mark monday's Reviews > The Last Hieroglyph

Clark Ashton Smith, one of my favorite classic writers of ornate science fantasy, closes out his career with less of a bang and more of a... well, I'm not going to say "whimper" because I'm not going to insult him. He closes out his career with a whisper. A whisper of his former skills, I suppose, rather than the more full-throated confidence and command of effects that he had in his heyday. There are certainly some of the worst stories I've ever read by him in here. Happily, there are plenty of perfectly fine stories, and handful of excellent ones that are just as wonderfully written and magically malevolent as his prior classics.

I loved his return to the Atlantean land of Poseidonis: "The Death of Malygris" features a cabal of understandably anxious second-level wizards who seek to plunder the fortunes of their apparently-dead superior. They should have known better.

CAS revisits his classic (and shared) setting of sword & sorcery, Hyperborea, in three treats. One about the robbery of a temple, another about an arrogant king bespelled by a grouchy enchanter to offer himself up to a range of underworld monstrosities, all who find the offering rather lacking (the delightful and macabre "The Seven Geases"), and a somewhat Lovecraftian story of an alien being intent on bringing death by ice to the world (the atypically somber "The Coming of the White Worm").

The Vancean far-future continent of Zothique is featured the most heavily in this collection. I was disappointed by a number of these stories, but there were some standouts. (All of my favorites are bolded below.) The best tales of Zothique, as with Poseidonis, are the ones suffused with a bleak melancholy. Just as Poseidonis is doomed to drown, Zothique exists at the end of days. "Morthylla" and "Necromancy in Naat" in particular exude the kind of luscious romanticism and literally necrophilic love affairs that are perfect for undead readers like myself.

It's sort of funny to describe these different worlds of Poseidonis and Zothique and Hyperborea, because they often feel like very similar places. Same goes for his setting in the provincial French countryside, Averoigne. All include dark wizardry, dying or dead civilizations, horribly ironic endings, and all portrayed with the deepest shades of purple prose.

A standout that felt quite different is the scabrous and unusually graphic "Schizo Creator" - starting with that fun title. The jumping points are Manichaeism and Gnosticism: the binary of a Good God of Order and the Dark God of Chaos, the right-hand path and the left. But what if, wonders a very modern psychoanalyst with some surprising sorcerous skills, there is only one being, and this God is schizophrenic. I mean seriously, LOL! And so our resourceful brain-panner manages to trap a high-level demon that he mistakes for Satan and then provides that very modern treatment, electroshock therapy. The results are pretty amusing, to the reader and to the high-level demon. And the whole experiment - dutifully reported back by that demon - is certainly of interest to the High Devil himself. Or should it be... Himself? No spoilers! Or blasphemy!

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INANE SYNOPSES

The Dark Age - post-apocalyptic caveboy learns that last living elitists still elitist
The Chain of Aforgomon - fuck around with Father Time and find out
The Primal City - cloud monsters don't like climbers
Treader of the Dust - ashy book leads to ashy skin leads to ashy death
The Great God Awto - hear them sing their paeans to this god
Strange Shadows - drunk dude sees clearly
Double Cosmos - druggie dude sees other self and other self is an asshole
Nemesis of the Unfinished - writer needs to write more and drink less
Symposium of the Gorgon - drunkard meets Gorgon, Pegasus, cannibals
Schizoid Creator - psychiatrist needs to rethink his thesis
Monsters in the Night - werewolf feeding time
Phoenix - boyfriend not returning from trip to reignite sun
The Dart of Rasafa - makes me sad that this was author's last story cause it sucked

Poseidonis

The Death of Malygris - oh he ain't that dead

Averoigne

Mother of Toads - nasty, horny sorceress + toads = bad news for handsome apprentice
The Enchantress of Sylaire - who cares how she really looks, she fucks

Hyperborea

The Coming of the White Worm - disgusting slug sorcerer wants the world to just chill
Seven Geases - hypnotized human sacrifice: "Eat me, I'm yours." 7 entities: "Sorry, just not into you."
Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles - Ocean's 11 - 3 + fake ghosts

Zothique

The Tomb-Spawn - escape from cannibals leads to discovery of something pretty gross
The Witchcraft of Ulua - entitled temptress mad she can't get it on with new cup-bearer
Xeethra - Ozymandias called, wants kingdom and name back
The Last Hieroglyph - astrologer gets on Fate's last nerve
Necromancy in Naat - dead people make great servants but not great lovers
The Black Abbot of Puthuum - racist travelers don't want to provide lonely, hungry monk with sustenance or sex
The Death of Ilalotha - after the funeral orgies, it's jealous queen vs. living dead girl
The Garden of Alompha - bored king not so bored anymore when being torn apart by vengeful veggies
The Master of the Crabs - crabs make unreliable friends
Morthylla - "After his death, he forgot that he had died..."