Author John Pelan, editor of Centipede’s Conversations with the Weird Tales Circle, has included Robert E. Howard “Pigeons from Hell,” H.P. Lovecraft‘s “The Outsider,” C.L. Moore‘s “Shambleau,” Clark Ashton Smith‘s “The Dark Eidolon,” Fritz Leiber‘s “Horrible Imagings,” Lord Dunsany’s “Thirteen at Table,” H. G. Wells “The Valley of the Spiders,” Karl Edward Wagner‘s “Sticks“ and Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” in The Century’s Best Horror Fiction.

This massive (one hundred stories, nearly sixteen hundred pages and over seven hundred thousand words of fiction!) two-volume set anthology by Cemetery Dance Publications is heading to the printer this summer. John Pelan did only one selection per author and has chosen one tale per each year of the twentieth century (1901-2000) as the most notable story of that year. Robert E. Howard’s masterpiece fits right in.

(Continue reading this post)

On SF Signal,  John DeNardo asked the questions below to ten science-fiction and fantasy writers and editors:

What are some of the best sword and sorcery stories? What makes them so good?

Martha Wells, Steven Brust, Mercedes Lackey, James Enge, Mary Robinette Kowal, Mark Chadbourn, P.C. Hodgell, Gail Z. Martin, Brandon Sanderson and Lou Anders have all replied. Unsurprisingly, tales by our favorite Texan author, Fritz Leiber and Michael Moorcock are among several authors’ favorites. Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett as well as TC‘s friend –and most excellent writer– Charles R. Saunders‘ stories are cited too.

As John O’Neill  put it over at the Black Gate blog, the list is well worth reading since “you’re sure to find more than a few good recommendations, whether you’re new to S&S or an old sword-brother.” That’s true, though one omission made me cringe: the ludicrous absence of the immense Karl Edward Wagner, who wasn’t listed by any writer and is only mentioned in the comments below the blog entry…

Nick Owchar’s exploration of Clark Ashton Smith in the LA Times started off somewhat rocky in his review of The Return of the Sorcerer, but he’s since proven himself a reliable and exemplary journalist. Certain other journalists could learn a lot from him.

In “The Siren’s Call,” Owchar discusses those mysterious femme fatales of Greek mythology, along with their place in modern literature: Robert Graves, T. S. Eliot, the imagery of Chris Achilléos, and their relation to the adolescent male mindset, among other things. After, he delves into Clark Ashton Smith once again, this time talking about Jackson Kuhl’s astonishing post about exactly why Smith’s work is so difficult to come by. It’s another excellent article, celebrating the third man of the Weird Tales trio, and bringing much needed acknowledgment of the scandalous state of affairs regarding Smith’s rights-holders to a bigger audience.

Well, that, and this little paragraph…

At the Cimmerian, you find posts about Smith as part of a trio that also includes H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. “There are some authors who can tell a new story, and yet make it feel as if it’s been told for eons,” writes Al Harron in the post “Emperor of Dreams.” Jeffrey Shanks, in “Collecting Clark Ashton Smith,” provides an overview of the writer’s publication history — it’s a post you can’t really read without also looking at what Deuce Richardson says about the availability of Smith’s work and at Jackson Kuhl’s post, “The Obscurity of Clark Ashton Smith.”

I hope you’ll forgive me for crowing a little at seeing myself–and fellow Cimmerian shield-bearers Jeffrey Shanks and Deuce Richardson–name checked in the LA Times. Made it, Ma! Top of the World!

The posts referenced above can be found here:

“Emperor of Dreams: Remembering Clark Ashton Smith”

“Collecting Clark Ashton Smith”

“Jackson Kuhl and “The Obscurity of Clark Ashton Smith”"

Others posted on the day of Smith’s nativity:

The Sword-and-Sorcery Legacy of Clark Ashton Smith

Saluting the Sorcerer

All Clark Ashton Smith-related posts on The Cimmerian can be found here.

When the history of fantasy and horror fiction is being discussed, the pulp magazine Weird Tales is inevitably mentioned. Published on low-grade “pulp” paper, Weird Tales was the first newsstand magazine devoted exclusively to weird and fantastic fiction. It ran for 279 issues, from March 1923 to September 1954.

The three most important and influential writers to have their work published in the title were Rhode Island horror writer H.P. Lovecraft; the Texan creator of Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard; and the California poet, short story writer, illustrator and sculptor, Clark Ashton Smith.

“The Complete Poems from Weird Tales” series collects their verse in the order that it originally appeared in the pages of “The Unique Magazine”.

You might remember back in December the news of PS Publishing announcing a trio of poetry collections by Howard, Lovecraft and Smith. Well, here’s an update: PS Publishing has released the contents, including some brief biographies by Stephen Jones, and tantalizingly small pictures of the covers.

(Continue reading this post)

Two tips which might be helpfulf to TC readers. Necronomicon Press is back open for business and is offering a fifteen percent discount on all titles bought on their site. Courtesy of Bill Thom and Coming Attractions, I learned that Wildside Press has a thirty percent off sale going on for orders of three or more books.

(Continue reading this post)

The 117th anniversary of Clark Ashton Smith’s birth last week was marked by The Cimmerian (here, here, and here), Grognardia, Black Gate, and others with accolades and remembrances. As well it should. Smith, along with Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, formed the weird fiction triptych of the 1920s and ’30s — and in my opinion, he was the most talented member of a talented group. Yet a recurring question in many of these memorials is why Smith remains uncelebrated in comparison to his partners. This is especially vexing when you consider he outlived the other two by almost a quarter-century.

