The Door to Saturn

by Clark Ashton Smith

  1. SS 157-158.

  2. CAS, letter to HPL, April 2, 1930 (SL 112 ).

  3. CAS, letter to HPL, c. February 15-23, 1931 (SL 149).

  4. Quoted by Steve Behrends, “An Annotated Chronology of the Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith.” In FFT 340.

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

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

  7. CAS, letter to AWD, April 9, 1931 (SL 150-151).

  8. CAS, letter to DAW, August 7, 1931 (ms, MHS).

  9. CAS, letter to AWD, May 8, 1931 (SL 153).

  A Captivity in Serpens

  After WS editor David Lasser rejected “The Red World of Polaris,” he clarified WS’s editorial requirements in a letter which unfortunately does not survive among Smith’s papers at JHL, but from which CAS quoted liberally (and bitterly) in his own correspondence. As Smith recounted to Lovecraft, Lasser and Gernsback wanted:

  “A play of human motives, with alien worlds for a background.” But if human motives are mainly what they want, why bother about going to other planets—where one might conceivably escape from the human equation? The idea of using the worlds of Alioth or Altair as a mere setting for the squabbles and heroics of the crew on a space-ship (which, in essence, is about what they are suggesting) is too rich for any use. Evidently Astounding Stories is setting the pace for them with its type of stellar-wild-west yarn. There doesn’t seem to be much chance of putting over any really good work, and a survey of the magazine field in general is truly discouraging.1

  After being informed of these editorial requirements, Smith put aside a third Volmar story, “The Ocean-World of Alioth,” which he had already outlined and begun, and began work on “A Captivity in Serpens,” at 17,000 words the longest piece of mature fiction he would complete. He vowed to Lovecraft that “I’ll give them their ‘action’ this time,”2 and Lasser must have agreed, as it was not only accepted but also received the cover illustration when it appeared in the Summer 1931 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly as “The Amazing Planet.” In accepting the story Lasser told Smith that “we were quite pleased with the story and believe it strikes the proper note for effective interplanetary atmosphere.”3

  The typescript at JHL is missing several pages, so the text of its original magazine appearance was consulted. It was collected posthumously in OD and included with the other Volmar stories in RW.

  1. CAS, letter to HPL, c. November 16, 1930 (SL 134).

  2. CAS, letter to HPL, November 10 1930 (SL 132).

  3. David Lasser, letter to CAS, March 27, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  The Letter from Mohaun Los

  According to surviving notes, Smith originally intended to call this story “An Excursion in Time:” “The time-travelling machine, which goes into the future... and lands in a foreign world when it stops, because it has stood still in space while the earth and the solar system {...} whirling on”.1 He developed this idea further in correspondence:

  By the way, I may tackle the well-worn idea of a time-travelling machine some day, and bring it to its logical denouement. A journey behind or ahead of earth-time would, it seems to me, land the voyager in some alien corner of space, unless he had made special provision for accompanying the movement of the earth and the solar system during the same backward or forward period. If he went far enough into the future, he might find himself in some world of Hercules! But this is an abstruse subject!2

  The first version of this tale was completed by April 9, 1931, but failed to sell. The reason for its rejection may have been a weak ending, as CAS intimated to Derleth: “Funny—I seem to have more trouble with the endings of stories than anything else. God knows how many I have had to re-write. I have a dud on hand now—‘Jim Knox and the Giantess’ [original title of “The Root of Ampoi”]—which will have to be given a brand-new wind-up if it is ever to sell. The same applies to my 10,000 word pseudo-scientific, ‘The Letter from Mohaun Los’.”3 Finishing the revision on March 29, 1932, Smith submitted the story to Wright, who held it for over three weeks before returning it. However, by the end of May Smith could announce that “Wonder Stories has accepted ‘The Letter from Mohaun Los,’ which will appear in the Aug. issue under a new title, Flight into Super-Time, which fails to elicit my enthusiasm. This tale contains a fair amount of satire, like ‘The Monster of the Prophecy.’ Among other things, there is an uproarious fight between a Robot and a time-machine, in which the two mechanical monstrosities succeed in annihilating each other.”4 Smith would later include the story in LW, referring to it at the time as “one of my more ironic Wonder Stories contributions but I’m sure most of its readers missed the double-barrelled satire.”5

