Essay by Ted Gioia
If you are seeking a self-made West Coast Renaissance man from the early 20th
century, you could hardly pick a better candidate than Clark Ashton Smith. But
don't look for a full-scale biography of this fascinating figure—none has been
published. No statues or monuments commemorate his legacy, except for
a small grave marker placed many years after his death next to the boulder in tiny
Auburn, California were his ashes were scattered. When one of his original
watercolors was put up for bid recently on eBay, it sold for one hundred dollars—
and there was just one bid!
Smith deserves better. In his early days, his poetry
gained him the nickname of "the Keats of the Pacific
Coast." He was also a sculptor, painter and prolific
author of prose fiction—with the exception of Poe
and Lovecraft, no one did more than Clark Ashton
Smith to define the modern horror story. Yet his
many out-of-print books are now rare collectors'
items, and for the saddest reason of all: because
very few copies were printed when they were first
issued. When Arkham house published a volume
of Smith’s Selected Poems a decade after his death,
the print run was limited to 2,000 copies—and those
sold slowly.
Frankly, I’m puzzled by this conspiracy of neglect.
Smith may have been the most erudite genre fiction writer of his generation—
you won’t find another pulp writer with a larger vocabulary or more esoteric
knowledge. In fact, if you asked me to pick the modern authors with the most
expansive taste in words, I put him on the short list alongside Vladimir Nabokov
and John Banville. And his myth-infused tales anticipate so much that is current
in contemporary storytelling, and not just in narrative fiction. I could easily
imagine Smith stories such as "The Maze of the Enchanter" or "The Weaver in the
Vault" serving as the basis for megahit video games. And fantasy film
screenwriters could learn a few tricks from Smith’s canny thieves Satampra and
Tirouv, whose adventures propel "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros."
But Smith would attract our attention if only for his compelling life story, which
deserves to be told in a full-scale bio. Born in the midst of California’s gold country
long after the prospectors had moved on, Clark Ashton Smith had virtually no role
models for the intellectual life he proposed for himself. To compensate for his lack
of formal education—he never completed grammar school—Smith read the entire
Encyclopedia Britannica. And when he finished it, he read it a second time. To
improve his knowledge of words, he did the same with Webster’s unabridged
dictionary. When he felt he had learned all the nuance of English, he taught
himself Spanish and French, and eventually translated poetry from those
languages.
Smith was already writing stories at age eleven, and poetry at age thirteen. He first
saw his work in print at age 17, when The Overland Monthly accepted two of his
stories. This was no small feat—Overland, launched by Bret Harte, had also helped
launch the careers of Jack London and Ambrose Bierce, and stood out as the most
prestigious American literary periodical west of the Rockies. Still a teenager,
Smith could now boast that his writing appeared in the same magazine that had
published Mark Twain and Willa Cather. He soon became a protégé of influential
San Francisco litterateur George Sterling, who championed Smith’s poetry and
helped the young author establish a reputation as one of the leading young writers
on the West Coast.
But Smith was much more than an ivory
tower aesthete. Over the years, he also
worked as a miner, fruit-picker, lumberjack,
cement-mixer, gardener, and in other blue
collar capacities. When Smith fills his tales
with mythic landscapes, richly described
with elaborate botanical and meteorological
details, he is not simply showing off his book
learning, but drawing on his first-hand expertise
in the great outdoors. These experiences would
make for a riveting biography, as would Smith's busy love life—he didn’t marry until
age 61, but his affairs, some with the wives of his neighbors, were the
scandal of his community. Strolling through the tiny town of Auburn with his
goatee and beret, he must have seemed a strange sight, a Parisian flaneur
magically transported to the wild west.