Blogger Jackson Kuhl (a personage not unknown to long-time TC readers) wrote the above in an entry he posted on Robert E. Howard’s birthday, ironically enough. Kuhl’s article, entitled “The Obscurity of Clark Ashton Smith,” answers the “vexing question” of CAS’ lack of literary prominence by pointing the finger directly at those who control Smith’s estate. Kuhl relates his (ultimately futile) struggles to publish an omnibus gathering together all of the Averoigne stories (a collection yours truly has been waiting for these past two decades). It is a disheartening tale, but one that should be read by every fan of the Bard of Auburn.

(Continue reading this post)

The Cimmerian was not the only venue celebrating the nativity of  Clark Ashton Smith this thirteenth of January just past. Cool websites such as Grognardia and Cinerati marked the occasion as well. Their tributes differed somewhat from those proffered here in that they noted the influence of Clark Ashton Smith upon the history of fantasy role-playing games. Specifically, they both cited Tom Moldvay’s Castle Amber gaming module as being what led them to Klarkash-Ton.

What is particularly striking about both tributes is that Castle Amber remains the one, single, solitary example of an RPG product that either blogger concerned (or myself) knows about which was largely based upon the works of CAS. Yet, that module appears to have exerted an outsized influence over the years.

(Continue reading this post)

EDITOR’S NOTE: First published in 1963, “The Sorcerer Departs” was Donald Sidney-Fryer’s magisterial bio-critical essay on the work of poet and fictioneer Clark Ashton Smith. Almost a half-century on, it remains the best. The full 17,000-word version, accompanied by new editorial matter, is currently available in a handsome booklet from Silver Key Press.

On the occasion of the Bard of Auburn’s 117th birthday, and with the permission of Sidney-Fryer himself, The Cimmerian hereby presents a vastly truncated version of that essay to its readers, which we have titled “Saluting the Sorcerer.” It is our hope that the piece stimulates you to seek out Smith’s work — most of which is widely available in various in-print and out-of-print editions — as well as begin to delve into the prodigious poetry and critical writings of Donald Sidney-Fryer.

SALUTING THE SORCERER

By Donald Sidney-Fryer

I pass. . . but in this lone and crumbling tower,
Builded against the burrowing seas of chaos,
My volumes and my philtres shall abide:
Poisons more dear than any mithridate,
And spells far sweeter than the speech of love….
Half-shapen dooms shall slumber in my vaults
And in my volume cryptic runes that shall
Outblast the pestilence, outgnaw the worm
When loosed by alien wizards in strange years
Under the blackened moon and paling sun.

In an age dominated by those whom George Sterling once derided as “the brave hunters of fly-specks on Art’s cathedral windows,” the poet Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) is sui generis. His Art embodies the thesis put forth by Arthur Machen in his study Hieroglyphics (1902) that “great writing is the result of an ecstatic experience akin to divine revelation.” The first major poet in English to be influenced by Poe, Smith certainly does not belong to any Weird Tales “school” — nor yet does he belong to any Gothic or neo-Gothic tradition except that of his own synthesis and creation. In the words of his own epigram: “The true poet is not created by an epoch; he creates his own epoch.”

Smith was born of Yankee and English parentage on January 13th, 1893, in Long Valley, California, about six miles south of Auburn. In 1902 his parents, Fanny and Timeus Smith, moved to Boulder Ridge, where father and nine-year-old son built a cabin and dug a well. Here Smith lived almost continuously until 1954, and one can easily imagine the effect that the surrounding countryside had on the sensitive and imaginative boy. It was a veritable gar­den of fruit trees, evergreens and park-like areas located on the rolling foot­hills of the Sierras, while arching overhead the nocturnal immensitudes of the heavens were rendered remarkably clear in the clean, smog-free country air.

(Continue reading this post)

Clark Ashton Smith gets credit for a lot of things, at least by those who are aware of his work. He was arguably the first poet to versify from a truly cosmic viewpoint when he wrote his legendary “The Hashish-Eater.” His poetry and prose, as well as his inimitable drawings, paintings and sculptures, captured the attention and respect of H.P. Lovecraft, who name-checked CAS in his own tales more than any writer, even Dunsany. Smith was a highly valued correspondent of Robert E. Howard. Clark Ashton Smith was admired by (and sometimes mentored) younger authors such as Bradbury, C.L. Moore and Leiber. His tales of Zothique were patent inspirations for later works by Jack Vance and Gene Wolfe.

One thing that Clark Ashton Smith decidedly does not receive much credit for is being one of the founding fathers of the heroic fantasy genre. On this, his one hundred and seventeenth birthday, I’d like to give him his due.

(Continue reading this post)

In this article I’ll be giving a brief overview of the works of Clark Ashton Smith from the perspective of the collector. As the longest lived of the Weird Tales “Big Three,” Smith produced a great number of poems and stories throughout his life in a career that spanned a half a century. The primary online resource for all things CAS-related is the exhaustive EldritchDark.com website, which gives thorough information on all of Smith’s publications. The most useful print reference is Don Herron’s article “Collecting Clark Ashton Smith” in the October 2000 issue of Firsts magazine.

One notable difference between Clark Aston Smith and his Weird Tales counterparts Lovecraft and Howard is that he had his work published in book form a number of times while he was still alive. He also signed quite a few books and his signature is fairly easy to obtain. As general rule of thumb, signed copies of Smith’s works usually sell for around two to three times what an unsigned copy in similar condition would sell for.

(Continue reading this post)