Comments on Robert M. Price's
"Brian Lumley---Reanimator"

by Brian Lumley

copyright © 1984 by Brian Lumley
reprinted by permission of Brian Lumley

[Robert M. Price's article may be read here.]

About your article:

You find Yibb-Tstll's anus oddly located. . . . God knows what you'd say if I told you about Yogge-Sothothe's! His boy Wilbur's is bad enough, but Ol' Yogge's boggy's globular! See, Bob, most of these critturs are "teratologically fabulous". If you doubt it take a look at Wilbur's brother (and I'll lend you a pinch of Ibn Ghazi's powder to do it!). But hell, we don't have to go to Arkham or Yuggoth to find examples of weird life forms. Did you see the recent episode of David Attenborough's "Living Planet" (a follow-up to "Life on Earth") about the giant submarine worms living at the edge of volcanic rifts in the sea floor, and existing by eating bacteria through their skin, said bacteria being the product of chemical reactions between hot lava and sea water? Ten feet long, eyeless, featureless, having no mouths and no excretory organs at all! Shades of Shudde-M'ell! But . . . I won't prolong the argument; you're entitled to your opinion; and you probably know your assholes better than me. (At the same time and for the same reason, I won't bow to you either. . . .)

I do take you to task, however, when you liken my "House of the Temple" to HPL's "Rats in the Walls". It's very flattering, to be sure, but hardly accurate. And incidentally, no one is more aware of my debt to HPL than I am. I am pretty sure that Robert Bloch, F. B. Long, Derleth (if he were still around; and if he were, wouldn't a hell of a lot of coprophagites be up to their necks in crocodiles now?), Ray Bradbury, Kuttner, King, etc., etc., etc., would say the same. Me, I'd rather stand in literary debt than fall in utter bankruptcy.

Anyway, about the two stories: the only real connection is that the two "heroes" return to England (Scotland) from abroad to claim an inheritance. Any other resemblance is, to my mind, minimal. As to "The Shunned House": again I am flattered, and can only assume you refer to the hypnotic stupor which forbids action on the part of the protagonists as the horror approaches? And does that mean that HPL owes a "debt" to Bram Stoker? Most of old Drac's victims were in precisely the same hole, weren't they? Actually, "House of the Temple" was very spontaneous and literally wrote itself, as did "Born of the Wind", "Haggopian", and several others. Of the rest of your conjecturing with regard to my "debt": none of the stories you mention consciously inspired the tales to which you connect them. Sorry. (Except, I grant you this, "In the Vaults Beneath" and Mountains of Madness.) "The Thing From the Blasted Heath" was simply a "horror-plant" story, but I gave it a HPheLlish trimming with the "blasted heath" etc., mainly to grab Derleth's attention. Inclusion of such a story in an Arkham book of "pastiches" seemed to make good sense to me.

But about "Vaults": you take exception to "shoggoth tissue" not only as a concept in itself but more especially as a lighting system. But the star-headed Old Ones were masters of protoplasmic and genetic engineering; yes, and shoggoths were merely cellular or biological "engines" used as we use bulldozers and hoists. They were bred in different strains to perform different tasks. They were a wonderful workhorse --- as is electricity! Steam engines and generators they might or might not have, but the Old Ones did have shoggoths for sure! Certain "scholars" out there have to learn to read their Lovecraft, if not their Lumley, much more carefully. Try looking in At the Mountains of Madness, Chapter VIII, two-thirds through. "The Old Ones had . . . shoggoth tissue from which to breed stone-lifters and subsequent beasts of burden for the cavern city, and other protoplasmic matter to mold into phosphorescent organisms for lighting purposes." (Lovecraft's big words, my little italics, your clanger.)

See, you're allowed to have a little giggle at me --- but not at HPL, for God's sake!!! Good grief --- they have your goolies for that sort of thing! Unutterable abomination . . . ch-ch . . . uttermost blasphemy! Rather reminds me of the (doubtless blushing even now) guy who wrote me hysterically over my "impossibly titled" and "laughable" Liber Miraculorem of Herbert of Clairvaux (12th century) and Von Gerner's Fischbuch "(!)" --- without first taking time to discover that they are in fact genuine works! Ho-hum. . . . Someone else found my description of Hadrian's Wall funny and had a giggle at something I said about the old fortifications along its length. Again, I was born within spitting distance of the wall: as a kid I tramped every bloody mile of it!

But . . . you made a similar mistake way back in Vol. 2, No. 1, (understandable, for again your research was shallow and your sources dated; or, maybe time was against you and you needed a quick filler?) where because you could discover nothing fishy about Dagon in his Philistine period you assumed Lovecraft mistaken in his depiction of Dagon as a classic merman, half-fish, half-man. Well, book sources are useful, certainly, but contemporary artifacts have to be better. Likenesses of Dagon --- half-fish, half-man, as in HPL --- may be viewed on Philistine coins (more properly medallions or jewelry) of the period. I saw one such "coin" in a museum when I was a squid (er, kid) since which I've come across them in photographs and drawings. Incidentally, (and not unnaturally) the temple to Dagon which Samson toppled was at Gaza. Of course it was: where else would you build a temple to a fish-god but on the coast, overlooking the sea? And with respect --- 'cos I know you're a biblical sort of chappy --- you put entirely the wrong interpretation on I Samuel 5:4. The verse reads thus:

And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of Dagon was left to him.

