Title: The Fantasy Fan November 1934
Author: Charles D. Hornig, - To be updated
Language: English
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                            THE FANTASY FAN

                        THE FANS' OWN MAGAZINE

                               Published
                                Monthly

                       Editor: Charles D. Hornig
                   (Managing Editor: Wonder Stories)

                            10 cents a copy
                            $1.00 per year

             137 West Grand Street, Elizabeth, New Jersey

                             Vol. 2, No. 3
                            November, 1934
                             Whole No. 15



                           A SAD, SAD STORY

Once upon a time, a year ago last summer, to be more specific, I had
money to burn, but rather than burn it, I decided to launch an attack
upon the fantasy-loving public in the form of a fan magazine. You've
guessed it--the result was none other than THE FANTASY FAN. I placed
enough capital in the venture to start it off. Needless to say, I
was disappointed with the results, as far as circulation goes--it's
always that way. Inexperience with the publishing game allows for
pretty pictures of people just dying to send in their dollars to
your new magazine, but the cold facts certainly throw ice-water on
air-castles. Experience shows that a publisher must fight for every
subscription. It is filled with disappointments and hard knocks. After
all, magazines are luxuries, particularly fiction magazines, and even
more particularly fan magazines--and people can't afford luxuries
during times when they can just about secure money enough to live on.
Fantastic fiction magazines have never been huge successes with the
general public, whose average intelligence is that of a moron. The
lovers of fantasy have a higher type of intellect, and are therefore
very few in number. I doubt that there are 150,000 people in this
country of 125,000,000 who can really appreciate the science and weird
fiction that is published in contemporary magazines. They are what you
call 'class' publications. And not one reader in five hundred of these
fantasy magazines is the least bit interested in the "fan" angle--but
those of them that are are loyal to the last. Each of them is worth
fifty ordinary readers. They are the only ones that are interested
in the fan magazines, so you can see why the aforementioned fan
magazines will never boast of circulations comparing with _Liberty_
or the _Saturday Evening Post_ or pay $500 for a cover illustration.
Therefore, the only way to keep fan magazines is to secure every
available _active_ fan, those rare specimens, and keep them together in
one big family. Of course, a few more spring up every here and there
when otherwise normal people discover that there _is_ such a thing as
fantasy fiction and fan magazines.

What I started out to say was that I had money to burn when I organized
THE FANTASY FAN and didn't mind it running in the red for a year. And
so it has. And so it continues. I kept putting money in, and putting
money in, never taking a cent out--never regretting the loss (nor do
I today, nor consider it loss). I have enjoyed sacrificing hundreds
of dollars (and that's not sarcasm) and devoting much of my time to
gathering and assorting material for each issue.

But--and here's the reason for all this quibbling--domestic
circumstances now prevent from taking any more money from my own pocket
to donate to the cause, and the only way that THE FANTASY FAN can
continue publication is to pay for itself. Of course, the circulation
has gone up way past the mark where it half pays for the issue,
certain months--due to advertising in Wonder Stories Science Fiction
Swap Column under cover and the mention that Farnsworth Wright gave
THE FANTASY FAN is in the Eyrie in the September 1934 issue of Weird
Tales, not to speak of the co-operation of the readers we already
had--but that is not enough. Now, my printer is a very nice fellow and
prints THE FANTASY FAN for a very low price that cannot be duplicated
anywhere, and it really does not cost so much to run TFF, when compared
to the more professional magazines. I can guarantee you one thing,
though: if every reader we now have would subscribe (if he has not
already done so) and secure at least one new subscriber, we could
continue monthly publication indefinitely.

So, if you really like our little publication, will you do your best to
help bring in the subscriptions? The next issue will be published in
anywhere from three weeks to two months, depending entirely upon cash
receipts. And here is an amazing fact--every dollar sent in actually
brings the next issue _days_ nearer publication. What do you say?
Wouldn't you hate to see THE FANTASY FAN break off publication, and
right in the middle of Lovecraft's article, too? I know I would. It's
become one of the family with me and if anything should happen to it, I
believe I'd put a crepe on the door.

