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Out Of Space And Time
An artist, poet, and prolific contributor to Weird Tales, Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1967) is an influential figure in the history of pulp fiction. A close correspondent and collaborator with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, Smith was widely celebrated as a master by his contemporaries. Back in print for the first time since 1971, Out of Space and Time showcases the many facets of Smith's unique prose that make him one of the greatest American writers of macabre and fantastic tales. Here are tales of Averoigne, tales belonging to the Cthulhu, stories of sheer horror, and one or two of sardonic comedy. Jeff VanderMeer provides an introduction for this Bison Books edition.
370 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1942
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159 people want to read
About the author
Clark Ashton Smith
719 books997 followersClark 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.
His writings are posted at his official website.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 1, 2014
Originally published in paperback edition as Out of Space and Time 1 & 2 in 1974 , these have now been reissued in a single volume by Bison Books who are doing a sterling job of reissuing vintage genre literature.
Out of Space and Time
The End of the Story (Weird Tales – May 1930)
A Rendezvous in Averoigne (Weird Tales – Apr 1931)
A Night in Malneant (Auburn Journal - 1931)
The City of The Singing Flame (Wonder Stories – July 1931)
The Uncharted Isle (Weird Tales – Nov 1930)
Judgments and Dooms
The Second Interment (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror – Jan 1933)
The Double Shadow (The Auburn Journal - 1932)
The Chain of Aforgomon (Weird Tales – Dec 1935)
The Dark Eidolon (Weird Tales – Jan 1935)
The Last Hieroglyph (Weird Tales – Apr 1935)
Sadastor (Weird Tales - Jul 1930)
The Death of Ilalotha (Weird Tales - 1937)
The Return of the Sorcerer (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror – Sep 1931)
Hyperborean Grotesques
The Testament of Athammaus (Weird Tales – Oct 1932)
The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan (Weird Tales – Jun 1932)
Ubbo-Sathla (Weird Tales – Jul 1933)
Interplanetaries
The Monster of the Prophecy (Weird Tales – Jan 1932)
The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis (Weird Tales - May 1932)
From the Crypts of Memory (Bohemia V2 #3 - 1917)
The Shadows (Auburn Journal - 1922)
The End of the Story
A young man visits a Monastery in Averoigne and falls under the spell of ancient book, which leads him to be ensnared by a Lamia
A Rendezvous in Averoigne
A young man who arranges a picnic finds himself, his fiancée and servants trapped in the thrall of vampires who subject them to a fearsome dinner and overnight stay at a phantom chateau.
A Night in Malneant
On a journey a man finds himself in an otherworldly village where everyone seems eternally preoccupied in the funeral arrangements for one Mariel.
The City of The Singing Flame
One of Smith’s interdimensional tales in which the narrator, happening to walk between two unusual boulders, finds himself in a fantastic and colourful world where an ancient city is the site of a flame which appears to consume all those it entices with its siren song.
The Uncharted Isle
Another interdimensional tale in which a shipwrecked sea-traveller finds himself on an island, which is not of our Earth, populated by grotesque humanoids and their gross deity.
The Second Interment
A rather clichéd tale of premature burial
The Double Shadow
Two sorcerors find an ancient tablet washed up by the sea and, deciphering its ancient text, summon one of the elder gods of a long dead race, much to their regret. Shadows begin to follow them, one by one, and they become transformed.
The Chain of Aforgomon
A writer, wishing to try the efficacy of a rare Eastern drug which purports to bring back the memories of past lives, discovers that he committed an ancient crime against the God of Time and is now suffering the final penalty for his actions.
The Dark Eidolon
A powerful wizard returns for vengeance against the gross and cruel king who ran him over with his horse when he was a child.
The Last Hieroglyph
When a none-too-successful astrologer finally finds his work beginning to pay off, his own horoscope shows a strange journey before him, and he is guided to his ultimate destiny by three cipher avatars.
Sadastor
A demon tells a tale to a lamia of how he visited the dying world of Sadastor and found a siren, weeping in a pool which was diminishing as the waters of the world dried up.
The Death of Ilalotha
A tale of revenge from beyond the grave when Ilalotha, lady in waiting to a jealous queen, dies. The Queen thinks that Ilalotha’s man will now be hers, but it looks like Ilalotha can pull men even when she’s dead.
