Lin Carter's Simrana Cycle

Lin Carter, enthralled by the “Dreamland” tales of Lord Dunsany and others, contributed to the growing genre with a series of his own stories, dubbed “The Simrana Tales.” Some of them were published in a variety of small-press magazines and other publications, but they were never collected into a book, and many tales have never been published at all.

Until now.

As Carter himself commented in his afterword to Lord Dunsany’s Beyond the Fields We Know, “The most Dunsanian of my fiction is the Simrana series … the name was coined many years ago and lay in my notebooks awaiting the right kind of story to occur to me.” A complete collection of his Simrana tales could hardly be called complete without including the stories that inspired him to write them in the first place: Lord Dunsany’s masterpieces of fantasy. Here at last is the complete Simrana Cycle, accompanied by outstanding stories in the genre including Dunsany’s own “The Sword of Welleran” and others; Henry Kuttner’s 1937 Weird Tales gem “The Jest of Droom-avista,” and new stories by leading authors in the field: Gary Myers, Darrell Schweitzer, Adrian Cole, Charles Garofalo, and Glynn Barrass, as well as six ink drawings by Roy G. Krenkel, originally done for the publication of Carter’s “The Gods of Neol Shendis.”

Contents:

The Gods of Niom Parma, Lin Carter

The Whelming of Oom, Lin Carter

Zingazar, Lin Carter

How Sargoth Lay Siege to Zaremm, Lin Carter

The Laughter of Han, Lin Carter

The Benevolence of Yib, Lin Carter

How Ghuth Would Have Hunted the Silth, Lin Carter

The Thievery of Yish, Lin Carter

How Her Doom Came Down at Last on Adrazoon, Lin Carter

How Jal Set Forth on His Journeying, Lin Carter

The Gods of Neol Shendis, Lin Carter

How Shand Became King of Thieves, Lin Carter and Robert M. Price

Caolin the Conjurer (or, Dzimdazoul), Lin Carter and Glynn Owen Barrass

The Philosopher Thief, Darrell Schweitzer

The Sorcerer's Satchel, Gary Myers

An Unfamiliar Familiar, Adrian Cole

The Summoning of a Genie in Error, Adrian Cole

The Sad But Instructive Fable of Mangroth's Tomes, Charles Garofalo

How Frindolf Got His Fill of Revenge, Charles Garofalo

The Devil's Mine, Robert M. Price

The Good Simranatan, Robert M. Price

How Thongor Conquered Zaremm, Robert M. Price

The River, Lord Dunsany

The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth, Lord Dunsany

The Sword of Welleran, Lord Dunsany

Carcassonne, Lord Dunsany

How Nuth Would Have Practiced His Art Upon the Gnoles, Lord Dunsany

The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller, and of the Doom That Befell Him, Lord Dunsany

In Zaccarath, Lord Dunsany

How the Enemy Came to Thlunrana, Lord Dunsany

The Jest of Droom Avista, Henry Kuttner