¹

The story was first submitted to Strange Tales. Harry Bates apologized to CAS, writing “It happened that Mr. Clayton got to your story, ‘The Ice Demon,’ before I did, and the no he hung on it was sufficiently emphatic to render useless my reading it after him. Therefore I have to let it go back, without even some specific criticism or objection.”² Smith complained to Derleth that Clayton’s “ideas of the disgusting must indeed be peculiar.”³ Wright also rejected the story upon first submission, which HPL called “a calamity, for we need a few tales in which the weirdness takes other than stock forms.”⁴ Wright accepted the story upon resubmission, after Smith revised the ending;⁵ unfortunately, there are no copies of the original version still extant, unless one such is held in a private collection. “The Ice Demon” appeared in the April 1933 issue of Weird Tales. The current text is based upon a carbon copy of the final revised version among Smith’s papers at the John Hay Library.

1. BB item 1.

2. Harry Bates, letter to CAS, September 16, 1932 (ms, JHL).

3. CAS, letter to AWD, September 28, 1932 (SL 191).

4. HPL, letter to CAS, postmarked August 27, 1932 (ms, private collection).

5. CAS, letter to AWD, October 27, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

The Isle of the Torturers

Completed on July 31, 1932, CAS called this story “a sort of companion to ‘The Empire of the Necromancers’.”¹ He described it to August Derleth as “a strange mixture of eeriness, grotesquery, bright color, cruelty, and stark human tragedy,” and added “I think it is the best of the summer’s crop....”² Lovecraft expressed the hope that Wright would take the story “in spite of the realistic details which might raise doubts in his milk-&-water judgment. It is full of magnificent atmosphere, & has a truly Dunsanian glamour & convincingness.”³

Smith received sixty dollars for the story when it was published in the March 1933 issue of WT.⁴ It was also reprinted by Christine Campbell Thomson for inclusion in Keep on the Light, which was part of the famous Not at Night! series of anthologies, making it the second of his stories to appear between boards. The present text is from a typescript presented to Genevieve K. Sully, and from a carbon copy in the CAS papers at Brown University.

1. CAS, letter to Lester Anderson, July 29, 1932 (ms, private collection).

2. CAS, letter to AWD, August 2, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

3. HPL, letter to CAS postmarked July 26, 1932 (ms, JHL).

4. Popular Fiction Publishing Company, letter to CAS, April 21, 1933 (ms, JHL).

The Dimension of Chance

The beginning of August 1932 saw Smith begin “a new scientific tale” that described “a universe in which the electrons did not form any regular patterns of behavior, and in which, therefore, the action of all natural forces was subject to no other law than that of chance. In such a world a plum-tree might bear avacadoes or grape-fruit—or both! The law of gravity might work in one place or at one time—and be non-effective at others—etc., etc.—a dizzy idea, n’est ce pas?”¹

As in the case of “An Adventure in Futurity,” the idea for the story originated in a suggestion by Wonder Stories editor David Lasser, which caused H. P. Lovecraft to observe that Lasser and Gernsback were probably “brighter & more sensible in many ways than the philistines controlling Astounding & the technologists in charge of Amazing! Really, there is little doubt but that Wonder is the most generally interesting of the scientifiction magazines.”² Lasser accepted “The Dimension of Chance” on August 25, 1932, but with reservations: he observed that “I would rather have had a little less description, if necessary, and more conflict with the residents of the dimension.”³

Smith did not think much of the story, noting that it “was probably better as a satire than anything else.” After the story was accepted by Lasser, Smith thought of changes that would improve it and sent in some new pages, but they arrived too late.⁴ As Steve Behrends has previously noted, those changes survive in the carbon copy of the story surviving at Brown University among Smith’s papers.⁵ They are incorporated into the present text. Attorney Ione Weber eventually collected sixty-five dollars for Smith for this story.⁶

“The Dimension of Chance” was first published in Wonder Stories’ November 1932 issue, and remained uncollected until it was posthumously included in OD.

1. CAS, letter to Genevieve K. Sully, August 4, 1932 (ms, private collection).

2. HPL, letter to CAS, postmarked August 27, 1932 (ms, Northern Illinois University).

3. David Lasser, letter to CAS, August 25, 1932 (ms, JHL).

4. CAS, letter to AWD, November 15, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

5. Steve Behrends, “Unpublished Revisions to ‘The Dimension of Chance’ by Clark Ashton Smith,” Dark Eidolon no. 2 (June 1989): 33.

6. Mike Ashley, “The Perils of Wonder: Clark Ashton Smith’s Experiences with Wonder Stories.” Dark Eidolon no. 2 (June 1989): 2-8.

The Dweller in the Gulf

Smith’s next story probably provided him with more headaches than the rest of his stories combined. He originally intended to call it “The Eidolon of the Blind.” He called it “a sort of running mate for ‘The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,’” and like its predecessor it suffered greatly from editorial tampering. Smith described the story as “equally monstrous and cruel.”¹ (He was particularly proud of its “magnificent Dantesque ending.”) Wright rejected it for Weird Tales “on the plea that it was too horrific for his select circle of Babbits [sic] and Polyannas.”² The story then went to Harry Bates before it finally landed at Wonder Stories, but not before Lasser and Gernsback required the addition of a “semi-scientific explanation” that he supplied through the addition of a new character.³ No mention was made that the horror element was objectionable.

When Smith saw its appearance in the March 1933 issue, he waxed apoplectic:

My triply unfortunate tale, “The Dweller in the Gulf,” is printed in the current

Wonder Stories

under the title of “Dweller in Martian Depths,” and has been utterly ruined by a crude attempt on the part of someone—presumably the office-boy—to rewrite the ending. Apart from this, paragraph after paragraph of imaginative description and atmosphere has been hewn bodily from the story. I have written to tell the editor what I thought of such Hunnish barbarity, and have also told him that I do not care to have my work printed at all unless it can appear verbatim or have the desired alterations made by my own hand. It shows what fine literature means to the Gernsback crew of hog-butchers.

⁴

Gernsback had already demonstrated a tendency to change Smith’s titles, but he had generally allowed Smith himself to make any required revisions. CAS wrote that “The chief reason that I’ve had anything to do with them is that Gernsback has had the perspicacity to print some of my more out-of-the-way stuff which no one else would touch.”⁵ Even Lovecraft paid Gernsback a left-handed compliment, albeit in a tasteless manner of the sort that makes his present-day admirers cringe: “It’s odd, but in spite of that damn’d kike’s financial remissness & sharp dealings, I really think he offers a better & more vital range of scientifiction than either of his two competitors. He is not quite so rigid, in his demand for the commonplace & the stereotyped.”⁶ Smith now revised drastically his opinion of Gernsback and of Wonder Stories: