- 5 months ago
Embark on a breathtaking journey with Clark Ashton Smith's "A Voyage to Sfanomoë," a wondrous tale from his legendary Poseidonis cycle. This audiobook summary transports you to a dying continent in the far-flung future, where the last remnants of humanity sail the seas on a quest for survival. The story follows the narrator and a crew of intrepid mariners as they set out from their island home in Poseidonis to find a mythical land of refuge, a place known as Sfanomoë. Their voyage is a grand odyssey across a surreal, dream-like ocean, filled with strange phenomena, bizarre sea creatures, and the decaying ruins of unimaginable cities.
"A Voyage to Sfanomoë" is a prime example of Clark Ashton Smith's unique blend of science fiction, fantasy, and cosmic horror, often referred to as "weird fiction." His lush, poetic prose and decadent imagination paint a picture of a world both beautiful and terrifying. As the sailors journey further, they enter a realm where the laws of nature are bent and the line between reality and nightmare blurs. This story is a testament to Smith's influence as a master of the pulp era, inspiring countless writers with his tales of forgotten worlds and ancient horrors. This deep dive will explore:
The mythical setting of Poseidonis and its connection to the Atlantis legend.
Smith's unique, descriptive literary style.
The story's themes of decay, cosmic beauty, and the search for hope in a dying world.
The influence of "The Arabian Nights" and other classical tales on the narrative.
"A Voyage to Sfanomoë" is a prime example of Clark Ashton Smith's unique blend of science fiction, fantasy, and cosmic horror, often referred to as "weird fiction." His lush, poetic prose and decadent imagination paint a picture of a world both beautiful and terrifying. As the sailors journey further, they enter a realm where the laws of nature are bent and the line between reality and nightmare blurs. This story is a testament to Smith's influence as a master of the pulp era, inspiring countless writers with his tales of forgotten worlds and ancient horrors. This deep dive will explore:
The mythical setting of Poseidonis and its connection to the Atlantis legend.
Smith's unique, descriptive literary style.
The story's themes of decay, cosmic beauty, and the search for hope in a dying world.
The influence of "The Arabian Nights" and other classical tales on the narrative.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Gates of Imagination presents, A Voyage to Svanamo, by Clark Ashton Smith, read, by Josh
00:07Greenwood.
00:10There are many marvelous tales, untold, unwritten, never to be recorded or remembered, lost beyond
00:18all divining and all imagining, that sleep in the double silence of far recessive time
00:24and space, the chronicles of Saturn, the archives of the moon in its prime, the legends of Antilia
00:31and Moaria, these are full of an unsurmised or forgotten wonder, and strange are the multitudinous
00:39tales withheld by the light-years of Polaris and the galaxy.
00:43But none is stranger, none more marvelous, than the tale of Hotar and Evadon and their
00:50voyage to the planet Svanamo, from the last isle of foundering Atlantis.
00:56Harken, for I alone shall tell the story, who came in a dream to the changeless center where
01:02the past and future are always contemporary with the present, and saw the veritable happening
01:08thereof, and Waking gave it words.
01:13Hotar and Evadon were brothers in science as well as by consanguinity.
01:19They were the last representatives of a long line of illustrious inventors and investigators,
01:24all of whom had contributed more or less to the knowledge, wisdom, and scientific resources
01:29of a lofty civilization matured through cycles.
01:33One by one, they and their fellow savants had learned the arcanic secrets of geology,
01:38of chemistry, of biology, of astronomy.
01:42They had subverted the elements, had constrained the sea, the sun, the air, and the force of gravitation,
01:48compelling them to serve the uses of man.
01:52And lastly they had found a way to release the typhonic power of the atom, to destroy,
01:58transmute, and reconstruct the molecules of matter at will.
02:02However, by that irony which attends all the triumphs and achievements of man, the progress
02:08of this mastering of natural law was coincidental with the profound geologic changes and upheavals
02:14which caused the gradual sinking of Atlantis.
02:18Age by age, eon by eon, the process had gone on.
02:23Huge peninsulas, whole seaboards, high mountain ranges, cityed plains and plateaus, all went
02:31down in turn beneath the diluvial waves.
02:34With the advance of science, the time and location of future cataclysms was more accurately predictable,
02:41but nothing could be done to avert them.
02:45In the days of Hotar and Evadon, all that remained of the former continent was a large
02:51isle called Poseidonis.
02:54It was well known that this isle, with its opulent seaports, its eon surviving monuments
03:00of art and architecture, its fertile inland valleys and mountains lifting their spires
03:06of snow above semi-tropic jungles, was destined to go down ere the sons and daughters of the
03:12present generation had grown to maturity.
03:15Like many others of their family, Hotar and Evadon had devoted long years of research to
03:20the obscure telluric laws governing the imminent catastrophe and had sought to devise a means
03:25of prevention, or at least of retardation.
03:30But the seismic forces involved were too deeply seated and too widespread in their operation
03:35to be controllable in any manner or degree.
03:39No magnetic mechanism, no zone of repressive force, was powerful enough to affect them.
03:45When the two brothers were nearing middle age, they realized the ultimate futility of their
03:50endeavors.
03:51And though the peoples of Poseidonis continued to regard them as possible saviors, whose
03:56knowledge and resource were well-nigh superhuman, they had secretly abandoned all effort to salvage
04:02the doomed isle, and had retired from sea-gazing La Phara, the immemorial home of their family,
04:09to a private observatory and laboratory far up in the mountains of the interior.
04:14Here, with the hereditary wealth at their command, the brothers surrounded themselves not only
04:20with all the known instruments and materials of scientific endeavor, but also with a certain
04:26degree of personal luxury.
04:29They were secluded from the world by a hundred scarps and precipices, and by many leagues of
04:34little-trodden jungle.
04:35And they deemed this seclusion advisable for the labors which they now proposed to themselves, and whose real
04:41nature they had not divulged to anyone.
04:44Hotar and Evadon had gone beyond all others of their time in the study of astronomy.
04:50The true character and relationship of the world—the Sun, the Moon, the planetary system, and the
04:57stellar universe—had long been known in Atlantis.
05:01But the brothers had speculated more boldly, had calculated more profoundly and more closely
05:08than anyone else.
05:10In the powerful, magnifying mirrors of their observatory, they had given special attention
05:15to the neighboring planets, had formed an accurate idea of their distance from the Earth,
05:21had estimated their relative size, and had conceived the notion that several, or perhaps
05:26all, might well be inhabited by creatures similar to man, or, if not inhabited, were potentially
05:33capable of supporting human life.
05:35Venus, which the Atlanteans knew by the name of Svanamo, was the planet which drew their
05:42curiosity and their conjecture more than any other.
05:46Because of its position, they surmised that it might readily resemble the Earth in climatic
05:50conditions and in all the prerequisites of biological development.
05:55And the hidden labor to which they were now devoting their energies was nothing less than
05:59the invention of a vehicle by which it would be possible to leave the ocean-threatened isle
06:04and voyage to Svanamoï.
06:08Day by day the brothers toiled to perfect their invention, and night by night, through the
06:13ranging seasons, they peered at the lustrous orb of their speculations as it hung in the
06:19emerald evening of Poseidonus, or above the violet-shrouded heights that would soon take the
06:26saffron footprints of the dawn.
06:29And ever they gave themselves to bolder imaginings, to stranger and more perilous projects.
06:38The vehicle they were building was designed with complete foreknowledge of all the problems
06:42to be faced, of all the difficulties to be overcome.
06:47Various types of air vessels had been used in Atlantis for epochs, but they knew that none
06:53of these would be suitable for their purpose even in a modified form.
06:58The vehicle they'd finally devised, after much planning and long discussion, was a perfect
07:03sphere, like a miniature moon.
07:06Since, as they argued, all bodies travelling through etheric space were of this shape.
07:12It was made with double walls of a metallic alloy whose secret they themselves had discovered.
07:18An alloy that was both light and tough beyond any substance classified by chemistry or mineralogy.
07:24There were a dozen small round windows lined with an unbreakable glass and a door of the same
07:29alloy as the walls, that could be shut with hermetic tightness.
07:33The explosion of atoms in sealed cylinders was to furnish the propulsive and levitative
07:37power and would also serve to heat the sphere's interior against the absolute cold of space.
07:44Solidified air was to be carried in electrum containers and vaporized at the rate which would
07:49maintain a respirable atmosphere.
07:52And foreseeing that the gravitational influence of the earth would lessen and cease as they went
07:56further and further away from it.
07:59They had established in the floor of the sphere a magnetic zone that would simulate the effect
08:03of gravity and thus obviate any bodily danger or discomfort to which they might otherwise
08:08be liable.
08:10These labours were carried on with no other assistance than that of a few slaves, members
08:14of an aboriginal race of Atlantis, who had no conception of the purpose for which the
08:19vessel was being built, and who, to ensure their complete discretion, were deaf-mutes.
08:25There were no interruptions from visitors, for it was tacitly assumed throughout the isle that
08:30Hotar and Evadon were engaged in seismologic researches that required a concentration both
08:36profound and prolonged.
08:39At length, after years of toil, of vacillation, doubt, anxiety, the sphere was completed.
08:46Shining like an immense bubble of silver, it stood on a westward-facing terrace of the laboratory,
08:52from which the planet Sphenomo was now visible at eventide, beyond the purpling sea of the
08:58jungle.
08:59All was in readiness.
09:00The vessel was amply provisioned for a journey of many lustrums and decades, and was furnished
09:05with an abundant supply of books, with implements of art and science, with all things necessary
09:10for the comfort and convenience of the voyagers.
09:13Hotar and Evadon were now men of middle years, in the hale maturity of all their powers and faculties.
09:20They were the highest type of the Atlantean race, with fair complexions and lofty stature,
09:25with the features of a lineage both aristocratic and intellectual.
09:31Knowing the nearness of the final cataclysm, they had never married.
09:35They had not even formed any close ties.
09:38But had given themselves to science, with a monastic devotion.
09:42They mourned the inevitable passing of their civilization, with all its epic garnered lore,
09:48its material and artistic wealth, its consummate refinement.
09:53But they had learned the universality of the laws whose operation was plunging Atlantis beneath
09:58the wave, the laws of change, of increase and decay.
10:02And they had schooled themselves to a philosophic resignation, a resignation which, mayhap, was
10:08not untempered by a foresight of the singular glory and novel, unique experiences that would
10:14be entailed by their flight upon hitherto untravelled space.
10:20Their emotions, therefore, were a mingling of altruistic regret and personal expectancy,
10:25when, on the evening chosen for their departure, they dismissed their wandering slaves with a
10:31writ of manumission, and entered the orb-shaped vessel.
10:36And Svanomoe brightened before them with a pulsing luster, and Poseidonus darkened below,
10:42as they began their voyage into the sea-green heavens of the west.
10:47The great vessel rose with a buoyant ease beneath their guidance, till soon they saw the lights
10:53of Susran the capital, and its galley-crowded port, Lafara, where nightly revels were held,
11:00and the very fountains ran with wine that people might forget a while the predicted doom.
11:06But so high in the air had the vessel climbed, that Hotar and Evadon could hear no faintest
11:12murmur of the loud lyres and strident merrymaking in the cities beneath.
11:18And they went onward and upward, till the world was a dark blur, and the skies were a
11:23flame with stars that their optic mirrors had never revealed.
11:28And anon the black planet below was rimmed with a growing crescent of fire, and they soared
11:33from its shadow to unsettling daylight.
11:37But the heavens were no longer a familiar blue, but had taken on the lucid ebon of ether, and
11:43no star nor world, not even the littlest, was dimmed by the rivalry of the sun.
11:50And brighter than all was Svanomoe, where it hung with unvacillating lambents in the void.
11:58Mile by stellar mile the earth was left behind, and Hotar and Evadon, peering ahead to the goal
12:05of their dreams, had almost forgotten it.
12:08Then, gazing back, they saw it was no longer below, but above them, like a vaster moon.
12:17And studying its oceans and isles and continents, they named them over one by one from their
12:23maps as the globe revolved.
12:26But vainly, they sought for Poseidonus amid an unbroken glittering waste of sea.
12:32And the brothers were conscious of that regret and sorrow which is the just due of all a vanished
12:38beauty, of all sunken splendour.
12:41And they mused a while on the glory that had been Atlantis, and recalled to memory her obelisks
12:47and domes and mountains, her palms with high and haughty crests, and the fire-tall plumes
12:53of her warriors that would lift no longer to the sun.
12:57Their life in the orb-like vessel was one of ease and tranquillity, and differed little
13:02from that to which they were accustomed.
13:05They pursued their wonted studies, they went on with experiments they had planned or begun
13:10in past days, they read to each other the classic literature of Atlantis, they argued
13:16and discussed a million problems of philosophy or science.
13:20And time itself was scarcely heeded by Hotar and Evadon, and the weeks and months of their
13:25journey became years, and the years were added into lustrums, and the lustrums into decades.
13:33Nor were they sensible of the change in themselves and in each other, as the years began to weave
13:39a web of wrinkles in their faces, to tint their brows with the yellow ivory of age, and to thread
13:46their sable beards with ermine.
13:48There were too many things to be solved or debated.
13:54Too many speculations and surmises to be ventured.
13:57For such trivial details as these to usurp their attention.
14:01Svanomoe grew larger and larger as the half-oblivious years went by, till anon it rolled beneath them
14:08with strange markings of untravelled continents and seas unsailed by man.
14:14And now the discourse of Hotar and Evadon was wholly concerning the world in which they would
14:18so soon arrive, and the peoples, animals, and plants which they might expect to find.
14:25They felt in their ageless hearts the thrill of an anticipation without parallel, as they
14:29steered their vessel toward the ever-widening orb that swam below them.
