The Door to Saturn

by Clark Ashton Smith

  Our text is from a typescript at JHL; judging from Lovecraft’s letter to Smith of April 16, 1931, it appears that either Lasser or Gernsback made some “inane interpolations” to what Smith had written, which have been eliminated. The story was collected posthumously in OD.

  1. David Lasser, letter to CAS, November 29, 1930 (ms, JHL).

  2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. mid-December 1930 (LL 22).

  3. CAS, letter to HPL, c. early-January 1931 (SL 141-142).

  4. HPL, letter to CAS, April 16, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  5. Editorial remarks to Clark Ashton Smith, “An Adventure in Futurity.” WS 2, no. 11 (April 1931): 1232.

  The Justice of the Elephant

  Completed on December 29, 1930, Smith described this to Lovecraft as being “grim and gruesome; but [FW] might take it, since it doesn’t involve the supernatural and is not at all poetic. The plot idea is quite similar to that of a tale which I sold to The Black Cat back in my boyhood.”1 (Smith refers to his story “The Mahout,” first published in The Black Cat for August 1911, collected posthumously in OD and TI.) FW accepted the story for the August 1931 issue of Oriental Stories and paid Smith the total of fourteen dollars.2 It was collected posthumously in OD. JHL possesses the holograph first draft, the first, revised typed draft, and a carbon copy of the final version accepted by FW.

  1. CAS, letter to HPL, c. early January 1931 (SL 142).

  2. Popular Fiction Publishing Company, letter to CAS, October 28, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  The Return of the Sorcerer

  Smith wrote to HPL on November 16, 1930 that “I seem to have had quite an influx of ghastly and gruesome ideas lately. Some of them will be real terrors, if they are developed properly. ...Another idea concerns a dismembered corpse, whose parts the murderer has buried in various spots. But presently he encounters some of the members running around and trying to re-unite and re-join the head, which he has kept in a locked closet!”1 Smith’s papers include the following synopsis for a proposed story to be called “The Re-union:” “A corpse has been dismembered, and its parts buried in different places by the murderer. He develops the hallucination that the pieces are trying to re-unite, and sees them running separately about in quest of each other.”2 Smith embraced Lovecraft’s suggestion that “both the murderer and the victim [should be] practitioners of the Black Arts,” and acknowledged this debt by “introducing the Necronomicon—in its original Arabic text.”3 The story went through several name changes, beginning with “Dismembered,” then “A Rendering from the Arabic,” before Smith settled on “The Return of Helman Carnby.” Needing a break from cranking out “pseudoscience” for WS, Smith completed a typed draft on January 4, 1930, but continued to make revisions even after mailing out the story for comments among his correspondents; for instance, he wrote Lovecraft “On looking over ‘Helman Carnby’, which I sent you the other day, the word ‘fragments’ strikes me as being too strained and incorrect. On p. 7 read: ‘a body hewn in many portions’; on p. 14: ‘I had buried the portions, etc.’; on p. 19, ‘lay facing the medley of remnants;’ and on p. 20, ‘the fresh segments of that other.’ There may be other slips—I wrote the story at white heat.”4 After reading the typescript, Lovecraft suggested that “if there were any way of piling on another shudder, I’d say it would be by veiling the final horror a little more obscurely from actual sight, & trying to hint or imply the blasphemous abnormality which sent the secretary fleeing from that accursed habitation. I certainly hope that the tale will find a typographical haven.”5 CAS “was greatly pleased and gratified by your reaction to

  “Carnby”—a tale to which I devoted much thought. The more veiled ending you suggest as possible was my original intention—certainly it would have been the safest and most surely successful method. I think what tempted me to the bolder and more hazardous revelation, was the visualizing of the actual collapse of that hellishly vitalized abnormality. If the tale is rejected as too gruesome, I can try the other ending, and have the secretary unable to enter the room till all is over, and there are merely two heaps of human segments on the floor.... I am going to adopt your suggestion about “Carnby” if it comes back from Ghost Stories. Here is the way it can be worked: the secretary finds himself physically unable to enter the room till all is over; but standing at the threshold, he hears the head as it breaks from the cupboard, and sees for a few moments the shadow of that headless monstrosity, and the singular disintegration of the shadows, followed by a sound that is not that of a single body falling, but of many. Then, entering, he flees from the inenarrable vision of that confused heap of human segments, some flesh and some putrefying, which are lying on the floor, with the surgeon’s saw still clutched in a half-decayed hand. 6

