Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive "preferred text" for Smith's entire body of work. This first volume of the series, brings together 25 of his fantasy stories, written between 1925 and 1930, including such classics as "The Abominations of Yondo," "The Monster of the Prophecy," "The Last Incantation" and the title story.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
One of the most popular writers to publish in Weird Tales, Smith wrote unique tales of fantasy, horror and science fiction that call to mind the Symbolist and Decadent movements more than the pulp era. This volume, the first of five scheduled to bring all his short fiction back into print, captures Smith at the point where he back-burnered his career as a poet to concentrate on crafting stories in which the erotic mingles with death and decay and the physically grotesque is rendered in sensually lush imagery. Most of the 25 works collected have been unavailable for decades, and editors Connors and Hilger have done yeoman service restoring them for readers who may find their bold expressiveness and occasionally taboo themes surprisingly modern. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The colorfully exotic tales of Clark Ashton Smith belong to an era of speculative fiction when embellished, purple prose was de rigueur and Weird Tales was a fan-favorite magazine. Despite its ironic title, this inaugural volume in a plan to collect Smith's complete oeuvre begins with the first tale he published (in 1926), "The Abomination of Yondo," and proceeds in roughly chronological order. Smith's tales brim with such familiar gothic tropes as haunted woods, medieval castles, and nightmarish fates for their hapless protagonists. "The Ninth Skeleton," for instance, follows the grisly trail of a young romantic who stumbles on an ancient cemetery before meeting his beloved. Smith's imaginative palette also included primitive science fiction, such as "A Voyage to Sfanomoe," involving a space flight by two brothers fleeing a sinking Atlantis. While Smith's scenarios are at times laughably outdated, his lush, poetic style and vivid characters keep his fiction consistantly entertaining. Essential reading for horror fans and a welcome revival of an often overlooked gothic master. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Indispensable: Smith's fantasies restored to their full splendor,
By
This review is from: The End of the Story (The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)
As established here and reinforced by the second volume, all five books in this series are essential to anyone interested in Smith's work and literate fantasy as a whole. Connors and Hilger have followed earlier textual studies by Donald Sidney-Fryer, Steve Behrends, and others with extensive studies of their own to restore as much of the glory to Smith's texts as is currently possible - and what glory! Smith is one of the few fantasists capable not only of creating multiple fantasy cultures, but with investing each of those worlds with its own distinct atmosphere, tone, and use of language. Many earlier versions of these texts toned down the richness, eroticism, and grotesquerie of these stories in order to appeal to what Smith's editors deemed was acceptable to the lowest-common-denominator among its readership. Scores of deletions, simplifications, bowdlerizations, and other alterations which have served to remove the sheen from these works have here been corrected through painstaking attention to all available manuscripts and correpondence. Here, at long last, is Smith in all his mordant, coruscating splendor. If one considers all of this, along with intelligent introductory material; alternate endings; unpedantic notes to each story detailing its composition, publication history, and its place within the larger context of Smith's work; as well as Jason Van Hollander's inspired integration of Smith and his sculptures into the macabre and affectionate cover art; Night Shade and these editors have presented to all lovers of fantasy an edition of the master's prose fiction which will serve as the benchmark for many years to come.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Smith at last,
This review is from: The End of the Story (The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)
What happened to Lovecraft with S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, or to Robert E. Howard with Patrice Louinet, has just happened to Clark Ashton Smith. Two long devoted scholars, Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, have spent years editing this definitive edition of the collected tales and short stories (some of them being in fact extended prose poems of an incredibly bewitching quality as the CAS scholar Donald Sidney-Fryer has often pointed out) of Clark Ashton Smith. This is what any serious CAS fan has been waiting for.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
First Volume of the Ultimate Smith Collection,
By
This review is from: The End of the Story (The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Vol. 1) (Hardcover)
One cannot imagine a better representation of the fantastic fiction of the late Clark Ashton Smith than that to be found in this and the forthcoming volumes in this collection. Connors and Hilger have tirelessly restored Smith's stories to their original form after comparing the texts of holographic manuscripts, published versions, and even bits and pieces from Smith's personal correspondence. The stories are being published herein in chronological order with notes for each tale and more (including an alternate ending for one tale that was deemed too "racy" at the time it was written).
The sturdy and handsome library binding, excellent typesetting, and beautiful dustcover top off this first of what cannot help but be the definitive Smith collection. Fans of Smith's fantasmagorical tales, this collection tops all others.
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