but his articulate English disappears whenever he is
posed a question he does not wish to answer. The
visitors are surprised, sometimes deeply shocked, by
their experiences. An insistent, abrasive woman is
turned to stone by the medusa, and a repressed
schoolteacher visits the faun and is seduced by his
masculinity, releasing something of the secret inner
feelings she has concealed even from herself. An-
other consults a fortune-teller and learns the de-
pressing truth about her future, that it will be
unproductive and uneventful. Different characters
take something away or leave something of them-
selves, and the circus disappears just as mysteriously
as it arrived.
The story itself is followed by an extensive cat-
alog of characters and things named in the main
text, which is itself fascinating and informative.
The 1964 film version, as The Seven Faces of Dr.
Lao,was extremely well done, although it changes
the character of Lao and his circus quite radically,
implying that their intentions are essentially
benevolent and it is only our human failings that
prevent us from taking advantage of its wonders.
The ending is, for most of the characters, consider-
ably more pleasant than in the book.
“The City of the Singing Flame”
Clark Ashton Smith(1931)
One subset of fantasy fiction adopts some of the
trappings of science fiction and is sometimes la-
beled science fantasyto imply that it straddles the
borderline between the two genres. This was true
of many stories of lost Atlantis, or those set in
other realities where the laws of nature made
magic possible or where the creatures of mythology
still exist. Clark Ashton SMITHfrequently couched
his fantasies in pseudoscientific terms, setting them
in the impossibly distant future or in lost worlds of
the past, but despite a veneer of science, they re-
main essentially fantasy tales.
The protagonist of this story is a fantasy writer
himself. He stumbles across two magical stones
while walking one day and finds himself immedi-
ately transported to a bizarre landscape near a
magnificent city. His first visit terrifies him, but he
manages to find his way back across the invisible
gateway. Once recovered from his initial shock, he
decides to return, armed this time, and approaches
the city, whose inhabitants are oversized and inhu-
man. Although he is unobserved, he is nearly se-
duced by mysterious music that emanates from
within the city walls. Later he returns yet again
with cotton to block out the sound of the music
and explores the city, which is peopled by so many
different forms of life that no one pays him any
particular attention. He eventually learns to recog-
nize the city’s original inhabitants, who alone seem
to be immune to the lure of the singing, which
originates in a supernatural flame in which one vis-
itor after another seeks a fiery death. Eventually he
enlists the aid of a friend, but despite everything he
succumbs to the lure.
Reprints of the story often include with it a
less interesting sequel, “Beyond the Singing
Flame” (1931), in which an acquaintance of the
original protagonist investigates his disappearance.
There we learn the name of the city, Ydmos, and
witness its destruction when the living flame fi-
nally falters. As is the case with most of Smith’s
fiction, characterization is minimal, and even the
plot is comparatively threadbare. What made
Smith such a remarkable writer was his ability to
create magnificently exotic images and conduct
his readers on tours of worlds that never existed
but that seem vivid and logical. His elaborate
prose style might seem awkward by contemporary
standards, but his precise and varied vocabulary
provides an extra layer of atmosphere to his al-
ready richly ornate fiction.Clark, Simon(1958– )
The British horror writer Simon Clark began his
career with a handful of short stories in the 1980s,
culminating in a collection, Blood and Grit(1990).
He continued to write short fiction intermittently
until the publication of his first novel, Nailed by the
Heart(1995), and has concentrated on novels ever
since. “Salt Snake” (1993), included in his second
collection, Salt Snakes and Other Blood Cuts
(1998), is his only outstanding piece at that length.
Nailed by the Heartbears a close resemblance
to the work of Algernon BLACKWOODand Ramsey
CAMPBELL, set in a remote English village where
the old ways from before Christianity have yet to58 “The City of the Singing Flame”