Today I sent off a gory horror-tale to Kline for marketing, the first and only story I’ve had time to write since I got home. I don’t know if I’ll ever have time to write another.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. barlow, 19 May [1936], MSS. Brown Digital Repository

My own writing is practically at a standstill. Am making rather feeble efforts to write for the horror-tale and sugary love-story markets to get some money, and hve finished one story of the former type which Kline has very competently critciized for me and suggested specific revisions. I may get around to it someday. I have neither time nor inclination to write about anything any more. I suppose it will come back ,but the hour is not yet. Though there has been one opus of about 2000 words or so which I wrote about a month ago, with no thought of sale. All about mysterious doings in a holly wood. Once when I was very small a letter from relatives in California around Christmas time reported that someone had gone down to Hollywood to get some holly, and I quite naturally thought, how lovely and convenient, and pictured the aunt in question wandering thru the deep, dark glossy wood of holly, with the growing scarlet light of the berries reflecting from the shining leaves, a place of gloom and greenness and glows of crimson. The image has returned to me time and again, and I finally had to do something about it.
—C. L. Moore to H. P. Lovecraft, 26 May 1936, LCM 113

My recent writings seem to have bogged down completely. In the last five months I have produced one trashy horror which Kline ages ago asked me to rewrite, thinking he could sell it in a revised form and which I haven’t touched since, and a drippy love-story which languished away and ceased half-finished some six weeks ago. The weather is partly responsible, but I must admit a sort of mental vacuum which shows no promise of change. I devote seven and a half hours daily to my secretarial duties and spend the rest of the time sewing desultorily, knitting a very handsome afg[h]an, attending about three movies weekly, induling in endless gossip with friends. How long this cloistered and nun-like seclusion will continue I wish I knew. I suspect that if my brain were functioning I would find myself bored to a horrible death, and rather dread the awakening. A few non-commercial attempts which I mentioned I should be very happy to have you read if I could ever get them finished to my satisfaction. I am writing and rewriting them over and over, in moments of comparative consciousness, and am far from satisfied even yet. However, to quote Mr. Penner once again, There’ll come a day.
—C. L. Moore to H. P. Lovecraft, 24 Jun 1936, LCM 143

Early 1936 was a tumultuous time in the life of C. L. Moore. In February, her fiancé of at least three years, (Herbert) Ernest Lewis, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In June just a few months later, her correspondent and fellow pulpster Robert E. Howard also died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Moore understandably struggled to write anything during this time—kept going in part by a trip to Florida, during which H. P. Lovecraft sent her long letters, and she attempted to writer stories to order for Otis Adelbert Kline, a literary agent.

None of Moore’s letters from the period that I have seen give any insight into the origin of “Lost Paradise,” either when it was written and submitted to Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales, or what may have inspired it. In format, the story is a typical Northwest Smith tale—a drink at a bar, a sudden bit of action, uncovering an ancient mystery—but the idea it is wrapped around, the story-within-a-story, seems to owe more to “The Bright Illusion” (1934) and “Greater Glories” (1935). The central focus is around the Seles:

They live somewhere in the remotest part of Asia, no one knows exactly where. But they’re not Mongolian. It’s a pure race, and one that has no counterpart anywhere in the solar system that I ever heard of.
—C. L. Moore, “Lost Paradise” in Weird Tales Jul 1936

Race in Moore’s Northwest Smith stories is an odd point, and worth a moment’s consideration. The peoples of Earth, Mars, and Venus are all presented as essentially human in body and mind, if not culture; while we aren’t privy to interplanetary marriages, there is the implication that they are more or less one human species, even if separated into different races in 1930s terms. C. L. Moore generally avoids getting more specific; Northwest Smith is implicitly Caucasian, and she generally avoids depicting or referring to Black people, Asians (“Mongoloids” or “Mongolians” in 1930s racial parlance), Native Americans, or any other specific 1930s racial groupings. There are other sentient beings, more or less human-like, such as Shambleau (“Shambleau”) and the Alendar (“Black Thirst”), and at least some of the god-like entities can conceive children, such as Nyusa (“Nymph of Darkness”). For the most part, however, the majority of Northwest Smith’s interplanetary setting seems populated by human beings, and are treated more like exotic cultures and peoples in the 1930s than, say, the random inhabitants of the Mos Eisley cantina in Star Wars.

