by
Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was one of the three major fantasists to emerge in the early days of Weird Tales (the others being, of course, H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard). So much has been written about all of them over the years that it’s hard to find much new to say. So let me talk instead about Smith’s influence on me.
Weird TalesMy father, who is an archaeologist specializing in Minoan Greece, used to bring our family to Crete almost every summer while he worked. It was spectacularly boring for a preteen boy like me, and I escaped through books I brought with me (mostly mysteries) or purchased in the local news shops, which catered to European tourists and stocked books and comics in French, German, and English (these last imported from England, not the United States). Whe
