The first four stories show a clear theme of the outsider being persecuted (wrongly) only to get his revenge\justice in the end. I guess old Clark was having a hard time being the Auburn outsider at the time.

just some random ramblings,
B.

I think this is my favourite volume so far. "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis", "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan", "The Empire of the Necromancers" and "Ubbo-Sathla"... oh boy! :-)

I'll try to make it last, so I won't have to wait unnecessarily between books.

Boyd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The first four stories show a clear theme of the
> outsider being persecuted (wrongly) only to get
> his revenge\justice in the end. I guess old Clark
> was having a hard time being the Auburn outsider
> at the time.

Ya think? (LOL)
What struck me is how similar "The Colossus of Ylourgne" is to both "Maker of Gargoyles" and "The Dark Eidolon." I think that the latter is Smith's best use of the theme.

Scott


>
> just some random ramblings,
> B.

He's thematically economical, he recycles a lot :-)

His Sci-Fi is painful, most of it back then was but the randomly joining together of terms to recreate the laws of physics grates somewhat.

The only sci-fi I read is read hard sci-fi.

I think that as CAS would rather describe phantasmagoric scenes than explain in a nuts and bolts manner how things happen, he was a bit perturbed when “scientific” explanations were required. Maybe I'm wrong, but a feel that he therefore made his “explanations” as absurd as possible as a bit of a joke. I sort of imagine him laughing when, for example, an editor accepted his idea that a time machine worked because it was powered by something that looked like a giant hourglass. Actually, I enjoy reading his ridiculous sci-fi terms as he seems to be saying “to heck with this providing real life explanations for the fantastic.”

Boyd Wrote:
> His Sci-Fi is painful, most of it back then was
> but the randomly joining together of terms to
> recreate the laws of physics grates somewhat.

It's true that much, if not most of 1930's sci-fi seems stilted or at best quaint to our jaded perspective of 70+ years on. But remember that the sf writers of that time were largely 'making it up' as they went along. They didn't have our experience with all the permutations the genre has undergone since the Golden Age of the 40's. I'm not saying we should gloss over the faults of those pioneering efforts, only that we should bear in mind the milieu in which they were written. And perhaps be a bit charitable towards them because of it.

I also think it very interesting that CAS's fantasy stories have not dated as his sf has. His fantasies still affect readers much (I suspect) as they did during his heyday in the Weird Tales era. Despite the dismissal of critics like Knight, Blish and Asimov his stories continue to be reprinted again and again. In fact, he seems to be gaining readers in the present.

Hard sci-fi does not date so badly as the laws of physics do not change (However our understanding of them does).

Every fantasy story lives in it's own self contained world so should survive the ages better.

'contemporary' fiction lives within the world 'at that time' so if read in that context never dates.