FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 165 - Ubbo-Sathla by Clark Ashton Smith

After learning about The Necronomicon in The Hound in our last show, we now have a tale from Clark Ashton Smith which introduces us to another infamous tome from the Cthulhu Mythos, allegedly written by a dark wizard in ancient Hyperborea,  - The Book of Eibon! 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Ubbo-Sathla by Clark Ashton Smith

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FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 147 - Dreams of Yith by Duane W. Rimel

A cycle of sonnets detailing weird dreams of a strange alien world of the Cthulhu Mythos,  written by Duane W. Rimel, with guidance from both H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Dreams of Yith by Duane W. Rimel

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FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 083 - The Ghoul by Clark Ashton Smith

In this podcast we hear a mythic tale set in ancient Arabia from Clark Ashton Smith, concerning a most curious encounter and a most unfortunate bargain...

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - The Ghoul by Clark Ashton Smith

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FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 001 - Introduction

Welcome to the the Great Library of Dreams Podcast, where we present readings of classic tales of the weird and the wonderful! Here you will find stories of the magical, the mysterious, the marvelous, and the macabre! In this introductory episode Mr Jim Moon details what you can expect on your visits to the cosy fireside of the Great Library, and reads an appropriate weird verse from Mr Clark Ashton Smith!

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 001 - Introduction

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Inktober 2018 - Week 3

Day 15 - "Weak" -  a quick and silly one today... Hey, it was a Monday and we all need a chuckle on Monday morning, right, gang?

Day 16 - "Angular" - This reminded me of the classic weird tale The Hounds of Tindalos by Frank Belknap Long

"They are beyond good and evil as we know it. They are that which in the beginning fell away from cleanliness. Through the deed they became bodies of death, receptacles of all foulness. But they are not evil in our sense because in the spheres through which they move there is no thought, no morals, no right or wrong as we understand it. There is merely the pure and the foul. The foul expresses itself through angles..."

You can hear my reading of it here

Day 17 - "Swollen" - This prompt made me thing of another Mythos entity, Tsathoggua, created by Clark Ashton Smith. This sketch is from a Hyperborean statue carved by Smith himself of the fat, sleepy bat-toad god.

Day 18 - "Bottle" -  Fancy a djinn and tonic?

Day 19 - "Scorched" - At this time of year, I couldn't help thinking of the fate of many a guy...

Day 20 - "Breakable" - This put me in mind of breaking curses, which in turn leads me to Casting the Runes by MR James...

Day 21 - "Drain" -  Well, in an attempt to avoid doing the inevitable Pennywise picture, I considered "drain" as a verb, which led me to vampires, and therefore provided the perfect excuse to draw Ingrid Pitt...

Week 1 is here

Week 2 is here

HYPNOGORIA 63 - Zombi Zombi Part 13 - Zombies in the Pulps

In this episode we chart how the zombie genre was developed extensively in weird fiction, in tales from classic genre writers such as August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith and E Hoffman Price, and in the pages of the more lurid shudder pulps. 

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Zombi Zombi Part 13 - Zombies in the Pulps

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FROM THE GREAT LIBRARY OF DREAMS 10 - The Empire of the Necromancers

Mr Jim Moon returns once again to the weird and wonderful writings of Clark Ashton Smith, and presents a fantastic tale from the far future, a legend from the exotic land of Zothique, the last continent on a dying Earth basking under a dwindling red sun.


DIRECT DOWNLOAD -  The Empire of the Necromancers

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Happy Birthday to Clark Ashton Smith

On January 13th 1893, legendary weird fiction author Clark Ashton Smith was born. Smith was remarkable man - a poet, artist and sculptor as well as a writer of short fiction and counted fellow legends HP Lovecraft and Robert E Howard among his close friends.

And to celebrate Mr Smith's birthday, here are two podcast about the man and his works -

HYPNOBOBS 107 - An Introduction to Clark Ashton Smith

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Leg of Toad, Eye of Gorgon: An Introduction to Clark Ashton Smith

Considered in his day as one of the top three authors in the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales alongside Robert E Howard and HP Lovecraft, his canon hasn't attracted quite the same standing as his two good friends. However in this episode Mr Moon attempts to rectify this with an introduction to his works and readings of two of his tales. First we encounter the horrors of medieval witchery in rural France in the darkly erotic Mother of Toads, originally censored but presented here in its full uncut glory. And then we voyage back into the age of myth for drinks with Medusa in the comic fable Symposium of the Gorgon.