In the context of 1930s pulp fiction, “Lost Paradise” is a variation of the “Lost Race” or “Lost World” plot; the only difference is that instead of physically traveling to some isolated valley, cavern, island, or moon, Northwest Smith and Yarol are sent back in time—mentally, at least, a bit like Lovecraft’s Great Race of Yith in The Shadow out of Time (Astounding Stories Jun 1936).

Be it remembered that ail who come to pay the race’s debt and buy anew our favor that their world may live, must come to us willingly, with no resistance against our divine hunger—must surrender without struggle. And be it remembered that if so much as one man alone dares resist our will, then in that instant is our power withdrawn, and all our anger called down upon the world of Seles. Let one man struggle against our desire, and the world of Seles goes bare to the void, all life upon it ceasing in a breath. Be that remembered!
—C. L. Moore, “Lost Paradise” in Weird Tales Jul 1936

As in “Dust of the Gods” (1934), Northwest Smith once more confronts three ancient gods of a lost world—the story is, like all of the Northwest Smith tales so far, effectively standalone with no direct continuity to the others, so neither Smith nor Yarol make any comment about this coincidence. Moore sets up the eventual struggle with typical skill (Chekov’s prophecy: you can’t set a condition for the total destruction of a world without pulling the trigger).

And once again C. L. Moore puts a dream on paper—a lovely fantasy. Northwest Smith remains one of the greatest fiction characters yet created.
—Donald Allgeir, The ‘Eyrie’ in Weird Tales Nov 1936

I do not like Lost Paradise. What I like is plain old-fashioned gjhost stories, werewolf stories and vampire stories.
—J. J. Hammond, The ‘Eyrie’ in Weird Tales Nov 1936

Response to “Lost Paradise” in The ‘Eyrie,’ Weird Tales‘ letter page, was slight and mixed; the story wasn’t bad, but it had the misfortune to be published in the same issue as “Necromancy in Naat” by Clark Ashton Smith and the first part of “Red Nails” by Robert E. Howard, which rather overshadowed it. Lovecraft was even more sparse with praise than usual:

Klarkash-Ton & C L M dominate the July issue.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Richard F. Searight, 27 Aug 1936, LPS 426

(The only reason Lovecraft doesn’t praise Robert E. Howard is because he never read serials until he had all the parts.)

While “Lost Paradise” is a fair story, in comparison with Northwest Smith’s other adventures it’s notable how passive he is here. It is Yarol that goes after the Seles, Yarol that wants the Secret, and Yarol who ultimately shoots the old priest in the back. Smith was just drinking segir-whiskey and people-watching in New York when he suddenly had to resist the vampiric impulses of some ancient alien entities. It really reads like a Northwest Smith frame wrapped around a different story altogether.

“Lost Paradise” was published in the July 1936 issue of Weird Tales. Scans of this issue are available on the Internet Archive.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Was there ever such a duel in the whole universe as the one between Northwest Smith and the nameless being that fought him in that Martian room?—a gripping tale by the author of “Shambleau”
—Epigraph to “The Cold Gray God” in Weird Tales (Oct 1935)

Summer in the Midwest, before the widespread adoption of air conditioning, could be sweltering. The very air gets sticky, even nights could be stifling and sweaty. C. L. Moore hadn’t been slacking during the summer of 1935, but Northwest Smith had been absent from the pages of Weird Tales. Wright had the story that would be “The Cold Grey God” on hand at least as early as March, but he sat on it, apparently waiting for the right time, and thinking of the right title. That came with the October 1935 issue.

