Weird Fiction discussion

INTRODUCTION and MEA CULPA

Oh dear! I nominated a collection of short stories written mostly in the early 1930s by Clark Ashton Smith that wasn't assembled until long after his death, and then by Lin Carter. This collection was published by Ballantine Books in 1971 and has never been reprinted. The ISBN for the book is 9780345022066. Had you purchased it from the stands in 1971 you would have paid 95 cents for it, brand new. Now the least expensive used copy goes for $54 each for the first two available copies. Once those are gone, there are a number available for $60 to $65. That may be out of most of our price ranges.

There was a similar book published in 1996, edited by Will Murray, ISBN 9780940884878, and titled The Book of Hyperborea. Published by Necromonicon Press in 1996, it too has been out of print ever since. Four previously owned copies of this book are available for a price that's in the mid-forties. Then you are in the mid-fities for the next two copies.I can't imagine why no further printings have ever been published of Smith's Hyperborea, but the fact (as far as I know) is that it hasn't been.

There are no Kindle or e-book collections that have the eleven stories that comprise the Hyperborea cycle. Only a few collections have a few of the stories each. Some of the stories are available as single stand-alones in Kindle for 99 cents apiece, which seems reasonable to me. The link I provided in the nominations topic is to a reasonably priced electronic Spanish translation of the work. Oops.

I considered switching things up and just picking a different Clark Ashton Smith (CAS) collection for us to read, like the one Nicolai nominated. Or another one called Megapack Weird Tales Collection #5 featuring solely CAS works. These both look like excellent collections.

But they're not Hyperborea. And Smith's Hyperborea looks like such an imaginative and wonderful concept. I just can't bear to part with this as our group read. If we as a group go ahead and read this now almost nonexistent collection of tales, we'll be rather set apart, I think, from peers who won't think of or be able to read these tales. So, the decision is made: there's to be no bait and switch here in our group. We're still doing Hyperborea.

For those among us with $50 to $70 dollars to drop on acquiring a previously owned book, or $100 to $150 for those vendors who say they have the book for sale in new condition (bookfinder dot com is your friend here), go for it! I think you will be best off for having done so and glad you did. For the rest of us, I have good news. These stories are all in the public domain. With the Internet now being the wonderful source it is, we can get hold of a copy in one way or another, I believe. They just won't be all together, and maybe the poems, illustrations, or the story fragment that appear in the books might not be available. But I am confident we can acquire in various sources, perhaps one by one, all 11 stories that comprise CAS's Hyperborean cycle. Read further messages in this topic for ways to get hands on these stories and join us for a fun read this March, won't you?

The numbered works below are the heart of Hyperborea. The works not numbered are added for the sake of completeness, but add little to nothing to Hyperborea in my opinion. I keep the internal chronological order Lin Carter arranged the stories in with the 1971 collection (note that this is very different from the published or written order):

The Muse of Hyperborea (prose poem) 1934
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
1. The Seven Geases (1934)
https://archive.org/details/WeirdTale...
2. The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan (1932)
https://archive.org/details/WeirdTale...
3. The White Sybil (1934)
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
The House of Haon-Dor (story fragment) 1933/1984
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
4. The Testament of Athammaus (1932)
https://archive.org/details/WeirdTale...
5. The Coming of the White Worm (1941)
https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/lu...
6. Ubbo-Sathla (1933)
https://archive.org/details/weird-tal...
7. The Door to Saturn (1932)
https://archive.org/details/StrangeTa...
8. The Ice-Demon (1933)
https://www.luminist.org/archives/SF/... [April 1933]
9. The Tale of Satampra Zeiros (1931)
https://archive.org/details/WeirdTale...
10. The Theft of Thirty-nine Girdles (1958)
https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/lu...
Lament for Vixeela (poem) 1989
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
11. The Abominations of Yondo (1926)
https://archive.org/details/endofstor... [pages 3-8]
The Abomination of Desolation (prose poem) 1929
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
The Desolation of Soom (prose poem) 1938
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
The Passing of Aphrodite (prose poem) 1934
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
The Memnons of the Night (prose poem) 1917
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
The Hyperborean City (synopsis) 1984
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...
The Shadow from the Sarcophagus (synopsis) 1979
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...