  CAS had already submitted the story to Ghost Stories, drawn by its rate of two cents a word, despite his reservations about the magazine’s editorial policies: “it will be impossible to sell them anything that depends on subtle atmosphere. A lurid yarn like ‘Carnby’ might get over on its dramatic suspense, despite the atmospheric element.”7 (Smith had not sold any stories to the magazine, but had received encouraging personal letters with the returned manuscripts.) Sometime in February Ghost Stories returned the manuscript, so Smith rewrote the ending and submitted it again, only to have it rejected once more “a most amusing letter from the editor.”8 The story was still “ ‘too horrific’— the editor told me very gravely that ‘the reactions of our staff-readers showed plainly that you have sinned in this respect’.’’9 Smith next sent the story to WT, only to have FW return the story “because many of our readers would be sure to find it sickening.”10 Smith changed the title to “The Return of the Sorcerer” when Harry Bates bought the story for the first issue of Strange Tales (September 1931), and it was included in OST.

  “The Return of the Sorcerer” represents Smith trying to achieve two goals that might be thought mutually contradictory: on the one hand, he hoped “to achieve the limit in sheer gruesomeness,” while at the same time he found the shadowy ending more satisfying personally: “One can usually get more horror out of shadows than out of the actual presented substance; on the same principle, I suppose, that one’s imagination or anticipation of some pleasure always exceeds hugely the reality.”11 One of Smith’s most famous stories, it has been repeatedly anthologized and also adapted into comic form by Richard Corben and for television as an episode for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, starring Vincent Price as John and Helman Carnby. Our text is based upon the typescript dated January 6, 1931 at JHL. We are including the original ending, from the typescript dated January 4, 1931, also at JHL, as Appendix 2.

  1. CAS, letter to HPL, November 16, 1930 (SL 136).

  2. SS 159.

  3. CAS, letter to HPL, c. early January 1931 (SL 142).

  4. CAS, letter to HPL, January 10, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  5. HPL, letter to CAS, January 1931 (Arkham House transcripts).

  6. CAS, letter to HPL, c. January 27, 1931 (SL 144).

  7. CAS, letter to AWD, January 27, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

  8. CAS, letter to AWD, March 8, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

  9. CAS, letter to DAW, March 24, 1931 (ms, MHS).

  10. FW, letter to CAS, March 21, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  11. CAS, letter to HPL, c. early January 1931 (SL 142); letter to AWD, February 26, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

  The City of the Singing Flame

  In the autumn of 1930 Smith sent Lovecraft a specimen of rock from Crater Ridge, near the Donner Pass in northern California near the Nevada border, whose form suggested various outré entities from his stories. Lovecraft was delighted with this gift, and bestowed upon it various nick-names such as “He Who Waits” and the Nameless Eikon. (Crater Ridge was also the site of the camping trip during which his friend Genevieve K. Sully first suggested to Smith that he ought to take up writing for the pulps as a reasonably congenial means of supporting his parents.) Perhaps because of these associations, Smith wrote a new story on January 15, 1931. He announced to HPL that he had written


  a new trans-dimensional story, “The City of the Singing Flame”, in which I have utilized Crater Ridge (the place where I found the innominable Eikon) as a spring-board. Some day, I must look for those two boulders “with a vague resemblance to broken-down columns”. If you and other correspondents cease to hear from me thereafter, you can surmise what has happened! The description of the Ridge, by the way, has been praised for its realism by people who know the place.1

  Lovecraft responded even more enthusiastically than usual:

  Gad, Sir, but you have struck twelve with this latest opus! I don’t know when anything has given me such a kick in months—for the whole thing corresponds to just the sort of dreaming I relish, & just the sort of dimensional plunging I tend to invisage when faced by a flaming & apocalyptic sunset. When I passed near the Nameless Eikon with the manuscript in my hand, the leaves fluttered strangely—as if {?} in a wind, despite the still air of my shadowy & totally ______ chamber. The description of Crater Ridge gives It an enormously vivid immediate background, whilst other parts of th narrative raise disquieting apprehensions concerning its more ultimate provenance. Can it be that... but it is well to restrain the wilder & darker speculations of the curious fancy. I feel sure that both Derleth & Wandrei will take at once to the tale—& if Wright fails to accept it, I shall lose my last shred of respect for him.2