                                                   Your Sincere Friend,
                                                             THE EDITOR

       *       *       *       *       *


                          CLARK ASHTON SMITH

                          An Autobiographette

I am inclined to think that my life is a pretty good exemplification
of the theories propounded by Lester Anderson in his interesting and
provocative article on Superstition. Anyhow, I was born on Friday the
13th, under Capricornus and Saturn, and have been flirting with most
of the other orthodox jinxes ever since. I do not whistle in the dark,
I have never gone in for Dream Books or psychoanalysis, and I make a
habit of walking under ladders when it is more convenient to do this
than circumambulate the obstruction. As to black cats--well, I have
owned one for many years--a most sinister-looking creature, with all
the aspects of an old-time wizard's familiar. Perhaps all this may help
to explain the kumiss in the cocoanut, and may account for my ability
to peruse the most horrendous stuff without batting an eyelash. Also
(since there are modern superstitions as well as ancient ones) it may
throw a light on my complete lack of faith in the Five year plan,
EPIC, and all other cockeyed Utopian schemes. Moreover, it may help to
explain my open mind in regard to all outre and inexplicable phenomena,
and the fact that I can take the theories of Einstein, as well as of
modern science in general, with a salutary pinch of saline seasoning.

       *       *       *       *       *


                            OUR READERS SAY

In order to save space for more articles, starting with this issue,
letters will be abbreviated.

"You and your associates have done a highly commendable job under
rather trying conditions and you may well be proud of your work."--H.
Koenig, New York, N.Y.

"THE FANTASY FAN is showing itself, all white cover and everything.
I find it more interesting to see a publication grown than to
find a brand-new mag on the market that perhaps may not last six
months."--Gertrude Hemken, Chicago, Ill.

"I wish to congratulate you for the start of a second year for
THE FANTASY FAN and I hope it will continue for many, many more
years."--Julius Hopkins, Washington, D.C.

"Your issue of articles, the First Anniversary Number, is one of your
most interesting yet, I think--a fine selection of features for both
weird and science fan."--Forrest J. Ackerman, San Francisco, Calif.

"The Anniversary issue, with the many new items and the glossy cover,
certainly marks a big step forward, and any lengthening of Lovecraft's
treatise is always welcome."--Duane W. Rimel, Asotin, Wash.

"THE FANTASY FAN has been improving steadily, and the first (and
only) fault, that of too much science fiction material, has been
eliminated."--Emil Petaja, Milltown, Mont.

"I was delighted with the First Anniversary Issue. It surely was neatly
done and had a dandy line-up. However, I missed the usual bit of
fiction."--F. Lee Baldwin, Asotin, Wash.

"I enjoyed all the articles in the last THE FANTASY FAN, as well as the
fantasies by Barlow and Morse. The slick cover has a pleasing effect,
indeed, though I liked the coloured ones, too."--Clark Ashton Smith,
Auburn, Calif.

       *       *       *       *       *


                           WITHIN THE CIRCLE

                           by F. Lee Baldwin

"The Red Brain" by Donald Wandrei is one of a long cosmic series most
of which is unpublished.

H. P. Lovecraft wrote 35 "Fungi from Yuggoth" in 1929 and 1930. _The
Fantasy Fan_ is going to print some of those which WT didn't take.

Farnsworth Wright has been a visitor in Seattle, Washington.

During the month of August, Clark Ashton Smith fought a terrible wood
and grass fire on his ranch.... He wrote fiction--of a more realistic
cast than some of his present work--as early as 1910 and 1911; some
of it appearing in the defunct _Black Cat_. He dropped prose entirely
until 1925 when he wrote "The Abominations of Yondo" (rejected by WT
and published in the _Overland Monthly_) and "Sadastor" (also rejected
by WT but later accepted by them and published).

_Weird Tales_ has on hand "The Hand of Wrath" by E. Hoffmann Price....
He and Otis Adelbert Kline have collaborated in a Mexican weird
novelette. It features Bart Leslie--Two Gun Bart--one of Kline's
heroes. You will recall that he was featured in "The Demon of Tlaxpam"
in WT a few years ago.... Price has also collaborated with Frank
Belknap Long, Jr., on a weird novelette which is on a "visit" to
_Astounding Stories_. He is about to write a serial and a novelette;
interplanetary, and Far East, respectively.

Forrest Ackerman can produce, at his pleasure, hour long programs, of
weird and fantastic voices and sequences. He has recently added to his
set of sound-discs from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", the complete set
of records from the weird-scientific film drama, "Frankenstein". He
also possesses the thrilling story of Im-Ho-Tep--the Egyptian, dead
26 centuries, returned to life--featuring the weird voice of Boris
Karloff; "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and the grotesque "Old Dark House".

Two youthful Merritt fans burglarized the basement of a certain
Carnegie Library and made off with old _Science and Inventions_
containing "The Metal Emperor".

Robert E. Howard's occupation is fiction-writing, though he helps his
father (a physician) attend to a small farm on the outskirts of Cross
Plains, Texas. He is 27 years old and has led a somewhat roving and
adventurous life. He is an amateur athlete and boxer; is very fond of
fighting and believes barbarism to be preferable to civilization. He
is a profound historic student, and an authority on the folklore and
tradition of the Southwest.