The pertinent portion of the multi-page website in the last link above is the following:
Satampra Zeiros and Tirouv Ompallios, noted Hyperborean thieves and burglars, are hired by ((the)) Ruul-Vash, high-priest of the moon-god, to enter the tomb of the ancient prehuman sorcerer Hurun. Then they are to break open the stone sarcophagus of Hurun and bring to Ruul-Vash certain magic talismans said to have been interred with the wizard. These talismans are of fabulous potency. The gholliish task is not to the liking of the thieves. but perforce they are constrained to serve Ruul-Vash, who is very powerful and moreover possesses damnatory evidence concerning many of their crimes. Ruul-Vash assures them that, owing to the immense antiquity of the corpse, there will be little left of Hurun except dust. Satampra Zeiros and his companion go forth by night to the ancient tomb, which is now but a grass-and-tree-grown mound with a cave-like entrance little larger than a jackat's burrow. The door of the vault has rusted away, and the inner tomb has long been a lairing-place of beasts. The sarcophagus, however, is intact, and is opened with some difficulty by the thieves, who, obeying RuuI-Vash's instructions, chisel away certain mysterious cyphers engraved on the lid. Within, to their mingled relief and disappointment, they find no trace of the wizard's body or the talismans-only a few pinches of fine brown powder from which a faint ghostly odor exhales and quickly evaporates. Satampra Zeiros, however, sees, or imagines that he sees, a small indistinct shadow like that of some half-human homunculus, which slides down the side of the stone box in the light of the wavering torch held by his companion, and vanishes in the gloom. The two return to Ruul-Vash, who refuses to believe that they found the sarcophagus empty, and charges them with secreting the magic talismans. On this charge, they are thrown into the dungeon beneath the temple of the moron-god, and are threatened with dire tortures by Ruul-Vash and his acolytes. Lashed to the frames of certain instruments of torture, they see on the dungeon-floor the same shadow that had seemed to emerge from the sarcophagus. The shadow falls across the feet of Ruul-Vash, who has ordered the torturers to begin their operations. Ruul-Vash falls in agony, his feet crumbling into dust fine as that of some ancient mummy. The shadow, increasing in size, covers his legs-and the legs also crumble. Soon there is nothing left of the high-priest, except the fine dust. The torturers flee; and the shadow, now grown to human size but with non-human form, touches with its hands the bonds of Satampra Zeiros and his companion. The bonds dissolve, leaving the burglars free to escape from the temple dungeon.

Wikipedia has two excellent entries that describe CAS's Hyperborea. The first is on the Lin Carter book itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbo...
The second is on the world these stories and poems create:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbo...

To start with, here is the map of Hyperborea that Lin Carter drew and included in his 1971 edited collection on page viii:



Some might think the contours resemble England and Scotland, but CAS was a Californian, remember. I think Greenland and Iceland were more in mind, Hyperborea meaning literally "Beyond the North Wind."

To start our reading, may I recommend Will Murray's extremely interesting and useful "Introduction to 'The Book of Hyperborea'? His essay introducing CAS's book appeared on page 7 of the aforementioned 1996 edition of the book and its author generously made it available online: http://www.eldritchdark.com/articles/...

Next, I propose we plunge into the stories themselves by proceeding to InternetArchive dot org. I note that after searching on the first story title, "The Seven Geases", three text entries appear. The second one, the original Weird Tales magazine the story first appeared in, does not require logging in to view the story directly.

If any others in the group find "The Seven Geases" in another way that's easily obtained, i.e. via a Kindle story collection, Gutenberg, or whatnot, please post here about it for the benefit of the others in the group.

I did the fiscally irresponsible step and ordered the paper book

Dan wrote: "To start our reading, may I recommend Will Murray's extremely interesting and useful "Introduction to 'The Book of Hyperborea'?

I can also recommend part 2 of 4 of Ryan Harvey's series on CAS' cycles, also focused on Hyperborea: https://www.blackgate.com/the-fantasy... -- part 1 covers Averoigne, part 3 Zothique and part 4 Poseidonis, Mars, and Xiccarph.

Thanks for that recommendation, Per. That site repeats but also adds a lot of information about Hyperborea. I especially like that it has a clearer map for me to print out. That map is just Lin Carter's guess based on his reading. I'm going to be reading closely and will be making some changes to it if (as often happens) I find internal clues that makes the map a bit off in some ways.

Zina wrote: "I did the fiscally irresponsible step and ordered the paper book"

Good for you! I strongly considered it. My most expensive purchase ever was for a nice copy of Weird Tales #364, $100 if I remember correctly. (Since I purchased it, Internet Archive has put it up on their website, which had I known they were going to I'd have never spent that much.) So buying a copy of Hyperborea was not out of the question for me. But I feel responsible, having nominated it, to try to find these stories for little to no cost, and read them that way, since this method is what I recommend for those who don't want to (or can't) spend so much on the group read this month.

