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lordenglishssbm's review against another edition
3.0
The prose is strong enough to elevate what are otherwise unremarkable stories. I'm not surprised that Smith only wrote three stories about Captain Volmar, because he doesn't seem to care about the character.
briarrose1021's review against another edition
5.0
While it is not unusual for past authors to have unpublished works, it is unusual for us to be able to experience them posthumously, especially when there was only one copy and it had been missing. Thanks to the investigative work of various individuals, The Red World of Polaris is not only available to us, but here grouped with other works involving the same characters. While not the greatest works by any stretch of the imagination, they are still great reads/listens for what they represent to the genre in general. I also really appreciated the inclusion of information about the previously missing work and the biographical information about the author. As I had never heard of this author before, it was nice to have a little bit of information about him included.
ederwin's review
2.0
Picked this up knowing almost nothing about CAS (Clark Ashton Smith). It turns out that this is some of his earliest "weird" stories, written for the early "weird tales" type magazines. The main thrill of this publication for fans of CAS is the third (of three) stories, "The Red World of Polaris", which had been thought to be lost, but was found and published 75 years later in this volume.
These are nominally SF stories, since they involve travels in a spaceship to other planets. But they feel more like fantasy or horror. (The distinctions are still fuzzy but were much more fuzzy back then.) The plot of the first story can be summed-up as "Some guys get marooned on a planet, see some weird and dangerous plants and animals, almost get killed a few times, and then leave the planet." They don't feel like real human characters, and in fact barely say a word to each other during the story. The imagination behind those weird plants and animals is quite good, and that would have probably been interesting enough to me back in 1930, but I've come to expect more.
Before this work, CAS had been a poet. It shows in his word choices. He uses a stilted, unnatural vocabulary that I expect from mediocre 19th century poetry. The introduction and afterword both point out that this is not his best work, so I won't write him off completely based on this sample, but I'm not likely to go looking for more anytime soon.
These are nominally SF stories, since they involve travels in a spaceship to other planets. But they feel more like fantasy or horror. (The distinctions are still fuzzy but were much more fuzzy back then.) The plot of the first story can be summed-up as "Some guys get marooned on a planet, see some weird and dangerous plants and animals, almost get killed a few times, and then leave the planet." They don't feel like real human characters, and in fact barely say a word to each other during the story. The imagination behind those weird plants and animals is quite good, and that would have probably been interesting enough to me back in 1930, but I've come to expect more.
Before this work, CAS had been a poet. It shows in his word choices. He uses a stilted, unnatural vocabulary that I expect from mediocre 19th century poetry. The introduction and afterword both point out that this is not his best work, so I won't write him off completely based on this sample, but I'm not likely to go looking for more anytime soon.
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