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Post by stevemitchell on Nov 28, 2011 10:13:31 GMT -6
Also on the Eldritch Dark site:
If you go to "Articles" and click on "Criticism," then scroll down to "2002," you will find the "Zothique D20 System game guide." It presents thoughts on how to run game scenarios in the Zothique setting, and although the discussion is keyed to the D20 system, you could easily take the basic information and adapt for OE/retro-clone play.
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Post by foxroe on Nov 29, 2011 12:24:38 GMT -6
Also on the Eldritch Dark site: If you go to "Articles" and click on "Criticism," then scroll down to "2002," you will find the "Zothique D20 System game guide." It presents thoughts on how to run game scenarios in the Zothique setting, and although the discussion is keyed to the D20 system, you could easily take the basic information and adapt for OE/retro-clone play. Very nice. Definitely some ripe gaming material in that document. Exalt for the find!
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Post by doublejig2 on Feb 8, 2019 14:06:53 GMT -6
Smith's stories (for the most part) don't really build upon one another in the sense of "First you should read story X, then story Y, and last of all story Z." (The only exception I can think of is that "The City of the Singing Flame" should be read before "Beyond the Singing Flame".) I share Falconer's preference for reading the stories in the order in which they were written. Night Shade's 5-volume collected stories of Smith presents his stories in the order in which they were written. Click here for the tables of contents of the five volumes: nightshadebooks.com/cart.php?m=search_results&search=clark+ashton+smithI'm currently reading the Night Shade 5-volume series, one story a day. It's an interesting (strangely fated?) and manageable journey...
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Post by stevemitchell on Feb 15, 2021 13:57:13 GMT -6
For those who have been waiting, like forever--Hippocampus Press has released a complete, authorized, one-volume collection of all of Smith's Averoigne stories. It's called THE AVEROIGNE CHRONICLES, and it's available from Amazon or directly from the publisher (and probably from other vendors as well). If you ever wanted to see where all that weird stuff in CASTLE AMBER came from, here's your chance!
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Post by retrorob on Dec 19, 2021 17:28:44 GMT -6
Smith isn't really known in my country (Poland). HPL has a cult status, and REH is still popular, but CAS remains a mystery. Only one short stories collection was translated and published in the 90s. It contains 6 stories (The Flower-Women, The Demon of the Flower, The Doom of Antarion, The Dweller in the Gulf, The City of the Singing Flame, The Monster of the Prophecy). As you can see, nothing of Hyperborea, Averoigne and Zothique.
Now I intend to read some of his stories in English. Could anyone recommend me where to start? Let's say, 5 best CAS stories?
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Post by geoffrey on Dec 20, 2021 11:49:06 GMT -6
Smith isn't really known in my country (Poland). HPL has a cult status, and REH is still popular, but CAS remains a mystery. Only one short stories collection was translated and published in the 90s. It contains 6 stories (The Flower-Women, The Demon of the Flower, The Doom of Antarion, The Dweller in the Gulf, The City of the Singing Flame, The Monster of the Prophecy). As you can see, nothing of Hyperborea, Averoigne and Zothique. Now I intend to read some of his stories in English. Could anyone recommend me where to start? Let's say, 5 best CAS stories? That's a tall order, seeing as how CAS wrote so many excellent stories. My favorite of his cycles is the Hyberborea cycle (which is also the most D&Dish). I will therefore take my five from there, in no particular order: "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" "The Testament of Athammaus" "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan" "The Ice-Demon" "The Seven Geases" (This one is my personal favorite of all of CAS's stories.) "The White Sybil" "The Coming of the White Worm" Oops. That's seven! Like I said, a very tall order. If it must be only five, read "The Seven Geases" and four others taken at random from the above list.
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Post by stevemitchell on Dec 21, 2021 17:43:28 GMT -6
From the Hyperborea series: "The Seven Geases."
From the Averoigne series: "The End of the Story."
From the Zothique series: "The Dark Eidolon."
From Smith's miscellaneous fantasy tales: "The Abominations of Yondo."
From Smith's miscellaneous science fiction tales: "The City of the Singing Flame."