May I ask if you purchased the 1971 or the 1996 edition? The 1971 has the stories in order of internal chronology, the one I've set up for our reading. The 1996 edition has the order of stories in the order they were written by CAS, which is very different. Reading the stories in that order means the internal chronology will be skipped around in a lot, but has the advantage of presenting characters and world features in the order they were created by the author.

I got the 1971. I think the 1996 can be had for less (around $40 if I remember)

Dan wrote: "Thanks for that recommendation, Per. That site repeats but also adds a lot of information about Hyperborea. I especially like that it has a clearer map for me to print out. That map is just Lin Car..."

I read them in the order they were published, which made for even less sense. Oh, I don't remember if any of the Hyperborea stories got censored before publication or not, but the CAS site you have mentioned in the past usually always have uncensored originals.

I think all his short stories are available at eldritchdark (right?), but I am SO tempted to but the 1996-version now!

Nicolai Alexander wrote: "I think all his short stories are available at eldritchdark (right?), but I am SO tempted to but the 1996-version now!"

Wow! I failed to notice that. But yes. It seems that at the website http://www.eldritchdark.com/ one can find all of CAS's writing collected together linked from the right column, including the short stories listed in #2 above. Even the poems (different link on the right) and the story fragment are there. That solves one major problem. We have one place, at least, and no doubt others (like Internet Archive for original source and original illustrations) we can try if we prefer. Wonderful!

So... using the reading order in #2 above, we start easy, with the prose poem "The Muse of Hyperborea", only two paragraphs long, found here: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...

Then, the first short story, "The Seven Geases," can be found with the original illustrations in the original source (Weird Tales) as outlined above in message 5. Another web source that does not have those illustrations (text only) is here: http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/...

I finished the prose poem, "Muse of Hyperborea." Meh. It serves well enough as an introduction, I suppose.

I also finished the first story, "The Seven Geases," and am duly impressed. It was wonderful. A famous big game hunter and his party of 26 men picked a fight with the wrong sorcerer who then whammied the protagonist. The protagonist was forced to undergo seven compelled missions or quests, called geases by CAS.

I provided two sources for reading the story above. I strongly recommend reading it from the October 1934 copy of Weird Tales and not from the eldritch dark website. Not only does the website have a dozen or two typos in the text (Weird Tales has none), but the website doesn't include all the paragraph breaks. Believe me, longer paragraphs are not your friend in this story.

I can see why Lin Carter placed this story first in his edition. It serves as an introduction and first cursory look to many of the beings or characters I suspect we will be seeing in greater depth in the subsequent stories. I am surprised to discover that this is the longest story in the collection. It didn't feel that it went on long at all to me. The other stories will all be shorter, some of them significantly so. I'm not sure that can be considered a positive at all.

I should mention, I found it necessary to read the story twice. CAS's writing is so ornate it can (and did) become a distraction (on my first reading). I tried to ignore the beauty of his language to concentrate on the story more the second time and found it possible. The story is almost as rich as the writing.

Just finished the third selection in message #2 above. (By the way, I located a preferred or recommended source for every portion of Smith's Hyperborea Cycle and placed it all in #2. Check it out! Unless you're buying the book, I really think those links are the way to go.)

"The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan" (1932) was the best entry (admittedly of only three) so far. Five stars for sure. CAS has no trouble writing a scene. I pictured the entire story and all of its drama in my mind easily.

Avoosl Wuthoqquan is a miser who runs a pawn shop. He acquires two emeralds, but then has trouble holding on to them. I particularly enjoyed the return of Tsathoggua whom we met in the first geas from the previous story. Now we know more of this mysterious entity of whom CAS drew but only briefly featured. CAS's illustration of Tsathoggua was a part of entry #2 above, but I wonder if the drawing made its way into either book version. I also liked the fleshing out of the city of Commorium. I'm picturing a somewhat medieval version of London.

"The White Sybil" is a story of love unrequited. Every man (I can't speak for women) who has met and yearned for a woman, tried to woo her without success, and had to face and then come to terms with disappointment in love can see themselves in this wonderful fantasy tale. Powerful stuff! I have had the sad experience of three White Sybils in my life and count myself lucky for not having had more.