HYPNOBOBS 108 - The Song of the Necromancer

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - The Song of the Necromancer

In which we take a fantastical voyage through an ocean of sound and music to explore a selection of the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith.

For more about Clark Ashton Smith, do visit the fabulous www.eldritchdark.com

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THE OWLS by Charles Baudelaire

Mr Jim Moon reads a poem by Charles P. Baudelaire for SFFaudio. These weird verses appeared in Weird Tales in 1914 and was translated into English by none other than Clark Ashton Smith under the pseudonym - Timeus Gaylord!

The Owls at SFFaudio

HYPNOBOBS 108 - The Song of the Necromancer

Due to forces beyond even his control, this week sees Mr Jim Moon hurriedly cobbling together an episode. The result is a shorter but somewhat different edition of Hypnobobs, in which we take a fantastical voyage through an ocean of sound and music to explore a selection of the poetry of Clark Ashton Smith.

For more about Clark Ashton Smith, do visit the fabulous www.eldritchdark.com

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - The Song of the Necromancer

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THE HILL-TOP by Clark Ashton Smith

The Hill-Top a poem by Clark Ashton Smith, read by Mr Jim Moon. First published in Selected Poems (1971).

listen to ‘The Hill-Top’ on Audioboo

The Hill-Top
by Clark Ashton Smith

Alone upon my hill-top,
After the ravelled rains,
I see the cloudy mountains,
I see the misty plains.

Fair is my hill, and rugged,
Where silken grasses grow,
And the drifted clouds go by me
More soft than woven snow.

The pale fantastic lichens
Make patterns on the stone,
And the oaks are old and dwarfèd
With golden mosses grown.

Beneath the ancient boulders
There dwells the shadowy fern;
And here the twisted pine-trees
To shapes of beauty turn.

I wander through the seasons
With thoughts of love and grief
That fall with the flowers of springtime
Or blow with the autumn leaf.

Between the plains and mountains,
Between the clouds and grass,
I find the dreams that linger,
And the fairer dreams that pass.


Cover art Moonlight Over Boulder Ridge by Clark Ashton Smith
Music 'Hypnogoria in F' by Mr Simon Rothwell

THE MESSENGERS by Clark Ashton Smith

The Messengers a poem by Clark Ashton Smith, read by Mr Jim Moon. Written on 21st May 1911 but first appeared in The Shadow of the Unattained: The Letters of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith (2005)

listen to ‘The Messengers’ on Audioboo

The Messengers
by Clark Ashton Smith

Catching a little wind’s unrest,
       The dandelion-crests dissolve,
       Where swooping wings of air involve
And lift them to a scattered quest.

Snared in the tangled zephyr-coil,
       They try the day to hidden ends—
       The messengers that Beauty sends
With words of waking to the soil.

THE CASTLE OF DREAMS by Clark Ashton Smith

The Castle of Dreams a poem by Clark Ashton Smith, read by Mr Jim Moon. First published in The Potion of Dreams - The Fugitive Poems of Clark Ashton Smith (1975).

listen to ‘The Castle of Dreams’ on Audioboo

The Castle of Dreams
by Clark Ashton Smith

It lies beyond the farthest sea,
This castle where onto I flee
When life and time hang wearily.
Yet though so far, 'tis strangely nigh:
Within the breathing of a sigh
One gains the walls secure and high
Of the Castle of Dreams.

Divinely beautiful and great,
Of pearl each dome and tower, and gate,
It stands, a hold of kingly state.
There gyving Time and Space are not,
And cares of Life are all forgot.
No breath of restless change is brought
To the Castle of Dreams.

I walk each wondrous court and hall,
Their varied treasures mine at call,
For there I am the lord af all.
If gold and gems of land and sea,
And broad estates were offered me,
I would not take them for the key
Of the Castle of Dreams.

TWILIGHT ON THE SNOW by Clark Ashton Smith

Twilight on the Snow, a poem by Clark Ashton Smith read by Mr Jim Moon. First published in the collection Ebony and Crystal (1922)

listen to ‘Twilight on the Snow’ on Audioboo

Twilight on the Snow
by Clark Ashton Smith

Before the hill's high altar bowed,
The trees are Druids, weird and white,
Facing the vision of the light
With ancient lips to silence vowed.

No certain sound the woods aver,
Nor motion save of formless wings—
Filled with phantasmal flutterings,
With thronging gloom and shadow-stir.

Unseen, unheard, amid the dell
Lie all the winds that mantic trees
Have lulled with crystal warlockries
And bound about with Merlin-spell.