  Smith incorporated elements from his previous work into “The Letter from Mohaun Los.” The battle between the warring pygmies occurs in his poem “The Hashish-Eater:”

  Then

  I watch a war of pygmies, met by night,

  With pitter of their drums of parrot’s hide,

  On plains with no horizon, where a god

  Might lose his way for centuries; [...]6

  Steve Behrends suggests that the rescue of the persecuted alien sage Tuoquan may derive from Smith’s synopsis for a proposed sequel to “The Monster of the Prophecy.”7 In “Vizaphmal in Orphiuchus,” Smith describes how

  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.8

  1. SS 160.

  2. CAS, letter to HPL, November 10, 1930 (SL 132).

  3. CAS, letter to AWD, August 18, 1931 (SL 160).

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

  5. CAS, letter to AWD, April 31[sic], 1943 (SL 339-340).

  6. CAS, “The Hashish-Eater; or, The Apocalypse of Evil.” In The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poems of Clark Ashton Smith (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2002).

  7. “Notes to the Text.” SS 260n47.

  8. ES 266, SS 143.

  The Hunters from Beyond

  Smith was working on “The Holiness of Azédarac” when he “suspended work on it to write a 6000 word modern thriller, ‘The Hunters from Beyond,’ which I have just completed. I hope it will have enough ‘plot,’ etc. for the new Clayton magazine.”1 (Smith was referring to Harry Bates’ Strange Tales, which paid two cents a word upon acceptance, as opposed to WT which usually paid a cent a word upon publication.) Smith was somewhat ambivalent regarding the story, telling Derleth that it was “probably junk.”2 Derleth liked the story and made some suggestions:

  I daresay if you wanted to you could make it into either a long space story (pursuit of these hunters from beyond, etc etc) or a first rate horror story with a perfectly ghoulish climax (the girl and Cyprian both keeping silent anent their work, the horror gradually encroaching, closing in upon them, Hastane perceiving only hints here and there, until in the end the whole hellish thing bursts on him. But it is good as it stands, and I like it. The end I find just a little weak. It is as if you had got up some morning and said Now I must write and story and evolved this and got tired of it near the end.3

  As if to confirm Derleth’s assessment, Smith politely thanked him for his suggested revisions, adding “good; but I’m none too fond of the story, and shan’t feel like reworking any of it if I can sell it anywhere as it stands. I have other ideas that interest me more.”4

  By this time Smith was submitting those stories that he thought had a chance to Ghost Stories because of their higher rate of payment, and by mid-June he was still waiting to hear back from its editor Daniel Wheeler. Its rejection may be inferred from the fact that he next submitt
ed it to Wright, who also rejected the story on grounds that “it lacks the convincingness of most of your stories. It is not nearly as convincing or thrilling, for instance, as Lovecraft’s ‘Pickman’s Model’—to mention a story of similar theme.”5 (This may have stung a little, since Smith acknowledged that story as the inspiration for his own.)6 Smith also mentions that Harry Bates returned the manuscript “ostensibly for lack of print space.”7

  Some weeks after Wright’s rejection Smith made some changes to the story, “leaving it more in doubt as to what is actually going on in the studio up to the last moment, and adding at the end, for contrast to the mindless girl who is beyond ‘even the memory of horror,’a last vision of the ghoul-infested gulf, ‘the ravening faces, the hunger contorted forms that swirled toward us from their ultra-dimensional limbo like a devil-laden hurricane from Malebolge’.”8

