A Vintage from Atlantis

The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith #3

by Clark Ashton Smith

Back in print in new trade paperback editions, the third of five volumes collecting the complete stories of renowned “weird fiction” author Clark Ashton Smith.

“None strikes the note of cosmic horror as well as Clark Ashton Smith. In sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Smith is perhaps unexcelled by any other writer.” —H. P. Lovecraft

Clark Ashton Smith, considered one of the greatest contributors to seminal pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, helped define and shape “weird fiction” in the early twentieth century, alongside contemporaries H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, drawing upon his background in poetry to convey an unparalleled richness of imagination and expression in his stories of the bizarre and fantastical.

The Collected Fantasies series presents all of Smith’s fiction chronologically. Authorized by the author’s estate and endorsed by Arkham House, the stories in this series are accompanied by detailed background notes from editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, who in preparation for this collection meticulously compared original manuscripts, various typescripts, published editions, and Smith’s own notes and letters. Their efforts have resulted in the most definitive and complete collection of the author’s work to date.

A Vintage from Atlantis is the third of five volumes collecting all of Clark Ashton Smith’s tales of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. It includes all of his stories from “The Holiness of Azédarac” (1931) to “The God of the Asteroid” (1932), as well as an introduction by Michael Dirda.

Skyhorse Publishing, under our Night Shade and Talos imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of titles for readers interested in science fiction (space opera, time travel, hard SF, alien invasion, near-future dystopia), fantasy (grimdark, sword and sorcery, contemporary urban fantasy, steampunk, alternative history), and horror (zombies, vampires, and the occult and supernatural), and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller, a national bestseller, or a Hugo or Nebula award-winner, we are committed to publishing quality books from a diverse group of authors.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Weird Fiction, Pulp

352 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

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

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one rather more than the preceding collection and rather less than the first volume. here are the mid-career stories in which the weird master's idiosyncratic style has reached its peak. two more collections to go, so hopefully this peak will be a plateau. the occasional amateurishness that marred some prior stories is nowhere to be found in this book. same goes, mainly, for the love stories; he's just not that into them at this point. this is CAS at his most polished, although "polished" does little to describe his marvelous combination of disdainful irony and bleak humor, hysteria and grotesquerie, bizarre flights of fancy, dense walls of prose delivered in an extravagantly purple style, and of course the fulsome harvest of obscure words in each and every story. nobody does it better.

I had a bunch of favorites. the frequently anthologized Seed from the Sepulcher was wonderfully grim and disgusting and did body horror decades before anyone else. Plutonium Drug puts forth a nifty twist on seeing the future and also details a range of interesting new drugs and poisons imported from various planets. Empire of the Necromancers is the first in the Zothique story cycle - stories which feel like they were written by a death-mad Jack Vance from another dimension. Double Shadow is about the doom that befell two sorcerers and their pet mummy due to some poorly thought-out trips to the very distant past - to crib the spells of a long-vanished serpent race, of all things. also featuring astral trips to archaic times, Ubbo-Sathla is a mindbending take on reincarnation. mindbending to this reader and unfortunately for the protagonist(s) as well. always remember: you can't go home again, especially if that first home is an oozing primordial mother-mass that is probably from outer space. The Holiness of Azédarac, set in that always interesting (and made-up) French province of Averoigne, starts off the collection on a fun note and spryly pivots from being about the murderous mage of the title to a tale of a well-meaning monk and an equally well-meaning enchantress falling quickly in lust and love. And The Demon of the Flower is as gorgeous, strange, and vicious as its titular monster; that CAS purple prose is at its most opulent.

my favorite of faves was Colossus of Ylourgne. this fabulous adventure is CAS at his most ripe, full of ghoulishness and aiming to please with an exciting narrative. basically it is about a sorcerer who has constructed a giant out of corpses; he'll inhabit that giant and use it to lay bloody waste on the various villages, churches, and judgmental monks of unlucky Averoigne. nice. maybe clerical types should stop finger-pointing so much. fortunately for them, there is a helpful young novice wizard who'll try and save the day. this story was super fun from beginning to end.

and now for some ridiculous synopses:

Averoigne
"Holiness of Azédarac" forget that wizard - a witch loves you!
"The Maker of Gargoyles" resentment & desire come alive!
"The Colossus of Ylourgne" attack on undead titan!

Poseidonis
"A Vintage from Atlantis" pirates shouldn't drink so much!
"Double Shadow" some serpent-spells shouldn't be cast!

Hyperborea
"The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqqquan" don't be a greedy pig!
"Ubbo-Sathla" AKA Shub-Niggurath? maybe!

Zothique
"Empire of the Necromancers" the dead make poor servants!

science fantasy
"The Demon of the Flower" don't assassinate a plant-god!

science fiction
sequel: "Beyond the Singing Flame" alas for the end of things!
"Seedling of Mars" Martian vegetable wants to help you evolve!
"The Eternal World" don't mess with the Gods of the Galaxy!
"The Invisible City" don't go looking for things you can't see!
"Immortals of Mercury" human protoplasm is required!
"The Plutonian Drug" future is now - unless you're dead!
"The God of the Asteroid" Mars is hell but asteroids are worse!

science fiction horror
"The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" that black turban ain't no turban!

horror
"The Nameless Offspring" nobody loves a step-ghoul!
"Seed from the Sepulcher" that head's a flower-pot!
"The Second Interment" uh oh, premature burial!
"The Supernumerary Corpse" two bodies for the price of one!