Kitto makes a point of "the stump" as being "the fishy part". Let's assume he was misled by tradition. Let's even for "stump" read "trunk" as you have it. Now, the scribe has no difficulty using such words as "face" and "palms" and "hands", so why does he use trunk or stump? Quite simply because he couldn't use "body", and he most certainly couldn't use "legs"! See, in the old Hebrew there's a word for man-body but no word for fish-body; hence "stump" in that instance; or, if you must, "trunk". (Though in fact the original text said "only the fish-part of Dagon was left to him.")

Further to that, verse 6 also mentions an item of interest; it can be seen that Ashdod, too, was coastal, ideally suited to temples of Dagon, etc. . . . Later, (historically) when the Phoenicians took up Dagon, calling him Cannes or some such and putting the new name on their coins, they too showed him pictorially --- as in HPL and as in Philistine times --- in a decidedly fishy light!

I researched all such when I was writing "Haggopian", not deeply, sufficient to satisfy that it wouldn't go against the grain to set the tale in the Mediterranean. So there you go; frankly, I prefer the "embarrassments" (!) of "shoggoth tissue" --- lifted directly from HPL --- to the "embarrassments" of erroneous information based on inadequate research. So when in your article concerning my work you say, "it takes no great detective skill", etc., I reckon you just about say it all. . . .

And how can you sneer at Titus Crow owning a copy of the Cthäat Aquadtogen? That's like saying Forry Ackerman shouldn't own a complete set of Famous Monsters, isn't it? I mean, who else would have a copy if not Crow? In "Billy's Oak", (where Crow was introduced) the narrator goes to see him because he has a copy! After that . . . he should lose it or something? Worse still, you say Crow has a Necronomicon. Hey, are you sure it's me you've been reading, Bob? Titus Crow owned a copy of the Necronomicon? I'd better tell him at once; it'll save him so much time down at the British Museum! Feery's Notes he has, yes, but not the Al Azif in any shape or form. (See, it's rare. My own copy cost all of $6.50 from Bob Weinberg, and it's only the Dee; and it's a poor photocopy!)

Now, I won't accuse you of neglecting your homework on this occasion, because here I can see that you're only making a point in your own right; but let's be honest about it, the point you make seems almost deliberately designed to bring me down to the status of the most amateur amateur Cthulhu freak. For even he (whoever he is) will probably respect the rarity of the item in question; which here you make it appear that I don't! Yes, your reader is liable to think, "Oh, yeah --- one of those stories again," because you unjustly caused him to do so!

Do me a favor: list the nine stories in which Wendy-Smith's demise is rhapsodized. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you surprise me. I thought it had been rhapsodized in only three or four stories. (Five?) (Six?) OK --- I give in --- I'll never rhapsodize, eulogize or italicize it again. . . .

Anyhaow, as they might have it in Dunwich, I'm not thoroughly displeased with what you say of my work, be it stories, novels, or both. (Though I have to say your rendering of Beneath the Moors was a bit strong; I personally like that one as much as anything I was doing in those days; and most readers, if they're not just snowing me, would seem to agree.) Indeed I would in most cases go along with your over-all appraisal. Personally I would say, as others have said, that Transition is the weakest: it was strong but had to lose many thousands of words before publication, and I admit I used an axe instead of a scalpel. Time didn't permit of fine trimming. So, critically, much of your judgment is probably soundly based; and it would have been even better if you'd checked your work a little more diligently. Perhaps once again, like me with Transition, time was against you.

As for your "mail-caller", Patrice Joubert? --- I'm not much on frog names, excepting Tsathoggua, of course --- he can't fool me, not living on the edge of Ithaqua territory like that! Anyway, I'm really sorry he feels that way and consider it only right that I help out in what is obviously a very severe case of Lumleyosis. He HATES me? Lord, I hardly know the guy, I swear! And I stink? Has he been in my sock drawer? (I saw something decidedly squamous in there a couple of weeks ago.) Or maybe he, too, like Yibb-Tstll, is coprocephaloid --- except he has it where his mouth should be.

Anyway, Patrice, having read one of your earlier letters (!) to Crypt, and while feeling that I really shouldn't extract the essence from retards, I've decided to advise you of a cure. All you have to do to avoid me is stay out of Crouch End and give up reading Weirdbook, Fantasy Book, Whispers, Etchings & Odyssey, old DAW paperbacks and in-print Arkhams with my name on 'em, old Joves and Berkleys similarly inscribed, several German, French, Japanese, and British hard- and paperbacks likewise embellished, including a new trilogy from Grenada, and, of course, Crypt.

An even better way (and to my mind much more satisfactory and permanent) would be to go scuba-diving with a leaky tank off Devil's Reef mumbling an invocation to Dagon!

Teratologically---

(Sgd.) Brian Lumley