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=*The Warrior Race=

"The Warrior Race" is a classic science fiction short story by L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction for October, 1940. It first appeared in book form in the collection The Wheels of If and Other Science Fiction (Shasta, 1948),; it later appeared in the anthologies The Edward De Bono Science Fiction Collection (The Elmfield Press, 1976),  Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 2 (1940) (DAW Books, 1979),  and Barbarians II (Signet/New American Library, Feb. 1988).

Plot summary
"Earth is under the rule of the incorruptible Centaurans. They are a warrior race of extraterrestrial humanoids known for their inhumanly high standards of conduct and rigic discipline. Shortly after arriving in Philadelphia, Juggins, a Centaurian, begins to submit to the pressures of living among corrupt humans. He begins smoking, taking bribes and otherwise touching off the decline and fall of the Centurian conquerors."

Reception
Commenting on this story in Laughlin and Levack's comprehensive bibliography of de Camp's works, Loay H. Hall writes "In this tale, de Camp again employs his vast knowledge of history--in this case the Spartan warrior race and its decline and fall, which he draws upon to explain the corruption of the Centurians. Despite de Camp's tongue-in-cheek claim in the foreword to The Wheels of If (Shasta, 1948) that he does not write satire, there is little doubt that this tale—and "The Contraband Cow"—are intended to be satire."

Importance
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Awards
The story was nominated for the 2016 Retro Hugo Award for Best Novelette, but placed below the cutoff for finalists for the award.

Plot summary
"An earthly archaeologist settles a quarrel between two nations on another planet, rescues the wife of the terran governor, and liberates archaeological relics the governor has wrongly collected."

Reception
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Relation to other works
De Camp's theme of scientists plying their trade amid administrative, local and environmental difficulties and sometimes resorting to extreme expedients in defence of their professions and professional standards is a common one in his fiction. Other examples include the short stories "Employment" (1939), "Living Fossil" (1939), "The Colorful Character" (1949), "In-Group" (1952), and "The Saxon Pretender" (1952) and the novels The Great Fetish (1978), The Bones of Zora (1983), The Stones of Nomuru (1988), and The Venom Trees of Sunga (1992).

In its portrait of a medieval-level society in the shadow of a technologically advanced one, "The Soaring Statue" complements the Krishna and Kukulkan stories in de Camp's Viagens Interplanetarias series.

Plot summary
This parody on other time travel stories is about a scientist who uses a time travel device to threaten all of North America with destruction through time travel paradoxes, and the secret agent attempting to stop him using a copy of the device.

"A tale of time travel and time paradox. Russell Hedges, seeking to rule his world of the future, threatens mass destruction unless he is made Chief Executive of the North American Continent. Agent Mendez de Witt is called in and proceeds to chase Hedges forward and backward in time. De Witt catches up with him in 1959 and during a foot chase space-time is ruptured and the two find themselves curiously changed."

Reception
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Importance
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Awards
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Plot summary
"What if: The Chinese discovered the Americas before Columbus. Summary: C. 1560, Spanish and Chinese explorers meet in North America, and a dispute over a Spaniard's elopement with a AmerInd girl must be settled."

Reception
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Importance
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Awards
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Plot summary
Retiring Roman Legionary Captain Pantera is looking to invest his savings in the partnership of a Syrian inn. In the course of conversation with his prospective partners it emerges that he once fathered an illegitimate child by a Judean woman who grew up to be a obscure preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, about whose teachings and fate a rising cult has since been founded.

Reception
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Importance
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Awards
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Biography
Fultz was born in 1969 in Kentucky, where he was also raised. He later lived in Chicago, and moved to California in 1998. He lives in the North Bay Area, and teaches high school level English Literature in the Napa Valley Unified School District.

Literary career
Fultz's fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Black Gate, and Space & Time; his comic book work has appeared in the comic book anthologies Zombie Tales and Cthulhu Tales. His graphic novel Primordia was published by Archaia Comics.

Books of the Shaper

 * 1) Seven Princes (2012)
 * 2) Seven Kings (2013)
 * 3) Seven Sorcerers (2013)

Tall Eagle

 * 1) The Testament of Tall Eagle (2015)
 * 2) Son of Tall Eagle (2018)

The Zang Cycle

 * "The Persecution of Artifice the Quill" (2006) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "Oblivion Is the Sweetest Wine" (2008) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "Return of the Quill" (2009) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "The Vintages of Dream" (2011) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "Spilling the Blood of the World" (2013) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "The Bountiful Essence of the Empty Hand" (2013) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "The Doom of the Black Urchin" (2013) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "The Liberation of Lady Veronique" (2013) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "The Rebirth of Zang (The Travails of Treons and Tyriel)" (2013) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "Treasures of the Prophet" (2013) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "What Grows in the Season of Sorcery?" (2013) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * "When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye" (2013) (collected in The Revelations of Zang (2013)
 * The Revelations of Zang (collection) (2013)