Photograph by Mr Jim Moon

THE SONG OF THE NECROMANCER by Clark Ashton Smith

The Song of the Necromancer, a poem by Clark Ashton Smith first published in Weird Tales V29 #2 (1937) and later in the Arkham House collection Selected Poems (1971) read by Mr Jim Moon.

listen to ‘The Song of the Necromancer’ on Audioboo

The Song of the Necromancer
by Clark Ashton Smith

I will repeat a subtle rune—
And thronging suns of Otherwhere
Shall blaze upon the blinded air,
And spectres terrible and fair
Shall wake the riven world at noon.

The star that was mine empery
In dust upon unwinnowed skies:
But primal dreams have made me wise,
And soon the shattered years shall rise
To my remembered sorcery.

To mantic mutterings, brief and low,
My palaces shall lift amain,
My bowers bloom; I will regain
The lips whereon my lips have lain
In rose-red twilights long ago.

Before my murmured exorcism
The world, a wispy wraith, shall flee:
A stranger earth, a weirder sea,
People with shapes of Fäery,
Shall swell upon the waste abysm.

The pantheons of darkened stars
Shall file athwart the crocus dawn;
Goddess and Gorgon, Lar and faun,
Shall tread the amaranthine lawn,
And giants fight their thunderous wars.

Like graven mountains of basalt,
Dark idols of my demons there
Shall tower through bright zones of air,
Fronting the sun with level stare;
And hell shall pave my deepest vault.

Phantom and fiend and sorceror
Shall serve me...till my term shall pass,
And I become no more, alas,
Than a frail shadow on the glass
Before some latter conjurer.

Cover art - Necromancer by AnaNevermajndSliver

THE NEREID by Clark Aston Smith

The Nereid, a poem by Clark Ashton Smith first published in the collection Ebony & Crystal (1922) read by Mr Jim Moon.

listen to ‘The Nereid’ on Audioboo

The Nereid

Her face the sinking stars desire:
Unto her place the slow deeps bring
Shadow of errant winds that wing
O'er sterile gulfs of foam and fire.

Her beauty is the light of pearls.
All stars and dreams and sunsets die
To make the fluctuant glooms that lie
Around her; and low noonlight swirls

Down ocean's firmamental deep
To weave for who glimmers there
Elusive visions, vague and fair;
And night is as a dreamless sleep:

She has not known the night's unrest
Nor the white curse of clearer day;
The tremors of the tempest play
Like slow delight about her breast.

The berylline pallors of her face
Illume the kingdom of the drowned.
In her the love that none has found,
The unflowering rapture, folded grace,

Await some lover strayed and lone,
Some god misled, who shall not come
Though the decrescent seas lie dumb
And sunken in their wells of stone.

But nevermore of him, perchance,
Her enigmatic musings are,
Whose purpling tresses float afar
In grottoes of the last romance.

Serene, an immanence of fire
She dwells for ever, ocean-thralled,
Soul of the sea's vast emerald.
Her face the sinking stars desire.

(Cover art is A Sketch for A Mermaid by John William Waterhouse)

HYPNOBOBS 107 - Leg of Toad, Eye of Gorgon: An Introduction to Clark Ashton Smith

This week Mr Jim Moon has unearthed from the Great Library of Dreams the works of a much overlooked but thoroughly fantastic author, Mr Clark Ashton Smith. Considered in his day as one of the top three authors in the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales alongside Robert E Howard and HP Lovecraft, his canon hasn't attracted quite the same standing as his two good friends. However in this episode  Mr Moon attempts to rectify this with an introduction to his works and readings of two of his tales. First we encounter the horrors of medieval witchery in rural France in the darkly erotic Mother of Toads, originally censored but presented here in its full uncut glory. And then we voyage back into the age of myth for drinks with Medusa in the comic fable Symposium of the Gorgon. 

The cover image for this episode is a photograph of a sculpture by Clark Ashton Smith, a piece entitled Young Ghoul. For more about Clark Ashton Smith, do visit the fabulous www.eldritchdark.com

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Leg of Toad, Eye of Gorgon: An Introduction to Clark Ashton Smith

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HYPNOBOBS 69 - Weird Verses

This week in the Great Library of Dreams, Mr Jim Moon samples a selection of weird verses from down the ages. Featuring macabre poems from such luminaries as Edgar Allan Poe, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E Howard and  HP Lovecraft and verses from modern masters such as Brian Lumley and Thomas Ligotti.

DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Weird Verses

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