And WT is publishing in July either the Smith story which Wright has entitled THE COLD GREY GOD, all about a lovely Venusian named Judai, or else a Jirel story we have been revising for months. He hasn’t decided yet which to use.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 20 Mar 1935, MSS Brown Digital Repository

On the subject of titles, I envy you your ability. The most painful part of writing, so far as I’m concerned, is naming the stories. Mr. Wright more or less takes it out of my hands sometimes, as in the case of a story scheduled for mid-summer sometime, which he is calling “The Cold Gray God”. I’m getting a regular spectrum of colored gods, staring with black and working slowly upward thru grey toward goodness knows what.
—C. L. Moore to H. P. Lovecraft, 7 May 1935, Letters to C. L. Moore and Others 34

The story starts with snow on Mars. A femme fatale. Northwest Smith, unable to repress his curiosity, goes to her house. The aesthetic borrows aspects of hardboiled fiction, of Oriental stories, the details adapted to the extraterrestrial setting. The idea of an ancient religion buried in the hearts and minds of an exotic culture was not uncommon in stories like Robert E. Howard’s “Skull-Face” (WT Oct-Nov-Dec 1929) and Robert W. Chambers’ The Slayer of Souls (1920); here it was applied to Martians.

“The Cold Gray God” is not set up as an archaeological horror; it’s set up as a weird heist story, in the strange criminal underworld of Mars. As in “Dust of the Gods” (1934), he’s hired to do a not-quite-legal job. Unlike in that story, the job itself isn’t the problem. A noirish sensibility of a web of secrets unfolds the narrative, and once again ensnares Northwest Smith in a plot of ancient space gods, strange survivals from a dim and distant past, and one with an unspeakable name:

And he knew why the men of Mars never spoke their cold god’s title. They could not. It was not a name human brains could grasp or human lips utter without compulsion from Outside. […] Nor was the name wholly gone, even now. It had withdrawn, for reasons too vast for comprehension. But it had left behind it shrines, and each of them was a little doorway into that presence; so that the priests who tended them furnished tribute. Sometimes they were possessed by the power of their god, and spoke the name which their devotees could not hear, yet whose awful cadences were a storm of power about them. And this was the origin of that strange, dark religion which upon Mars has been discredited for so long, though it has never died in the hearts of men.
—C. L. Moore, “The Cold Gray God” in Weird Tales (Oct 1935)

Which is a neat way to get around coming up with a mouthful of letters like Cthulhu or Tsathoggua. While C. L. Moore never deliberately added to the Mythos of the Necronomicon and Unaussprechlichen Kulten, she very much absorbed the ideas of Lovecraft and co., and adapted those tropes to her own use. This is not unlike Northwest Smith’s version of “The Call of Cthulhu,” or an homage to the same. The stars were right—then came the raygun.

If there’s a criticism of the story, it’s that it is very similar to Smith’s other adventures. This isn’t the first god he’s faced down, or the first time he’s struggled against an alien will. It is a standalone episode; while there are elements of the setting that are shared with other stories, there is still no continuity. This encounter does not cause Smith to reflect on any other encounters; this experience does not hinge on any previous one. So while the setting expands a bit with each story, the series itself maintains the same episodic nature as that other great stalwart of Weird Tales, Jules de Grandin. Readers weren’t looking for character development, no origin or ending, and writers weren’t going for character arcs for the most part.

“The Cold Gray God” is well-written, a good example of a Northwest Smith story. It just lacks a bit of novelty.

