Conjure Wife (1943) and Our Lady of Darkness (1977) by Fritz Leiber: Under Her Black Wings

Two good novels from classic fantasy writer Fritz Leiber: Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness. The former is a tale of witchcraft set at a New England college university, while the latter explores the occult theory of Thibaud de Castries known as "megapolisomancy" (invented solely by Leiber himself in a Lovecraft-inspired bit of mythmaking) and posits the city of San Francisco itself as a haunted - and haunting - entity. It also weaves authors like Jack London and Clark Ashton Smith into its storyline, as well as the pulp fiction background of Leiber himself, and won the 1978 World Fantasy Award. Both novels feature modern men, thoughtful and literate, modern men of skepticism and rationality, who find that the dark superstitions of the past have a horrifying way of wending their way into the light of the contemporary world. Count me in!

I don't think either of these covers captures the feel of the books themselves: Conjure Wife is another example of an older book republished during the height of the Gothic romance fad (this edition is from '68, art by Jeff Jones). Its current edition has a pretty foxy Goth chick on its cover, reminiscent of the loverly Eva Green. Berkley's Our Lady of Darkness has an odd psychedelic tinge to it, dated even by 1977 standards; fortunately Amazon has it listed as being back in print this fall.

...sometimes it wasn't clear whether it was a real woman, or a goddess, or some sort of metaphorical entity that de Castries was talking about. "She is all merciless night animal," he would say... "She knows the cities' secrets and their secret weaknesses, their ponderous rhythms and dark songs. And she herself is secret as their shadows. She is my Queen of Night, Our Lady of Darkness."

The Weird Tales of Clark Ashton Smith: Nightmares Forever Calling Me

Unless you are diehard fan of horror or dark fantasy stories of the early 20th century, the name Clark Ashton Smith probably means little or nothing to you. But for those of us who are such fans, his name conjures up worlds of exotic darkness, of the purplest prose describing the strangest entities of eons past. Along with Lovecraft and Conan creator Robert E. Howard, Smith ruled those long-ago days of the 1930s and Weird Tales magazine. But unlike the other two, whose works have long been readily available, Smith sank, along with most of their Weird Tales brethren, into obscurity. Despite vocal champions like Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, and Lovecraft himself, Smith is a household name only to those folks, like myself, whose homes suffer under a surfeit of paperback horror fiction. And not even always then.

Fortunately in recent years much of his work has come back into print thanks to, you guessed it, the rise of the internet. A Google search turns up plenty on him. But, as always here at Too Much Horror Fiction, what is the fun of simply ordering a $20 book off Amazon? The real collecting fun is had scouring bookstores and library sales and even eBay to find these gloriously-covered and colored paperbacks which smell of dust and bear the worn creases of hours of much-loved reading. I've luckily found all of these paperback editions over the years; they're treasured parts of my collection, you can be sure. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy editions from the early 1970s are particularly awesome.

For me, Smith conjures up memories of hours lost in musty crooked bookstores, trying to find any of his elusive paperbacks published throughout the 1970s by Ballantine. In the 1930s and '40s much of his output was published in small hardcover editions by Arkham House and these are now collectors' items. For those not so inclined at collecting there is The Eldritch Dark site, devoted to everything Klarkash-Ton (as Lovecraft dubbed him). You'll miss out on some distinctive cover art, replete with demonic sorcerers, underground caverns, and bizarre nightlife, however.

A poet and a sculptor in addition to being an author, Smith published dozens of stories throughout the 1930s with delightfully odd and evocative titles like "The Charnel God," "The Dark Eidolon," "The Beast of Averoigne," "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan," "The Desolation of Soom" and "The Isle of the Torturers." I mean, awesome! Smith invented prehistoric, arctic lands like Hyperborea, or Averoigne, or Zothique, peopled with primitives and shamans and wizards and priests and all manner of horrific creatures. With a prose style charmingly antiquated, a vocabulary that would put any logophile to shame, and an imagination that knew the darkness of a hundred ancient worlds, Smith's stories embrace myth, magic, and horror with equal fervor. Any true horror fan should avail themselves of his malevolent and decadent visions at once.

Original Arkham House hardcovers, 1942 and 1944; latter features CAS's sculptures

As all men know, the advent of the Beast was coeval with the coming of that red comet which rose behind the Dragon in the early summer of 1369. Like Satan's rutilant hair, trailing on the wind of Gehenna as he hastens worldward, the comet streamed nightly above Avergoigne, bringing the fear of bale and pestilence in its train. And soon the rumor of a strange evil, a foulness unheard of in any legend, passed among the people...