The End of the Story

by Clark Ashton Smith

  1. FW, letter to CAS, April 19, 1930 (ms, JHL).

  2. CAS, letter to Virgil Finlay, September 27, 1937 (SL 315).

  3. CAS, letter to AWD, May 26, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

  4. AWD, letter to CAS, July 23 [1933] (ms, JHL): “I understand [Trend] took your

  A NIGHT IN MALNEANT, so H. P. writes, and undertook to compliment the editors when I last wrote to them.”

  5. HPL, letter to CAS, October 29, 1929 (Arkham House transcripts).

  6. CAS, letter to DAW, August 6, 1933 (SL 217).

  The Resurrection of the Rattlesnake

  The story was completed on October 9–10, 1929, according to dates on the holograph and typed copies of the first draft that CAS presented to his friend George Haas. However, this represents an earlier draft that does not incorporate plot changes suggested by Mrs. Sully: “This latter is pretty punk, except for the touch of genuine horror at the end—which by the way, I owe to the same friend who liked ‘Randolph Carter’ so much. It was she who suggested the finding of the bloody rattles in Godfrey’s clenched hand. Apart from this the tale owes something to Bierce.”1 (CAS is probably referring to Bierce’s story “The Man and the Snake.”) HPL responded to the story with his typical enthusiasm and encouragement: “‘The Resurrection of the Rattlesnake’ is haunting, too. You manage to fill the atmosphere with a certain dark portentousness as the end approaches, & the climax fits on very neatly—even though it is an adopted suggestion.”2 FW accepted the story for the October 1931 issue of WT, and paid CAS twenty dollars.3 It was collected posthumously in OD. The title used on the manuscripts is “The Resurrection of the Rattle-Snake,” but CAS was inconsistent in his spelling of this term, so we have settled upon his most usual nomenclature.

  1. CAS, letter to HPL, January 27, 1930 (SL 109, LL 6).

  2. HPL, letter to CAS, February 2, 1930 (ms, JHL).

  3. FW, letter to CAS, January 27, 1930 (ms, JHL).

  Thirteen Phantasms

  The only existing manuscript is a typescript at the JHL of a late draft called “Twenty-Nine Phantasms” that is dated October 11, 1929. We cannot locate any references to this story among CAS’s correspondence, nor can we find evidence of its submission to any magazine prior to its publication in Julius Schwartz’s fanzine Fantasy Magazine for March 1936. The title change was apparently made by CAS, since on his “Completed Stories” log “Twenty-Nine” is struck through and replaced by “13.” In addition, Roy A. Squires offered for sale a typescript of the story under the current title in his Catalog no. 7 (1973?) Despite the name change, the Brown University typescript and Fantasy Magazine versions are essentially identical, differing only in details such as paragraphing. It was likewise uncollected during CAS’s lifetime, being collected in OD.

  The Venus of Azombeii

  Completed on November 4, 1929, “The Venus of Azombeii” was accepted by FW for publication in the June-July 1931 issue of WT, for which CAS received the munificent sum of seventy-five dollars. CAS described the story to Derleth thus: “The tale is an odd mixture of poetry and melodrama, and may (I’m not sure) prove quite popular with Wright’s clientele. It was one of my earliest, and has had to wait about eighteen months for publication.”1 Writing to HPL of the lack of overt supernaturalism in the story, CAS observed that “I’d like some time to edit a collection of first-class weird fiction, and would exclude from it anything that lacked the authentic note of supernatural and cosmic terror. A lot of my own stuff, such as ‘The Venus of Azombeii,’ would scarcely be eligible!”2 “The Venus of Azombeii” received third ranking in the O. Henry Memorial Award Stories of 1932, ed. Blanche Colton Williams (NY: Doubleday, 1932). It was collected posthumously in OD. This text is based upon a typescript at JHL.

  1. CAS, letter to AWD, June 15, 1931 (SL 154).

  2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. early November 1931 (SL 166).

