Customer Reviews

Out of Space and Time (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

OK, I confess I do not have this book. Even maniacs like me can't afford everything. What I am doing is reproducing the table of contents so potential buyers can compare and see how this collection will fit into their plans. I cannot vouch for the editorial scholarship compared to the Nightshade Books edition. I just gave it 5 stars because, heck, it's CAS!

CLARK ASHTON SMITH: MASTER OF FANTASY XV

OUT OF SPACE AND TIME
The End of the Story
A Rendezvous in Averoigne
A Night in Malneant
The City of the Singing Flame
The Uncharted Isle

JUDGMENTS AND DOOMS
The Second Interment
The Double Shadow
The Chain of Aforgomon
The Dark Eidolon
The Last Hieroglyph
Sadastor
The Death of Ilalotha
The Return of the Sorcerer

HYPERBOREAN GROTESQUES
The Testament of Athammaus
The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan
Ubbo-Sathla

INTERPLANETARIES
The Monster of the Prophecy
The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis
From the Crypts of Memory
The Shadows

For comparison, here are the contents of A Rendezvous in Averoigne from Arkham House. Of course all the weird tales should be available in the Nightshade Books edition.

The Holiness of Azédarac
The Colossus of Ylourgne
The End of the Story
A Rendezvous in Averoigne
The Last Incantation
The Death of Malygris
A Voyage to Sfanomoë
The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan
The Seven Geases
The Tale of Satampra Zeiros
The Coming of the White Worm
The City of the Singing Flame
The Dweller in the Gulf ["Dweller in Martian Depths"]
The Chain of Aforgomon
Genius Loci
The Maze of Maal Dweb
The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis
The Uncharted Isle
The Planet of the Dead
Master of the Asteroid
The Empire of the Necromancers
The Charnel God
Xeethra
The Dark Eidolon
The Death of Ilalotha
The Last Hieroglyph
Necromancy in Naat
The Garden of Adompha
The Isle of the Torturers
Morthylla

Pretty fantastic and glad to have read and learned of CAS. The book is overwhelming in its scope and the size of this man's imagination. He draws each world, each story, each person with incredible depth. An amazing introduction can be found here as well of unusual words. And I think there are few writer's I've ever read that actually put a smell of something awful, the thing you turn your eyes from if you can, that boiling in one's stomach so fully described as to be experienced. His forerunner stories are the sort that always catch my attention (Andre Norton wrote some of my favorites). The deep ideas behind the layers of worlds, the thin veil between them, the unimagined ages and civilizations before ours. The idea of rooms which "exhale a medley of half-forgotten superstitions", poets "regarded as no less anomalous than double-headed snakes or five legged calves", the "vertigo ineffable before the vastness and diuturnity of the cycles of being" - all seem to tell a bit of CAS himself. Where early imaginative books like those of Verne have tried my patience, I found CAS's work to be an impressive collection and a door opened to a early age in this genre, full of "eldritch terrors and forebodings that still murmur in [t]his brain."

Clark Ashton Smith is by far my favorite writer these days and this is a great collection of his work! I have Out of Space and time on my end table next to H.P. Lovecraft's collection of Bloodcurdling tales of horror and the macabre... A perfect combo for that late nite read ;-)

(check out my collection of macabre jewelry and art on [...])

Ijust glad someone brought this great fantasy writer back for others to enjoy.