The Return of the Sorcerer
A sorcerer, originally chopped into many pieces which were then separated, begins to reassemble himself to seek revenge.
The Testament of Athammaus
Athammaus, executioner of Hyperborea, tells the tale of the creature who is beheaded and continually regenerates, each time into a more warped and protean being.
The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan
A morality tale is which Avoosl, a greedy merchant, is given a prophecy. He is then sold two emeralds which escape him and lead him far into the depths of a mountain where he is trapped by an eldritch creature and eaten.
Ubbo-Sathla
A man finds an off stone in an antique shop and is transported back to the time of Ubbo-Sathla, the primordial being.
The Monster of the Prophecy
A human is transported to a far world to become the monster who was prophesied to appear and signal an end to the rule of a tyrant.
The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis
Archaeologists on Mars investigate tombs that the natives will not enter and awaken strange bat-like life-forms that kill and then reanimate their victims.
From the Crypts of Memory
A short tone poem
The Shadows
A short tone poem
May 7, 2013
(NB: I read both of the Bison Frontiers of Imagination / U. of Nebraska Press editions of Lost Worlds and Out of Space and Time at the same time, so this review will cover both.)
While most or all of the Clark Ashton Smith opus is now available free online, this was my first reading of stories from this author considered one of the "big three" writers for the pulp magazine Weird Tales, and while not all of the writing is great, some of it is quite beautiful and haunting.
Smith is at his best when working in a "decadent" vein: sleepwalking heroes drawn against their will to dire fates, necromancers reanimating foul corpses, worlds on the brink of decay and destruction, weary dreams of past lives and the end of times. Smith's links to Dunsany and Theosophy are obvious, but he also channels the prose poems of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. While reading, one imagines the paintings of Odilon Redon or Arnold Böcklin... islands of the dead, haunting shapes in the shadows.
Of the various settings (Averoigne, Poseidonis, Zothique, etc.) that he invented, Smith's strongest stories in these two collections (to me) were those from Zothique ("The Dark Eidolon", "The Empire of the Necromancers", "Necromancy in Naat") and Atlantis ("The Last Incantation", "A Death of Malygris", "The Double Shadow"), and his two prose poems "From the Crypts of Memory" and "The Shadows".
There are a few duds in the anthology, and Clark Ashton Smith's prose and vocabulary can be purple and too recondite; he also doesn't excel at either action/adventure (unlike Robert E. Howard) or at providing access to his horrors via contemporary characters (as in Lovecraft), but as a kind of self-taught American Rimbaud writing dreamscapes of decaying lands haunted by necromancers and dire portents, he leaves an enduring mark.
While most or all of the Clark Ashton Smith opus is now available free online, this was my first reading of stories from this author considered one of the "big three" writers for the pulp magazine Weird Tales, and while not all of the writing is great, some of it is quite beautiful and haunting.
Smith is at his best when working in a "decadent" vein: sleepwalking heroes drawn against their will to dire fates, necromancers reanimating foul corpses, worlds on the brink of decay and destruction, weary dreams of past lives and the end of times. Smith's links to Dunsany and Theosophy are obvious, but he also channels the prose poems of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. While reading, one imagines the paintings of Odilon Redon or Arnold Böcklin... islands of the dead, haunting shapes in the shadows.
Of the various settings (Averoigne, Poseidonis, Zothique, etc.) that he invented, Smith's strongest stories in these two collections (to me) were those from Zothique ("The Dark Eidolon", "The Empire of the Necromancers", "Necromancy in Naat") and Atlantis ("The Last Incantation", "A Death of Malygris", "The Double Shadow"), and his two prose poems "From the Crypts of Memory" and "The Shadows".
There are a few duds in the anthology, and Clark Ashton Smith's prose and vocabulary can be purple and too recondite; he also doesn't excel at either action/adventure (unlike Robert E. Howard) or at providing access to his horrors via contemporary characters (as in Lovecraft), but as a kind of self-taught American Rimbaud writing dreamscapes of decaying lands haunted by necromancers and dire portents, he leaves an enduring mark.
