The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith from Night Shade Press

The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith (2006-2010); edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger. Night Shade Press.

Clark Ashton Smith was a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. With those two, he formed what became known as "The Three Musketeers of Weird Tales" in the late 1920's and 1930's. None of them was the most popular writer for Weird Tales -- that was Seabury Quinn. But in time they would become known as the three finest and most influential American fantasists of their era. 

Smith is the least well-known because he didn't create a fictional universe that others would adopt after him, as Lovecraft did with the Cthulhu Mythos and as Howard did with the world of Conan the Barbarian. His style and subject matter, however, have an incalculable influence and worth. His poetic prose (and Smith was a very good, published poet long before his short story years) testifies to horror, lushness, irony, and moments of grace. 

OK, sometimes it seems like he ate a thesaurus. Maybe three of them. But that's a part of the charm, especially as even Smith's diction can be ironic or satiric, especially when he's just making up words.

Truly remarkable too is that the bulk of Smith's stories were written in a five-year period. It's a burst of creativity almost unrivaled in fantasy literature. Most of the stories he wrote after that burst were based on story ideas he recorded at the time in his Commonplace Book.

Note on bracketed categories:

• Averoigne: Fictional, demon-haunted French province during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
• Zothique: The "last continent" of Earth, uncounted millions or billions of years in the future.
• Hyperborea: The ancient civilized kingdoms of humanity prior to the last Ice Age.
• Poseidonis: Last city of sinking Atlantis.
• Cthulhu Mythos: A number of Smith's stories could be set within H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, especially those set during the time of Hyperborea and those featuring the dark god Tsathoggua. Well, and those mentioning Eibon or The Book of Eibon. Or Ubbo-Sathla. However, only those stories that are definitely Cthulhu Mythos stories are indicated.
• Malygris: Stories that involve the great Poseidonis mage Malygris.
• Mars: Science fiction story set on or around Smith's generally terrifying version of Mars.
• Maal Dweb: Alien though human-looking sorcerer who seems to rule over an entire alien solar system.

The End Of The Story:  Volume One

In this first volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, we see Smith emerge almost fully formed as a writer of weird prose. He's definitely still finding his voice and his way (and a market), but his first published story ("The Abominations of Yondo" (1926)) and second story composed is a small masterpiece of weird horror and an unnervingly altered future. 

Contains the following stories and essays. All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of composition: 

1. Introduction by Ramsey Campbell
2. A Note on the Texts by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger
3. To the Daemon (1943): Slight but telling prose poem.
4. The Abominations of Yondo (1926): In this memorable story influenced by Lord Dunsany, Smith crafts his first essential tale, a weird and unsettling story set in some strange distant future.
5. Sadastor (1930) : Slight but telling prose poem.
6. The Ninth Skeleton (1928): Slight meditation on time.
7. The Last Incantation  [Malygris] (1930): Short, pithy fantasy set in one of Smith's strange fictional realms not of our Earth (but certainly of his) introduces a mage who will return, Malygris. ESSENTIAL.
8. The End of the Story  [Averoigne] (1930): Bleak tale of vampirism and desire is the first set in Smith's medieval French province of Averoigne. ESSENTIAL.
9. The Phantoms of the Fire  (1930): Slight contemporary ghost story.
10. A Night in Malnéant  (1933): A tale of mourning seemingly set in a nightmare almost seems like a dry run for a lot of Thomas Ligotti's work half-a-century later.
11. The Resurrection of the Rattlesnake  (1931): Sight contemporary horror story.
12. Thirteen Phantasms  (1936): Slight meditation on time and identity.
13. The Venus of Azombeii (1931) : Slight African adventure of a Lost City/Tribe with some unfortunate racial elements and little fantastic content (really, none).
14. The Tale of Satampra Zeiros : [Satampra Zeiros/ Hyperborea]  (1931): First tale of the prehistoric world of Hyperborea and the charming thief and raconteur Satampra Zeiros is also a sequel to a later Smith story, The Testament of Athammaus. ESSENTIAL.
15. The Monster of the Prophecy  (1932): Colourful, slyly satiric planetary romance, the latter almost literally by the end.  ESSENTIAL.
16. The Metamorphosis of the World  (1951): One of Smith's satiric broadsides at his contemporary science-fiction writers also reads as a straightforward apocalyptic piece of science fiction anticipating some of our own fears of climate change.
17. The Epiphany of Death  (1934): Moody horror tale is also a nod to H.P. Lovecraft.
18. A Murder in the Fourth Dimension  (1930): Slight but fun bit of contemporary science fiction.
19. The Devotee of Evil  (1933): Contemporary horror plays with pseudoscience in its explanation for the existence of EVIL.  ESSENTIAL.
20. The Satyr  [Averoigne]  (1931): Disturbing dark fantasy from monster-haunted Averoigne. ESSENTIAL.
21. The Planet of the Dead  (1932): Melancholy science fantasy about a man who feels estranged from his own place and time, a recurring theme in Smith's stories.
22. The Uncharted Isle  (1930): Clever piece of dimension-hopping science fiction. ESSENTIAL.
23. Marooned in Andromeda  [Captain Volmar : 1]  (1930): First of Smith's three complete stories and one fragment about his oddball crew of space-faring adventurers and mutineers. The satire of his contemporary space opera writers is subtle until it suddenly isn't. First Smith story to feature dangerous plants.
24. The Root of Ampoi (1949): Slight contemporary Lost City/Tribe story.
25. The Necromantic Tale  (1931) : Slight dark fantasy tale of reincarnation and swapped minds.
26. The Immeasurable Horror  (1931): Disturbing, horrifying science-fiction adventure set on and above Smith's nightmarishly lush Venus. ESSENTIAL.
27. A Voyage to Sfanomoë  [Poseidonis]  (1931):  Science fantasy set as Atlantis falls takes us back to the nightmarishly lush Venus of  "The Immeasurable Horror."   Also, dangerous plants! ESSENTIAL.
28. Story Notes by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger
29. "The Satyr":  Alternate Conclusion  [Averoigne]  (1931): The alternate ending to "The Satyr" is even more disturbing than the chosen ending.
30. From the Crypts of Memory (1917) : poem by Clark Ashton Smith
31. Bibliography by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger

The Door to Saturn:  Volume Two

In this second volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, we see Smith pretty much at the zenith of his powers as a weird fantasist. The stories can be weird and occasionally horrifying, but also droll and comical in some cases. Smith moves among contemporary horror and distant realms of self-created fantasy with apparent ease. Even a story that waited 55 years to be published -- "A Good Embalmer" -- is an enjoyable bit of dark whimsy that reminds one of the stories of Ambrose Bierce.

There are more attempts at relatively straightforward horror-fantasy here than in any other volume, suggesting that Smith was working to place stories in markets by writing stories to fit the existing markets.  This tendency would wane as his career progressed.