August W. Derleth is 24--U. of Wis. graduate and lives in Sauk City,
Wis. He is gaining fame in magazines of select quality with serious
reminiscent regional fiction and poetry. He writes mystery books
besides fantasy.

       *       *       *       *       *


                              ON FANTASY

                         by Clark Ashton Smith

We have been told that literature dealing with the imaginative and
fantastic is out of favour among the Intellectuals, whoever they are.
Only the Real, whatever that is or may be, is admissible for treatment;
and writers must confine themselves to themes well within the range
of statisticians, lightning calculators, Freud and Kraft-Ebbing, the
Hearst and McFadden publications, NRA, and mail-order catalogues.
Chimeras are no longer the mode, the infinite has been abolished;
mystery is obsolete, and sphinx and medusa are toys for children. The
weird and the unearthly are outlawed, and all mundane impossibilities
(which, it may be, are the commonplaces of the Pleiads) have been
banished to some limbo of literalistic derision. One may write of
horses and hippopotami but not of hippogriffs; of biographers, but
not of ghouls; of slum-harlots or the hetairai of Nob Hill but not
of succubi. In short, all pipe-dreams, all fantasies not authorized
by Freudianism, by sociology, and the five senses, are due for
the critical horse-laugh, when, through ignorance, effrontery, or
preference, they find a place in the subject-matter of some author
unlucky enough to have been born into the age of Jeffers, Hemingway,
and Joyce.

Let us examine these amazing dicta, fathered, as they must be, by
people whose literal-mindedness can be surpassed only by that of their
"four-footed betters." Surely it is axiomatic that in thought or art
we deal not with things themselves, but with concepts of things. One
may write, like Villon, of Muckle Meg and the Fair Helm-Maker; or, like
Sterling, evoke Lilith and the blue-eyed vampire: in either case, only
figments of the poet's mind are presented. It is for the creator, not
the critic, to choose that image or symbol which suits him best. People
who cannot endure anything with a tinge of trope or fantasy, should
confine their reading to the census-returns. There, if anywhere, they
will find themselves on safe ground.

To touch on other considerations: Why this thirst for literalism, for
nothing but direct anthropological data, which would proscribe the
infinitudes of imagination, would bar all that can lift us, even in
thought, above the interests of the individual or the species? Does
it not imply a sort of cosmic provincialism, an overweening racial
egomania?

Indeed, if all things fantastic or impossible are to be barred as
literary subject-matter, where is one to draw the line? Many thinkers
who lived before Freud, and some who live contemporaneously with him,
have maintained that the world itself is a fantasy; or, in De Casseres'
phrase, a "superstition of the senses." Gaultier has pointed out that
we live only by illusion, by a process of seeing ourselves and all
things as they are not. The animals alone, being without imagination,
have no escape from reality. From paretic to psychoanalyst, from poet
to ragpicker, we are all in flight from the real. Truth is what we
desire it to be, and the facts of life are a masquerade in which we
imagine that we have identified the maskers. The highest intellects
have always delighted in poetic fantasy and philosophic paradox,
knowing well that the universe itself is multiform fantasy and paradox,
and that everything perceived or conceived as actuality is merely
one phase of that which has or may have innumerable aspects. In this
phantom whirl of the infinite, among these veils of Maya that are
sevenfold behind sevenfold, nothing is too absurd, too lovely, or
dreadful to be impossible.

       *       *       *       *       *


                   SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE

                          by H. P. Lovecraft

                   (copyright 1927 by W. Paul Cook)


                             Part Fourteen

The collaborators Erckmann-Chatrain enriched French literature with
many spectral fancies like "The Man Wolf," in which a transmitted curse
works toward its end in a traditional Gothic-castle setting. Their
power of creating a shuddering midnight atmosphere was tremendous
despite a tendency toward natural explanations and scientific wonders;
and few short tales contain greater horror than "The Invisible Eye,"
where a malignant old hag weaves nocturnal hypnotic spells which induce
the successive occupants of a certain inn chamber to hang themselves
on a crossbeam. "The Owl's Ear" and "The Waters of Death" are full
of engulfing darkness and mystery, the latter embodying the familiar
overgrown-spider theme so frequently employed by weird fictionists.
Villiers de l'Isle Adam likewise followed the macabre school; his
"Torture by Hope," the tale of a stake-condemned prisoner permitted to
escape in order to feel the pangs of recapture, being held by some to
constitute the most harrowing short story in literature. This type,
however, is less a part of the weird tradition than a class peculiar
to itself--the so-called _conte cruel_, in which the wrenching of the
emotions is accomplished through dramatic tantalizations, frustrations,
and gruesome physical horrors. Almost wholly devoted to this form is
the living writer Maurice Level, whose very brief episodes have lent
themselves so readily to theatrical adaptation in the "thrillers" of
the Grand Guignol. As a matter of fact, the French genius is more
naturally suited to this dark realism than to the suggestion of the
unseen; since the latter process requires, for its best and most
sympathetic development on a large scale, the inherent mysticism of the
Northern mind.