Other collections

 * Worlds Beyond Worlds: The Short Fiction of John R. Fultz (2021)

Chapbooks

 * Strange Days in Old Yandrissa (2012)

Short Fiction

 * "The Lost Scrolls of Mu" (1997)
 * "The Giants of Oothom Zagi" (1998)
 * "The Devouring of S'lithik Hhai" (1998
 * "Kingdom of the Black Lotus" (1998)
 * "The Five Deaths of Uz Kybul" (1999)
 * "The Maddening of Amun Zah" (2000)
 * "I Do the Work of the Bone Queen" (2008)
 * "Behind the Eyes" (2009)
 * "This Is How the World Ends" (2010)
 * "The Taste of Starlight" (2010)
 * "The Thirteen Texts of Arthyria" (2010) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "Where the White Lotus Grows" (2011) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "Strange Days in Old Yandrissa" (2012) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "The Gnomes of Carrick County" (2012) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "Flesh of the City, Bones of the World" (2013)
 * "The Key to Your Heart Is Made of Brass" (2013)
 * "Daughter of the Elk Goddess" (2013) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "Yael of the Strings" (2014) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "Anno Domini Azathoth" (2015)
 * "The Rude Mechanicals and the Highwayman" (2015)
 * "Chivaine" (2015) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "The River Flows to Nowhere" (2016)
 * "The Penitence of the Blade" (2016) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "Ten Thousand Drops of Holy Blood" (2017) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "The Man Who Murders Happiness" (2017)
 * "The Veneration of Evil in the Kingdom of Ancient Lies" (2017)
 * "Love in the Time of Dracula" (2018)
 * "Oorg" (2018) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "Clouds Like Memories, Words Like Stones" (2018)
 * "Tears of the Elohim" (2018) (collected in Worlds Beyond Worlds (2021)
 * "The Thing in the Pond" (2019)
 * "The Embrace of Elder Things" (2019)

Verse

 * "R'lyeh Rising" (1997)

Independent kingdom
Originally, Chalcis was a city in Coele-Syria. When the Seleucid influence in the area began to dissipate, the Itureans took over a region stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to near Damascus. They made Chalcis the capital of their realm, while Baalbek was the center of worship. The founder of this realm seems to have been Ptolemaeus, son of Menneus, an Ituraean dynast.

During the time of Alexander Jannaeus, Hasmonaean king of Judea, Ptolemaeus had to cede part of his territory to the Hasmonaeans. This area was later known as Iturea (Iturea, in an ethnic sense, covered the much larger area in which the Itureans were settled). In 64 BCE Ptolemaeus bribed the Roman general Pompeius to refrain from annexing his realm and allow him to continue to rule as Tetrarch. Pompey also returned to him the areas lost to Jannaeus when he brought an end to the independent Hasmonaean state in 63 BCE.

Roman vassal state


Chalcis was a vassal state under Roman rule during the remainder of Ptolemaeus' reign. In 40 BCE, he was succeeded by his son Lysanias. Lysanias supported the efforts of the Hasmonean scion Antigonus II Mattathias to take the throne of Judea in 42 and 40 BCE, allying with him against the Roman client king Herod, whom he temporarily supplanted on his Parthian-supported second attempt. Lysanias's anti-Roman sympathies eventually led to his execution by Mark Antony in 33 BCE, at the instigation of Cleopatra VII of Egypt, who had eyes on his territories.

Though Antony gave Lysanias' territory to Cleopatra, a remnant realm of Chalcis persisted after this disaster, with the most important cities being Chalcis and Abila. Cleopatra leased it to Zenodorus, possibly a son of Lysanias, and following her suicide in 30 BCE, Augustus initially allowed Zenodorus to rule as Tetrarch, only to depose him in 23 BCE for conducting raids into Trachonitis, which had prompted complaints from his neighbors. Augustus then gave some or all of his lands to Herod, including Iturea, Batanaea, Trachonitis and Auranitis. Little is known about Chalcis itself in the time immediately after Lysanias' death; Chalcis sub Libanum and its district may have been made part of the Roman province of Syria, while Abilene, the area around Abila, appears to have made up a separate statelet at least part of the time.

Division
The districts surrendered to Herod continued to be ruled by him and his family, who in time came to control the core regions of the former kingdom as well. After Herod's death in 4 BCE, Iturea, Trachonitis, Gaulanitis, Batanea, Paneas and Auranitis became a tetrarchy under Philip, one of his sons, who ruled as a tetrarch until his death in AD 34. Meanwhile, Abilene may have gone to another Lysanias, mentioned in the Gospel of Luke as tetrarch of Abilene in the time of John the Baptist. It is possible, however, that the reference to Lysanias in Luke is an anachronistic reference to the Lysanias put to death by Antony.