Contains the following stories and essays (All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of publication): 

1. Introduction by Tim Powers
2. A Note on the Texts by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger
3. The Door to Saturn  [Hyperborea]  (1932): Smith's novella about his legendary sorcerer Eibon becomes funnier the longer it goes, and ends with one of Smith's nods to interspecies sex, carefully phrased so as to avoid rejection from the magazines of the 1930's. ESSENTIAL.
4. The Red World of Polaris  [Captain Volmar 2] (2003) : Smith's second tale of Captain Volmar and his intrepid space-faring crew again walks the line between Space Opera and satire, but becomes awesomely apocalyptic over the final third.
5. Told in the Desert (1964) : Minor bit of horror.
6. The Willow Landscape (1931) : Lovely, melancholy Orientalist tale.
7. A Rendezvous in Averoigne  [Averoigne] (1931) : Another Averoigne story lays out some of the province's more dangerous locations. ESSENTIAL.
8. The Gorgon (1932) : Minor horror story.
9. An Offering to the Moon (1953) : Minor tale of a modern-day archaeological expedition gone nightmarishly wrong.
10. The Kiss of Zoraida (1933)  : Minor bit of Orientalist nastiness.
11. The Face by the River (2004) : A fairly straightforward contemporary ghost story.
12. The Ghoul (1934) : Weird Orientalist dark fantasy about ghouls. 
13. The Kingdom of the Worm (1933) : Smith pays homage to a little-known confabulist of the past with some pretty eerie and disturbing moments of travel through a disintegrating landscape infected by rot.
14. An Adventure in Futurity  (1931) : One of what is almost a Smith sub-genre -- a guy gets into a machine of either his or alien design (or a future human's, as here), and travels to another world or time. This one visits the future, and aims some pointed satire at conventional time-travelling narratives.
15. The Justice of the Elephant  (1931) : Minor 'revenge' horror story. With elephants!
16. The Return of the Sorcerer  [Cthulhu Mythos]  (1931) : One of Smith's most anthologized stories is a sly, blackly humourous tale that intersects with H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. ESSENTIAL.
17. The City of the Singing Flame  [Singing Flame : 1] (1941) A work of visionary dark fantasy that focuses on the ecstasies of the Sublime. Followed by a sequel. ESSENTIAL.
18. A Good Embalmer  (1989) : Droll contemporary horror story.
19. The Testament of Athammaus  [Hyperborea]  (1932) Great work of dark fantasy is a sort of prequel to Volume 1's "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros." ESSENTIAL.
20. A Captivity in Serpens  [Captain Volmar : 3] (1931) Smith's third tale (second published) of Captain Volmar and his intrepid space-faring crew again walks the line between Space Opera and satire yet again, and features a lengthy, dizzying chase scene through a cyclopean city.
21. The Letter from Mohaun Los  (1932) : One of what is almost a Smith sub-genre -- a guy gets into a machine of either his or alien design, and travels to another world or time. This one visits other planets while attempting to travel in time, discovering that gravity doesn't apply to objects in transit through the time-stream.
22. The Hunters from Beyond  (1932) : Solid, visceral yet cosmic horror story nods in a way to H.P. Lovecraft's great "Pickman's Model." ESSENTIAL.
23. Story Notes by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger
24. Alternate Ending to "The Return of the Sorcerer" 
25. Bibliography by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger

A Vintage From Atlantis:  Volume Three 

In this third volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, Smith has reached the peak of his considerable powers as a prose writer, giving birth to all-time classics that include the horrifying "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" and "The Seed from the Sepulchre" and the brilliant, droll Averoigne novella "The Colossus of Ylourgne." "The Colossus of Ylourgne" and "The Empire of the Necromancers" are two prime examples of Smith's ability to combine horror, irony, humour, and melancholy into one short package. 

Contains the following stories and essays (All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of publication)

1. Introduction by Michael Dirda
2. A Note on the Texts
3. The Holiness of Azedarac [Averoigne] (1933): Ironic, erotic. ESSENTIAL.
4. The Maker of Gargoyles [Averoigne] (1932): Creepy gargoyles do terrible things.  ESSENTIAL.
5. Beyond the Singing Flame (1931) Smith returns to the world of the Singing Flame (See Volume 2) in a work of cosmic ecstasy and mystery. ESSENTIAL.
6. Seedling of Mars [Mars] (1931) (with E. M. Johnston): Another of Smith's subtle parodies of planetary romances  and science fiction of his time, leading to a strange and apocalyptic climax. is this catastrophe or eucatastrophe?
7. The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis [Mars] (1932) Absolutely first-rate science-fiction horror set on Smith's dying, dusty, ancient Mars. It's like the prototype for every Alien-style movie and written horror to come. ESSENTIAL.
8. The Eternal World (1932) : Odd, engaging bit of cosmic speculation and Sublime play with time and space.
9. The Demon of the Flower (1933) : Disturbing tale of metamorphosis and evil plants. 
10. The Nameless Offspring (1932) : Disturbing contemporary tale of ghouls and implied, quasi-necrophiliac rape.
11. A Vintage from Atlantis [Poseidonis] (1933) : Moody prose poem.
12. The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan [Hyperborea] (1932) : Strangely hilarious (in almost a Bugs Bunny sort of way) of how a greedy loan shark gets his just desserts.
13. The Invisible City (1932) : Fun, odd, contemporary  'Hidden City' adventure.
14. The Immortals of Mercury (1932) : Another of Smith's subtle digs at his contemporary science-fiction writers.
15. The Empire of the Necromancers [Zothique] (1932) : Brilliant, affecting, funny tale of a couple of malign necromancers on the world's last continent. ESSENTIAL.
16. The Seed from the Sepulcher (1933) Horrifying, creepy tale of an evil plant. An orchid, in this case. ESSENTIAL.
17. The Second Interment (1933) : Minor horror in the vein of Poe.
18. Ubbo-Sathla [Hyperborea/ Cthulhu Mythos] (1933): Time-bending tale of metamorphosis and fate.  ESSENTIAL.
19. The Double Shadow [Poseidonis] (1933) : Witty tale of magics gone wrong. ESSENTIAL.
20. The Plutonian Drug (1934) : Minor time-travel piece.
21. The Supernumerary Corpse (1932) : Very minor scifi murder.
22. The Colossus of Ylourgne (1934) A brilliant novella involving necromancy in medieval French Averoigne. Stands among other things as the lurking precedent for Clive Barker's much-praised "In the Hills, the Cities." ESSENTIAL.
23. The God of the Asteroid (1932): Minor, bleak science fiction story.
24. Story Notes
25. The Flower-Devil (1922) : poem by Clark Ashton Smith
26. Bibliography

The Maze of the Enchanter:  Volume Four 

In this fourth volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, Smith continues in peak form. Excellent tales of his horrifying Mars of the future ("The Dweller in the Gulf," "Vulthoom") rub shoulders with fine stories of the Earth's last continent ("The Isle of the Torturers"), prehistoric Hyperborea ("The Ice Demon"), and visionary contemporary horror (the terrific "Genius Loci"). We also meet Smith's prototype of Rick from Rick and Morty, the amoral science-magician Maal Dweb.