  The Tale of Satampra Zeiros

  Completed on November 16, 1929, “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” was published in WT’s November 1931 issue, and was included in LW. Lovecraft positively bubbled over with enthusiasm for the story when he read it in manuscript:

  I must not delay in expressing my well-nigh delirious delight at “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros”—which has veritably given me the one arch-kick of 1929! Yug! n’gha k’yun bth’gth R’lyeh gllur ph’ngui Cthulhu yzkaa … . what an atmosphere! I can see & feel & smell the jungle around immemorial Commoriom, which I am sure must lie buried today in glacial ice near Olathoë, in the land of Lomar! It is of this crux of elder horror, I am certain, that the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred was thinking when he—even he—left something unmention’d & signify’d by a row of stars in the surviving codex of his accursed & forbidden Necronomicon! You have achieved in its fullest glamour the exact Dunsanian touch which I find it almost impossible to duplicate, & I am sure that even the incomparable Nuth would have been glad to own Satampra Zeiros as his master. Altogether, I think this comes close to being your high spot in prose fiction to date—for Zothar’s sake keep it up…. my anticipations as

  sume fantastic proportions!1

  Unfortunately, HPL’s enthusiasm was not shared by the magazine editors. After being rejected without comment by Amazing Stories, to which he “was fool enough” to submit it “before I had seen a recent copy of the magazine,”2 CAS was dismayed to learn that Wright was rejecting it, making it the first of a series of rejections of his best work that embittered him against the capriciousness of editors:

  I am reluctantly returning the other story, “The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros.” I am afraid our readers (the great majority of them at least) would find the story extremely unreal and unconvincing. Personally, I fell under the spell of its splendid wording, which reminded me of Lord Dunsany’s stories in The Book of Wonder. However, I fear that Lord Dunsany’s stories would prove unpalatable to most of our readers….3

  CAS forwarded this letter to HPL with despairing remarks about how “Satampra Zeiros” was “apparently hopeless from the view-point of salability.”4 Lovecraft’s outrage matched his earlier enthusiasm: “As for Wright’s letter—the return of ‘Satampra Zeiros’ left me {too} speechless even for cursing! Of all _______ ______ _______ s … … … may Tsathoggua dissolve the _________!!! He certainly has a great opinion of his precious readers!”5 Several months later HPL had the opportunity to suggest to FW that he reconsider his rejection of the story. This apparently lead him to reconsider his earlier decision, and the tale was accepted in November 1930. Smith received forty-eight dollars for the tale.6

  “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” is notable for the introduction of Tsathoggua, the chief deity of the prehistoric continent of Hyperborea before it was overtaken by the encroaching polar ice caps. Lovecraft was so smitten by Smith’s creation that he used him in two stories on which he was working: “The Mound,” which he ghost-wrote for Zealia Bishop, and “The Whisperer in Darkness.” In the latter story appears this nod: “It’s from N’kai that frightful Tsathoggua came—you know, the amorphous toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton.”7 (This last is of course an “in-joke” referring to Lovecraft’s nickname for CAS.) Because of Wright’s earlier rejection, Tsathoggua made his debut in Lovecraft’s story (published in WT August 1931) three months before Smith’s tale appeared.

  While “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” did not take high marks on the monthly reader’s polls, at least one reader, who signed himself “Nimble Fingers,” expressed his appreciation in the January 1932 issue:

  I have enjoyed your magazine immensely. Your stories are entirely different. There is one story in particular that I liked. Perhaps it appealed to me because I am also of that company of “good thieves and adventurers, in all such enterprises which require deft fingers and a habit of mind both agile and adroit.” Perhaps you will think I am boasting, but I am not, as it does not pay to boast in this profession. By this time, no doubt, you will be wonderin
g what story I am referring to: it is “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros.” I have never read a story more entertaining and amusing than this one. What an adventure!8

  1. HPL, letter to CAS, December 3, 1929 (Selected Letters III, ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei [Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971]: 87-88).

  2. CAS, letter to HPL, December 10, 1929 (SL 106).

  3. FW, letter to CAS, January18, 1930 (ms, JHL).

  4. CAS, letter to HPL, January 27, 1930 (SL 109).

  5. HPL, letter to CAS, February 2, 1930 (ms, JHL).

  6. WT, letter to CAS [October 28, 1931] (ms, JHL. )

  7. HPL, “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Lovecraft: Tales, ed. Peter Straub (NY: Library of America, 2005): 462.