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories by an early proponent of fantasy and science fiction/horror. Clarke Ashton Smith earned a living by selling stories to periodicals such as Weird Tales or Astounding Stories.

This collection is patchy and some of the stories have not aged well. Particularly jarring was "The Plutonian Drug" featuring an amazing substance called Plutonium, made from a lichen from Pluto. Of course a few years after the story was written the real Plutonium was discovered.

For me the gothic horror stories set in medieval Averoigne work best and have stood the test of time. I also love the way CAS has with arcane and obscure words such as lich, mephitic and hierophant.

A generous 3/5, with a nostalgic nod back to a simpler time when a teenage me devoured pulp fiction such as this

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume is so far the strongest of the first three in the five that collect all of Clark Ashton Smith's work. The editors collected the stories in the order that Smith wrote them, and in the period represented by this volume Smith was writing some of his best work. In stories such as "The Empire of the Necromancers," Smith is able to create worlds with scale and texture that rival that found in some of the doorstop, multi-volume fantasy tales I have read. His prose is descriptive and evocative and his plots are adventurous and epic. To read a Clark Ashton Smith story is to enjoy a course of literary sustenance that is so filling that I forced myself to space my readings out, so as to maximize my enjoyment of every one.

Thank you Nightshade for publishing these works in full, and giving them the shelf space they deserve.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third volume in the series of C.A.S’ work that I’ve read. I liked it a bit more than the two previous volumes.

I am far more interested in the weird/horror stories than the sci-fi stories. They are pretty mixed together, so you get a so-so science-adventure story like “The Eternal World” or “Seedling of Mars,” but then something great like “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis” or “The Nameless Offspring.”

The thing is, the best stories are in the second half of the book. Once you get through “The Immortals of Mercury,” it’s pretty smooth sailing.

There are some non-Weird Tales stories that were fairly impressive, like “The Demon of the Flower” published in “Astounding Stories” for example. A few of the other sci-fi/horror stories are quite good too. “The God of the Asteroid” is an haunting and sad sci-fi tale. “The Plutonian Drug” is a very imaginative, but predictable story.

However many of the sci-fi stories were “rent-payers” as Smith himself often admitted in letters noted in the back of the book. And too often these stories run together on a similar theme: an explorer is captured by a superior alien race and will probably be sacrificed or killed, so he makes a desperate escape. “The Invisible City,” “The Immortals of Mercury” follow this theme pretty close, “The Eternal World” isn’t far behind, although it’s an improvement over those two and shows some great imagination.

My favorites were “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,” “The Colossus of Ylourgne” and “The Seed from the Sepulcher.” I would say “The Empire of the Necromancers,” “The Double Shadow,” “The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan” and “The Nameless Offspring” rank just below these.

Everything else is good at least worth a read...except for the “science-adventure” stories: “Beyond the Singing Flame,” “Seedling of Mars,” “The Invisible City” and “The Immortals of Mercury.” One can skip these and still live a fulfilled life.

Out of 21 stories here, 11 appeared in Weird Tales (marked (WT)). Most others appeared in science fiction magazines like Wonder Stories and Astounding Stories. Two of the stories “The Second Interment” and “The Nameless Offspring” appeared in the short-lived Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, and they are much in the vein of the Weird Tales stories.

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The Holiness of Azédarac (WT) - I’d read this one previously and skipped it here. When I read it a couple years ago I thought: This is another story I can't say is bad, but not exactly my favorite type. It's a rather milder story, a sort of time travel romance. A man sent on a mission by the archbishop has acquired proof that the priest Azedarac is engaged in the black arts, but is sent back in time where he discovers hitherto unknown pleasures.

The Maker of Gargoyles (WT) - This is a pretty good story, an example of Smith’s earth-bound horror stories more than wild fantasy. A stonemason feared and hated by the townsfolk as a dabbler in the black arts seems to be the cause of a massacre when beasts much like the gargoyles he has carved start murdering people at night.

Beyond the Singing Flame - I read “The City of the Singing Flame” some years ago, and this story seems to be the same story from what I recall. It's imaginative stuff but not my favorite type of Smith’s work, and the end didn’t really go anywhere. A writer decides to track down his friend who entered the city of the Singing Flame, and finds himself drawn into a similar adventure.

Seedling of Mars - A quite political, and in some ways utopian science fiction tale. This was one of the least interesting stories, although it does have some great moments of cosmic strangeness. Scientists investigating a spaceship that lands on earth become enclosed inside of it and whisked away to Mars where a giant organism wants to offer humanity a bargain that divides the liberal and conservative-minded.

The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis (WT) - This was a re-read for me, four years ago when I read this I thought it was one of the creepiest stories I’d ever read. This is as perfect a weird tale as I’ve ever read, and it’s one of the best things C.A.S. ever wrote. It actually made me feel like something was crawling on me at times. An exploring party on Mars goes to inspect an ancient, ruined city, at first they find nothing, but that changes once they enter a huge catacomb.

