---Picked up big pile of mail at post office, including packages from Stark House, Wheatland, and Tachyon, which I will catalog ASAP. But still nothing from PGW. I guess I will have to check on the status on that one.
---Word from Hippocampus:
Dear Bookseller,
The first ever full-scale critical anthology on Clark Ashton Smith is now available in hardcover and paperback from Hippocampus Press! A blurb is below; please advise quantities desired. Now is also a good time to stock up on our backlist titles by Smith, THE BLACK DIAMONDS, THE SWORD OF ZAGAN and THE LAST OBLIVION.
Thank you for your interest in Hippocampus Press!
Best regards,
Derrick Hussey
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THE FREEDOM OF FANTASTIC THINGS
Selected Criticism on Clark Ashton Smith
Edited by Scott Connors
July 2006
376 pages
Hardcover : ISBN 0976159244: $49.95
Paperback: ISBN 0976159252: $20.00
As poet, fiction writer, and artist, Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) has left an indelible mark on the fields of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. But criticism of his bountiful and varied work has been surprisingly scanty, and oftentimes ill-informed. The Freedom of Fantastic Things represents the most substantial volume of criticism of Smith’s work ever published, and includes both original and previously published work by the leading scholars on Smith.
Among the notable contributions are Donald Sidney-Fryer’s exhaustive discussion of Smith’s relations with his early mentor, George Sterling; Brian Stableford’s brilliant analysis of Smith’s cosmicism; Fred Chappell’s sensitive treatment of Smith’s fantastic poetry; S. T. Joshi’s essays on The Hashish-Eater and on Smith’s prose-poetry; Scott Connors’s penetrating study of Smith’s relations to literary Modernism; Lauric Guillaud’s rumination on fantasy and decadence in Smith’s work; and other essays by Carl Jay Buchanan, Charles K. Wolfe, Steve Behrends, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Ronald S. Hilger, and other leading authorities.
At the conclusion of the volume is Steve Behrends’s exhaustive chronology of Smith’s work and a comprehensive primary and secondary bibliography. All in all, a feast for devotees of the necromancer from Auburn!
Scott Connors is the coeditor of Smith’s Red World of Polaris and of a forthcoming five-volume edition of Smith’s fiction. He is also working on a full-scale biography of Smith.
Table of Contents:
Introduction by Scott Connors
“The Centaur” by Clark Ashton Smith
Klarkash-Ton and “Greek” by Donald Sidney-Fryer
Contemporary Reviews of Clark Ashton Smith
Eblis in Bakelite by James Blish
James Blish versus Clark Ashton Smith; to Wit, the Young Turk Syndrome by Donald Sidney-Fryer
The Last Romantic by S J Sackett
Communicable Mysteries: The Last True Symbolist by Fred Chappell
What Happens in The Hashish-Eater? by S T Joshi
The Babel of Visions: The Structuration of Clark Ashton Smith’s The Hashish-Eater by Dan Clore
Clark Ashton Smith’s “Nero” by Carl Jay Buchanan
Satan Speaks: A Reading of “Satan Unrepentant” by Phillip A Ellis
Lands Forgotten or Unfound: The Prose Poetry of Clark Ashton Smith by S T Joshi
Out the Human Aquarium: The Fantastic Imagination of Clark Ashton Smith by Brian Stableford
Gesturing Toward the Infinite by Scott Connors
Clark Ashton Smith: A Note on the Aesthetics of Fantasy by Charles K Wolfe
Fantasy and Decadence in the Work of Clark Ashton Smith by Laurie Guillaud
Humor in Hyperspace: Smith’s Uses of Satire by John Kipling Hitz
The Song of the Necromancer: “Loss” in Clark Ashton Smith’s Fiction by Steve Behrends
Brave World Old and New: The Atlantis Theme in the Poetry and Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith by Donald Sidney-Fryer
Coming in from the Cold: Incursons of “Outsideness” in Hyperborea by Steven Tompkins
As Shadows Wait Upon the Sun: Clark Ashton Smith’s Zothique by Jim Rockhill
Into the Woods: The Human Geography of Averoigne by Stefan Dziemianowicz
Sorcerous Style: Clark Ashton Smith's The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies by Peter H Goodrich
Loss and Recuperation: A Model for Reading Clark Ashton Smith’s “Xeethra” by Dan Clore
“Life, Love, and the Clemency of Death”: A Reexamination of Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Isle of the Torturers” by Scott Connors
An Annotated Chronology of the Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith by Steve Behrends
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
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