  8. Quoted in T. G. Cockcroft, “The Reader Speaks: Reaction to Clark Ashton Smith in the Pulps.” Dark Eidolon no. 2 (July 1989): 19.

  The Monster of the Prophecy

  “The Monster of the Prophecy” presents the most complicated history of any of Smith’s stories. A draft manuscript bearing the title “The Pawn of Vyzargon” exists, although he first mentions the story to Lovecraft in late November 1929:

  I have two sizeable affairs under way, one of them a brand-new conception with illimitable possibilities, which I am calling “The Monster of the Prophecy.” It concerns a starving poet who is about to throw himself into the river, when he is approached by a stranger who befriends him and afterwards introduces himself as a scientist from a world of Antares, who is sojourning briefly on earth in a human disguise. The Antarean is about to return to Antares planet, with the aid of a vibrating device which annihilates space, and offers to take the poet with him. When they reach their destination, it develops that he has a little game of his own to play. For he uses the poet to bring about the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, to the effect that a mighty wizard will appear in a certain place at a certain time, accompanied by an unheard-of white monster with two arms

  and two legs, and that this wizard will then become the supreme ruler of half the planet. The Antarean adventures of the poet will, I think, be something absolutely novel in interplanetary fiction. He ends up, after incredible perils and experiences that bring him to the verge of insanity, as the lover of an ennuied princess with three legs, five arms, and an opalescent skin, and realizes that, even though he is universally looked upon as a monstrosity, he is no worse off in this respect than he was in his own world. For once, I think, the side-lights of satire will not detract from the fantasy.1

  The typescript of the first version is dated December 3, 1929. Steve Behrends observes that this was just five weeks after CAS launched his assault on the pulp marketplace, which is truly remarkable.2 CAS sent Lovecraft a carbon at the same time that he submitted it to WT, noting that

  It struck me on re-reading the thing that I had consciously, or unconsciously satirized pretty nearly everything. Even science, and the pseudo-scientific type of yarn now prevalent, are made a josh of in the first chapter, in the creation of the absurd “space-annihilator…” But of course the profoundest satire is that which is directed at intolerance of all kinds. I seem to have put far more intellectual ideas into the story than into anything else of mine—which, of course, may have ruined it from a purely artistic stand-point.3

  Lovecraft continued to be enthusiastic about Smith’s efforts, noting that he

  enjoyed “The Monster of the Prophecy” tremendously, & admired its gorgeousness of atmosphere & cleverness of structure. The satirical element does not interfere with the general interest so far as I can see, whilst the tribe of Edmond Hamiltons is not sufficiently subtle to perceive & resent the ironic implications in the “space-annihilator.” In your handling of the theme you certainly avoid all the pitfalls & paradoxes of the common “interplanetary” yarn, & manage to create a non-terrestrial landscape of genuinely convincing quality—with a fauna & flora not in the least earthy, but unmistakably Klarkash-Tonic in every particular!4

  Wright accepted the novelette on a provisional basis, “provided you speed up the first part of the story. The story seems rather too leisurely up to the point where the Anterean [sic] and the human depart for Antares.”5 Smith reluctantly complied, eliminating the foreword and much of the atmosphere from the first part of the story; Behrends estimates that 1400 words out of 14,000 were removed, or about ten per cent. CAS was philosophic about the

  matter, observing stoically “Perhaps I’m doing well to ‘put over’ a novelette on any terms at this early stage. I couldn’t altogether grasp Wright’s objection, though. The full text can be restored if the tale is ever brought out.”6 Wright featured the story on the cover of the January 1932 issue, where it was voted best story. CAS included it in both OST and in Far from Time.

  The current text was determined by comparing carbons of the first version rejected by Wright and the second version that he accepted, along with the published versions from both WT and OST (A third typescript, prepared by Carol Smith for Far From Time, does not differ from OST.) Behrends notes some small changes between the second carbon and the published version, and suggests that these are due to late changes made by Smith to the original sent to Wright. We differ from Behrends in a couple of his decisions as to which word choice to utilize, but acknowledge his pioneering scholarship in restoring Smith’s texts.

