The City of Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith

Book Details

The City of Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith – two stories of adventure into parallel universes. Despite its weird beauty, and its function as a portal to the Inner Dimension, the Singing Flame of Ydmos must be destroyed.

The City of Singing Flame (1931) – In the city of strange wonders, the lure of the flame drew them on and on . . . . destruction loomed ahead . . . .
Foreword
The Journal
A Plunge Into Nothingness
An Amazing World
The Lure of the Flame

Beyond The Singing Flame (1931) – Into the land where distance and time melted away, he saw the enemies of Ydmos destroy the Singing Flame . . . .
Chapter I
Chapter II Into the Flame
Chapter III The Inner Dimension

Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) was a self-educated American poet, sculptor, painter and author of fantasy, horror and science fiction short stories. He spent most of his life in the small town of Auburn, California, living in the small cabin built by his parents. He hated the provincialism of the small town life but rarely left Auburn until he married late in life.

In the early 1920s Smith found some limited fame as a poet. After publishing a long poem in blank verse, The Hashish Eater, or The Apocalypse of Evil, Smith attracted the attention of H.P. Lovecraft. They became correspondents and friends until Lovecraft‘s death in 1937.

Clark Ashton Smith was one of the Big Three writers for the magazine Weird Tales. The other two were Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.

The City of Singing Flame contains 5 illustrations.

The City of Singing Flame is also available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Files:

1. CASmith-CityOfSingingFlame.epub

Excerpt: The City of Singing Flame

Foreword

WE had been friends for a decade or more, and I knew Giles Angarth as well as anyone could purport to know him. Yet the thing was no less a mystery to me than to others at the time; and it is still a mystery.

Sometimes I think that he and Ebbonly had designed it all between them as a huge, insoluble hoax; that they are still alive somewhere, and are laughing at the world that has been so sorely baffled by their disappearance. And sometimes I make tentative plans to re-visit Crater Ridge and find if I can the two boulders mentioned in Angarth’s narrative as having a vague resemblance to broken-down columns. In the meantime no one has uncovered any trace of the missing men or has heard even the faintest rumor concerning them; and the whole affair, it would seem, is likely to remain a most singular and exasperating riddle.

Angarth, whose fame as a writer of fantastic fiction will probably outlive that of most other modern magazine contributors, had been spending the summer among the Sierras, and had been living alone till the artist Felix Ebbonly went to visit him. Ebbonly, whom I had never met, was well known for his imaginative paintings and drawings; and he had illustrated more than one of Angarth’s novels. When neighboring campers became alarmed over the prolonged absence of the two men and the cabin was searched for some possible clue, a package addressed to me was found lying on the table; and I received it in due course of time, after reading many newspaper speculations regarding the double vanishment. The package contained a small, leather-bound notebook. Angarth had written on the flyleaf:

Dear Hastane:

You can publish this journal sometime, if you like. People will think it the last and wildest of all my fictions— unless they take it for one of your own. In either case, it will be just as well. Good-bye.

Faithfully,

Giles Angarth.

I am now publishing the journal, which will doubtless meet the reception he predicted. But I am not so certain myself, as to whether the tale is truth or fabrication. The only way to make sure will be to locate the two boulders; and anyone who has ever seen Crater Ridge, and has wandered over its miles of rock-strewn desolation, will realize the difficulties of such a task.

Excerpt From: Clark Ashton Smith. “The City of Singing Flame.”