  At first Smith was still not satisfied with “The Hunters from Beyond:” “The tale doesn’t please me very well—the integral mood seems a little second-rate, probably because the treatment of modern atmosphere is rather uncongenial for me.”9 Not long after writing this, less than ten days, Smith began to change his opinion: “‘The Hunters’ looked pretty good when I read it over the other day, and I think I prefer it to the Helman Carnby thing now, though I didn’t at first.”10 He elaborated upon this later , explaining that “my preference for ‘The Hunters from Beyond’ is based on its style, too. I agree that Carnby has a more original plot; but it seems to need some additional atmospheric development.”11 However, the reevaluation or reassessment seems to have been rather short-lived, since when Bates bought the revised version Smith called it “the least original of my recent yarns.”12 When it appeared in the October 1932 issue of ST, where it received the cover illustration that Smith rather liked, he told Derleth “‘The Hunters’ is no great favorite of mine either; but it seems to shine by comparison with the other tales.”13 He later selected it for inclusion in LW. Our text is based upon the typescript dated August 11, 1931 at JHL.

  The story may have been inspired by an actual experience that occurred while the young Smith was suffering from an attack of tuberculosis. Writing in the November 1934 issue of Charles D. Hornig’s fanzine The Fantasy Fan, CAS described in “The Demonian Face” how

  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 the 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.14

  1. CAS, letter to AWD, May 1, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

  2. CAS, letter to AWD, May 8, 1931 (SL 153).

  3. AWD, letter to CAS, May 12, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  4. CAS, letter to AWD, May 15, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

  5. FW, letter to CAS, June 30, 1931 (ms, JHL).

  6. CAS, letter to AWD, May 8, 1931 (SL 153).

  7. CAS, letter to AWD, July 11, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

  8. CAS, letter to AWD, August 18, 1931 (SL 160-161).

  9. CAS, letter to AWD, August 28, 1931 (SL 161).

  10. CAS, letter to AWD, September 6, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

  11. CAS, letter to AWD, September 15, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

  12. CAS, letter to DAW, November 21, 1931 (ms, MHS).

  13. CAS, letter to AWD, July 19, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

  14. PD 40.

  APPENDIX TWO:

  ALTERNATE ENDING TO

  “THE RETURN OF THE SORCERER”

  Begins immediately after the paragraph “It was not my own violition…”

  I seemed to know with a loathly prescience the sight that awaited me beyond the sill. But the reality would have put to shame the foulest enormities of the nether pits. Carnby—or what remained of him—was lying on the floor; and above him stooped an unbelievable thing—the nude, headless body of a man, already blue with incipient putrefaction, and marked with earth-stains. At wrist and elbow and shoulder, at knee and ankle and hip, there were red sutures where the sundered limbs had been knit together in some hellish fashion, by the power of a will that was more than mortal. The Thing was holding a bloody surgeon’s saw in its right hand; and I saw that its work had been completed….

  Surely, it would seem, I was viewing the climax of all conceivable horror. But even as the Thing knelt with its ghastly tool suspended above the remains of its victim, there came a violent crash from the cupboard, as if something had been hurled against the door. The lock must have been defective; for the door burst open, and a human head emerged and bounded to the floor. It rolled over, and lay facing the medley of human fragments, that had been John Carnby. It was in the same condition of decay as the body; but I swear that the eyes were alive with malignant hate. Even with the marks of corruption upon them, the features bore a manifest likeness of those of John Carnby; and plainly they could belong only to a twin brother.

  I was beyond horror, beyond terror; and I do not believe I could have stirred again if it had not been for the thing that happened now. As if the animating and uniting power had been removed with the completion of its task, the headless cadaver toppled to the floor, scattered in all its original portions. The life had gone out of the eyes in that terrible head; and there was nothing but a heap of mouldy members, beside the fresh fragments of that other.

  The spell was broken. I felt that something had withdrawn from the room—the overpowering volition that had held me captive was gone. It had released me, even as it had released the corpse of Helman Carnby. I was free to go; and I fled from that ghastly room and ran headlong through an unlit house, and into the outer darkness.

  APPENDIX THREE:

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  “The Door to Saturn.” ST 1, no.3 (January 1932): 390-403. In LW.

  “The Red World of Polaris.” Red World of Polaris by Clark Ashton Smith. Edited by Ronald S. Hilger and Scott Connors (San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2003).

