3. FW, letter to CAS, August 10, 1937 (ms, private collection).
The Great God Awto
Clark Ashton Smith was not fond of modern technology. For most of his life he lived without electricity or indoor plumbing, let alone a telephone, a radio, or an automobile. He harbored a strong dislike of the last listed invention. Consider the following excerpts from his letters:
I have not heard that the Indians were responsible for the fire; but I did talk with eyewitnesses who saw it start from a lighted cigarette that was tossed into the wayside grain by a passing auto, in which were four boys (unfortunately, not identified).… Crackers were popping merrily in Auburn all day and all night on the Fourth, and also on Sunday. And when I went in Sunday evening, the streets were a torrent of autos. After what I had been through, the reckless idiocy of the merry-making public simply made me boil. I fear that such conditions, and all their accompanying hazards, are going to get worse instead of better.
1
So Sultan Malik [
E. Hoffmann Price
] has gone into the garage business! Shades of the Silver Peacock and the Hashishins! Well, perhaps he is displaying a modicum of wisdom at that. No matter how serious the depression becomes, the U.S. population will go on running its chariots till the last tire blows out and the ultimate half-pint of gas is exhausted.
2
And speaking of the Peacock Sultan, Lovecraft referred to E. Hoffmann Price’s 1928 Model “A” Ford as “Great Juggernaut.” It is apparent that “The Great God Awto” is an in-joke to a considerable extent, but one in which Smith’s sardonic and biting humor runs loose like a—, well, like a juggernaut. The story probably dates from the summer of 1937, when CAS wrote that “I have some science fiction (satire) under way at present; but confess that I don’t find it very congenial.”4 “The Great God Awto” was collected posthumously in TSS. The only surviving typescript among Smith’s papers at the John Hay Library was prepared by his wife, Carol, sometime during the 1950s, so the current text was taken from the February 1940 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories.
1. CAS, letter to Genevieve K. Sully, July 9, 1931 (SL 155–157).
2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. late February-early March 1934 (SL 252).
3. See E. Hoffmann Price, Book of the Dead. Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others (Memories of the Pulp Era). Ed. Peter Ruber (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 2001): p. 53.
4. CAS, letter to AWD, September 8, 1937 (ms, SHSW).
Strange Shadows
After reading this story it would appear that Clark Ashton Smith was trying to write a story that would be acceptable to John W. Campbell and Unknown, but it is not known if any of the three known versions were ever submitted anywhere.1 Three versions of the story exist, the third of which (with the variant title of “I Am Your Shadow”) is incomplete. We present version two, the latest complete version of the story available. The conclusion of “I Am Your Shadow,” along with the complete text of version one, may be found in Appendix 5.
1. This would seem to be the case from a letter Smith wrote to Derleth dated November 23, 1941 (ms, SHSW) that states “I am finding it easier to work now and have the ending of a tale (suitable, I think, for Unknown Worlds) which has baffled me for close to 18 months.” Its position on Smith’s log of completed stories would not invalidate this, as Smith would sometimes list a tale in the order it was started, not finished.
The Enchantress of Sylaire
Very little information is available concerning the writing of this story, Clark Ashton Smith’s final tale of Averoigne, which saw print in the July 1941 issue of Weird Tales. It does not appear in the table of contents for a proposed collection that Smith entitled Averoigne Chronicles, although a story with the similar title of “The Sorceress of Averoigne” does appear.1 An outline for a story with this title, which Steve Behrends dates to October 1930, exists, but it bears little resemblance to the current story outside of the use of a mirror for divination.2 “The Enchantress of Sylaire” appears to have been written between the summer of 1938 and Farnsworth Wright’s firing as editor of Weird Tales in February 1940, since Smith mentions that WT had two of his stories in its stock of forthcoming stories (see note for “The Coming of the White Worm”).3 The text of the story’s appearance in the July 1941 issue of WT was consulted, along with its appearance in AY.
1. BB item 60.
2. SS pp. 144–146.
3. CAS, letter to Margaret and Ray St. Clair, February 22, 1940 (SL 328).
Double Cosmos
Although Clark Ashton Smith did not complete “Double Cosmos” until March 25, 1940, he had worked on it at intervals for several years. Back in 1934, when Smith still harbored hopes that Astounding Stories might yet become a regular market for his stories, he received a tip about one of Assistant Editor Desmond Hall’s pet subjects from August Derleth: “Thanks for the tip about Desmond Hall’s medical prepossessions. I am preparing a yarn with a semi-medical interest, dealing with a chemist who invents a strange, terrific drug that enables him to see the reality of the cosmos in toto. The revelation is rather staggering.... ‘Secondary Cosmos’ is the title: our universe proving but a sort of vestigial appendage of the real world, overlapping into a subsidiary space.”1 Smith apparently drew upon the following entries in his Black Book. He called the first one “The Rift:” “A man who sees, following a brain-operation, a rift in the material world through which mysterious beings pass in enigmatic traffic. The rift is visible wherever he goes, as a sort of charm, in streets, buildings, fields, etc.”The entry immediately following “The Rift” is even more relevant: “A scientist who, investigating the so-called 4th dimension, discovers that he himself is merely a sort of organ or extension of a being that fruitions in this other world. He is, so to speak, a rather useless vestigial tail or appendix and, at a certain stage in the being’s evolution, this organ is to be discarded; this act of shedding entails the death of the investigator.” With Smith’s typical misanthropy, the title of this one was “The Appendix.”2
The story was set aside for three years. Smith described his current literary program in another letter to Derleth: “I am trying to finish a science fiction story, Secondary Cosmos, which I began two years ago; and may also add a third tale, The Rebirth of the Flame, to my Singing Flame stories. Other tales, begun and thoroughly plotted, are The Alkahest, and Sharia: a Tale of the Lost Planet. The last-named has great possibilities, I feel. Recent revisions include The Maze of the Enchanter, which I have pruned by more than a thousand words for re-submission to Esquire and W.T.”3
Smith didn’t do much with the story after its completion. He admitted that “None of the present fantasy markets (Unknown is the best, I guess) appeal to me greatly….”4 He later told Derleth that he had given the story to agent Julius Schwartz Jr. to sell, but did not know the story’s status.5 “Double Cosmos” remained unpublished until it was published in Robert M. Price’s fanzine Crypt of Cthulhu in 1983. It was included in SS.
1. CAS, letter to AWD, June 28, 1934 (ms, SHSW).
2. BB items 37 and 38.