Contains the following stories and essays (All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of publication)

1. Introduction by Gahan Wilson
2. A Note on the Texts
3. The Mandrakes [Averoigne] (1933) : Minor tale of posthumous revenge.
4. The Beast of Averoigne [Averoigne] (1933) Restored three-part version of one of the two or three best stories of that demon-haunted medieval French province of Averoigne -- this time threatened from without by a thing from a comet. ESSENTIAL
5. A Star-Change (1933) : Minor but fascinating tale that focuses on the potentially mind-altering effects of alien landscapes and dimensions.
6. The Disinterment of Venus [Averoigne] (1934) Droll, erotic humour involving a pagan statue that really gets a lot of monks... excited. Statuesque, indeed! ESSENTIAL.
7. The White Sybil [Hyperborea] (1934) : Moody, near-prose poem.
8. The Ice-Demon [Hyperborea] (1933) ESSENTIAL. Terrific horror story of the coming of the Ice Age that would end Smith's Hyperborea.
9. The Isle of the Torturers [Zothique] (1933) ESSENTIAL. A perverse, satisfying tale of almost accidental revenge on the titular island by one of its victims.
10. The Dimension of Chance (1932) : Almost parodic with its jet-plane chase at the beginning before diving into another of Smith's unearthly dimensions where our rules do not apply.
11. The Dweller in the Gulf [Mars] (1933) ESSENTIAL. Human adventurers on Mars meet with one of the Red Planet's most horrible subterranean denizens. The story does a masterful job of conjuring up claustrophobia and body horror.
12. The Maze of the Enchanter [Maal Dweb] (1933)  ESSENTIAL. Droll story of Smith's bored magician.
13. The Third Episode of Vathek:  The Story of the Princess Zulkaïs and the Prince Kalilah (1937) : novelette by William Beckford and Clark Ashton Smith: Heavy sledding if you're not a William Beckford fan. Smith writes about 4000 words to complete Beckford's incomplete 11,000 words of a tale of Vathek from the 18th century.
14. Genius Loci (1933) ESSENTIAL. Smith codifies a new type of supernatural horror in the contemporary world. 
15. The Secret of the Cairn (aka The Light from Beyond) (1933) : Trippy science-fiction story about yet another voyage to another dimension.
16. The Charnel God [Zothique] (1934) ESSENTIAL. A sword-and-sorcery tale that was one of Conan creator Robert E. Howard's favourite Smith stories.
17. The Dark Eidolon [Zothique] (1935) ESSENTIAL. Small epic of Earth's last continent, an evil city, and the evil sorcerer who seeks vengeance against it. 
18. The Voyage of King Euvoran [Zothique] (1933) : Comic tale (albeit with a high death toll) of a quest for a lost crown.
19. Vulthoom [Mars] (1935) : Smith's malign Mars has another monstrous being. And it's an evil plant.
20. The Weaver in the Vault [Zothique] (1934) : Moody tale of creeping horror.
21. The Flower-Women [Maal Dweb] (1935) ESSENTIAL. Black comedy and magical battles as a bored Maal Dweb becomes the unlikely saviour of a species of carnivorous plant women. Yes, semi-evil plants.
22. Story Notes
23. Alternate Ending to "The White Sybil"
24. The Muse of Hyperborea  (1934) poem
25. The Dweller in the Gulf:  Added Material
26. Bibliography

The Last Hieroglyph:  Volume Five

In this fifth volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, Smith's creative juices continue to flow before rapidly going dry due to increased family responsibilities and a cessation of the creative forces that made for his incredible five-year burst of greatness. Nonetheless, many fine stories come from his pen, especially before 1939. Almost all the stories, regardless of date of composition or publication, began as entries in Smith's Commonplace Book of the early 1930's.

Contains the following stories and essays (All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of publication)

1. Introduction by Richard A. Lupoff
2. A Note on the Texts
3. The Dark Age (1938) : Mournful science-fiction story about the descent of (a) Dark Age. 
4. The Death of Malygris [Malygris] (1934) ESSENTIAL. Posthumous revenge for one of Smith's mighty, malign sorcerers.
5. The Tomb-Spawn [Zothique] (1934) : Bleak horror tale of the last continent.
6. The Witchcraft of Ulua [Zothique] (1934) ESSENTIAL. Erotic, ironic tale of an innocent young man, a malign queen, and the thankful intercession of the man's magical uncle.
7. The Coming of the White Worm (Chapter IX of the Book of Eibon) [Hyperborea] (1941)  ESSENTIAL. Brilliant tale of the descending Ice Age at the end of the Age of Hyperborea. 
8. The Seven Geases [Hyperborea] (1934) ESSENTIAL. A droll, horrifying tale of malign justice directed at a very annoying nobleman.
9. The Chain of Aforgomon (1935) : Contemporary horror in the vein of the Cthulhu Mythos.
10. The Primal City (1934) : Weird, minor lost city tale. 
11. Xeethra [Zothique] (1934) : Almost a prose poem of Zothique, very atmospheric and melancholy.
12. The Last Hieroglyph [Zothique] (1935) ESSENTIAL. Brilliant, almost post-modern tale of gods, destiny, and... writing?
13. Necromancy in Naat [Zothique] (1936) ESSENTIAL. Moody and melancholy, but also a satisfying tale of revenge and love beyond the grave.
14. The Treader of the Dust (1935) ESSENTIAL. Another white guy reads the wrong spells from the wrong book. Horrifying decay and disintegration are marvelously expressed in Smith's prose.
15. The Black Abbot of Puthuum [Zothique] (1936) ESSENTIAL. The closest Smith ever came to writing a Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser sword-and-sorcery tale. A lot of funny, and surprisingly ribald.
16. The Death of Ilalotha [Zothique] (1937) : Minor horror tale with a memorable final few paragraphs.
17. Mother of Toads [Averoigne] (1938) ESSENTIAL. Erotic horror story. Genuinely creepy and disturbing, especially if you don't like toads.
18. The Garden of Adompha [Zothique] (1938) ESSENTIAL. This time the plants are the good guys! Some very curious erotica here at times.
19. The Great God Awto (1940) : Mild parody of Smith's hated automobile culture.
20. Strange Shadows (1984) : Attempt at a more contemporary (for 1941), flippant 'Unknown Magazine' style doesn't work, which may explain why it was not published for more than 40 years after composition.
21. The Enchantress of Sylaire [Averoigne] (1941) : Funny, erotic tale of Averoigne, witches, werewolves, and love rejected and found.
22. Double Cosmos (1983) : Minor alternate dimension story. 
23. Nemesis of the Unfinished (1984) : Very minor bit of 'horror' about writer's block.
24. The Master of the Crabs [Zothique] (1948) : Funny, grotesque tale of crabs and treasure and magic. 
25. Morthylla [Zothique] (1953) : Minor, mournful tale of the last continent. 
26. Schizoid Creator (1953) : Another stab at Unknown Magazine dark fantasy.
27. Monsters in the Night (1954) ESSENTIAL. Much-anthologized piece uncharacteristic of Smith's prose style.
28. Phoenix (1954) : Bradburyesque science-fiction story anticipates Danny Boyle's Sunshine, among other things.
29. The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles [Satampra Zeiros/ Hyperborea] (1958)  ESSENTIAL. Smith's lovable thief from his early story "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" returns for a curtain call. 
30. Symposium of the Gorgon (1958) : Minor drollery.
31. The Dart of Rasasfa (1984) : Very slight parody of Gernsbackian scifi of the 1920's. 
32. Story Notes
33. Variant Temptation Scenes from "The Witchcraft of Ulua"
34. "The Traveler" (1922) : poem
35. Material Removed from "The Black Abbot of Puthuum"
36. Alternate Ending to "I Am Your Shadow" 
37. Alternate Ending to "Nemesis of the Unfinished" 
38. Bibliography

Note: If you've read this far in the Supercut, note that the illustrations for the covers of collected editions always have Clark Ashton Smith's face on one of the characters. The More You Know!

The Last Hieroglyph: Volume Five of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith

The Last Hieroglyph:  Volume Five of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith (2010); edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger.

One
Two
Three
Four...

Clark Ashton Smith was a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. With those two, he formed what became known as "The Three Musketeers of Weird Tales" in the late 1920's and 1930's. None of them was the most popular writer for Weird Tales -- that was Seabury Quinn. But in time they would become known as the three finest and most influential American fantasists of their era. 