  “Told in the Desert.” Over the Edge. Edited by August Derleth (Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1964; London: Victor Gollancz, 1967; London: Arrow, 1976). In OD.

  “The Willow Landscape.” Philippine Magazine (May 1931). WT 34, no.1 (June-July 1939): 87-90. In DS, GL.

  “A Rendezvous in Averoigne.” WT 17, no. 3 (April-May 1931): 364-374. WT 33, no. 1 (January 1939): 112-22. In OST, RA.

  “The Gorgon.” WT 19, no.3 (April 1932): 551-58. In LW.

  “An Offering to the Moon.” WT 45, no. 4 (September 1953): 54-65. In OD.

  “The Kiss of Zoraida.” Magic Carpet 3, no. 3 (July 1933): 373-76. In OD.

  “The Face by the River.” Lost Worlds no. 1 (2004): 3-7. WT 61, no. 1 (July 2005): 52-55. Reprinted in Seekers of Dreams. Edited by Douglas A. Anderson (Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Press, 2005).

  “The Ghoul.” Fantasy Fan 1, no. 5 (January 1934): 69-72. In OD.

  “The Kingdom of the Worm.” Fantasy Fan 1, no. 2 (October 1933): 17-22. In OD.

  “An Adventure in Futurity.”WS 2, no. 11 (April 1931): 1230-51, 1328. In OD.

  “The Justice of the Elephant.” Oriental Stories 1, no. 6 (Autumn 1931): 856, 858, 863-64. In OD.

  “The Return of the Sorcerer.” ST 1, no.1 (September 1931): 99-109. In OST. Reprinted in Sleep No More. Edited by August Derleth (NY: Farrar and Rinehart, 1944; NY: Editions for the Armed Services, 1944).

  “The City of the Singing Flame.” WS 3, no. 2 (July 1931): 202-13 (as “City of Singing Flame”). Tales of Wonder no. 10 (Spring 1940): 6-31 (combined with “Beyond the Singing Flame”). Startling Stories 5, no. 1 (January 1941): 98-106. In OST (combined with “Beyond the Singing Flame”), RA. Reprinted (combined with “Beyond the Singing
Flame”) in The Other Side of the Moon. Edited by August Derleth (NY: Pellegrini and Cudahy, 1949). Reprinted (combined with “Beyond the Singing Flame”) in From Off This World. Edited by Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend (NY: Merlin Press, 1949).

  “A Good Embalmer.” Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith. Ed. Steve Behrends with Donald Sidney-Fryer and Rah Hoffman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989).

  “The Testament of Athammaus.” WT 20, no.4 (October 1932): 509-21. In OST.

  “A Captivity in Serpens.” Wonder Stories Quarterly 2, no. 4 (Summer 1931): 534-51, 569 (as “The Amazing Planet”). Fantastic Story Quarterly 2, no. 1 (Winter 19551): 86-108 (as “The Amazing Planet”) . In OD, RWP.

  “The Letter from Mohaun Los.” WS 4, no. 3 (August 1932): 218-29, 278 (as “Flight into Super-Time) . Tales of Wonder no. 16 (Spring 1942): 54-72 (as “Flight Through Time”). In LW.

  “The Hunters from Beyond.” ST 2, no.3 (October 1932): 292-303. Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror no. 1 [Edited by Walter H. Gillings] (London: Utopian Publications [1946] : 43-54. A Book of Weird Tales 1, no. 1 [1960]: 91-103. In LW. Reprinted in The Macabre Reader. Edited by Donald A. Wollheim (NY: Ace, 1959).

  ABOUT THE EDITORS

  Scott Connors received his B. A. degree in English and History from Washington and Jefferson College and has also studied at the University of Salzburg. In addition to numerous articles for such publications as Lovecraft Studies, Wormwood, The Barbaric Triumph, and Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia, he has edited the Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith and The Freedom of Fantastic Things, the latter a collection of criticism on Smith. He also regularly reviews books for Publishers Weekly and Weird Tales. He is currently working on a biography of Smith.