I have just read "The House of Haon-Dor," to which my reaction is, "What?" The story fragment appears to have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Hyperborea. I looked for an explanation of why it would be included and found the following:

The lengthiest fragment to survive is the fascinating “The House of Haon-Dor.” Smith includes the story in his list of entries in The Book of Hyperborea, but it has only a marginal connection to rest of the series since it takes place in the contemporary California Sierras. The fragment introduces Robert Faraway, a youth exploring an old hydraulic mining site who becomes fascinated with a strange abandoned cabin. The surviving synopsis continues the story, where the Hyperborean wizard Haon-Dor (encountered in “The Seven Geases”) possesses Faraway with a vampiric spirit. The fragment shows that Smith had considerable skill describing his own physical world (Northern California), and his prose portrait of the lonely hydraulic mining site remains a potent one. Unfortunately, the illness of Smith’s parents caused him to abandon this story, which had the potential to mix together the two worlds in which he lived: his real one and his literary one.

In short, it's included because CAS counts the full story as Hyperborean. Had he completed the story, CAS planned tie one of the characters in the fragment, Robert Faraway, to a sorcerer named Haon-Dor in "The Seven Geases." But the fragment never mentions Haon-Dor or any other aspect of Hyperborea. I think Lin Carter right not to have included it in his edition (1971).

That all said, I read the fragment and find nothing to recommend it. There's nothing wrong with it; it's just the first part of an incomplete story set in California.

oh sweet Goodness. I read the 7 geas, and whaaaaaat a story that is! Totally expected him to emerge right in front of his men, too. Totally in love with the detail, the story, the increasingly incorporeal, for lack of better terms, deities... Google says Geas is pronounced with a h and each vowel like in regular languages, e as in deity and a as in real. Did I get that right?

"Geas" is apparently derived from Gaelic and is pronounced "gesh" except that short e sounds like it may be drawn out a bit, making it almost like "gaysh". Maybe halfway between those two would be ideal. If you know the way an Egyptian would say "army" in Arabic, I'd say you're right on the money.

I just finished "The Testament of Athammaus" and I have to say every story so far has been gold. I was glad to see the hunted Voormis from the first story feature again in this one, not to mention the cameo by our frog-like god Tsathoggua. But the heart of the story is the struggle between the villain, Knygathin Zhaum, and the protagonist, King Loquamethros's highly competent executioner, Athammaus.

This is the most horrifying story I have yet read written by CAS. I remain in awe again of CAS's writing ability. Lovecraft has the higher reputation, but seriously, I don't think of Smith as being one scintilla less skilled at craft, and I think he tells better stories in terms of plot. I absolutely can't believe he had trouble getting magazines of the time to accept and publish these.

2. The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan
This story is also incredibly graphic, just imagining all these colorful shiny gems and all these colorful surroundings and the ugly pale - what IS he that's all pale, fat, squat, with the head of a toad? anyway, just imagining all of that is enthralling.

Right. Lord Tsathoggua.

The White Sybil. A haunting, strange, beautiful story. Dan mentioned unrequited love. I also saw the fragility of the divine confronted by an effort of posessing it, bespoiling that which should not be touched. Also, the foreshadowing of the glaciers about to wipe everything away. Such beautiful tales!

3. The Testament of Athammaus. What a terrifying story! kept imagining it manga-style, with that dread lizardman from outer space growing out like a mad tentacled Aliened version of Tetsuo. These are excellent, colorful stories. I am so glad you suggested this awesome book!

That ending!!!!! (view spoiler)[ "But seeing at last that the professional problem which it offered was quite insoluble; and divining moreover that Commoriom was now entirely without a king, a judicial system, a constabulary or a people, I finally abandoned the doomed city and followed the others" (hide spoiler)]

Yes. (You may want to put spoiler brackets around that last post, Zina.) That was not the ending I was expecting at all. (view spoiler)["And we all gave up and fled for our lives. The End." (hide spoiler)] ??? I can't imagine CAS is going to leave the situation at that by the end of the next story!

I think this is the first time I have ever read a story from a king's executioner's point of view, with that character being a sympathetic protagonist. Usually executioners have no personality, and we loathe them for beheading a character we like: one of King Henry's wives, for example.

Dan wrote: "Yes. (You may want to put spoiler brackets around that last post, Zina.) That was not the ending I was expecting at all. [spoilers removed] ??? I can't imagine CAS is going to leave the situation a..."
BTW I read a whole set of excellent books by Gene Wolf, the Book of New Sun, centered around an executioner.