In AD 37, Emperor Caligula gave Herod Agrippa I the former tetrarchies of Philip (namely Iturea, Trachonitis, Gaulanitis, Batanea, Paneas and Auranitis) and Lysanias (Abilene) with the title of king. His realm was subsequently augmented in AD 40 by the regions of Galilee and Perea, formerly ruled by Herod Antipas (4 BCE - AD 39), and in AD 41 by the regions of Judea, Idumea and Samaria, formerly ruled by Herod Archelaus (4 BCE - AD 6) and then formed the province of Judaea (AD 6 - 41). Agrippa I ruled all these territories until his death in AD 44.

Meanwhile, in AD 39, the district of Iturea was given by Caligula to a certain Soemus, who is called by Dio Cassius (lix. 12) and by Tacitus (Annals, xii. 23) "king of the Itureans." Soemus reigned until his death in AD 49, when his kingdom was incorporated into the province of Syria (Tacitus, l.c.).

In AD 41, at Agrippa's request, his brother Herod was given Chalcis and allowed the title of basileus (king) by Claudius. King Herod of Chalcis reigned until his death in AD 48, whereupon his kingdom was given to Agrippa's son Agrippa II, though only as a tetrarchy.

Agrippa II was forced to give up the tetrarchy of Chalcis in AD 53, but in exchange Claudius made him ruler with the title of king over the territories previously governed by Philip (Iturea, Trachonitis, Gaulanitis, Batanea, Paneas and Auranitis), and Lysanias (Abilene). In 55, the Emperor Nero added to his realm the cities of Tiberias and Taricheae in Galilee, and Livias (Iulias), with fourteen villages near it, in Perea.

The tetrarchy of Chalcis, previously surrendered by Agrippa II in AD 53, was subsequently in AD 57 given to his cousin Aristobulus, the son of Herod of Chalcis. After the death of Aristobulus in AD 92, Chalcis was absorbed into the province of Syria.

According to Photius, Agrippa II died at the age of seventy in the third year of the reign of Trajan (AD 100, but statements of Josephus, in addition to the contemporary epigraphy from his kingdom, cast this date into serious doubt. The modern scholarly consensus holds that he died before 93/94. Following his death his realm as well came under the direct rule of Rome.

Rulers of Chalcis

 * Ptolemaeus, son of Menneus, 85–40 BCE
 * Lysanias, son of Ptolemaeus, 40–36 BCE
 * Zenodorus, 36–23 BCE (initially under Cleopatra)
 * Herod the Great, 23–4 BCE
 * Lysanias (Abilene), time of John the Baptist?
 * Herod Agrippa I (Batanaea, Abilene and other areas), AD 37–44
 * Soemus (Iturea), AD 38–49
 * Herod of Chalcis (Chalcis), AD 41–48
 * Herod Agrippa II (Chalcis), AD 48–53; (Batanaea, Abilene and other areas), AD 53–93/94
 * Aristobulus of Chalcis (Chalcis), AD 57–92

Gary Grossmann chronology
In 2023 Gary Grossmann circulated his own take on the chronology, again including only those stories written by Howard. He focuses on the 21 completed stories, but also makes an effort to place the fragments and outlines, where possible. Grossmann bases his story placements on close readings of the texts and the chronological hints and evidence on Conan's maturation and accumulation of experience therein, together with a minimalistic approach to where he might have been when, giving weight to geographical proximity of the various adventures in appraising their nearness to each other in time. He differs most radically from his predecessors in the always-speculative bridges between the stories, envisioning links he views as truer to the character and circumstances than others provide. He notes that all chronologies (including his) agree in assigning the stories into early, middle and late groupings, with the disagreements between schemes applying only to the arrangements of stories within these groupings.

Early stories

 * "The God in the Bowl"
 * "The Tower of the Elephant"
 * "The Hand of Nergal" (fragment) (could also go after "Hall" or "Rogues")
 * "The Hall of the Dead" (synopsis))
 * "Rogues in the House"
 * "The Frost Giant's Daughter"

Middle stories

 * "Black Colossus"
 * "Queen of the Black Coast"
 * "The Vale of Lost Women"
 * "The Snout in the Dark" (fragment)
 * "Drums of Tombalku" (fragment)
 * "The Slithering Shadow"


 * "Shadows in the Moonlight"
 * "The Devil in Iron"
 * "The People of the Black Circle"
 * "A Witch Shall Be Born"
 * "Shadows in Zamboula"
 * "The Pool of the Black One"

Late stories

 * "Beyond the Black River"
 * "The Black Stranger"
 * "Red Nails"
 * "Jewels of Gwahlur"
 * "Wolves Beyond the Border" (fragment)
 * "The Phoenix on the Sword"
 * "The Scarlet Citadel"
 * "The Hour of the Dragon"