Clark Ashton Smith: Difference between revisions

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Content added Content deleted
VisualWikitext
m (revise quote template spacing)
No edit summary
 
(5 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
{{creator}}
{{creator}}
[[File:Clark Ashton Smith 1912.jpg|thumb|300px|Clark Ashton Smith, 1912]]
'''Clark Ashton Smith''' (1893-1961) was an American writer of [[Horror]], [[Fantasy]] and [[Science Fiction]]. He is most notable for being one of the founders of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] along with [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Robert E. Howard]] and others.
'''Clark Ashton Smith''' (1893-1961) was an American writer of [[Horror]], [[Fantasy]] and [[Science Fiction]]. He is most notable for being one of the founders of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]] along with [[H.P. Lovecraft]], [[Robert E. Howard]] and others.


Line 9: Line 10:


----
----
{{creatortropes}}
=== Tropes found in Clark Ashton Smith's works: ===
* [[Action Girl]]: Vixeela in ''The Theft of Thirty-Nine Girdles''.
* [[Action Girl]]: Vixeela in ''The Theft of Thirty-Nine Girdles''.
* [[Action Hero]]: Subverted.
* [[Action Hero]]: Subverted.
Line 51: Line 52:
* [[Downer Ending]]: Toyed with a lot. Sometimes we get a simple [[The Bad Guy Wins]] downer; sometimes a [[Kill'Em All]] ending, where the villains go down as well; and sometimes a straight happy ending.
* [[Downer Ending]]: Toyed with a lot. Sometimes we get a simple [[The Bad Guy Wins]] downer; sometimes a [[Kill'Em All]] ending, where the villains go down as well; and sometimes a straight happy ending.
* [[Dragged Off to Hell]]: Inverted {{spoiler|in ''The Devotee of Evil''.}} Averted {{spoiler|in ''Xeethra'' to the surprise of the main character. It's still a [[Downer Ending]] though.}}
* [[Dragged Off to Hell]]: Inverted {{spoiler|in ''The Devotee of Evil''.}} Averted {{spoiler|in ''Xeethra'' to the surprise of the main character. It's still a [[Downer Ending]] though.}}
* [[Drives Like Crazy]]: The titular cult in his [[Future Imperfect]] satire "The Great God Awto." A postscript reveals that in the 60th Century, people drive like crazy in stratospheric rocket ships, although of course they don't do this as part of some savage religion like Awto's barbaric "Hammuriquanean" worshippers.
* [[Drives Like Crazy]]: The titular cult in his [[Future Imperfect]] satire "The Great God Awto." A postscript reveals that in the 60th Century, people drive like crazy in stratospheric rocket ships, although of course they don't do this as part of some savage religion like Awto's barbaric "Hammuriquanean" worshippers did in the 20th.
* [[Drop-Dead Gorgeous]]
* [[Drop-Dead Gorgeous]]
* [[Due to the Dead]]
* [[Due to the Dead]]
Line 69: Line 70:
* [[Evil Versus Evil]]: every single character in ''The Dark Eidolon'' is evil.
* [[Evil Versus Evil]]: every single character in ''The Dark Eidolon'' is evil.
* [[Eye of Newt]]
* [[Eye of Newt]]
* [[Fantastic Flora]]: Evidently one of his favorite tropes.
* [[Faux Death]]: played for horror in ''The Charnel God'' and ''The Second Internment''.
* [[Faux Death]]: played for horror in ''The Charnel God'' and ''The Second Internment''.
* [[Functional Magic]]
* [[Functional Magic]]
Line 161: Line 163:
[[Category:Authors]]
[[Category:Authors]]
[[Category:Clark Ashton Smith]]
[[Category:Clark Ashton Smith]]
[[Category:Pages with working Wikipedia tabs]]

Latest revision as of 22:49, 13 February 2019

/wiki/Clark Ashton Smithcreator
Clark Ashton Smith, 1912

Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was an American writer of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction. He is most notable for being one of the founders of the Cthulhu Mythos along with H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and others.

Compared to Lovecraft's, Smith's stories tend to focus less on the Cosmic Horror Story and more on the pure exoticism of the setting. Some Mythos entities recur between them, such as the god Tsathoggua, but these entities tend to be less malevolent in Smith's portrayal than in Lovecraft's.

Also unlike Lovecraft, sexuality plays a strong role in many of Smith's works and female characters are a lot stronger and more prominent than in Lovecraft (most likely to Smith having a much more... active love life than Lovecraft). Unlike Howard, sorcerers in Smith tend to have the upper hand against swordsmen and Smith has many sorcerer protagonists, both good and evil. Unlike both Lovecraft and Howard, Smith was not a racist or a xenophobe, which can be seen best in stories like The Great God Awto and A Star-Change.

Smith was fond of playing with tropes and his stories occasionally feature Black Comedy.

Clark Ashton Smith provides examples of the following tropes:

There were tables strewn with archaic instruments of doubtful use, with astrological charts, with skulls and alembics and crystals, with censers such as are used in the Catholic Church, and volumes bound in worm-eaten leather with verdigris-mottled clasps. In one corner stood the skeleton of a large ape; in another, a human skeleton; and overhead a stuffed crocodile was suspended.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Clark_Ashton_Smith?oldid=1680891"