The Last Hieroglyph

The Last Hieroglyph
The Last Hieroglyph
by Clark Ashton Smith
	Title page of "The Last Hieroglyph" as it appeared in Weird Tales, April 1935.
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Zothique
Genre(s)	Fantasy
Published in	Weird Tales
Publication type	Pulp magazine
Publisher	Popular Fiction Publishing Co.
Media type	Print
Publication date	April 1935

"The Last Hieroglyph " is a short story by American author Clark Ashton Smith as part of his Zothique cycle, and first published in the April 1935 issue of Weird Tales.

Plot[]

Nushain the astrologer in Xylac charts a new horoscope which he copies down in a book. The horoscope foretells of a journey involving three guides to the house of Vergama, a god. A mummy appears in his written horoscope. Soon he is visited by a mummy who leads Nushain from his abode to the underworld. Nushain is accompanied by his black servant Mouzda and his dog Ansarath. Initially, he is overwhelmed by the underworld and flees back the way he came but ends up getting lost. The mummy finds him and leads Nushain to the shore of an unknown ocean. There they are visited by a merman and an uncrewed ship. The ship follows the merman as it sends them over a boiling ocean. The ship brings them to a wall of fire. A salamander beckons them to follow it through the wall and they do so. The salamander sends them to a staircase that ends with a house of great height. They find that it is the home of the god Vergama. Vergama shows them they are all characters in her book as she points to the three guides that led them here: the mummy, the merman, and the salamander. Turning a page, a great wind sweeps up the three as they find that they too are merely characters in Vergama's book.

Reception q(≧▽≦q)[]

In the 1981 book Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers, Will Murray called it an "ironic tale."^[1] In the 1977 book The Weird Tales Story, Robert Weinberg called it "one of his typical entertaining fantasies of Zothique."^[2]

References[]

^ Smith, Curtis (1981). Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press. p. 506. ISBN 0-312-82420-3.
^ Weinberg, Robert (1999). The Weird Tales Story. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside Press. p. 39. ISBN 1587151014.

External links[]

The Last Hieroglyph title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Text of "The Last Hieroglyph"

This article about a fantasy short story (or stories) published in the 1930s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

[Smith_1981-1] Smith, Curtis (1981). Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press. p. 506. ISBN 0-312-82420-3.

[Weinberg_1999-2] Weinberg, Robert (1999). The Weird Tales Story. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside Press. p. 39. ISBN 1587151014.

[1]

[2]

v t Works of Clark Ashton Smith
Bibliography Deities
Short stories	"The Black Abbot of Puthuum" "The Charnel God" "The Dark Eidolon" "The Death of Ilalotha" "The Empire of the Necromancers" "The Isle of the Torturers" "The Last Hieroglyph" "Necromancy in Naat" "A Night in Malnéant" "The Ninth Skeleton" "The Return of the Sorcerer" "Sadastor" "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros" "The Testament of Athammaus" "The Voyage of King Euvoran" "The Weaver in the Vault" "The Witchcraft of Ulua" "Xeethra"
Collections	Out of Space and Time Lost Worlds Genius Loci and Other Tales The Dark Chateau Spells and Philtres The Abominations of Yondo Tales of Science and Sorcery Poems in Prose Other Dimensions Zothique Hyperborea Xiccarph Poseidonis Selected Poems The Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith A Rendezvous in Averoigne The Emperor of Dreams Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith
Settings	Averoigne Hyperborea Zothique Poseidonis
Related	Cthulhu Mythos Cykranosh Tsathoggua

The Last Hieroglyph

Contents

Plot[]

Reception q(≧▽≦q)[]

See also[]

References[]

External links[]