This is a continent of Earth with a sun "which was now a coal-red decadent star, grown old beyond chronicle, beyond legend" (Morthylla, Zothique, Ballantine, ISBN 019385095, c.1970, p.157), "dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood . . . [where] the older gods had returned to man" (The Dark Eidolon, p.128), ruling over "the black weariness of a dying race, grown hopeless of all but oblivion" (The Empire of The Necromancers, p. 44). It is a narrowly-focused, feudal society, amoral in its blatant pursuit of power and gratification of the more un-wholesome desires. Science has long been asphyxiated under the exotic perfume of sorcery, but, more importantly, there's the stink that everything worthwhile has already been done and forgotten, and all that is left is the forbidden yet intoxicating smell of blood, feces, sex, and death. Not surprisingly, it is the cycle closest to modern sensibilities where everything is objectified, even sharing the same genre fascination with once-exuberant mortals gleefully transformed into vacuous, drug-like stumbling zombies.

But do not expect to find any Xena-like warriors with feminist attitudes. Here, women are chattel, odalisque decorations, and rape dolls for demons. Actual loving relationships signal plot device trickery to lure a naïve hero to his doom, as in Necromancy in Naat. Smith delights in scenes of lust—often mixing the charnel and the carnal—with wily flourishings of his characteristic grandiose word choices. In The Black Abbot of Puthuum, the heroine fends off "the enormously swollen shape . . . loom[ing] monstrously erect" (p.187). The barbaric heroes have previously purchased her for a sweat spot on the pillows of their kings' harem, and, after dispatching the Negroid and false-abbot ghoul who "dwind[les] in size . . . with a hideous wrinkling" (p.189), change their minds about her fate and flip a coin to see who takes possession. But, while "pouting prettily" (p.190), she demands the right to choose, thus showing women's nature to beguile, as does Beldith in Morthylla, when she poses as a legendary lamia to lure Valzain, a melancholy student poet grown weary of the court debaucheries that "swell the flaccid pulses" (p.157), where "tedium lurks at the middle of all kisses" (p.158). Although she makes a perfect coitus mate, Valzain is so jaded that only a post-corpse woman will do. There's more coffin congress in The Death of Ilalotha, where again, an amorous lover spurns the living "poppy-crimson lips" (p.72) for "the kisses of the worm" (p.70), succubus' spells notwithstanding. But the cruelest of all is Ilvaa in The Isle of the Torturers, when she uses her come-on charms as much as her promise for escape to keep King Fulbra with a "bold and hopeful heart . . . to endure the ordeals of that day" (p.230), so his tormentors can enjoy his pain and suffering as long as possible. Smith's use of women is clear: "in all love, there is more or less deception" (Morthylla, p.165).

The positionings of females in Smith's writing can be excused considering the era and the publications that bought his words. Weird Tales and other pulps demanded action and atmosphere, and CAS gave them elemental wizards, demons, and witches in magical transformations far from the Depression of the times. Characterization—whether male or female, alien or demon—just mostly got in the way.

Hyperborea

Xiccarph

Poseidonis

Averoigne

Selected Stories

© copyright 02/19/2006 by Larry Crawford