The Eternal World - A pretty impressive science-fantasy story, with a very wild ending. This one has some great ideas in it, but soon turns into more of an adventure story. A man builds a machine that projects him into a world of suspended time, but he and some other timeless beings are taken from this world by a large vessel.

The Demon of the Flower - I liked this one a lot, one of the pleasant surprises in this collection. It’s a dark fantasy tale, with rich color and description, full of imagination and has a powerful ending. A king seeks to destroy a tyrannical plant that demands a yearly sacrifice from his people.

The Nameless Offspring (ST) - This earth-based horror story offers a nice break from the sci-fi stories. Smith paints what is a not-overly original tale, but in the moody, ghoulish pastels only he can. The notes on this story are interesting, speculating that it might not have been written at all had the magazine Strange Tales not existed, because it was likely too nasty for the editor of Weird Tales. A man finding himself lost on the foggy English moors seeks refuge at the home of an old friend of his fathers’ who has a family secret involving a crypt-dwelling spawn that’s so horrific it cannot be put into words!

A Vintage from Atlantis (WT) - A very short story, it reminded me a little of the early stories of Lovecraft. Interesting, but not overly memorable. A crewman on a pirate ship recalls what happened after his crew drank a wine cask from a long dead civilization.

The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan (WT) - I really liked this one, it’s a brief, not unpredictable revenge tale, but the ending leaves an impression. A rich usurer refuses to give alms to a beggar, and later is led into a trap by his own greed.

The Invisible City - This story starts off well, but I didn’t care for where it ultimately goes. It’s a decent read though and reminded me a little of Lovecraft’s “In the Walls of the Eryx.” Two archaeologists stranded in a desert find an invisible city with very strange inhabitants.

The Immortals of Mercury - This story is another sci-fi adventure story about a man captured by an alien race with some effective moments of weirdness. It’s just too long and made worse because we can feel potential in it. Lovecraft himself noted “it furnishes more than one authentic shudder” and “the later parts give a very real thrill of subterrene horror,” but agreed with Smith that it was written for a common audience who demanded action-based stories. A explorer of Mercury is taken captive by a strange native race who seek to make him a sacrifice.

The Empire of the Necromancers (WT) - This is a brief story I’d read previously, and it is one of the best stories in this volume. It’s a decadent, grotesque tale, over-the-top in it’s descriptions of crumbling, decaying corpses. Two necromancers summon up the dead of a long-dead city in the desert to do their bidding, but the spark of rebellion starts to fester in some of them.

The Seed from the Sepulcher (WT) - This is an excellent story, one of the top three in this volume. It’s an earth-based weird-horror tale, displaying some very dark imagination. Two men are exploring the jungles of Venezuela for rare orchids and one of them checks out a long-abandoned ruin, only to become infected by a horrific malady.

The Second Interment (ST) - A grim tale of live burial, it reminded me a bit of Poe’s story on the subject. A man who was buried alive fears a repeat of the affair, and fears his avaricious brother will allow it to happen.

Ubbo-Sathla (WT) - This one took a little time to get going, but it turns into a fairly impressive story. It becomes very effective as it goes and in terms of overall theme it's like something out of a Ligotti tribute. A man finds a strange crystal in a curio shop and staring into it is transported to primordial time.

The Double Shadow (WT) - I didn’t realize I’d read this one previously until I got a ways into it, but I think I liked it better this time around, based on my old review. An apprentice to a sorcerer finds an ancient mirror washed up on the beach, after discovering how to perform the incantation connected with it nothing happens -- it's only later they find themselves plagued by horrors.

The Plutonian Drug - This reminds me of something from The Twilight Zone. It’s a sci-fi tale that's pretty predictable plot-wise, but it’s also very imaginative. A sculptor tries a rare drug that allows him to see into the past and future.

The Supernumerary Corpse (WT) - This is a brief story with a pretty original idea at it’s base that I liked, but unfortunately Smith didn’t seem to know what to do with it. A chemist, cheated out of his discoveries decides to kill the man with a poison he has developed, that has a very strange result.

The Colossus of Ylourgne (WT) - This might be my favorite story here, certainly this is one of the better long stories (coming in around 14,000 words). In some ways it’s a weird-adventure tale, but it has plenty of atmosphere too. An evil sorcerer who feels bitterly wronged by his fellow men esconds to an abandoned castle where he starts to build something to take revenge.

The God of the Asteroid - This is a sad story, horrific too. It makes a lasting impression of grief and melancholy and was among favorites of the sci-fi stories in this volume. A crashed spaceship is discovered on an asteroid, it’s dead inhabitant records his final days in a diary.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wrote in my review of The Door to Saturn that my biggest problem with Smith's stories was the endings, and that's still true after reading A Vintage from Atlantis. In the appendices to the book, there's even a letter from Smith to August Derleth that reads in part:

Funny--I seem to have more trouble with the endings of stories than anything else. God knows how many I have had to re-write.

Perhaps he should have spent more time rewriting them, though I'm getting ahead of myself. I did rate this four stars, after all, so it's not quite as terrible as me beginning with a complaint about it sounds.

