The Emperor of Dreams

by Clark Ashton Smith

From the vampire-haunted alleyways of mediaeval Averoigne to the shining spires of dying Zothique, Clark Ashton Smith weaves his literary sorcery, transporting us to forgotten realms of necromancies and nightmares, lost worlds and other dimensions. In the enchanted regions of Hyperborea, Atlantis and Xiccarph, encounter malefic magic and demonic deeds beneath the last rays of a fading sun . . . For the first time ever, this volume encompasses Clark Ashton Smith's entire career as a writer. Smith virtually stopped writing stories in 1937, for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained, but he left behind a unique legacy of fantasy fiction which is as imaginative and decadent today as when it was first published in the pulp magazines more than half a century ago.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Weird Fiction, Sword and Sorcery, Pulp

592 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1978

About the author

Clark Ashton Smith was a poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. It is for these stories, and his literary friendship with H. P. Lovecraft from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937, that he is mainly remembered today. With Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, also a friend and correspondent, Smith remains one of the most famous contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales.

His writings are posted at his official website.

Reviews

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah, Clark Ashton Smith. For those of you unfamiliar with this writer imagine someone with the fevered imagination of Lovecraft and the lyrical stylistic chops of Lord Dunsany and you'll get an idea of what you're in for. For my money Smith is perhaps the best of the "Weird Tales Triumvirate" of Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Ashton Smith. I would probably place Howard as a close second on that list...heresy I know, but for all of the coolness of Lovecraft's ideas he really was just a god-awful writer.
Take a dip into this tome and visit one of Smith's created worlds: medieval Averoigne, antediluvian Poseidonis, far future Zothique, or ancient Hyperborea, all tinged with the dark fantasy Cthulhoid elements borrowed from his friend Lovecraft and embellished with his delicious prose.
I'd heartily recommend the tales "The Double Shadow", "The Beast of Averoigne", "Mother of Toads", and the 'Malygris tales' "The Last Incantation" & "The Death of Malygris" as good starting points, though there are few places to go wrong here.

Also posted at Shelf Inflicted

[Mir]

To Clark Ashton Smith, by Lin Carter

Upon what rare and oriental wine
Your visions fed, I cannot claim to know,
Nor from what volumned lore of spheres sublime
You built your necromantic tales whereto
So many dreamers like myself have come
To revel in the opulence of art
That nourishes like some supernal sun
The famished dreamers whom our age doth hurt.

It is apparent you alone may spell
The hieroglyphs of parchments old as Mu
And vivify old legends to regale
This modern age that mocks its poets so.
Sing on, Atlantean, and cull new song
From ancient rimes neglected overlong.

[Jean-marcel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This stuff was truly a revelation to me when I discovered it about ten years ago. Clark Ashton smith is simply a gorgeous writer, who creates tales with a mastery of language and lyrical sense that makes them flow like exquisite poetry, and indeed, he was also a poet of a startlingly high order. Now, it is true that Smith's fiction was created with the clear aim of making him a bit of cash, and that he often used the same themes and sometimes pretty much re-told the same stories using slightly different words and characters. however, this wasn't an abnormal practice for pulp writers and Smith's words are like music, even at the worst of times. Just take the stories in a little at a time, never reading too quickly and spreading out the tales as much as possible, and if you love decadent, macabre settings and fantastic descriptions of bizarre landscapes, twisted hybrid creatures, lonely souls, and painful love, you will adore this stuff.

Smith's stories are often very doomy and can pack a pretty heavy sting in the tail, even if sometimes you can predict what's coming, as in the heavy and black-as-the-blackest-night "Isle of the Torturers". "The Dweller in the Gulf" is one of the creepiest stories I've ever read in my life and will give you chills all over. Then there's stuff like "The Seven Geases", which takes you on a tour of a fascinating and ever vaster and increasingly bizarre series of underworld landscapes only to suddenly drop you off a precipice at the end with a nasty "hah hah!" On the other hand, unlike some of his contemporaries (Lovecraft!), Smith has got a sense of humour, and isn't afraid to show it at times, or can even surprise you with a rather positive and benign ending from time to time. Reading his tales, one gets the sense that he was a lot more worldly than some of the other writers operating in his field, and that the reason he wrote about decadence so well is that he actually had quite a bit of a love of wine, women and song himself. I feel that there is definitely a touch of the romantic in him, too...and he did translate Baudelaire, after all.