A very flourishing, though till recently quite hidden branch of
weird literature, is that of the Jews, kept alive and nourished in
obscurity by the sombre heritage of early Eastern magic, apocalyptic
literature, and cabbalism. The Semitic mind, like the Celtic and
Teutonic, seems to possess marked mystical inclinations; and the
wealth of underground horror-lore surviving in ghettoes and synagogues
must be much more considerable than is generally imagined. Cabbalism
itself, so prominent during the Middle Ages, is a system of philosophy
explaining the universe as emanations of the Deity, and involving the
existence of strange spiritual realms and beings apart from the visible
world, of which dark glimpses may be obtained through certain secret
incantations. Its ritual is bound up with mystical interpretations of
the Old Testament, and attributes an esoteric significance to each
letter of the Hebrew alphabet--a circumstance which has imparted to
Hebrew letters a sort of spectral glamour and potency in the popular
literature of magic. Jewish folklore has preserved much of the terror
and mystery of the past, and when more thoroughly studied is likely
to exert considerable influence on weird fiction. The best examples of
its literary use so far are the tale of "The Golem" by Gustav Meyrink,
and the drama "The Dybbuk" by the Jewish writer using the pseudonym
"Ansky". The former, widely popularised through the cinema a few years
ago, treats of a legendary artificial giant made and animated by a
medieval rabbin of Prague according to a cryptic formula. The latter,
translated and produced in America in 1925 describes with singular
power the possession of a living body by the evil soul of a dead
man. Both golems and dybbuks are fixed types, and serve as frequent
ingredients of later Jewish tradition.

(The next issue of THE FANTASY FAN will be dedicated to Edgar Allan
Poe, in which will be published an instalment of Mr. Lovecraft's
article about four times as long as this one, all dealing with this
father of the fantastic. Don't miss part fifteen.)

       *       *       *       *       *

                     Subscribe to THE FANTASY FAN
                         only a dollar a year
                     Insure yourself of your copy
                     only a limited number printed
                   and the supply does not last long

                           "Our Readers Say"
                        is open to all--use it
                   Your suggestions, criticisms, and
                      opinions are always welcome

                   The Best Authors of Weird Fiction
                        contribute regularly to
                            THE FANTASY FAN
                  Tell your fantasy friends about it

       *       *       *       *       *


                           THE DEMONIAN FACE

                         by Clark Ashton Smith

About 1918 I was in ill health and, during a short visit to San
Francisco, was sitting one day in the Bohemian Club, to which I had
been given a guest's card of admission. Happening to look up, I saw
a frightful demonian face with twisted rootlike eyebrows and oblique
fiery-slitted eyes, which seemed to emerge momentarily from air about
nine feet above me and lean toward my seat. The thing disappeared as
it approached me, but left an ineffaceable impression of malignity,
horror, and loathsomeness. If an hallucination, it was certainly seen
amid appropriate surroundings; if an actual entity, it was no doubt
the kind that would be likely to haunt a club in one of our modern
Gomorrahs.

       *       *       *       *       *

                            Back Numbers Of
                            THE FANTASY FAN
                          are still available
                        See the ad in the rear
                          of the magazine for
                      issues available and prices

                              WEIRD TALES
                  is the only magazine on the market
                           today presenting
                     really literary weird fiction
                      masterpieces of the macabre
                             and unearthly
                               Boost it
                       and help its circulation
                        by securing new readers

                      Tell Your Friends about TFF

       *       *       *       *       *


                           WEIRD WHISPERINGS

                       by Schwartz and Weisinger

_Pen Names_

Ronal Kayser, who has been writing for _Weird Tales_ under the pen-name
of Dale Clark, has now dropped his pseudonym and will hereafter use
his own name.... Greye La Spina had five stories in the first issue
of that old fantasy magazine, _The Thrill Book_.... Four of these
tales appeared under various pseudonyms, but the cover design story
was published under her own name.... G. G. Pendarves, famous weird
author, is the pen-name of an English_woman_.... Her real name is Miss
G. Gordon Trenery; she is now selling stories to some of the English
magazines under the name of Gordon Trenery.... And remember Hugh
Davidson, author of "The Vampire Master," "Snake Man," and other WT
thrillers? Well, Davidson is the pseudonym for none other than Edmond
Hamilton!


