The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith: The End Of The Story: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 1

by Clark Ashton Smith

Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive “preferred text” for Smith's entire body of work. This first volume of the series, brings together 25 of his fantasy stories, written between 1925 and 1930, including such classics as "The Abominations of Yondo," "The Monster of the Prophecy," "The Last Incantation" and the title story.

Genres: Fantasy, Horror, Audiobook, Dark Fantasy, Weird Fiction, Science Fiction

301 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 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

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an imagination. The Immeasurable Horror! CAS has a way with words, I thought this was a beautiful passage.

"But in his musings there was neither light nor fire; and turning from the greyness of the present, from the darkness that seemed to close in so imminently upon the future, he groped backward among the shadows of memory, even as a blind man who has lost the sun and seeks it everywhere in vain. And all the vistas of time that had been so full of gold and splendor, the days of triumph that were colored like a searing flame, the crimson and purple of the rich imperial years of his prime, all these were chill and dim and strangely faded now, and the remembrance thereof was no more than the stirring of dead embers."

[Zina · Rating 5 out of 5]

FABULOUS. infinitely inventive, fantastical stories that just draw you into their colorful worlds. This first volume has his earlier works. Contents can be found here: https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?88612

[Elford Alley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clark Ashton Smith has long been a blind spot in my weird fiction reading. Thankfully, I have corrected this. A great collection showcasing the more fantasy-leaning elements of his work.

[A.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty cool that this guy has invented several fantasy worlds, and influenced both EH Howard (of the Conan stories) and Lovecraft.

This review is just for the titular story.

Set the in the Land of Averoigne a narrative by written by the young Christophe Morand about his unaccountable disappearance in 1798.

He took shelter from a storm at an abbey that has an erudite abbot and an impressive collection of manuscripts — including many ancient works considered lost or never even known. But the abbot warns him to stay away from one manuscript. Of course our brash young man goes back to the library as soon as he can, and reads the forbidden book. Gasp.

The story within the story is that of Comte who met a satyr in the woods, and is given instructions on how to enter a hidden world under a ruin. Next day, the young man Christophe is off to the ruins he just happened to see on his way to the abbey.

888

I saw a comment that this ending is the same as Innsmouth, but he wrote it BEFORE Lovecraft did. ha!

3 stars

[Alexander L. Belikoff · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first volume (of a splendid 5-volume collection of CAS works) offers a fair (but not necessarily a flattering) sample of Mr. Smith's writing. There are a handful of short stories that definitely established CAS as a strong weird fiction writer ("The Tale of Satampra Zeiros," "A Night in Malnéant," "The Abominations of Yondo"). The rest unfortunately are not as solid both in plot and execution and they do bring the notion of "pulp fiction" to mind more than once. While I highly recommend the stories mentioned above, I will hardly re-read the others. (Having said so, I am looking forward to reading the other four volumes).

[Davide Pappalardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mix of styles and influences dear to the weird tales circle and 20’s American sci-fi, gothic and fantastic literature that shows us an author building up is own identity. We have tales in the vain of Poe, plunges in Hyperborean times recalling of Howard and cosmic horrors close to Lovecraft, as well as classic sci-fi tales and adventures in exotic settings. Not everything is great, some stories didn’t age well with their naivety and concepts very much of their time, but there are sparks of genuine greatness now and then.

[Matthew Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first in a series of books collecting Smith’s fictional output in chronological order. I always prefer this approach when starting to read a new author as you can see how their style evolves over time and even from the jump the incredible talent is evident and I’m eager to dig into the rest of his output. There are some rough patches here and there but on the whole the stories collected here rival Lovecraft in terms of cosmic horror.

[Geoffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something a little different. Smith is obviously talented, but that talent does not always come out. Some very memorable stuff, some extremely dull. You never know what you'll get. Good enough that I will read future volumes in this series one of these days, though.

[Shane Petersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collection truly is a mixed bag with some very entertaining stories and others that seem fairly bland.

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slowly making my way through the five volumes of Clark Ashton Smith's short stories, prose poems, and poetry. All of it is good stuff!

[b · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little repetitive now and then, but overall an incredible sample of CAS’ writing. A Brooklyn poet goes to a far off planet, helps a wizard overthrow a religious government, falls out of graces and is tortured, escapes by an act of seemingly divine intervention and wanders across the strange planet to meet the alien love of his life, and it all starts on the earth newspapers racing to tell the grimmest version of his possible demise. Incredible. Just one example of many greats. A lot of the most overtly problematic elements of the genre (see: racism) are here, but, by and large CAS actually dumps a lot of that nonsense into the colonial characters themselves, and keeps a safe distance from actually saying anything about any ‘blacker, lesser tribes’ or whatever such Lovecraftian messiness the genre usually does; I think CAS lets his more foolish narrators be fools and embody crappy values as a moral lesson as opposed to an actual diegetic hierarchy of being, which makes the work tenable in a refreshing way. CAS is also in love with the extraterrestrial and romance and the written word in a way that reminds me of Bradbury, and that’s also a gift. If you like war of the worlds, or annihilation, but you want to read the actual best-rendered versions of those premises, this is where you’ll find them. Glad I stuck with this. Perhaps even on to the next in this series collecting CAS’ work.