Read the beginning of the Introduction from Swords from the Sea by Harold Lamb, edited by Howard Andrew Jones, Introduction by S. M. Stirling:

"One thing we tend to forget about the pulps was how many of them there were, and how much was written for them. The science-fiction and fantasy segments and the superhero pulps remain freshest in memory, because they were at the root of traditions that have continued and flourished ever since; and the Western, if not in such condition, is not forgotten. But in fact, the adventure pulps contained dozens of distinct subgenres: Western, Oriental, Detective, South Seas, any number of historical types such as the pirate story or the tale of the Crusades. And miscegenation in plenty—tales of detectives having adventures in Chinatown, for example, or of super-science set among Tibetan mahatmas (the last a specialty of Talbot Mundy, a contemporary of Lamb’s), or psychic Chinese detectives involving “spicy” tales of white slavery.

Harold Lamb specialized in Oriental/historical adventures —for a number of reasons, starting with the exceedingly rare one that he was a genuine historian of the Orient, the author of well-regarded biographies of Genghis Khan and other figures, and of a redaction of the autobiography of Babur, the first Moghul emperor of India and descendant of Tamerlane. Together with a grasp of history and character far above the average of the tribe, Lamb had a driving narrative focus and a talent for depicting action as vigorous as any, even Robert E. Howard’s. But he wasn’t limited to stories of Cossacks and Mongols, well known though his efforts in those fields are.

The stories in this collection are largely crossover; pirates-plus-something-else, for example. We have Vikings on the Golden Horn in Constantinople . . . which really happened, by the way. Vikings actually ruled Russia for some time—the very word Russ originally meant northman—and some of their raiders actually sailed down the Volga, took ship on the Caspian, and pillaged Persia! The Byzantines were so impressed by Viking fighting abilities that they recruited a special “ax-bearing Guard,” also known as the Varangians, which for centuries came mostly from the Viking countries.

We also have a story of Renaissance England—in the obscure reign of Edward VI, Elizabeth’s little-remembered half brother. It’s a rousing story of proto-buccaneers and obscure northerners in the terrible lands beyond the White Sea, but it also illustrates how Lamb actually knew history, not just the high points that other writers instinctively reached for. Not for him the well-known exploits of the Elizabethan sea-dogs; instead he sets his story a generation earlier, when the English made their first tentative steps to break the hold the Iberian peoples had on the routes to the world beyond Europe.

Lamb also had a taste and talent for centering his fiction upon the unusual hero. For one thing, he generally avoided the noblemen who populated so much of historical fiction—and often enough the sweet noblewomen. He was more likely to take a battered middle-aged Scot or a Venetian flower girl as his companion—or to match John Paul Jones with a Cossack and set them on the Black Sea!"