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106-529: Richard L. Tierney , a writer who also wrote Mythos tales, later applied the term "Derleth Mythos" to distinguish Lovecraft's works from Derleth's later stories, which modify key tenets of the Mythos. Authors of Lovecraftian horror in particular frequently use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos. In his essay "H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos", Robert M. Price described two stages in the development of

212-588: A bachelor's degree in entomology. Thereafter he worked for upwards of thirteen years (1958–71) for the U.S. Forest Service , firstly in Northwest Oregon for two seasons, then in Alaska collecting insects with a different field assistant each season for seven seasons, and eventually in a laboratory in Berkeley, CA for three years full-time. Tierney's earliest work to see print was some letters-of-comment in

318-511: A basic plot. Then Dave would rattle off a first draft as fast as he could. I'd revise this to suit myself, often rewriting extensive sections, sometimes changing the plotline altogether. The time involved worked out surprisingly close to 50/50, Dave and I spending about two months apiece per novel." In the late 1970s, Tierney was contacted by editor Philip Rahman (publisher of the Fedogan & Bremer line) who had read Tierney's tale "From Beyond

424-743: A boulder to the immediate west of where his childhood home (destroyed by fire in 1957) stood; some were also scattered in a stand of blue oaks near the boulder. There was no marker. Plaques recognizing Smith have been erected at the Auburn Placer County Library in 1985 and in Bicentennial Park in Auburn in 2003. Bookseller Roy A. Squires was appointed Smith's "west coast executor", with Jack L. Chalker as his "east coast executor". Squires published many letterpress editions of individual Smith poems. Smith's literary estate

530-585: A cabin built by his parents, Fanny and Timeus Smith. Smith professed to hate the town's provincialism but rarely left it until he married late in life. His formal education was limited: he suffered from psychological disorders including intense agoraphobia , and although he was accepted to high school after attending eight years of grammar school, his parents decided it was better for him to be taught at home. An insatiable reader with an extraordinary eidetic memory , Smith appeared to retain most or all of whatever he read. After leaving formal education, he embarked upon

636-511: A character based on the Gnostic heresiarch Simon Magus . The first collection of these tales was The Scroll of Thoth: Twelves Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited with an introduction and story notes by Robert M. Price (Chaosium, 1997). An expanded edition has been issued Sorcery Against Caesar by Richard L. Tierney and divers hands, edited by Edward Stasheff. (Edgewood, NM: Pickman's Press, 2020). The expanded edition includes 16 stories and

742-526: A cobwebby collection of forgotten tomes, but rather in a certain convincing cosmic attitude. Price said Lovecraft's writings could at least be divided into categories and identified three distinct themes: the "Dunsanian" (written in a similar style as Lord Dunsany ), " Arkham " (occurring in Lovecraft's fictionalized New England setting), and "Cthulhu" (the cosmic tales) cycles. Writer Will Murray noted that while Lovecraft often used his fictional pantheon in

848-642: A coronary attack. Aged 61, he married Carol(yn) Jones Dorman on November 10, 1954. Dorman had much experience in Hollywood and radio public relations. After honeymooning at the Smith cabin, they moved to Pacific Grove, California , where he set up a household including her three children from a previous marriage. For several years he alternated between the house on Indian Ridge and their house in Pacific Grove. Smith having sold most of his father's tract, in 1957

954-487: A decade. In his later youth, Smith met Sterling through a member of the local Auburn Monday Night Club, where Smith read several of his poems with considerable success. On a month-long visit to Sterling in Carmel, California , Smith was introduced by Sterling to the poetry of Charles Baudelaire . He became Sterling's protégé and Sterling helped him to publish his first volume of poems, The Star-Treader and Other Poems , at

1060-409: A devotee of the poems of Edgar Allan Poe , he was especially inspired by the H. P. Lovecraft poems in the anthology (particularly the " Fungi from Yuggoth " and also those of Donald Wandrei , Robert E. Howard , Frank Belknap Long and others). Tierney began writing fantastic stories in the early 1950s, aged around fifteen and came into his writing stride in his early twenties. His first attempt at

1166-660: A five-month postgraduate course in Entomology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst . His main purpose in going there was to visit Lovecraftian sites. He spent all of his Easter vacation in Providence , walking the streets of Lovecraft's neighborhood by day and night. He often talked with H. Douglass Dana, the proprietor of a Providence bookstore whom Lovecraft had known personally. At another bookstore he purchased Lovecraft's own copy of Keats ' Endymion (poem) which

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1272-431: A hundred short stories between 1929 and 1934, nearly all of which can be classed as weird horror or science fiction. Like Lovecraft, he drew upon the nightmares that had plagued him during youthful spells of sickness. Brian Stableford has written that the stories written during this brief phase of hectic productivity "constitute one of the most remarkable oeuvres in imaginative literature". He published at his own expense

1378-488: A mechanistic materialist view of the universe, in which the Old Ones are entirely inimical to humankind, from the later elaborations by August Derleth whereby Derleth posited a more simplistic "good vs evil" paradigm underlying the Mythos. Essentially, Tierney argues that Lovecraft's cosmic outlook in his fiction was not intended to convey a "good vs evil" approach. Thus Derleth's version of the Cthulhu Mythos, which promotes

1484-503: A member of a "Smith" circle as Smith was a member of a Lovecraft one. In 1920 Smith composed a celebrated long poem in blank verse , The Hashish Eater, or The Apocalypse of Evil , published in Ebony and Crystal (1922). This was followed by a fan letter from H. P. Lovecraft , which was the beginning of 15 years of friendship and correspondence. With studied playfulness, Smith and Lovecraft borrowed each other's coinages of place names and

