“The Maker of Moons” was written by Robert W. Chambers and first appeared in English Illustrated Magazine (July, 1896). Chambers (1865-1933) was a popular writer during his heyday, best-known at the time for his romance and historical novels, but he is remembered today only for his fantasy and horror stories, most notably those included in The King in Yellow.

In upstate New York, among the Cardinal Woods, a Chinese sorcerer, Yue-Laou, leader of a secret society, is creating flawless counterfeit gold and various monsters. The intervention of the narrator and the Secret Service foil Yue-Laou’s plot, and the narrator successfully falls in love with Ysonde, the daughter of a lotus blossom.

Two of the other stories in The Maker of Moons (1896), a collection of Chambers stories in which “The Maker of Moons” appeared, are also about how the narrator met and fell in love with his wife—but those two stories are comedic/satirical, leading fantastika scholar Everett F. Bleiler to conclude that “The Maker of Moons” is “tongue-in-cheek for what was later done more seriously in The Slayer of Souls.”¹

This theory is at least arguable; Chambers was the most commercial of writers, but he was neither unintelligent, unaware of the workings of the market, or ignorant of the components of fantastika. (Most of his fantastika, The King in Yellow aside, is mediocre-to-bad, leading John Clute and Lee Weinstein to write of him, “Chambers tends to irritate those who encounter him, not because he was incompetent but because he was a potentially gripping writer who repudiated his gift.”²) Chambers may well have decided that recent ascent in popularity of the figure of the super-villain in popular fiction (see: A Bid for Fortune, “The Adventure of the Final Problem,” The Doctor Quartz Mysteries) and the ever-present white obsession with The Yellow Peril (focused during the early- and mid-1890s on the conflict between the Sze Yup Tong and the Sam Yup Tong in San Francisco’s Chinatown³) meant that a quick profit could be turned by the hasty construction of a satire of Yellow Peril fiction.

But if this was the case, “The Maker of Moons” represents a Victorian fictional version of Poe’s Law: that without a clear statement of the author’s intent, it’s impossible to create satire that isn’t mistaken for that which is being satirized.⁴ “The Maker of Moons” is generally taken seriously by critics and readers–and, indeed, as the story does not contain a clear statement of Chambers’ intent, one shouldn’t interpret it as satire. Certainly the preferred inscribed narrative of the story is a serious one. So this work will take “The Maker of Moons” at its word, as it were.

That being said, “The Maker of Moons” is one of the important works in the evolution of the Yellow Peril super-villain, the character type that would culminate in Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu. While there were individual Yellow Peril villains before “The Maker of Moons”’ Yue-Laou (see: The Yellow Peril), Yue-Laou represents a leap forward as a Yellow Peril sorcerer, the final Victorian gloss on the evil sorcerer figure that the century had variously portrayed as Italians, Egyptians (see: Pharos the Egyptian), and Arab (see: “Sufrah”). After “The Maker of Moons” the dominant fictional form of the wicked non-white sorcerer would be Asian, and primarily Chinese.

the sorcerers of China and the most murderously diabolical sect on earth....I've seen them at their devilish business, and I repeat to you solemnly, that as there are angels above, there is a race of devils on earth, and they are sorcerers...I tell you that the Kuen Yuin have absolute control of a hundred millions of people, mind and body, body and soul. Do you know what goes on in the interior of China? Does Europe know, could any human being conceive of the condition of that gigantic hell pit?⁵

The language of “The Maker of Moons” matches the racism of this statement, adding fabular phraseology in order to add exoticism to the story:

I have seen the dead plains of Black Cathay and I have crossed the mountains of Death, whose summits are above the atmosphere. I have seen the shadow of Xangi cast across Abaddon. Better to die a million miles from Yezd and Ater Quedah than to have seen the white water lotus close in the shadow of Xangi! I have slept among the ruins of Xaindu where the winds never cease and the Wulwulleh is wailed by the dead.⁶

(One wonders if this particular passage had any influence on the Pegana stories of Lord Dunsany).

Interestingly, though, Chambers’ “Do you know what goes on in the interior of China?...could any human being conceive of the condition of that gigantic hell pit?” implies a certain sympathy for the Chinese in China–a departure from the more common presentation of the Chinese as a unitary group without a single redeeming characteristic, in novels like Atwell Whitney’s Almond-Eyed: The Great Agitator; a Story of the Day (1878) and Robert Woltor’s A Short and Truthful History of the Taking of Oregon and California by the Chinese in the Year A.D. 1899 (1882).

While not up to the frightening unearthliness of The King in Yellow, “The Maker of Moons” is an entertaining story, anticipating the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft without giving in to Lovecraft’s indulgences and weaknesses. The espionage/Secret Service subplot of “The Maker of Moons” meshes well with the story’s horror elements. Barris, a Secret Service agent, is far more of a standard action/adventure hero than were contemporary English spy characters (see: The Newton Moore Adventures), and he anticipates the Secret Service heroes of the 1920s pulps. Chambers begins the story in a leisurely fashion, but as the main character becomes more aware of the menace he faces the pace of the story and the degree of the horror accelerates.

Print: Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2004.

¹ Everett F. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (Kent, OH: Kent State University, 1983), 110.

² John Clute and Lee Weinstein, “Chambers, Robert W.,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, accessed Nov. 2, 2018, http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/chambers_robert_w.

³ William F. Wu, The Yellow Peril: Chinese Americans in American Fiction, 1850-1940 (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1982), 75.

⁴ “Poe’s law,” Wikipedia.com, accessed Nov. 3, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law.

⁵ Robert W. Chambers, “The Maker of Moons,” in The Maker of Moons (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896), 36.

⁶ Chambers, “The Maker of Moons,” 58.