Before I begin, one quirk I noticed in several of the stories that I didn't notice before is the repetition of the language that runs throughout many of the stories. I already commented on Smith's tendency to use Latinate words instead of Anglo-Saxon ones to add an antique air to his stories, but in this book there's a lot of the kind of poetic redoubling that's common in Biblical poetry--lines like "his mighty laughter, his stormy bellowing."

First off, the titular A Vintage from Atlantis. I'm honestly not sure why this was given top billing like that, because I found it to be pretty pedestrian. Sure, the image of a bunch of wild and crazy pirates all staring morosely off into the distance and then marching into the sea is a good one, but there's no conflict and the horror of the protagonist didn't come through to me even though "a terror came on me" is written right into the story. It's another one of the "dum dum DUM!" stories that doesn't have much else to recommend it in my mind. There is some good imagery when the crew first drinks the wine, but that's about it.

On the other hand, the book also contains The Empire of the Necromancers, which has a great title, is fantastically evocative, and is the first appearance of the Last Continent, Zothique. I'll admit that not all that much really happens in the story--the plot is basically "some necromancers show up, raise up a nation to serve them, and then get what's coming to them--but the language used is incredible:

Dead laborers made their palace-gardens to bloom with long-perished flowers; liches and skeletons toiled for them in the mines, or reared superb, fantastic towers to the dying sun. Chamberlains and princes of old time were their cupbearers, and stringed instruments were plucked for their delight by the slim hands of empresses with golden hair that had come forth untarnished from the night of the tomb. Those that were fairest, whom the plague and the worm had not ravaged overmuch, they took for their lemans and made to serve their necrophilic lust.

No wonder no one likes necromancers. Especially the corpses they've raised up from their slumber and compelled into unholy servitude, who then rebel against their sorcerous bondage with damnable consequences.

The Eternal World doesn't have the same kind of language as the previously mentioned stories, but I do give it props for featuring the danger of eldritch knowledge front and center. The main character is only an observer for most of the story, but he sees the actions of a small group in a single city end up dooming an entire planet to destruction. That idea--that existence is incredibly fragile, and could be snuffed out at any moment through the actions of people who barely know what they're doing--is both incredibly Lovecraftian and the life experience of basically anyone who was born during the Cold War, so it's perhaps no surprise that I like it so much. That mood was enough to make me like "The Eternal World" even though the protagonist spends the entire story doing nothing.

Next to "Empire of the Necromancers," The Maker of Gargoyles is one of the strongest stories in the collection. It's got the evocative imagery that Smith brings at his best while also having a deeper theme that's more than just, "Here's this horrible thing that happened" or "look at all these weird places." At first, Reynard looks like your stereotypical Internet Nice Guy, who's super annoyed that hanging around the fringes of the social circle and staring creepily at the girl he's in lust with doesn't result in her declaring her undying love for him, but on the other hand there are some hints that he has other reasons to be so angry:

Whether rightly or unjustly, his very physiognomy had always marked him out for public disfavor: he was inordinately dark, with hair and beard of a preternatural bluish-black, and slanting, ill-matched eyes that gave him a sinister and cunning air.

So, the people of Vyones hated him for no reason because of how he looked, which is enough to make the gentlest soul angry. No wonder those gargoyles murder their way through the populace. Based on Reynard's actions at the end, he almost comes off as sympathetic, even though he seems like a repugnant troll earlier on. This one is a good savory addition to the sweetness of the stories based primarily on mood, though it also has mood in spades.

I could go on. I haven't even talked about The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis or The Colossus of Ylourgne, both of which are well worth reading, or the almost cute ending of The Holiness of Azédarac, or the sublime creepiness of The Double Shadow. Oh, and there are some other stories in here too, if you like that sort of thing.

I gave this one four stars, but it's more like 4.5. A Vintage from Atlantis is definitely the best of Smith's story collections I've read so far, and the few stories that fell flat weren't enough to drag the book down overall. If you read one of these books, read this one.

And maybe for my next review I'll break out a thesaurus and stop writing "evocative" and "imagery" so much.

Previous Review: The Door to Saturn.
Next Review: The Maze of the Enchanter.

[Gustavo Krieger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clark Ashton Smith, junto com Lovecraft e Robert E. Howard, foi um dos criadores do que hoje se chama de "Mitos de Cthulhu". Seus contos podem ser resumidos em: alguém descobre que algo terrível pode acontecer, e o algo terrível acontece.
Apesar de seu caráter pessimista (ainda mais do que Lovecraft), suas histórias possuem duas qualidades que as colocam como excelentes exemplares deste tipo de literatura: primeiro são muito variadas, indo da idade média ao futuro em planetas longínquos sem jamais perder a naturalidade ou originalidade. Segundo, tendo começado sua carreira como poeta, é um escritor que explora bastante o léxico inglês, usando as palavras mais exóticas para descrever seus cenários. Por exemplo: "About it, prone or tilted in the mire, there lay the mighty tablets of star-quarried stone that were writ with the inconceivable wisdom of the pre-mundane gods".
Passando um preliminar estranhamento linguístico, as histórias encontradas são muito boas e algumas de fato excelentes, engajando o leitor em uma fantasmagoria alucinante.

[Simcha York · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Vintage from Atlantis is the third of five books that collect the fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith. Of the first three books in the series, it is certainly the strongest.

