“The Uncharted Isle” (1930)

I thought this story by Clark Ashton Smith was pretty darn good—sometimes, in the wastelands of horror fiction, a good story gives me relief and gratitude. So imagine my surprise and chagrin to find it ranked 4 (below average) and 6 (slightly above average) on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), where, admittedly, the rankings are scanty. I overcompensated with a 9 (very good but not quite perfect), which should maybe be an 8 (good; recommended)—present standings with my vote: 6.33. But come on. Sure, there’s maybe not much original about the premise. A man, the first-person narrator, is lost at sea, adrift in a small boat after a terrible fire on his ship. He washes up on an island where nothing is right. He doesn’t recognize the vegetation. He doesn’t even recognize the stars at night. Things only get more weird from there. The obvious interpretation is that he is still on the boat at sea, dreaming, or perhaps raving mad. It doesn’t feel like a dream, however. I haven’t read enough Smith yet to know whether he’s even good at dreams, but I don’t think it’s what he’s trying for here. What makes the story work for me is how real it feels, in spite of its fantastic details. Indeed, the details are crazy good and unnerving. He spends a day or so recovering with fresh water, strange fruit, and rest, then explores the island interior. He discovers a community on the other side. He wanders in and finds people there of an unknown ethnicity. He is unable to communicate with them. He appears to be like a ghost, walking unseen among them. They are preoccupied with something that seems to be of great concern. “At first I couldn’t make out what they were doing, or trying to do; but plainly they were much in earnest about it. Some were looking at the sea or the sun, and then at long scrolls of a paper-like material which they held in their hands; and many were grouped on a stone platform around a large, intricate metal apparatus resembling an armillary.” The strong implication, as the story goes along, is that they too are in a wrong place, or something has gone wrong with what they know. The vegetation and the sky may not be theirs either. It feels like interdimensional membranes have grown thin, or something equally out of Algernon Blackwood. It’s a very simple story—in then out of whatever this reality is. What makes it work is that this “other” place is so well and fully imagined. The details are precise and weird, even if the ostensible explanation—it was all the dream of a man adrift at sea for “days and days”—is lame. You come away feeling it could not possibly be just a dream.

Clark Ashton Smith, The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies
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