R'lyeh Review 003

R'LYEH REVIEW

Issue 003

New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
Ramsey Campbell (ed.)
Arkham House, 1981, 257 pp., $11.95

(Reviewed by C. J. Henderson)

This is a fascinating collection, filled from first page to last with quite acceptable additions to the Mythos begun by Lovecraft in what now seems time immemorial.

Campbell's introduction to the volume is short and to the point. Briefly confessing the literary faults committed by himself (cf. his early The Inhabitant of the Lake) and others in the name of the Cthulhu Mythos, he warns the reader to be ready for some surprises. And there are plenty, almost all of them pleasant. Each of these "new tales", though very different in mood and tone, can legitimately claim to carry on the tradition of Lovecraft.

The book opens with "Crouch End" by Stephen King. These days, King's name by itself is enough to garner readers, but "Crouch End" doesn't merely coast on reputation. Instead, it is an excellent mood piece, capturing all of the spirit of the "weird" genre. As usual, King takes innocent people, allows them no chance of escape, and abandons them to destruction at the hands of Evil. Yes, this much is typical King, but that is just his style, and those readers who believe Good should defeat Evil at least occasionally will simply have to bear with it. In any case, the tale of two tourists lost in a shunned English town is effective. King uses his favorite technique of spinning horror on the loom of everyday ills and fears. Here, he takes the disorientation and anxiety felt by any lost travelers and transforms it into a paradox of interdimehsidnal perdition,

The next two contenders trying to follow King's act are A. A. Attanasio's "The Star Pools" and Brian Lumley's "The Second Wish". The first is more violent, and the second more sexual, than anything written by Lovecraft. Yet both are true to the spirit of HPL. They are decent shockers in their own right, as well as able contributions to the Mythos.

Weird Tales veteran Frank Belknap Long enters the lists with "Dark Awaking", followed by relative newcomer Basil Copper, whose "Shaft Number 247" is pure science fiction. As Campbell claimed at the outset, both these authors have dared to follow new directions, with the result that neither story is visibly "Lovecraftian" in any way. And this is no criticism.

Among the best pieces of the collection are David Drake's "Than Curse the Darkness" and Campbell's own "The Faces at Pine Dunes". Drake's story is a dark, violent, and gritty tale of both the highest and lowest reaches of human nature. On one level, it makes virtually no use of the traditional Lovecraftian dark gods, unless the "Old Ones" are seen as subliminal human motivations. In this case, the entire story is theirs.

Campbell's piece is slow-moving. It takes its time, dragging itself like chalk against a very long blackboard, fraying the reader's nerves. But the reader will find himself spellbound rather than impatient.

Proverbially "last but not least" is T. E. D. Klein's "Black Man with a Horn". As a piece of literature in the broader sense, Klein's story is probably the best in this anthology. Using (almost) nothing but real historical and cultural data, he paints a picture of nightmarish fantasy in which the reader finds himself, like the protagonist, trapped waiting for inevitable Doom to overtake him. The use of first-person narration is unusually good, as is the distinctive freshness of Klein's approach to Lovecraft's Mythos. All in all, this is a great Cthulhu Mythos tale.

New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos is reportedly the last such collection to be published by Arkham House. If so, it is a fitting capstone, since the volume is one of the best ever.

The Tomb
At the Mountains of Madness
The Lurking Fear
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
H. P. Lovecraft
Del Rey Books, 1981, $2.25, $2.25, $2.25, $1.95

(Reviewed by Robert M. Price)

Lovecraft fans owe Del Rey (Ballantine) Books a debt of gratitude for bringing a large selection of HPL's work back into paperback circulation. There will be six titles in all (with The Doom That Came to Sarnath and The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath soon to appear). Judging by the four already available, these books should form a welcome addition to any Lovecraftian's shelf. The books' covers are distinctive and bold. Both the general color format (gray pictures and red lettering on a black background) set the appropriate mood even before one opens the covers. And the eerie illustrations by Michael Whelan are beautiful in their ghoulish way, bringing to mind the terms in which Lovecraft himself praised the macabre art of Clark Ashton Smith. (Contrast them with the embarrassingly silly covers of Ballantine's Lovecraft books in the early seventies.)

Though much of HPL's good work, and some of his very best ("The Shadow Over Innsmouth", At the Mountains of Madness, and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) is included here, one still wishes for a more complete selection. The collections of Derleth pastiches and "collaborations" (= more pastiches) are wisely left to rest in peace, but the republication of Ballantine's Fungi from Yuggoth and The Horror in the Museum volumes would be welcome. And wouldn't it be nice finally to see Ballantine/Del Rey editions of the two paperbacks The Colour Out of Space and The Dunwich Horror? Just try to get ahold of the old Lancer, Zebra, or Jove editions! One glimmer of hope may be visible, though. Rumor has it that Del Rey is considering a new "Best of HPL" volume (or two) edited by S. T. Joshi and Marc A. Michaud, which would likely contain several of these stories. By all means, let's hope so!