Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was born on this date, January 13.  Along with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft, Smith was considered one of the Big Three of Weird Tales. Smith lived the longest of these three gentlemen, but his writing career wasn’t much longer. He wrote during the 1920s and 30s but stopped writing around 1937. Smith was a poet as well as a short story writer, and it shows in his lush, baroque prose.  In fact, one of the more common criticisms of Smith is that reading him requires too much work and too large of a vocabulary. His stories were often set in imaginary worlds such as Hyperborea, Poseidonis, and Zothique.  They are well worth seeking out.  Fortunately they are available in inexpensive electronic editions.

In observance of his birth, let’s look at two of his stories set in more modern times. Mild spoiler warning.

“The Kiss of Zoraida” is a brief tale set in Syria first published in the July 1933 issue of The Magic Carpet Magazine.  A young man is having an illicit affair with Zoraida, the young wife of an elderly and hated jewel dealer. He has been slipping over the garden wall each evening while the jewel dealer is away on business. He fancies himself clever. Turns out he’s not s smart as he thinks he is.

Tonight he discovers the jewel dealer has returned early and is waiting for him with a gun. The old man has no intention of shooting him, though. Under the escort of two eunuchs bearing large scimitars, he takes the young man to see his paramour. She is lying dead on a couch, a victim of poison.

The old man gives the young lover  the same choice he gave his faithless wife. Be cut to pieces slowly by the eunuchs or take a quick acting poison. In the case of the young man, the poison will be on the lips of the young woman. Be slowly cut to pieces, or give Zoraida one last kiss…

“The Seed from the Seplucher”, first published in Weird Tales in the October 1933 issue, is set in what was at the time modern South America. Falmer and Thone are hunting orchids with two Indian guides along an obscure tributary of the Orinoco when they here a rumor of an abandoned city containing a burial pit with treasure. Thone is suffering from a fever, so Falmer takes one of the guides and goes in search of the place.

He returns three days later. He located the city but not the treasure. His guide refused to enter the city. Falmer finds the burial pit, goes down in it, and finds nothing but skeletons. As he’s climbing out, he sees something horrifying in the upper corner of the vault closest to where he entered. It’s a skeleton hanging on the wall, held there by roots. The roots are coming out of the top of the skull, the eyes, the nose holes, and the mouth, stretching towards the roof. Other roots extend down through the ribs and into a skull of a skeleton below. There’s some type of growth among the roots coming out of the top of the skull.

He leans over to get a closer look, brushes against the growth, and immediately is covered with spores.

Falmer and Thone set off down the river the next morning. Falmer seems to be coming down with a fever, while Thone has recovered enough that his comes and goes. By midday Falmer is complaining about a headache. Thone eventually finds a place along the bank to go ashore. He gives Falmer a shot of morphine, which settles him down. While examining his friend, Thone discovers a horn like growth on the top of Falmer’s head, about to break through the skin.

Thone succumbs to another bout of fever. When he wakes up, he finds the guides gone and the growth having punctured the skin of Falmer’s head…

You can probably guess how things are going to end. This is a delightfully ghastly story. In both of these tales, Smith takes a fairly standard plot and makes it something engrossing through his writings.  Both stories are currently available in The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith Vol. 3: A Vintage From Atlantis.

If you haven’t read Smith, do yourself a favor and check him out. He isn’t everyone’s vintage, but he’s a heady draught for those who like his work.