1590-407: A monstrous alien entity to herald a new aeon on Earth. John Taggart, the time traveler from Tierney's The Winds of Zarr becomes involved with Simon of Gitta, as their separate quests converge toward a common goal of saving the very Earth. Cover art for the volume is by Dave Carson . The novel was reissued by Pickman's Press in late 2021. Tierney continued to publish weird verse after the turn of

1696-427: A number of fantastic poems in small press journals including Joseph Payne Brennan 's Macabre ; August Derleth 's The Arkham Collector ; Glenn Lord 's The Howard Collector ; Stuart David Schiff's Whispers (magazine) ; and The United Co-operative . During the 1970s, Tierney also began to submit verse to fantasy/horror markets such as Harry O. Morris's Nyctalops . His first collection of weird verse appeared under

1802-546: A poem, "Vengeance Quest." Price's Introduction from The Scroll of Thoth is included in abridged form; his original story notes are reprinted for the tales from The Scroll of Thoth, while Edward Stasheff provides story notes for the other tales. The Biblical figure of Simon Magus is a great figure in the Western mystery tradition . A meticulous researcher, Tierney studied the Roman era and Gnosticism for this series featuring

1908-656: A prison to him. Tierney read two of H. P. Lovecraft 's stories (" The Rats in the Walls " and " The Dunwich Horror ") in the anthology Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural edited by Wise and Fraser (1949) at about age thirteen, but was not especially impressed by them since they contained no conventional ghosts. At age 14, he read "Colossus' by Donald Wandrei in August Derleth 's 1950 anthology Beyond Time and Space . Tierney has referred to this tale as "one of

2014-467: A self-directed course of literature, including Robinson Crusoe , Gulliver's Travels , the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and Madame d'Aulnoy , the Arabian Nights and the poems of Edgar Allan Poe . He read an unabridged dictionary word for word, studying not only the definitions of the words but also their etymology . The other main course in Smith's self-education was to read

2120-624: A series of seven novels loosely based on another Robert E. Howard character. Red Sonya of Rogatino featured in Robert E. Howard's short story "The Shadow of the Vulture" ( The Magic Carpet , January 1934), which Roy Thomas rewrote as a Conan story for Marvel Comics Conan the Barbarian #23 (1973), changing the spelling of the heroine's name to Red Sonja . Thomas also somewhat based Red Sonja on another Howard character, Dark Agnes de Chastillon,

2226-517: A short period of time: Robert E. Howard 's death by suicide (1936), Lovecraft's death from cancer (1937) and the deaths of his parents, which left him exhausted. As a result, he withdrew from the scene, marking the end of Weird Tales ' s Golden Age . He began sculpting and resumed the writing of poetry. However, Smith was visited by many writers at his cabin, including Fritz Leiber , Rah Hoffman , Francis T. Laney and others. In 1942, three years after August Derleth founded Arkham House for

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2332-479: A society of like-minded fans begun by McCauley and John ('Jack') Koblas (aka 'Count Koblas'), who met in rotating fashion at members' homes. Members included the cartoonist Joseph (Joe) A. West; the photographer Eric Carlson (from Duluth, MN), Phillip Rahman (who would later found Fedogan and Bremer publishers) and his brother Glenn Rahman. Occasional attendees included such figures as R. Alain Everts of Madison, WI and

2438-461: A sort of verbal black magic, in the achievement of which I make use of prose-rhythm, metaphor, simile, tone-color, counter-point, and other stylistic resources, like a sort of incantation." Smith was born January 13, 1893, in Long Valley, Placer County, California , into a family of English and New England heritage. He spent most of his life in the small town of Auburn, California , living in

2544-704: A swordswoman of 16th-century France who wars against the Turks in Eastern Europe. For the Red Sonja series, Tierney and Smith were paid $ 1,000 per book and set the stories in the Hyborian Age , 15,000 years ago. Ace Books published the series from 1981 to 1983. As to which work was Smith's and which Tierney's, in an interview with Robert M. Price, Tierney commented: "No-one could ever unravel Dave's work from mine. We'd toss ideas back and forth and come up with

2650-480: A tale was a Lovecraftian story titled "Countdown for Kalara." Tierney destroyed its first draft but rewrote it; the rewritten version was later published in Space and Time 56 (July 1980) as well as being reprinted in Robert M. Price's anthology The Yith Cycle (Chaosium, 2010). He continued writing through the 1950s, producing numerous tales, some of which did not see print until the 1970s or later. For instance, "Life of

2756-614: A volume containing six of his best stories, The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies , in an edition of 1000 copies printed by the Auburn Journal . The theme of much of his work is egotism and its supernatural punishment; his weird fiction is generally macabre in subject matter, gloatingly preoccupied with images of death, decay and abnormality. Most of Smith's weird fiction falls into four series set variously in Hyperborea , Poseidonis , Averoigne and Zothique . Hyperborea, which

2862-468: A well-rotted corpse". Smith was a member of the Lovecraft circle, and his literary friendship with Lovecraft lasted from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in 1937. His work is marked by an extraordinarily rich and ornate vocabulary, a cosmic perspective and a vein of sardonic and sometimes ribald humor. Of his writing style, Smith stated: "My own conscious ideal has been to delude the reader into accepting an impossibility, or series of impossibilities, by means of

