The Lost Race
core short fiction 1927 Conan / Kull / Bran Mak Morn
Record
| First published | 1927 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | short fiction |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.29 (51 ratings, collected 2026-09-13) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781473323308 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Set during the Roman invasion of ancient Britain, the story follows the Picts as they are gradually driven from their ancestral lands by successive waves of invaders, culminating in their retreat from the surface world altogether and their construction of a new, hidden society built underground, away from the conquerors who have taken everything above. As one of the earliest works in Robert E. Howard's Bran Mak Morn cycle, the story lays the groundwork for the diminished, embittered Pictish civilization that later tales in the series depict, tracing how a once-proud people reduced by centuries of conquest come to see subterranean concealment as their only remaining path to survival. The tale establishes the grim, elegiac tone that runs through Howard's later stories of the Pictish king who would eventually try to reverse his people's long decline.
Where it sits
- Universe: Conan / Kull / Bran Mak Morn
- Series: Bran Mak Morn (lifetime-published stories) core; position 1 of 5 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Robert E. Howard
Notes
- From the series record (Bran Mak Morn (lifetime-published stories)): The 5 Bran Mak Morn stories Howard sold and saw published in his own lifetime (all Weird Tales, 1927-1932), per a dedicated Howard-scholarship bibliography (reh.world). 'The Lost Race' (Bran mentioned only as legend; the protagonist is a Gael, Cororuc) and 'The Children of the Night'/'The Dark Man' (in-story framing device narrators, not Bran himself) are included per that same scholarship source's own classification of the Bran Mak Morn cycle -- Worms of the Earth and Kings of the Night are the only 2 with Bran as the story's own on-page protagonist. 'Kings of the Night' (Weird Tales, November 1930) is a crossover: Kull of Atlantis (admitted separately this same run) is summoned via time-travel magic as a guest character to help Bran fight the Romans.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series Bran Mak Morn (lifetime-published stories): position 1 of 5: next Kings of the Night (1930)
- Internal chronology, within Conan / Kull / Bran Mak Morn: position 2 of 7: previous The Shadow Kingdom (1929) · next The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune (1929)
Sources
- The World of Robert E. Howard: Bran Mak Morn
- Wikisource: Weird Tales, Volume 9, Issue 1 -- The Lost Race
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bran_Mak_Morn
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