Smith mixed with the leading California writers of his day, but the most influential
relationship came via mail with H.P. Lovecraft, the master of the pulp fiction
horror tale. Over a period of fifteen years, from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in
1937, the two corresponded regularly, and the influence of the older writer could
soon be detected in Smith’s work. If Smith had first promised to gain renown as
the "Keats of the Pacific Coast" he would eventually gain his greatest fame as the
"Lovecraft of the Far West." By the late twenties, Smith was focusing on horror,
fantasy and science fiction, and entering into the most productive period of his
career. Between 1929 and 1937, he published more than fifty stories in Weird
Tales, and also was a frequent contributor to other pulp magazines.
Yet editors often complained about his dense
writing and choice of arcane words. The modern
day reader who turns to Smith’s fantasy fiction
will understand these concerns. No genre writer
in the present day could get away with such
demanding writing, and it is testimony to the
literacy of the American general readers of the
1930s that Smith could operate at all in the world
of mass market commercial fiction. Let me take
one example: Smith’s story "The Uncharted Isle,"
a ten-page story that appeared in Weird Tales in
November 1930. Here readers encounter words
such as eroclitic, armillary, pell, wried, irremeable,
and parapegm. Many were no doubt confused, but
Smith probably didn't mind—after all, he later
explained that this story was an "allegory of human
disorientation." You couldn’t get away with using
those words in a highbrow periodical nowadays, let
alone a mass market magazine. But such was Smith's
modus operandi, and he maintained it even as he had
to ramp up his rate of acceptances in order to survive
the economic decline of the Great Depression and pay
the medical bills of his ailing parents.
These stories stand out even more for their eerie ambience than for their
demonstrations of verbal virtuosity. Reading his finest stories, such as "The
Double Shadow" or "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis," you will feel an encroaching
claustrophobia and an unsettling despair that, in later years, might be labeled
existential angst. No, Smith never enjoyed the adulation from French readers that
Poe, Lovecraft and other American horror writers received—although he
translated works from French, and was a Francophile himself—yet I could easily
imagine his stories fitting into fashionable Parisian modern and postmodern
discourse.
I suspect that this pervasive psychological malaise has limited Smith’s ability to
reach a crossover audience in the years following his death, in the way that Poe
and Lovecraft somehow managed. The typical Smith hero dies at the end of the
story, and often because of a deliberate choice to embrace the horrifying
unknown. In "The City of the Singing Flame" this acceptance of self-destruction
involves leaping into a beguiling musical pyre in an alternative universe temple. In
"Genius Loci," the narrator is captivated by a malevolent meadow that has already
killed several others, and announces in the closing paragraph his decision to
journey there to meet his own demise. In "The Face by the River," a murderer
returns to the scene of the crime to succumb to a death similar to the one inflicted
on his victim. In “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,”
the sole survivor of a horrific expedition can’t
resist the temptation to go back to the place of
his companions’ violent destruction, and join
them in death. No one apparently told Smith that
readers, even of horror stories, prefer a happy ending.
You get few of those in his stories, although examples
of Freud’s thanatos (the so-called ‘death instinct’)
show up every few pages. Are you surprised, then,
that film directors haven’t snatched up the movie
rights to Smith’s stories?
But the very reasons why Hollywood stays away from
Clark Ashton Smith are the ones that should draw serious
readers to this pioneer of genre fiction. He may have
the darkest worldview of any of the pioneers of the horror idiom, and grasped
with more intensity than his peers the particular essence of twentieth century
scaremongering. Even more than Poe or Lovecraft, Smith anticipated a deadly age
in which the greatest destruction came not via ghosts or goblins but from deep
inside the human soul.
That’s a horror that doesn’t go away, even in the light of day and the greater light
of lucid, rational thinking. For that reason, Smith’s stories may well be filled with
all the mythic creatures and supernatural trappings you find in other horror
writers, but he rarely assigns them the blame for the calamities that ensue upon
their arrival. His darkest landscapes are hardly the richly-described misty
meadows and fog-drenched labyrinths where his stories transpire, but rather the
psychic ones inside his protagonist’s heads. That’s a horror that can’t be defeated
with a magical sword or whispered incantation, and still resonates in an age that
no longer fears ghosts and ghouls.
Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to
Listen to Jazz from Basic Books.
Publication Date: May 16, 2016
If you are seeking a self-made West Coast Renaissance man from the early 20th
century, you could hardly pick a better candidate than Clark Ashton Smith. But
don't look for a full-scale biography of this fascinating figure—none has been
published. No statues or monuments commemorate his legacy, except for
a small grave marker placed many years after his death next to the boulder in tiny
Auburn, California were his ashes were scattered. When one of his original
watercolors was put up for bid recently on eBay, it sold for one hundred dollars—
and there was just one bid!
Smith deserves better. In his early days, his poetry
gained him the nickname of "the Keats of the Pacific
Coast." He was also a sculptor, painter and prolific
author of prose fiction—with the exception of Poe
and Lovecraft, no one did more than Clark Ashton
Smith to define the modern horror story. Yet his
many out-of-print books are now rare collectors'
items, and for the saddest reason of all: because
very few copies were printed when they were first
issued. When Arkham house published a volume
of Smith’s Selected Poems a decade after his death,
the print run was limited to 2,000 copies—and those
sold slowly.
Frankly, I’m puzzled by this conspiracy of neglect.
Smith may have been the most erudite genre fiction writer of his generation—
you won’t find another pulp writer with a larger vocabulary or more esoteric
knowledge. In fact, if you asked me to pick the modern authors with the most
expansive taste in words, I put him on the short list alongside Vladimir Nabokov
and John Banville. And his myth-infused tales anticipate so much that is current
in contemporary storytelling, and not just in narrative fiction. I could easily
imagine Smith stories such as "The Maze of the Enchanter" or "The Weaver in the
Vault" serving as the basis for megahit video games. And fantasy film
screenwriters could learn a few tricks from Smith’s canny thieves Satampra and
Tirouv, whose adventures propel "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros."
But Smith would attract our attention if only for his compelling life story, which
deserves to be told in a full-scale bio. Born in the midst of California’s gold country
long after the prospectors had moved on, Clark Ashton Smith had virtually no role
models for the intellectual life he proposed for himself. To compensate for his lack
of formal education—he never completed grammar school—Smith read the entire
Encyclopedia Britannica. And when he finished it, he read it a second time. To
improve his knowledge of words, he did the same with Webster’s unabridged
dictionary. When he felt he had learned all the nuance of English, he taught
himself Spanish and French, and eventually translated poetry from those
languages.
Smith was already writing stories at age eleven, and poetry at age thirteen. He first
saw his work in print at age 17, when The Overland Monthly accepted two of his
stories. This was no small feat—Overland, launched by Bret Harte, had also helped
launch the careers of Jack London and Ambrose Bierce, and stood out as the most
prestigious American literary periodical west of the Rockies. Still a teenager,
Smith could now boast that his writing appeared in the same magazine that had
published Mark Twain and Willa Cather. He soon became a protégé of influential
San Francisco litterateur George Sterling, who championed Smith’s poetry and
helped the young author establish a reputation as one of the leading young writers
on the West Coast.
But Smith was much more than an ivory
tower aesthete. Over the years, he also
worked as a miner, fruit-picker, lumberjack,
cement-mixer, gardener, and in other blue
collar capacities. When Smith fills his tales
with mythic landscapes, richly described
with elaborate botanical and meteorological
details, he is not simply showing off his book
learning, but drawing on his first-hand expertise
in the great outdoors. These experiences would
make for a riveting biography, as would Smith's busy love life—he didn’t marry until
age 61, but his affairs, some with the wives of his neighbors, were the
scandal of his community. Strolling through the tiny town of Auburn with his
goatee and beret, he must have seemed a strange sight, a Parisian flaneur
magically transported to the wild west.
