You have admirably suggested the subtle, brooding horror of gnarled & immemorially ancient woods—a feeling one likewise catches with especial poignancy in certain of Arthur Machen’s descriptive passages. You might well prepare a whole series of “Averoigne” tales—evolving a definite fantastic milieu in which the landscape & manners of olden France blend imperceptibly with those of the misty mid-region of Weir.

¹

CAS responded “Yes, I might write a whole series, with Averoigne for the milieu; but I have so many ideas, with geographical locations in widely scattered realms of myth and fancy, that I may not get around to Averoigne again for awhile! But certainly it’s a temptation to repeat some scene or character….”² Unfortunately, Wright rejected it on April 9, 1930.

Smith continued to send the story around, telling Derleth that it “has had nine or ten rejections, most magazines, for some unknown reason, appearing to regard it as overly risque. If I were only famous, I might have sold it to the Cosmopolitan for a thousand or two!”³ At some point CAS decided to tone down the ending, apparently to make it more appealing to a wider audience, and finally succeeded in selling it to La Paree Stories  (“high-class medium, eh, what?”)⁴ for $10.50.⁵ Years later he would send Derleth a “slightly revised and snapped-up” version for possible submission to Playboy;⁶ unfortunately, that version has not been located.

“The Satyr” represents our most radical restoration of a Smith text, since the version published in La Paree Stories was used when he prepared GL. However, we feel that the inclusion of the original ending changes what has been up to now a light if somewhat macabre romantic comedy into a much more powerful tragedy that evokes associations with such medieval romances as the legends of Tristan and Iseult. The published conclusion is included in the Appendix 2.

1. HPL, letter to CAS, April 10, 1930 (ms, JHL).

2. CAS, letter to HPL, April 23, 1930 (SL 113).

3. CAS, letter to AWD, June 15, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

4. CAS, letter to DAW, August 7, 1931 (ms, MHS).

5. Merwil Publishing Co. (Merle W. Hersey), letter to CAS, June 2, 1931 (ms, JHL).

6. CAS, letter to AWD, June 3 [1956] (SL 380).

The Planet of the Dead

The origins of “The Planet of the Dead” may be found in the prose poem “From the Crypts of Memory” (Bohemia April 1917), which was included in his collections Ebony and Crystal: Poems in Verse and Prose (Auburn Journal, 1922), OST, and PP. (See Appendix 3.) The chief difference, he explained to Lovecraft, involved “an earthly hero, drawn to this planet by his spiritual affinity with the inhabitants.”¹ His notes for the story consist of the following: “An amateur astronomer is studying a certain remote, obscure star, which fascinates him greatly, when he falls into a cataleptic condition. In this state, which lasts for hours, he undergoes a psychic experience which seems to cover years. He finds himself in a world of dim, tremendous antiquity, lit by an aging sun. When a catastrophe overtakes this sun, he returns to mortal life, and finds that the star he was studying has vanished.”² In writing the story, he may have been influenced by Theosophist ideas regarding astral projection; the French astronomer Camille Flammarion, who popularized the idea of palingenesis, which held that the souls of the dead inhabited other worlds; and Frank L. Pollack’s short story “Finis” (Argosy June 1906), which recounts the last night of two lovers on a doomed earth.³ Completed on April 6, 1930, Wright readily accepted it for WT “somewhat to my surprise,”⁴ paying Smith forty dollars for its appearance in the March 1932 issue.⁵ CAS included it in his inaugural collection, OST.

Smith went further into the story’s origins in another letter to Lovecraft that also sheds light on several of Smith’s stories and poems:

I don’t think I have had anything quite like the pseudo-mnemonic flashes you describe. What I have had sometimes is the nocturnal dream-experience of stepping into some totally alien state of entity, with its own memories, hopes, desires, its own past and future—none of which I can ever remember for very long on awakening. This experience has suggested such tales as “The Planet of the Dead”, “The Necromantic Tale,” and “An Offering to the Moon”. I think I have spoken of the place-images which often rise before me without apparent relevance, and persist in attaching themselves to some train of emotion or even abstract thought. These, doubtless, are akin to the images of which you speak, though they are always clearly realistic.

⁶

1. CAS, letter to HPL, December 10, 1929 (SL 105).

2. SS 158.

3. Frank Lillie Pollack (1876-1957) corresponded with Smith for several years.

4. CAS, letter to HPL, April 23, 1930 (SL 111).

5. FW, letter to CAS, April 12, 1930 (ms, JHL).

6. CAS, letter to HPL, c. October 24, 1930 (SL 128).

The Uncharted Isle

“The Uncharted Isle” was completed on April 21, 1930. It was accepted on first submission by WT, which published it in the November 1930 issue. One of Smith’s favorites among his tales, he selected it for both OST and Far from Time.

When asked to contribute to the anthology My Best Science Fiction Story by editors Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend (Merlin Press, 1949), Smith selected “The Uncharted Isle,” explaining his choice thus:

     Although better known for my writings in the fantasy field, I have at different times turned out what is called the straight science fiction story. After due thought I have chosen “The Uncharted Isle” as my best—or, at least, my favorite—for several reasons. Of these,

the first is that, while having a basis in theoretic science, the tale is not merely an ordinary science fiction story, but it can be read as an allegory of human disorientation.

     Then, too, it is written in what I think is a literate style while at the same time being free from conventional plot complications. Neither is it cumbered with pseudo-technical explanatory matter. And lastly, because my work is always selected for fantasy, this story has not been selected for inclusion in other anthologies, leaving me happily free to offer it herewith as a fresh science fiction item.

¹

Three typescripts at JHL were examined, along with its appearances in WT and OST. No major discrepancies outside of spelling and punctuation were found among any of the extant versions.

1. PD 73.

Marooned in Andromeda

On January 24, 1930, Smith wrote to Donald Wandrei that “I am now beginning a yarn about three mutineers on a space-flier, who are put off to shift for themselves on some unknown world in Andromeda.”¹ This was “Marooned in Andromeda”, which he believed would offer “an excellent peg for a lot of fantasy, horror, grotesquery, and satire.”² By mid-March he put the story aside and began composition of “The Devotee of Evil,” returning to it the next month and completing the typescript on May 19.³ Lovecraft told Smith that “you have escaped marvellously from the range of the stereotyped in handling interplanetary adventure.”⁴ It was submitted to Wonder Stories, whose editor, David Lasser, not only accepted the story but surprised Smith by proposing “a series of tales about the same crew of characters (Capt. Volmar, etc.) and their adventures on different planets, saying that they would use a novelette of this type every other month.”⁵ Smith was hesitant about committing to such a series, noting with some trepidation the problems that his and Lovecraft’s friend Frank Belknap Long had in securing payment for a story that Gernsback had published. He agreed to do the series once he had received payment for this story, which arrived in the form of a ninety dollar check in mid-September.⁶ “Marooned in Andromeda” was the cover story for the October 1930 issue of Wonder Stories, where Lasser singled Smith out for “special commendation due to his daring and far-reaching vision in depicting conditions as they might exist on a distant planet in another universe.”⁷ Smith recounted two further adventures of Captain Volmar and the crew of the Alcyone: “The Red World of Polaris” and “A Captivity in Serpens,” and began a fourth, “The Ocean-World of Alioth.” “Marooned in Andromeda” was collected in OD. Night Shade Books published for the first time the complete Volmar series as Red World of Polaris in 2003.