November 29, 2012
So after finishing the Klarkashton cycle I decided I was still in the mood for scary stories so decided to read this volume next. I have to say I think I definitely preferred it. The first few stories were totally brilliant. They were the set in a mythical middle ages where creatures of myth and legend, lamias and vampires roamed the woods, most likely wanting to devour you, possibly just wanting to have sex with you. It was a really good blend of mystery, horror and legends. I have to say I think I definitely prefer Smith's middle ages stories over all his others. The City of the Singing Flame was next which was a strange extradimensional tale with bombs and a not quite realised threat. It was interesting and different but a little odd. The second entombment was quite creepy but I did enjoy the chain of aforforgomon - a nice story of the doom of a guy throughout reincarnations (or possibly just a bad drug trip). The last two stories just kinda blended together with horrors and demons and general unpleasantness. I think while I like spooky stories I may not be cut out to read "horror" as I find it begins to bore me after awhile. So much sameness and if you don't care about the characters (as there is no characterisation) no ammount of demons and death will make it more interesting. Still overall I thought this was a good collection but will be taking a break from Smith for awhile. Though I would like to read more of his stories at some point. Definitely no where near as good as Dunsany or Lovecraft. But when he's on form he's very enjoyable
November 25, 2023
Clark Ashton Smith's 1942 Out of Space and Time collects 20 of the author's stories of fantasy, horror, and occasionally science fiction that appeared in various pulp magazines between 1922 and 1937. The collection was published in 1942 by Arkham House--an edition that is far from inexpensive nowadays--and fortunately was reprinted by the British publisher Neville Spearman in 1971, complete with the original 1941 introduction by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei that concludes with Smith, who was born in 1893 and died in 1961, still being 48 years old. For those who enjoy the baroque Lovecraftian prose of the time, and who enjoy fantasy and horror, the book is an absolute gem.
Almost all of these stories are somewhere between good and very good. A few are exquisite. My own favorites are the 1930 "The End of the Story," the 1931 "A Rendezvous in Averoigne," the 1939 "The Double Shadow," the 1931 "The Return of the Sorcerer," and the 1932 "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis."
"The End of the Story" and "A Rendezvous in Averoigne" both are set in a pleasantly creepy early France. "The End of the Story," which happens to be the first tale in the book, takes place in 1789, and the other, the second in the book, appears to have a more medieval setting. There are wickedly enchanted woods, and strange spirits, and underground terrors, and evil told in an ancient book that is both forbidding and compelling, giving "a mad, unaccountable thrill" (1971 Neville Spearman hardcover, page 11). The prose is syrupy, with adjective piled upon adjective, and all 'em foreboding and doom-filled.
"The Double Shadow" is a message-in-a-bottle story of the acolyte of a great and haughty sorcerer who "ha[s] delved more deeply than all others...in an interdicted lore" and "ha[s] called up the dwellers in sealed crypts, in fearful abysses beyond space" (page 129). The pair upon their secret beach find tossed up a strange "tablet of some nameless metal like never-rusting iron, but heavier," which bears "many rows of small crooked ciphers" of a language unknown to either man (page 131-32). After much research, the master eventually "summon[s] up the dim, tenuous ghost of a sorcerer from prehistoric years," who is able to explain that the writing is that "of the serpent-men, whose primal continent had sunk eons before the lifting of Hyperborea from the ooze. But the ghost [can] tell [them] naught of their significance; for, even in his time, the serpent-people had become a dubious legend; and their deep, antehuman lore and sorcery were things irretrievable by man" (page 132-33).
Finally, though, the code is solved--it shows directions to summon up some creature unnamed...without, the acolyte notices nervously, any "corresponding rite of exorcism nor spell of dismissal (page 134). And when the pair resurrect "the gaunt umber mummy of an Atlantean warrior" to assist them in a ceremony that includes burning candles of "corpse tallow" (page 135), why, whatever could go wrong?
"The Return of the Sorcerer" is one of few set around the 1930s time of writing. To my taste, though, it may be perhaps even more pleasantly shocking in its horror than any of the others. A fellow running out of funds, who just happens to be expert in Arabic, responds to the advertisement of a weird old guy in a weird old house who needs a secretary proficient in Arabic. The study of this employer is, the first-person narrator tells us, "very much as [he] should have imagined the den of some old sorcerer to be. There [are] tables strewn with archaic instruments of doubtful use, with astrological charts, with skulls and alembics and crystals, with censers such as used in the Catholic Church, and volumes bound in worm-eaten leather with verdigris-mottled clasps" (pages 238-39).
