 The invention of "sword and sorcery" is generally credited to Robert E. Howard, a pulp writer from Cross Plains, Texas, who committed suicide at age thirty.Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories and his King Kull tales fixed the major tropes of the genre from 1925 on, when the first Conan story, "Spear and Fang", appeared.Delany twists and plays with these conventions in his Nevèrÿon stories, to create his critical effects.