Kurtz (Heart of Darkness) circumstances and remote settings to assert power over others. It is widely believed that Conrad drew influence from these characters, as well as Stevenson's plot lines, when writing "Heart of Darkness". In the 1958 loose adaptation for the CBS television anthology series "Playhouse 90" Kurtz was played by Boris Karloff. This version uses the encounter between Marlow and Kurtz as its final act, and adds a backstory in which Marlow had been Kurtz's adopted son. Francis Ford Coppola's acclaimed Vietnam War film "Apocalypse Now" (1979) centers on the protagonist's mission to find and kill the renegade Colonel Kurtz (played by
Heart of Darkness the subject seems comic, but isn't. The tale was first published as a three-part serial, February, March and April 1899, in "Blackwood's Magazine" (February 1899 was the magazine's 1000th issue: special edition). Then later, in 1902, "Heart of Darkness" was included in the book "" (published on 13 November 1902, by William Blackwood). The volume consisted of "Youth: a Narrative", "Heart of Darkness" and "The End of the Tether" in that order. For future editions of the book, in 1917 Conrad wrote an "" where he, after denying any "unity of artistic purpose" underlying the collection, discusses each of the