Nor did readers complain about that, although they complained about other things:

I read “Cold Gray God” last night, and liked it good. My only objections are personal: I don’t like “cooed” as a word; and I can’t stand “clean death”. For some obscure reason, I don’t fancy a girl cooing; whilst during the past year or so it seems to me all the fictional characters have gone overboard about having a “good, clean death”—by a “cool, clean sword”, “clean, consuming fire”…or good clean, clean, clean—like a clank, clank, clank—will drive me clean coo-koo, so help me, if I come across it about oncemore!!!
—Forrest J. Ackerman to C. L. Moore, 2 Oct 1935

Readers in “The ‘Eyrie'” were more positive, with one writing simply:

I surely enjoyed The Cold Gray God by C. L. Moore. I like stories of Mars.
—Orby Martin, Weird Tales Dec 1935

Among Moore’s pulp peers, H. P. Lovecraft counted it among the best stories in the issue. A typical version of his response:

W T is rather lousy of late. In the Sept. issue “Vulthoom” & “Shambler from the Stars” barely save it from being a total loss, while “Cold Grey God” & “Last Guest” perform a similar service for the Oct. number.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Lee McBride White, 28 Oct 1935, Letters to J. Vernon Shea et al. 362

If he noted the similarity to some of his own ideas, it hasn’t survived in any letter that’s seen print. At some point, Lovecraft conveyed the essence of this to Moore herself:

I’m so glad you approved of my “Cold Grey God” (which is Wright’s title, not mine.)
—C. L. Moore to H. P. Lovecraft, 16 Oct 1935, Letters to C. L. Moore and Others 68

One thing seems clear: both the readers and Lovecraft had come to appreciate Moore as a reliable writer, one of Weird Tales‘ more familiar and recognizable names for quality. Farnsworth Wright, the editor, was content to keep buying her stories. With this, her 13th published story in a pulp magazine or fanzine, Moore herself seems to have achieved a comfortably high level of confidence and competence.

“The Cold Grey God” was published in the October 1935 issue of Weird Tales. Scans of this issue are available on the Internet Archive.

Thanks to Marcos Legaria for his help.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Mr. Wright has accepted the new story, JULHI. (Pronounce it! I can’t.) All about a very peculiar one-eyed female of a hitherto unknown race, with an immovable mouth perpetually stretched open in a heart-shaped arch, thru which she speaks by humming in various keys and intensities. You’ve heard people make a violin talk, haven’t you? Saying “I don’t know,” and “What?” and that sort of thing, the way one does without opening the mouth. Well, anyhow, she lives on sensation, somewhat as the Alendar lived on beauty. Then there’s a city which exists simultaneously in two worlds thru some obscure sort of magic. Only in one world time moves faster than in the other, so , if you know the way, you can step out of crumbling ruins into the same city still standing in the other plane. All very complicated.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 10 Sep-9 Oct 1934, MSS. Brown Digital Repository

By 1935, C. L. Moore was fairly well-established at Weird Tales, having placed 5 stories in 1934 and establishing two series characters, Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry, both of whom were well-received by both the general readership and among her peers. At the same time, Moore was now in contact with R. H. Barlow, Lovecraft, Forrest J. Ackerman, and others in pulp circles, and receiving conflicting advice. The Great Depression was still going, she still needed to bring in money with her writing, but Lovecraft and Barlow were talking about her development as an artist.

The fifth published adventure of Northwest Smith, “Julhi,” seems another concession to Farnsworth Wright’s demand for more Northwest Smith stories than a tale that demanded to be told. Moore even provided one of her own illustrations for the story:

 I’ve just sent in a drawing for JULHI which I really do think is good. Don’t know if he’ll take it, but darnit, it is one of the best I’ve ever done. She said modestly.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 10 Sep-9 Oct 1934, MSS. Brown Digital Repository

The story itself shows Moore’s continued flagrant flouting of any division between science fiction and fantasy. The opening is almost that of a hardboiled detective tale or Oriental adventure: back on Venus once more, Northwest Smith has been kidnapped and awakes, unarmed and with a local girl in the ancient ruins of Vonng, a city raised by sorcery. There is a distinct echo with “Black Thirst” and other Northwest Smith stories—the doomed young woman Apri; the supernatural alien Julhi with her strange, vampiric hunger; and Smith as the fly in the ointment.

