Breathtaking unknown planets, continents that have long disappeared or have not yet emerged, travel between worlds and times, in time and in timelessness, disastrous forests and deserts, terrible creatures from distant galaxies, flower demons and corpse-eating demons (guess who is scarier ), ancient sorceresses and ambitious necromancers risking both soul and body, as well as werewolves, vampires risen from the dead, nameless monsters, petrified prehistoric nightmares and living stone... Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) - one of the three pillars of the “strange science fiction" of the 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 contains stories from 1925-1931; most of them are published in new translations.