Conan Author Robert E. Howard invented Godzilla, what?!?!

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Nails

Quote: "In the jungles far to the south of any known civilized or barbarian kingdoms, Valeria of the Red Brotherhood flees persecution after murdering a would-be rapist. She is followed into the wilderness by Conan, a fellow adventurer who wishes for an alliance with Valeria as her lover. Conan's stand-off with Valeria is interrupted by a dragon (actually a dinosaur, described with the characteristics of a Stegosaurus and Allosaurus) which mauls their horses. Conan and Valeria escape the dragon by climbing onto a rocky outcropping...."


I am shocked I've never heard someone mention this. Surely it wasn't a common thing to mix a t.rex/allosaurus with a stegosaurus. Unless Wikipedia is reading too much into this, it sure sounds like the first version of Godzilla. Wow.



Other interesting facts... in 1919 he was reading a book in a New Orleans library, when he discovered the Picts. Wikiped says:

"That same year, sitting in a library in New Orleans while his father took medical courses at a nearby college, Howard discovered a book concerned with the scant fact and abundant legends surrounding an indigenous culture in ancient Scotland called the Picts."


and he hated oil booms:

"In 1920, the Vestal Well within the limits of Cross Plains struck oil and Cross Plains became an oil boomtown. Thousands of people arrived in the town looking for oil wealth. New businesses sprang up from scratch and the crime rate increased to match. Cross Plains' population quickly grew from 1,500 to 10,000, it suffered overcrowding, the traffic ruined its unpaved roads and vice crime exploded but it also used its new wealth on civic improvements, including a new school, an ice manufacturing plant, and new hotels.[27] Howard hated the boom and despised the people who came with it.[28] He was already poorly disposed towards oil booms as they were the cause of the constant traveling in his early years but this was aggravated by what he perceived to be the effect oil booms had on towns."


And American Indians were still performing raids. And in the early 1900s, Texas still sounds a lot like what I thought was the 1850s wild west:

"As the son of the local doctor, Howard had frequent exposure to the effects of injury and violence, due to accidents on farms and oil fields combined with the massive increase in crime that came with the oil boom.[15] Firsthand tales of gunfights, lynchings, feuds, and Indian raids developed his distinctly Texan, hardboiled outlook on the world.[16] Sports, especially boxing, became a passionate preoccupation.[17] At the time, boxing was the most popular sport in the country,"

He had a Celtic phase:

Howard's "Celtic phase" began in 1930, during which he became fascinated by Celtic themes and his own Irish ancestry.