Like every Northwest Smith story so far, this is a standalone episode; there is no reference to the events of “Shambleau” or “Dust of the Gods,” no comparison to Smith’s other weird adventures. There is a lot of exposition and little enough plot; long paragraphs of description and sensuous language, but not surfeit of characters and events. Names and details suggest a broader setting; perhaps not as coherent as Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age or Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne, but fairly consistent. And at the end, Smith has won the battle and lost the girl, so to speak.

There is a strong echo of stories like A. Merritt’s “The Metal Monster” (1920) in this comparatively brief tale—while Moore gets Smith into the action swiftly, once Smith crosses over to the other side, he acts as witness to something alien, beyond his understanding, and serves as the audience’s surrogate as he learns something of the secret of Julhi and ancient Vonng—the was Julhi’s vampiric qualities take on the shape of some new and unguessed cosmic sin or taboo. Even for readers who have already read similar confrontations in “Shambleau” and “Black Thirst,” it works:

And then — Julhi, by that writer of writers, C. L. Moore. The plot is terrible, yes — it smacks of his other stories — but oh ! the way in which Julhi is written! Of any stories of Mr. Moore’s I’ve read, Julhi — for its beautiful prose — certainly is a masterpiece. I’ve read it over several times, and every time I find more beautiftd phrases than before. Mr. Moore writes in such a quiet yet vivid style. One realizes that he is not showing off his use of an exceptional vocabulary, but that he writes naturally, easily and gracefully. I give Julhi my vote for first choice in the March issue of Weird Tales.”
—Michael Liene, ‘The Eyrie’ in Weird Tales May 1935

Reader response for “Julhi” was less universally positive than for previous tales, but all the more interesting for all that. Several readers had picked up on Moore’s use of ancient gods and alien terrors and made comparisons to the work of Lovecraft and other Mythos writers, such as Mrs. E. W. Murphy:

I have gotten so that I am even a little tired of the Old Ones, the whole family of them; and I am sincerely sorry, because so many of the best writers write about them. An exception is the Northwest Smith series; when Northwest encounters an elder race, it is not a formless, dark mind or a weird beast, but it is something unique.
—Mrs. E. W. Murphy, ‘The Eyrie’ in Weird Tales May 1935

One of the more interesting responses was from a young Henry Kuttner, who in 1936 would break into Weird Tales, and in five would marry C. L. Moore.

Best story was the shortshort, What Waits in Darkness by Loretta Burrough. Second best is C. L. Moore’s yarn. I note especially the great part adjectives play in Moore’s stories. Oddly, while they help achieve a weird effect, I chose Burrough’s story for the simple, direct manner in which the good story was told. […]
There is a wealth of top-notch material waiting to be converted into modern stories, as Cahill did with an old legend in his recent yarn, Charon, Maybe I’ll write one myself and send it to you. After all, C. L. Moore was your ‘find’ for 1934, and you’ll need a new find for the new year, won’t you?
—Henry Kuttner, ‘The Eyrie’ in Weird Tales May 1935

I also read “Julhi”, which is better than the B.I., though a bit sentimentalised, clogged by direct, continuous explanatory matter, & inclined to repeat the Shambleau formula. Klarkash-Ton isn’t greatly stuck on it, & expresses a fear that Catherine the Great may develop into a single-plot artist like Ed Ham, Ward, & Morgan.
—H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, [16 Mar 1935], O Fortunate Floridian 218

Kuttner’s note of the difference between her style and Burrough’s would somewhat reflect the difference between Moore’s style and his own—though they would, as a writing team, learn to marry their personal strengths together as well.