Smith mixed with the leading California writers of his day, but the most influential
relationship came via mail with H.P. Lovecraft, the master of the pulp fiction
horror tale. Over a period of fifteen years, from 1922 until Lovecraft's death in
1937, the two corresponded regularly, and the influence of the older writer could
soon be detected in Smith’s work. If Smith had first promised to gain renown as
the "Keats of the Pacific Coast" he would eventually gain his greatest fame as the
"Lovecraft of the Far West." By the late twenties, Smith was focusing on horror,
fantasy and science fiction, and entering into the most productive period of his
career. Between 1929 and 1937, he published more than fifty stories in Weird
Tales, and also was a frequent contributor to other pulp magazines.
Yet editors often complained about his dense
writing and choice of arcane words. The modern
day reader who turns to Smith’s fantasy fiction
will understand these concerns. No genre writer
in the present day could get away with such
demanding writing, and it is testimony to the
literacy of the American general readers of the
1930s that Smith could operate at all in the world
of mass market commercial fiction. Let me take
one example: Smith’s story "The Uncharted Isle,"
a ten-page story that appeared in Weird Tales in
November 1930. Here readers encounter words
such as eroclitic, armillary, pell, wried, irremeable,
and parapegm. Many were no doubt confused, but
Smith probably didn't mind—after all, he later
explained that this story was an "allegory of human
disorientation." You couldn’t get away with using
those words in a highbrow periodical nowadays, let
alone a mass market magazine. But such was Smith's
modus operandi, and he maintained it even as he had
to ramp up his rate of acceptances in order to survive
the economic decline of the Great Depression and pay
the medical bills of his ailing parents.
These stories stand out even more for their eerie ambience than for their
demonstrations of verbal virtuosity. Reading his finest stories, such as "The
Double Shadow" or "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis," you will feel an encroaching
claustrophobia and an unsettling despair that, in later years, might be labeled
existential angst. No, Smith never enjoyed the adulation from French readers that
Poe, Lovecraft and other American horror writers received—although he
translated works from French, and was a Francophile himself—yet I could easily
imagine his stories fitting into fashionable Parisian modern and postmodern
discourse.
I suspect that this pervasive psychological malaise has limited Smith’s ability to
reach a crossover audience in the years following his death, in the way that Poe
and Lovecraft somehow managed. The typical Smith hero dies at the end of the
story, and often because of a deliberate choice to embrace the horrifying
unknown. In "The City of the Singing Flame" this acceptance of self-destruction
involves leaping into a beguiling musical pyre in an alternative universe temple. In
"Genius Loci," the narrator is captivated by a malevolent meadow that has already
killed several others, and announces in the closing paragraph his decision to
journey there to meet his own demise. In "The Face by the River," a murderer
returns to the scene of the crime to succumb to a death similar to the one inflicted
on his victim. In “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,”
the sole survivor of a horrific expedition can’t
resist the temptation to go back to the place of
his companions’ violent destruction, and join
them in death. No one apparently told Smith that
readers, even of horror stories, prefer a happy ending.
You get few of those in his stories, although examples
of Freud’s thanatos (the so-called ‘death instinct’)
show up every few pages. Are you surprised, then,
that film directors haven’t snatched up the movie
rights to Smith’s stories?
But the very reasons why Hollywood stays away from
Clark Ashton Smith are the ones that should draw serious
readers to this pioneer of genre fiction. He may have
the darkest worldview of any of the pioneers of the horror idiom, and grasped
with more intensity than his peers the particular essence of twentieth century
scaremongering. Even more than Poe or Lovecraft, Smith anticipated a deadly age
in which the greatest destruction came not via ghosts or goblins but from deep
inside the human soul.
That’s a horror that doesn’t go away, even in the light of day and the greater light
of lucid, rational thinking. For that reason, Smith’s stories may well be filled with
all the mythic creatures and supernatural trappings you find in other horror
writers, but he rarely assigns them the blame for the calamities that ensue upon
their arrival. His darkest landscapes are hardly the richly-described misty
meadows and fog-drenched labyrinths where his stories transpire, but rather the
psychic ones inside his protagonist’s heads. That’s a horror that can’t be defeated
with a magical sword or whispered incantation, and still resonates in an age that
no longer fears ghosts and ghouls.
