Not so much in rebuttal to Mr. Ackerman as to toss another stick onto the fire, let me confess that the scientific fiction type of literature seems to me among the dullest written. I avoid whenever possible, except in such cases where it passes the boundaries into the weird and horrible. Of course, the work of Wells is an exception. This may be blasphemy to most of your readers, but there it is. To return to Mr. Ackerman's complaint: I fail to see why it is any more deplorable for Wonder Stories to publish Clark Ashton Smith's horror story than for Weird Tales to publish Edmond Hamilton's pseudo-scientific effusions. And it was Amazing Stories that had the honor to publish "The Colour Out of Space" by America's master of the weird, Lovecraft. Richard E. Morse. A DREAM OF THE ABYSS by Clark Ashton Smith I seemed at the sheer end: Albeit mine eyes, in mystery and night Shrouded as with the thick profundity of death, Or as if underneath Lethean lentors drowned, Saw never lamp nor star nor dead star's wraith of light, Yet seemed I at the world's sheer end; And fearfully and slowly I drew breath From silent gulfs of all uncertainty and dread, Precipitate to Nadir from around; Nor trusted I on any side to tread One pace, lest I should overstep the brink And infinitely and forever sink Past eye-shot of the Cyclopean sun, When from the bulwark of the world adown oblivion, He on the morrow should stare after me. Swift from infinity, The black, unformed, enormous Fear that lives between the stars, Clutched with the cold, great darkness at my heart. Then from the gulf arose a whispering, And rustle as of Silence on the wing, To stay and stand Anear at my right hand: What Powers abysmal, born o' the blind black air, What nameless demons of the nether deep That 'scape the sun and from the moonlight live apart, Came and conspired against me there I heard not, ere the whispering Ceased, and a heavier darkness seemed to spring Upon me, and I felt the silence leap And clasp me closer, and the sweep Of all the abyss reach up and drag Body and feet from the crumbling uttermost crag To the plumb and infinite emptiness unknown: Nor knew I, in tumult of the rapid air, If me did Azrael or Abaddon bear, Or if I fell alone. HOW TO COLLECT FANTASY FICTION by Julius Schwartz Part Three