introducing
clark ashton smith's
the door to saturn

You won't find any other story quite like this, not even in the oeuvre of Clark Ashton Smith.  None of his other tales straddles two categories quite so dramatically.  Due to its opening scene it's classifiable as belonging to his Hyperborean cycle, but for the most part it's set on Saturn and hence counts as one of his interplanetaries.  
    Another quality that makes The Door to Saturn unique is its blend of humour and wonder.  To convey this is, for a critic, quite a challenge!
    Nevertheless, I suggested it for one of our Roll Off A Tangent series, back in April 2023.    I chose it in the belief that my podcast-team colleagues would find it irresistible, The result was a shock to me.  None of them thought much of the story!  They just didn't get it.  So disappointed was I at the result, that I did not even bother to put up a link to the podcast when the recording became public.   However, it has just occurred to me that my intro to the podcast might be worth displaying here.

Stid:  But before you do this, let me suggest, Zendexor, why you didn't get the result you wished.  
    It's not the fault of the story; it's the fault of wrong expectations of the story.
    One of the podcasters admitted, openly, that his favouring part was right at the beginning before the tale turned "comedic".  It was the combination of comedy with the genre-fantasy which put him off.  

Zendexor:  Whereas in my case that boundary-stretching aspect is precisely what appeals to me most.  The Door to Saturn is both successfully comedic and successfully fantastic, with superb invention all the way through.
    As you say, wrong expectations led to the podcast being a flop.  To appreciate a story you need to tune in to what it is.  In fact I'd go further: if you don't tune in, then although your eyes may be scanning it line by line, you're not really reading it.
    And now, here's the intro I spoke for the podcast:

Greetings, fellow connoisseurs of literature, and welcome to another episode of Roll Off A Tangent.  I am Robert Gibson alias Zendexor, and my fellow team-members are Nikita Zuev and XJ.
    This time we are discussing a 1932 tale by Clark Ashton Smith, called The Door to Saturn. 
    It has just about everything – politics, religion, adventure, cookery, and a sensitive exploration of the relations between the sexes among the headless people of Saturn.
    In Earth’s distant past, the sorceror Eibon, a devotee of the unpopular subterranean god Zhotthaquah, is warned by that entity that the authorities, headed by inquisitor Morghi, are after him.  His only chance of escape is a secret panel in his tower that offers a transdimensional doorway to the planet Saturn, from which Zhotthaquah had originally come to Earth.
    Eibon perforce steps through this one-way door and onto Saturn.  Here the reader is treated to a powerful sensory description of the Saturnian landscape, with its crumbly soils and metallic-looking streams.    

detail from a painting by Bruce Pennington

The slope beneath him was lined with rows of peculiar objects; and he could not make up his mind whether they were trees, mineral forms, or animal organisms, since they appeared to combine certain characteristics of all these. This preternatural landscape was appallingly distinct in every detail, under a greenish-black sky that was overarched from end to end with a triple cyclopean ring of dazzling luminosity. The air was cold, and Eibon did not care for its sulphurescent odor or the odd puckery sensation it left in his nostrils and lungs. And when he took a few steps on the unattractive-looking soil, he found that it had the disconcerting friability of ashes that have dried once more after being wetted with rain.

Presently there appears a bizarre Saturnian relative of Zhotthaquah, by name Hziulquoigmnzhah, who points into the distance, says “Iqhui dlosh odhqlonqh,” and then departs.
    The next arrival on the scene is none other than Morghi the inquisitor who has rashly followed the sorcerer through the transdimensional door.   Eibon breaks the news to him that he’s now on Saturn and there’s no going back.  Henceforth, the two old enemies gradually learn co-operation. 
    Eibon claims to have been entrusted with a mission by the Saturnian god Hziulquoigmnzhah. 

    "And what is this mission of yours?"
    "That will be revealed in due time," answered Eibon with sententious dignity. "I am not allowed to discuss it at present. I have a message from the god which I must deliver only to the proper persons."
    Morghi was unwillingly impressed.
    "Well, I suppose you know what you are doing and where you are going. Can you give me any hint as to our destination?"
    "That, too, will be revealed in due time."

Actually there is no “mission”; Hziumquoigmnzhah’s words “Iqhui dlosh odhqlonqh” eventually turn out simply to have meant “be on your way”; but Eibon never finds it hard to bluff Morghi.
    Further events cement the alliance of the two former antagonists after they have lived as guests for a while among the folk called the Blemphroims, who admire the earthmen’s possession of heads, a part of the body which the Blemphroims sadly lack.  After a while the Blemphroims inform Eibon and Morghi that they have been chosen to mate with the Djhenquomh, the national mother, a monstrously enormous female, in the hope that the resulting next generation of Blemphroims will possess heads.

…the sorcerer temporized by making a few queries anent the legal and social status which would be enjoyed by Morghi and himself as the husbands of the Djhenquomh. And the naive Blemphroims told him that this would be a matter of brief concern; that after completing their marital duties the husbands were always served to the national mother in the form of ragouts and other culinary preparations.

    Escape is easy, for as the author says,

Apparently it had never occurred to the simple and patriotic Bhlemphroims that the fathering of the next national litter was a privilege that anyone would dream of rejecting.

Eibon and Morghi finally manage to settle down among a slightly more cephalically endowed people, the Ydheems, who possess rudimentary heads.

    There was no national mother among the Ydheems, who propagated themselves in a far more general manner than the Bhlemphroims, so existence was quite safe and tranquil…
    Morghi, however, was not entirely happy. Though the Ydheems were religious, they did not carry their devotional fervor to the point of bigotry or intolerance; so it was quite impossible to start an inquisition among them. But still there were compensations: the fungus-wine of the Ydheems was potent though evil-tasting; and there were females of a sort, if one were not too squeamish.

To recap: I’ve stressed the farcical humour of this story, but will always remember that wonderful first impression of the landscape of Saturn.

Clark Ashton Smith, "The Door to Saturn" (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, January 1932).

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