Written between 1931 and 1932, these stories cover a range of his styles. There is the 30-page dark sci-fi "Seedling of Mars" (which like most of his longer sci-fi pieces, is one of his weaker works), a collection of Averoignian tales, including the time-traveling adventure "The Holiness of Azédarac," "The Maker of Gargoyles," and the necromantic tale "The Colossus of Ylourgne." As usual, of course, it is Smith's shorter mood-pieces that truly pull the book together - tales such as the haunting "A Vintage from Atlantis," the Lovecraftian "Ubbo-Sathla," and quirkily dark "The Plutonian Drug" and "The Supernumerary Corpse."

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the works of Clark Ashton Smith, or anyone interested in dark fantasy or pulp-era weird tales.

[Jess M · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is for volumes 1 to 5 of the set. I have a weakness for collecting, a weakness I was more than willing to indulge for a set such as this. I found however that not all of CAS’s stories measure up to ones I had previously read (typically in pulp). And I am NOT AT ALL a fan of his poetry.

The publisher has also added an impressive appendix to each vol. Sadly the margins and typeface used are substandard, not to mention the questionable cover art that seems to mock rather then venerate this amazing writers work. This collection is gift for the true CAS devotes among us, but probably not the best place to start your encounters with the author.

New CAS readers may be happier with a half dozen pulps and old paperbacks.

[Keith W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Final score about a 4.5.

I read half this collection, read some other stuff before a subscription ran out, and then finished it, so a few earlier stories are not super fresh in my mind.

Even so, a few of the stories from the front half of this collection were extremely memorable to me and have stuck with me anyway. One thing I have enjoyed about CAS’s career is his steady rotation through genre, which gives you a well-rounded mix of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror in each of his collected works.

I continue to appreciate CAS from the other members of the Weird Tales Trinity (Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft) because his stories usually feel quite unique from the others, and I keep feeling like he was quite influential in fantasy even if to a lesser degree than Howard. It feels like a lot of cool fantasy imagery on Magic: The Gathering cards is pulled almost directly from some of his fantasy stories. Even some of the From Soft Soulsborne games seem to me to have some uncanny similarities, though whether intentional or not, who knows.

This collection also has one of the most strange and unique inter-dimensional weird horror stories I have ever read. I don’t know if it’s necessarily the best of its kind, but it had some really incredible and original ideas which have stuck with me for the past month or so. I hope as time goes on that more people who are fans of Lovecraft’s weird horror and fans of fantasy will check out CAS’s work, because to me he is a voice not quite like any other and his prose is consistently great.

[Zina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This third volume of the antology is every bit as wonderful as the previous two.
Here we get to revisit that dimension with the flame that all the beings from everywhere flocked to - and it is not what we thought when we read the previous story.
Travel hrough time and space and even outside of all t ime and space (yes!), sentient flower-like beings ranging from cool and mildly disturbing to downright horrifying monstrocities, a planet with two suns, one green one orange, necromancers - oh my.

[e · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to go to there! I would like to say that I’m different and wouldn’t drink the ancient mystery wine, but I like both wine and the author’s writing style too much- he sold me on it very quickly. I think that learning from Olive’s class about pirates also added to how immersive it felt. Side note, I wonder if this is what the ancient fruit wine in stardew tastes like?

[J.W. Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories collected in the first and second volumes of “The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith” are very solid, memorable, thrilling, and enjoyable. The contents of the third volume, “A Vintage from Atlantis” are even stronger. It’s probably the best volume in this collected series I’ve read yet, and I assume the sequential two volumes will be even better. Smith keeps pushing the envelope of the weird, fantastic, macabre, and disturbing with his tales the further into his career one gets. I enjoyed this volume immensely, and while I wasn’t so crazy about the title story, the tales I did enjoy are as follows…..

– “The Maker of Gargoyles:” An episode in the “Averoigne Cycle” in which a sculptor who is responsible for the creation of a cathedral’s gargoyles deeply regrets his trade as a wave of demonic terror sweeps his city brought about by his creations.

– “Beyond the Singing Flame:” When a friend of the two individuals who have disappeared in their pilgrimage to the trans-dimensional City of the Singing Flame wonders just what happened to them, he decides to take up a journey to the strange, otherworldly location himself.

– “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis;” A gothic tale of archaeological terror set on Mars in an ancient and darksome necropolis, where unspeakable evil awaits.

– “The Eternal World:” When an obsessed scientist makes a journey to transcend dimensions, nothing could ever prepare him for the mind-blasting experience that awaits him.

– “The Nameless Offspring:” A rich family has been haunted by a sinister secret, and when a friend of the family uncovers said secret, he finds that he is in over his head.

– “The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan:” A story set in the “Hyperborean Sequence” where a greedy money-lender receives his just desserts.

– “The Immortals of Mercury:” A human explorer encounters alien wonders and terrors alike as he voyages deep into the planet Mercury.

– “The Empire of the Necromancers:” The first installment of the post-apocalyptic “Zothique Cycle” where a dark empire is built by two sinister necromancers who raise and enslave a vast army of the undead. The undead, it would seem, have other plans in mind….

– “The Seed from the Sepulcher:” Two explorers unearth an ancient horror deep in the heart of the Venezuelan jungles.