Ted Gioia writes about music, literature and popular culture. His latest book is How to
Listen to Jazz from Basic Books.
Publication Date: May 16, 2016
This is my year of horrible reading.
I am reading the classics of horror fiction
during the course of 2016, and each week will
write about a significant work in the genre.
You are invited to join me in my annus
horribilis. During the course of the year—if
we survive—we will have tackled zombies,
serial killers, ghosts, demons, vampires, and
monsters of all denominations. Check back
each week for a new title...but remember to
bring along garlic, silver bullets and a
protective amulet. Ted Gioia
I am reading the classics of horror fiction
during the course of 2016, and each week will
write about a significant work in the genre.
You are invited to join me in my annus
horribilis. During the course of the year—if
we survive—we will have tackled zombies,
serial killers, ghosts, demons, vampires, and
monsters of all denominations. Check back
each week for a new title...but remember to
bring along garlic, silver bullets and a
protective amulet. Ted Gioia
My Year of Horrible Reading
Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker
Week 2:
The Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson
Week 3:
Tales of Mystery & Imagination
By Edgar Allan Poe
Week 4:
Carrie
By Stephen King
Week 5:
The Passion According to G.H.
By Clarice Lispector
Week 6:
Tales
By H.P. Lovecraft
Week 7:
The Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty
Week 8:
The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill
Week 9:
Nausea
By Jean-Paul Sartre
Week 10:
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson
Week 11:
Ghost Stories of Henry James
By Henry James
Week 12:
Interview with the Vampire
By Anne Rice
Week 13:
American Psycho
By Bret Easton Ellis
Week 14:
Last Stories and Other Stories
By William T. Vollmann
Week 15:
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
By M.R. James
Week 16:
Rosemary's Baby
By Ira Levin
Week 17:
The King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers
Week 18:
Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier
Week 19
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe
Week 20
The Dark Eidolon
by Clark Ashton Smith
Week 1:
Dracula
By Bram Stoker
Week 2:
The Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson
Week 3:
Tales of Mystery & Imagination
By Edgar Allan Poe
Week 4:
Carrie
By Stephen King
Week 5:
The Passion According to G.H.
By Clarice Lispector
Week 6:
Tales
By H.P. Lovecraft
Week 7:
The Exorcist
By William Peter Blatty
Week 8:
The Woman in Black
By Susan Hill
Week 9:
Nausea
By Jean-Paul Sartre
Week 10:
I Am Legend
By Richard Matheson
Week 11:
Ghost Stories of Henry James
By Henry James
Week 12:
Interview with the Vampire
By Anne Rice
Week 13:
American Psycho
By Bret Easton Ellis
Week 14:
Last Stories and Other Stories
By William T. Vollmann
Week 15:
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
By M.R. James
Week 16:
Rosemary's Baby
By Ira Levin
Week 17:
The King in Yellow
By Robert W. Chambers
Week 18:
Rebecca
By Daphne Du Maurier
Week 19
The Woman in the Dunes
by Kōbō Abe
Week 20
The Dark Eidolon
by Clark Ashton Smith
| Clark Ashton Smith |
| conceptual fiction Exploring the Non-Realist Tradition in Fiction |
Making a Case for Clark Ashton Smith
In his day, he was the 'Keats of the Pacific Coast' and the
'Lovecraft of the Far West'. Yet Clark Ashton Smith is
omitted from most discussions of major Western authors.
Is it time for a revival of his work?
In his day, he was the 'Keats of the Pacific Coast' and the
'Lovecraft of the Far West'. Yet Clark Ashton Smith is
omitted from most discussions of major Western authors.
Is it time for a revival of his work?