In the Lovecraft circle, “Julhi” elicited several longer comments from H. P. Lovecraft than usual, who noted:

“Julhi” is pretty much a formula yarn, despite Miss Moore’s undeniable power to [evoke utter] strangeness, & to suggest monstrous ____________[. However,] Wright’s propaganda in favour of popular action stuff, plus the author’s own weakness for 1900-esque romantic slush, are combining with deadly effect—so that perhaps another single-plotter is to be added to the ranks already adorned by Messrs. Hamilton, Ward, Morgan, et al. Little Ar-E’ch-Bei—the premier Moore fan—is quite concerned about the slipping of the new luminary; & is urging the gang to find some excuse to shoot her tactful words of advice counteracting the tradesmanlike recommendations of Satrap Pharnabozus . . . . . & the philistinic suggestions of Prince Effjay of Akkamin, who has been volunteering collaboration!
—H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, [26 Mar 1935], Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 595

(The letter was somewhat damaged, henced the blanks.) Ar-E’ch-Bei is R. H. Barlow; Satrap Pharnabozus is Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales; Effjay of Akkamin is Forrest J Ackerman; and the authors are Edmond Hamliton, Harold Ward, and Basset Morgan. Farnsworth Wright did indeed appear to be leaning more into pulpish weird-adventure stories in 1934 and 1935, and Lovecraft and Barlow feared that Moore was following suit.

If “Julhi” is a formula yarn, however, it was Moore’s own formula, which even Lovecraft would admit:

Regarding “Julhi”—I wouldn’t tend to give it an extreme classification in either direction. It certainly displays very well the author’s peculiar power to evoke images & conceptions of utter strangeness, & to suggest monstrous gateways from the tri-dimensional world to other spheres of entity, yet somehow doesn’t have quite the concentrated explanation, & the central idea is largely a repetition of “Shambleau” & “Black Thirst”. There is too much literal & concentrated power of the Shambleau them. I would tend to rate it above “Black God’s Shadow”, but below “Black God’s Kiss”. It is hard to measure a story absolutely—there are so many points to consider. The real test is simply that of ability to awake & sustain a certain mood in the discriminating reader. “Julhi” falls short of certain other Moore yarns because there is something just the least expected about the various twists & touches—of course a sort of conventional romanticism hovers over the whole thing. However—the story of course rises miles above the lifeless, mechanical tripe forming the bulk of W T’s contents. As for the illustration—it is of course nothing notable, though it would have to go a long way to take the cellar championship from some of the other “Art” work in the magazine.
—H. P. Lovecraft to William F. Anger, 27 Mar 1935, Letters to Robert Bloch et al. 230

Even with Lovecraft’s reservations, he rated it one of the best stories in the issue, second only to Robert E. Howard’s Conan yarn “Jewels of Gwahlur”:

March W T is pretty fair on the whole—honours divided among “Jewels of Gwahlur”, “Julhi”, & “The Sealed Casket”.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Duane W. Rimel, 16 Apr 1935, Letters to F. Lee Baldwin et al. 268

Because Moore was drawn into the circle of correspondents of Lovecraft and Weird Tales, we sometimes get details on her from other sources than her direct correspondence. E. Hoffmann Price, a friend of Lovecraft and Howard who had been trying to make ends meet as a full-time pulp writer, informed Lovecraft that Moore was considering joining the American Fiction Guild:

Also got a line from C.L. Moore in response to my solicitation in behalf of the American Fiction Guild. A very pleasant young lady, judging from her letter; and if she turned her talents to more profitable fields, I doubt not that she could do well—though I feel that a bit of discipline in plotting, in writing a “tighter” story would help. Still, I remember Shambleau as one of the outstanding weird tales, and N.W. Smith as one of the few interplanetary characters I can remember more than .0005 part of a second. And doubtless she knows what she is doing. But if she has any any [sic] ambitions to be a fictioneer—which I think she has—she would do well to make herself a few other markets to guard her against the day when the weird tales gods will boot her into the outer darkness and she will find out that writing and selling and living by the sweat of one’s typewriter is tough stuff, when one has become deeply rutted in the weird tales method of story telling. Somehow, one can’t very long do both kinds of fiction, and one can’t live on weird tales a-tall! Not unless some people get very much more “preferred” rates than I ever got!
—E. Hoffmann Price to H. P. Lovecraft, 19 Apr 1935, MSS Brown Digital Repository

Price was at this point a bit sour on Weird Tales for personal and professional reasons, especially how little they paid and how late they were in paying it. To which Lovecraft responded, in exactly the opposite attitude.