2968-454: Is a lost continent of the Miocene period, and Poseidonis, which is a remnant of Atlantis, are much the same, with a magical culture characterized by bizarreness, cruelty, death and postmortem horrors. Averoigne is Smith's version of pre-modern France, comparable to James Branch Cabell 's Poictesme. Zothique exists millions of years in the future. It is "the last continent of earth, when the sun

3074-465: Is considered the start of the Mythos), the first story to really expand the pantheon of Great Old Ones and its themes is " The Call of Cthulhu ", which was published in 1928. Lovecraft broke with other pulp writers of the time by having his main characters' minds deteriorate when afforded a glimpse of what exists outside their perceived reality. He emphasized the point by stating in the opening sentence of

3180-585: Is dim and tarnished". These tales have been compared to the Dying Earth sequence of Jack Vance . In 1933 Smith began corresponding with Robert E. Howard , the Texan creator of Conan the Barbarian . From 1933 to 1936, Smith, Howard and Lovecraft were the leaders of the Weird Tales school of fiction and corresponded frequently, although they never met. The writer of oriental fantasies E. Hoffmann Price

3286-529: Is forthcoming from P'rea Press. Tierney was working on a new novel collaboration with Glenn Rahman, The Path of the Dragon, prior to his death. With Tierney's permission, Robert M. Price has written two further stories in the Simon of Gitta series, to be published in 2022. Tierney was a lifelong bachelor. He died on February 1, 2022, at the age of 85. At Arcana 23 (convention), held Oct 10–12, 1993, Tierney

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3392-468: Is named after the Cthulhu Mythos. Richard L. Tierney Richard Louis Tierney (August 7, 1936 – February 1, 2022) was an American writer, poet and scholar of H. P. Lovecraft , probably best known for his heroic fantasy , including his series co-authored (with David C. Smith ) of Red Sonja novels, featuring cover art by Boris Vallejo . He lived the latter part of his life in Mason City in

3498-613: Is perhaps unexcelled", and Ray Bradbury said that Smith "filled my mind with incredible worlds, impossibly beautiful cities, and still more fantastic creatures". Additional writers influenced by Smith include Leigh Brackett , Harlan Ellison , Stephen King , Fritz Lieber , George R. R. Martin , and Donald Sidney-Fryer . Smith was one of "the big three of Weird Tales , with Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft", though some readers objected to his morbidness and violation of pulp traditions. The fantasy writer and critic L. Sprague de Camp said of him that "nobody since Poe has so loved

3604-581: Is represented by his stepson, Prof William Dorman, director of CASiana Literary Enterprises. Arkham House owns the copyright to many Smith stories, though some are now in the public domain. For 'posthumous collaborations' of Smith (stories completed by Lin Carter), see the entry on Lin Carter . While Smith was always an artist who worked in several very different media, it is possible to identify three distinct periods in which one form of art had precedence over

3710-428: Is the only man known to have met all three in the flesh. Critic Steve Behrends has suggested that the frequent theme of 'loss' in Smith's fiction (many of his characters attempt to recapture a long-vanished youth, early love, or picturesque past) may reflect Smith's own feeling that his career had suffered a "fall from grace": Smith's late teens and early twenties had certainly been a heady period: he'd been taken under

3816-539: The Arabian Nights , like the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and the works of Edgar Allan Poe , are known to have strongly influenced Smith's early writing, as did William Beckford 's Vathek . When he was 15, Smith read George Sterling 's fantasy-horror poem " A Wine of Wizardry " in a national magazine (which he later described as "In the ruck of magazine verse it was like finding a fire-opal of

3922-743: The Hyborian Age and the Cthulhu Mythos . Incidentally, I originally pictured Simon as he was played by Jack Palance in The Silver Chalice . However, it's been so many years since I've seen that film that my memory has slipped. I think I now visualize Simon as someone about halfway between Jack and the Marvel Comics version of Conan." The Drums of Chaos (2008) is the author's magnum opus: an epic alternate history dark fantasy Cthulhu Mythos novel featuring Tierney's best-known characters, Simon of Gitta and John Taggart. Set in

4028-460: The cognitive dissonance caused by this revelation leads to insanity, in his view. There have been attempts at categorizing this fictional group of beings. Phillip A. Schreffler argues that by carefully scrutinizing Lovecraft's writings, a workable framework emerges that outlines the entire "pantheon"—from the unreachable "Outer Ones" (e.g., Azathoth , who occupies the centre of the universe) and "Great Old Ones" (e.g., Cthulhu, imprisoned on Earth in

4134-509: The "Lovecraft Circle". For example, Robert E. Howard's character Friedrich Von Junzt reads Lovecraft's Necronomicon in the short story "The Children of the Night" (1931), and in turn Lovecraft mentions Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten in the stories "Out of the Aeons" ( 1935 ) and "The Shadow Out of Time" ( 1936 ). Many of Howard's original unedited Conan stories also involve parts of

4240-622: The "good vs evil" concept derived from the Judaeo-Christian mythos, is untrue to Lovecraft's fictional philosophies. Tierney frequently appeared in the fan press with his cartoons, many contributed to zines in the Esoteric Order of Dagon amateur press association; Tom Reid issued a 50-copy limited edition of these drawings as Esoterica Mundi in 1976. Artwork by Tierney also appeared in such magazines as Amra , Etchings and Odysseys , The Diversifier , and Crypt of Cthulhu. In

4346-417: The 1970s, Tierney devoted himself as well to casting more artistically serious ceramic figurines in a fantastic style similar to Clark Ashton Smith 's famous rock carvings. Some examples can be seen at: [2] Tierney completed several story fragments and synopses left by Robert E. Howard . In the seventies, Tierney edited two volumes of Howard's works, published in hardcover by Donald M. Grant - Tigers of