When one of his original
watercolors was put up
for bid recently on eBay,
it sold for one hundred
dollars—and there was
just one bid!
watercolors was put up
for bid recently on eBay,
it sold for one hundred
dollars—and there was
just one bid!
To purchase, click on image
Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
Barth, John
Giles Goat-Boy
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Blish, James
A Case of Conscience
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Bunch, David R.
Moderan
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chambers, Robert W.
The King in Yellow
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Delany, Samuel R.
Nova
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan (editor)
Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Farmer, Philip José
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Fowles, John
A Maggot
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hill, Susan
The Woman in Black
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Houellebecq, Michel
Submission
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Jackson, Shirley
The Haunting of Hill House
James, Henry
The Turn of the Screw
James, M.R.
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
King, Stephen
Carrie
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Lafferty, R.A.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Dispossessed
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Levin, Ira
Rosemary's Baby
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Lovecraft, H.P.
Tales
Malzberg, Barry N.
Herovit's World
Mandel, Emily St. John
Station Eleven
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
I Am Legend
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Moorcock, Michael
Behold the Man
Moorcock, Michael
The Final Programme
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the
End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir
Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Percy, Walker
Love in the Ruins
Poe, Edgar Allan
Tales of Mystery & Imagination
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Rice, Anne
Interview with the Vampire
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Russ, Joanna
The Female Man
Saramago, José
Blindness
Sheckley, Robert
Dimension of Miracles
Sheckley, Robert
Mindswap
Sheckley, Robert
Store of the Worlds
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Silverberg, Robert
The World Inside
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Clark Ashton
The Dark Eidolon
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Spinrad, Norman
Bug Jack Barron
Stoker, Bram
Dracula
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tiptree, Jr., James
Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Vance, Jack
The Dragon Masters
Vance, Jack
Emphyrio
Vance, Jack
The Languages of Pao
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vollmann, William T
Last Stories and Other Stories
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Zelazny, Roger
This Immortal
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
My Year of Horrible Reading
When Science Fiction Grew Up
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
The Most Secretive Sci-Fi Author
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
The Puzzling Case of Robert Sheckley
The Avant-Garde Sci-Fi of Brian Aldiss
Science Fiction 1958-1975: A Reading List
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
_____
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
SF Novelists
More Words, Deeper Hole
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Tor blog
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction
and its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials
from publishers, authors, publicists
or other parties.
All rights reserved.
www.twitter.com/tedgioia
Conceptual Fiction:
A Reading List
(with links to essays on each work)
Home Page
Abbott, Edwin A.
Flatland
Adams, Douglas
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aldiss, Brian
Barefoot in the Head
Aldiss, Brian
Hothouse
Aldiss, Brian
Report on Probability A
Allende, Isabel
The House of the Spirits
Amado, Jorge
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
Amis, Martin
Time's Arrow
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Asimov, Isaac
The Foundation Trilogy
Asimov, Isaac
I, Robot
Atwood, Margaret
The Handmaid's Tale
Banks, Iain M.
The State of the Art
Ballard, J.G.
The Atrocity Exhibition
Ballard, J.G.
Crash
Ballard, J.G.
The Crystal World
Ballard, J.G.
The Drowned World
Barth, John
Giles Goat-Boy
Bester, Alfred
The Demolished Man
Blish, James
A Case of Conscience
Borges, Jorge Luis
Ficciones
Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Bradbury, Ray
Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray
The Illustrated Man
Bradbury, Ray
The Martian Chronicles
Bradbury, Ray
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Brockmeier, Kevin
The View from the Seventh Layer
Bulgakov, Mikhail
The Master and Margarita
Bunch, David R.
Moderan
Burgess, Anthony
A Clockwork Orange
Card, Orson Scott
Ender's Game
Carpentier, Alejo
The Kingdom of This World
Carroll, Lewis
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chabon, Michael
The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Chambers, Robert W.
The King in Yellow
Chiang, Ted
Stories of Your Life and Others
Clarke, Arthur C.
