Unfortunately, HPL’s enthusiasm was not shared by the magazine editors. After being rejected without comment by Amazing Stories, to which he “was fool enough” to submit it “before I had seen a recent copy of the magazine,”² CAS was dismayed to learn that Wright was rejecting it, making it the first of a series of rejections of his best work that embittered him against the capriciousness of editors:

I am reluctantly returning the other story, “The Tale Of Satampra Zeiros.” I am afraid our readers (the great majority of them at least) would find the story extremely unreal and unconvincing. Personally, I fell under the spell of its splendid wording, which reminded me of Lord Dunsany’s stories in

The Book of Wonder.

However, I fear that Lord Dunsany’s stories would prove unpalatable to most of our readers….

³

CAS forwarded this letter to HPL with despairing remarks about how “Satampra Zeiros” was “apparently hopeless from the view-point of salability.”⁴ Lovecraft’s outrage matched his earlier enthusiasm: “As for Wright’s letter—the return of ‘Satampra Zeiros’ left me {too} speechless even for cursing! Of all _______ ______ _______ s … … … may Tsathoggua dissolve the _________!!! He certainly has a great opinion of his precious readers!”⁵ Several months later HPL had the opportunity to suggest to FW that he reconsider his rejection of the story. This apparently lead him to reconsider his earlier decision, and the tale was accepted in November 1930. Smith received forty-eight dollars for the tale.⁶

“The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” is notable for the introduction of Tsathoggua, the chief deity of the prehistoric continent of Hyperborea before it was overtaken by the encroaching polar ice caps. Lovecraft was so smitten by Smith’s creation that he used him in two stories on which he was working: “The Mound,” which he ghost-wrote for Zealia Bishop, and “The Whisperer in Darkness.” In the latter story appears this nod: “It’s from N’kai that frightful Tsathoggua came—you know, the amorphous toad-like god-creature mentioned in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomicon and the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean high-priest Klarkash-Ton.”⁷ (This last is of course an “in-joke” referring to Lovecraft’s nickname for CAS.) Because of Wright’s earlier rejection, Tsathoggua made his debut in Lovecraft’s story (published in WT August 1931) three months before Smith’s tale appeared.

While “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” did not take high marks on the monthly reader’s polls, at least one reader, who signed himself “Nimble Fingers,” expressed his appreciation in the January 1932 issue:

I have enjoyed your magazine immensely. Your stories are entirely different. There is one story in particular that I liked. Perhaps it appealed to me because I am also of that company of “good thieves and adventurers, in all such enterprises which require deft fingers and a habit of mind both agile and adroit.” Perhaps you will think I am boasting, but I am not, as it does not pay to boast in this profession. By this time, no doubt, you will be wondering what story I am referring to: it is “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros.” I have never read a story more entertaining and amusing than this one. What an adventure!

⁸

1. HPL, letter to CAS, December 3, 1929 (Selected Letters III, ed. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei [Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1971]: 87-88).

2. CAS, letter to HPL, December 10, 1929 (SL 106).

3. FW, letter to CAS, January18, 1930 (ms, JHL).

4. CAS, letter to HPL, January 27, 1930 (SL 109).

5. HPL, letter to CAS, February 2, 1930 (ms, JHL).

6. WT, letter to CAS [October 28, 1931] (ms, JHL. )

7. HPL, “The Whisperer in Darkness.” Lovecraft: Tales, ed. Peter Straub (NY: Library of America, 2005): 462.

8. Quoted in T. G. Cockcroft, “The Reader Speaks: Reaction to Clark Ashton Smith in the Pulps.” Dark Eidolon no. 2 (July 1989): 19.

The Monster of the Prophecy

“The Monster of the Prophecy” presents the most complicated history of any of Smith’s stories. A draft manuscript bearing the title “The Pawn of Vyzargon” exists, although he first mentions the story to Lovecraft in late November 1929:

I have two sizeable affairs under way, one of them a brand-new conception with illimitable possibilities, which I am calling “The Monster of the Prophecy.” It concerns a starving poet who is about to throw himself into the river, when he is approached by a stranger who befriends him and afterwards introduces himself as a scientist from a world of Antares, who is sojourning briefly on earth in a human disguise. The Antarean is about to return to Antares planet, with the aid of a vibrating device which annihilates space, and offers to take the poet with him. When they reach their destination, it develops that he has a little game of his own to play. For he uses the poet to bring about the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy, to the effect that a mighty wizard will appear in a certain place at a certain time, accompanied by an unheard-of white monster with two arms

and two legs, and that this wizard will then become the supreme ruler of half the planet. The Antarean adventures of the poet will, I think, be something absolutely novel in interplanetary fiction. He ends up, after incredible perils and experiences that bring him to the verge of insanity, as the lover of an ennuied princess with three legs, five arms, and an opalescent skin, and realizes that, even though he is universally looked upon as a monstrosity, he is no worse off in this respect than he was in his own world. For once, I think, the side-lights of satire will not detract from the fantasy.

¹

The typescript of the first version is dated December 3, 1929. Steve Behrends observes that this was just five weeks after CAS launched his assault on the pulp marketplace, which is truly remarkable.² CAS sent Lovecraft a carbon at the same time that he submitted it to WT, noting that

It struck me on re-reading the thing that I had consciously, or unconsciously satirized pretty nearly everything. Even science, and the pseudo-scientific type of yarn now prevalent, are made a josh of in the first chapter, in the creation of the absurd “space-annihilator…” But of course the profoundest satire is that which is directed at intolerance of all kinds. I seem to have put far more

intellectual

ideas into the story than into anything else of mine—which, of course, may have ruined it from a purely artistic stand-point.

³

Lovecraft continued to be enthusiastic about Smith’s efforts, noting that he enjoyed “The Monster of the Prophecy” tremendously, & admired its gorgeousness of atmosphere & cleverness of structure. The satirical element does not interfere with the general interest so far as I can see, whilst the tribe of Edmond Hamiltons is not sufficiently subtle to perceive & resent the ironic implications in the “space-annihilator.” In your handling of the theme you certainly avoid all the pitfalls & paradoxes of the common “interplanetary” yarn, & manage to create a non-terrestrial landscape of genuinely convincing quality—with a fauna & flora not in the least earthy, but unmistakably Klarkash-Tonic in every particular!⁴

Wright accepted the novelette on a provisional basis, “provided you speed up the first part of the story. The story seems rather too leisurely up to the point where the Anterean [sic] and the human depart for Antares.”⁵ Smith reluctantly complied, eliminating the foreword and much of the atmosphere from the first part of the story; Behrends estimates that 1400 words out of 14,000 were removed, or about ten per cent. CAS was philosophic about the matter, observing stoically “Perhaps I’m doing well to ‘put over’ a novelette on any terms at this early stage. I couldn’t altogether grasp Wright’s objection, though. The full text can be restored if the tale is ever brought out.”⁶ Wright featured the story on the cover of the January 1932 issue, where it was voted best story. CAS included it in both OST and in Far from Time.