Clark Ashton Smith Review: The Mandrakes

“The Mandrakes” is the first story in Clark Ashton Smith’s collection, The Maze of the Enchanter. I doubt if anyone will rate it as Smith’s best story or his worst but it demonstrates something that many writers should learn how to do–know how to establish rules for world-building but, even more importantly, know how to break those rules when a story calls for it.

Smith had established that his fictional French province, Averoigne, outlawed sorcery. So, how to have a sorcerer operating in the open?

In David Gerrold’s The World of Star Trek, he described a process he called “hardening of the arteries,” when a television show lays down so many rules (moving outside the galaxy causes massive increase in psychic powers, the Federation cannot interfere with developing civilizations) that it limits the storytelling.

Star Trek has thought of multiple ways to disregard the Prime Directive for the sake of a story, some sound justified, others not so much.

In “The Mandrakes,” Smith didn’t dodge the ban on sorcery–he openly addressed it. He didn’t overly elaborate his reason around it (a Star Trek explanation would have been that the sorcerer saved the illegitimate son of the Pope from a werewolf and was granted double secret dispensation).

Smith explained that the sorcerer was out of the way from the rest of the population, benefitted the wealthy with his services, and seemed harmless, only selling love potions. Low-key but effective explanation.

Unfortunately, the sorcerer wasn’t so harmless to his wife, killing her during an argument. He hid the body well but didn’t count on a crop of mandrake to give him away.

Stories of mandrake root are found in everything from Medieval legends to Harry Potter. I’m surprised that with Smith’s love for vegetable/animal hybrids that he took so long to feature mandrakes.

“The Mandrakes” falls in the middle of Smith’s stories. The ending is easy to see coming and, although the mandrakes are grotesque, they pale before Smith’s more imaginative works.

It does show Smith’s respect for world-building by maintaining a consistency with Averoigne. That’s a quality many writers, including his friend Lovecraft, didn’t always live up to.