Hey, I'm sorry for my absence this month. I am very excited that you wanted to read CAS, and it's fun to read your reviews so far, but I need to get back to you with my own thoughts on this collection later. You see, I much, much, much prefer reading physical copies, and I don't own a copy of this one yet. I do want to buy it, but it's very expensive for me at the moment. I intend to buy one later, though, if possible, so I hope that it's okay that I instead respond at some point down the line in the unforeseeable future.

Nicolai Alexander wrote: "Hey, I'm sorry for my absence this month. I am very excited that you wanted to read CAS, and it's fun to read your reviews so far, but I need to get back to you with my own thoughts on this collect..." I think you will LOVE it! These are SUCH good tales! So fun!

Yes. I'm enjoying these so much more than Zothique, also long out of print, which we (meaning me) read as a group years ago. It's funny how what ties these tales together is a place rather than a returning character. It's like Hyperborea is a character.

I get that you don't like reading stories from links on a computer screen (assuming you don't know how to side-load pdf files into your e-reader). One option I was considering that I still am considering is making my own book by printing out the pages myself. For the 11 stories--and the other stuff is barely worth reading, for completists only--they average 10 pages each. That would be printing out about 110 pages, which seems reasonable. That way you get the wonderful magazine illustrations the books no doubt skip with the stories.

The white worm is an awesome little story. I was left a bit less enthralled by the story of they guy that found the orb of that old magician, mentioned by the mad arab Abdul Alhazred. My imagination just kept bringing me the orb from the Science of Discworld and ruined the impression. The combination of imaginative terrain and beings with wicked sarcastic humor in the story of the Saturn is awesome!

I agree. "The White Worm" was the first sub-four-star story for me, obtaining but three and a half. I still enjoyed it immensely, but for the first time felt more words were used than necessary to tell the story.

My favorite part of the story was the "at first there were seven, then six aspect. Now there are only five..." and so on, all the way down to Evaugh, our hero.

I also enjoyed seeing the northern region Mhu Thulan for the first time. Apparently, it is the main part of Hyperborea for finding sorcerers.

We also see Eibon here for the first time (I think) in the last paragraph. He is our story's narrator, having obtained the account of the white worm from the spirit of a previous sorcerer, Evagh. It's a shame what happened to Evagh. Apparently, Smith never got the memo stating the rule that in every horror story there has to be a survivor at the end. Usually there's only one, but there always is at least one.

According to the Hyperborea Wiki, Eibon, the lead Mhu Thulan sorcerer of all time, is about to become the most important character in Hyperborea for us the rest of the way out. He is the principle character for these tales apparently. We just haven't seen him until now because Lin Carter arranged these stories in internal chronological order.

I wonder if we are to see Ezdagor again, the sorcerer who gave Ralibar Vooz his seven geases.

And with "Ubbo-Sathla" (1933) we are at three stars. I liked the characters, the setting, greatly appreciate that CAS now makes concrete that Hyperborea is pre-historic Greenland. I love the concept of the great sorcerer Eibon, and that he wrote The Book of Eibon, which can be found somewhere in modern times, according to Paul Tregardis, perhaps in a translation.

My only problem with the story is that it's really not. A story that is. Just like that last sentence wasn't really. A sentence that is. There is no antagonist, no clear blockage to a goal that Paul Tregardis (of our day) is trying to overcome. Nothing. I can see why CAS had difficulties placing this for publication. If he were collecting his stories in a collection, this could be a gap-bridger, a filler. How strange that CAS thought this a marketable story.

Fascinating stuff!

To be fair, the antagonist in this story is the natural order of things, if you will.(view spoiler)[ He is searching for forbidden knowledge. He finds it. It irrevocably throws him back into primordial soupdom, and he can't even buzz "helllp meee" (hide spoiler)]. I did not like that story a whole lot, and the vision of the bearded wizards from the Unseen University peering into the ball and making baffled noises severely undermined the movie my mind was creating out of this. That is not CAS fault, of course, that Terry Pratchett had wizards and a ball and snow in it, or that my stupid mind can't stop imagining wrong things.

I enjoyed "The Door to Saturn" (1932) more, 3.5 stars. It is about sorcerer Eibon's trying to avoid high priest Morghi's persecution of him for heresy. Eibon pays homage to an ancient god named Zhothaqquah who is probably an alien who came to Hyperborea by way of Saturn. Morghi is an Inquisitor that would make a 16th century Spaniard proud and wants to bring Eibon to justice for his sacrileges. He therefore pursues Eibon through a portal leading to another world. They come to difficulties and find themselves having to team up to make it back to their home.

