Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams (2018)
Directed by Darin Coelho Spring
Featuring Donald Sidney-Fryer, Harlan Ellison, S.T. Joshi, Cody Goodfellow, Skinner

Clark Ashton Smith, one of the “Three Musketeers” of the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales (with H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard) has sadly not received the popular attention that the creators of Cthulhu and Conan have benefited from. This new documentary hopefully will remedy that situation.

Smith lived from 1893 to 1961, primarily in the Gold Rush town of Auburn, CA. For about 50 years, he resided in a cabin there without electricity or running water. He never attended high school, but educated himself by devouring all of the books in the local library. He developed an incredible vocabulary and style that soon established him as a promising poet and the protégé of the “Keats of the West Coast,” George Sterling.

Lovecraft encountered Smith’s poetry and began a correspondence to state his admiration that blossomed into a lifelong friendship, all expressed through the mail, as the men unfortunately never met in person. The title of the documentary comes from the first line of Smith’s poem “The Hashish-Eater”, which Lovecraft praised in his Supernatural Horror in Literature. Continue reading →