Remembering Scott Connors

Scott at the 2015 Lovecraft Film Festival

The Clark Ashton Smith and weird fiction scholar Scott Connors passed away near the end of October. I’ve looked for obituaries but have found none. His work deserves more attention, particularly in the weird fiction community, so I’ve gathered some information from friends and other sources, and would like to present it here as a memorial. 

According to the Fictionmags Index, he was born in 1957 as William Scott Connors. I never knew him to use this first name. To me he was always Scott. I got to know him first via the Lovecraftian apa the EOD (The Esoteric Order of Dagon), which I had joined in early 1996. I lasted more than twenty-six years in the Order, and left at the end of 2022. Scott joined in early 1999 and left at the end of 2016. This was Scott’s second time in the Order, which had been founded in 1973. Scott was an early member (from western Pennsylvania), from late 1974 through 1982, with a few gaps. Somewhere along the line, he got a B.A. in English and History, and attended the University of Salzburg in Austria. In 1983 he enlisted in the U.S. Army, and was stationed in Korea for a year or so. He left fandom completely for over fifteen years.

When Scott returned to the EOD in 1999 he was based in South Carolina, and by mid-2001 he had moved permanently to northern California, where he lived until his death, unexpected, reportedly of “natural causes” over the weekend of 25-26 October. His sister had his body cremated and shipped back east. Scott’s friends are planning a memorial service for next year, probably in the spring.

Over the years he contributed many essays and book reviews to All Hallows, Crypt of Cthulhu, Dead Reckonings, Fantasy Crossroads, Faunus, The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter, The Green Book, The Lovecraft Annual, Lovecraft Studies, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Publishers Weekly, Sargasso, Skelos, The Weird Fiction Review, Weird Tales (book reviewer, 2006-2008), Wormwood, and probably other publications. (Some of his substantial articles first appeared in one of his EOD-zines.)

His long-announced biography of Clark Ashton Smith was never finished, and he complained in recent years of writer’s block. How much he actually wrote of it is unknown, but there are certainly enough of Scott’s stray essays  on Clark Ashton Smith to make up a thick memorial volume. I hope this happens.

Meanwhile, here is a list of his most significant publications, on Smith, Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Doubtless others could be added to this list. 

Clark Ashton Smith

Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith (Arkham House, 2003), edited by David E. Schultz and Scott Connors

The Red World of Polaris: The Adventures of Captain Volmar by Clark Ashton Smith (Night Shade Books, 2003), edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger

Star Changes: The Science Fiction of Clark Ashton Smith (Darkside Press, 2005), edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger

The Freedom of Fantastic Things: Selected Criticism on Clark Ashton Smith (Hippocampus Press, 2006), edited by Scott Connors. Includes essay “Gesturing Towards the Infinite: Clark Ashton Smith and Modernism”

The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, 5 volumes (Night Shade Books), edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, comprising:
1. The End of the Story (2006)
2. The Door to Saturn (2007)
3. A Vintage from Atlantis (2007)
4. The Maze of the Enchanter (2009)
5. The Last Hieroglyph (2010) 

The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith (Night Shade Books, 2011), edited by Scott Connors and Ron Hilger. [A companion to the 5-volume Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith.]

In the Realms of Mystery and Wonder: Collected Prose Poems and Artwork of Clark Ashton Smith (Centipede Press, 2017), edited by Scott Connors

Clark Ashton Smith: A Comprehensive Bibliography (2020), by S.T. Joshi, David E. Schultz and Scott Connors

Contributor to The Unique Legacy of Weird Tales (2015), edited by Justin Everett and Jeffrey H. Shanks, essay “Pegasus Unbridled: Clark Ashton Smith and the Ghettoization of the Fantastic”

Contributor to Anno Klarkash-Ton (Rainfall Books, 2017), edited by Glynn Barrass and Frederick J. Mayer, essay “The Emperor of Dreams – Donald A. Wandrei”

Editor, Lost Worlds: The Journal of Clark Ashton Smith Studies, issues 1 through 5 (2004-2008)

H.P. Lovecraft

A Century Less a Dream: Selected Criticism on H.P. Lovecraft (Wildside Press, 2002), edited  by Scott Connors

Editor, The Journal of the H.P. Lovecraft Society, two issues 1976-1979

Robert E. Howard

Contributor to  The Barbaric Triumph (2004), edited by Don Herron, essay “Twilight of the Gods: Howard and Völkstumbewegung”

Contributor to The Robert E. Howard Reader (2010), edited by Darrell Schweitzer, essay “Weird Tales and the Great Depression”

Co-editor, with others, The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard Studies,  2015-2019