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Congratulations on yet another fine
issue! I don't know how you manage to maintain such high standards for such a
length of time, but you've done it again with this fiction-oriented issue.
Hope you're surviving the wintry
blasts. I keep wondering how HPL would have fared during this shivery season.
--- Robert
Bloch
Los Angeles, CA
I've especially liked your single
author issues (particularly the ones on Tierney and Smith). A Ramsey Campbell
issue might be nice since Scream Press is bringing out his collected Mythos
stories, Cold Print, in March of this year.
--- Alan
Ziebarth
Chicago, IL
[A Campbell issue is in the works! ---
Ed.]
Long may Crypt of Cthulhu
prosper. It comes as a welcome breath of fresh air after the pomposity and
ponderousness that are nowadays infesting the fantasy field as Lovecraft and
Howard rapidly become academic cottage industries.
--- Roger
G. Knuth
Philadelphia, PA
I very much enjoyed the two Clark
Ashton Smith issues, with the exception of the "posthumous
collaboration" by Lin Carter. I noted some years ago that the first
so-called "collaboration" by CAS and Carter bore the perfect name ---
"The Utmost Abomination". Now it strikes me that two other titles of
Smith's Untold Tales are apt in this case. When attempting to carry on
Smith's exquisite style Carter becomes "A Good Embalmer", and for his
heroic persistence in completing every fragment by Smith, Howard, et al.,
that happens to fall into his path I can only consider Carter the ultimate
"Nemesis of the Unfinished".
Also, a note I contributed to the
twelfth mailing of The Hyperborian League amateur press association for July
1978 answers Will Murray's query in "The Price-Smith Collaborations"
that "Possibly there was a financial arrangement attendant" to E.
Hoffmann Price rewriting two CAS stories:
Looking through CAS-Nyctalops
#7, I noticed again Roy Squires's list of unreprinted Smith MSS. One
mentioned, I realized, is back in print. "The House of the Monoceros"
in E. H. Price's Far Lands Other Days is actually a CAS story reworked
by Price. They did two tales this way, both appearing in Spicy Mystery
Stories under EHP's byline. Price's notes on the other story, "Dawn
of Discord", says he did a "revisory transcription" from a CAS
synopsis and first draft, a "day's work, all told. Half day actual work .
. . rest at odd times." The fee was split 33-77 in Smith's favor.
As I recall, I saw a photocopy of
Price's work-log index card in some files of Donald Sidney-Fryer being held in
Tennessee by Chester K. Wolfe, editor of Planets and Dimensions, and made
a photo copy for myself. As you can see, Price was quite generous in splitting
the payment.
--- Don
Herron
San Francisco, CA
I read each issue of the Crypt
with relish, and I am always interested to see what new and exciting stories or
treatises you'll be publishing next. "I Am Your Shadow" by Clark
Ashton Smith was really an enjoyable piece. CAS is one of my favorite authors
and it always seems I can depend on your mag to give me some fresh material from
the outre. That is, fresh to me anyway, since living out in the boonies of New
Mexico it is hard to come by much literature.
Richard L. Tierney's piece in the Crypt
#24, "Seed of the Star-God" was an
exemplary story. His grasp of history is very strong, and he makes a provocative
case for the strange life of Simon the Magician. The story made me want to read
more and I was glad of the rundown of Simon stories you gave in Crypt.
If you ask me I think that you could be
the Editor of a new version of Weird Tales quite easily. I hear that
certain other groups involved with resurrecting WT have once again gone
bottom up in the sea of red-tape and in-fighting. Your WT issue was by
far the best imitation I've seen around. So . . . think about it.
--- David
T. Pudelwitts
Tucumcari, NM
I am a weird fiction (and Clark Ashton
Smith in particular) enthusiast and I was very happy to learn and read about him
in Crypt of Cthulhu.
These are two marvelous issues!
The unpublished material by CAS is of
great importance to complete the knowledge of his work, and any word he wrote is
of interest: fragments, synopses, etc. Every text shows his artistry and deep
poetic sense. The Untold Tales are delightful and wonderful.
I discovered Steve Behrends as a fine
CAS scholar, and I read all the articles with pleasure. The unpublished Clark
Ashton Smith is a complex problem. I didn't see a single word about such
unfinished or unpublished stories as "The Scarlet Succubus"or
"The Alkahest" quoted by D. Sidney-Fryer in his bibliography. . . .
--- Jean-Luc
Buard
Maurepas, France
Regarding Crypt #29, p. 49, Darrell
Schweitzer's letter: Yes, it happened, except that I had used the nominative
case where I should have used the vocative. The professor was Elliot Dobbie of
Columbia University.
--- L.
Sprague deCamp
Villanova, PA
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