The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies Read Free Page A

imaginary grimoire similar to Lovecraft’s
Necronomicon
. 10
    Averoigne was, in Smith’s fiction, depicted as a realm in medieval France. The name was no doubt derived from the actual region of Auvergne, in south-central France. Averoigne is the setting for ten stories. These tales tend to be somewhat more conventionally supernatural than Smith’s other tales, as he is obliged to respect the historical constraints of the period. Many of the Averoigne tales are relatively routine accounts of vampires, werewolves, lamias, and the like, but several feature a fusion of weirdness and eroticism that recalls his best poetry. 11
    Other tales fall into smaller cycles, such as Atlantis (five stories), set on that mythical continent before it sank into the Atlantic Ocean, and Mars (three stories), nominally set on the red planet. A number of stories, whether in the above cycles or written as independent narratives, draw upon Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, but in such a way as to expand the parameters of that imaginary cosmogony well beyond what Lovecraft had envisioned. Smith created the toad-god Tsathoggua and the
Book of Eibon
, both of which Lovecraft quickly appropriated. As early as 1933 , noting how many other writers were borrowing elements from his stories, he wrote: “It would seem that I am starting a mythology.” 12
    All this raises the question of influence. The pioneering Smith scholar Donald Sidney-Fryer tended to discount the influence of Dunsany and Lovecraft on Smith’s fiction, 13 but it is difficult to deny that, in the case of Dunsany, Smith found a significant precursor in the creation of imaginary realms, and, in the case of Lovecraft, an
example
for the writing of serious weird fiction, even if Smith recognized that the kind of fiction he wished to write was very different from Lovecraft’s. The frequency with which, in the course of the 1920 s, Smith asked Lovecraft to lend him copies of his tales speaks strongly of the inspiration Smith derived from a writer who, although he placed his work regularly in
Weird Tales,
retained his aesthetic integrity and adhered courageously to an “art for art’s sake” attitude.
    Smith attempted to do the same in his fiction, but his financial situation increasingly militated against it. For the sad fact is that his two ailing parents required more and more care on Smith’s part, and he was compelled to generate—and, more significantly, sell—fiction at a brisk pace in order to support his family. This is why he could not follow Lovecraft’s example and refuse to revise a tale to ensure its sale to a magazine. Farnsworth Wright of
Weird Tales
repeatedly belabored Smith about his esoteric prose idiom and the fact that many of his tales lacked the narrative drive that would keep his readers turning the pages, and Smith felt he had no option but to rewrite his tales to suit Wright’s tastes. He was even more ruthless in targeting stories to Hugo Gernsback’s
Wonder Stories,
an early science fiction pulp magazine that occasionally manhandled Smith’s stories after submission such that they became virtually unrecognizable. In one memorable instance, “The Dweller in the Gulf” appeared in the March 1933 issue of
Wonder Stories
with a butchered ending as “The Dweller in Martian Depths.” To compound the absurdity, the young Forrest J Ackerman lambasted the story in the pages of the legendary fan magazine
The Fantasy Fan,
declaring: “Frankly, I could not find one redeeming feature about the story.” 14 This led to a furious war of words between Ackerman on the one side and Lovecraft, R. H. Barlow, and other defenders of Smith on the other, with Smith largely watching from the sidelines in bemused wonder.
    It is manifest that Smith’s move toward science fiction—or, more accurately, a fusion of fantasy and science fiction—was impelled largely by market considerations. That said,