A synopsis titled “The God of the Asteroid” was found among Smith’s papers: “A space-ship manned by three terrestrial explorers is wrecked on an asteroid. One of the three survives, and is worshipped as a god by the grotesque inhabitants. He goes stark mad, but lives for years, still revered and tended as a deity”.³ The present story was completed on June 9, 1932. Smith received forty dollars for the story.

Smith refers in the story to Mohammed’s coffin, which was supposed to have been suspended between Heaven and Earth. He had written another story, “Like Mohammed’s Tomb,” that unfortunately has not been located and may not survive.

The first indication that Smith had resigned himself to the name-change was when he allowed the story to be reprinted as “Master of the Asteroid” in August Derleth’s anthology Strange Ports of Call (Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1948). This might have been due to purely commercial considerations, since under the published title it was a well-known and popular story. Sometime in the late 1950s Smith’s wife Carol prepared a new typescript using the title given to the story by WS, and it is under this title that it was collected posthumously in TSS, and later in RA. Surprisingly, in light of the praise lent the tale by Ray Bradbury in his foreword to the unpublished paperback collection Far from Time, Smith did not include this story in that book.

1. SS 182.

2. CAS, letter to AWD, December 24, 1932. (SL 198).

3. SS 155.

APPENDIX TWO: THE FLOWER-DEVIL

(The Poem that “The Demon of the Flower” Was Based Upon)

In a basin of porphyry, at the summit of a pillar of serpentine, the thing has existed from primeval time, in the garden of the kings that rule an equatorial realm of the planet Saturn. With black foliage, fine and intricate as the web of some enormous spider; with petals of livid rose, and purple like the purple of putrefying flesh; and a stem rising like a swart and hairy wrist from a bulb so old, so encrusted with the growth of centuries that it resembles an urn of stone, the monstrous flower holds dominion over all the garden. In this flower, from the years of oldest legend, an evil demon has dwelt—a demon whose name and whose nativity are known to the superior magicians and mysteriarchs of the kingdom, but to none other. Over the half-animate flowers, the ophidian orchids that coil and sting, the bat-like lilies that open their ribbēd petals by night, and fasten with tiny yellow teeth on the bodies of sleeping dragon-flies; the carnivorous cacti that yawn with green lips beneath their beards of poisonous yellow prickles; the plants that palpitate like hearts, the blossoms that pant with a breath of poisonous perfume—over all these, the Flower-Devil is supreme, in its malign immortality, and evil, perverse intelligence—inciting them to strange maleficence, fantastic mischief, even to acts of rebellion against the gardeners, who proceed about their duties with wariness and trepidation, since more than one of them has been bitten, even unto death, by some vicious and venefic flower. In places, the garden has run wild from lack of care on the part of the fearful gardeners, and has become a monstrous tangle of serpentine creepers, and hydra-headed plants, convolved and inter-writhing in lethal hate or venomous love, and horrible as a rout of wrangling vipers and pythons.

And, like his innumerable ancestors before him, the king dares not destroy the Flower, for fear that the devil, driven from its habitation, might seek a new home, and enter into the brain or body of one of the king’s subjects—or even the heart of his fairest and gentlest, and most beloved queen!

APPENDIX THREE:

BIBLIOGRAPHY

“The Holiness of Azédarac.” WT 22, 3 (November 1933): 594-607. In LW, RA.

“The Maker of Gargoyles.” WT 20, 2 (August 1932): 198-207. In TSS.

“Beyond the Singing Flame.” WS 3, 6 (November 1931): 752-761. Tales of Wonder no. 10 (Spring 1940): 6-31 (combined with “The City of the Singing Flame”). Startling Stories 11, 1 (Summer 1944): 90-99. In OST (combined with “The City of the Singing Flame”). Reprinted (combined with “The City of the Singing Flame”) in The Other Side of the Moon. Edited by August Derleth (NY: Pellegrini and Cudahy, 1949). Reprinted in From Off This World. Edited by Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend (NY: Merlin Press, 1949).

“Seedling of Mars.” WS Quarterly 3, 1 (Fall 1931): 110-125, 136 (as “The Planet Entity”). In TSS.

“The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis.” WT 19, 5 (May 1932): 599-610. In OST, RA. Reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader no. 1. Edited by Donald A. Wollheim (NY: Avon, 1947).

“The Eternal World .” WS 3, 10 (March 1932): 1130-1137. In GL.

“The Demon of the Flower.” Astounding Stories 12, 4 (December 1933): 131-138. In LW.

“The Nameless Offspring.” ST 2, 2 (June 1932): 264-276. Strange Tales of the Mysterious and Supernatural Second Selection [Edited by Walter H. Gillings] (London: Utopian Publications [1946]): 16-27. In AY.

“A Vintage from Atlantis.” Weird Tales 22, 3 (September 1933): 394-399. In AY.

“The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan.” WT 19, 6 (June 1932): 835-840. In OST, RA. Reprinted in And the Darkness Falls. Edited by Boris Karloff (Cleveland: World, 1946).

“The Invisible City.” WS 4, 1 (June 1932): 6-13, 86. Tales of Wonder no. 9 (Winter 1939): 50-63. Bibliothek der Unterhaltung und des Wissens, Band IX (Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1933): 5-16 (as “Die unsichtbare Stadt”). In OD.

“The Immortals of Mercury.” Science Fiction Series no. 16 (NY: Stellar Publishing Corp., 1932). In TSS.

“The Empire of the Necromancers.” WT 20, 3 (September 1932): 338-344. In LW, RA. Reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader no. 7. Edited by Donald A. Wollheim (NY: Avon, 1947).

“The Seed from the Sepulcher.” WT 22, 4 (October 1933): 497-505. In TSS. Reprinted in Tales of the Undead. Edited by Elinore Blaisdell (NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1947).

“The Second Interment.” ST 3, 1 (January 1933): 8-16. In OST.

“Ubbo-Sathla.” WT 22, 1 (July 1933): 112-116. In OST. Reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader no. 15. Edited by Donald A. Wollheim (NY: Avon, 1951).

“The Double Shadow.” Original version: in The Double Shadow and Other Fantasies (Auburn Journal Press, 1933). Revised version: in WT 33, 2 (February 1039): 47-55. In OST. Reprinted in The Sleeping and the Dead: Thirty Uncanny Tales. Edited by August Derleth (NY: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1947; Toronto: George J. McLeod Ltd., 1947).

“The Plutonian Drug.” Amazing Stories 9, 5 (September 1934): 41-48. In LW. Reprinted in The Outer Reaches. Favorite Science Fiction Tales Chosen By Their Authors. Edited by August Derleth (NY: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1951; NY: Berkley, 1951).

“The Supernumerary Corpse.” WT 20, 5 (November 1932): 693-698. In OD.

“The God of the Asteroid” (as “The Master of the Asteroid”). WS 4, 5 (October 1932): 435-439, 469. Tales of Wonder no. 11 (Summer 1940): 46-55. Bibliothek der Unterhaltung und des Wissens, Band V (Stuttgart: Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1933): 5-22 (as “Die Geheimnis des Asteroiden”). In AY, RA. Reprinted in Strange Ports of Call. Edited by August Derleth (NY: Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1948; Toronto: George J. McLeod, 1948; NY: Berkley, 1948, 1958)