Smith is the least well-known because he didn't create a fictional universe that others would adopt after him, as Lovecraft did with the Cthulhu Mythos and as Howard did with the world of Conan the Barbarian. His style and subject matter, however, have an incalculable influence and worth. His poetic prose (and Smith was a very good, published poet long before his short story years) testifies to horror, lushness, irony, and moments of grace. 

OK, sometimes it seems like he ate a thesaurus. Maybe three of them. But that's a part of the charm, especially as even Smith's diction can be ironic or satiric, especially when he's just making up words.

Truly remarkable too is that the bulk of Smith's stories were written in a five-year period. It's a burst of creativity almost unrivaled in fantasy literature. Most of the stories he wrote after that burst were based on story ideas he recorded at the time in his Commonplace Book.

In this fifth volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, Smith's creative juices continue to flow before rapidly going dry due to increased family responsibilities and a cessation of the creative forces that made for his incredible five-year burst of greatness. Nonetheless, many fine stories come from his pen, especially before 1939. Almost all the stories, regardless of date of composition or publication, began as entries in Smith's Commonplace Book of the early 1930's.

Note on bracketed categories:

• Averoigne: Fictional, demon-haunted French province during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
• Zothique: The "last continent" of Earth, uncounted millions or billions of years in the future.
• Hyperborea: The ancient civilized kingdoms of humanity prior to the last Ice Age.
• Poseidonis: Last city of sinking Atlantis.
• Cthulhu Mythos: A number of Smith's stories could be set within H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, especially those set during the time of Hyperborea and those featuring the dark god Tsathoggua. Well, and those mentioning Eibon or The Book of Eibon. Or Ubbo-Sathla. However, only those stories that are definitely Cthulhu Mythos stories are indicated.
• Malygris: Stories that involve the great Poseidonis mage Malygris (See also The Last Incantation, Vol. 1)

Contains the following stories and essays (All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of publication)

1. Introduction by Richard A. Lupoff
2. A Note on the Texts
3. The Dark Age (1938) : Mournful science-fiction story about the descent of (a) Dark Age. 
4. The Death of Malygris [Malygris] (1934) ESSENTIAL. Posthumous revenge for one of Smith's mighty, malign sorcerers.
5. The Tomb-Spawn [Zothique] (1934) : Bleak horror tale of the last continent.
6. The Witchcraft of Ulua [Zothique] (1934) ESSENTIAL. Erotic, ironic tale of an innocent young man, a malign queen, and the thankful intercession of the man's magical uncle.
7. The Coming of the White Worm (Chapter IX of the Book of Eibon) [Hyperborea] (1941)  ESSENTIAL. Brilliant tale of the descending Ice Age at the end of the Age of Hyperborea. 
8. The Seven Geases [Hyperborea] (1934) ESSENTIAL. A droll, horrifying tale of malign justice directed at a very annoying nobleman.
9. The Chain of Aforgomon (1935) : Contemporary horror in the vein of the Cthulhu Mythos.
10. The Primal City (1934) : Weird, minor lost city tale. 
11. Xeethra [Zothique] (1934) : Almost a prose poem of Zothique, very atmospheric and melancholy.
12. The Last Hieroglyph [Zothique] (1935) ESSENTIAL. Brilliant, almost post-modern tale of gods, destiny, and... writing?
13. Necromancy in Naat [Zothique] (1936) ESSENTIAL. Moody and melancholy, but also a satisfying tale of revenge and love beyond the grave.
14. The Treader of the Dust (1935) ESSENTIAL. Another white guy reads the wrong spells from the wrong book. Horrifying decay and disintegration are marvelously expressed in Smith's prose. In the vein of the Cthulhu Mythos.
15. The Black Abbot of Puthuum [Zothique] (1936) ESSENTIAL. The closest Smith ever came to writing a Conan or Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser sword-and-sorcery tale. A lot of funny, and surprisingly ribald.
16. The Death of Ilalotha [Zothique] (1937) : Minor horror tale with a memorable final few paragraphs.
17. Mother of Toads [Averoigne] (1938) ESSENTIAL. Erotic horror story. Genuinely creepy and disturbing, especially if you don't like toads.
18. The Garden of Adompha [Zothique] (1938) ESSENTIAL. This time the plants are the good guys! Some very curious erotica here at times.
19. The Great God Awto (1940) : Mild parody of Smith' hated automobile culture.
20. Strange Shadows (1984) : Attempt at a more contemporary (for 1941), flippant 'Unknown Magazine' style doesn't work, which may explain why it was not published for more than 40 years after composition.
21. The Enchantress of Sylaire [Averoigne] (1941) : Funny, erotic tale of Averoigne, witches, werewolves, and love rejected and found.
22. Double Cosmos (1983) : Minor alternate dimension story. 
23. Nemesis of the Unfinished (1984) : Very minor bit of 'horror' about writer's block.
24. The Master of the Crabs [Zothique] (1948) : Funny, grotesque tale of crabs and treasure and magic. 
25. Morthylla [Zothique] (1953) : Minor, mournful tale of the last continent. 
26. Schizoid Creator (1953) : Another stab at Unknown Magazine dark fantasy.
27. Monsters in the Night (1954) ESSENTIAL. Much-anthologized piece uncharacteristic of Smith's prose style.
28. Phoenix (1954) : Bradburyesque science-fiction story anticipates Danny Boyle's Sunshine, among other things.
29. The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles [Satampra Zeiros/ Hyperborea] (1958)  ESSENTIAL. Smith's lovable thief from his early story "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" returns for a curtain call. 
30. Symposium of the Gorgon (1958) : Minor drollery.
31. The Dart of Rasasfa (1984) : Very slight parody of Gernsbackian scifi of the 1920's. 
32. Story Notes
33. Variant Temptation Scenes from "The Witchcraft of Ulua"
34. "The Traveler" (1922) : poem
35. Material Removed from "The Black Abbot of Puthuum"
36. Alternate Ending to "I Am Your Shadow" 
37. Alternate Ending to "Nemesis of the Unfinished" 
38. Bibliography

The Maze of the Enchanter: Volume Four of the Collected Fantasies Of Clark Ashton Smith

The Maze of the Enchanter:  Volume Four of the Collected Fantasies Of Clark Ashton Smith (2009); edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger.

Clark Ashton Smith was a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. With those two, he formed what became known as "The Three Musketeers of Weird Tales" in the late 1920's and 1930's. None of them was the most popular writer for Weird Tales -- that was Seabury Quinn. But in time they would become known as the three finest and most influential American fantasists of their era. 

Smith is the least well-known because he didn't create a fictional universe that others would adopt after him, as Lovecraft did with the Cthulhu Mythos and as Howard did with the world of Conan the Barbarian. His style and subject matter, however, have an incalculable influence and worth. His poetic prose (and Smith was a very good, published poet long before his short story years) testifies to horror, lushness, irony, and moments of grace. 

OK, sometimes it seems like he ate a thesaurus. Maybe three of them. But that's a part of the charm, especially as even Smith's diction can be ironic or satiric, especially when he's just making up words.

Truly remarkable too is that the bulk of Smith's stories were written in a five-year period. It's a burst of creativity almost unrivaled in fantasy literature. Most of the stories he wrote after that burst were based on story ideas he recorded at the time in his Commonplace Book.