– “The Second Internment:” A tale heavily inspired by the works of Edgar Alan Poe where a paranoid, disturbed individual meets the very end he fears; being buried alive.

– “Ubbo-Sathla:” When an overly-curious individual seeks the occult secrets of his previous life as a Hyperborean wizard, he finds that the price for unlocking said secrets may be too high to pay.

– “The Double Shadow:” A tale set in the “Poseidonis Cycle” where a sorcerer and his apprentice delve too deeply into the darksome powers that were wielded in the distant past by the Serpent-Men of Valusia.

“The Colossus of Ylourgne:” This tale returns to Averoigne where an evil, disfigured sorcerer seeks the ultimate revenge upon those who persecuted him, through very macabre means.

All in all a great collection. I give “The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith Vol III: A Vintage from Atlantis” a 4.5 out of 5.

[Χρυσόστομος Τσαπραΐλης · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the larger number of stories and pages in comparison to volume two, the third tome of Clark Ashton Smith’s Omnibus, was overall better, containing no pages that forced skipping. On the contrary, the good stories are many, and the great are among the author’s most exquisite writings.

Mediocre:
-Beyond the Singing Flame: The sequel to the City of the Singing Flame takes us back to the great city of Ydmos, and even beyond, explaining some of the Flame’s mysteries.
A rare sequel, this story builds on the success of its predecessor, and tries to elaborate on the Flame’s hazy nature. The cosmic and psychedelic elements are increased, the atmosphere becomes more ominous and tenebrous, even apocalyptic (somewhat reminiscent of Dunsany’s gods), but the truth is that the weirdness, a crucial part of the original’s magic, is here reduced. Solid, though somewhat tiring in alien descriptions.

-The Eternal World: A man finds himself in a place beyond space and time, where he, along with three other omnipotent beings, is abducted by a mysterious spaceship.
An interesting idea, yet the implementation is tiring, as tends to be the norm with CAS’s hard space science fiction

-The Demon of the Flower: An empire ruled by plants, with a demonic flower as a divine emperor. A man travels to find a way to banish the tyrant.
This one is a mix of fairy tale and weird fiction, an intriguing combination that unfortunately proves less than stellar in this one, most probably due to the weirdness immensely overpowering the flow.

-The Invisible City: Two explorers wander through Gobi desert and reach a city with invisible buildings and denizens.
A stellar idea which however was is less than stellar in its execution. Things are rather forced and sped up, especially in the latter half.

-The Immortals of Mercury: A man is captured by the immortal people residing in Mercury’s interior, and is to be used as an ingredient for a metal alloy.
A typically protracted sci-fi story which however has a nice Underdark (deep cave) feeling. Still, more a train of gonzo and action scenes than a proper story. The idea of heat-resistant giant lizards used as grills was amazing.

Good:
-The Holiness of Azedarac: Part of the Averoigne circle, this centers around the pious monk Ambrose, his quest of exposing Azedarac’s satanic faith, and his sudden disappearance.
Not an astounding plot, yet here Clark Ashton’s pen indulges in a wealth of verbal delights. Good sylvan atmosphere and a pinch of archaic druidic mysteries. Also, the end is unusually kind and optimistic, pushing aside the cold hand of duty that is many times unmoving in such fairy-tale-like legends.

The Maker of Gargoyles: Also part of the Averoigne circle, this concerns two malevolent gargoyles, imbued with their creator’s spiteful instincts and desires.
An essentially magical way of thinking, the transference of and animation with powerful emotion to creations. The story is not unpredictable, but it nicely zooms in the setting, town and particular period, offering also a wealth of lore.

-Seedling of Mars: An empty martian spaceship kidnaps (somewhat) a number of humans and takes them to Mars, who is revealed to be an almost animated planet. What follows is a battle between open-mindness and exploration lust on the one side, and conservative human nature on the other.
Finally, a very good science fiction story. This is part philosophical, part action, vibrating with the wonder of novelty.

-A Vintage from Atlantis:A pirate crew finds an ancient jar in a beach, containing a wine from Atlantis. Once drunk, the wine bestows visions of the now-sunken continent.
Magnificent prose, jewel-encrusted words that flow like amber wine through the pages. An oneiric atmosphere.

-The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan: A miserly moneylender pawns a couple of huge emeralds which start rolling from his reach. He chases them through city and forest to a cave, where doom awaits.
A quirky story with a weird idea (gems rolling on their own), completely on the side of fairy-tales. Almost great.

-The Seed from the Sepulcher: Two Amazonian explorers looking for rare plants. One of them becomes infected by a parasitic plant.
Grotesque, with a fear of hybrids and impurity in its core. A bit verbose, it could benefit from a tighter editing.

-The Second Interment: The protagonist is deathly afraid of premature burial, having already been buried alive once. The story follows his mental and bodily sensations as he sinks in the despair of the inevitable second coming of his dreadful situation.
A Poe-like thematic story which traces the manic, panicked and feverish thoughts of a phobic man that dreads the grave.

-Ubbo-Sathla: An artifact found in a pawnshop is revealed to be a divination implement, able to bridge eternities. Using it, the protagonist’s consciousness is slowly merged with that of an ancient sorcerer, and then a primordial god.
A nice story of sorcerous might and hubris, it kind of fails to rise to stellar levels.

