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The Maze of the Enchanter (The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Vol. 4) (v. 4)

av Clark Ashton Smith

MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygDiskussioner / Omnämnanden
2053131,211 (4.32)1 / 7
The fourth of five volumes collecting the complete stories of renowned "weird fiction" author Clark Ashton Smith. "None strikes the note of cosmic horror as well as Clark Ashton Smith. In sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Smith is perhaps unexcelled by any other writer." --H. P. Lovecraft Clark Ashton Smith, considered one of the greatest contributors to seminal pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, helped define and shape "weird fiction" in the early twentieth century, alongside contemporaries H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, drawing upon his background in poetry to convey an unparalleled richness of imagination and expression in his stories of the bizarre and fantastical. The Collected Fantasies series presents all of Smith's fiction chronologically. Authorized by the author's estate and endorsed by Arkham House, the stories in this series are accompanied by detailed background notes from editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, who in preparation for this collection meticulously compared original manuscripts, various typescripts, published editions, and Smith's own notes and letters. Their efforts have resulted in the most definitive and complete collection of the author's work to date. The Maze of the Enchanter is the fourth of five volumes collecting all of Clark Ashton Smith's tales of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. It includes all of his stories from "The Mandrakes" (1932) to "The Flower-Women" (1933), and an introduction by Gahan Wilson.… (mer)
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This fourth volume of Smith's Collected Stories is something of a mixed bag. Although some of his best and best known tales are here (Genius Loci, The Dark Eidolon) the strain of economic necessity shows through more than it did in volume 3. Smith was forced to crank out tales, too many and too fast, to take care of his ailing parents. Unlike [a:H.P. Lovecraft|9494|H.P. Lovecraft|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1299165714p2/9494.jpg], who resisted editorial meddling, Smith was all too willing to make editorial changes to his stories in order to make them more saleable. This is certainly forgivable but also lamentable since Smith is at times such a fine writer of the truly weird tale when he isn't meddled with. Too many of the stories here exhibit a sameness that dulls the better ones. Take it in small bites and it will taste better. ( )
  Gumbywan | Jun 24, 2022 |
The fourth volume is a bit more focused thematically, including 5 stories of the Zothique circle, 3 of the Averoigne one and two Hyperborean ones. This doesn’t mean, of course, that there is any aspect of Clark Ashton’s writing that is not represented here. There are many good and great stories here, with quality peaks at the beginning and at the second half, and a stellar high at the Charnel God/Dark Eidolon combo.

Bad:
-The Dimension of Chance: In the far future of 1970s (the story was written in the ’30s) an American military plane ends up in a strange world after chasing a Japanese aircraft. There, random probability has a much more active role in shaping the world, resulting in creatures whose physiology is pluralistic to say the least.
Nice idea, whose materialization is, however, doomed from inception to be rather tiresome when injected into words. Of the weird science-fiction CAS genre, of which I am not a fan.

Mediocre:
-A Star-Change: Alien beings take the protagonist with them to their planet.
One of CAS’s exercises in descriptions of weird environments, imbued with the fatalistic conception of mankind’s limitations. Not much to keep.

-The White Sybil: In Hyperborea, a poet catches glimpses of the White Sibyl, a divine oracle, follows her up a mountain, sees another world, yet when he touches the woman the mirage is shattered.
This has a poem-like quality, lots of description, and not much in the way of plot or action. It is definitely beautiful but rather tiresome.

-The Isle of the Torturers: After his nation is wiped by pestilence, a king (who has immunity by wearing a magic ring) sails for a distant land. A storm throws his vessel on an island famed for its sadistic inhabitants.
Of the Zothique circle, yet not much in the way of plot. Obvious resemblance to the Masque of Red Death, (also, a very early manifestation of Melnibone?) quite predictable, it unfortunately doesn’t rise above mediocrity.

-The Dweller in the Gulf: A trio of Earth people descend into a huge Martian cave, where they encounter a strange race and the Dweller in the Gulf.
Though it could theoretically be slotted in the dungeon crawl genre, this is more descriptive and eloquent than needed. It has a nice escalation, but feels rather unpolished.

-The Secret of the Cairn: An artist discovers a strange stone in the forest, which he cannot approach – when he does, it seems that it keeps distancing itself, without changing position. Afterwards it is revealed as part of an elaborate alien ritual -the aliens take the protagonist for a short visit to their world.
This had potential to be great, sylvan cairn and all, but the alien edge along with the overwhelming weirdness of the alien world description weighs it down a lot.

Good:
-The Mandrakes: A sorcerer kills and buries his wife in the garden; in this spot start sprouting female-shaped mandrakes.
Part of the Averoigne cycle, a solid short story with grand overtones of rural witchcraft.