In this fourth volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, Smith continues in peak form. Excellent tales of his horrifying Mars of the future ("The Dweller in the Gulf," "Vulthoom") rub shoulders with fine stories of the Earth's last continent ("The Isle of the Torturers"), prehistoric Hyperborea ("The Ice Demon"), and visionary contemporary horror (the terrific "Genius Loci"). We also meet Smith's prototype of Rick from Rick and Morty, the amoral science-magician Maal Dweb.

Note on bracketed categories:

• Averoigne: Fictional, demon-haunted French province during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
• Zothique: The "last continent" of Earth, uncounted millions or billions of years in the future.
• Hyperborea: The ancient civilized kingdoms of humanity prior to the last Ice Age.
• Poseidonis: Last city of sinking Atlantis.
• Cthulhu Mythos: A number of Smith's stories could be set within H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, especially those set during the time of Hyperborea and those featuring the dark god Tsathoggua. Well, and those mentioning Eibon or The Book of Eibon. Or Ubbo-Sathla. However, only those stories that are definitely Cthulhu Mythos stories are indicated.
• Maal Dweb: Alien though human-looking sorcerer who seems to rule over an entire alien solar system.

Contains the following stories and essays (All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of publication)

1. Introduction by Gahan Wilson
2. A Note on the Texts
3. The Mandrakes [Averoigne] (1933) : Minor tale of posthumous revenge.
4. The Beast of Averoigne [Averoigne] (1933) Restored three-part version of one of the two or three best stories of that demon-haunted medieval French province of Averoigne -- this time threatened from without by a thing from a comet. ESSENTIAL
5. A Star-Change (1933) : Minor but fascinating tale that focuses on the potentially mind-altering effects of alien landscapes and dimensions.
6. The Disinterment of Venus [Averoigne] (1934) Droll, erotic humour involving a pagan statue that really gets a lot of monks... excited. Statuesque, indeed! ESSENTIAL.
7. The White Sybil [Hyperborea] (1934) : Moody, near-prose poem.
8. The Ice-Demon [Hyperborea] (1933) ESSENTIAL. Terrific horror story of the coming of the Ice Age that would end Smith's Hyperborea.
9. The Isle of the Torturers [Zothique] (1933) ESSENTIAL. A perverse, satisfying tale of almost accidental revenge on the titular island by one of its victims.
10. The Dimension of Chance (1932) : Almost parodic with its jet-plane chase at the beginning before diving into another of Smith's unearthly dimensions where our rules do not apply.
11. The Dweller in the Gulf (1933) ESSENTIAL. Human adventurers on Mars meet with one of the Red Planet's most horrible subterranean denizens. The story does a masterful job of conjuring up claustrophobia and body horror.
12. The Maze of the Enchanter [Maal Dweb] (1933)  ESSENTIAL. Droll story of Smith's bored magician.
13. The Third Episode of Vathek:  The Story of the Princess Zulkaïs and the Prince Kalilah [Vathek] (1937) : novelette by William Beckford and Clark Ashton Smith: Heavy sledding if you're not a William Beckford fan. Smith writes about 4000 words to complete Beckford's incomplete 11,000 words of a tale of Vathek from the 18th century.
14. Genius Loci (1933) ESSENTIAL. Smith codifies a new type of supernatural horror in the contemporary world. 
15. The Secret of the Cairn (aka The Light from Beyond) (1933) : Trippy science-fiction story about yet another voyage to another dimension.
16. The Charnel God [Zothique] (1934) ESSENTIAL. A sword-and-sorcery tale that was one of Conan creator Robert E. Howard's favourite Smith stories.
17. The Dark Eidolon [Zothique] (1935) ESSENTIAL. Small epic of Earth's last continent, an evil city, and the evil sorcerer who seeks vengeance against it. 
18. The Voyage of King Euvoran [Zothique] (1933) : Comic tale (albeit with a high death toll) of a quest for a lost crown.
19. Vulthoom (1935) : Smith's malign Mars has another monstrous being. And it's an evil plant.
20. The Weaver in the Vault [Zothique] (1934) : Moody tale of creeping horror.
21. The Flower-Women [Maal Dweb] (1935) ESSENTIAL. Black comedy and magical battles as a bored Maal Dweb becomes the unlikely saviour of a species of carnivorous plant women. Yes, semi-evil plants.
22. Story Notes
23. Alternate Ending to "The White Sybil"
24. The Muse of Hyperborea  (1934) poem
25. The Dweller in the Gulf:  Added Material
26. Bibliography

A Vintage From Atlantis: Volume Three of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith

A Vintage From Atlantis:  Volume Three of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith (2007); edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger. 

Clark Ashton Smith was a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. With those two, he formed what became known as "The Three Musketeers of Weird Tales" in the late 1920's and 1930's. None of them was the most popular writer for Weird Tales -- that was Seabury Quinn. But in time they would become known as the three finest and most influential American fantasists of their era. 

Smith is the least well-known because he didn't create a fictional universe that others would adopt after him, as Lovecraft did with the Cthulhu Mythos and as Howard did with the world of Conan the Barbarian. His style and subject matter, however, have an incalculable influence and worth. His poetic prose (and Smith was a very good, published poet long before his short story years) testifies to horror, lushness, irony, and moments of grace. 

OK, sometimes it seems like he ate a thesaurus. Maybe three of them. But that's a part of the charm, especially as even Smith's diction can be ironic or satiric, especially when he's just making up words.

Truly remarkable too is that the bulk of Smith's stories were written in a five-year period. It's a burst of creativity almost unrivalled in fantasy literature. Most of the stories he wrote after that burst were based on story ideas he recorded at the time in his Commonplace Book.

In this third volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, Smith has reached the peak of his considerable powers as a prose writer, giving birth to all-time classics that include the horrifying "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" and "The Seed from the Sepulchre" and the brilliant, droll Averoigne novella "The Colossus of Ylourgne." "The Colossus of Ylourgne" and "The Empire of the Necromancers" are two prime examples of Smith's ability to combine horror, irony, humour, and melancholy into one short package. 

• Note on bracketed categories:
• 
  
• Averoigne: Fictional, demon-haunted French province during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
• Zothique: The "last continent" of Earth, uncounted millions or billions of years in the future.
• Hyperborea: The ancient civilized kingdoms of humanity prior to the last Ice Age.
• Poseidonis: Last city of sinking Atlantis.
• Cthulhu Mythos: A number of Smith's stories could be set within H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, especially those set during the time of Hyperborea and those featuring the dark god Tsathoggua. Well, and those mentioning Eibon or The Book of Eibon. Or Ubbo-Sathla. However, only those stories that are definitely Cthulhu Mythos stories are indicated.
• Mars: Science fiction story set on or around Smith's generally terrifying version of Mars.

