The Worlds of Clark Ashton Smith (Part III)

Though Clark Ashton Smith is best known for his contributions to fantasy and horror, broadly understood, it is worth remembering that two of his most distinctive story cycles unfold on worlds far removed from Earth. In these tales, Smith turns his imagination outward, beyond decaying continents and haunted provinces, to the alien immensities of outer space. His extraterrestrial settings are not backdrops for scientific adventure in the pulp sense, but extensions of his characteristic themes of cosmic indifference, the fragility of civilization, and the grotesque irony of human ambition when measured against incomprehensible forces.

The Mars and Xiccarph stories, in particular, reveal Smith working at the intersection of science fiction and weird fantasy. While they employ the usual trappings of planetary romance – ancient cities, strange races, lost technologies – they nevertheless remain firmly rooted in his decadent esthetic and metaphysical pessimism. These are not tales of heroic exploration or human progress, but, like so many of his tales, meditations on decline, exile, and the unsettling otherness of the universe itself. In this respect, Smith’s off-world tales could be seen to stand alongside his Hyperborean and Zothique stories as part of a single imaginative project that presents a gallery of doomed worlds, each reflecting the same dark cosmic vision through a different lens.

Mars

Clark Ashton Smith's Mars, known to its natives as Aihai, is follows the tradition of earlier sci-fi by imagining it as a dying planet, long past its zenith. Human colonists and barrel-chested indigenous peoples coexist amid desiccated canals, crumbling cities, and the vast ruins of earlier civilizations. Though these tales draw on the trappings of planetary romance, Smith consistently subverts expectations of heroic exploration, presenting Mars instead as a layered necropolis where each age has left behind haunted remnants and buried catastrophes. Trading centers like Ignarh serve as fragile outposts of commerce in a landscape steeped in decay, while explorers who venture into remote regions or beneath the planet’s surface inevitably uncover primordial evils older and more implacable than humanity itself.

Although there are only three stories in this cycle, they are all excellent and among my favorites of anything CAS ever wrote.

• "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" (1932): Explorers enter forbidden ruins to their regret. This is often cited as Smith's best story and it's hard to disagree.
• "The Dweller in the Gulf" (1933): Gold-seekers descend into a cave ruled by a monstrous entity.
• "Vulthoom" (1933): Adventurers confront an ancient being plotting Earth's invasion.

Xiccarph

To describe Clark Ashton Smith’s Xiccarph tales as a “cycle” may be generous, since there are only two of them, but they are unified by the presence of the sinister Maal Dweb, who dominates both stories. Xiccarph itself is an alien world orbiting three suns, where brief, uneasy nights nurture a profusion of luxuriant yet deadly vegetation. The planet’s ecology blurs the boundary between plant and animal life, creating a landscape that is at once fecund and predatory. Across this perilous terrain lie tribal societies and cruel city-states, each shaped by the relentless hostility of their environment.

As in Smith’s other settings, atmosphere takes precedence over adventure. The Xiccarph stories probe the loneliness of absolute power, the moral emptiness of domination, and the disturbing beauty of alien life, resulting in a world that feels both luxuriant and claustrophobic. It's a nightmarish planet where every living thing seems poised to consume or transform every other.

The two tales of Xiccarph are:

• "The Maze of the Enchanter" (1933): A warrior rescues a maiden from Maal Dweb's nightmarish plant-maze.
• "The Flower-Women" (1935): Maal Dweb battles reptilian foes to save vampiric flower-beings.

And that brings us to the end of this brief overview of Smith's story cycles. He, of course, wrote many more stories – CAS was nothing if not prolific – but it's probably these for which he is most famous and on which his present reputation as a pulp fantasist rests. Most of them are available to read online at The Eldritch Dark website, though many of his works are also in print through a variety of smaller publishers.