Yes, 'tis a tad odd, but although this "melange of medievalism and Satanism" ordinarily would amuse the narrator, here he finds it "difficult...to repress an actual shudder" (page 239). Oh, and the strange thumpings and scrapings and draggings the live-in secretary keeps hearing just outside the door, which even his employer listens to with "fearful intentness" and "terror"? Just rats, the man assures him (pages 241-42). And the ancient passage the narrator "decipher[s]" from a tome whose "yellowing pages" upon opening give off the smell of having "lain among corpses in some forgotten graveyard," the lines explaining that a sufficiently powerful sorcerer in death can reanimate even his own dismembered body-- Why, that doesn't have anything to do with anything at all, does it?
"The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" is one of the book's few pieces of straight-up science fiction rather than fantasy. It is, however, another lovely piece of foreboding horror, opening with the narrative frame of a first-person tale "relat[ing], as a warning to others..., the singular and frightful happenings...among the ruins of Yoh-Vombis" (page 347). The Martian natives themselves are loathe to guide the Terran scientists to the ancient city whose builders had been "destroyed by some unknown agency--something too horrible and outre to be mentioned even in a myth" (pages 347-49), and once at the destination, "nothing [will] induce them to enter Yoh-Vombis," for "apparently there [is] some mysterious taboo in connection with the place (page 351). As they camped during the frigid night prior to the next day's excursion, the narrator from his "thick, double-lined bag" almost thought he saw a creeping shadow "unnatural and perhaps ominous," something "like a roughly circular piece of cloth or leather, dark and crumpled, and twelve or fourteen inches in diameter that ran along the ground with the doubling movement of an inch-worm, causing it to fold and unfold in a startling manner as it went" (page 350). Gee, the fancies of an unsettled sleep sure are funny, aren't they?
In any event, after daylight down, down the explorers go into subterranean passages whose "singularly heavy" atmosphere is "filled with unknown effluvia" and whose dust "diffus[es] a faintness of bygone corruption, like the dust of powdered mummies" (page 353). But this "veritable warren of catacombs" (page 354) holds things stranger than "highly formalized drawings" of the ancients (page 353) or "enormous pot-bellied urns" of "ashes and charred fragments of bone" from "the cremated remains of whole families" (page 354). There is, after all, the "dark and corrugated patch of circular form, like a withered fungus" they see "clinging" to a high ceiling, about which they puzzle "with many futile conjectures," and which "[o]ddly enough," the narrator does not happen yet to connect with "the crumpled, shadowy object [he] had seen or dreamt of the night before" (pages 354-55)...
Clark Ashton Smith's Out of Space and Time is an exquisite collection of cloying horror and dread, of deep cycles of oppressive time, of indeterminacy and uncertainty leading to dooms from the ancient to the future, on Earth and other planets and even in other dimensions. For the patient--as opposed to those who want to dash through a quick beach read--the unhurried journeys therein make a wonderful 5-star read.
Almost all of these stories are somewhere between good and very good. A few are exquisite. My own favorites are the 1930 "The End of the Story," the 1931 "A Rendezvous in Averoigne," the 1939 "The Double Shadow," the 1931 "The Return of the Sorcerer," and the 1932 "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis."
"The End of the Story" and "A Rendezvous in Averoigne" both are set in a pleasantly creepy early France. "The End of the Story," which happens to be the first tale in the book, takes place in 1789, and the other, the second in the book, appears to have a more medieval setting. There are wickedly enchanted woods, and strange spirits, and underground terrors, and evil told in an ancient book that is both forbidding and compelling, giving "a mad, unaccountable thrill" (1971 Neville Spearman hardcover, page 11). The prose is syrupy, with adjective piled upon adjective, and all 'em foreboding and doom-filled.
"The Double Shadow" is a message-in-a-bottle story of the acolyte of a great and haughty sorcerer who "ha[s] delved more deeply than all others...in an interdicted lore" and "ha[s] called up the dwellers in sealed crypts, in fearful abysses beyond space" (page 129). The pair upon their secret beach find tossed up a strange "tablet of some nameless metal like never-rusting iron, but heavier," which bears "many rows of small crooked ciphers" of a language unknown to either man (page 131-32). After much research, the master eventually "summon[s] up the dim, tenuous ghost of a sorcerer from prehistoric years," who is able to explain that the writing is that "of the serpent-men, whose primal continent had sunk eons before the lifting of Hyperborea from the ooze. But the ghost [can] tell [them] naught of their significance; for, even in his time, the serpent-people had become a dubious legend; and their deep, antehuman lore and sorcery were things irretrievable by man" (page 132-33).
