A Vintage From Atlantis Read Free

last story was to exclude images, ideas and locutions which I would have used freely in a modern story. The same, of course, applies to “Sir John Maundeville,” which is a deliberate study in the archaic. ( SL 137)

    Therefore we have allowed certain variations in spelling and usage that seem to us to be consistent with Smith’s stated principles as indicated above.
    We are fortunate in that typescripts exist for all of the stories in this book except for “The Immortals of Mercury.” Rah Hoffman, a friend of Smith and one-time co-editor of the amateur journal The Acolyte , was particularly helpful in deciphering the textual mysteries of this story, and we gratefully acknowledge his assistance.
    Smith is known to have revised two stories extensively to meet editorial requirements, but we have been unable to locate copies of these earlier versions. Smith was in the habit of writing the dates of completion on the last page of his typescripts, along with the dates of any revisions, if any. In the case of “The Eternal World” the surviving typescript is dated the same day he indicated he had first completed the story, and the differences between it and the published version are not as substantial as his correspondence would indicate. Steve Behrends has stated that Smith’s original version of “The Invisible City” was modified to add “more science,” although we have been unable to verify his citation.
    “The Seed from the Sepulcher” was originally accepted by Harry Bates for Strange Tales , but later had five hundred words cut from it in order to sell it to Weird Tales after the former magazine ceased publication. We compared the two versions of this story, restoring some descriptive passages trimmed from the WT version while maintaining Smith’s elimination of much repetitious narrative present in the version accepted by Bates. We also have restored several lines that were inadvertently eliminated from the version published in Tales of Science and Sorcery and carried over to all versions reprinted after that.
    Smith published six stories himself in a 1933 pamphlet, The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies , but later revised some of these for sale to Esquire (unsuccessfully) and Weird Tales (successfully) in the late 1930s. In these instances we use the version published by Smith himself.
    We regret that we cannot present a totally authoritative text for Smith’s stories. Such typescripts do not exist. All that we can do is to apply our knowledge of Smith to the existing manuscripts and attempt to combine them to present what Smith would have preferred to publish were he not beset by editorial malfeasance in varying degrees. In doing so we hope to present Smith’s words in their purest form to date so that the reader might experience what Ray Bradbury described in his foreword to A Rendezvous in Averoigne : “Take one step across the threshold of his stories, and you plunge into color, sound, taste, smell, and texture—into language.”
    The editors wish to thank Douglas A. Anderson, Steve Behrends, Geoffrey Best, Joshua Bilmes, April Derleth, William A. Dorman, Don Herron, Margery Hill, Rah Hoffman, S. T. Joshi, Terence McVicker, Neil Mechem, Marc Michaud, Will Murray, Boyd Pearson, John Pelan, Alan H. Pesetsky, Rob Preston, Robert M. Price, Dennis Rickard, David E. Schultz, Donald Sidney-Fryer, and Jason Williams for their help, support, and encouragement of this project, as well as Holly Snyder and the staff of the John Hay Library of Brown University, and D. S. Black of the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, for their assistance in the preparation of this collection. Needless to say, any errors are the sole responsibility of the editors.

T HE H OLINESS OF A ZÉDARAC

    I
    “B y the Ram with a Thousand Ewes! By the Tail of Dagon and the Horns of Derceto!’’ said Azédarac, as he fingered the tiny, pot-bellied vial of vermilion liquid on the table before him. “Something will have