On the last continent of Earth, under a decrepit but still despotic sun, necromancy flourishes, the god of death rules the living, mummies rebel against those who revived them, and the vengeance of the sorcerer is nothing compared to the vengeance of the gods. On the prehistoric continent of Earth, a mysterious white Sibyl predicts disasters, and cruel demons lurk in the depths of the glaciers. In medieval France, a gourmet monster comes from a comet, an ancient statue leads monks astray, and a wife-killing sorcerer and a wise sorceress get their deeds. On modern Earth, a collector of the strange is irrevocably plunged into the times that preceded the primitive ones, a traveler is burned in an alien fire that appeared from ancient times, and the demons of unfinished stories take revenge on an overly self-critical writer... Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) is one of the three pillars of “weird fiction” "1930s (together with Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, and, of course, the creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, in whose stories Smith's fictions appear every now and then), a follower of Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce. He melted science fiction in the last fire of romantic poetry and reached new limits of true horror - this is how the world learned what endless horizons both science fiction and horror can open up to us, and Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, and Stephen King owe a lot to Smith. This collection features work from 1932–1935, Smith's heyday as a storyteller, as well as his less numerous later texts; Most of the stories here are published in new translations.