Childhood's End
Clarke, Arthur C.
A Fall of Moondust
Clarke, Arthur C.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke, Susanna
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Crowley, John
Little, Big
Danielewski, Mark Z.
The Fifty Year Sword
Danielewski, Mark Z.
House of Leaves
Davies, Robertson
Fifth Business
Delany, Samuel R.
Babel-17
Delany, Samuel R.
Dhalgren
Delany, Samuel R.
The Einstein Intersection
Delany, Samuel R.
Nova
Dick, Philip K.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Dick, Philip K.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dick, Philip K.
The Man in the High Castle
Dick, Philip K.
Ubik
Dick, Philip K.
VALIS
Disch, Thomas M.
Camp Concentration
Disch, Thomas M.
The Genocides
Doctorow, Cory
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Donoso, José
The Obscene Bird of Night
Ellison, Harlan (editor)
Dangerous Visions
Ellison, Harlan
I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream
Esquivel, Laura
Like Water for Chocolate
Farmer, Philip José
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
Fowles, John
A Maggot
Fuentes, Carlos
Aura
Gaiman, Neil
American Gods
Gaiman, Neil
Neverwhere
Gibson, William
Burning Chrome
Gibson, William
Neuromancer
Grass, Günter
The Tin Drum
Greene, Graham
The End of the Affair
Grossman, Lev
The Magicians
Haldeman, Joe
The Forever War
Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts
Harrison, M. John
The Centauri Device
Harrison, M. John
Light
Heinlein, Robert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Heinlein, Robert:
Stranger in a Strange Land
Heinlein, Robert
Time Enough for Love
Helprin, Mark
Winter's Tale
Herbert, Frank
Dune
Hill, Susan
The Woman in Black
Hoffman, Alice
Practical Magic
Houellebecq, Michel
Submission
Huxley, Aldous
Brave New World
Jackson, Shirley
The Haunting of Hill House
James, Henry
The Turn of the Screw
James, M.R.
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
Keret, Etgar
Suddenly, A Knock at the Door
Keyes, Daniel
Flowers for Algernon
King, Stephen
Carrie
Kundera, Milan
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Kunzru, Hari
Gods Without Men
Lafferty, R.A.
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Dispossessed
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Lathe of Heaven
Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Leiber, Fritz
The Big Time
Leiber, Fritz
Conjure Wife
Leiber, Fritz
Swords & Deviltry
Leiber, Fritz
The Wanderer
Lem, Stanislaw
His Master's Voice
Lem, Stanislaw
Solaris
Lethem, Jonathan
The Fortress of Solitude
Levin, Ira
Rosemary's Baby
Lewis, C. S.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Link, Kelly
Magic for Beginners
Lovecraft, H.P.
Tales
Malzberg, Barry N.
Herovit's World
Mandel, Emily St. John
Station Eleven
Mann, Thomas
Doctor Faustus
Márquez, Gabriel García
100 Years of Solitude
Markson, David
Wittgenstein's Mistress
Matheson, Richard
Hell House
Matheson, Richard
I Am Legend
Matheson, Richard
What Dreams May Come
McCarthy, Cormac
The Road
Miéville, China
Perdido Street Station
Miller, Jr., Walter M.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Millhauser, Steven
Dangerous Laughter
Mitchell, David
Cloud Atlas
Moorcock, Michael
Behold the Man
Moorcock, Michael
The Final Programme
Morrison, Toni
Beloved
Murakami, Haruki
1Q84
Murakami, Haruki
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the
End of the World
Nabokov, Vladimir
Ada, or Ardor
Niffenegger, Audrey
The Time Traveler's Wife
Niven, Larry
Ringworld
Noon, Jeff
Vurt
Obreht, Téa
The Tiger's Wife
O'Brien, Flann
At Swim-Two-Birds
Okri, Ben
The Famished Road
Percy, Walker
Love in the Ruins
Poe, Edgar Allan
Tales of Mystery & Imagination
Pohl, Frederik
Gateway
Pratchett, Terry
The Color of Magic
Pynchon, Thomas
Gravity's Rainbow
Rabelais, François
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Rice, Anne
Interview with the Vampire
Robinson, Kim Stanley
Red Mars
Rowling, J.K.
Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone
Rushdie, Salman
Midnight's Children
Russ, Joanna
The Female Man
Saramago, José
Blindness
Sheckley, Robert
Dimension of Miracles
Sheckley, Robert
Mindswap
Sheckley, Robert
Store of the Worlds
Shelley, Mary
Frankenstein
Silverberg, Robert
Dying Inside
Silverberg, Robert
Nightwings
Silverberg, Robert
The World Inside
Simak, Clifford
City
Simak, Clifford
The Trouble with Tycho
Smith, Clark Ashton
The Dark Eidolon
Smith, Cordwainer
Norstrilia
Smith, Cordwainer
The Rediscovery of Man
Stephenson, Neal
Snow Crash
Spinrad, Norman
Bug Jack Barron
Stoker, Bram
Dracula
Stross, Charles
Glasshouse
Sturgeon, Theodore
More Than Human
Sturgeon, Theodore
Some of Your Blood
Swift, Jonathan
Gulliver's Travels
Thomas, D.M.
The White Hotel
Tiptree, Jr., James
Warm Worlds and Otherwise
Tolkien, J.R.R.
The Hobbit
Updike, John
The Witches of Eastwick
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Mixed Men
Van Vogt, A.E.
Slan
Van Vogt, A.E.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Van Vogt, A.E.
The World of Null A
Vance, Jack
The Dragon Masters
Vance, Jack
Emphyrio
Vance, Jack
The Languages of Pao
Verne, Jules
Around the Moon
Verne, Jules
From the Earth to the Moon
Verne, Jules:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vollmann, William T
Last Stories and Other Stories
Vonnegut, Kurt
Cat's Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt
The Sirens of Titan
Vonnegut, Kurt
Slaughterhouse-Five
Wallace, David Foster
Infinite Jest
Walpole, Horace
Hieroglyphic Tales
Wells, H.G.
The First Men in the Moon
Wells, H.G.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Wells, H.G.
The Time Machine
Wilson, Robert Anton & Robert Shea
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
Winton, Tim
Cloudstreet
Woolf, Virginia
Orlando
Zabor, Rafi
The Bear Comes Home
Zelazny, Roger
Lord of Light
Zelazny, Roger
This Immortal
Special Features
Notes on Conceptual Fiction
My Year of Horrible Reading
When Science Fiction Grew Up
Ray Bradbury: A Tribute
The Year of Magical Reading
Remembering Fritz Leiber
A Tribute to Richard Matheson
Samuel Delany's 70th birthday
The Sci-Fi of Kurt Vonnegut
The Most Secretive Sci-Fi Author
Curse You, Neil Armstrong!
Robert Heinlein at 100
A.E, van Vogt Tribute
The Puzzling Case of Robert Sheckley
The Avant-Garde Sci-Fi of Brian Aldiss
Science Fiction 1958-1975: A Reading List
Links to related sites
The New Canon
Great Books Guide
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
_____
SF Site
io9
Graeme's Fantasy Book Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
The Millions
Big Dumb Object
SF Novelists
More Words, Deeper Hole
The Misread City
Reviews and Responses
SF Signal
True Science Fiction
Tor blog
Disclosure: Conceptual Fiction
and its sister sites may receive review
copies and promotional materials
from publishers, authors, publicists
or other parties.
All rights reserved.
Smith read the
entire Encyclopedia
Britannica. And when
he finished it, he read it
a second time...He did
the same with Webster's
unabridged dictionary.
entire Encyclopedia
Britannica. And when
he finished it, he read it
a second time...He did
the same with Webster's
unabridged dictionary.