Finally, though, the code is solved--it shows directions to summon up some creature unnamed...without, the acolyte notices nervously, any "corresponding rite of exorcism nor spell of dismissal (page 134). And when the pair resurrect "the gaunt umber mummy of an Atlantean warrior" to assist them in a ceremony that includes burning candles of "corpse tallow" (page 135), why, whatever could go wrong?
"The Return of the Sorcerer" is one of few set around the 1930s time of writing. To my taste, though, it may be perhaps even more pleasantly shocking in its horror than any of the others. A fellow running out of funds, who just happens to be expert in Arabic, responds to the advertisement of a weird old guy in a weird old house who needs a secretary proficient in Arabic. The study of this employer is, the first-person narrator tells us, "very much as [he] should have imagined the den of some old sorcerer to be. There [are] tables strewn with archaic instruments of doubtful use, with astrological charts, with skulls and alembics and crystals, with censers such as used in the Catholic Church, and volumes bound in worm-eaten leather with verdigris-mottled clasps" (pages 238-39).
Yes, 'tis a tad odd, but although this "melange of medievalism and Satanism" ordinarily would amuse the narrator, here he finds it "difficult...to repress an actual shudder" (page 239). Oh, and the strange thumpings and scrapings and draggings the live-in secretary keeps hearing just outside the door, which even his employer listens to with "fearful intentness" and "terror"? Just rats, the man assures him (pages 241-42). And the ancient passage the narrator "decipher[s]" from a tome whose "yellowing pages" upon opening give off the smell of having "lain among corpses in some forgotten graveyard," the lines explaining that a sufficiently powerful sorcerer in death can reanimate even his own dismembered body-- Why, that doesn't have anything to do with anything at all, does it?
"The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" is one of the book's few pieces of straight-up science fiction rather than fantasy. It is, however, another lovely piece of foreboding horror, opening with the narrative frame of a first-person tale "relat[ing], as a warning to others..., the singular and frightful happenings...among the ruins of Yoh-Vombis" (page 347). The Martian natives themselves are loathe to guide the Terran scientists to the ancient city whose builders had been "destroyed by some unknown agency--something too horrible and outre to be mentioned even in a myth" (pages 347-49), and once at the destination, "nothing [will] induce them to enter Yoh-Vombis," for "apparently there [is] some mysterious taboo in connection with the place (page 351). As they camped during the frigid night prior to the next day's excursion, the narrator from his "thick, double-lined bag" almost thought he saw a creeping shadow "unnatural and perhaps ominous," something "like a roughly circular piece of cloth or leather, dark and crumpled, and twelve or fourteen inches in diameter that ran along the ground with the doubling movement of an inch-worm, causing it to fold and unfold in a startling manner as it went" (page 350). Gee, the fancies of an unsettled sleep sure are funny, aren't they?
In any event, after daylight down, down the explorers go into subterranean passages whose "singularly heavy" atmosphere is "filled with unknown effluvia" and whose dust "diffus[es] a faintness of bygone corruption, like the dust of powdered mummies" (page 353). But this "veritable warren of catacombs" (page 354) holds things stranger than "highly formalized drawings" of the ancients (page 353) or "enormous pot-bellied urns" of "ashes and charred fragments of bone" from "the cremated remains of whole families" (page 354). There is, after all, the "dark and corrugated patch of circular form, like a withered fungus" they see "clinging" to a high ceiling, about which they puzzle "with many futile conjectures," and which "[o]ddly enough," the narrator does not happen yet to connect with "the crumpled, shadowy object [he] had seen or dreamt of the night before" (pages 354-55)...
Clark Ashton Smith's Out of Space and Time is an exquisite collection of cloying horror and dread, of deep cycles of oppressive time, of indeterminacy and uncertainty leading to dooms from the ancient to the future, on Earth and other planets and even in other dimensions. For the patient--as opposed to those who want to dash through a quick beach read--the unhurried journeys therein make a wonderful 5-star read.
January 7, 2023
If I see the word "adamantine" written one more damn time....