14:36Soon they hung above its surface, in a cloud-laden atmosphere of tropic warmth.
14:41But though they were childishly eager to set foot on the new planet, they sagely decided
14:47to continue their journey on a horizontal level, till they could study its topography with
14:52some measure of care and precision.
14:55To their surprise, they found nothing in the bright expanse below that in any manner suggested
15:00the work of men or living beings.
15:03They had looked for towering cities of exotic aerial architecture, for broad thoroughfares
15:09and canals and geometrically measured areas of agricultural fields.
15:14Instead, there was only a primordial landscape of mountains, marshes, forests, oceans, rivers,
15:21and lakes.
15:23At length they made up their minds to descend.
15:26Though they were old, old men, with five-foot ermine beards, they brought the moon-shaped
15:32vessel down with all the skill of which they had been capable in their prime, and opening
15:37the door that had been sealed for decades, they emerged in turn, Hotar preceding Evadon,
15:44since he was a little the elder.
15:47Their first impressions were of a torrid heat, of dazzling colour and overwhelming perfume.
15:54There seemed to be a million odours in the heavy, strange, unstirring air.
15:59Odours that were almost visible in the form of wreathing vapours.
16:04Perfumes that were like elixirs and opiates, that conferred at the same time a blissful drowsiness
16:10and a divine exhilaration.
16:13Then they saw that there were flowers everywhere.
16:16That they had descended in a wilderness of blossoms.
16:19They were all of unearthly form, of super-mundane size and beauty and variety, with scrolls and
16:26volutes of petals many-hued, that seemed to curl and twist with a more than vegetable animation
16:32or sentiency.
16:34They grew from a ground that their overlapping stems and calyxes had utterly concealed.
16:40They hung from the bowls and fronds of palm-like trees they had mantled beyond recognition.
16:46They thronged the water of still pools.
16:50They poised on the jungletops like living creatures, winged for flight to the perfume-drunken heavens.
16:57And even as the brothers watched, the flowers grew and faded with a thaumaturgic swiftness.
17:03They fell and replaced each other as if by some ledgerdomain of natural law.
17:09Hotar and Evadon were delighted.
17:11They called out to each other like children, they pointed at each new floral marvel that
17:15was more exquisite and curious than the rest, and they wondered at the speed of their miraculous
17:21growth and decay.
17:24And they laughed at the unexampled bizarrery of the sight when they perceived certain animals
17:29new to zoology, who were trotting about on more than the usual number of legs, with orchidaceous
17:36blossoms springing from their rumps.
17:39They forgot their long voyage through space.
17:42They forgot there had ever been a planet called the Earth and an isle named Poseidonis.
17:48They forgot their lore and their wisdom as they roamed through the bowers of Svanamo.
17:55The exotic air and its odours mounted to their heads like a mighty wine, and the clouds of golden
18:01and snowy pollen which fell upon them from the arching arbors were potent as some fantastic
18:07drugs.
18:09It pleased them that their white beards and violet tunics should be powdered with this pollen,
18:15and with the floating spores of plants that were alien to all terrene botany.
18:21Suddenly Hotar cried out with a new wonder and laughed with a more boisterous mirth than before.
18:29He had seen that an oddly folded leaf was starting from the back of his shrunken right hand.
18:35The leaf unfurled as it grew.
18:37It disclosed a flower bud.
18:39And lo!
18:40The bud opened and became a triple-challiced blossom of unearthly hues, adding a rich perfume
18:46to the swooning air.
18:48Then, on his left hand, another blossom appeared in like manner, and then leaves and petals were
18:54burgeoning from his wrinkled face and brow, were growing in successive tears from his limbs
18:59and body, were mingling their hair like tendrils and tongue-shaped pistils with his beard.
19:05He felt no pain, only an infantile surprise and bewilderment as he watched them.
19:11Now, from the hands and limbs of Evadon, the blossoms also began to spring.
19:17And soon the two old men had ceased to wear a human semblance, and were hardly to be distinguished
19:22from the garland-laden trees about them.
19:26And they died with no agony.
19:28As if they were already part of the teeming, floral life of Svanomoi, with such perceptions
19:33and sensations as were appropriate to their new mode of existence.
19:38And before long their metamorphosis was complete, and every fibre of their bodies had undergone
19:44a dissolution into flowers.
19:47And the vessel in which they had made their voyage was embowered from sight in an ever-climbing
19:52mass of plants and blossoms.
19:56Such was the fate of Hotar and Evadon, the last of the Atlanteans, and the first, if not
20:03also the last, of human visitors to Svanomoi.
Be the first to comment