_Weird News_

Winford Publications' new weird magazine, out in about two months,
will sell for fifteen cents a copy, and is tentatively titled _Mystery
Novels Monthly_. It will feature a book-length mystery novel each
issue, but all the shorter stories will be of a strictly weird nature.
J. Silberkeit is the editor.... Miss C. L. Moore has returned to
'Northwest' Smith as a character in a new story titled "Julhi," which
will probably appear in the February WT.... Nat Schachner, besides
writing science fiction and weird-mystery yarns for _Astounding_,
_Dime Mystery_, and _Terror Tales_, likewise writes quite regularly
for _Super Detective_.... E. Hoffmann Price sells consistently to the
new mag, _Spicy Detective Stories_.... _Tales of the Uncanny_, a new
English magazine, features weird yarns by such well known authors as
Algernon Blackwood, H. G. Wells, John Buchan, Hugh Walpole, Michael
Arlen, H. R. Wakefield, and Somerset Maughan.


_The Edmond Hamilton Lowdown_

Here's the story behind the discovery and making of Edmond Hamilton as
related by Farnsworth Wright:

"Hamilton's first story, entitled 'Beyond the Unseen Wall' was rejected
by me ten years ago, but I liked its possibilities so well that I sent
Hamilton a three-page typewritten letter with the rejection, telling
him how I thought the story might be fixed up; because it sagged in the
middle and was rather unconvincingly set forth. I did not know Hamilton
from Adam's off ox, but a year later he sent the story back again,
rewritten and so much changed that I hardly recognized it. I accepted
it immediately, and I suggested "The Desert God" as an acceptable
title. Hamilton wrote back suggesting a new one, "The Monster-God
of Mamurth," which is the title under which we printed it in _Weird
Tales_. Hamilton has not had a reject from us since then. Up to the
present, he has had 43 stories printed in _Weird Tales_, and several
more are in our hands and will appear soon."

       *       *       *       *       *


                            The Primal City

                         by Clark Ashton Smith

In these after-days, when all things are touched with insoluble doubt
and dereliction, I am not sure of the purpose that had taken us into
that little visited land. I recall, however, that we had found explicit
mention, in a volume of which we possessed the one existing copy, of
certain vast prehuman ruins lying amid the bare plateaus and stark
pinnacles of the region. How we had acquired the volume I do not know;
but Sebastian Polder and I had given our youth and much of our manhood
to the quest of hidden knowledge; and this book was a compendium of all
things that men have forgotten or ignored in their desire to repudiate
the inexplicable.

We, being enamored of mystery, and seeking ever for the clues that
material science has disregarded, pondered much upon those pages
written in an antique alphabet. The location of the ruins was clearly
stated, though in terms of an obsolete geography; and I remember our
excitement when we had marked the position on a terrestrial globe. From
the very first we were eager to behold the alien city, and certain
of our ability to find it. Perhaps we wished to verify a strange and
fearful theory which we had formed regarding the nature of the earth's
primal inhabitants; perhaps we sought to recover the buried records
of a lost science ... or perhaps there was some other and darker
objective....

I recall nothing of the first stages of our journey, which must have
been long and arduous. But I recall distinctly that we travelled for
many days amid the bleak, treeless uplands that rose rapidly like a
tiered embankment toward the range of high pyramidal summits guarding
our destination. Our guide was a native of the country, sodden and
taciturn, with intelligence little above that of the llamas which
carried our supplies. He had never visited the ruins, but we had been
assured that he knew the way, which was a secret remembered by few of
his fellow countrymen. Rare and scant was the local legendry concerning
the place and its builders; and, after many queries, we could add
nothing to the knowledge gained from the immemorial volume. The city,
it seemed, was nameless; and the region about it was untrodden by man.

Desire and curiosity raged within us like a calenture; and we gave no
heed to the hazards and travails of exploration. Over us stood the
eternal azure of vacant heavens, matching in their desolation the empty
landscape. The route steepened; and above us now was a wilderness
of cragged and chasmed rohk, where nothing dwelt but the sinister
wide-winged condors.

Often we lost sight of certain eminent peaks that had served us for
landmarks. But it seemed that our guide knew the way, as if led by an
instinct more subtle than memory or intelligence; and at no time did
he hesitate. At intervals we came to the broken fragments of a paved
road that had formerly traversed the whole of this difficult region;
broad, cyclopean flags of gneiss, channeled as if by the storms of
cycles older than human history. And in some of the deeper chasms we
saw the eroded piers of great bridges that had spanned them in other
time. These ruins reassured us; for in the primordial volume there was
mention of a highway and of mighty bridges, leading to the fabulous
city.

