Customer Reviews

The Book of Hyperborea

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A collection of short stories that originally appeared in pulp magazines such as "Weird Tales", C. A. Smith's "Book of Hyperborea" transcends the pulp genre and attains the level of true literary artistry. Smith's measured prose sings where his friend and contemporary Lovecraft stutters or shrieks. (Not to cast aspersions: Lovecraft's vaulting imagination more than makes up for his faults as a stylist.) These tales combine elements of Baudelaire, De Quincy, "A Thousand Nights and a Night", and "Vathek" to produce a vibrant, sensuous, and luxuriant world in which every story has a satisfyingly unhappy ending. Needless to say, this is a quite different approach than that of most current writers of fantastic fiction. So if you have a taste for the plodding prose and hopelessly worthy and boring heroes of Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, et al., then by all means pass Mr. Smith by. He was out of step during his prime, so it's unlikely his shade will be troubled by your continued neglect. In any case, Smith wrote for the ages: like the work of Dunsany and Cabell--certainly the greatest literary artists in fantastic fiction--these stories are intended for a well-read, cultivated audience. Consequently, I recommend this book more to readers of belles lettres than to fans of paperback fantasy trilogies. If you like Poe, you should give Clark Ashton Smith a try. Edward Gorey enthusiasts who are looking for something a little juicier than, though equally gruesome as, Regera Dowdy's stark narratives, will also enjoy C. A. Smith's mordant gloominess of tone.

Set in Greenland before the glaciers came. A doomed society struggling against the inevitable. A collection of short stories catalogueing this fall. All bundled up in the almost poetic writing style of Clark Ashton Smith. Lovecraft envied him, and this book is why.

Clark Ashton Smith wrote prolifically for the old pulp magazines, mostly during the 1920s and 1930s, but his main interest was in poetry. That preoccupation with language is clearly evident in every entry in this volume, which represents a collection of all the stories (including a few incomplete fragments) that pertained to his imaginary land of "Hyperborea," lost in the mists of antiquity. These stories also fit in with the so-called "Cthulhu mythos" of H.P. Lovecraft and numerous other writers, which present an alternative history of humanity as only the latest (and weakest) of earth's sentient denizens, subject to the awful inhuman powers of greater beings that originally came from other planets. What distinguishes Smith's work from that of other Cthulhu writers, or from other writers of fantasy, is his style of writing (borrowed from the 19th century decadent poets he loved and emulated), his morbid and ironic sense of humor, and his penchant for avoiding happy endings.

From a modern perspective this doesn't always work. One gets the distinct impression in many of these stories of a writer more in love with his own wordcraft than in tune with his narrative. Some of the stories are plainly ridiculous; "The Door to Saturn," for example, rates as unbearably poor science fiction in an Ed Wood, 50's B-movie vein. Others contain the germ of a wonderful idea, but squander it on what amount to small-minded jokes, despite the florid prose that attempts to disguise them as something else ("The Seven Geases" in particular). Nevertheless, some of these ideas are worth experiencing, and some of Smith's humor still bites.