While I enjoyed the story, it seemed to me to be the one most like the literature found in the New Weird period of 1991-2010 of any story so far. It's basically a travelogue so that CAS can world-build and describe strange beings in this other dimension the two enemies find themselves transported into. That's similar in plot to a lot of New Weird novels and stories I could name.

It is enhanced here because CAS's writing is such a pleasure to read. However, on this occasion many of CAS's rhetorical flourishes seem to have been tamped down. I'm finding myself sometimes able to go 300 or even 500 words before needing to consult a dictionary instead of the usual 100 to 150 words. Those who like New Weird fiction will find a lot to appreciate in this imaginative travel story.

"The Ice-Demon" (1933) *** was a treasure hunt tale told in more words than I expected for what it was. Three men brave the northern wilderness in a hunt for precious gems only to discover that the gems are protected from acquisition by unexplained supernatural forces that set the land and environment against them. Their greed causes them to try to overcome these forces.

The pacing here was a bit slow for me. Also, men against the environment stories are common, especially in adventure stories, but aside from a few of Jack London's works, I've never seen them pulled off particularly well. This story was okay, but London did it better. The story also didn't add much to our knowledge of Hyperborea.

The Ice Demon reminded me of the house in the House of Leaves. A place with agency, of malevolent nature, changing its geometry

Zina wrote: "The Ice Demon reminded me of the house in the House of Leaves. A place with agency, of malevolent nature, changing its geometry"

Yeah, that was unusual, how Smith made the ice starting in the form of an encroaching glacier the antagonist. I think what defused the story was the fact we don't particularly like the protagonists--who roots for people motivated solely by greed?--so we don't care about the danger they're in.

The Tale of Satampra Zeiros (1931) *****

This was a wonderful story describing the latter fate of the frog-like god Tsathoggua. I am so glad we are using the internal chronology supplied by Lin Carter. This story was published in 1931, but clearly follows decades, perhaps even a century or two, after the events related in "The White Sybil" (1934). I find my earlier prediction that the capital Commorium would have to soon be made habitable somehow was completely wrong, since at the time of this story it still isn't.

Again, as in the last story, CAS's protagonists are greedy thieves I find difficulty sympathizing with. Nevertheless, the action is more direct, and I don't think the story suffers from that lack of sympathy, not even for the protagonist who loses his right hand. It occurs to me that the writing of these stories is mostly the early 1930s, the worst years of the Great Depression. Perhaps CAS is using desperate protagonists down on their luck who can only manage economic security by stealing because of what was happening in society around him. It's strange to see society at work in Smith's stories this way, if I am indeed right, because these tales are in no other way products of their time. CAS could be writing for future decades and centuries, so timeless is his artistry in terms of writing craft.

"The Theft of the Thirty-nine Girdles" (1958) ***

Another thief's heist story and not particularly remarkable on its own. This time golden girdles are the loot rather than gems.

And that finishes Hyperborea as far as I'm concerned. I place the last story, "The Abominations of Yondo" (1926) as #11 above in Message 2 because Will Murray includes it in his collection. Lin Carter (correctly in my opinion) does not. If the story has any relation to Hyberporea, having read it, I could not determine what it might have been.

I am glad I failed to notice how difficult of acquisition this book was when I nominated it. Otherwise, I would not have. I learned a lesson from that.

The prose poems, synopses, and fragments add nothing meaningful to the Hyperborea story in my opinion. If I were to reissue the book, I might include all that stuff in an appendix with a terse explanation for why. For me, Hyperborea consists of the ten short stories numbered one through ten above (message 2). Nothing more is needed.

That said, these ten stories read something like a novel with the land of Hyperborea being the linking protagonist between them, although many of the characters do repeat. The collected stories are simply magic. Five stars. This is a classic in fantasy literature every bit as worthy as anything Tolkien ever wrote was. In addition, it is as well-crafted as anything Lovecraft ever wrote was. The plots and world-building bear comparison to Robert E. Howard's.

This book needs to be republished in a new edition, hopefully with the stories presented in Lin Carter's order as I have it above. If there is any justice in the publishing world, one day that will come to pass. When it does, I will pre-order the hardback version for keeping and referring to.

My review, which might look familiar to readers of this thread: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I agree! Fabulous fantasy! Made me forget myself and just immerse into the stories, in wonder and awe. I think, after the House of Leaves this is my #2 most favorite read from this group.