The best stories here are, I think, ones where Smith goes for an atmosphere of the far away and, as the man himself would say, "the ultramundane". A few of the stories are set in contemporary times and are about contemporary people, more or less, and while some of them are enjoyable, a number just seem to be aping Lovecraft and end up being rather forgetable. The science fiction-themed stories are great for me; very pulpy but full of Smith's love of utterly fantastic landscapes and complete alienness. The stories about lost, forgotten civilisations and those set at the end of humankind, where magic and wizardry and necromancy hold sway and the world is a strange, decaying place, are probably going to be Smith's eternal legacy and, indeed, make up a large part of his strongest body of work. But, the adventures set in medieval France are charming and often rather romantic, and a few of the later stories (he didn't write many after the thirties) hint that he could have taken things in some really interesting new directions if he'd decided to keep at fiction. I'm particularly fond of the short, punchy lampooning of religion that is "The Schizoid Creator".

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gigantic collection of stories that spans (I assume) almost the author's entire career. The first stories seemed like flagrant thesaurus abuse, but soon enough the prose became masterfully florid, ancient, and poetic. It's difficult not to compare the author to his contemporaries H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, as all three shared ideas and universes among their work. At first I thought Clark Ashton Smith to be a somewhat generic version of the other two, with no real defining philosophy to his perspective. But where Lovecraft explores man's insignificance next to the cosmos and Howard explores man's animalistic and evolutionarily incidental station, Smith seems to focus on the "ennui" of existence. He does it through wizards, gods, kings, and especially necromancers, who are not content with the mundanity and predictability of earthly life. It's a fascinating lens through which to explore the universe, and by the end of the collection I was sorry to leave it.
It's so interesting to have these three great authors playing off of each other's work and ideas, and in a sense they all seem to complement each other and present separate, yet equally valid, perceptions of human existence.

[Isabel (kittiwake) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truly yours is a melancholy case.' There was concern in Famurza's voice. 'I have been reading some of your late verses. You write only of tombs and yew-trees, of maggots and phantoms and disembodied loves. Such stuff gives me the colic. I need at least a half-gallon of honest vine-juice after each poem.'

Clark Ashton Smith was a short story writer, poet and illustrator. A friend of H.P. Lovecraft, some of his stories belong to the Cthulu Mythos.

Although the quotation above is from one of his stories, it could well apply to Smith himself. His stories contain necromancers, demons, otherworldly gods, liches, ghouls, tombs and doom . . . lots and lots of doom (mostly of the eldritch kind). I read over half of the stories in this book a few months ago, and then stopped because all that doom was getting a bit much. I read the rest a story at a time, and have just finished. They are good stories but 550 pages all at once is too much, and spreading them out was a great improvement. I couldn't believe it when I was almost at the end and came upon a couple of humorous stories!

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Emperor of Dreams" is a large collection of 46 fantasy stories with exotic and atmospheric settings. The author's use of obscure and esoteric language encourage the reader to keep a dictionary handy.
Contents:
ON FANTASY
SONG OF THE NECROMANCER
THE ABOMINATIONS OF YONDO
THE NINTH SKELETON
THE LAST INCANTATION
A RENDEZVOUS IN AVEROIGNE
THE RETURN OF THE SORCERER
THE TALE OF SATAMPRA ZEIROS
THE DOOR TO SATURN
THE GORGON
THE WEIRD OF AVOOSL WUTHOQQUAN
THE NAMELESS OFFSPRING
THE EMPIRE OF THE NECROMANCERS
THE HUNTERS FROM BEYOND
THE ISLE OF THE TORTURERS
THE BEAST OF AVEROIGNE
GENIUS LOCI
UBBO-SATHLA
THE KISS OF ZORAIDA
THE SEED FROM THE SEPULCHER
THE WEAVER IN THE VAULT
THE GHOUL
THE CHARNEL GOD
THE DEATH OF MALYGRIS
THE TOMB-SPAWN
THE SEVEN GEASES
XEETHRA
THE DARK EIDOLON
THE FLOWER-WOMEN
THE TREADER OF THE DUST
THE BLACK ABBOTT OF PUTHUUM
NECROMANCY IN NAAT
THE DEATH OF ILALOTHA
THE GARDEN OF ADOMPHA
MOTHER OF TOADS
THE DOUBLE SHADOW
THE COMING OF THE WHITE WORM
THE ROOT OF AMPOI
MORTHYLLA
AN OFFERING TO THE MOON
THE THEFT OF THE THIRTY-NINE GIRDLES
SYMPOSIUM OF THE GORGON
TOLD IN THE DESERT
PRINCE ALCOUZ AND THE MAGICIAN
A GOOD EMBALMER
THE MORTUARY

[Ευθυμία Δεσποτάκη]

Did not finish, διάβασα περίπου 50 σελίδες.