Polder and I were exultant; and yet I think that we both shivered with
a curious terror when we tried to read certain inscriptions that were
still deeply engraved on the worn stones. No living man, tho erudite in
all the tongues of Earth, could have deciphered those characters; and
perhaps it was their very alienage that frightened us. We had sought
diligently during laborious years for all that transcends the dead
level of mortality through age or remoteness or strangeness; we had
longed ardently for the esoteric and bizarre; but such longing was not
incompatible with tear and repulsion. Better than those who had walked
always in the common paths, we knew the perils that might attend our
exorbitant and solitary researches.

Often we had debated, with variously fantastic conjectures, the enigma
of the mountain builded city. But, toward our journey's end, when the
vestiges of that pristine people multiplied around us, we fell into
long periods of silence, sharing the taciturnity of our stolid guide.
Thoughts came to us that were overly strange for utterance; the chill
of elder aeons entered our hearts from the ruins--and did not depart.

We toiled on between the desolate rocks and the sterile heavens,
breathing an air that became thin and painful to the lungs, as if with
some admixture of cosmic ether. At high noon we reached an open pass,
and saw before and above us, at the end of a long and quickly opened
perspective, the city that had been described as an unnamed ruin in a
volume antedating all other known books.

The place was built on an inner peak of the range, surrounded by
snowless summits little sterner and loftier than itself. On one side
the peak fell in a thousand-foot precipice from the overhanging
ramparts; on another, it was terraced with wild cliffs; but the third
side, facing toward us, was a steep acclivity with broken-down scarps
and chimneys that would offer small difficulty to expert mountaineers.
The rock of the whole mountain was strangely ruinous and black; but
the city walls, tho gapped and worn to a like dilapidation, were
conspicuous at a distance of leagues.

Polder and I beheld the bourn of our world-wide search with thoughts
and emotions which we did not voice. The Indian made no comment,
pointing impassively toward the far summit with its crown of ruins. We
hurried on, wishing to complete our journey by daylight; and plunging
into an abysmal valley, we began at mid-afternoon the ascent of the
slope toward the city.

We were impressed anew by the abnormal and manifold cleavages of the
granite. It was like climbing amid the overthrown and fire-blasted
blocks of a Titan citadel. Everywhere the slope was rent into huge,
obliquely angled masses, often partly vitrified, which made the ascent
a more arduous problem than we had expected. Plainly, at some former
time, the stone had been subjected to the action of heat; and yet there
were no volcanic craters amid the nearby mountains. Puzzling greatly, I
recalled a passage in the old volume, hinting ambiguously at the dark
fate that had long ago destroyed the city's inhabitants. But from this
passage I could still draw no definite conclusion: for the ideation was
too fantastic to be understood as anything more than a dubious figure
of speech.

We had left our three llamas at the slope's bottom, merely taking with
us provisions for a night. Thus unhampered, we made fair progress in
spite of the ever-varying obstacles offered by the shattered scarps.
After a while we came to the hewn steps of a stairway mounting to the
summit; but the steps had been wrought for the feet of colossi, and, in
many places, they were part of the heaved and tilted ruin; so they did
not greatly facilitate our climbing.

The sun was still high above the western pass behind us; and for this
reason, as we went on, I was much surprised by a sudden deepening of
the char-like blackness on the rocks. Turning, I saw that several
greyish vapory masses, which might have been either cloud or smoke,
were drifting idly about the summits that overlooked the pass; and one
of these masses rearing like a limbless figure, upright and colossal,
had interposed itself between us and the sun.

Sebastian and the guide had also noted this phenomenon. Clouds were
almost unheard-of amid those mountains in summer; and the presence
of smoke would have been equally hard to explain. Moreover, the grey
masses were wholly detached from each other and showed a peculiar
opacity and sharpness of outline. At second glance they did not really
resemble any cloud forms we had ever seen; for about them there was a
baffling suggestion of weight and solidity. Moving sluggishly into the
heavens above the pass, they preserved their original contours and
their separateness. They seemed to swell and tower, coming toward us
on the blue air from which, as yet, no lightest stirring of wind had
reached us. Floating thus, they maintained the rectitude of massive
columns or of giants marching on a broad plain.

I think we all felt an alarm that was none the less urgent for its
vagueness. Somehow, from that instant, it seemed that we were penned
up by unknown powers and were cut off from all possibility of retreat.
We had ventured into a place of hidden peril--and the peril was upon
us. In the movement of the strange clouds there was something alert,
deliberate--and implacable. Polder spoke with a sort of horror in his
voice, uttering the thought which had already occurred to me.