-The Beast of Averoigne: The appearance of a comet heralds the coming of a strange beast in the vicinity of a monastery, a terror that hunts in the night. The aid of a sorcerer is finally enlisted to thwart the devil.
Part of the Averoigne cycle, a grand narration from three different points of view/characters, with a brooding twist in the end. Excellent medieval horror.

-The Disinterment of Venus: An ancient Venus statue is unearthed in a monastery garden, inducing the monks to satyriasis.
Part of the Averoigne cycle. A nice, unusually sexually suggestive story which reeks of hidden monastic lust, an exultation of pagan carnality with a satisfying ending.

-The Maze of the Enchanter: A man trying to locate his abducted fiancé enters a wizard’s territory, ending up in the sorcerer’s notorious labyrinth.
Top-notch CAS dark fantasy. The descriptions are evocative and rich like elder vitae. Just a bit more of plot action would take it to the grand category.

-The third episode of Vathek: The completion of an unfinished Vathek appendice, in which twin brother and sister indulge in forbidden love and pacts with the Devil.
A majestic capture of Vathek’s atmosphere, this is overally excellent, though it could perhaps be edited to a lesser word count.

-Genius Loci: A painter seems to be maliciously affected by a locale with a pond and some gnarled trees. His friend, trying to save him, calls the artist’s girlfriend, who however proves incapable of overpowering the locale’s influence.
The spirit of the place as a vampiric entity: this is the core idea of this beautiful little story. Not much to dislike here, apart from the slightly slow pace.

-The Voyage of King Euvoran: The stuffed bird forming the crowning jewel of a king’s crown is revived by a necromancer and flies away. The King embarks on an expedition to retrieve it.
Part of the Zothique cycle, yet unusually humorous in tone, this has very memorable locales, an island ruled by birds, and a fitting fairy-tale-esque ending.

-Vulthoom: Some humans who have been stranded on Mars descend to the planet’s interior and are offered a mission by a god-like entity – a task that involves preparing Earth for colonization.
A nice case of CAS-ian sci-fi, that focuses on plot rather than heavy descriptions.

-The Flower-Women: The omnipotent wizard from the Maze of the Enchanter visits another planet out of boredom. There he meets plant sirens and reptilian sorcerers.
An almost light-hearted story that reveals an almost humane side of the stern enchanter. Very pleasurable.

Great:
-The Ice Demon: Three persons embark on a quest towards the oncoming glacier that heralds the coming Ice Age; they seek an ice chamber holding a frozen army, along with royal gemstones. The glacier seems to be imbued with malevolent consciousness and agency.
An ode to ice and cold. Set in the later days of Hyperborea, the story contains amazing descriptions of arctic vistas and ice-sculpted monuments. The demon itself and its signs of attack are a study in majestic subtlety. Strangely reminiscent of Algernon Blackwood’s The Sacrifice, as far as atmosphere goes.

-The Charnel God: A city dominated by the temple of a death god – all people who die in its walls end up in there. The protagonist must rescue his wife, who has the symptoms of death, but remains alive.
Part of the Zothique cycle, it showcases pulpy dark adventuring done right. Not of the sword & sorcery kind where heroes indulge in their skill, but of the one that reads like a good dark fairy-tale.

-The Dark Eidolon: A mighty wizard returns to the city of his birth to wreak revenge upon the prince that once scorned him. With him, he has the dark eidolon of a demon god.
Part of the Zothique cycle, and one of CAS’s most grandiose creations. Has there been a more majestic description of oncoming doom than the one of the beings coming upon the city? This is the stuff apocalypse is made of.

-The Weaver in the Vault: Three imperial guards go to a necropolis to fetch an ages-old mummy to their liege.
Part of the Zothique cycle. When CAS focuses on dungeon crawling he excels. With nice background hues of steppe-like camaraderie, and amazing, atmospheric descriptions of the charnel grounds. ( )
  Athotep | Sep 26, 2020 |
Clark Ashton Smith is undergoing something of a revival these days. As well as an amateur artist who even illustrated some of his stories for Weird Tales, he was also a superb poet of the fantastic. (The Last Oblivion: Best Fantastic Poetry of Clark Ashton Smith is an affordable, excellent introduction to that side of his talent.)

And, of course, there are the stories. Smith was not as good a writer as poet, but he could still be very good. This series collects his stories in the order Smith wrote them with the editors working very hard to present Smith's preferred versions and alternate versions as well as Smith's opinion of those stories as well as that of his famous friends, H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. This volume's stories were written in 1932 and 1933 and have Smith working in the many universes he had already established or writing sequels to his popular past stories. In all cases, the stories stand alone even when part of a series.