  Smith contemplated a sequel, “Vizaphmal in Ophiuchus,” for which he prepared a plot synopsis in April 1930:

  I. Tsandai, a savant of Zothique, a world of one of the suns of Ophiuchus, has fallen foul of the local scientific fraternity in general; and they are about to turn him, by the use of a transforming-ray, into a low, brainless type of monster. Vizaphmal, the Antarean wizard-scientist, using his space-annihilator at random, for the sake of adventure, appears in the chamber where the transformation is about to take place. Comprehending the situation telepathically, he rescues Tsandai and carries him away to the uninhabited equatorial zones of the planet.

  II. Here Vizaphmal brings the space-annihilator to rest, while Tsandai explains the ideas that had brought him into disrepute with his confreres. While they are conversing, the annihilator is surrounded by a forest of night-growing vegetable organisms, which attack and try to devour it, though unsuccessfully . Vizaphmal is about to start for one of the moons of Zothique, where Tsandai has expressed a desire to be taken, when the mechanism of the annihilator refuses to work.

  III. In the meanwhile, the annihilator has been televisually located by the savants of Zothique, who follow and capture it, blasting with zero-rays the exuberant vegetation that has surrounded it. The annihilator, with Tsandai and Vizaphmal inside, is carried like a cage to Mlair, the city from which Vizaphmal had rescued Tsandai. Here the savants try to break it open in vain, since the material of which it is made resists every force or element of which they are masters.

  IV. At last they drop the annihilator into a bottomless pit in their insane rage; Vizaphmal and Tsandai are stunned by the shock of the fall. When they recover, the annihilator is floating in a subterranean sea of burning bitumen. Vizaphmal finds that the fall has restored the mechanism to working-order; and they re-ascend to the surface of the world.

  V. Here they find that the persecution of Tsandai, who is immensely popular with the people in general, has brought about an uprising against the authority of the scientists, who had virtually ruled Zothique. Tsandai and Vizaphmal are received with acclamations; and leaving Tsandai in a position of impregnable power, the Antarean departs for other worlds.7

  This synopsis was never utilized, although Smith would later use the name “Zothique” to refer to the last continent of earth under a dying red sun.

  1. CAS, letter to HPL, November 26, 1929 (SL 104).

  2. Steve Behrends, “Introduction.” The Monster of the Prophecy by Clark Ashton Smith, ed. Steve Behrends (West Warwick, RI: Necronomicon Press, 1988): 5.

  3. CAS, letter to HPL, December 10, 1929 (SL 105-106).

  4. HPL, letter to CAS, December 19, 1929 (ms, JHL).

  5. F
W, letter to CAS, January 18, 1930 (ms, JHL).

  6. CAS, letter to HPL, January 27, 1930 (SL 109).

  7. SS 143-144.

  The Metamorphosis of the World

  This story is referred to exclusively as “The Metamorphosis of the World” in CAS’s correspondence and “Completed Stories” log until the fifties. The title change to “The Metamorphosis of Earth” was made by AWD when he solicited the story for a science fiction anthology that became Beachheads in Space (Pelligrini and Cudahy, 1952) and marketed it on Smith’s behalf to Dorothy McIlwraith, Wright’s successor at WT, who accepted it for the September 1951 issue.1 Despite its late appearance, the story was written in late 1929, although CAS wrote that he was still “dragging on at present” with it in early 1930, noting gleefully how he was “engaged in killing off an odious bunch of scientists.”2 The typescript at JHL is undated. By late January he could write to HPL that “I finished ‘The Metamorphosis of the World’, and am trying it out on the ‘scientifiction’ magazines. I don’t know that you would care for it: probably the best element is the satire.”3 Smith submitted it to Science Wonder Stories, only to see the story rejected because his explanation and description of the scientific processes involved was overly technical, something which came as a great surprise to him since “I was afraid I didn’t know enough about scientific technicalities to hit their requirements! And lo, I’ve overshot the mark!”4 It was then rejected by Amazing Stories.