John Pelan - The Last Continent: New Tales of Zothique

LIMITED EDITION ISBN 0-9665662-4-6

DELUXE EDITION ISBN 0-9665662-3-8

THE LAST CONTINENT: NEW TALES OF ZOTHIQUE

Copyright 1999 by ShadowLands Press

Dust Jacket Art Copyright 1999 by Rob Alexander

This book is a work of fiction. All names, places and events are imaginary or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to actual events or places is entirely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-63999

ShadowLands Press

a subsidiary of Bereshith Publishing

PO Box 2366 Centreville, VA 20122-2366

v3.1

Grim News From the Far Future Copyright 1999 by Donald Sidney-Fryer

To Wake the Dead in Nypholos Copyright 1999 by Gerard Houarner

The Decibel Circus Copyright 1999 by Rhys Hughes

The Benevolent Emperor Copyright 1999 by Brian McNaughton

Where the Past Lay Buried Copyright 1998 by David B. Silva

Temple of Captured Gods Copyright 1999 by David Niall Wilson

The Connoisseur of Corpses Copyright 1999 by Dan Clore

The Vainglorious Simulacrum of Mungha Sorcyllamia Copyright 1999 by Mark McLaughlin

The Scarlet Succubus Copyright 1999 by Edward Lee & John Pelan

Hode of the High Place Copyright 1984 by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Serenade at the End of Time Copyright 1999 by Don Webb

Blue Roses, Red, Red Wine Copyright 1999 by t. Winter-Damon

A Traveler in Desert Lands Copyright 1999 by Gene Wolfe

Jolerarymis Rose Copyright 1998 by Geoff Cooper

The Judgement of Tsaran Copyright 1999 by Polagaya Fine

Ashes of Longing, Ashes of Lust Copyright 1999 by Lucy Taylor

Love & Death at the End of Time Copyright 1999 by Mark Chadbourn

The Leper King Copyright 1999 by Charlee Jacob

The Light of Achernar Copyright 1999 by Brian Stableford

The Triumph of the Worm Copyright 1999 by Karl Henrik Johnsson

by Donald Sidney-Fryer

by Gerard Houarner

by Rhys Hughes

by Brian McNaughton

by David B. Silva

by David Niall Wilson

by Dan Clore

by Mark McLaughlin

by Edward Lee & John Pelan

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

by Don Webb

by t. Winter-Damon

by Gene Wolfe

by Geoff Cooper

by Polagaya Fine

by Lucy Taylor

by Mark Chadbourn

by Charlee Jacob

by Brian Stableford

by Henrik Johnsson

This tome is first and foremost a tribute to Clark Ashton Smith, one of the finest prose stylists this century has ever seen. These tales would not exist without the treasures left to us by the late Bard of Auburn.

The publishers would also like to thank the following for their help in making this book a reality: Russell Horror Collector Mullen for making the initial connection, Ed Kramer for invaluable aid and advice, Joe Fleischmann for pushing us to do it right, Fredrik King, Allen Koszowski and Rob Alexander for their artistic visions, Patricia Macomber for technical advice and design, and Dave Necro Barnett and Fat Cat Design for the fabulous cover layout and design.

Thanks to all of the authors who undertook the task of breathing life into a dying world. The tales you have told are a fitting tribute to an author and a world that will never truly die.

And of course we are indebted to the editor, John Pelan, for his vision, perseverance and dedication to this project. The story of a fated meeting in 1998 has been told elsewhere, and this book is a testament to the hard work and keen knowledge of a wonderful editor. John, Thanks!

It is one of the curious paradoxes in the limitless domains of art that anything can minister to pleasure, including many things that most of us might very well go out of our way to avoid in our immediate lives. It is a further paradox in the specific universe of literature that, in abundantly describing one thing, the writer can most effectively suggest another thing, that other phenomenon or condition being the diametric opposite of the first. Of all the prose fictions by Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) that he devoted to celebrating one geographical area more or less, those that he wrote about Zothique as the last continent of Earth are the most numerous. It is obvious that Ashton Smith enjoyed writing about the mainland that will presumably come about only during the final cycle of the planet. At that general time a numerically dwindling and spiritually sick and senescent humankind will somehow still manage to survive before the ultimate fall of Night, when all humans will presumably perish. Smith conceived of Zothique largely as arid and semi-arid but the latter to a much lesser extentvast deserts extending in all directions underneath a blood-red sun during the day, and unbearably brilliant stars during the nightand such a countryside relieved only by the rare or occasional oasis, or yet verdant valley, or irrigated fields. However, it is in those poetic evocations of desert landscapes with their general desiccation and/or desolation that Smith most successfully brings to mind the exact opposite: vividly lush and green fields, groves, and forests that tease and haunt us all the more compellingly because of their express absence. Amid this exhausted and near-lifeless environment Smith characteristically posits a fast-moving narrative that, although colorful and picturesque, almost invariably depicts nothing but death, decay, dissolutionor on the other hand the ironic and empty triumph over death by means of an illicit necromancy, by which people, animals, or entire landscapes are restored to a semblance or mockery of life. Only the archaic magick, or gramarye, resuscitated from the primordial cycles of the first continent inhabited by humans, Hyperborea, displays the greatest animation of vitality. As ever, in the oeuvre of Ashton Smith whether cast in verse or prose, the one supreme antidote to the horror and banality of life is love itself, and the seductive enchantment that derives from it: love that defies death, and sometimes, (albeit but rarely and briefly) triumphs over it.

Unlike the fictional output of his great colleague and correspondent H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), Smiths own tales have engendered relatively few sequels or imitations. Just Lovecrafts own stories that collectively make up the Cthulhu Mythos have spawned so much derivative fiction that surely this further development has now come to outnumber the stories that inspired them by quite a significant margin. What is more, we might add, much of this imitative fiction reflects considerable discredit on Lovecrafts original stories. The present volume of new stories by various authors, new stories that utilize the same fictional background or locale as created by Smith for his own tales of Zothique, represents an obviously pioneering development as instigated by editor John Pelan. The point here simply is to present a new collection, to spin some new yarns, but it is not to rewrite Smiths own stories, or to imitate Smiths own proper and personal style of writing, at least not consciously. To imitate his own style, and to do so successfully, would probably prove impossible in any case. Moreover, what would be the point? Young or beginning writers in general should occupy themselves with constructing their own plots or narratives, as well as concocting their own idiosyncratic styles of writing.

However, we live at a time when otherwise perfectly capable people must invent all over again what other creative people before them have originated, and then must claim their new version, or versions, as somehow on par with the original work of art itself. Such a case is exactly analogous to that of the great ballet-master Marius Petipa (1818-1910), who served the Imperial Russian Ballet during an over-all period from the latter half of 1847 until sometime in 1904, first as a dancer and then as a choreographer. During 1904 a new and not at all sympathetic head of the theatre administration in St. Petersburg forcibly retired him, or at least relegated him to the status of inactive service. Just before this de facto retirement as forced upon him, as well as after, Petipa experienced the supreme displeasure of seeing a number of his best major works (usually characterized by highly fantastic plots) deliberately refashioned by other ballet-masters into stylized interpretationsas though ballet were not already quite stylized as a primary condition of its existence! Petipa complained to the head of the theatre administration, Colonel Telyakovsky, but in vain. As Petipa himself expressed it with considerable bitterness and with especial pertinence: As if people had nothing else to focus their attention, he repeated, as if there were no new stories to tell. That is, as if people had nothing else to do, as if they had nothing of their own to relate.