Apparently all the complaints people have about Lovecraft, I have about Clark Ashton Smith. It's true that Lovecraft suffers from overly purple prose and a repetitive vocabulary at times--but it's nothing compared to the overwritten, pretentious, purplish ramblings of Smith. And at least Lovecraft knew how to ooze dread and display a startling imagination in even the shortest of stories.
It's all the more disappointing since two stories in this collection, "The Return of the Sorcerer" and "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis", are excellent. Unfortunately, all the others are not.
Apparently all the complaints people have about Lovecraft, I have about Clark Ashton Smith. It's true that Lovecraft suffers from overly purple prose and a repetitive vocabulary at times--but it's nothing compared to the overwritten, pretentious, purplish ramblings of Smith. And at least Lovecraft knew how to ooze dread and display a startling imagination in even the shortest of stories.
It's all the more disappointing since two stories in this collection, "The Return of the Sorcerer" and "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis", are excellent. Unfortunately, all the others are not.
July 12, 2019
I very much enjoy reading Clark Ashton Smith. It feels like he's painting a picture with words more than telling an actual story. Possibly not everyone's cup of tea I'm sure.
December 13, 2025
★★★★★ — 4.95/5;
CaS's best among some great work; perhaps besides Blake, can't think of a better representee for h0rr0r prose.
“I am as one who, gazing long upon darkness, beholds therein a distant light.”—Clark Ashton Smith
To read Out of Space and Time is to step not merely into another world but into an entire mode of imagination, where language becomes spellcraft and pulp fiction elevates itself into poetry. Clark Ashton Smith—oft overshadowed by his better-marketed contemporaries H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard—deserves here the full measure of admiration, for he is the most literary of the triumvirate that helped define Weird Tales and, through it, modern horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction.
Smith’s stories are not built merely to entertain, though they do. They do not simply frighten, though often they do that too, with icy finality. They are instead invocations—lush, lyrical, and luxuriantly decadent. Each sentence could be carved on a stone tablet or whispered in a haunted chapel. To quote from “The City of the Singing Flame”:
“There are sounds which cannot be described in the language of earth, sounds that are too strange, too remote, too exquisite, for human ears.”
Clark Ashton Smith was not just a writer of weird fiction; he was a poet and painter who poured his visions into words, using language not as a vehicle for plot but as the very atmosphere of his stories. Out of Space and Time collects some of his finest visions—from the eldritch landscapes of Hyperborea and Zothique to the haunted, medieval mists of Averoigne, each tale sings with that gothic incantation that makes Smith feel not only ancient but eternal.
Where Lovecraft was cosmic in despair and Howard heroic in violence, Smith is decadent—a connoisseur of language, decay, beauty, and ruin. And in this I find a kind of spiritual satisfaction no other pulp author has given me. He is what would happen if Baudelaire wrote fantasy, if Poe were more florid, more daring, and less earthbound.
This volume, mercifully brought back into print by Bison Books with a fittingly eerie introduction by Jeff VanderMeer, resurrects that lush vocabulary and unhurried pacing that feels more like ritual than storytelling. It is not modern—it is not meant to be.
“All things are possible in the night when the lips of the sea are red,” Smith writes, and you believe him, because when reading his work, you are no longer in your world at all.
Smith’s horror is not the jumpscare or the monster-in-the-closet. His horror is the infinite vista, the ancient ruin, the inevitable doom whispered in dream or vision. Take “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis”—a tale that could easily sit beside Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City” or “At the Mountains of Madness,” yet outpaces them in mythic elegance. Or “The Double Shadow,” which reads like a fever dream of Plato’s cave rewritten by the dead hand of an alien priest.
And yet Smith was never merely echoing Lovecraft. Their correspondence reveals admiration and rivalry, but also different cosmic visions: Lovecraft was a materialist prophet of meaningless universe-horror. Smith was more spiritual, more romantic—his end-times worlds still shimmer with opalescent beauty and mournful glory. Death comes, yes, but it comes dressed in jeweled robes.
If literature is the soul’s attempt to give form to feeling, then Out of Space and Time is pure feeling cast in obsidian prose. These are stories meant to be read aloud at midnight, beside a candle, perhaps beneath the stars. For those of us who feel the pulse of ancient things in modern life, who seek awe as much as terror, Smith is the most nourishing of the Weird writers.