Contains the following stories and essays (All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of publication)

1. Introduction by Michael Dirda
2. A Note on the Texts
3. The Holiness of Azedarac [Averoigne] (1933): Ironic, erotic. ESSENTIAL.
4. The Maker of Gargoyles [Averoigne] (1932): Creepy gargoyles do terrible things.  ESSENTIAL.
5. Beyond the Singing Flame (1931) Smith returns to the world of the Singing Flame (See Volume 2) in a work of cosmic ecstasy and mystery. ESSENTIAL.
6. Seedling of Mars [Mars] (1931) (with E. M. Johnston): Another of Smith's subtle parodies of planetary romances  and science fiction of his time, leading to a strange and apocalyptic climax. is this catastrophe or eucatastrophe?
7. The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis [Mars] (1932) Absolutely first-rate science-fiction horror set on Smith's dying, dusty, ancient Mars. It's like the prototype for every Alien-style movie and written horror to come. ESSENTIAL.
8. The Eternal World (1932) : Odd, engaging bit of cosmic speculation and Sublime play with time and space.
9. The Demon of the Flower (1933) : Disturbing tale of metamorphosis and evil plants. 
10. The Nameless Offspring (1932) : Disturbing contemporary tale of ghouls and implied, quasi-necrophiliac rape.
11. A Vintage from Atlantis [Poseidonis] (1933) : Moody prose poem.
12. The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan [Hyperborea] (1932) : Strangely hilarious (in almost a Bugs Bunny sort of way) of how a greedy loan shark gets his just desserts.
13. The Invisible City (1932) : Fun, odd, contemporary  'Hidden City' adventure.
14. The Immortals of Mercury (1932) : Another of Smith's subtle digs at his contemporary science-fiction writers and their planetary romances.
15. The Empire of the Necromancers [Zothique] (1932) : Brilliant, affecting, funny tale of a couple of malign necromancers on the world's last continent. ESSENTIAL.
16. The Seed from the Sepulcher (1933) Horrifying, creepy tale of an evil plant. An orchid, in this case. ESSENTIAL.
17. The Second Interment (1933) : Minor horror.
18. Ubbo-Sathla [Hyperborea/ Cthulhu Mythos] (1933): Time-bending tale of metamorphosis and fate.  ESSENTIAL.
19. The Double Shadow [Poseidonis] (1933) : Witty tale of magics gone wrong. ESSENTIAL.
20. The Plutonian Drug (1934) : Minor time-travel piece.
21. The Supernumerary Corpse (1932) : Very minor scifi murder.
22. The Colossus of Ylourgne (1934) A brilliant novella involving necromancy in medieval French Averoigne. Stands among other things as the lurking precedent for Clive Barker's much-praised "In the Hills, the Cities." ESSENTIAL.
23. The God of the Asteroid (1932): Minor, bleak science fiction story.
24. Story Notes
25. The Flower-Devil (1922) : poem by Clark Ashton Smith
26. Bibliography

The Door to Saturn: Volume Two of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith (2007)

The Door to Saturn:  Volume Two of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith (2007); edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger.

For Volume 1: The End of the Story, click here.

Clark Ashton Smith was a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. With those two, he formed what became known as "The Three Musketeers of Weird Tales" in the late 1920's and 1930's. None of them was the most popular writer for Weird Tales -- that was Seabury Quinn. But in time they would become known as the three finest and most influential American fantasists of their era. 

Smith is the least well-known because he didn't create a fictional universe that others would adopt after him, as Lovecraft did with the Cthulhu Mythos and as Howard did with the world of Conan the Barbarian. His style and subject matter, however, have an incalculable influence and worth. His poetic prose (and Smith was a very good, published poet long before his short story years) testifies to horror, lushness, irony, and moments of grace. 

OK, sometimes it seems like he ate a thesaurus. Maybe three of them. But that's a part of the charm, especially as even Smith's diction can be ironic or satiric, especially when he's just making up words.

Truly remarkable too is that the bulk of Smith's stories were written in a five-year period. It's a burst of creativity almost unrivaled in fantasy literature. Most of the stories he wrote after that burst were based on story ideas he recorded at the time in his Commonplace Book.

In this second volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, we see Smith pretty much at the zenith of his powers as a weird fantasist. The stories can be weird and occasionally horrifying, but also droll and comical in some cases. He moves among contemporary horror and distant realms of self-created fantasy with apparent ease. Even a story that waited 55 years to be published -- "A Good Embalmer" -- is an enjoyable bit of dark whimsy that reminds one of the stories of Ambrose Bierce.

There are more attempts at relatively straightforward horror-fantasy here than in any other volume, suggesting that Smith was working to place stories in markets by writing stories to fit the existing markets.  This tendency would wane as his career progressed.


Note on bracketed categories:

• Averoigne: Fictional, demon-haunted French province during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
• Zothique: The "last continent" of Earth, uncounted millions or billions of years in the future.
• Hyperborea: The ancient civilized kingdoms of humanity prior to the last Ice Age.
• Poseidonis: Last city of sinking Atlantis.
• Cthulhu Mythos: A number of Smith's stories could be set within H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, especially those set during the time of Hyperborea and those featuring the dark god Tsathoggua. Well, and those mentioning Eibon or The Book of Eibon. Or Ubbo-Sathla. However, only those stories that are definitely Cthulhu Mythos stories are indicated.

Contains the following stories and essays (All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of publication): 

1. Introduction by Tim Powers
2. A Note on the Texts by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger
3. The Door to Saturn  [Hyperborea]  (1932): Smith's novella about his legendary sorcerer Eibon becomes funnier the longer it goes, and ends with one of Smith's nods to interspecies sex, carefully phrased so as to avoid rejection from the magazines of the 1930's. ESSENTIAL.
4. The Red World of Polaris  [Captain Volmar 2] (2003) : Smith's second tale of Captain Volmar and his intrepid space-faring crew again walks the line between Space Opera and satire, but becomes awesomely apocalyptic over the final third.
5. Told in the Desert (1964) : Minor bit of horror.
6. The Willow Landscape (1931) : [Orientalist fantasy] : Lovely, melancholy Orientalist tale.
7. A Rendezvous in Averoigne  [Averoigne] (1931) : Another Averoigne story lays out some of the province's more dangerous locations. ESSENTIAL.
8. The Gorgon (1932) : Minor horror story.
9. An Offering to the Moon (1953) : Minor tale of a modern-day archaeological expedition gone nightmarishly wrong.
10. The Kiss of Zoraida (1933) : [Conte cruel] : Minor bit of Orientalist nastiness.
11. The Face by the River (2004) : A fairly straightforward contemporary ghost story.
12. The Ghoul (1934) : Weird Orientalist dark fantasy about ghouls. 
13. The Kingdom of the Worm (1933) : Smith pays homage to a little-known confabulist of the past with some pretty eerie and disturbing moments of travel through a disintegrating landscape infected by rot.
14. An Adventure in Futurity  (1931) : One of what is almost a Smith sub-genre -- a guy gets into a machine of either his or alien design (or a future human's, as here), and travels to another world or time. This one visits the future, and aims some pointed satire at conventional time-travelling narratives.
15. The Justice of the Elephant  (1931) : Minor 'revenge' horror story. With elephants!
16. The Return of the Sorcerer  [Cthulhu Mythos]  (1931) : One of Smith's most anthologized stories is a sly, blackly humourous tale that intersects with H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. ESSENTIAL.
17. The City of the Singing Flame  [Singing Flame : 1] (1941) A work of visionary dark fantasy that focuses on the ecstasies of the Sublime. Followed by a sequel. ESSENTIAL.
18. A Good Embalmer  (1989) : Droll contemporary horror story.
19. The Testament of Athammaus  [Hyperborea]  (1932) Great work of dark fantasy is a sort of prequel to Volume 1's "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros." ESSENTIAL.
20. A Captivity in Serpens  [Captain Volmar : 3] (1931) Smith's third tale (second published) of Captain Volmar and his intrepid space-faring crew again walks the line between Space Opera and satire yet again, and features a lengthy, dizzying chase scene through a cyclopean city.
21. The Letter from Mohaun Los  (1932) : One of what is almost a Smith sub-genre -- a guy gets into a machine of either his or alien design, and travels to another world or time. This one visits other planets while attempting to travel in time, discovering that gravity doesn't apply to objects in transit through the time-stream.
22. The Hunters from Beyond  (1932) : Solid, visceral yet cosmic horror story nods in a way to H.P. Lovecraft's great "Pickman's Model." ESSENTIAL.
23. Story Notes by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger
24. Alternate Ending to "The Return of the Sorcerer" 
25. Bibliography by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger

The End Of The Story: Volume One of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith

The End Of The Story:  Volume One of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith (2006); edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger. 

