Clark Ashton Smith – online!

Pretty d*** cool – if you haven’t ever read him – he was one of the ‘big three’ way back in Weird Tales days – the other two (better known than CAS) were H.P. Lovecraft (Cthulhu sushi, anyone? Tastes better than Soylent Green! :)) and Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian).

I had never heard of CAS myself until reading Stephen King’s ‘Different Seasons’ many many years ago – Different Seasons is really four novellas, the first 3 of which have since been made into movies – bu the fourth story – ‘The Breathing Method‘ – has not. If you’ve read it, you probably know why. But several times through the story King references CAS alien landscapes and settings, which got me interested in finding some stories to read.

Given no convenient ‘internets’ to check out at the time – I went to the next best thing – Powell’s Books – which actually had some used paperbacks (imagine that) – CAS is often as hard to find on the stacks as Philip K. Dick and for a while there, I was thinking CAS was harder to find than Kilgore Trout books. But, thankfully other fans exist out there too and besides the existing paperbacks here and there, a few hardback story collections have been put together. CAS didn’t write novels – only short stories and poetry.

Anyway, check out some of the stories here and enjoy – after which you may be ready to find a copy of The City of the Singing Flame all your own…..

candybowl

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