Smith visions this dunker as "the last isle of foundering Atlantis" ("A Voyage to Sfanomoe", Poseidonis, Ballantine, SBN 345033531125, c.1973, p.50). Thematically, there's not much concurrence to the five tales—seven, if you broaden this cycle's parameters to include Mu and Lemuria as "authenticated" Lost Continents of Earth—other than CAS's usual fixation with the three stages of living: dying, dead, and living dead.

A promising yet sadly-incomplete "overlord of all kings and sorcerers" (The Death of Malygris, p.19) is outlined in two of the tales. The Last Incantation is a short ditty where, like Maal Dweb, the aging mage wants to sooth his ennui with a little bone play involving young girls. Malygris raises his long-dead fiancé from the virgin days before his "lust of . . . necromantic dominion" (p.13) gripped his soul, but there's no voodoo Viagra to swell his "fervent and guileless heart that loved" (p.17).

Sexual spoofing aside, Malygris absorbs an important lesson as to the costs of power and pride, something Dweeb would never ascertain. In fact, Malygris could play as Obi-Wan to Maal Dweb's Darth Maul (anybody hear an echo? What you say, George?). Both sorcerers have only two tales to their name, and both are undisputed masters over all within their influence. As to whether Malygris possesses any humane and therefore antithetical attributes to Dweeb, Smith leaves us in the dark, for in The Death of Malygris, he is described only by his fellow necromancers who are spiteful and jealous and clearly still afraid of his power, while "he sits defying the worm, still undecayed and incorrupt" (p.21) and apparently quite dead.

Another cautionary tale warning off voracity and pride is The Double Shadow. Avyctes, the sole surviving pupil of Malygris, is not content with just the knowledge from the mages of Mu "whereby the doors of a far-future time could be unlocked" or native fore-fathers "who held speech with the spirits of the sun". He craves "a darker knowledge, a deeper empery . . . [from] the lost serpent-people" (p.37) even further back in yore. He contrives an ingenious plan to resurrect an ancient warlock to travel back even further to retrieve the arcane information. Since no results come forth, Avyctes considers his evoking a failure—until another shadow attaches to his own.

The hauntings of Mu and Lemuria must have freed Smith's imaginary zeal in a special, transmigrative way, as both An Offering to the Moon and The Uncharted Isle are gleefully addled mirages of "the ineffably horrifying sensations of passing beyond [one's] proper self" (p85). But to think these read like drug-induced hallucinations would be a disservice. They're much more healthier.

Zothique

Hyperborea

Xiccarph

Averoigne

Selected Stories

© copyright 02/19/2006 by Larry Crawford