The Tomb Spawn

[@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.

[@colemarie9262]

I liked this one a lot.

[@pajamawolfie]

So they managed to accidentally kill the alien demon in the end. Nice.

[@AndyAction]

Such brilliant writing - thank you for posting! Perhaps a more suitable image to accompany this classic tale?

[@Arkanoid1212]

perhaps ;)

[@paysonterhune290]

I just adore Clark Ashton Smith. He doesn't get the same recognition granted HPL or RE Howard, mainly I think because his stories don't feature singularly charismatic protagonists like Conan, Solomon Kane or Randolph Carter...his work is more surreal and poetic, very Dunsanay meets Rimbaud

[@Daleksaresupreme1]

What issue of Dragon Magazine it that?

[@Arkanoid1212]

its the duelist i think around the black summer of 1999

[@ZorroinArkham]

imagine putting ads on this video which you stole