"They are the sentinels who guard this region--and they have espied us!"

We heard a harsh cry from the Indian. Following his gaze, we saw that
several of the unnatural cloud-shapes had appeared on the summit toward
which we were climbing, above the megalithic ruins. Some arose half
hidden by the walls, as if from behind a breastwork; others stood, as
it were, on the topmost towers and battlements, bulking in portentous
menace, like the cumuli of a thunder-storm.

Then, with terrifying swiftness, many more of the cloud-presences
towered simultaneously from the four quarters, emerging from behind the
gaunt peaks or assuming sudden visibility in mid-air. With equal and
effortless speed, as if convoked by an unheard command, they gathered
in converging lines upon the eyre-like ruins. We the climbers, and the
whole slope about us and the valley below, were plunged in a twilight
weird and awesome as that of central eclipse.

The air was still windless, but it weighed upon us as if burdened
with the wings of a thousand cacodemons. I remember that I was
overwhelmingly conscious of our exposed position, for we had paused
on a wide landing of the mountain-hewn steps. We could easily have
concealed ourselves amid the huge fragments on the surrounding slope;
but, for the nonce, we were incapable of the simplest movement.

In a close-ranged army, the Clouds mustered above and around us. They
rose into the very zenith, swelling to insuperable vastness, and
darkening like Tartarean gods. The sun had disappeared, leaving no
faintest beam to prove that it still hung unfallen and undestroyed in
the heavens.

I felt that I was crushed into the very stone by the eyeless regard
of that awful assemblage, judging and condemning. We had trespassed
upon a region conquered long ago by strange elemental entities; we
had approached their very citadel--and now we must meet the doom our
rashness had invited. Such thoughts, like a black lightning, flared in
my brain.

Now, for the first time, I became aware of sound--if the word can be
applied to a sensation so anomalous. It was as if the oppression that
weighed upon me had grown audible; as if palpable thunders poured over
and past me. I felt, I heard them in every nerve, and they roared
through my brain like torrents from the opened flood-gates of some
tremendous weir in a world of genii.

Downward upon us, with limbless atlantean stridings, there swept the
cloudy cohorts. Their swiftness was that of supernatural things. The
air was riven as if by the tumult of a thousand tempests, was rife with
an unmeasured elemental malignity. I recall but partially the events
that ensued; but the impression of insufferable darkness, of demonic
clamor and trampling, and the pressure of thunderous burdenous onset,
remains forever indelible. Also, there were voices that called out with
the stridor of clarions in a war of gods, uttering ominous syllables
that the ear of man could never seize.

Before those vengeful Shapes; we could not stand for a moment. We
hurled ourselves with a mad precipitation down the shadowed steps of
the giant stairs. Polder and the guide were a little ahead of me, to
the left hand, and I saw them in that baleful twilight on the verge
of a deep chasm, which, in our ascent, had compelled us to much
circumambulation. I saw them leap together--and yet I swear that they
did not fall into the chasm: for one of the Shapes was upon them
whirling and stooping, even as they sprang. There was a blasphemous,
unthinkable fusion as of forms beheld in delirium: for an instant the
two men were like vapors that swelled and swirled, towering high as the
thing that had caught them; and the thing itself was a misty Janus,
with two heads and bodies melting, no longer human, into its unearthly
column....

       *       *       *       *       *

After that, I remember nothing more, except the sense of vertiginous
falling. By some miracle I must have reached the edge of the chasm and
flung myself into its depths without being overtaken as the others
had been. How I escaped the pursuit of those cloudy Guardians is
forevermore an enigma. Perhaps, for some inscrutable reason of their
own, they permitted me to go.

When I returned to awareness, stars were peering down upon me like
chill incurious eyes between black and jagged lips of rock. The air
had turned sharp with the coldness of nightfall in a mountain land. My
body ached with a hundred bruises and my right forearm was limp and
useless when I tried to raise myself. A dark mist of horror stifled
my thoughts. Struggling to my feet with pain-racked effort, I called
aloud, though I knew that none would answer me. Then, striking match
after match, I searched the chasm and found myself, as I had expected,
alone. Nowhere was there any trace of my companions: they had vanished
utterly--as clouds vanish.

Somehow, by night, with a broken arm, I must have climbed from the
steep fissure, I must have made my way down the frightful mountainside
and out of that namelessly haunted and guarded land. I remember that
the sky was clear, that the stars were undimmed by any semblance of
cloud; and that somewhere in the valley I found one of our llamas,
still laden with its stock of provisions....

