Many of you may be unaware, but Scott Connors passed away on 28 Oct 2024. He has been for many decades the leading scholar into the life and fiction of Clark Ashton Smith, but he has also contributed work on Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft.

In memory of the deceased, Hippocampus Press has discounted his works The Freedom of Fantastic Things: Selected Criticism on Clark Ashton Smith and Clark Ashton Smith: A Comprehensive Bibliography 50% off.

I'm trying to track the archetype of the necromancer through fantasy, and one of the earliest stories I have found which describes it in the death-sorcerer vein as is common in modern fantasy is Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique, the short story I'm most interested in is The Empire of the Necromancers. I'm wondering if anyone knows either an earlier example of this, or knows what inspired either this story or Necromancy in Naat. I have long loved the necromancer in fiction, hence why I want to know where it came from.

Clark-Ash-Tober continues at Thrilling Suspense Fantasy with a reading of the surprising and tricky “Black Abbot of Puthuum” by CAS—another Zothique story. This one shows that subversion of trope and convention has been done since the inception of Sword and Sorcery, but need not break the mood or vibe as it plays with our expectations! Big channel news coming, so please leave a comment about where you would like to see the channel develop.We’ll have two more CAS tales before the month is through, so I’d like to invite you become a Thrilling Suspense Fanatic!
https://youtu.be/QF5wswC2whs

New Clark-AshTober material for all the Thrilling Suspense Fanatics wanting to get into more Zothique goodness. A classic tale of sword and sorcery featuring the desert, demons, and a damsel in 'The Charnel God'https://youtu.be/pJ2oZrzxD-M?si=wpiN3KBlg34-cJdI

I went to read some of my favorite CAS poems before bed tonight and found that all of the links to the Eldritch Dark website (my normal source for his writings) redirected to hippocampus press's website. What happened? I haven't checked out the Eldritch Dark in some time, did I miss an important announcement or occurrence? I'm quite sad as I don't have The Shadows in any of my collections and it's such an incredible poem. Thanks in advance!

I only discovered Clark Ashton Smith in midlife, but fell in love with his language, style, ideas, and just overall literary brilliance. I have also used him in my teaching. I unlocked a life achievement by getting to be a guest on the STRANGE SHADOWS podcast from the Innsmouth Gold network to discuss his short story "The Immortals of Mercury."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/strange-shadows/id1634386316?i=1000668760720

Hi folks
Great to see a CAS group here! I'm Rob Poyton, co-host of Strange Shadows, a CAS dedicated podcast. Hope you can check us out sometime!
https://strangeshadows.buzzsprout.com/

Was browsing the new games on Steam and came across this in the new releases

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2864860/Fallen_Saint_Yhoundeh/

Based on his Yhoundeh the elk goddess

Does anyone know of a Zothique gazetteer, with summaries of deities, rulers, typical inhabitants, notable landmarks, fauna/flora, economy, etc.? This world is so fascinating!

The second act is a direct poetic interpretation of The Last Incantation.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mf196V5yPJgOxYzSe-MCtd6PQF6StAGn/view?usp=sharing
(Link to Drive since Reddit formatting is less than ideal)

Let me know what you think!

Hey, I've been a fan of Clark's material for almost a decade and I actually want to purchase physical copies of his corpus, partially but not wholly due Eldritch Dark no longer hosting the his content digitally. Is there any comprehensive physical omnibus's or only the collections as published in his time?

I've been looking for an online copy of this tribute to CAS which has all kinds of reminiscences and appreciations by other writers. It was a chapbook with apparently only 450 copies sold. (Images of the cover almost look like it was photocopies.)

But I can't find a copy and wondered if anyone here had any way to get access to it?