Fantastic Worlds : JG Ballard's Condensation of 'The King In Yellow (The Play)' by Cardinal Cox is a prose work included in the 2007 King In Yellow Anthology and A Terrible Thing.
The piece is an ABC of the Carcosa Mythos consisting of:
- Aldebaran - a description of the star and a statement that its habitable worlds were incinerated millennia ago.
- Black Stars - "Evening in Carcosa". Mentions the Castellan.
- Cassilda and Camilla - 'Production notes' describing these two characters (one the Queen, the other her servant).
- Demhe - described as "a maw whose throat reaches to the stomach of the planet. Clouds fill the gaping cavity."
- Emperors - "the lines of names of supplicants fill the walls of the palace."
- Flageolet - A jazz scene in Bay City.
- Grand Guignol - Describes a theatre that opened in the same year that Jack The Ripper terrorised London and that Guignol was originally a Mr Punch-like puppet from Lyons.
- Hyades - Describes these stars. Also mentions the Pleiades, but says that they can be ignored.
- Incubus - A nameless woman seduces a man in a bar. They are observed by a nameless detective.
- Jonquil - A shade of yellow and apparently the name of the broken doll communicating with Cordelia in this brief sketch.
- King In Yellow - Mentions Louis Castaigne. Also parallels to cholera and syphilis.
- Lake of Hali - Describes as cloudfilled, lifeless and a place where "Parts of unrecognisable bodies break the surface."
- Masquerade - Refers to the Masque of the Red Death.
- Naotalba - Describes the priest as writing two notes - one to Uoht and one to Thale, before jumping to his death from a tower window.
- Orchestra - A fourteen-piece orchestra plays The Devil In The Belfry.
- Paris - M. Dupin is asked to come out of retirement and battle the vile play.
- Quote - Act 1, Scene 2 of the play.
- Rhode Island - An old man discovers what The Providence Players intend to present...
- Shrine Of Hastur - Haita's abandonment of his god is likened to "a pebble (that) had fallen to dislodge a stone. This had nudged a rock that tupped the boulder that led to the landslide."
- Towers Before The Moon - Describes the moons passing between the towers of Carcosa and wonders "what would happen if the moons struck one of the towers"?
- Uoht - A fat man running through the sewers and shying away from The Yellow Sign.
- Vermillion Sands - "In the desert, a touring troupe of actors start to eat each other."
- Worms - "The high point of evolution".
- Xenelasia - "'Too late,' they mumble, 'too late.'"
- Yhtill - Apparently a description of the Stranger or the King In Yellow.
- Ziggurat - "The Phantom of Truth has taken back the Pallid Mask."