Clark Ashton Smith was a contemporary of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. With those two, he formed what became known as "The Three Musketeers of Weird Tales" in the late 1920's and 1930's. None of them was the most popular writer for Weird Tales -- that was Seabury Quinn. But in time they would become known as the three finest and most influential American fantasists of their era. 

Smith is the least well-known because he didn't create a fictional universe that others would adopt after him, as Lovecraft did with the Cthulhu Mythos and as Howard did with the world of Conan the Barbarian. His style and subject matter, however, have an incalculable influence and worth. His poetic prose (and Smith was a very good, published poet long before his short story years) testifies to horror, lushness, irony, and moments of grace. 

OK, sometimes it seems like he ate a thesaurus. Maybe three of them. But that's a part of the charm, especially as even Smith's diction can be ironic or satiric, especially when he's just making up words.

Truly remarkable too is that the bulk of Smith's stories were written in a five-year period. It's a burst of creativity almost unrivaled in fantasy literature. Most of the stories he wrote after that burst were based on story ideas he recorded at the time in his Commonplace Book.


In this first volume of The Collected Fantasies from Night Shade Press, we see Smith emerge almost fully formed as a writer of weird prose. He's definitely still finding his voice and his way (and a market), but his first published story ("The Abominations of Yondo" (1926)) and second story composed is a small masterpiece of weird horror and an unnervingly altered future Earth. If Earth it truly is...

Contains the following stories and essays. All dates are publication, not composition -- the five volumes are arranged in order of composition: 

Introduction by Ramsey Campbell
A Note on the Texts by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger

1. To the Daemon (1943): Slight but telling prose poem.
2. The Abominations of Yondo (1926): In this memorable story influenced by Lord Dunsany, Smith crafts his first essential tale, a weird and unsettling story set in some strange distant future.
3. Sadastor (1930) : Slight but telling prose poem.
4. The Ninth Skeleton (1928): Slight meditation on time.
5. The Last Incantation  [Malygris] (1930): Short, pithy fantasy set in one of Smith's strange fictional realms not of our Earth (but certainly of his) introduces a mage who will return, Malygris. ESSENTIAL.
6. The End of the Story  [Averoigne] (1930): Bleak tale of vampirism and desire is the first set in Smith's medieval French province of Averoigne. ESSENTIAL.
7. The Phantoms of the Fire  (1930): Slight contemporary ghost story.
8. A Night in Malnéant  (1933): A tale of mourning seemingly set in a nightmare almost seems like a dry run for a lot of Thomas Ligotti's work half-a-century later.
9. The Resurrection of the Rattlesnake  (1931): Sight contemporary horror story.
10. Thirteen Phantasms  (1936): Slight meditation on time and identity.
11. The Venus of Azombeii (1931) : Slight African adventure of a Lost City/Tribe with some unfortunate racial elements and little fantastic content (really, none).
12. The Tale of Satampra Zeiros : [Satampra Zeiros/ Hyperborea]  (1931): First tale of the prehistoric world of Hyperborea and the charming thief and raconteur Satampra Zeiros is also a sequel to a later Smith story, The Testament of Athammaus. ESSENTIAL.
13. The Monster of the Prophecy  (1932): Colourful, slyly satiric planetary romance, the latter almost literally by the end.  ESSENTIAL.
14. The Metamorphosis of the World  (1951): One of Smith's satiric broadsides at his contemporary science-fiction writers also reads as a straightforward apocalyptic piece of science fiction anticipating some of our own fears of climate change.
15. The Epiphany of Death  (1934): Moody horror tale is also a nod to H.P. Lovecraft.
16. A Murder in the Fourth Dimension  (1930): Slight but fun bit of contemporary science fiction.
17. The Devotee of Evil  (1933): Contemporary horror plays with pseudoscience in its explanation for the existence of EVIL.  ESSENTIAL.
18. The Satyr  [Averoigne]  (1931): Disturbing dark fantasy from monster-haunted Averoigne. ESSENTIAL.
19. The Planet of the Dead  (1932): Melancholy science fantasy about a man who feels estranged from his own place and time, a recurring theme in Smith's stories.
20. The Uncharted Isle  (1930): Clever piece of dimension-hopping science fiction. ESSENTIAL.
21. Marooned in Andromeda  [Captain Volmar : 1]  (1930): First of Smith's three complete stories and one fragment about his oddball crew of space-faring adventurers and mutineers. The satire of his contemporary space opera writers is subtle until it suddenly isn't. First Smith story to feature dangerous plants.
22. The Root of Ampoi (1949): Slight contemporary Lost City/Tribe story.
23. The Necromantic Tale  (1931) : Slight dark fantasy tale of reincarnation and swapped minds.
24. The Immeasurable Horror  (1931): Disturbing, horrifying science-fiction adventure set on and above Smith's nightmarishly lush Venus. ESSENTIAL.
25. A Voyage to Sfanomoë  [Poseidonis]  (1931):  Science fantasy set as Atlantis falls takes us back to the nightmarishly lush Venus of  "The Immeasurable Horror."   Also, dangerous plants! ESSENTIAL.

Story Notes by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger
"The Satyr":  Alternate Conclusion  [Averoigne]  (1931): The alternate ending to "The Satyr" is even more disturbing than the chosen ending.
From the Crypts of Memory : (1917) : poem by Clark Ashton Smith
Bibliography by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger

The Shadow of the Torturer (1980) by Gene Wolfe

The Book Of the New Sun Volume 1: The Shadow of the Torturer (1980) by Gene Wolfe: Nearly 40 years on, The Shadow of the Torturer retains the power to startle with its virtuoso use of language and its detailed world creation. 

The Book Of the New Sun belongs to a relatively small but robust sub-genre of science fiction and fantasy set uncounted millions upon millions of years into the future of Earth, a time so remote that some of the beaches of this Earth are a rainbow of particles, the atomized remnants of the coloured glass bottles of our era. 

Wolfe's possible influences from this sub-genre include William Hope Hodgson's early 20th-century The Night Land, Clark Ashton Smith's 1930's tales of Zothique, and Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories that began in the 1950's. Those who would follow Wolfe into these strange lands would include Michael Shea in his 1980's tales of Nifft the Lean and China Mieville with the far-future Earth of Railsea and even the mysterious, probably non-Terran landscapes of Perdido Street Station and its sequels.

Such stories often nod to Arthur C. Clarke's Law -- any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Hence the tendency to call such stories 'science fantasy.' Are the monsters actually the product of genetic engineering? Are the demons advanced aliens? And so on, and so forth.

This first novel of the tetralogy introduces us to young Severian, a member of the Guild of Torturers on the cusp of his elevation beyond the level of apprentice. We're shown his boyhood in the mostly deserted grounds of the once-thriving complex of the Torturers. All this occurs within the walls of the gigantic capital city of this world, whose walls reach the clouds.

