Cthulhu's Reign (2010): edited by Darrell Schweitzer

Cthulhu's Reign (2010): edited by Darrell Schweitzer:

• The Walker in the Cemetery by Ian Watson
• Sanctuary by Don Webb 
• Her Acres of Pastoral Playground by Mike Allen 
• Spherical Trigonometry by 朝松健 [as by Ken Asamatsu] 
• What Brings the Void by Will Murray 
• The New Pauline Corpus by Matt Cardin 
• Ghost Dancing by Darrell Schweitzer 
• This Is How the World Ends by John R. Fultz 
• The Shallows by John Langan 
• Such Bright and Risen Madness in Our Names by Jay Lake 
• The Seals of New R'lyeh by Gregory Frost 
• The Holocaust of Ecstasy by Brian Stableford 
• Vastation by Laird Barron 
• Nothing Personal by Richard A. Lupoff 
• Remnants by Fred Chappell 

Entertaining anthology goes with the depressing scenario 'What happens AFTER H.P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones return to reclaim the Earth?' and runs with it in enjoyable albeit often oppressively depressing ways. But some of the stories contain faint hope, and the overall selection ranges broadly from Heist Comedy ("The Seals of New R'lyeh" by Gregory Frost) to hard science fiction ("Nothing Personal" by Richard A. Lupoff) to post-modern stream-of-consciousness ("Vastation" by Laird Barron).

Along the way, stories attempt to portray what the world post-Cthulhu would look like. A writhing mass of endless screaming meat? A patchwork of broken reality? A maze haunted by sadistic smaller versions of Cthulhu? A world in the process of being changed to suit its new masters, the Moon already transformed into a red and glaring five-pointed star in the squirming heavens? A seemingly normal neighbourhood that gets less normal the closer one looks? A baleful orb of anti-matter? 

Yes, all this and more!

The stories are all at least competent. Many are inspired. "The Shallows" by John Langan is a modern classic, I think, counterpointing the mundane and the weird both in setting and in the (one-sided) conversation a survivor of the rise of Cthulhu tells to, well, an unusually crabby house-guest. Fred Chappell's "Remnants" offers a slice of hope in what sometimes seems like the first part of an epic, hard-science-fiction series. Recommended.