I Remember Lemuria

Amazing Stories cover, March 1945 thumbnail
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Amazing Stories cover, March 1945
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Sensational ‘Racial Memory’ story

This entire issue can be downloaded here

Racial Memory was a concept very much in vogue at the start of the 20th century. Robert E Howard’s poem ‘Cimmeria’ is one of my favorite examples.

I remember
The dark woods, masking slopes of sombre hills;
The grey clouds’ leaden everlasting arch;
The dusky streams that flowed without a sound,
And the lone winds that whispered down the passes.

Vista on vista marching, hills on hills,
Slope beyond slope, each dark with sullen trees,
Our gaunt land lay. So when a man climbed up
A rugged peak and gazed, his shaded eye
Saw but the endless vista – hill on hill,
Slope beyond slope, each hooded like its brothers.

It was a gloomy land that seemed to hold
All winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun,
With bare boughs rattling in the lonesome winds,
And the dark woodlands brooding over all,
Not even lightened by the rare dim sun
Which made squat shadows out of men; they called it
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and deep Night.

It was so long ago and far away
I have forgot the very name men called me.
The axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,
And hunts and wars are shadows. I recall
Only the stillness of that sombre land;
The clouds that piled forever on the hills,
The dimness of the everlasting woods.
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.

Oh, soul of mine, born out of shadowed hills,
To clouds and winds and ghosts that shun the sun,
How many deaths shall serve to break at last
This heritage which wraps me in the grey
Apparel of ghosts? I search my heart and find
Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.

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The Slithering Shadow

Held Against Her Will, Weird Tales pulp magazine cover thumbnail
Weird Tales - September 1933 thumbnail
Weird Tales 1933-09 003 thumbnail
Weird Tales 1933-09 026 thumbnail
Weird Tales 1933-09 075 thumbnail
Held Against Her Will, Weird Tales pulp magazine cover
Weird Tales - September 1933
Weird Tales 1933-09 003
Weird Tales 1933-09 026
Weird Tales 1933-09 075

Fritz Leiber rated The Slithering Shadow (a.k.a. Xuthal of the Dusk) among the worst of the Conan stories, calling it “repetitious and childish, a self-vitiating brew of pseudo-science, stage illusions, and the ‘genuine’ supernatural.” However, that didn’t stop this original Margaret Brundage painting for selling for $42,000. This entire issue can be downloaded here

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