H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard: Where next?

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Still haven't got on the Gene Wolfe bandwagon.

Thus We Frustrate Kid Charlemagne (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 19 October 2014 03:05 (nine years ago) link

Just pasting something I wrote on the Ligotti forum...

I have the following collections..

Collected Fantasies Of Clark Ashton Smith 1-5
Miscellaneous Writings (kind of a 6th volume to the above series)
Complete Poetry And Translations 1-3
Nostalgia Of The Unknown (prose poetry)
Sword Of Zagan
Red World Of Polaris
Black Diamonds

I thought that was all the prose and poetry but looking at Internet Speculative Fiction Database, there's a lot more, I think. The contents of the poetry collections haven't been updated yet but it seems like some of his later short stories are only in books like

Strange Shadows: The Uncollected Fiction and Essays of Clark Ashton Smith
The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: Clark Ashton Smith's Cthulhu Mythos Fiction

Can anyone tell me if these are collected in anything else, if they are any good or if they are variants of earlier pieces?

As usual I'm getting ahead of myself, as I've only read a tiny amount of his work

Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 22 October 2014 23:39 (nine years ago) link

It's weird but I don't think the complete poetry series collects any prose poetry, which isn't even that much.

Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, 22 October 2014 23:41 (nine years ago) link

There's a ligotti forum?

a drug by the name of WORLD WITHOUT END (Jon Lewis), Thursday, 23 October 2014 01:03 (nine years ago) link

http://ligotti.net/

I was hesitant to join at first because I haven't read much Ligotti and am less enthusiastic about forums revolving around one author, but it seems that not everyone there is a Ligotti fan but the attraction is that it's by far the best forum for horror/weird I've seen, also lots of in-depth discussion of philosophy and religion. Lots of poetry too. I've seen some fascinating stuff there.

Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 23 October 2014 01:38 (nine years ago) link

one year passes...

black diamonds and sword of zagan are both pretty plodding reads iirc. i sold my copies... anyway, that's neither here nor there.

but i came to post that the first two volumes of smith's "collected fantasies" are back in print, as paperbacks, in case you're like me and missed out on them before they were selling for $200+

ian, Monday, 15 February 2016 17:12 (eight years ago) link

five years pass...

Does anyone rate Ashton Smith's poetry? Joshi does, but then he would.

Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 1 December 2021 10:22 (two years ago) link

C.L. Moore's Jirel ov Joiry is apparently thee earliest (almost only?) sword & sorcery female chop-chop artist---stories I've come across in anthologies are mind-blowing---def. quality over quantity---wiki sums up: Contents (of original s/t collection)
"Jirel Meets Magic" (Weird Tales 1935)
"Black God's Kiss" (Weird Tales 1934)
"Black God's Shadow" (Weird Tales 1934)
"The Dark Land" (Weird Tales 1936)
"Hellsgarde" (Weird Tales 1939)
A sixth story, "Quest of the Starstone", written in collaboration with Henry Kuttner, teamed Jirel with Moore's science fiction hero Northwest Smith. It was finally collected with the other Jirel stories in the 2007 Black God's Kiss.[1][2]

Reception
Algis Budrys noted that while the Jirel stories were among Moore's earliest work, they remained effective more than thirty years later because "the events which occur to Jirel, as she struggles with the half-understood forces of darkness in her quasi-medieval world, are all things that play on the heart of what being you and me is all about."[3]
Aye, and that includes asskicking.
You really can't go wrong with C.L. Moore, it seems, and she had quite a range.

dow, Wednesday, 1 December 2021 17:12 (two years ago) link

(almost only?) sword & sorcery female chop-chop artist Can't recall having read RAH's Red Sonja stories, though think there's a collection, and a movie.

dow, Wednesday, 1 December 2021 17:17 (two years ago) link

And I second this, from way upthread: f ya like conan style action sword n sorcery, his Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories are fun. Also see recent discussion of Jack Vance's sketchy rover Cugel etc., over o the 5000 Posts thread.

dow, Wednesday, 1 December 2021 20:36 (two years ago) link


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