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#clark ashton smith
weirdlookindog · 10 months
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"The moon's implacable, white, frozen lips were appeased only by warm blood..." -Clark Ashton Smith
Virgil Finlay - An Offering To the Moon
(Weird Tales - September 1953)
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Ataraxia ⚬ Sorcerer
The Unexplained — Electronic Musical Impressions Of The Occult
1975
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Night Gallery ⚬ The Return of the Sorcerer ⚬ S3.E1 ⚬ 1972
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spacenoirdetective · 1 year
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Les Edwards, “Bishop of Ximes”
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claytonianjp · 2 months
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head cannon: The Black Stone summons a Tsathoggua minion
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kekwcomics · 4 months
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MAGAZINE OF HORROR Vol. 6, No. 2 (#32) (Health Knowledge, 1970)
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ibrithir-was-here · 5 months
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Silly little personal headcanons for Sandmanverse I thought I'd throw out here for any other lovers of early 20th century Weird Fiction.
Clark Ashton Smith totally got fairy-godfathered by Dream as a baby, and totally wandered around the Dreaming proper as a kid, and that's why he's got so many fantastic poems about the Land of Dreams and its ruler, and also why his health and creativity took a steep dive around the time Dream was captured.
His creative drive starts to come back when he makes friends with Lovecraft, who also managed to get into the Dreaming proper as a kid (inspiring his Dream Cycle)
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sictransitgloriamvndi · 6 months
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“Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams; I crown me with the million-coloured sun Of secret worlds incredible, and take Their trailing skies for vestment, when I soar, Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.” - Clark Ashton Smith
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lil-tachyon · 5 months
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You mentioned Clark Ashton Smith. Which of his stories would you recommend? So far I've been underwhelmed.
Context for anyone who doesn't know: Clark Ashton Smith was one of the "Big Three" of Weird Tales (the other two being Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard) and is certainly the least famous. Even if you don't know who Lovecraft or Howard are, you've probably heard of Cthulu and Conan the Barbarian. Smith is also certainly the weirdest of them all by a good margin and the most inconsistent in his writing. You pick up a Lovecraft story and 90% of the time it's going to be at least competently written and you know the broad strokes of what the content will be (unnameable cosmic horrors, nervous breakdowns, and often very explicit racism). A Smith story is just as likely to feel like it was written by an accomplished poet as it is to feel like a teenager's drivel. And it could be about wizards at the end of time, or spacewrecked astronauts, or medieval French bishops. The only consistent thing about his work is that you'll need a dictionary by your side while you read it. Get ready for words like "mephitic," "hippocephalic," and "cyclopean" to be abused in ways that even Lovecraft probably found egregious. (Emperor of Dreams? More like Emperor of Purple Prose! Haha, good joke Logan.) The bizzarity and unevenness of his output are probably the qualities that I find so engaging about it and also the things that have kept him from being as beloved as his peers into the present day.
Anyway, I haven't done a deep-dive on Smith since I read his complete works all the way through. Some of his stories are pretty fresh in my mind, but most of them I haven't read in 5-6 years. Keep all that in mind and I'll put my recommendations below the break:
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"The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis": Definitely my personal favorite Smith story and probably one of his best. If you don't like this one, it's unlikely you'll be a fan. On its own a very good "ancient cosmic horror" story, what really makes it stand out is it's setting: a near-future (relative to the 1932 publication date) Mars that has been colonized (in a very 19th century sense of the word) by humans. The Martian city of Ignarh is apparently a hub for interplanetary commerce and the subaltern Martian indigenous population provide local guides for human archaeologists to study (and no doubt exploit) the ruins of ancient civilizations that abound on the planet. Smith wrote two other stories in the same setting, "The Dweller in the Gulf" and "Vulthoom" that re-tread the same plot beats but lend a little more color to the Martians themselves. A writer capable of viewing the Martians as sympathetic peoples rather than as "native savages" could've spun this setting into something truly great. Richard Corben also does a fantastic comic adaptation.
"The Abominations of Yondo": Didn't like the first recommendation? I'll take one more shot at making you a fan. "Abominations" is a very short read that manages to contain all the hallmarks of a classic Smith story. Nobody else does it like him and if you don't like it then you just don't like it.
"City of the Singing Flame": A story of inter-dimensional exploration that manages to weave together Smith's obvious love for his home state of California with his penchant for imaginary places beyond time and space. It has a sequel that I thought was okay but most people dislike. If you like this story, it's probably better to treat it as a standalone.
"A Night in Malnéant": A somber, dreary horror tale that I don't think gets enough love or at least isn't anthologized particularly often. Tones down the weirdness a bit, but in a good way.
"Isle of the Torturers": Far-future horror-fantasy that really sticks the ending. Also does the same thing as "Yoh-Vombis" where it has a setting that's only briefly introduced but could easily be spun into a full-on novel. Great Halloween read.
Off the top of my head, those are some of my personal favorites. "Return of the Sorcerer" gets anthologized a lot. It's not weird enough for me but I think it's considered one of his better stories. Similarly I'm not a big fan of his Averoigne cycle of stories (set in medieval France), but if you want some dark ages sword and sorcery, "Mother of Toads" and "The Colossus of Ylourgne" are the ones I liked best.
I'd also like to mention "The Great God Awto" which is a truly bad short story but notable for being one of the earliest pieces of anti-car fiction of which I'm aware. Predates Bradbury's "The Pedestrian" by more than a decade.
Also if you can't find any of Smith's work at your local library, check out eldritchdark.org. I believe all his fiction is available for free here as well as his visual art and other resources.
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sesiondemadrugada · 7 months
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Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams (Darin Coelho Spring, 2018).
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sandmandaddy69 · 3 months
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Clark Ashton Smith
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thehauntedrocket · 9 months
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Vintage Paperback - Beyond Time And Space by August Derleth
Berkley (c.1950)
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weirdlookindog · 3 months
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Virgil Finlay - The Death of Ilalotha
(Weird Tales - September 1937)
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howardia · 1 month
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Sons of CIMMERIA, here is a good source of rare Howard prints and ephemera; and a depot of other materials of the PULP GIANTS and MASTERS of the WEIRD!
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djohnhopper · 3 months
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BOTD: Clark Ashton Smith. Valued and prized by a great fan base, Clark Ashton Smith is still going strong, thank all his gods and necromancers. 121 today.
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etherealacademia · 1 year
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sometimes classic sci-fi and fantasy is sooo hard to get into. like why did authors routinely start stories with sentences like “I, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall write with my left hand, since I have no other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Ompallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua, which lies neglected by the worship of man in the jungle-taken suburbs of Commorium, that long-deserted capital of the Hyperborean Rulers”
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kleioscanvas · 1 year
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Old illustration for Clark Ashton Smith's "The Seven Geases"
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