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4452-469: The Arabian Nights. Later, he wrote long adventure novels dealing with Oriental life. By 14 he had already written a short adventure novel called The Black Diamonds which was lost for years until published in 2002. Another juvenile novel was written in his teenaged years: The Sword of Zagan (unpublished until 2004). Like The Black Diamonds , it uses a medieval , Arabian Nights -like setting, and

4558-406: The Cthulhu Mythos, the loosely connected series of horror stories written by Lovecraft and other writers inspired by his creations. These fictional cults have in some ways taken on a life of their own beyond the pages of Lovecraft's works. According to author John Engle, "The very real world of esoteric magical and occult practices has adopted Lovecraft and his works into its canon, which have informed

4664-434: The Cthulhu Mythos. Price denotes the second stage's commencement with August Derleth, with the principal difference between Lovecraft and Derleth being Derleth's use of hope and development of the idea that the Cthulhu Mythos essentially represented a struggle between good and evil. Derleth is credited with creating the "Elder Gods". He stated: As Lovecraft conceived the deities or forces of his mythos, there were, initially,

4770-406: The Cthulhu Mythos. Price called the first stage the "Cthulhu Mythos proper". This stage was formulated during Lovecraft's lifetime and was subject to his guidance. The second stage was guided by August Derleth who, in addition to publishing Lovecraft's stories after his death, attempted to categorize and expand the Mythos. An ongoing theme in Lovecraft's work is the complete irrelevance of mankind in

4876-650: The Elder Gods.... These Elder Gods were benign deities, representing the forces of good, and existed peacefully...very rarely stirring forth to intervene in the unceasing struggle between the powers of evil and the races of Earth. These powers of evil were variously known as the Great Old Ones or the Ancient Ones.... Price said the basis for Derleth's system is found in Lovecraft: "Was Derleth's use of

4982-569: The Holy Land during the time of the First century Roman Empire during the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth , Simon of Gitta is on a mission to avenge the deaths of his parents, seeking revenge in blood against the Roman officials who committed the murders. As he travels the Holy Lands with his mentor Dositheus, and their student Menander, they become entangled in a complex plot designed to call down

5088-663: The Mountains of Madness became his two favourite Lovecraft tales. Tierney was also influenced by the work of Tarzan creator, Edgar Rice Burroughs . At around the same age (15 or 16), he was inspired to write poetry by August Derleth 's fantasy verse anthology Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre which he read several times in the Mason City Public Library. While he had previously been

5194-418: The Mythos as opposed to it being a discrete plot device within Lovecraft's own stories. Derleth expanded the boundaries of the Mythos by including any passing reference to another author's story elements by Lovecraft as part of the genre. Just as Lovecraft made passing reference to Clark Ashton Smith's Book of Eibon , Derleth in turn added Smith's Ubbo-Sathla to the Mythos. Derleth also attempted to connect

5300-794: The Party" (written in 1956) first appeared in Antithesis No 3 (1974). "The Dream" (written Nov 1956), was first printed in Crypt of Cthulhu No 86 (Eastertide 1994). "The Wrath of Tupan" (written April 1957) first appeared in Fantasy Crossroads (March 1977). "The Eggs of Pawa," which features Ralph Duncan, the protagonist of the novel The House of the Toad, was penned in May 1957 but did not see print until Eldritch Tales No 2 (1981). "From Beyond

5406-637: The Red Sonja Ace Books novels were printed two or three times, though Endithor's Daughter saw only one printing. The Red Sonja novels have been reprinted in German by Heyne Verlag (1990). Clark Ashton Smith Clark Ashton Smith (January 13, 1893 – August 14, 1961) was an influential American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories and poetry, and an artist. He achieved early recognition in California (largely through

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5512-517: The Sea (1973) (reprinted in paperback, Zebra Books, 1975) and Hawks of Outremer (1979). In Tigers of the Sea, the title story and "The Temple of Abomination" are posthumous collaborations of Tierney with Howard. Tierney has revealed that "in the Zebra [paperback] edition of Tigers of the Sea , Howard's portion ends in the second paragraph of page 209 with 'Cormac smiled fiercely.". Mine begins with "For

5618-755: The Stars" (which takes place in NE Iowa), in Kirby McCauley's anthology Night Chills (1975), The two became friends and eventually he published Tierney's Cthulhu Mythos novel The House of the Toad (1993), which is set in modern-day Iowa along the Mississippi River in the Quad Cities region. A long-running series of stories (begun in the mid-1980s and culminating in 2008 with the novel The Drums of Chaos ) by Tierney features Simon of Gitta,

5724-648: The Stars," another product of 1957, first appeared in Kirby McCauley 's anthology Night Chills (Avon, 1975). "The Creatures" comes from the same productive year and first saw print in Eldritch Tales No 3 (1978; the dating is correct. Issue 2 of this magazine was printed three years later than No 3). Again, "The Howler in the Dark" was written in 1957 but did not see print until it appeared in Crypt of Cthulhu 24 (Vol 3, No 8, Lammas 1984); this appearance

5830-531: The Titans in a potato bin") and decided he wanted to become a poet. At age 17, he sold several tales to The Black Cat , a magazine which specialized in unusual tales. He also published some tales in the Overland Monthly in this brief foray into fiction which preceded his poetic career. However, it was primarily poetry that motivated the young Smith and he confined his efforts to poetry for more than

