Reptoid conspiracy lore descended from a Conan-the-Barbarian author’s story
Evidence
In all likelihood, the notion of a shape-changing serpent race fi rst came from the imagination of an obscure pulp-fi ction author, Robert E. Howard (1906–36). Howard was a fantasy writer of the sword-andsorcery variety, best known for his character Conan the Barbarian. In August 1929, he published a story in Weird Tales magazine called “The Shadow Kingdom,” in which the evil power was the snake-men whose adversary, Kull, came from Atlantis. These creatures had the bodies of men but the heads of serpents, just as Doreal was later to assert, and like his Serpent Race, they had the capacity to change shape, appearing human when they wished. In Howard’s story they were thought to have been destroyed, but they returned insidiously, insinuating themselves into positions of power. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 580
Categorization
- SHARE: For any friend into both pulp fantasy and conspiracy lore: Robert E. Howard’s 1929 snake-men story is the hidden ancestor of reptilian-alien conspiracism.
- SEED: Article angle: the genealogy running from pulps (Howard, Shaver) into occult pamphlet, then into conspiracist ‘fact’ — a study in how fiction becomes belief through intermediaries.
- XREF: connects to: Inner-earth and reptilian themes fuse through shared associations with death and evil — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 591; Belief in some conspiracies predicts endorsement of unrelated fictional ones — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 184; Conspiracy subcultures require an official narrative to define themselves against — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 829
Broader Connections
- Belief in some conspiracies predicts endorsement of unrelated fictional ones
#exemplifies(0.75) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 184 - Conspiracy subcultures require an official narrative to define themselves against
#qualifies(0.72) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 829