Clark Ashton Smith - The Double Shadow

[@craigfulton3316]

His use of the language to add to the atmosphere and flavour of the tale is excellent. I think he paints the world and characters perfectly.

[@richmcgee434]

@Mike Marley Troll.

[@feralbluee]

great reading.- and love your voice. thanks much :) 🐈🐾

[@jerosjulianjr.infante7971]

The way even liches and demons did not want to stick around and find out what happened tells us tht whatever it was that crossed over during the spell is on some other shit entirely. Perhaps Lovecraft-esque beings that are to demons what demons are to humans

[@Loschh]

Absolutely epic.

[@bloke1348]

..and the Mummy gave a necromantic answer, saying that there was.... Nothing.

[@alexandernagel8205]

I want to live here

[@seanjustinkvalsvig1581]

Clark Ashton Smith (January 13, 1893 - August 14, 1961) was an American writer and artist. As a poet, Smith is grouped with the "The Last of the Great Romantics" Smith's was praised by contemporaries. H. P. Lovecraft "in sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, perhaps unexcelled", and Ray Bradbury "filled my mind with incredible worlds, impossibly beautiful cities, and still more fantastic creatures" one of "the big three of Weird Tales, with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft" The fantasy critic L. Sprague de Camp said of him that "nobody since Poe has so loved a well-rotted corpse." A member of the Lovecraft circle and his literary friendship from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937. "My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of a sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation." Clark Ashton Smith stated. Smith's self-education was to read the complete 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica at least twice. Smith retained most or all of whatever he read. After leaving formal education, he embarked upon a self-directed course of literature, Smith later taught himself French and Spanish to translate verse out of those languages, including works by Gérard de Nerval, Paul Verlaine, Amado Nervo, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and all but 6 of Charles Baudelaire's 157 poems in The Flowers of Evil. A fan letter from H. P. Lovecraft, which was the beginning of 15 years of friendship and correspondence. Smith and Lovecraft borrowed each other's place names and the names of strange gods for their stories, so different is Smith's treatment of the Lovecraft theme. Smith was poor for most of his life and often did hard manual jobs such as fruit picking and woodcutting to support his parents. He was an able cook and made many kinds of wine. He also did well digging, typing and journalism.

[@aesopstortoise]

Oi mate, you got a licence for that spell?

[@RolandWieffering1]

Yes, but it reached its expiration date about a 100.000 years ago.... LOL

[@RolandWieffering1]

Thanks for having a sense of humor....

[@goodnamesareallgone1]

Interesting, wonder why they did not call the old sorcerer once again and send him back to the lizard people's time to find out more.

[@alexandernagel8205]

Sounds like a story you should write!

[@bloke1348]

I'm guessing that the epoch of the shadow people was so distant and obscure that that wasn't possible....or indeed it could well be a plot hole!!!!

[@goodnamesareallgone1]

@@bloke1348 you might be right. Or those shadow people locked whatever backdoor that was used to get to them after they fed the old sorcerer a trojan horse incantation.

[@bloke1348]

@@goodnamesareallgone1 well I think the sorcerer that they summoned up could only supply information he couldn't take part in the summoning ceremony. They need the mummy for that but he wasn't articulate enough to supply any insight. It does beg the question as to why didn't they try again with another servant of better abilities. I think Smith should have said something like " amongst those who served us there were none that would suit this task " or something like that. I think it's done deliberately though to create this huge sense of obscurity, mystery and the foreboding of the great unknown. Actually on that note I think this is a totally underrated story/writer , his use of syntax and imagery and his lyrical flow put him up there with the greats, in my humble opinion. I listened to this story countless times for its mastery. The reader too I think is fantastic in his delivery.

[@goodnamesareallgone1]

@@bloke1348 agreed and yeah leaving some ambiguity in the story does allow the reader to exercise their own imagination and enjoy the story line long after hearing/reading it.

[@BryinWillis-e8g]

Said hey…

[@melocomanTV]

im ficking shaking this is so scary

[@louithrottler]

12x Jumbo Sized Wizards Pens for sale ...

[@couragekarnga8735]

The moral of this story is one, don't go saying spells you don't understand, and two, man, after all, is only mortal, even if they are wizards!

[@RolandWieffering1]

You're absolutely right, ever read "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" by H P Lovecraft? There it is said literally "don't invoke anything you can't send away". Thanks for your comment.

[@couragekarnga8735]

@@RolandWieffering1 Yes, I have. I'm in love with Lovecraft!

[@RolandWieffering1]

@@couragekarnga8735 So am I, great those stories from Weird Tales and others. I love those pulp fiction stories, well, most of them.

[@kalishakta]

"I beg you to remember their attitude toward servants." HP Lovecraft to Robert Putney Drake in the Illuminatus trilogy.

[@nowhereman6019]

Wizards: No sense of right and wrong