1. CAS, letter to DAW, January 24, 1930 (ms, MHS).

2. CAS, letter to HPL, January 27, 1930 (SL 110).

3. CAS, letter to HPL, March 11, 1930 (ms, JHL); CAS, letter to HPL, April 23, 1930 (SL 113).

4. HPL, letter to CAS, postmarked August 6, 1930 (ms, JHL).

5. David Lasser, letter to CAS, August 22, 1930 (ms, JHL).

6. CAS, letter to HPL, c. mid-September 1930 (SL 121). CAS actually received $87.50 for “Marooned” (see Lasser, letter to CAS, September 10, 1930 [ms, JHL]).

7. David Lasser, introduction to “Marooned in Andromeda.” Wonder Stories (October 1930): 391.

The Root of Ampoi

First entitled “Jim Knox and the Giantess,” and then “Food of the Giantesses,” this story was completed on May 28, 1930. It was rejected by WT on June 12, 1930, with FW explaining that it lacked “the thrill of ‘The Venus of Azombeii’ and the eery fascination of ‘The Uncharted Isle’” (although he did add that “The readers like your stories. Have you any more weird poetry on hand?”)¹ CAS referred to the story as “a dud” that would “have to be given a brand-new wind-up if it is ever to sell.” However, one cannot read too much into this disparagement, as he added “The same applies to … ‘The Letter from Mohaun Los’.”² Smith was unable to sell the story until years later, when August Derleth solicited a story for the Arkham Sampler, a quarterly magazine he published in the late 1940s. He accepted this story, but thought the title was awkward and asked that Smith supply a new one.³ CAS agreed that “Food of the Giantesses” was a “punk title,”⁴ and suggested “Ampoi’s Root.”⁵ By a freak coincidence, Derleth had been preparing an announcement for the story and “in the absence of the new title for your story I called it ‘The Root Of Ampoi.’ Since that is as close to ‘Ampoi’s Root’ as it is possible to get, we can let it stand.”⁶ “The Root of Ampoi” was first published in the Spring 1949 issue of the Arkham Sampler. It was reprinted in Fantastic Stories of Imagination’s August 1961 issue, which appeared shortly before Smith’s death on August 14, 1961. It was included in TSS.

1. FW, letter to CAS, June 12, 1930 (ms, JHL).

2. CAS, letter to AWD, August 18, 1931 (SL 160).

3. AWD, letter to CAS, November 10, 1948 (ms, JHL).

4. CAS, letter to AWD, November 16, 1948 (SL 355 [misdated “November 6, 1948”]).

5. CAS, letter to AWD, December 18, 1948 (Arkham House archives).

6. AWD, letter to CAS, December 22, 1948 (ms, JHL).

The Necromantic Tale

“The Necromantic Tale” was completed on June 23, 1930, and was quickly accepted by Farnsworth Wright for WT (with Smith receiving forty-four dollars when it was published in the January 1931 issue).¹ Shortly thereafter, Lovecraft read the story and made the following comments to Smith: “The atmosphere is very well sustained, & there is a genuine convincingness to the style. I wonder how it would have been to have the ancient wizard disappear at the stake, before the eyes of all spectators, just as the flames flare up?”² Smith, who as has been noted by Behrends was generally quite responsive to suggestions,³ enthusiastically embraced this idea:

Thanks for your suggestion about “The Necromantic Tale”! I think so highly of it that I am re-typing a page of the story with an additional sentence or two about the mysterious footnote at the very end of the old record, saying that they saw Sir Roderick disappear when the flames leaped high; and that this, “if true, was the moste damnable proof of hys compact and hys commerce with the Evill One.” This emendation I shall submit to Wright, who has already accepted the tale. Wright ought to approve—the change almost “makes” the story.

⁴

Amusingly enough, the surviving carbons of the story have the relevant portion handwritten in the margins. “The Necromantic Tale” was collected posthumously in OD.

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

2. HPL, letter to CAS, July 18, 1930, quoted in Roy A. Squires’ Catalog no. 19 (1985), p. 25.

3. See Steve Behrends, “CAS and Divers Hands,” Crypt of Cthulhu no. 26 (Hallowmas1984): 30-31.

4. CAS, letter to HPL, July 30, 1930 (SL 115).

The Immeasurable Horror

Completed on July 13, 1930, Smith originally intended to market “The Immeasurable Horror” to the “scientifiction magazines,”¹ but after rejections by Amazing Stories and presumably Astounding Stories as well as the Gernsback publications,² it was accepted by WT. Wright did point out

some flaws… that need fixing up. When your hero returns in the coaster to the Purple Mountains, your story speaks continually of “we”; but after he comes back he seems to be alone, and no further

mention is made of Markheim or Rocher. From the context the reader gathers that the other members of the party had to wait for the hero to regain consciousness before they found out what had happened? What of Rocher and Markheim? It may not need more than a line or two, but these two characters cannot be permitted to slide out of the story without any explanation at all.

³

Smith accordingly made the required alterations,⁴ and the tale appeared in the September 1931 issue. It was collected in OD.

1. CAS, letter to HPL, July 30, 1930 (SL 116).

2. CAS, letter to HPL, c. mid-September 1930 (SL 120).

3. FW, letter to CAS, October 4, 1930 (ms, JHL).

4. CAS, letter to HPL, c. early October 1930 (LL 13).

A Voyage to Sfanomoë

Completed between July 13-17, 1930, “A Voyage to Sfanomoë” was snapped up by Wright, who offered CAS thirty dollars for the story.¹ It was published in the August 1931 WT. Smith originally included it among the prospective contents of his first Arkham House collection, OST, but it was not collected in hardcover until LW.²

Apropos of the story, Smith made the following comments to Lovecraft in a discussion regarding their relative needs for emotional attachments to their surroundings:

I think we are probably more alike than some of my remarks on a desire to voyage in space and time may have led you to infer. This desire, in all likelihood, is mainly cerebral on my part, and I am not so sure that I would care to be “a permanent colonist” in some alien universe—no matter how bored or disgusted I may

seem

to be at times with my environment. And I have had reason to discover, at past times—particularly in times of nervous disturbance—how dependent I really am on familiar things—even on certain features of my surroundings which might not seem very attractive to others. If I am upset, or “under the weather”, an unfamiliar milieu tends to take on an aspect of the most distressing and confusing

unreality

—similar, no doubt, to what you experienced in Brooklyn. So, in all probability, I will do well to content myself with dream projections… But doubtless your geographical sense is far more clearly and consciously developed than mine.

³

1. FW, letter to CAS, July 22,1930.