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.

Volume 1 Review
Volume 2 Review
Volume 3 Review

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)

• Introduction by Gahan Wilson
• A Note on the Texts
• The Mandrakes [Averoigne] (1933) : Minor tale of posthumous revenge.
• 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
• A Star-Change (1933) : Minor but fascinating tale that focuses on the potentially mind-altering effects of alien landscapes and dimensions.
• The Disinterment of Venus [Averoigne] (1934) Droll, erotic humour involving a pagan statue that really gets a lot of monks... excited. Statuesque, indeed! ESSENTIAL.
• The White Sybil [Hyperborea] (1934) : Moody, near-prose poem.
• The Ice-Demon [Hyperborea] (1933) ESSENTIAL. Terrific horror story of the coming of the Ice Age that would end Smith's Hyperborea.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The Maze of the Enchanter [Maal Dweb] (1933)  ESSENTIAL. Droll story of Smith's bored magician.
• 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.
• Genius Loci (1933) ESSENTIAL. Smith codifies a new type of supernatural horror in the contemporary world. 
• The Secret of the Cairn (aka The Light from Beyond) (1933) : Trippy science-fiction story about yet another voyage to another dimension.
• The Charnel God [Zothique] (1934) ESSENTIAL. A sword-and-sorcery tale that was one of Conan creator Robert E. Howard's favourite Smith stories.
• 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. 
• The Voyage of King Euvoran [Zothique] (1933) : Comic tale (albeit with a high death toll) of a quest for a lost crown.
• Vulthoom (1935) : Smith's malign Mars has another monstrous being. And it's an evil plant.
• The Weaver in the Vault [Zothique] (1934) : Moody tale of creeping horror.
• 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.
• Story Notes
• Alternate Ending to "The White Sybil"
• The Muse of Hyperborea  (1934) poem
• The Dweller in the Gulf:  Added Material
• Bibliography

The End Of The Story: Volume One of the Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith (2006)

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 forWeird 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: 

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.

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

China Town

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.

Horrotica

Walk on the Wild Side: The Best Horror Stories of Karl Edward Wagner Volume 2 edited by Stephen Jones (2012): Centipede Press has done readers of horror and dark fantasy a tremendous service with the release of its two-volume collection of the late Karl Edward Wagner's best horror fiction. This is the weaker of the two volumes, collecting Wagner's shorter works with an emphasis on his late-life burst of often pornographic short stories.

Wagner started his writing life as a dynamo, both in horror and in heroic fantasy, much of the latter featuring his time-jaunting anti-hero Kane. He also worked on his own short-lived specialty press (Carcosa), wrote a licensed Conan novel (The Road of Kings), and took over editorship of DAW Books' excellent Year's Best Horror series in the early 1980's, a job he'd hold until his death in 1994.

Along the way, something happened. It involved the consumption of astounding amounts of alcohol and the growth of an intermittent writer's block that would persist from the late 1970's until his death. Trained as a psychiatrist, Wagner must have known something was going on. But what? We'll never entirely know, and the prose pieces in these two volumes by Wagner's friends suggest that he was ultimately a mystery to them as well.

We know that Wagner wrote at least one pornographic novel, and an awful lot of his late output collected here ranges into the territory of erotic horror (or 'horrotica!!!). I really wish he hadn't.

Gone for the most part is Wagner's marvelous sense of place and psychological depth, replaced with spurting penises in foaming hot tubs and more girl-on-girl action than normally found in a frat boy's hashish dream. There are a few gems here -- the creepy asylum story "Into Whose Hands" and the sad homage to The King in Yellow, "I've Come to Talk to You Again, are excellent, as is the punk-rock nightmare "Did They Get You To Trade?"

There are several stories across both volumes that deal with writers, writer's block, and writers either grown old or old before their time. How autobiographical these stories are is ultimately unknowable, but the cumulative effect certainly feels autobiographical. As an editor and a writer, here lies a fallen giant, an indispensable part of 1970's and 1980's horror, dark fantasy, and heroic fantasy. And if Karl Edward Wagner never became as great as he could have been -- well, the tragedy of his personal fall outweighs literary concerns. Recommended.

City of Fallen Angels

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories by Tim Powers containing "The Bible Repairman," "The Hour of Babel," "Parallel Lines," "A Soul in a Bottle," "A Journey of Only Two Paces" and "A Time to Cast Away Stones" (Collected 2011): Tim Powers is pretty much the best living American fantasist -- the only writer I'd say could contest him for this imaginary title would be Gene Wolfe. Longtime friend of Philip K. Dick, Powers may show Dick's influence in his eclectic choice of subject matter and in the intricate, sometimes byzantine complexity of his plots.

But Powers' other strengths -- his careful attention to historical detail and his ability to ground even the wildest of fantastic conceits in that detail -- are all his own. He writes fantasy as if he were a 'hard science fiction' writer.

Powers normally seems to prefer novels to spin out his detailed, involving tales, so short-story collections are rare and generally quite short. This is no different, but the density of imagination in the stories collected here makes this brief collection (less than 200 pages) seem much more filling than its length would suggest. All of the stories are filled with the wealth of invention and attention to detail that marks Powers' work; the general introduction and afterwords to each story supply fascinating insight into the inspiration for the stories.

Los Angeles, Powers' preferred locale when he's not travelling through time and space, is the setting for five of the six stories. The sixth and last, "A Time to Cast Away Stones," returns us to the horrifying early 19th-century world of Powers' novel The Stress of Her Regard, focusing on the fascinating Trelawny, a fellow traveller with Byron and Shelley who would live to be an occasional confidante of the Pre-Raphaelites, and who is noteable for almost wholly inventing a biography for himself that survived unchallenged for nearly 80 years. Highly recommended.

In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner

In a Lonely Place by Karl Edward Wagner (Collected 1983): This mid-1980's collection of short stories and novellas by Wagner includes probably his most famous story, the award-winning "Sticks" from the mid-1970's. Wagner, who died too young in 1995, was a major writer, publisher and anthologist in the horror, dark-fantasy, and sword-and-sorcery genres for more than 20 years, with his annual Year's Best Horror anthology from DAW pretty much setting the gold standard for genre 'Best of' collections from the early 1980's until Wagner's death and resultant cancellation of the series.

Here, we get many of his best horror stories, including the forementioned "Sticks", a whopper of a Lovecraft homage that also references the artwork and lifestory of pulp illustrator Lee Brown Coye. Did the makers of The Blair Witch Project read "Sticks" at some point? If not, it's an incredible coincidence.

Other stories bounce off Lovecraft, Manly Wade Wellman and Robert Chambers' seminal The King in Yellow in interesting and productive ways, all without requiring any actual knowledge of the references for readerly enjoyment. The novella "Beyond Any Measure" remains, nearly thirty years after its first appearance, one of the five or six cleverest vampire stories ever written. Highly recommended.