5936-692: The Winter 1942 issue of the magazine. Impressed by the glossary, Derleth asked Laney to rewrite it for publication in the Arkham House collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943). Laney's essay ("The Cthulhu Mythos") was later republished in Crypt of Cthulhu #32 (1985). In applying the elemental theory to beings that function on a cosmic scale (e.g., Yog-Sothoth ) some authors created a fifth element that they termed aethyr . A number of fictional cults dedicated to "malevolent supernatural entities" appear in

6042-511: The age of 19. Smith received international acclaim for the collection. The Star-Treader was received very favorably by American critics, one of whom named Smith "the Keats of the Pacific". Smith briefly moved among the circle that included Ambrose Bierce and Jack London , but his early fame soon faded away. A little later, Smith's health broke down and for eight years his literary production

6148-700: The audio CD Strange Aeons (UK: Rainfall Records, 2001). Tierney's prose poem "Autumn Chill" is included in Stephen Jones (ed), Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 22 (Robinson, 2011) - only the second poem to ever appear in this horror anthology series. It is also included in Mammoth Books Presents Unexpected Encounters , an e-book containing four of the works from the Robinson anthology. The work can also be found online in an audio reading by fan Will Hart. Tierney

6254-641: The cities or posadas in the villages, Tierney gave himself a crash course in Spanish and became fascinated with the Nahuatl people and culture. He spent much time in Yucatan and other areas photographing many of the most remote mountain and jungle sites — a background he uses in his later Peru-inspired Cthulhu Mythos novel The House of the Toad (1993). In the Winter/Spring of 1964, Tierney took

6360-437: The complete 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica at least twice. Smith later taught himself French and Spanish to translate verse out of those languages, including works by Gérard de Nerval , Paul Verlaine , Amado Nervo , Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer and all but 6 of Charles Baudelaire 's 157 poems in The Flowers of Evil . His first literary efforts, at the age of 11, took the form of fairy tales and imitations of

6466-441: The deities of the Mythos to the four elements (air, earth, fire, and water), creating new beings representative of certain elements in order to legitimize his system of classification. He created "Cthugha" as a sort of fire elemental when a fan, Francis Towner Laney, complained that he had neglected to include the element in his schema. Laney, the editor of The Acolyte , had categorized the Mythos in an essay that first appeared in

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6572-421: The dozens, the gatherings were made annual and featured professional guests. They were called MinnCons until Minncon 17 in 1987. Thereafter, the name of the convention was changed to Arcana (convention) . Kirby McCauley's girlfriend had a friend who worked at local occult publisher Llewellyn Worldwide and recommended Tierney for a job there on the strength of his occult interests; Tierney had read extensively on

6678-439: The enthusiasm of George Sterling ) for traditional verse in the vein of Swinburne . As a poet, Smith is grouped with the West Coast Romantics alongside Joaquin Miller , Sterling, and Nora May French and remembered as "The Last of the Great Romantics" and "The Bard of Auburn". Smith's work was praised by his contemporaries. H. P. Lovecraft stated that "in sheer daemonic strangeness and fertility of conception, Clark Ashton Smith

6784-402: The face of the cosmic horrors that apparently exist in the universe. Lovecraft made frequent references to the " Great Old Ones ", a loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the Earth and have since fallen into a deathlike sleep. While these monstrous deities were present in almost all of Lovecraft's published work (his second short story " Dagon ", published in 1919,

6890-644: The great Corn Steppes of Iowa. Some of his standalone novels utilize the mythology of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos . He is also known for his Simon of Gitta series (which cross historical Gnosticism with Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos ) and his Robert E. Howard completions and utilisation of such Howard-invented characters as Cormac Mac Art, Bran Mak Morn and Cormac Fitzgeoffrey . Tierney is especially renowned for his weird and fantastic verse, which has been acclaimed by such critics, writers, and poets as S. T. Joshi , Don Herron, Ramsey Campbell , Robert M. Price, Donald Sidney-Fryer, and Frank Belknap Long . In 1993, Tierney

6996-592: The height of the hippie rebellion. Tierney found the phone number of pulp writer E. Hoffmann Price , worked up the nerve to call him and tell him he was a fan of H.P. Lovecraft, and was invited to Price's residence for a visit. Thereafter, they got together frequently, often over a meal cooked by Price - usually an Indian curry or a Mexican chilli. Both writers were interested in Buddhism. Price often discussed with Tierney pulp writers he had known, such as Clark Ashton Smith . Price also lent him some paperback books he had published. Between 1966 and 1973, Tierney published

7102-551: The homes connected with the Thomas Macy family. Macy was amongst the first settlers there - the Massachusetts Quakers who were driven out of MA by the Puritans . Tierney made his mark in Lovecraft studies at this time by authoring the essay "The Derleth Mythos", first published in 1972 in Meade and Penny Frierson's HPL (Birmingham, Al: The Editors, 1972, 1975) and reprinted in 1976 in Darrell Schweitzer's Essays Lovecraftian (Baltimore, MD: TK Graphics). The essay famously separates Lovecraft's ideas of his Cthulhu mythos as based on

7208-433: The line of Thomas Macy (1608–1682), an early settler of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and of Nantucket Island . Tierney was born in Spencer, Iowa . His family moved to Mason City in 1942 when Tierney was six years old. He went through the public school system, attending Madison grade school, Roosevelt Junior High and a high school he referred to as "Old Bastille" since it was built of old dark brick and always felt like

7314-409: The magician-warrior as a sword-and-sorcery hero. Simon of Gitta also features in Tierney's novels The Gardens of Lucullus (with Glenn Rahman) and The Drums of Chaos. Simon is a Samaritan ex-gladiator whose sorcerous abilities allow him to survive encounters with an array of evil priests, emperors, and hideous creatures. His quest for his true love Helen drives Simon and plays an instrumental part in