Δεδομένου του ότι έχω την σειρά που περιέχει όλα τα fantasy διηγήματα του CAS (έχω ξεκινήσει να απολαμβάνω το πρώτο βιβλίοThe End of the Story), θα ήταν ανοησία να διαβάσω και αυτήν την ανθολογία, που δεν είναι πλήρης. Ωστόσο περιέχει τρία-τέσσερα κομμάτια που δεν περιέχει η άλλη σειρά: μια εισαγωγή του συγγραφέα (κι οι εισαγωγές του CAS είναι σκέτα λουκούμια), ένα ποίημα, μια ιστορία από τα νεανικά του χρόνια (~16 ετών) που έγραφε αραμπέσκ, και την πολύ-πολύ-πολύ αναλυτική βιογραφία του.

Από όλο αυτό κρατάω τη φρίκη που ένιωσα όταν διάβασα με ποιον τρόπο έχασε το πατρικό του σπίτι.

[Ani Vardanyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kinda sad to spoil the current 666 review count but had to say, I'm a fan. For all the admirers of the weird and fantasy, this is the best you could ask for. This voluminous collection contains some stories on which he was clearly just practicing his hand, but even those were fun.

Oh, wait 666 was the rating count! And we are at it now. Yay! :D

[Florin Pitea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars. It was amazing. Weird, poetic and enchanting. Highly recommended.

[Icarium · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book as made me rethink about my dislike for fantasy short stories. By far my favorite standalone short story collection.

[Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent instalment in the Gollancz 'Fantasy Masterworks' line, showcasing the short fiction and (occasional) poetry of one of the top three WEIRD TALES authors of all time alongside Lovecraft and Howard. Smith was, for me, a rare and true genius when it comes to writing; his vocabulary is astonishing and even his darkest and most macabre tales are told through an evocative tapestry of rich language that makes you feel and enjoy every sentence. Never has prose seemed more beautiful, never has a writer felt more gifted or in touch with his inner creative self.

THE EMPEROR OF DREAMS isn't a complete anthology of Smith's fiction, but with no less than forty-five separate pieces of writing collected here, it's a great place to begin. There are a handful of poems and a few stories set in the then-present, mostly about funeral homes, but the real skill and interest comes in his fantastic fiction and particularly the stories which veer towards the horrific and magical rather than his Arabesques or science fiction tales. The Hyberborean stories rival Howard at his best while those which take place in Averoigne are unlike any other I've read, infused with a real sense of European history and folklore.

It's quite impossible to talk about all the works collected here, but there are no real 'bad' ones at all, plenty of 'good' ones, and a huge number of masterpieces. The following stories are thoroughly recommended and each as perfect as a piece of short fiction gets, for me: Return of the Sorcerer, The Tale of Satampra Zeiros, The Door to Saturn, The Gorgon, The Nameless Offspring, The Isle of Torturers, The Beast of Averoigne, The Seed from the Sepulchre, The Weaver in the Vault, The Charnel God, The Death of Malygris, The Seven Geases, The Treader of the Dust, The Black Abbot of Puthuum, The Double Shadow and The Coming of the White Worm.

Inevitably as a massive Lovecraft fan I particularly enjoy Smith's contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos, but he never needed it as a hook by which to sell his work, and as he himself argued he contributed as much to the genre as he took from it. My personal favourites are the grisly RETURN OF THE SORCERER, the expert plant horror THE SEED FROM THE SEPULCHRE and the cosmically charged COMING OF THE WHITE WORM. He's an author I can't recommend highly enough, and I'd also like to praise Stephen Jones for his excellent editing and in particular fine little biography included in this pages.

[Troy Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of material from one of the Weird Tales Triumvirate (along with Howard and Lovecraft). Much of contemporary writing looks upon adjectives with abject horror. After Hemmingway and Pound won the style war, adjectives became pariah (much to the chagrin of those of us who love Faulkner). Language! Not just the stories, but the language of Clark's stories thrills. Imagine trying to explain the horrors of the abyss without references to movies, comics, pop-culture and pulp fiction (or the lingering mental clipart left in our imagination by media). Contemporary writers can easily tap into our collective memories to pull out those images that require little teasing. Not so easy a hundred years ago! I think of Clark when hearing Tolkien's sage counsel "We should look at green again."

[Jorge Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stuff. . .as long as you like stories about necromancers, gods from strange planets and dimensions, ancient pre-human civilisations, sorcery etc. which is all good as far as I am concerned!
My favourite ones from this collection being: The Door to Saturn, The Seed from the Sepulchre, The Double Shadow, The Coming of the White Worm and Symposium of the Gorgon.
I'm sure if went through it again I would have other favourites though.
I am going to say that though I am a huge Lovecraft fan. . .I think I prefer Clark Ashton Smith's writing style.
An under-rated writer if ever there was one.