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Post by retrorob on Dec 29, 2021 11:05:22 GMT -6
geoffreyThanks for the tip! For now I'm done with 5 Hyperborean stories: "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" "The Testament of Athammaus" "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan" "The Ice-Demon" "The Seven Geases" As I'm not a native English-speaker, I've found CAS far more challenging than REH. His language is sophisticated, so I had to look up words in a dictionary pretty often - with many of them being described as archaic, obsolete, obscure, literary etc. Perhaps CAS is a closest match for Lord Dunsany. For example "The Tale of Satampra Zairos" is quite similar to the story about 2 thieves and gnolls. My favorite is "The Ice-Demon" which reminds me of Jack London somehow. To sum up - I liked the series (kind of Dying Earth theme), Hyperborea would make a nice setting for an OD&D campaign. For sure I'm going to read the remaining stories, than maybe I'll check Zothique.
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Post by tdenmark on Dec 29, 2021 17:10:00 GMT -6
Audible put out a collected series of his books in Audiobook format. I've been enjoying listening to them. His use of language is superb. It really creates a picture in your mind.
He should be more famous than he is, maybe he didn't manage to create his "Conan" or "Tarzan" or write a real hit, just a series of excellent books.
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Post by geoffrey on Dec 29, 2021 22:03:27 GMT -6
As I'm not a native English-speaker, I've found CAS far more challenging than REH. His language is sophisticated, so I had to look up words in a dictionary pretty often - with many of them being described as archaic, obsolete, obscure, literary etc. I am a native English speaker, and the vocabulary in CAS's stories has challenged me more than the vocabulary of any other fiction. CAS had an eidetic memory, and when he was young he read the entirety of Webster's unabridged dictionary. Thus his extraordinary vocabulary.
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 30, 2021 14:31:27 GMT -6
Also, a lot of words CAS used are now archaic, so reading the work can be challenging even to a native English speaker.
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Post by retrorob on Dec 30, 2021 16:13:08 GMT -6
As I'm not a native English-speaker, I've found CAS far more challenging than REH. His language is sophisticated, so I had to look up words in a dictionary pretty often - with many of them being described as archaic, obsolete, obscure, literary etc. I am a native English speaker, and the vocabulary in CAS's stories has challenged me more than the vocabulary of any other fiction. CAS had an eidetic memory, and when he was young he read the entirety of Webster's dictionary. Thus his extraordinary vocabulary. That explains why I found a lot of words here: www.merriam-webster.com/ BTW it seems that www.eldritchdark.com/ went down. That's a shame. PS Since yesterday I've read "Ubbo-Sathla" and "The White Sybil", so it seems that I'm almost done with Hyperborea.
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Post by Vile Traveller on Dec 30, 2021 17:18:45 GMT -6
Yep, CAS is best appreciated with a dictionary at your side - he really went the extra mile in choosing his words.
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Post by geoffrey on Dec 31, 2021 12:08:39 GMT -6
PS Since yesterday I've read "Ubbo-Sathla" and "The White Sybil"... I find "The White Sybil" to be the most beautiful of all of CAS's stories.
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Post by tkdco2 on Dec 31, 2021 20:53:17 GMT -6
Yep, CAS is best appreciated with a dictionary at your side - he really went the extra mile in choosing his words. I suggest an online dictionary for younger readers. A lot of young people freak out at the site of a print dictionary. They think it's too hard to use. I wish I were kidding about that.
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Post by stevemitchell on Jan 2, 2022 12:27:21 GMT -6
As always, it's great to see CAS getting some attention.
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Post by stevemitchell on Jul 28, 2022 14:07:16 GMT -6
Hippocampus Press has just released ZOTHIQUE: THE FINAL CYCLE by Clark Ashton Smith. The two previous collections of the Zothique tales (Ballantine Adult Fantasy and Necronomicon Press) are long out of print. So, a very welcome arrival for Smith fans. This is Smith's best fantasy cycle, in my opinion (but you should also read the Averoigne and Hyperborea tales).
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Post by Falconer on Jul 28, 2022 19:33:59 GMT -6
Thanks for letting us know about this. I already have all of the Ballantine collections plus (somewhat randomly) just Volume 3 of the Collected Fantasies, plus two other (unauthorized) Averoigne collections. But it’s great they are doing this.
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Post by Finarvyn on Jul 29, 2022 6:55:55 GMT -6
Hippocampus Press has just released ZOTHIQUE: THE FINAL CYCLE by Clark Ashton Smith. Do you have this? Curious about the font size. Looks to be trade paper and not mass market, so font size may be decent.
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Post by stevemitchell on Jul 29, 2022 15:02:12 GMT -6
Yes, it arrived yesterday. The font size is very readable, and I say this as someone whose eyes aren't that great. (As a comparison, the font size is bigger than what you see in the Ballantine Robert E. Howard collections.)
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