Things change, of course, and a choice made by Severian sends him on his path beyond the Torturers' demesne and into that wider but still enclosed world of the city. He is to pass beyond the city's gates, but the sheer scale of the city will make that passage the odyssey of this first novel.

Wolfe masterfully summons sympathy for Severian, in part by having Severian tell his story from some remote future point, a sort of Great Expectations at the end of time. Severian's world is overflowing with strange and interesting characters, creatures, objects, and events. This is world-building on a massive scale, but world-building that always keeps its eye on the inhabitants of that world.

The Book Of the New Sun isn't an easy read. Wolfe offers a cascade of odd and offbeat and often archaic nouns to name the various oddities of this world at the end of time. It's a bit of a riff on the wild naming practices of Clark Ashton Smith and his stories of Earth's last continent Zothique. Regardless of how big your dictionary is, the names and nouns will soon flow smoothly through your consciousness. Part of Wolfe's magic here is to make the reader comfortably uncomfortable with the world of the far future. Highly recommended.

The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: Clark Ashton Smith's Cthulhu Mythos Fiction: edited and with notes by Robert M. Price (Collected 2008)

The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: Clark Ashton Smith's Cthulhu Mythos Fiction: edited and with notes by Robert M. Price (Collected 2008):

Chaosium reprints the Cthulhu Mythos-related short stories of Clark Ashton Smith in three volumes, with this being the one containing stories that aren't set in the distant past when the Book of Eibon was being composed nor those Smith stories that focus on his quasi-tricksterish god Tsathoggua.

Despite the availability of Smith's work in multiple editions, this text is valuable because it reprints several variant versions of Smith's stories that aren't available that easily, along with a long story fragment -- "The Infernal Star" -- that is otherwise out of print.

'Klarkash-Ton' was the nickname H.P. Lovecraft gave Smith in their correspondence in the 1930's. The stories range from straightforward horror to science fiction to science-fiction horror, while Smith's prose style ranges from the relatively plain to the poetically baroque, almost arcane diction that one really either loves or hates. I love it, in part because there's clearly a sense of humour at work behind the occasionally loopy word choices.

One caveat: the stories have been proofread and copy-edited with mind-boggling ineptitude. You may want to grab a pen and correct all the errors for the next person who reads the collection. Think of it as a fun game!

• "The Ghoul" (1934): Smith's ghoul isn't as idiosyncratic as Lovecraft's ghouls, though it sure loves to eat dead people. 
• "A Rendering from the Arabic" (Variant of "The Return of the Sorcerer" [1931]): Slightly different version of the oft-reprinted "The Return of the Sorcerer." Lovecraftian references abound in a story about the walking, shuffling dead.
• "The Hunters from Beyond" (1932): One of those Smith stories that plays with his own multi-talented career as a painter and sculptor as well as a writer of prose and poetry. It does seem a bit derivative of both HPL's "Pickman's Model" and Frank Belknap Long's "The Hounds of Tindalos."
• "The Vaults of Abomi" (Variant of "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" [1932/1989]): A few hundred words flesh out the beginning of one of Smith's two or three finest works of science-fictional horror, set on his version of Mars and possessed of imagery and situations that anticipate such later horrors as Alien, The Thing, and The Puppet Masters.
• "The Nameless Offspring" (1932): Well, we get the offstage rape of a woman in a coma by a ghoul, followed by the resultant offspring. One of Smith's most obliquely disturbing works.
• "Ubbo-Sathla (1933)": Much-reprinted reincarnational horror story.
• "The Werewolf of Averoigne"  (Variant of "The Beast of Averoigne") [1931/1984]): The variant is superior to the standard version, preserving as it does Smith's original multi-viewpoint epistolary format.
• "The Eidolon of the Blind" (Variant of "The Dweller in the Gulf" [1933]): Another creepy science-fiction horror story set on Smith's version of Mars, which makes most other early 20th-century writers' versions of Mars seem like a goddam Disneyworld.
• "Vulthoom" (1935): Another Mars story, much lighter on horror and, as Price comments in the notes, not that different from many other contemporary interplanetary stories involving humans and decadent, Orientalist civilizations.
• "The Treader of the Dust" (1935): Excellent, concise horror story with a strikingly creepy evil god or demigod or whatever you want to call it.
• "The Infernal Star" (Fragment) (1935/1989): Fascinating, long fragment of what was to be a novella-length dark fantasy involving reincarnation, atomic 'memory,' and a Sun made, basically, of Evil.

In all: highly recommended, though I do wish for an edition with better copy editing.

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (2000)

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (2000): China Mieville's second novel takes us to the strange world of Bas-Lag and the strange, sprawling city of New Crobuzon. One could see Mieville as having gone back to the time before the genre divisions established by the commercial demands of publishing were in force, back to the early 20th century, when science fiction and science fantasy and dark fantasy were non-existent distinctions. 

New Crobuzon, vast and London-like and filled with humans and a wide variety of other sentient species, is one of those places where both magic and science work. It's a crowded, vibrant place that combines elements of Dickensian London and steampunk. It's also a partial dystopia thanks to its ruthless ruling class. There's freedom in New Crobuzon right up until the point one makes trouble for the government. The secret police are everywhere, quashing unionization and making deals with organized crime.

Mieville has a density of imagination that crams Perdido Street Station with memorable characters, species, and events. The plot is pure entertainment, the outlines familiar: a plucky group of misfits must battle a terrible enemy. Mieville's attention to detail makes that familiar plot hum, though, and his wild imaginings make it sing. His socialist concerns also make for some scenes unusual to fantasy and science fiction -- celebrations of the working class, a protagonist who's an overweight intellectual, and a fascinating off-beat coda that both defies and rewards expectations.

Is there a tradition Mieville works within? To some extent, yes. A world of both science fiction and fantasy is the world of the Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, among many others. Mieville's dense, often eclectic diction in concert with this mashed-up world of science and magic and the grotesque recalls the works of Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance, Tim Powers, Michael Shea, Fritz Leiber, and Michael Moorcock.

But this is all Mieville's world, in the same way that The Lord of the Rings is both high fantasy and its own Tolkien genre, all its own. That's how it works with great writers: they're a genre of one. The characters are compelling, flawed, and occasionally heart-breaking. There are asides and references that suggest the vastness of the world Mieville has imagined. There are terrifically exciting sections, including a climax that goes on for about a hundred pages without losing either momentum or invention. There's sorrow as keen as anything, genre or otherwise. There's an awesome super-Spider and a terrified ambassador from Hell. 

And there's a pack of truly terrible, superbly imagined  monsters, set upon New Crobuzon in a manner which recalls so, so many real-world governmental perversities involving drugs, guns, organized crime, and a corrupt political system. This is neither a world with a Chosen One nor a rightful king. And the heavy lifting, with all its costs, will be done by beings excluded from the heights of society. Some of them may even otherwise be terrible, terrible people.

There are flaws, of course, piffling for the most part. My one larger complaint involves Mieville's need to keep throwing in new species and new sub-plots, a need which results in a bit of clutter in the middle section. A relatively lengthy bit pitting one truly odd species against the monsters of  the novel is the apotheosis of this problem -- it advances the plot not one whit, and seems to be there because Mieville really, really wanted to introduce this cool, malevolent species and then pit it against the far more malevolent monsters.

In all, this is a great novel, regardless of genre. There's a keenness to it, even an anger at The Way Things Are Here, that nonetheless never becomes didactic, never detracts from the singularity of Mieville's fully realized, vibrant, awful Secondary World. Highly recommended.