7420-453: The millennium, with the volume Savage Menace and Other Poems of Horror (2010) collecting all his verse subsequent to Collected Poems. In the 1980s he collaborated on two poems, "The Coming of Juss" and "The Kiss of Elf-Queen," with Dale C. Donaldson. He also collaborated on verse with poets including the Australians Charles Lovecraft and Leigh Blackmore . Robert M. Price gives an audio reading of Tierney's poem "Petition: To Tsathoggua" on

7526-1264: The moment..." Thus, as you can see, I'm the one who hauled in all the (Cthulhu) Mythos elements!". In Hawks of Outremer, the story "The Slave Princess" is the sole posthumous collaboration by Tierney with Howard; Howard wrote the first six chapters of the story, with Tierney supplying the last two. Apart from the 'posthumous collaborations' with Robert E. Howard listed above, Tierney has also posthumously collaborated with Clark Ashton Smith ("Utressor" in Robert M. Price, ed. The Book of Eibon (Chaosium, 2002)) and with Edgar Allan Poe ("The Light-House" in Nyctalops 14 (March 1978) and reprinted in Etchings & Odysseys 2 (May 1983)). Philip Rahman's brother, Glenn Rahman, urged Tierney to collaborate with him on The Gardens of Lucullus which eventually appeared in 2001. Tierney has also collaborated on short fiction with authors including Laurence J. Cornford and Robert M. Price (see Simon of Gitta series below). He has collaborated on poetry with Dale C. Donaldson, Charles Lovecraft, and Leigh Blackmore . In 1981, Tierney returned to Mason City to take care of his mother, Margaret, now deceased. That year, Arkham House published his volume of weird verse, Collected Poems (Richard L. Tierney) including

7632-530: The most fascinating stories I had ever encountered, largely because of [its] poetic mood evoking a setting of trans-cosmic vastness. He would many years later become a neighbor and friend of Wandrei's in Minneapolis. Aged 15, and reading heavily in science fiction, Tierney read Lovecraft's " The Shadow Out of Time " in Donald A. Wollheim 's Viking Portable Novels of Science and was 'hooked'. "Shadow" and At

7738-517: The names of strange gods for their stories, though so different is Smith's treatment of the Lovecraft theme that it has been dubbed the "Clark Ashton Smythos." In 1925 Smith published Sandalwood , which was partly funded by a gift of $ 50 from Donald Wandrei . He wrote little fiction in this period with the exception of some imaginative vignettes or prose poems . Smith was poor for most of his life and often did hard manual jobs such as fruit picking and woodcutting to support himself and his parents. He

7844-430: The occult and often drew horoscope charts for his friends, though he took none of this very seriously. Llewellyn employed him for a year and a half (1971–72). Tierney stayed in touch with his California friend E. Hoffman Price , conducting an extensive correspondence with him. While on a New York trip to visit Kirby McCauley, Tierney took a side trip to Nantucket Island to investigate his ancestral roots, in particular

7950-656: The old house burned – the Smiths believed by arson, others said by accident. Smith now reluctantly did gardening for other residents at Pacific Grove, and grew a goatee. He spent much time shopping and walking near the seafront but despite Derleth's badgering, resisted the writing of more fiction. In 1961 he suffered a series of strokes and in August 1961 he quietly died in his sleep, aged 68. After Smith's death, Carol remarried (becoming Carolyn Wakefield) and subsequently died of cancer. The poet's ashes were buried beside, or beneath,

8056-569: The others. Smith published most of his volumes of poetry in this period, including the aforementioned The Star-Treader and Other Poems , as well as Odes and Sonnets (1918), Ebony and Crystal (1922) and Sandalwood (1925). His long poem The Hashish-Eater; Or, the Apocalypse of Evil was written in 1920. Smith wrote most of his weird fiction and Cthulhu Mythos stories, inspired by H. P. Lovecraft . Creatures of his invention include Aforgomon , Rlim-Shaikorth , Mordiggian, Tsathoggua ,

8162-735: The pages of George H. Scithers ' sword-and-sorcery fanzine Amra in 1961. Tierney has written widely on a variety of esoteric topics, such as the legends concerning Mount Shasta and Amne Machin . One of his fellow Alaskan workers went to the University of Mexico and Tierney visited him. Well-versed in Meso-American archaeology, during his time working for the Forest Service he spent four winters on his own time in Mexico, Central and South America visiting ancient Amerind ruins (1962–66). While occupying cheap lodgings such as hotels in

8268-520: The poems feature the misanthropic bitterness of Ambrose Bierce . Literary historian Don Herron has stated that the collection presents Tierney as "one of the most technically accomplished sonneteers of his generation, able to bring rhyming forms to bear on his own concerns, such as the especially nihilistic concluding poem "To the Hydrogen Bomb". Tierney found this period of living rent-free with his mother highly productive for his writing, and it

8374-437: The poems from the 1975 verse collection Dreams and Damnations , along with much other weird verse of the period, from magazines such as The Diversifier , Literary Magazine of Fantasy and Terror , Ambrosia , Dark Messenger Reader , Myrrdin , Fantasy Crossroads and others. Critic S. T. Joshi has said Collected Poems "established Tierney as one of the leading weird poets of his generation." Joshi has commented that some of

8480-671: The publication of the Arkham House Collected Poems (Tierney) (1981) resulted in the Strange Company volume, though reprinted, being scarcely distributed. In 1972, Tierney moved to Minneapolis to take up writing as a vocation. He lived for nearly nine years in the Twin Cities ( Minneapolis–Saint Paul ), which brought him in frequent contact with old-time horror/fantasy writers such as Carl Jacobi and Donald Wandrei . He had made Wandrei's acquaintance

8586-446: The purpose of preserving the work of H.P. Lovecraft, Derleth published the first of several major collections of Smith's fiction, Out of Space and Time (1942). This was followed by Lost Worlds (1944). The books sold slowly, went out of print and became costly rarities. Derleth published five more volumes of Smith's prose and two of his verse, and at his death in 1971 had a large volume of Smith's poems in press. In 1953, Smith suffered

8692-474: The ritual practices, or even formed the bedrock, of certain cabals and magical circles". The Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft is considered to have been highly influential for the speculative fiction genre. It has been called "the official fictional religion of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, a grab bag for writers in need of unthinkably vast, and unthinkably indifferent, eldritch entities". Sollasina cthulhu , an extinct ophiocistioid echinoderm ,

8798-631: The rubric 'Elder Gods' so alien to Lovecraft's in At the Mountains of Madness ? Perhaps not. In fact, this very story, along with some hints from "The Shadow over Innsmouth", provides the key to the origin of the 'Derleth Mythos'. For in At the Mountains of Madness is shown the history of a conflict between interstellar races, first among them the Elder Ones and the Cthulhu-spawn." Derleth said Lovecraft wished for other authors to actively write about

8904-478: The stories he ghostwrote for other authors, he reserved Arkham and its environs exclusively for those tales he wrote under his own name. Although the Mythos was not formalized or acknowledged between them, Lovecraft did correspond, meet in person, and share story elements with other contemporary writers including Clark Ashton Smith , Robert E. Howard , Robert Bloch , Frank Belknap Long , Henry Kuttner , Henry S. Whitehead , and Fritz Leiber —a group referred to as

9010-418: The story that "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." Writer Dirk W. Mosig noted that Lovecraft was a "mechanistic materialist" who embraced the philosophy of cosmic indifferentism and believed in a purposeless, mechanical, and uncaring universe. Human beings, with their limited faculties, can never fully understand this universe, and

9116-617: The sunken city of R'lyeh ) to the lesser castes (the lowly slave shoggoths and the Mi-Go ). David E. Schultz said Lovecraft never meant to create a canonical Mythos but rather intended his imaginary pantheon to serve merely as a background element. Lovecraft himself humorously referred to his Mythos as "Yog Sothothery" (Dirk W. Mosig coincidentally suggested the term Yog-Sothoth Cycle of Myth be substituted for Cthulhu Mythos ). At times, Lovecraft even had to remind his readers that his Mythos creations were entirely fictional. The view that there

9222-643: The table, he found it a very distasteful business at times—he had once said to Sterling that writing prose was "a hateful task, for a poet, and [one which] wouldn't be necessary in any true civilisation." In short, it may be that Smith experienced that variety of "let-down" or loss peculiar to the child prodigies. In September 1935, Smith's mother Fanny died. Smith spent the next two years nursing his father through his last illness. Timeus died in December 1937. Aged 44, Smith now virtually ceased writing fiction. He had been severely affected by several tragedies occurring in

9328-522: The tales. Some of the stories pay tribute to H. P. Lovecraft, while a story such as "The Blade of the Slayer" is a tribute to Karl Edward Wagner 's tales of the swordsman Kane. Magus meets up with Shub-Niggurath (the evil goddess), searches for the Ring of Set , and has several other dark adventures. Tierney has commented: "All these tales combine Gnosticism and other first-century elements with overtones of

9434-467: The title Dreams and Damnations , a slim volume of eight poems issued by R. Alain Everts' The Strange Company (of Madison, WI) in 1975 as a limited edition of 100 copies; this included a few of his translations for Charles Baudelaire . The collection was reviewed by Donald Sidney-Fryer in The Diversifier , 14 (May 1976); however an unfortunate law-suit brought by Everts in an attempt to prevent

9540-521: The wilderness and live a solitary existence - a plan which did not work out, since he made more friends than ever when he began his employment. During his first year at College, he wrote to August Derleth at Arkham House and started collecting their publications. Inspired by the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft, he began to pen his own verse, but not knowing where to submit it, sent out none of his efforts until much later. He switched his major to Wildlife Management and graduated in 1961 with

9646-428: The wing of a personal idol, the poet George Sterling, and his first book of poetry had brought him comparisons to Keats and Shelley. This notoriety must surely have raised his standing in his small hometown. And yet the depression found Smith without a job or viable occupation, unable to eke out a living as a poet, with girlfriends berating him for his lack of ambition. And while his turn to writing fiction did put bread on

9752-532: The wizard Eibon , and various others. In an homage to his friend, Lovecraft referred in "The Whisperer in Darkness" and "The Battle That Ended the Century" (written in collaboration with R. H. Barlow) to an Atlantean high-priest, "Klarkash-Ton". Smith's weird stories form several cycles, called after the lands in which they are set: Averoigne , Hyperborea , Mars , Poseidonis , Zothique . To some extent Smith

9858-461: The year before through several telephone conversations while gathering copyright information for him on some Carl Jacobi stories that were soon to be published by Arkham House. He later provided the Introduction to Wandrei's volume of collected science fiction stories, Colossus . Kirby McCauley, whom Tierney had met a fantasy convention sometime prior, introduced him to the fledgling Minn-Conn,

9964-419: The young S. T. Joshi . It was a topic of conversation that Donald Wandrei was still alive nearby, and members of the group frequently got together at Wandrei's house, attracted by the fact that Wandrei had known Lovecraft personally. They visited Carl Jacobi somewhat less often, since he had suffered a stroke which left him paralysed down one side and with a speech impediment. By 1988, with this group numbering in

10070-763: Was a longtime member of the Unitarians . He stated that he found writing a chore but was sometimes inspired by listening to classical music or film scores. In late 2020, Tierney suffered a stroke which caused some numbness to the right side of his body but that did not affect his mental acuity. He also caught but recovered from the COVID-19 virus. He lived in Mason City, Iowa and spent the last few years of his life in Good Shepherd Nursing Home. An expanded edition of Savage Menace and Other Poems

10176-685: Was aged 23 but did not see print until 1975. Harry O. Morris, who published the work through his Silver Scarab Press, would later illustrate Tierney's novel The House of the Toad . The Winds of Zarr has cover art by Stephen Fabian and interior art by Randall Spurgin. Tierney wrote his first Simon of Gitta tale, "The Ring of Set," in 1960; it lay around in manuscript for about 16 years until his friend Kirby McCauley submitted it to Andrew J. Offutt for his first Swords Against Darkness anthology, which appeared in 1977. Tierney attended Iowa State College in Ames , studying forestry, his idea being to work in

10282-507: Was an able cook and made many kinds of wine. He also did well digging, typing and journalism, as well as contributing a column to The Auburn Journal and sometimes worked as its night editor. One of Smith's artistic patrons and frequent correspondents was San Francisco businessman Albert Bender . At the beginning of the Depression in 1929, with his aged parents' health weakening, Smith resumed fiction writing and turned out more than

10388-607: Was during this time he wrote his novels The House of the Toad , Drums of Chaos and many of the Simon of Gitta stories. For Zebra Books, in 1978, Tierney had collaborated with David C. Smith on the novel For the Witch of the Mists: Bran Mak Morn, a work utilising the Robert E. Howard character of Morn, a Pictish king. This novel was reprinted by Ace Books in 1981. A few years later, also for Ace Books, with his frequent collaborator David C. Smith , Tierney co-authored

10494-591: Was influenced in his vision of such lost worlds by the teachings of Theosophy and the writings of Helena Blavatsky . Stories set in Zothique belong to the Dying Earth subgenre . Amongst Smith's science fiction tales are stories set on Mars and the invented planet of Xiccarph . His short stories originally appeared in the magazines Weird Tales , Strange Tales , Astounding Stories , Stirring Science Stories and Wonder Stories . Clark Ashton Smith

10600-523: Was intermittent, though he produced his best poetry during this period. A small volume, Odes and Sonnets , was brought out in 1918. Smith came into contact with literary figures who would later form part of H.P. Lovecraft's circle of correspondents; Smith knew them far earlier than Lovecraft. These figures include poet Samuel Loveman and bookman George Kirk. It was Smith who in fact later introduced Donald Wandrei to Lovecraft. For this reason, it has been suggested that Lovecraft might as well be referred to as

10706-537: Was minus a few lines of text which were restored in the printing in Robert M. Price's anthology" The Necronomicon (Chaosium, 1996). Tierney's first novel, The Winds of Zarr, which combined H. P. Lovecraft (including a Lovecraft-style deity named Zathog - see List of Great Old Ones ), Robert E. Howard , time travel and ancient astronauts, and is set in Egypt during the New Kingdom , was penned in 1959 when Tierney

10812-419: Was no rigid structure is expounded upon by S. T. Joshi , who said Lovecraft's imaginary cosmogony was never a static system but rather a sort of aesthetic construct that remained ever adaptable to its creator's developing personality and altering interests.... There was never a rigid system that might be posthumously appropriated..... The essence of the mythos lies not in a pantheon of imaginary deities nor in

10918-519: Was presented with the annual Minnesota Fantasy Award. He was nominated for Science Fiction Poetry Association Grand Master in 2010. [1] Tierney was of Irish origin on his paternal side. His great-grandfather emigrated from Dublin with his family to the United States. His maternal parentage traces its lineage to the Mayflower and the first Quaker settlement at Nantucket Island , Mass via

11024-541: Was the recipient of the 1993 Minnesota Fantasy Award, given annually at the Arcana (convention) (the convention known until 1987 as 'MinnCon'). Tierney was nominated for Science Fiction Poetry Association Grand Master in 2010. [3] The heroine is the Hyrkanian warrior Red Sonja . The character is loosely based on Red Sonya created by Robert E. Howard , via the recreation for comics penned by Roy Thomas . Several of

11130-709: Was the third member of the great triumvirate of Weird Tales , with Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard . Many of Smith's stories were published in six hardcover volumes by August Derleth under his Arkham House imprint. For a full bibliography to 1978, see Sidney-Fryer, Emperor of Dreams (cited below). S. T. Joshi is working with other scholars to produce an updated bibliography of Smith's work. A selection of Smith's best-known tales includes: By this time his interest in writing fiction began to lessen and he turned to creating sculptures from soft rock such as soapstone . Smith also made hundreds of fantastic paintings and drawings. The authoritative bibliography on Smith's work

11236-466: Was twice signed by Lovecraft. The volume was in poor condition, lacking the covers, but Tierney had it rebound by a bookbinder near Brown University. Around this time Tierney also took bus trips to Boston , Salem , Marblehead , and Brattleboro , Vermont - the setting of Lovecraft's The Whisperer in Darkness . Tierney lived in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1960s and early 1970s,

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