And I would go further: Smith is the finest prose stylist the Weird tradition ever birthed. He is not always easy—but nothing worthy ever is. He rewards the patient, the curious, the literary-minded. His words leave sediment in the soul.
In a literary world that increasingly values speed over savor, bluntness over beauty, Out of Space and Time reminds us that horror and fantasy can still be an art of words—and that pulp, in the hands of a true poet, can become something magnificent.
“I met a daemon on the stairs / And spoke with him of wasted years.”
–Clark Ashton Smith
Thank you, Clark. For wasting none of our time, and for giving us the kind of literature that, once read, leaves the waking world a little more shadowed, and a little more full of wonder.
CaS's best among some great work; perhaps besides Blake, can't think of a better representee for h0rr0r prose.
“I am as one who, gazing long upon darkness, beholds therein a distant light.”—Clark Ashton Smith
To read Out of Space and Time is to step not merely into another world but into an entire mode of imagination, where language becomes spellcraft and pulp fiction elevates itself into poetry. Clark Ashton Smith—oft overshadowed by his better-marketed contemporaries H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard—deserves here the full measure of admiration, for he is the most literary of the triumvirate that helped define Weird Tales and, through it, modern horror, fantasy, and speculative fiction.
Smith’s stories are not built merely to entertain, though they do. They do not simply frighten, though often they do that too, with icy finality. They are instead invocations—lush, lyrical, and luxuriantly decadent. Each sentence could be carved on a stone tablet or whispered in a haunted chapel. To quote from “The City of the Singing Flame”:
“There are sounds which cannot be described in the language of earth, sounds that are too strange, too remote, too exquisite, for human ears.”
Clark Ashton Smith was not just a writer of weird fiction; he was a poet and painter who poured his visions into words, using language not as a vehicle for plot but as the very atmosphere of his stories. Out of Space and Time collects some of his finest visions—from the eldritch landscapes of Hyperborea and Zothique to the haunted, medieval mists of Averoigne, each tale sings with that gothic incantation that makes Smith feel not only ancient but eternal.
Where Lovecraft was cosmic in despair and Howard heroic in violence, Smith is decadent—a connoisseur of language, decay, beauty, and ruin. And in this I find a kind of spiritual satisfaction no other pulp author has given me. He is what would happen if Baudelaire wrote fantasy, if Poe were more florid, more daring, and less earthbound.
This volume, mercifully brought back into print by Bison Books with a fittingly eerie introduction by Jeff VanderMeer, resurrects that lush vocabulary and unhurried pacing that feels more like ritual than storytelling. It is not modern—it is not meant to be.
“All things are possible in the night when the lips of the sea are red,” Smith writes, and you believe him, because when reading his work, you are no longer in your world at all.
Smith’s horror is not the jumpscare or the monster-in-the-closet. His horror is the infinite vista, the ancient ruin, the inevitable doom whispered in dream or vision. Take “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis”—a tale that could easily sit beside Lovecraft’s “The Nameless City” or “At the Mountains of Madness,” yet outpaces them in mythic elegance. Or “The Double Shadow,” which reads like a fever dream of Plato’s cave rewritten by the dead hand of an alien priest.
And yet Smith was never merely echoing Lovecraft. Their correspondence reveals admiration and rivalry, but also different cosmic visions: Lovecraft was a materialist prophet of meaningless universe-horror. Smith was more spiritual, more romantic—his end-times worlds still shimmer with opalescent beauty and mournful glory. Death comes, yes, but it comes dressed in jeweled robes.
If literature is the soul’s attempt to give form to feeling, then Out of Space and Time is pure feeling cast in obsidian prose. These are stories meant to be read aloud at midnight, beside a candle, perhaps beneath the stars. For those of us who feel the pulse of ancient things in modern life, who seek awe as much as terror, Smith is the most nourishing of the Weird writers.
And I would go further: Smith is the finest prose stylist the Weird tradition ever birthed. He is not always easy—but nothing worthy ever is. He rewards the patient, the curious, the literary-minded. His words leave sediment in the soul.
In a literary world that increasingly values speed over savor, bluntness over beauty, Out of Space and Time reminds us that horror and fantasy can still be an art of words—and that pulp, in the hands of a true poet, can become something magnificent.
