24-volume Bantam Tarzan series, with the 70s version of the famous naked white ape cast more in the image of Howard’s Conan than were early versions of Edgar Rice Burroughs inspired cover art. Ironically, Howard has been said to have been aping Burroughs’ Mars, Pellucidar, Venus and Moon Maid novels with Almuric. As a writer, I find the idea of one author owning a genre—in this case what used to be called “interplanetary” fiction, and later “science/fantasy”—to be a ridiculous notion. And as a reader of no less than 15 Edgar Rice Burroughs “interplanetary” novels, I find Almuric to be a highly unique entry in the genre, beyond the stock necessities of the setting and a heroic love interest—and it was about time Howard explored that at length!

From top to bottom:

In the upper most left corner the reader finds the Ace icon and a 60-cent price, followed by

The reader’s eye is drawn to a shadowed stone staircase flanked by an otherworldy light source in the form of a covered glass brazier and a massive stone pillar to the right. To the left is a massive stone wall.

Atop the twelfth stair, emerging from curtained shadow, with the lurid light of red coals burning low in the distant interior, stands an elegantly—but simply—gowned woman, who is both gracile in feature and extremely female in form, her tiny, pale shoulders framed by a head of raven black hair.

The reader then realizes that he is looking over the brawny shoulders of the man in the foreground, a thick-haired, broadly-built man whose muscular arms strain against the chains where he stands, seemingly desirous of reaching the woman who gazes down the stairs at him from the distance. The man strains more with one hand than the other, as if reaching out, not in an apish frenzy to engulf her. The figure of the man is less dashing and more abrasive, and much more heavily attired—in animal skins it seems—than would be typical of Almuric and Conan cover art a decade later.

The man is chained.

The man is contained.

The man is desired by this distant, unreachable woman of delicate aspect who stands in a manner suggestive of both curiosity and timidity.

Whoever this uncredited artist is, his reading of Almuric evoked as much the plight of the Howard character [as it is based on a particular scene] as it did the sense of stifling domestication that millions of readers have reached out to Howard to escape, or, perhaps more accurately, to hold back, just as the curiosity of the beauty atop the stair seems to keep the looming shadows of an alien world at bay.

The reader may view the cover of this edition, and find the artist credits, via the link below.