That title’s actually a bit misleading, because this is a compendium of six books – Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran, A Dreamer’s Tales, The Book of Wonder, The Last Book of Wonder, and The Gods of Pegãna – by Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany. But publishers Gollancz probably figured that trying to cram that little lot onto the spine would put people off.
This is volume two of their increasing swollen Fantasy Masterworks series, and a good illustration of why the collection is so damn vital. Lord Dunsany is hardly a big name these days, much of his modern reputation is based on his influence of other writers like H. P. Lovecraft, and getting the kind of overview that Time and the Gods offers would leave a sizeable hole in your pocket.
Dunsany did masterful work in a variety of forms, but probably the best stories in this collection are the ultra-short ones, many of which are absolutely stunning examples of what a short story can be. Having said that, the pieces in the first and last collections barely qualify as stories – they’re more like religious homilies, albeit from religions and places that never existed outside of their author’s head. The one criticism that can be made of Gollancz is that including both is a bit superfluous.
Anyway, here’s an example of Dunsany’s style, picked at random and from The Madness of Andelsprutz in A Dreamer’s Tales:
“Suddenly I was aware of great shapes moving in the rain, and heard the sound of voices that were not of my city nor yet of any that I ever knew. And presently I discerned, though faintly, the souls of a great concourse of cities, all bending over Andelsprutz and comforting her, and the ravines of the mountains roared that night with the voices of cities that had lain still for centuries.”
Calling Dunsany’s prose flowery, archaic and overblown is a gigantic understatement, but it’s also frequently beautiful, often hauntingly so, and the man had enough imagination to keep a dozen writers in work. From a modern perspective some of his meandering descriptions could suffer a bit of trimming, and become repetitive after a while (Dunsany loved describing cities, for example) – but for every one that slows a story down there are another dozen that are hugely evocative and lodge themselves deep down in your brain.
Dunsany’s writing is also distinguished by a uniquely weird sense of humour. At one point he justifies his use of the word “gluttered” with a useful note: “See any dictionary, but in vain.” Another story ends with a lengthy diversion about how little he trusts the tale’s original teller, and an assurance that if it turns out that his readers have been misled, “…there are little things about him that I know … which I will tell at once to every judge of my acquaintance, and it will be a pretty race to see which of them will hang him.”
If you have any interest in the development of fantasy then Dunsany is worth a look – for all his anachronistic language there’s a very modern (and in places, almost post-modern) sensibility to much of his writing, so much so that in places it’s reminiscent of Clive Barker or Neil Gaiman. But if you just like good short stories, especially ones with a leaning towards the strange, then Dunsany is one of the masters of the form, and Time and the Gods is a perfect book to have around for the occasional dip into.