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Smoke of the Snake
Contents:
"Introduction", by R. Dixon Smith
"The Music Lover"
"Hamadryad"
"The Elcar Special"
"Eternity When?"
"The Tunnel"
"The Monument"
"The Street That Wasn’t There" (with Clifford D. Simak)
"Smoke of the Snake"
"The Black Garden"
"Test Case"
"Josephine Gage"
"Offspring"
"Chameleon Town"
"A Quire of Foolscap"
"The Chadwick Pit"
"Introduction", by R. Dixon Smith
"The Music Lover"
"Hamadryad"
"The Elcar Special"
"Eternity When?"
"The Tunnel"
"The Monument"
"The Street That Wasn’t There" (with Clifford D. Simak)
"Smoke of the Snake"
"The Black Garden"
"Test Case"
"Josephine Gage"
"Offspring"
"Chameleon Town"
"A Quire of Foolscap"
"The Chadwick Pit"
208 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1994
About the author
Carl Jacobi
159 books18 followersLibrarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Carl Richard Jacobi was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1904 and lived there throughout his life. He attended the University of Minnesota from 1927 to 1930 where he began his writing career in campus magazines.
His first stories were published while he was at the University. The last of these, "Moss Island", was a graduate's contribution to The Quest of Central High School, and "Mive" in the University of Minnesota's The Minnesota Quarterly. Both stories were later sold to Amazing Stories and Weird Tales respectively and marked his debut in professional magazines. "Mive" brought him payment of 25 dollars.
He joined the editorial staff of The Minnesota Quarterly, and after graduation in 1931, he became a news reporter for the Minneapolis Star, as well as a frequent reviewer of books and plays. He also served on the staff of the Minnesota Ski-U-Mah, a scholastic publication.
After years with the Minneapolis Star, he was the editor for two years of Midwest Media, an advertising and radio trade journal. Later, he devoted himself full-time to writing. He owned his own private retreat, a cabin at Minnewashta in the Carver country outlands of Minneapolis. His intimate familiarity with the terrain and environment there provided the setting for many of his most distinguished stories. Jacobi was a lifelong bachelor.
He wrote scores of tales for all the best known magazines of fantasy and science fiction and was represented in numerous anthologies of imaginative fiction published in the United States, England and New Zealand. His stories were translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch. Many of his tales were published in anthologies edited by Derleth, and Arkham House published his first three short story collections. Stories also appeared in such magazines as Short Stories, Railroad Magazine, The Toronto Star, Wonder Stories, MacLean's magazine, Ghost Stories, Strange Stories, Thrilling Mystery, Startling Stories, Complete Stories, Top-Notch and others. Though best known for his macabre fiction, Jacobi also wrote science fiction, weird-menace yarns and adventure stories.
From Wikipedia
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Carl Richard Jacobi was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1904 and lived there throughout his life. He attended the University of Minnesota from 1927 to 1930 where he began his writing career in campus magazines.
His first stories were published while he was at the University. The last of these, "Moss Island", was a graduate's contribution to The Quest of Central High School, and "Mive" in the University of Minnesota's The Minnesota Quarterly. Both stories were later sold to Amazing Stories and Weird Tales respectively and marked his debut in professional magazines. "Mive" brought him payment of 25 dollars.
He joined the editorial staff of The Minnesota Quarterly, and after graduation in 1931, he became a news reporter for the Minneapolis Star, as well as a frequent reviewer of books and plays. He also served on the staff of the Minnesota Ski-U-Mah, a scholastic publication.
After years with the Minneapolis Star, he was the editor for two years of Midwest Media, an advertising and radio trade journal. Later, he devoted himself full-time to writing. He owned his own private retreat, a cabin at Minnewashta in the Carver country outlands of Minneapolis. His intimate familiarity with the terrain and environment there provided the setting for many of his most distinguished stories. Jacobi was a lifelong bachelor.
He wrote scores of tales for all the best known magazines of fantasy and science fiction and was represented in numerous anthologies of imaginative fiction published in the United States, England and New Zealand. His stories were translated into French, Swedish, Danish and Dutch. Many of his tales were published in anthologies edited by Derleth, and Arkham House published his first three short story collections. Stories also appeared in such magazines as Short Stories, Railroad Magazine, The Toronto Star, Wonder Stories, MacLean's magazine, Ghost Stories, Strange Stories, Thrilling Mystery, Startling Stories, Complete Stories, Top-Notch and others. Though best known for his macabre fiction, Jacobi also wrote science fiction, weird-menace yarns and adventure stories.
From Wikipedia
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 30, 2014
So, this is the third Jacobi collection I've read now, and I'm sorry to say I'm really not sure what the appeal is. To be fair, while Jacobi often approaches his standard pulp horror tropes uniquely and from unusual angles, there rarely is any satisfying payoff: many tales start out with unique premises but end up down conventional routes; some being so painfully rote and by the numbers one can tell exactly where they're headed within a couple of pages. Other stories remain true to their offbeat obliqueness, but come off as so low-key and uneventful that I'm left feeling I missed something somewhere; some readers have compared Jacobi to the notoriously ambiguous Robert Aickman, another writer who has been a source of some frustration, but with Jacobi, unengaged as I became reading his seemingly-conventional stories, I often come to the finale feeling that I am either not reading enough, or perhaps reading far too much, into it. However, I have yet to read Jacobi's earliest, most highly-regarded fiction - although I am looking forward to it - and perhaps my evaluation will change after that.
March 4, 2024
This is a strange collection that contains some of Jacobi's earliest works as well as final works, arranged without any particular order or theme. They are all written in the usual pulpy style, with exaggerated characters doing things that would astonish even today's tabloids, and encountering things that are... as pulpy as they can get.
Unfortunately, almost all of the stories ended either in an extremely cliched manner, or abruptly— without any proper conclusion.
This book is fodder for some old guy's nostalgia and nothing more.
Unfortunately, almost all of the stories ended either in an extremely cliched manner, or abruptly— without any proper conclusion.
This book is fodder for some old guy's nostalgia and nothing more.
February 6, 2023
Jacobi, Carl - Smoke Of The Snake
Intended as the fourth collection for Arkham House, this Fedogan & Bremer provides a satisfying cap to Jacobi’s works.
A contemporary of HPL, his stories span a longer sweep of time. Decades.
Indeed, one of the included titles, I remember reading in Whispers magazine.
There are tales of black magic, voodoo, or opium steeped madness.
One or two glide through the realm of SciFi, though none of “hard SciFi” and all are light-touched and amusing.
Readers who still have a taste for bygone pulp (Howard, Cave, Rohmer, Wandrei) will find this a late night treat.
Intended as the fourth collection for Arkham House, this Fedogan & Bremer provides a satisfying cap to Jacobi’s works.
A contemporary of HPL, his stories span a longer sweep of time. Decades.
Indeed, one of the included titles, I remember reading in Whispers magazine.
There are tales of black magic, voodoo, or opium steeped madness.
One or two glide through the realm of SciFi, though none of “hard SciFi” and all are light-touched and amusing.
Readers who still have a taste for bygone pulp (Howard, Cave, Rohmer, Wandrei) will find this a late night treat.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews