Zothique is a collection of fantasy short stories by Clark Ashton Smith , edited by Lin Carter . It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the sixteenth volume of its Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in June 1970. It was the first themed collection of Smith's works assembled by Carter for the series. The stories were originally published in various fantasy magazines in the 1930s, notably Weird Tales .
28-568: The book collects one poem and all sixteen tales of the author's Zothique cycle, set on the Earth's last continent in a far distant future , with an introduction, map, and epilogue by Carter. They were originally written and published between 1932 and 1951. Most were written in a tar paper and wood cabin in Auburn, California . All were first published in the magazine Weird Tales with the exception of " The Voyage of King Euvoran " which first appeared in
56-556: A barren Earth, then travels even further into the future to see the Sun go out and Earth freezing over. Two brooding works by William Hope Hodgson would elaborate on Wells's vision. The House on the Borderland (1908) takes place in a house besieged by unearthly forces. The narrator then travels into a distant future in which humanity has died and then even further, past the death of Earth. Hodgson's The Night Land (1912) describes
84-466: A comet on a collision course with Earth in the 25th century. The last half focuses on Earth's future history, where civilizations rise and fall, humans evolve, and finally Earth ends as an old, dying, and barren planet. H. G. Wells 's 1895 novella The Time Machine utilizes Dying Earth imagery. At the end of the novel, the unnamed time traveller travels thirty million years into the far future, where only gigantic crabs, butterflies and lichens exist on
112-438: A conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as grounded by the laws of nature and comprehensible by science, while a conventional fantasy story contains mostly supernatural elements that do not obey the scientific laws of the real world. The world of science fantasy, however, is laid out to be scientifically logical and often supplied with hard science -like explanations of any supernatural elements. During
140-427: A deliberate attempt to apply the techniques and attitudes of science fiction to traditional fantasy subjects. Distinguishing between pure science fiction and pure fantasy, Rod Serling argued that the former was "the improbable made possible" while the latter was "the impossible made probable". As a combination of the two, science fantasy gives a scientific veneer of realism to things that simply could not happen in
168-657: A natural scientific basis. Science fiction critic John Clute chose the narrower term "technological fantasy" from the broader concept of "science fiction". The label first came into wide use after many science fantasy stories were published in the American pulp magazines , such as Robert A. Heinlein 's Magic, Inc. , L. Ron Hubbard 's Slaves of Sleep , and Fletcher Pratt and L. Sprague de Camp 's Harold Shea series. All were relatively rationalistic stories published in John W. Campbell Jr. 's Unknown magazine. These were
196-458: A new type of mineral-metallic life. In some ways it reads like the inversion of his earlier Les Xipéhuz (1887), in which early humans encounter and battle an utterly alien and incomprehensible form of life. From the 1930s onwards, Clark Ashton Smith wrote a series of stories situated in Zothique , the last continent of Earth, where its inhabitants live out their lives in a similar manner to
224-422: A perfectly chronological order so the thing may be read as a novel, if you like." Dying Earth (genre) Dying Earth is a subgenre of science fantasy or science fiction which takes place in the far future at either the end of life on Earth or the end of time , when the laws of the universe themselves fail. Dominant themes include world-weariness , innocence , idealism , entropy , heat death of
252-528: A time, millions of years in the future, when the Sun has gone dark. The last few millions of the human race are gathered together in a gigantic metal pyramid, the Last Redoubt, under siege from unknown forces and Powers outside in the dark. A work by the early French science fiction author J.-H. Rosny aîné , La Mort de la Terre (1910), deals with the last, scattered generation of an evolved humankind on an exhausted, desert Earth and their encounter with
280-452: A word when a paragraph would do and, I'm afraid, I gave up after 20 pages." In the 1988 book Fantasy: The 100 Best Books , James Cawthorn and Michael Moorcock said "Smith crams enough colour and outré incident into a short story to fill the average novel." Amra ' s L. Sprague de Camp favoured the collection with "all sixteen Zothique stories, plus a poem, by the master of the macabre in jewel-bedizened proze, about sorcerous doings on
308-460: Is based on Indo-European roots and is highly inflected, like Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. Darrell Schweitzer suggests the idea of writing about a far future land may have come from William Hope Hodgson's novel The Night Land , noting that Smith was an admirer of Hodgson's work. However, this theory was conclusively disproven by Scott Conner in a scholarly journal devoted to Hodgson. Locus ' s Charles N. Brown wrote "Smith would never use
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#1732787456728336-569: Is slowly but inexorably wiped from the face of the planet by an unstoppable outbreak of the Great Plague , killing almost everyone but the protagonist, immune to the disease's effects. Another early example is La Fin du Monde ( The End of the World , aka Omega: the last days of the world ), written by Camille Flammarion and published in France in 1893. The first half of the novel deals with
364-481: Is sometimes cited as an example of science fantasy. Writer James F. Broderick describes Star Trek as science fantasy because it includes semi-futuristic as well as supernatural/fantasy elements such as The Q . According to the late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke , many purists argue that Star Trek is science fantasy rather than science fiction because of its scientifically improbable elements, which he partially agreed with. The status of Star Wars as
392-740: The 1933 book The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies and later republished under the title "The Quest of Gazolba" in the September 1947 issue. Clark Ashton Smith himself described the Zothique cycle in a letter to L. Sprague de Camp , dated November 3, 1953: Zothique, vaguely suggested by Theosophic theories about past and future continents, is the last inhabited continent of earth. The continents of our present cycle have sunken, perhaps several times. Some have remained submerged; others have re-risen, partially, and re-arranged themselves. Zothique, as I conceive it, comprises Asia Minor, Arabia, Persia, India, parts of northern and eastern Africa, and much of
420-493: The Golden Age of Science Fiction , science fantasy stories were seen in sharp contrast to the terse, scientifically plausible material that came to dominate mainstream science fiction, typified by the magazine Astounding Science Fiction . Although science fantasy stories at that time were often relegated to the status of children's entertainment, their freedom of imagination and romance proved to be an early major influence on
448-474: The "New Wave" writers of the 1960s, who became exasperated by the limitations of "Hard Science Fiction" . The term "science fantasy" was coined in 1935 by critic Forrest J. Ackerman as a synonym for science fiction. In the 1950s, the British journalist Walter Gillings considered science fantasy as a part of science fiction that was not plausible from the point of view of the science of the time (for example,
476-469: The Indonesian archipelago. A new Australia exists somewhere to the south. To the west, there are only a few known islands, such as Naat, in which the black cannibals survive. To the north, are immense unexplored deserts; to the east, an immense unvoyaged sea. The peoples are mainly of Aryan or Semitic descent; but there is a negro kingdom (Ilcar) in the north-west; and scattered blacks are found throughout
504-429: The bows, arrows, swords, javelins, etc. of antiquity. Under the influence of Smith, Jack Vance wrote the short story collection The Dying Earth . The collection had several sequels and gave the subgenre its name. Science fantasy Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy . In
532-738: The civilisations of the Classical era . Smith said in a letter to L. Sprague de Camp, dated November 3, 1953: Zothique, vaguely suggested by Theosophic theories about past and future continents, is the last inhabited continent of earth. The continents of our present cycle have sunken, perhaps several times. Some have remained submerged; others have re-risen, partially, and re-arranged themselves. The science and machinery of our present civilization have long been forgotten, together with our present religions. But many gods are worshipped; and sorcery and demonism prevail again as in ancient days. Oars and sails alone are used by mariners. There are no fire-arms—only
560-592: The earth's last continent." Bizarre Fantasy Tales ' s Robert A. W. Lowndes opined "The best introduction to Clark Ashton Smith presently available is the Ballantine, softcover edition of the Zothique series." Forgotten Fantasy ' s Douglas Menville commended "one of the best volumes so far in the excellent Adult Fantasy series, edited by Lin Carter, this is the first paperback collection ever published of
588-558: The imaginary and the actual, the magical and the prosaic, the mythical and the scientific, meet and interanimate. In so doing, these worlds inspire us with new sensations and experiences, with [quoting C. S. Lewis] 'such beauty, awe, or terror as the actual world does not supply', with the stuff of desires, dreams, and dread." Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore published novels in Startling Stories , alone and together, which were far more romantic . These were closely related to
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#1732787456728616-536: The other countries, mainly in palace-harems. In the southern islands survive vestiges of Indonesian or Malayan races. The science and machinery of our present civilization have long been forgotten, together with our present religions. But many gods are worshipped; and sorcery and demonism prevail again as in ancient days. Oars and sails alone are used by mariners. There are no fire-arms—only the bows, arrows, swords, javelins, etc. of antiquity. The chief language spoken (of which I have provided examples in an unpublished drama)
644-435: The real world under any circumstances. Where science fiction does not permit the existence of fantastical or supernatural elements, science fantasy explicitly relies upon them to complement the scientific elements. In explaining the intrigue of science fantasy, Carl D. Malmgren provides an intro regarding C. S. Lewis 's speculation on the emotional needs at work in the subgenre: "In the counternatural worlds of science fantasy,
672-400: The universe , exhaustion or depletion of many or all resources, and the hope of renewal. A related subgenre set in the distant future of entropic decay is called entropic romance. The Dying Earth genre differs from the apocalyptic subgenre in that it deals not with catastrophic destruction, but with entropic exhaustion of Earth. It is therefore described as more " melancholic ". The genre
700-523: The use of nuclear weapons in H.G. Wells' novel The World Set Free was a science fantasy from the point of view of Newtonian physics and a work of science fiction from the point of view of Einstein's theory). In 1948, writer Marion Zimmer (later known as Zimmer Bradley) called "science fantasy" a mixture of science fiction and fantasy in Startling Stories magazine. Critic Judith Murry considered science fantasy as works of fantasy in which magic has
728-421: The wonderful weird tales of Clark Ashton Smith." Sci Fi Weekly ' s Cynthia Ward noted "while it's a fascinating and influential place, deserving of the fantasy or horror fan's visit, Zothique is, to paraphrase James Brown , a straight white man's man's man's world." The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction ' s Gahan Wilson remarked "Mr. Carter has arranged these fascinatingly morbid fantasies in
756-452: The work that they and others were doing for outlets like Weird Tales , such as Moore's Northwest Smith stories. Ace Books published a number of books as science fantasy during the 1950s and 1960s. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction points out that as a genre, science fantasy "has never been clearly defined", and was most commonly used in the period between 1950 and 1966. The Star Trek franchise created by Gene Roddenberry
784-513: Was prefigured by the works of the Romantic movement. Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville 's Le Dernier Homme (1805) narrates the tale of Omegarus, the Last Man on Earth. It is a bleak vision of the future when Earth has become totally sterile. Lord Byron 's poem " Darkness " (1816) shows Earth after the Sun has died. Mary Shelley 's The Last Man (1826) details a future in which humanity
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