  Instead of submitting it to WT (who “might have taken the tale; but God knows when they would have printed it”3), CAS submitted it to Hugo Gernsback and WS, who published it in the July 1931 issue (and paid Smith the sum of fifty-two dollars in early April 1932.) It proved popular enough with the readership that a sequel was commissioned and published in the November issue as “Beyond the Singing Flame.” David Lasser’s successor as editor of WS, Charles D. Hornig, included “The City of the Singing Flame” as number seven on a list of the ten most popular stories ever printed by the magazine, as published in the January 1935 issue.4

  1. CAS, letter to HPL, c. January 27, 1931 (SL 144-145).

  2. HPL, letter to CAS, February 8, 1931 ( ms, MHS).

  3. CAS, letter to AWD, March 25, 1931 (ms., SHSW).

  4. See T. G. L. Cockcroft, “The Reader Speaks: Reaction to Clark Ashton Smith in the Pulps.”  Dark Eidolon no. 2 (June 1989): 16.

  A Good Embalmer

  In the same letter where he first mentioned the plot germ that became “The Return of the Sorcerer,” Smith discussed another idea (which should really take the palm for macabre grotesquerie) concerning

  two undertakers, business partners, whom (for temporary convenience) we might call Jake and John. John has a very poor opinion of Jake’s professional abilities, especially as an embalmer, and tells him one day that if he (John) should die before Jake does, and has to be subjected to the latter’s mercies, he will rise up from the dead... Well—John eventually dies, and his partner is about to begin operations on the corpse, when John suddenly sits up. Jake drops dead from heart-failure at the shock... Next morning, two corpses are found laid out in the undertaking establishment; and it is discovered that the corpse of Jake has been very efficiently embalmed....1

  This is the same story outlined among Smith’s papers as “The Undertakers:”

  Two undertakers, one of whom has a poor opinion of his partner’s abilities, particularly as an embalmer. He tells him, ‘If I die before you do, and you try to embalm me, by God, I’ll get up and embalm you!’ Years later he dies suddenly. His partner takes charge of the body, and is about to begin professional operations, when the corpse suddenly sits up. The living partner drops dead through shock. The next morning, two corpses are found laid out in the parlor; and the one that died last has been carefully embalmed.2

  Smith spent three days working on the story before completing it on February 7, 1931. He remained dubious of its merits, telling August Derleth that it “may not even have the dubious merit of being salable.”3 Part of the problem was that Smith knew “next to nothing about the subject; so you might warn me if I have ‘pulled any boners.’ Anyway, it didn’t seem necessary or advisable to dwell on the technical side.”4 (Lovecraft reassured him “No—I can’t pick any flaws in the embalming tale; for despite my authorship of the banned ‘In the Vault’ I have not a shred of inside knowledge of the profession! One has to bluff beyond one’s scholastic means now & then….”5) Derleth wrote that “the plot is okeh, but I don’t think you were feeling particularly good when you wrote it. It seems disconnected, and somehow you do not hit the end right. It is the kind of story Wright might take in a pinch but a reader would forget it the moment he had read the last word,” adding “Of course, it does not at all compare with anything else of yours I have recently seen.”6

  CAS almost managed to sell the story to ST. According to editor Harry Bates, “I liked it myself, and would have bought it, but Mr. Clayton thought we had better not. I did not support it very strongly, for I just as leave have something of greater length to represent you next time.”7 Smith then appears to have given the story to Charles D. Hornig for his fanzine The Fantasy Fan, since an announcement for a story called “The Embalmers of Ramsville,” by Michael Weir, appears on page 96 of the February 1934 issue. “Michael Weir” is almost certainly a pseudonym of Smith’s, probably derived from Poe’s poem “Ulalume.” The story remained unpublished until 1989, when Steve Behrends included it in Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith. Our text is based upon the original holograph manuscript at JHL.