Plainly I was not pursued by the Guardians. Perhaps they were concerned
only with the warding of that mysterious primal city from human
intrusion. Never shall I learn the secret of those ruinous walls and
crumbling keeps, nor the fate of my companions. But still, through my
nightly dreams and diurnal visions, the dark Shapes move with the
tumult and thunder of a thousand storms; and my soul is crushed into
the earth with the burden of their imminence; and They pass over me
with the speed and vastness of vengeful gods; and I hear Their voices
calling like clarions in the sky, with ominous, world-shaking syllables
that the ear can never seize.


                                The End

       *       *       *       *       *


                             LOST EXCERPTS

                           by Robert Nelson

_I. In Living Darkness_

In dreams agone I walked aimlessly and long in far and distant realms.

I have seen wretched and depressed women feed with their milk the
famished spirits that swelter and moulder amid the rank noisomeness
of charnel hells. By blue and rotting trees I have seen colossal and
cankered white worms fawning to their young and devouring themselves.

I have seen evil and demented dwarfs fling flaring torches into the
faces of maids who were playing sad violins and dying with nameless
sins and melody. And I have stood on red rocks overlooking a black and
ever-surging sea wherein dread things stabbed and slew and shrieked in
exaltation to the molten dripping skies.

       *       *       *       *       *


                                MEDUSA

                         by Clark Ashton Smith

                      (Written at the age of 18)

    As drear and barren as the glooms of Death,
    It lies, a windless land of livid dawns,
    Nude to a desolate firmament, with hills
    That seem the fleshless earth's outjutting ribs,
    And plains whose face is crossed and rivelled deep
    With gullies twisting like a serpent's track.
    The leprous touch of Death is on its stones,
    Where, for his token visible, the Head
    Is throned upon a heap of monstrous rocks,
    Rough-mounded like some shattered pyramid
    In a thwartly cloven hill-ravine, that seems
    The unhealing scar of huge of Tellurian wars.
    Her lethal beauty crowned with twining snakes
    That animate her hair, the Gorgon reigns:
    Her eyes are clouds wherein Death's lightnings lurk,
    Yet, even as men that seek the glance of Life,
    The gazers come, where, coiled and serpent-swift,
    Those levins wait. As round an altar-base
    Her victims lie, distorted, blackened forms
    Of posture horror smitten into stone--
    Time caught in meshes of eternity--
    Drawn back from dust and ruin of the years,
    And given to all the future of the world.
    The land is claimed of Death: the daylight comes
    Half-strangled in the changing webs of cloud
    That unseen spiders of bewildered winds
    Weave and unweave across the lurid sun
    In upper air. Below, no zephyr comes
    To break with life the circling spell of doom.
    Long vapour-serpents twist about the moon,
    And in the windy murkness of the sky,
    The guttering stars are wild as candle-flames
    That near the socket.

                          Thus the land shall be,
    And Death shall wait, throned in Medusa's eyes,
    Till, in the irremeable webs of night,
    The sun is snared, and the corroded moon
    A dust upon the gulfs, and all the stars
    Rotted and fallen like rivets from the sky,
    Letting the darkness down upon all things.

       *       *       *       *       *


                               MALANOTH

                        (To Clark Ashton Smith)

                              by R. O. P.

    Where is the ancient hidden sphere
    Where Malanoth is king?
    What silhouetted towers rear
    And on the heavens cling?

    Above the wall that shows no gate
    The mighty columns loom;
    Mysterious wonder incarnate
    Where slumbers ancient doom.

    Beyond the myriad whirling moons
    That circle through the skies--
    A place described in evil runes,
    The awesome kingdom lies.

    And Malanoth, its striped face
    Obscure and pondering
    Thinks always in that silent place
    Of some old, secret thing.

       *       *       *       *       *


                            A DEATH SIGNAL

                          (A True Experience)

                        by Kenneth B. Pritchard

My grandfather was on his death bed. A door to his room was closed.
Other doors in the house were shut, and at least one was locked or
bolted.

Some of his family were downstairs. They knew that the end was near;
but just when he would pass, they could not tell.

What happened next must have put terror into the hearts of the
inhabitants.

All of a sudden, all the doors in the house opened, whether they were
bolted or otherwise! And then, even as they had opened, so they closed!
And my grandfather was dead.

It seemed as though his death was a signal for someone or something to
open and close the doors. What was its meaning? Did something come to
take his soul?

It is easy to see how Shakespeare's Hamlet spoke strange truths; and
that men of science and learning have much to uncover, with the light
of the torch of intelligence leading the way into dark corners and
shedding an illuminating gleam into the unknown.

       *       *       *       *       *

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