Xiccarph. An alien world with three suns, four moons, and two CAS stories. Personally, I don't consider two stories a cycle. That's like saying Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday was Steinbeck's "Monterey Wharf Cycle". I'd prefer to combine all of Smith's off-world tales and call it the "Un-Terra Buncha Differ'nt 'Hoods an' Time Cycle". Or, how about the "Let's Pass Cycle", because there's not much here to pull over for, anyway.

Certainly not for an overnighter in The Maze of Maal Dweb. Perilous but predictable, it seems to exist in a mirrorworld of Greek Mythology where the omnipotent sorcerer Maal Dweb acts like Pygmilyion's evil twin with his "caprice to eternalize the frail beauty of women" (Xiccarph, Ballantine, ISBN 345025016125, c.1972, p.35) by turning flesh to stone. The maze is a torture ground for even more important human frailties like love and loyalty, as this lizard-brained warlock kidnaps young beauties knowing their lovers will come after them, only to be transformed into beasts "'so that their outer semblance should conform strictly to their inner nature"' (Maal Dweb's own words, p.35). In the second Xiccarph story, The Flower-Women, Dweeb zooms off to another world under his cruel tyranny for no other reason than his "ennui has become intolerable" (p.37). Easily dispatching a group of pterodactyl-like wizards who exhibit "the cold and evilly cryptic nature of reptiles" (p.45), he aborts the rooting up of his girlfriends, the Siren-like, singing sisterhood of half-flower half-women of the title. Did I mention these flowergirls are vampires ? But Dweeb doesn't devolve the scaly depredators for their sake; it's merely to test if he's still got the stones.

Maal Dweb is Smith's most repugnant and sociopathic protagonist. Although there are parallels to Greek Myths, Dweeb's world is far more intolerant, sadistic, amoral, and without compassion or emotion. It mocks human vulnerabilities and lauds its callousness. If Smith set out to create a non-human or inhuman world, he succeeded. I like to think that is also why he gave up the series.

Now the three Aihai stories have different problems. First of all, there's no reason to set them on Mars. These adventures bedrock in horror, not science fiction or fantasy, and horror stories are usually more unsettling when contrasted off familiar and comfortable surroundings, like Earth. Secondly, they're derivative and reek of conformity to publisher's standards. The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis reads like a typical run-screaming Lovecraft tale. Vulthoom suffers from its mechanical orientation, as CAS is a much better wordsmith with organic perversions. Closing my eyes, I see Hieronymus Bosch, not Max Ernst. The Dweller in the Gulf, the best of the three, has enough atmospheric creepiness and suspense surrounding the crepuscular and malignant giant turtle with "a Power that exhaled a miasmal slumber" (p.113), but, reading it, I just got, well, sleepy.

Zothique

Hyperborea

Poseidonis

Averoigne

Selected Stories

© copyright 02/19/2006 by Larry Crawford