[Hamish · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned about ninety pages in. While I enjoyed the technical ability of Smith’s writing, I found the stories boring and pointless; yawn, yawn, yawn. Maybe it’s the subject matter? I didn’t like Lovecraft, either, when I read him, and he was a contemporary of Smith. Mummies and cadavers, and things that go bump in the night; they all seemed a little bit dumb, to be honest.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Often depressing. Not always "horror" because of the creepiness, but because of the pessimistic world view.

[Grond · Rating 3 out of 5]

So here’s the thing. Clarke Ashton Smith’s collection of short stories ‘The Emperor of Dreams’ serves to highlight just how ‘next level’ the weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft was. It’s not that Smith isn’t a talented storyteller in his own right it is just that the peculiar modalities of Horror/Weird fiction from the era don’t translate very well into the present day. There is a quasi-ineffable ‘something’ about Lovecraft that plenty of readers up to the present day identify with. There is a grandness to his vision that correctly presumed the way we can perceive ourselves in the universe revealed by the developments of science that set us up to feel the burn, for lack of a better metaphor.

Back to Smith. His baroque tales of ancient Hyperborea or fantastical horror in his era are decked out in all the garish purple prose you might have come to expect from the Lovecraft circle but to a palate more used to the stripped down prose of the latter half of the twentieth century it is too rich. What was, perhaps, meant to help evoke a certain feeling of dreamlike phantasm ends up coming of a lot more like the writer wiggling his fingers and say ‘Oooh! Scary!’.

That being said a few of the stories entirely hit the mark managing a good bit of skin crawling discomfort as Smith paints a picture that would not seem amiss in a Cronenberg-like bit of ‘body horror’. Others just manage the right balance of epic fantasy and just this side of nasty Gothic horror.

A worthwhile read if only to help further place Lovecraft in the context of his contemporaries like Bloch and Robert E. Howard and Smith himself.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't remember when I started reading Clark Ashton Smith, but I do keep track of the stories I've read, so I know that as of yesterday (12-27-19) I have read all the stories in this book. I didn't love all of them (or may any of them), but there were plenty of interesting, horrific, cool stories there. There are 45 entries in this book and the back says it is "the first ever to encompass CAS's entire career as a writer", which may or may not mean it includes everything he ever published.

I have to say I enjoyed the "purple prose" more when I was younger, though his vocabulary is more humbling now that I've got almost 50 years under my belt. The number of words per page that I haven't heard before or don't recognize is sometimes stunning (to a life long reader).

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

How is it I am just learning about Clark Ashton Smith? How have I missed him my whole life!

As an avid reader of Lovecraft, Smith is an excellent extension of this style of writing. While no one can write gothic-space-horror like Lovecraft, Smith has his own tone and style that is equally haunting.

A good friend of both Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, Smith dips in to their prospective worlds in his short stories, enriching both!

There are so many good stories in this collection; some of my favorites were "Mother of Toads", "A Good Embalmer", and "The Hunters From Beyond."

Do yourself a favor and pick up a short story collection before next Halloween!

[Julian]

A terrific collection by an all-time favorite writer. Having read and having been thinking of Vance a lot lately, I could really see Smith's influence on Vance in many of the stories, vocabulary, and especially dialog. But also the wry sense of humor in stories like The Door to Saturn. This is a solid collection of stories for the CAS enthusiast, though apparently not complete. My copy from early 200s has held up well. If you don't know Clark Ashton Smith, read him. If you're just wondering about this edition, it's a solid paperback collection to put on your bookshelf, but nothing you're going to brag about production-wise.

[wasuretta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read just "The Treader of the Dust".

[Burak Emiralp · Rating 5 out of 5]

İthaki, bu kitabı çıkardığında Bütün Öyküleri 1 olarak belirtmişti ve ben havalara uçmuştum. En sevdiğim yazarlardan birisi olan Clark Ashton Smith'in tüm eserlerini kendi dilimde okuyacaktım.

Ama zaman geçti ve ne yazık ki İthaki devamını getirmedi. Umarım önümüzdeki günlerde başka öyküleri de çevrilir.

Kozmik korku sevenler kitapta yer alan bir çok öyküye bayılacaklardır. Hyperborea, Averoigne temalı hikayelerin de olması kitabın artıları arasında...

[Beyza · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Biraz aklımı kaçırmış olmalıydım, ama içimde korku, grotesk ve düşsellik alanında gerçek bir şeyler yaratmak için hep güçlü bir arzu olmuştu." sf 131

"Adlandıramadığımız şeyler bize hep korku vermiştir ve vermeyi de sürdürecektir. Kaldı ki yıldızlardaki şeytanlar dünyadakinden daha kötü sayılmaz." sf 185

[bluetyson]

isbn,original

[jeremiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this collection. Weird fantasy horror, with each story taking a bit of each.

[Joseph Panno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great grotesque fun.