Smith’s fiction output fell off for several reasons starting in late 1933. However, Wright had a sufficient backlog of stories that this didn’t begin to become apparent until after 1936. Coupled with the deaths of Robert E. Howard in 1936 and H. P. Lovecraft in 1937, this was a blow which lead to Wright frantically trying to get stories from one of his few remaining stars. Smith insisted that Wright first purchase stories that he had previously rejected, which brought about the appearance in Weird Tales of several stories from The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies, including the title story. Ironically, when it appeared in the February 1939 in a slightly pruned version, “The Double Shadow” was voted the most popular story in that issue by the readers. Smith used tear sheets from that issue for OST, and he planned to include the story in Far from Time. We are using the text from a copy of The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies that features Smith’s handwritten corrections of typographical errors.

1. HPL, letter to DAW, March 26, 1932 (Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei, Ed. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz [San Francisco: Night Shade Books, 2002], p. 304).

2. CAS, letter to DAW, April 6, 1932 (ms, MHS).

3. CAS, letter to DAW, April 14, 1932 (ms, MHS).

4. SS 174.

5. CAS, letter to AWD, April 5, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

6. Harry Bates, letter to CAS, June 11, 1932 (ms, JHL).

7. Quoted in CAS, letter to AWD, September 28, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

8. CAS, letter to AWD, October 16, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

9. CAS, letter to AWD, November 15, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

The Plutonian Drug

Smith wrote August Derleth in February 1932 that “I’ve begun a short pseudo-scientific tale, dealing with a drug that changed a man’s perception of time into a sort of space-perception. He saw himself as a continuous body—a sort of infinite frieze—stretching both into the past and future.” He added that he found the writing of the story “hellishly hard to do.”¹ He put the story aside for a month, completing it on April 5, 1932.

Although he had submitted stories to a wide variety of publications, CAS had so far managed to sell his stories to just three magazines with any degree of regularity. One pulp that he had yet to “crack” was the oldest of the “scientifiction” magazines, Amazing Stories. By late 1931 he made just about given up, telling Derleth that “The same editorial crew is still in force, and I understand there will be no change in policy. They seem to have a fixed prejudice against my stuff as not being sufficiently scientific”.² With “The Plutonian Drug” CAS thought that he had managed to inject enough science that it might meet with success, so he submitted “The Plutonian Drug” to its editor, T. O’Conor Sloane (1851-1940).³ As was his practice, Sloane held on to the manuscript for several months before publishing it in the September 1934 issue of Amazing Stories. Smith received only ½ cent a word for the story,⁴ less than either Weird Tales (one cent) or Wonder Stories (¾ cent), and far less than the two cents paid by the Clayton Strange Tales. CAS collected it in LW. It also formed part of the proposed contents for Far from Time.

In 1951 August Derleth asked Smith to select a favorite story for an anthology. He chose this story:

“The Plutonian Drug” is, in my opinion, among my best in the genre of science-fiction. For one thing, it is the sort of tale that can hardly become “dated” in spite of changing vogues and varying themes. And it has the advantages of conciseness and brevity.

The field of speculation that it opens is a fascinating one, and hardly to be exhausted. Benjamin Paul Blood (and, no doubt, others) has hinted that our deepest perceptions of reality may come to us beneath the influence of drugs: a proposition equally impossible to prove or disprove.

Quien Sabe?⁵

1. CAS, letter to AWD, February 24, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

2. CAS, letter to AWD, October 15, 1931 (ms, SHSW).

3. CAS, letter to HPL, [c. early April 1932] (SL 175).

4. CAS, letter to AWD, October 27, 1932 (ms, SHSW).

5. PD 74.

The Supernumerary Corpse

The concept of “The Supernumerary Corpse” occurred to Smith early in his career as a fiction writer, the title appears in a list of possible titles that dates to late 1929. His notes for the story describe it succinctly: “A man dies, and leaves two corpses, in two different places”.¹ CAS first discusses the story in a letter to Lovecraft in mid-November 1930.² It apparently failed to fire his imagination sufficiently as it was not completed until April 10, 1932. CAS submitted it to Wright, wryly noting that it “may be punk enough for him to buy,” and adding that he could not decide if “the carbon is worth circulating”.³ It was published in the November 1932 issue, and remained uncollected until after Smith’s death, in OD. The current text is based upon a carbon of the typescript at JHL.

1. SS 159.

2. CAS, letter to HPL, [c. November 16, 1930] (SL 136).

3. CAS, letter to HPL, [c. early April 1932] (ms, JHL).

The Colossus of Ylourgne

The story germ of this story may be found in Smith’s “Black Book,” which he described in the fanzine the Acolyte as “a notebook containing used and unused plot-germs, notes on occultism and magic, synopses of stories, fragments of verse, fantastic names for people and places, etc., etc.”,¹ under the title “The Colossal Incarnation”:

An immense giant, moulded from innumerable dead bodies by a sorcerer. The tale to be told by one of his assistants, who has helped to collect the bodies, stealing them from graves and charnels. Having read his own horoscope, and knowing that his death is imminent, the sorcerer plans to have his spirit pass into the vast body through which, among other things, he will take revenge on a city that had flouted him. But the body, being composed of the dead, is not sufficiently subject to his control. Its elements long only for sleep and oblivion; and instead of destroying the city, it proceeds to dig itself a colossal grave.

²

Completed on May 1, 1932, Smith described the story as “about the most horrific of my tales dealing with the mythical province of Averoigne”.³ It was accepted by Harry Bates for Strange Tales, but as in the case of “The Double Shadow” and “The Seed from the Sepulcher,” it was returned to Smith after the magazine folded. It was the most popular story in the June 1934 issue of Weird Tales and was included in both GL and RA.

The next year Smith was approached by Universal Pictures regarding whether he had any stories that might be suitable for adaptation as screenplays.⁴ Smith offered “The Colossus of Ylourgne” and “The Dark Eidolon.” Apparently the studio expressed interest in these properties, since Smith asked Wright to release the motion-picture rights, which he did on October 11, 1935,⁵ but the Laemmele family lost control the next year, and the new management may not have cared for such unconventionally imaginative material.

1.“Excerpts from the Black Book,” The Acolyte (Spring 1944), reprinted in BB 77.

2. BB item 57.

3. CAS, letter to DAW, May 4, 1932 (ms, MHS).

4. Universal Pictures (Edward Churchill), letter to CAS, August 21, 1935 (ms, JHL).

5. FW, letter to CAS, October 11, 1935 (ms, JHL).

The God of the Asteroid

This story is yet another testament to Gernsback’s proclivity for changing the titles of stories without first consulting the authors. First published in the October 1932 issue of Wonder Stories under the title of “Master of the Asteroid,” and receiving a fine cover illustration by Frank R. Paul, all contemporary references to the story by Smith use the present title, which dates back to a listing of possible story titles he recorded in late 1929 or early 1930.¹ For instance, he refers in a letter to the Lovecraft-revised story “The Man of Stone” by Hazel Heald as “a story in the Oct. Wonder Stories (which featured my ‘God of the Asteroid’) ….”—after he had learned of the title-change to “Master of the Asteroid.”²