And so Miss Moore is considering the A.F.G.? Young Bobby Barlow is afraid she’ll go commercial & lose the potency & freshness which come of spontaneous, non-formula writing—which may be so, especially since she uses stock romantic characters & situations anyhow, as a result of a womewhat unclassical taste. Her work seems to be like that of Two-Gun Bob in spirit—accidentally suited to the herd’s taste, yet motivated by a genuine self-expressive instinct. If she became a general fiction-factory she’d lose the distinctive merit she now has—though possibly turning out an acceptable grade of formula-junk. One can never tell in advance about any given case.
—H. P. Lovecraft to E. Hoffmann Price, 4 May 1935, Letters to E. Hoffmann Price etc. 179

Moore was being tugged in different directions by several well-meaning but philosophically antipodal friends. The interplay of influences—from Barlow and Lovecraft on one hand, and Price and Ackerman on the other—would help shape her subsequent fiction as she struggled to find her own path between commercial necessity and artistic expression.

Whatever else was going on, everyone wanted to see what C. L. Moore would write next.

“Julhi” may be read online for free at the Internet Archive.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The fan-letters for “Scarlet Dream” were still being run in Weird Tales when the fourth adventure of Northwest Smith was announced, to appear in the August 1934 issue. While it sold readily enough to Farnsworth Wright, Moore herself had misgivings about the story:

An August tale, DUST OF GODS, is pretty poor, I’m sorry to say.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow. n.d. (early Apr 1934), MSS Brown Digital Repository

The young fan Barlow had been in touch with Moore for a few months,

Which brings us round to your query about revamping some of my tales. If you think they’re worth while, and if the necessity arises, I’ll try, tho it’ll be like pulling teeth. The mental sloven again. Yes, the Guardian of the cave in DUST OF GODS was rather unnecessary. You’re not telling me anything about my own defects that I don’t know already. That story was written just at the drag-end of a very blank period, and patched painfully together. Maybe that’s why I hate it so—it was so hard to write. The Guardian, I still think, could have been quite effective if handled more carefully. The idea came from no less a personage than the Sea-Hag’s Goon (I suppose Popeye graces your Floridan funnies?) Did you ever notice that the Goon, even in the darkest night, never seems affected by shadows at all? It’s as if the creature belonged to another state of being so remote from ours that the dark can’t touch it. I don’t believe “Segar” intended that effect, for he doesn’t shade his other characters either, but the Goon’s shadowless state so impressed me that I thought something should be done. You observe the sad result, tho if I’d been in a fresher state of mind I might have been able to write a whole story around such a being. It was a good idea, anyhow, don’t you think?
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 5 Jul 1934, MSS Brown Digital Repository

C. L. Moore was still working a full-time job, writing stories whenever she could find the time. Like with many of her other stories at this point, she took impromptu inspiration from everyday events:

I think the funniest, tho, was the god Lsa who appeared briefly in DUST OF GODS. When I wrote that story I happened to see an ad for the L. S. Ayres & Company department story of Indpls. in a newspaper, and grabbed at the initials. Dust of Gods itself happened by accident. I was typing “Gold Dust” and accidentally left out the “l”, and it struck me how interesting “god dust” sounded.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 10 Sep-9 Oct 1934, MSS Brown Digital Repository

In “Shambleau,” “Black Thirst,” and “Scarlet Dream,” Northwest Smith falls into adventure essentially by random chance. By contrast, “Dust of the Gods” opens up like a hardboiled crime story, as Smith and his partner Yarol look for a job to afford their next bottle of segir-whiskey. They get an offer to find the dead gods of a lost planet, and embark on what in another context would be an epic fantasy quest. One with distinctly Lovecraftian overtones.