-The Plutonian drag:An extraterrestrial drag causes anyone imbibing it to perceive near future and past visually, flattening time into perspectiveless space.
The core idea of this is ingenuous and very well presented. Alas, it could be expanded a bit more; right now it is just a rough uncut gem.

-The Supernumerary Corpse: A man poisons his nemesis but ends up with two identical (and far removed in spatial terms) corpses.
This has a very short and weird plot, which remains essentially unexplained. Very nice.

Great:
-The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis: A team of settlers from Earth ventures into the ruins of a forgotten race on Mars.
An amazing dungeon crawl in Martian ruins, better than your best dungeon crawl adventure (fantasy or otherwise).

-The Nameless Offspring: Someone finds himself in the vicinity of his childhood neighborhood. He ends up in the manor of an old acquaintance, who hides a secret offspring.
A gothic manor story which has everything: the decrepit owner, the dead spouse, crypts, the deformed spawn, the butler. This is the stuff CAS lived and died for, who in this particular case throws in both Necronomicon verses and ghoulish delights.

-The Empire of the Necromancers: Two necromancers leave a region populated by the living, in order to establish an empire, in a province long decimated by plague; their empire is populated by undead animated by their spells.
This is how the archaic undead rises through the pen of a true master. This is how terrible majesty and arcane wonder is evoked. One of the best CAS stories.

-The Double Shadow: A sorcerer’s apprentice watches his master’s approaching doom as a conjured unfathomable being slowly approaches his shadow.
Clark Ashton Smith at his best. Sorcerous evocation, a weird and utterly unexplainable horror from the dark past.

-The Colossus of Ylourgne: The dead start leaving their graves and converge in a ruined castle where a sorcerer plans his revenge upon the world.
Magnificence incarnate in the Averoigne circle. A long story with highly atmospheric parts, a solid plot and parts that could well have influenced such a masterpiece as «In the Hills, the Cities.» Reified awe.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite story from the bunch is The Colossus of Ylourgne.

Other honorable mentions:

The God of the Asteroid
The Invisible City
The Seed from the Sepulcher

[Joseph Carrabis · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Vintage from Atlantis is v3 of "The Collected Fantasies." I knew Smith's name but wouldn't remember his work, and at only 4$US from Hamilton Books, I figured go for it.
Smith is a early Golden Age (I'd almost say Bronze Age) SF/F author and for the most part this comes through in the majority of pieces in this volume. Definitely well-written in their day, I'm not sure they'd pass muster now except as studies in technique and form. To that end, A Vintage from Atlantis is priceless. When Smith wrote horror, we wrote unmistakable horror. When he wrote fantasy, he wrote unmistakable fantasy. Ditto science fiction. If anything, his horror predilection comes through in his other stories. His science fiction, for example, has nice horror elements. His fantasies tend towards the dark side. And in a few of his stories, his political leanings are clear.
A priceless part of the book are the several appendices detailing how the stories came about and email exchanges with other notables of the day - August Derleth, HP Lovecraft, et cetera.
Definitely worth a read although not quite a keeper.

[Vlad Martínez Cruz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las joyas de la corona: "The Holiness of Azedárac", "Beyond the Singing Flame" (véase la delirante descripción de una ciudad que se moviliza sobre incontables patas mecánicas para atacar a sus vecinas), "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" (y su dotación de arqueólogos nominados a los Premios Darwin), "The Demon of the Flower", "The Nameless Offspring" (incluida en los Mitos de Cthulhu de Alianza Editorial como "Estirpe de la Cripta", insinúa en clave Pro-Vida el indiscreto acaecer de un ghūl), "The Seed from the Sepulcher" (una flor parasitaria que supera en horror a los convidados de Yoh-Vombis; Richard Corben se encargó de plasmarla en un cómic, añadiendo un despliegue de glándulas mamarias), "The Double Shadow" (mi primera gran favorita, porque tengo alma de nigromante trasnochado y las sombras me inquietan) y "The Colossus of Ylourgne" (segunda gran favorita; seguro material para un episodio de la vieja serie de TV "In Search Of...").

Menciones honoríficas: "The Eternal World", "The Invisible City", "The Empire of the Necromancers", "The Supernumerary Corpse", "The Immortals of Mercury".

Para gustos hay colores. Y si éstos derivan de un espectro ultramundano, pues...

[Lewis Carnelian · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to say of this yet another excellent volume in the complete stories of CAS? If you haven’t read any of his stories, this perhaps is not the place to start, although you could do worse. For those rabid CAS fans (and I believe I am one of them), this is essential and the treatment Night Shade Books offers CAS enthusiasts I wish would be extended to other authors, but perhaps it is because of Smith’s excellence that he inspires such editions. I believe this volume contains the first of his Zothique stories, his Dying Earth cycle, “The Empire of the Necromancers”, from which a clear line can be drawn to Jack Vance and subsequently Gene Wolfe. But the introduction by Michael Dirda makes all too clear what Smith fans already instinctively knew: how he predates Borges in the fabuleux, and strikes heavy at the forge of the mega-cosmic existentialism that Olaf Stapledon mined. Those whose minds search down such corridors with an insatiability I hope eventually discover CAS, and, when they do, these consecrated volumes will be of innumerable service to their imaginations.

