--- product_id: 23948926 title: "The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: The Lovecraftian Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith (Chaosium Fiction) (Call of Cthulhu Fiction)" price: "$11.24" currency: USD in_stock: false reviews_count: 9 url: https://www.desertcart.us/products/23948926-the-klarkash-ton-cycle-the-lovecraftian-fiction-of-clark-ashton store_origin: US region: United States of America --- # The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: The Lovecraftian Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith (Chaosium Fiction) (Call of Cthulhu Fiction) **Price:** $11.24 **Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: The Lovecraftian Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith (Chaosium Fiction) (Call of Cthulhu Fiction) - **How much does it cost?** $11.24 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Currently out of stock - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.us](https://www.desertcart.us/products/23948926-the-klarkash-ton-cycle-the-lovecraftian-fiction-of-clark-ashton) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Here is a collection of Clark Aston Smith's Cthulhu Mythos fiction, collected and arranged by Robert M. Price, with commentary for each of the stories. Included here are "The Ghoul", "A Rendering from the Arabic", "Ubbo-Sathla", "The Werewolf of Averoigne", and others. Review: The ORIGINAL versions - First off, there are typos. I was forewarned, so they didn't bother me. Kinda funny to spot them, actually. The end notes are pretty fascinating. Many of the included stories were modified and re-titled when they were originally published. This compilation has the author's original versions and titles. Some of the stories weren't Cthulhu mythos. That's the only negative. They were well written, so at least enjoyable. Review: Ghoulfriend in a Coma - The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: Clark Ashton Smith's Cthulhu Mythos Fiction: edited and with notes by Robert M. Price (Collected 2008): Chaosium reprints the Cthulhu Mythos-related short stories of Clark Ashton Smith in three volumes, with this being the one containing stories that aren't set in the distant past when the Book of Eibon was being composed nor those Smith stories that focus on his quasi-tricksterish god Tsathoggua. Despite the availability of Smith's work in multiple editions, this text is valuable because it reprints several variant versions of Smith's stories that aren't available that easily, along with a long story fragment -- "The Infernal Star" -- that is otherwise out of print. 'Klarkash-Ton' was the nickname H.P. Lovecraft gave Smith in their correspondence in the 1930's. The stories range from straightforward horror to science fiction to science-fiction horror, while Smith's prose style ranges from the relatively plain to the poetically baroque, almost arcane diction that one really either loves or hates. I love it, in part because there's clearly a sense of humour at work behind the occasionally loopy word choices. One caveat: the stories have been proofread and copy-edited with mind-boggling ineptitude. You may want to grab a pen and correct all the errors for the next person who reads the collection. Think of it as a fun game! "The Ghoul" (1934): Smith's ghoul isn't as idiosyncratic as Lovecraft's ghouls, though it sure loves to eat dead people. "A Rendering from the Arabic" (Variant of "The Return of the Sorcerer" [1931]): Slightly different version of the oft-reprinted "The Return of the Sorcerer." Lovecraftian references abound in a story about the walking, shuffling dead. "The Hunters from Beyond" (1932): One of those Smith stories that plays with his own multi-talented career as a painter and sculptor as well as a writer of prose and poetry. It does seem a bit derivative of both HPL's "Pickman's Model" and Frank Belknap Long's "The Hounds of Tindalos." "The Vaults of Abomi" (Variant of "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" [1932/1989]): A few hundred words flesh out the beginning of one of Smith's two or three finest works of science-fictional horror, set on his version of Mars and possessed of imagery and situations that anticipate such later horrors as Alien, The Thing, and The Puppet Masters. "The Nameless Offspring" (1932): Well, we get the offstage rape of a woman in a coma by a ghoul, followed by the resultant offspring. One of Smith's most obliquely disturbing works. "Ubbo-Sathla (1933)": Much-reprinted reincarnational horror story. "The Werewolf of Averoigne" (Variant of "The Beast of Averoigne") [1931/1984]): The variant is superior to the standard version, preserving as it does Smith's original multi-viewpoint epistolary format. "The Eidolon of the Blind" (Variant of "The Dweller in the Gulf" [1933]): Another creepy science-fiction horror story set on Smith's version of Mars, which