So you see the old gods have not died utterly. They can never die as we know death: they come from too far Beyond to know either death or life as we do.
—C. L. Moore, “Dust of the Gods”

Northwest Smith has a welcome skepticism and practicality to this revelation. He had, at this point, seen several alien species, had his mind and soul tugged at by different creatures that would have been eldritch entities in a Mythos story, and sought and found adventure on many worlds. Dead gods and fifty thousand dollars (plus expenses) was just another Tuesday.

The story quickly takes on an Indiana Jones-esque twist, with some gorgeous moments:

“I saw it once carved in the rock of an asteroid,” went on Yarol in a whisper. “Just a bare little fragment of dead stone whirling around and around through space. There was one smooth surface on it, and this same sign was cut there. The Lost Planet must really have existed, N. W., and that must have been a part of it once, with the god’s name cut so deep that even the explosion of a world couldn’t wipe it out.”
—C. L. Moore, “Dust of the Gods”

Moore plays a little fast and loose with the physics, and much of the story is pure description, speculation, and exposition. Yet it works well enough for its purpose. A small adventure into a fragment of Big Time, to find the fossils of ancient, pre-human gods lost in the wastelands of Mars. It veers from the formula of Moore’s previous stories—no sexy alien women here, to seduce Northwest Smith or fall in love with him—but it gives him more time and repartee with Yarol, to deepen the characterization of their partnership and to expand on the setting, the ancient Mars that was once green, and now is not, where even the most ancient and forbidden god is now little more than a common cussword.

By this point, Moore had established sufficient reputation that H. P. Lovecraft was looking forward to her next story:

I got the new W.T. yesterday, but have not had time even to glance at it. Doubt if it amounts to much except for the Moore & Howard offerings.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Robert Bloch, [11 Aug 1934], Letters to Robert Bloch & Others 109

Lovecraft was not disappointed:

Read the Aug. W. T., & fancy it is a trifle above the average. Howard, Moore, & Flagg items all notable from bizarre standpoint.
—H. P. Lovecraft to R. H. Barlow, [14 Aug 1934], O Fortunate Floridian 163

I’ve now read the August W T, & would say it stands a little above the average. I’d group the redeeming items in this order: Moore, Howard, Cave, Flagg. Miss Moore certainly is the discovery of the last half-decade—the most distinguished accession to the noble company since Howard appeared in 1925.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Richard Ely Morse, 15 Aug 1934, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky 89

Nor was Lovecraft alone:

C. L. Moore certainly must be a genius—I liked her Dust of Gods almost better than any of the tales so far published. My one objection is the omnipresent ray-gun, whose use seemed particularly unnecessary in this tale, since the dust could better have been ignited by some secret device installed aeons agao to protect it from desecration.
—Clark Ashton Smith to R. H. Barlow, 10 Sep 1934, To Worlds Unknown 256

Smith was being, perhaps, a little disingenuous here. He had done his share of interplanetary adventures for the pulps, including those set on Mars and dealing with brooding, ancient, alien horrors, such as “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis” (Weird Tales May 1932), and if he didn’t use a lot of rayguns, he and more were both very much tapping into some of the same atmosphere of interplanetary horror, of a setting on distant worlds that were lived-in and grimy, not perfect and unblemished.

Average fans praised Moore, though “Dust of the Gods” took second place to Robert E. Howard’s “The Devil in Iron” for the best story in the issue. Still, Moore was cognizant of the quiet efforts by R. H. Barlow against falling into pulp conventions and formulaic stories.

I’ve taken your advice at last about burying dear old Northwest Smith, temporarily at least. Just yesterday I had a letter from Mr. Wright accepting a new story with a medieval lady as the central character.
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 16 May 1934, MSS Brown Digital Repository

“Dust of the Gods” may be read for free online here.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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