Carcosa

Carcosa is a fictional city in the Ambrose Bierce short story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1891). In Bierce's story, the ancient and mysterious city is barely described, and is viewed only in hindsight (after its destruction) by a character who once lived there.

Its name may be derived from the medieval city of Carcassonne in France.

The King in Yellow

The city was later used more extensively in Robert W. Chambers' book of horror short stories published in 1895 entitled The King in Yellow. Chambers had read Bierce's work and had also borrowed a few other names (including Hastur) from Bierce's work.

In Chambers' stories, and within the apocryphal play (also titled The King in Yellow) which is mentioned several times within them, the city is a mysterious, ancient, and possibly cursed place. The most precise description of its location given is that it said to be located on the shores of Lake Hali in the Hyades. The descriptions given of it, however, make it clear that it must be located on another planet, or possibly even in another universe.

For instance:

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink behind the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies,

But stranger still is

Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,

Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,

Die though, unsung, as tears unshed

Shall dry and die in

Lost Carcosa.

—"Cassilda's Song" in The King in Yellow Act 1, Scene 2

Lake Hali

Lake Hali is a misty lake found near the city of Carcosa. In the play The King in Yellow, the mysterious cities of Yhtill"Yhtill" is the name of the city where The King is Yellow is set. In the language of Alar (a city in the play), the word means "stranger" and is the name used by the character wearing the "Pallad Mask". (Harms, "Yhtill", The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, p. 341; cf. "The Repairer of Reputation", Chambers.) and Carcosa stand beside the lake. It is referenced in the Cthulhu Mythos stories of H. P. Lovecraft and his imitators. The city of Carcosa is said to be the home of the god Hastur, although it should be noted that this conjecture (along with the concept of Hastur as a Great Old One) began not with Chambers or Lovecraft but with the fiction of August Derleth.

The name Hali apparently originiated in Ambrose Bierce's "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" (1891) in which Hali is the author of a quote which prefaces the story. It is possible that the Hali referred to is the Urdu poet Maulana Hali. The narrator of the story implies that the person named Hali is now dead (at least in the timeline of the story).

Other appearances

Later writers, including H. P. Lovecraft and his many admirers, became great fans of Chambers' work and incorporated the name of Carcosa into their own stories, set in the Cthulhu Mythos. In the stories of Derleth and a few others Carcosa is the residence of the Great Old One Hastur. Occasionally, Hastur will alter reality and merge parts of Earth into Carcosa, usually bringing along unwilling people as well.

In the short story "More Light", in which James Blish presented his version of a complete text of the play The King in Yellow, Carcosa was described as having four singularities: that it appeared overnight, that no one could tell whether it sat upon the waters of Lake Hali or beyond them on the unseen farther shore, that the rising moon appeared to be in front of the city's towers rather than behind them, and that one knew the city's name to be Carcosa the moment one looked upon it. In Blish's version, Carcosa was created as a city of exile for the King in Yellow, because he was not king in Aldebaran.

Marion Zimmer Bradley also used the name Carcosa for a city on her fictional planet Darkover. According to her, this usage and the appearance of other distinctive names from Chambers' work dated from her own youthful fascination with "The King in Yellow" and her ambitions to produce her own reconstruction of the play on the basis of the fragments in Chambers' works. Only later did she transform those early fantasy writings into science fiction by relocating them from a parallel earth to a distant world under a red sun.

Carcosa Press

Carcosa Press was a specialty publishing firm formed by David Drake, Karl Edward Wagner, and Jim Groce who were concerned that Arkham House would cease publication after the death of its founder, August Derleth. Carcosa put out two notable collections of pulp horror stories, Manly Wade Wellman's Worse Things Waiting (1975) and Hugh B. Cave's Murgunstrumm and Others (1978), both edited by Wagner and illustrated by Lee Brown Coye. The Carcosa Press colophon depicts the silhouette of a towered city in front of three moons.

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