  1. CAS, letter to HPL, November 16, 1930 (SL 136).

  2. SS 159.

  3. CAS, letter to AWD, February 7, 1931(ms, SHSW).

  4. CAS, letter to HPL, c. February 15-23, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  5. HPL, letter to CAS, March 26, 1931 (Arkham House Transcripts 31.77).

  6. AWD, letter to CAS, May 20, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  7. Harry Bates, letter to CAS, July 7, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  The Testament of Athammaus

  Smith completed this, the third of his tales of Hyperborea, on February 22, 1931, although he had conceived of the plot as early as April 1930: “Athammaus, the public executioner of Commoriom, beheads the outlaw, Nicautal Zhaun, and afterwards oversees his entombment. The next day, Nicautal Zhaun reappears on the streets of Commoriom, is again captured, beheaded, and interred. Seven times is this repeated, till all the people flee from Commoriom, taking it as an evil and supernatural portent. The baffled Athammaus, mocked by Nicautal Zhaun, reluctantly follows them.”1 He elaborated on this to Lovecraft, explaining how “this outlaw (who was connected with Tsathoggua on his mother’s side) managed to leak or ooze from the tomb on each occasion,” concluding that “The tale should make a rollicking hell-raiser.”2 After completing the story, Smith wrote that “I really think he (or it) is about my best monster to date,” after admitting “In my more civic moods, I sometimes think of the clean-up which an entity like Knygathin Zhaum would make in a modern town.”3

  Smith wrote that he would “be rather peeved if Wright turns [‘Athammaus’] down; since it is about as good as I can do in the line of unearthly horror.”4 Wright wrote Smith on March 21, 1931 that “if is with real reluctance that I am returning ‘The Testament of Athammaus,’ for it is an ingenious and well-told tale. However, our readers have shown a dislike for stories of cannibalism,” adding “It may be, if the story remains vividly in my mind for six months, as did ‘Satampra Zeiros,’ that I will sometime ask you to send this to me again.”5

  Lovecraft offered this assessment: “Wright is... just old Farnsworth. Eternally the same! He’ll be asking for ‘Athammaus’ all over again before long. It probably never occurred to him that the ‘cannibalism’ connected with prehistoric anthropophagous monsters is something entirely different in its emotional implications from such realistic cannibalism as might occur among actual human beings in a contemporary setting.”6 Smith remarked to Derleth that “Wright seems to have lost what little nerve he ever had. He has returned my two best horror tales, on the plea that they
would be too strong for his readers. I think, though, that he will take ‘The Testament of Athammaus’ later on—it seems to have impressed him greatly. But ‘Helman Carnby’ is quite beyond the pale. This latter tale really seems to be something of a goat-getter.”7

  The story apparently remained very vivid in Wright’s memory, since Smith bragged to Donald Wandrei “Have I mentioned Wright’s final acceptance of ‘The Testament of Athammaus’, a month after he had declined it?”8 Smith’s memory may have been slightly off, since he mentions its rejection by Bates and ST to AWD in May 1931.9 “The Testament of Athammaus” was the second most popular story in the October 1932 issue of WT, being beaten out by Jack Williamson’s “The Wand of Doom.” Smith included it in OST. The present text is from a typescript given to R. H. Barlow and later presented by him to the Bancroft Library.

  Following his assessment of Knygathin Zhaum as his “best monster to date,” Smith offered the following commentary upon his conception of Hyperborea:

  This primal continent seems to have been particularly subject to incursions of “outsideness”—more so, in fact, than any of the other continents and terrene realms that lie behind us in the time stream. But I have heard it hinted in certain obscure and arcanic prophecies that the far-future continent called Gnydron by some and Zothique by others, which is to rise millions of years hence in what is now the South Atlantic, will surpass even Hyperborea in this regard and will witness the intrusion of Things from galaxies not yet visible; and, worse than this, a hideously chaotic breaking-down of dimensional barriers which will leave parts of our world in other dimensions, and vice versa. When things get to that stage, there will be no telling where even the briefest journey or morning stroll might end. The conditions will shift, too; so there will be no possibility of charting them and thus knowing when or where one might step off into the unknown.