Many readers have asked the Editor where they could secure such books
as the "Necronomicon," "The Book of Eibon" and other books of medieval
sorcery mentioned in the stories of Clark Ashton Smith, H. P.
Lovecraft, and other authors of weird tales.
Upon these requests, the Editor wrote to Clark Ashton Smith, inquiring
of him whether these books had been translated into English as yet or
not, whereupon, Mr. Smith informs us as follows:
"'Necronomicon,' 'Book of Eibon,' etc., I am sorry to say, are all
fictitious. Lovecraft invented the first, I the second. Howard, I
believe, fathered the German work on the Nameless Cults. It is really
too bad that they don't exist as objective, bonafide compilations of
the elder and darker Lore! I have been trying to remedy this, in some
small measure, by cooking up a whole chapter of Eibon. It is still
unfinished, and I am now entitling it 'The Coming of the White
Worm'.... This worm mentioned in Eibon is Rlim Shaikorth, and comes
from beyond the pole on a strange, gigantic iceberg with a temperature
of absolute zero."
We'll bet that most Smith and Lovecraft fans really believed in the
existence of these books (as did the editor). A reader informs us that
in the July issue of Weird Tales, these books were mentioned in three
stories.
This incident only goes to prove that Smith and Lovecraft have the
gift of creating the "illusion of reality," the phrase defined in the
1924 Anniversary Number of Weird Tales.
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