[Amy Mills · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting pirate tale with strong echoes of Lovecraft (I thought it was a Lovecraft story until I checked after listening to it). Pirate crew comes across an amphora of ancient wine (at least, they think it's wine), and most of them happily imbibe it. The one teetotaler among the crew is forced to drink some against his will, and is the only one not destroyed by the siren song of the visions it brings on (presumably because he didn't drink enough to be as strongly affected).

It galumphs along in places, much like Lovecraft's writing does, but is interesting enough. Worth a read (or listen) if you like eldritch tales.

[rosie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow! What an interesting pirates’ tale. I’ve always had a fascination with pirates and I took a class on Caribbean Piracy so I’ve learned a lot about pirate culture.

The gothic elements of mystery and supernaturally-induced death add a unique facet to what is typically written about when it comes to pirates. Usually it’s beasts or human enemies; it’s never “we found this trance-inducing viscous liquid that makes us hallucinate and send ourselves to our watery grave”. I suppose now that I’ve put it that way it sounds like sirens but I’m glad it wasn’t!

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought all five collected volumes of Smith's stories a couple years ago and have been making it a point to kick off my fall reading with one of them each year. I liked this one less than the first two, I think because it's heavy on his sci fi stories, which I don't find as interesting as his more fantasy based stories. There are some really great stories in here. but also some that are just a slog.

[Davide Pappalardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would be a five stars, if It wasn't for some not very inspired moments (I'm looking at you The Immortals of Mercury). Smith's style and tropes are quite clear by now: his obsession with monstrous plants and insects, his unique and eerie gothic sensibilities that play with existential dread and paradoxes. I find there is a growing interest in death in his prose, being the main theme of many of the best tales collected here.

[Arthur B · Rating 5 out of 5]

With this volume, Night Shade's collection of the weird fiction of Clark Ashton Smith (minus juvenilia), arranged in chronological order of composition, hits perhaps his best period. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[Stephen Simpson · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of five parts of a collection of the works of one of my favorite writers. There is more sci-fi and horror in here than you normally see in CA Smith collections; they aren’t his best works, but still nice to see.

[Kevin Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highlights of this volume: "The Holiness of Azedarac," "The Demon of the Flower," and "The Eternal City."

This segment of Clark's work is not as impressive as what I was reading in Volumes 1 and 2? Or maybe I've just become overly acclimated.

[Louis Yank]

Favorite story - The nameless offspring is on par with the Dunwich horror. CAS should be as well regarded as HPL

[Chuck McKenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic collection of eerie short fiction from one of the masters of 20th Century dark fantasy and Lovecraftian horror. An absolute must-read for fans of those subgenres.

[Benjamin Hare · Rating 3 out of 5]

The twenty-one imaginative short stories in this volume showcase some of the best (and worst) of Clark Ashton Smith's oeuvre. His evocative language and bizarre plots cover the gamut of the 1920's weird pulp fiction era and can be a pleasant surprise for new readers. Still, Smith is an acquired taste. His imagination is wholly unique, and despite some of the weak endings, non sequitur developments, and a fascination with rotting corpses, the prose are lovely. Here are the standout tales of this collection:

"The Holiness of Azéderac" → A time-traveling monk is seduced (willingly) by a forest-dwelling witch.

"The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" → Archeologists on Mars uncover a dangerous secret hidden for millennia.

"The Demon Flower" → A self-aware plant holds brutal religious dominion over it's human slaves.

"The Empire of Necromancers" → Two necromancers establish a kingdom of reanimated corpses.

"Ubbo-Sathla" → An antique collector finds an artifact created by a great Hyperborean wizard.

"The God of the Asteroid" → The lone survivor of a rocket ship crash witnesses the rise, fall, and rise again of strange aliens.

[Ravsta P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every year I read repeatedly through the 5 volumes of Clark Ashton Smith's works, and the rereading only makes me more glad to have done so.

More rounded than Lovecraft with a seemingly greater depth for the fantastic, Smith's worlds are often enticing although deadly. The blending of horror with fantasy and irony is unlike any other I've read.

Some favourites of mine from this volume are 'The Demon of the Flower' and 'The Colossus of Ylourgne'.

If you've never heard of Clark Ashton Smith then, please, take a look at his works. This was a man who memorised entire dictionaries at a young age, raised on tales of his father's worldwide wanderings, who wrote not only because he loved to, but also to support his dying parents.

Check him out.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well-done audio book adaptation of the weird fiction short stories and novellas of Clark Ashton Smith, a master of the genre and a member of Lovecraft's circle, widely acknowledged to have been an early influence on D&D (who nevertheless did not make it to the Gygax Appendix N - an apparent glaring omission that has invited much speculation). Weird fiction encompasses much of what today would be classed as science fiction, fantasy, and horror, often macabre in tone. I loved these stories and highly recommend them!

[Benjamin Chandler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very short story about buccaneers who discover a long forgotten flask of mysterious wine and what happens when they drink it.

Enjoyable enough.

(This edition is not to be confused with the Clark Aston Smith anthology by the same name.)