If you are puzzled by any fact connected with fantasy fiction, send your questions in to us, and we will do our best to answer them. Any question sent in by you and not answered in this issue was received too late and will appear in our next issue. STARTLING FACT Many readers have asked the Editor where they could secure such books as the "Necronomicon," "The Book of Eibon" and other books of medieval sorcery mentioned in the stories of Clark Ashton Smith, H. P. Lovecraft, and other authors of weird tales. Upon these requests, the Editor wrote to Clark Ashton Smith, inquiring of him whether these books had been translated into English as yet or not, whereupon, Mr. Smith informs us as follows: "'Necronomicon,' 'Book of Eibon,' etc., I am sorry to say, are all fictitious. Lovecraft invented the first, I the second. Howard, I believe, fathered the German work on the Nameless Cults. It is really too bad that they don't exist as objective, bonafide compilations of the elder and darker Lore! I have been trying to remedy this, in some small measure, by cooking up a whole chapter of Eibon. It is still unfinished, and I am now entitling it 'The Coming of the White Worm'.... This worm mentioned in Eibon is Rlim Shaikorth, and comes from beyond the pole on a strange, gigantic iceberg with a temperature of absolute zero." We'll bet that most Smith and Lovecraft fans really believed in the existence of these books (as did the editor). A reader informs us that in the July issue of Weird Tales, these books were mentioned in three stories. This incident only goes to prove that Smith and Lovecraft have the gift of creating the "illusion of reality," the phrase defined in the 1924 Anniversary Number of Weird Tales. * * * * * Urge your friends to subscribe to TFF. ANNALS OF THE JINNS by R. H. Barlow 2--The Shadow From Above A midsummer day in the hamlet of Droom. The villagers went about their various tasks, and within the tiny market-square the spice-vendors and the people from the hills with their exotic burdens of gay fruits created a pleasant hum of busy occupation. Sleeping dogs lay contentedly in the warm sunlight, and the squat beasts of burden ambled about peacefully upon their six clawless paws, their grotesque faces slit with toad-like grins. All was, no one could have denied, entirely calm.