Obwohl sich hier wie üblich mehr als genug auf dem "to read" Stapel befindet, lese ich gerade mal wieder Clark Ashton Smith. Seine Art zu schreiben begeistert mich einfach immer wieder aufs Neue und ohne hier ein "Blasphemie! Verbrennt ihn" Faß aufmachen zu wollen, läuft der für mich, hm, artverwandten Autoren wie bspw. Lovecraft locker den Rang ab. Dort, wo Lovecraft Beschreibungen oft fern bleibt (#unbeschreiblich ^^), wartet Smith mit so wunderbaren Formulierungen auf, die je nach Geschichte zwischen bunt-fantastisch und halluzinatorisch-fiebrig schwanken.
Gerade also "COLLECTED FANTASIES OF CLARK ASHTON SMITH VOLUME 1 - THE END OF THE STORY"
Ganz kurzer Auszug aus "The Abominations of Yondo"
"The sand of the desert of Yondo is not as the sand of other deserts; for Yondo lies nearest of all to the world's rim; and strange winds, blowing from a pit no astronomer may hope to fathom, have sown its ruinous fields with the gray dust of corroding planets, the black ashes of extinguished suns. The dark, orblike mountains which rise from its wrinkled and pitted plain are not all its own, for some are fallen asteroids half-buried in that abysmal sand. Things have crept in from nether space, whose incursion is forbid by the gods of all proper and well-ordered lands; but there are no such gods in Yondo, where live the hoary genii of stars abolished and decrepit demons left homeless by the destruction of antiquated hells.
...
Before me, under a huge sun of sickly scarlet, Yondo reached interminable as the land of a hashish-dream against the black heavens. Far-off, on the utmost rim, were those orb-like mountains of which I have told; but in between were awful blanks of gray desolation, and low, treeless hills like the backs of half-buried monsters. Struggling on, I saw great pits where meteors had sunk from sight; and divers-colored jewels that I could not name glared or glistened from the dust. There were fallen cypresses that rotted by crumbling mausoleums, on whose lichen blotted marble fat chameleons crept with royal pearls in their mouths. "