What is "zothique"

Zothique is an imagined future continent in a series of short stories by Clark Ashton Smith. Zothique is also the title of the cycle of tales which take place there. In terms of number and extent, the Zothique cycle is the largest collection of stories written by Smith. The cycle belongs to the fantasy genre, and more precisely to the Dying Earth subgenre.

Zothique is a collection of fantasy short stories by Clark Ashton Smith, edited by Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the sixteenth volume of its celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in June 1970. It was the first themed collection of Smith's works assembled by Carter for the series. The stories were originally published in various fantasy magazines in the 1930s, notably Weird Tales.

The book collects one poem and all sixteen tales of the author's Zothique cycle, set on the Earth's last continent in a far distant future, with an introduction and map and epilogue by Carter.