makes most other early 20th-century writers' versions of Mars seem like a goddam Disneyworld. "Vulthoom" (1935): Another Mars story, much lighter on horror and, as Price comments in the notes, not that different from many other contemporary interplanetary stories involving humans and decadent, Orientalist civilizations. "The Treader of the Dust" (1935): Excellent, concise horror story with a strikingly creepy evil god or demigod or whatever you want to call it. "The Infernal Star" (Fragment) (1935/1989): Fascinating, long fragment of what was to be a novella-length dark fantasy involving reincarnation, atomic 'memory,' and a Sun made, basically, of Evil. In all: highly recommended, though I do wish for an edition with better copy editing. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #4,155,736 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #98,017 in Horror Literature & Fiction | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 43 Reviews | ## Images ![The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: The Lovecraftian Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith (Chaosium Fiction) (Call of Cthulhu Fiction) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71RxEstX4BL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The ORIGINAL versions *by A***B on November 20, 2020* First off, there are typos. I was forewarned, so they didn't bother me. Kinda funny to spot them, actually. The end notes are pretty fascinating. Many of the included stories were modified and re-titled when they were originally published. This compilation has the author's original versions and titles. Some of the stories weren't Cthulhu mythos. That's the only negative. They were well written, so at least enjoyable. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Ghoulfriend in a Coma *by J***R on November 12, 2015* The Klarkash-Ton Cycle: Clark Ashton Smith's Cthulhu Mythos Fiction: edited and with notes by Robert M. Price (Collected 2008): Chaosium reprints the Cthulhu Mythos-related short stories of Clark Ashton Smith in three volumes, with this being the one containing stories that aren't set in the distant past when the Book of Eibon was being composed nor those Smith stories that focus on his quasi-tricksterish god Tsathoggua. Despite the availability of Smith's work in multiple editions, this text is valuable because it reprints several variant versions of Smith's stories that aren't available that easily, along with a long story fragment -- "The Infernal Star" -- that is otherwise out of print. 'Klarkash-Ton' was the nickname H.P. Lovecraft gave Smith in their correspondence in the 1930's. The stories range from straightforward horror to science fiction to science-fiction horror, while Smith's prose style ranges from the relatively plain to the poetically baroque, almost arcane diction that one really either loves or hates. I love it, in part because there's clearly a sense of humour at work behind the occasionally loopy word choices. One caveat: the stories have been proofread and copy-edited with mind-boggling ineptitude. You may want to grab a pen and correct all the errors for the next person who reads the collection. Think of it as a fun game! "The Ghoul" (1934): Smith's ghoul isn't as idiosyncratic as Lovecraft's ghouls, though it sure loves to eat dead people. "A Rendering from the Arabic" (Variant of "The Return of the Sorcerer" [1931]): Slightly different version of the oft-reprinted "The Return of the Sorcerer." Lovecraftian references abound in a story about the walking, shuffling dead. "The Hunters from Beyond" (1932): One of those Smith stories that plays with his own multi-talented career as a painter and sculptor as well as a writer of prose and poetry. It does seem a bit derivative of both HPL's "Pickman's Model" and Frank Belknap Long's "The Hounds of Tindalos." "The Vaults of Abomi" (Variant of "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" [1932/1989]): A few hundred words flesh out the beginning of one of Smith's two or three finest works of science-fictional horror, set on his version of Mars and possessed of imagery and situations that anticipate such later horrors as Alien, The Thing, and The Puppet Masters. "The Nameless Offspring" (1932): Well, we get the offstage rape of a woman in a coma by a ghoul, followed by the resultant offspring. One of Smith's most obliquely disturbing works. "Ubbo-Sathla (1933)": Much-reprinted reincarnational horror story. "The Werewolf of Averoigne" (Variant of "The Beast of Averoigne") [1931/1984]): The variant is superior to the standard version, preserving as it does Smith's original multi-viewpoint epistolary format. "The Eidolon of the Blind" (Variant of "The Dweller in the Gulf" [1933]): Another creepy science-fiction horror story set on Smith's version of Mars, which makes most other early 20th-century writers' versions of Mars seem like a goddam Disneyworld. "Vulthoom" (1935): Another Mars story, much lighter on horror and, as Price comments in the notes, not that different from many other contemporary interplanetary stories involving humans and decadent, Orientalist civilizations. "The Treader of the Dust" (1935): Excellent, concise horror story with a strikingly creepy evil god or demigod or whatever you want to call it. "The Infernal Star" (Fragment) (1935/1989): Fascinating, long fragment of what was to be a novella-length dark fantasy involving reincarnation, atomic 'memory,' and a Sun made, basically, of Evil. In all: highly recommended, though I do wish for an edition with better copy editing. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Flawed But Great Sampling of Clark Ashton Smith's Cthulhu Mythos Stories *by A***N on September 17, 2020* As someone who had only read a handful of Clark Ashton Smith's contributions to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, I was pretty excited to pick up this book. Unfortunately there were some unexpected problems with this collection. Don't get me wrong, this collection features some pretty great stories by Smith, such as "The Hunters from Beyond". It also includes another story of Smith's I had wanted to read for a while, "The Return of the Sorcerer". Of course in this collection Return of the Sorcerer is presented here with the alternate title, "A Rendering from the Arabic". The reason for the alternate title is because the story is presented with an alternate ending. According to the story's intro (seen at the back of the book), the ending in this version is from Smith's surviving first draft of the story. The reason for the use of the story's alternate title (apparently a working title Smith had used originally) was to avoid bibliographic confusion according to the collection's editor, Robert M. Price. And this is one of the two big flaws with this collection. About half of the stories in this collection are the unrevised versions of Smith's stories rather than the versions which were originally published. In some cases this is both a good and a bad thing. For instance with the story, "The Eidolon of the Blind", the editor of Weird Tales apparently found the story so grotesque he refused to publish it at all (this is all according to the story's intro). Smith eventually tried selling the tale to a publication called Wonder Stories under the title "The Dweller in the Gulf", but the editor of that publication demanded certain revisions to it be made. It seems even after Smith conceded to these demands and made the changes the editor wanted, Wonder Stories published it under the title "The Dweller in Martian Depths" and had someone from the secretarial staff make further changes to the story. So in the case of "Eidolon of the Blind", it's a real treat for us readers to have it presented in this collection in its original form, because I doubt that the butchered published version was really any good from the sound of it. The original version would be gruesome by even today's standards, and I can kind of see why a publisher of a magazine that operated during the early 1900s wouldn't want to touch it. Even so, there are a few of these "director's cut" versions of Smith's stories that shouldn't have been bothered with at all. The best example from this collection is the director's cut of the story, "The Beast of Averoigne", which is presented in this collection under the first draft title "The Werewolf of Averoigne". This version is presented with a section that had been cut entirely from the published version, and it was good it had been cut because it's kind of a spoiler for the "beast's" identity. Of course the overall problem with using these director's cut versions of Smith stories is that it makes it a bad collection for someone like myself who hadn't read much of Smith's work in the first place. In short, this is probably not the best book to use for introducing a friend to the work of Clark Ashton Smith. The other big problem with this collection is that it's riddled with typos! I found at least two or three typos in almost every story in this book. I don't know if the proofreader Chaosium Inc. was using was nearsighted or just being lazy. These typos don't make the book impossible to read, but they are very annoying. To sum it up, this book is a decent collection, but only for someone who's well versed in the works of Clark Ashton Smith and is enough of a fan to want to read the original versions of his work...and doesn't mind too many typos. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.us/products/23948926-the-klarkash-ton-cycle-the-lovecraftian-fiction-of-clark-ashton](https://www.desertcart.us/products/23948926-the-klarkash-ton-cycle-the-lovecraftian-fiction-of-clark-ashton) --- *Product available on Desertcart United States of America* *Store origin: US* *Last updated: 2026-07-20*