“I met a daemon on the stairs / And spoke with him of wasted years.”
–Clark Ashton Smith
Thank you, Clark. For wasting none of our time, and for giving us the kind of literature that, once read, leaves the waking world a little more shadowed, and a little more full of wonder.
July 7, 2018
I was vaguely aware of Clark Ashton Smith as a collaborator of H. P. Lovecraft but little beyond that, so I thought this collection of short stories might serve to provide a flavour of his work. It did, but not in the way that I'd hoped. Although I enjoyed the first story in the collection, The End of the Story, I could probably have just read that and then stopped. The prose is so purple it heads towards infra-black and the tone is rarely anything other than portentous and pompous, to a degree that I found quite infuriating (but which did mean that the rare flashes of humour were all the more unexpected and welcome).
The work, to an amateur eye, like mine, reads like Lovecraft (on a bad day) but feels quite heavy and kludgy. I did finish the collection and, for what it's worth, my favourite story of the collection, The Monster of the Prophecy is quite near the end, so I'm (mostly) glad that I got that far. This story concerns a human encounter with an alien and contains one of the aforementioned rare flashes of humour, that made it stand out for me.
On the whole though, whilst tolerable in small doses, I struggled with this one and I won't be looking out any more by Smith.
The work, to an amateur eye, like mine, reads like Lovecraft (on a bad day) but feels quite heavy and kludgy. I did finish the collection and, for what it's worth, my favourite story of the collection, The Monster of the Prophecy is quite near the end, so I'm (mostly) glad that I got that far. This story concerns a human encounter with an alien and contains one of the aforementioned rare flashes of humour, that made it stand out for me.
On the whole though, whilst tolerable in small doses, I struggled with this one and I won't be looking out any more by Smith.
May 30, 2017
Weird Tales är ett namn som torde värma i alla fall lite för varje människa med ett seriöst intresse för spekulativ fiktion. Man brukar tala om de tre stora och med detta menar man H.P Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard och den man som diskuteras här, Clark Ashton Smith. Utav de tre är han nog den mest obskyra. Lovecraft hade sin Chtulhu med all mytos omkring, Howard sin Conan men Smith hade inte en liknande centralpunkt vilket kan förklara varför han är mer bortglömd än de andra två. I mina ögon är Lovecraft onekligen störst men sen kommer Smith, utan tvekan. Samlingen "Out of Space And Time" skall enligt baksidestexten ha mer fokus på skräck än "Lost Worlds" och det verkar onekligen stämma. I flera av novellerna skvätter det blod och kroppsdelar, absolut. Men i Smiths mjuka och vackra prosa är det sällan man blir rädd. Mer mysrys även när man pratar om styckade kroppsdelar som får liv för att hämnas, vilket de gör medelst kirurgsåg ("The Return of the Sorcerer"), eller vidriga fysiska mutationer ("The Double Shadow"). Ibland lyckas han även vara rolig på ett torrt, kortfattat sätt. När berättaren i "The Testament..." förklarar att antagonisten kommit tillbaka till liv för en andra gång och ätit folk är det svårt att inte skratta i alla fall lite. Men stämningen! Det är nog det som är Smiths absolut största styrka. Det finns även tre stycken prosadikter ("Sadastor", "From the Crypts of Memory" och "The Shadows") med och alla tre tillhör toppskiktet. Alla försök till narrativ är borta och istället kan Smith sträcka ut vingarna och bara ordbajsa. Detta funkar ypperligt. Andra bra, utom de nämnda, är "A Night in Malnéant", "Ubbo-Sathla" och "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis".
Smith var en nära vän till H.P Lovecraft och det finns tematiska likheter här. Människor som försöker sträcka sig utanför den normala sfären och bara hämtar lidande och död, varelser som kommer in utifrån människornas världar och resor till andra världar dyker ofta upp. Det är blodigare och med mer kvinnor än gammle Howard, bara.
Smith var en nära vän till H.P Lovecraft och det finns tematiska likheter här. Människor som försöker sträcka sig utanför den normala sfären och bara hämtar lidande och död, varelser som kommer in utifrån människornas världar och resor till andra världar dyker ofta upp. Det är blodigare och med mer kvinnor än gammle Howard, bara.
July 15, 2012
More like 3.5 but rounding up. Some good stuff here, as well as some not-as-good.
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