Smith's greatest and most influential creation, the decadent, magical, grotesque far future of Zothique, Earth's last continent, is the setting for many stories here. Showing the influence of Smith's idol Edgar Poe at several points, "The Isle of the Torturers" has a king and fellow sparse survivors of a plague ending up on said island, a place given to the sadistic pleasure of all kinds of torture. "The Charnel God" has a young nobleman braving the temple of Mordiggian to rescue his dead wife from its priests. (She only seems dead, more shades of Poe.). "The Dark Eidolon" is Smith at the top of his form with a sorcerer determined to avenge an injury he suffered, when still a beggar boy and not Zothique's most feared man, at the hands of a future emperor. And there's a god who has his own ideas of justice. A poetic, dark tale of two unpleasant men marred only by a misstep in final imagery. "The Voyage of King Euvoran", obsessively undertaken to recover a royal symbol and right a slight, ends up in a satisfying, wry conclusion. "The Weaver in the Vaults" has three soldiers sent on a mission to recover a royal mummy so it can be ground up for magical potions. They encounter a strange, vampiric creature underneath a city "where Death has made his capital".

There are further entries in the French medieval world of Averoigne. "The Mandrakes" has wedded sorcerers selling illegal love potions - and being murderously unhappy in their own marriage. "The Beast of Averoigne" is an effective werewolf story. "The Disinternment of Venus" pits erotic pagan magic against Christian chastity at a monastery.

The magical prehistoric Earth of Hyperborea is the setting of two stories. "The White Sibyl" is a prose-poem about the obsession of the poet Tortha for the titular woman who foretells the glaciers about to engulf the city of Cerngoth. The fate of a doomed expedition to stop those glaciers and a plot to loot its remains is the subject of "The Ice-Demon".

"The Maze of the Enchanter" introduces the bored magician Maal Dweb. Here a barbarian tries to rescue his lover from Maad Dweb's clutches. Wry insouciance mixed with decadence. Still oppressed by ennui, Dweb decides to live dangerously and rescue "The Flower-Women" with only the powers of his novice days.

As evidenced by its title, "The Third Episode of Vathek: The Story of the Princess Zulkaïs and the Prince Kalilah" finishes off a fragment from William Beckford's Vathek; An Arabian Tale, the first Arabian fantasy. I didn't remember Beckford being so entertaining. Smith added about 4,000 words to Beckford's 14,000.

Horror and science fiction mix in the last two installments of Smith's Ahai aka Mars series. "The Dweller in the Gulf" has a trio from Earth encountering a nasty leftover from the past in a cavern. Effective horror despite some clumsy dialogue and exposition. "Vulthoom" is the most minor of the Ahai series but still, for Smith, a fairly successful science fiction story. Some earthmen discover a plot to invade and subjugate Earth via an alien drug. (Some have seen an influence on Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch).

Most of Smith's straight science fiction doesn't work too well. Its plots characteristically have self-destructively obsessed protagonists or heroes returning as psychological or physical cripples after their encounter with the alien, alienated from their homes in the end. "A Star-Change" has an excellent idea - a man having his senses so altered by extraterresterials that life in his old home is unbearable - but the execution is boring and jargon filled. Americans pursuing Japanese spies end up in "The Dimension of Chance", a place so chaotic that general categories of minerals and plants are unknown and gravity is mercurial. But, again, the execution is annoying. The dialogue is bad too which is perhaps why Smith thought the story worked as satire more than anything else. "The Secret of the Cairn" works better than "A Star-Change" at exploring the alienating effects of the alien.

"Genius Loci" is a fine story bearing the mark of Algernon Blackwood in its plot of an artist's obsession with an unwholesome landscape. ( )
1 rösta RandyStafford | Mar 26, 2012 |
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The fourth of five volumes collecting the complete stories of renowned "weird fiction" author Clark Ashton Smith. "None strikes the note of cosmic horror as well as Clark Ashton Smith. In sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Smith is perhaps unexcelled by any other writer." --H. P. Lovecraft Clark Ashton Smith, considered one of the greatest contributors to seminal pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, helped define and shape "weird fiction" in the early twentieth century, alongside contemporaries H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, drawing upon his background in poetry to convey an unparalleled richness of imagination and expression in his stories of the bizarre and fantastical. The Collected Fantasies series presents all of Smith's fiction chronologically. Authorized by the author's estate and endorsed by Arkham House, the stories in this series are accompanied by detailed background notes from editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, who in preparation for this collection meticulously compared original manuscripts, various typescripts, published editions, and Smith's own notes and letters. Their efforts have resulted in the most definitive and complete collection of the author's work to date. The Maze of the Enchanter is the fourth of five volumes collecting all of Clark Ashton Smith's tales of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. It includes all of his stories from "The Mandrakes" (1932) to "The Flower-Women" (1933), and an introduction by Gahan Wilson.

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