Black Wings of Cthulhu 5 (2016) edited by S.T. Joshi

Black Wings of Cthulhu 5 (2016) edited by S.T. Joshi, containing the following stories:

• Plenty of Irem by Jonathan Thomas
• Diary of a Sane Man by Nicole Cushing
• The Woman in the Attic by Robert H. Waugh
• Far from Any Shore by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• In Blackness Etched, My Name by W. H. Pugmire
• Snakeladder by Cody Goodfellow
• The Walker in the Night by Jason C. Eckhardt
• In Bloom by Lynne Jamneck
• The Black Abbess by John Reppion
• The Quest by Mollie L. Burleson
• A Question of Blood by David Hambling
• Red Walls by Mark Howard Jones
• The Organ of Chaos by Donald Tyson
• Seed of the Gods by Donald R. Burleson
• Fire Breeders by Sunni K Brock
• Casting Fractals by Sam Gafford
• The Red Witch of Chorazin by Darrell Schweitzer
• The Oldies by Nancy Kilpatrick
• Voodoo by Stephen Woodworth
• Lore by Wade German

Another year, another superior Black Wings anthology of cosmic horror from editor S.T. Joshi. The 'of Cthulhu' is added to the trade paperback editions of these anthologies for commercial considerations, by the way. The hardcovers, per the originating H.P. Lovecraft quote, are simply Black Wings.

As is usual for Joshi anthologies, the stories range from good to excellent. Familiar names that include Caitlin Kiernan, W.H. Pugmire, and Darrell Schweitzer offer up superior tales of dark gods and that menacing, indifferent universe of cosmic dread. Sunni Brock offers a fresh take on Innsmouth, complete with what seems like a nod to the Japanese horror story that would become the American movie Dark Water (that story being "Floating Water" by Koji Suzuki). Schweitzer offers an ambitiously circular mise en abyme. Kiernan's background in paleontology informs the unfortunate findings of her characters. 

There's a sarcastic cheekiness to Nancy Kilpatrick's "The Oldies" that doesn't undermine the horror of its collision of Old Gods and traumatized people. As flies to wanton boys, and all that jazz. Jonathan Thomas (The Color Over Occam) offers a wry visit to Lovecraft's Kingsport that nods to the odd festival held there, and its odder participants, in a story whose droll tone resembles that of a vintage Clark Ashton Smith story like "The Seven Geases" or "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros." 

A couple of stories -- John Reppion's "The Black Abbess" and David Hambling's "A Question of Blood" specifically -- don't quite stick their landings as they embrace a little too much lack of closure. Still, they're worth reading, as the anthology is as a whole. And Wade German's concluding poem is a nice touch, especially given Lovecraft's embrace of weird poetry. Highly recommended.

The Horror in the Museum by H.P. Lovecraft and Others

The Horror in the Museum  by H.P. Lovecraft and Others (1970/1989/This edition 2007): edited by August Derleth, Stephen Jones, and S.T. Joshi:

Primary Revisions: Which is to say, stories that are almost entirely rewritten by HPL from stories or notes from other writers.

• The Green Meadow (1918) by Winifred V. Jackson and H. P. Lovecraft [as by Lewis Theobald, Jr. and Elizabeth Neville Berkeley]: Really a Dunsanian prose-poem more than anything else.
• The Crawling Chaos (1921) by Winifred V. Jackson and H. P. Lovecraft [as by Lewis Theobald, Jr. and Elizabeth Neville Berkeley]: Again, really a Dunsanian prose-poem more than anything else.
• The Last Test (1928) by H. P. Lovecraft and Adolphe de Castro [as by Adolphe de Castro] : Enjoyable, overlong novella about a scientist's descent into madness, his descent speeded by the advice of a monstrous survival from eons past. Set primarily in late-19th-century San Francisco.
• The Electric Executioner (1930) by H. P. Lovecraft and Adolphe de Castro [as by Adolphe de Castro]: So far as I know, the only story written or rewritten by HPL to be set primarily on a train. 
• The Curse of Yig (1970) by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop [as by Zealia Bishop]: Should be moved to the HPL canon. One of Lovecraft's generally top-notch "collaborations" with Zealia Bishop that moved the Cthulhu Mythos into the Midwestern environs of Oklahoma.
• The Mound (1940) by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop [as by Zealia Bishop]: Another top-notch, almost-canonical Lovecraft-Bishop Joint. A secret land of Great Old One worshippers hides about a mile below the surface of Oklahoma. Well, that explains a lot! 
• Medusa's Coil (1939) by Zealia Bishop and H. P. Lovecraft [as by Zealia Bishop]: Oh, Lord. Brace yourself for the most racist ending in Lovecraft's stories and revisions, so anomalously ascendant over much more dire information that the ending almost seems like a parody.
• The Man of Stone (1932) by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald [as by Hazel Heald]: Minor horror stuff.
• The Horror in the Museum (1933) by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald [as by Hazel Heald]: Solid Mythos material set at... a wax museum?
• Winged Death (1934) by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald [as by Hazel Heald]: Somewhat goofy Africa-set horror story.
• Out of the Aeons (1933) by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald [as by Hazel Heald]: Another piece that could be considered canonical Mythos horror.
• The Horror in the Burying-Ground (1937) by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald [as by Hazel Heald]: Very minor horror material.
• The Diary of Alonzo Typer (1938) by H. P. Lovecraft and William Lumley [as by William Lumley]: Promising beginning, somewhat muted ending to a haunted house story with shades of the Great Ones looming behind it. Bears more than a passing resemblance to Stephen King's early-career homage to HPL, "Jerusalem's Lot."

Secondary Revisions: Which can range from a lot of HPL to almost none at all.

• The Horror at Martin's Beach (1923) by H. P. Lovecraft and Sonia Greene  (variant of The Invisible Monster) [as by Sonia H. Greene]: Minor horror stuff with hypnotic sea monsters.
• Ashes (1924) by C. M. Eddy, Jr. and H. P. Lovecraft [as by C. M. Eddy, Jr.] : Minor science-fictional horror that seems inspired by Robert W. Chambers.
• The Ghost-Eater (1924) by H. P. Lovecraft and C. M. Eddy, Jr. [as by C. M. Eddy, Jr.] : Really minor lost-in-the-woods horror.
• The Loved Dead (1924) by C. M. Eddy, Jr. and H. P. Lovecraft [as by C. M. Eddy, Jr.] : Oh, brother. Controversial (for its time) story about a guy who, though his actions are never completely described, seems to be a necrophiliac.
• Deaf, Dumb and Blind (1925) by C. M. Eddy, Jr. and H. P. Lovecraft [as by C. M. Eddy, Jr.] : Minor piece of cosmic horror.
• Two Black Bottles (1927) by H. P. Lovecraft and Wilfred Blanch Talman [as by Wilfred Blanch Talman] : Droll tale of zombies and churchyards.
• The Trap (1932) by Henry S. Whitehead and H. P. Lovecraft [as by Henry S. Whitehead] : Minor piece of horror revolving around optics.
• The Tree on the Hill (1934) by Duane W. Rimel : Under-developed piece of cosmic horror.
• The Disinterment (1935) by H. P. Lovecraft and Duane W. Rimel [as by Duane W. Rimel] : Minor horror that seems mainly inspired by Poe.
• "Till A' the Seas" (1935) by H. P. Lovecraft and R. H. Barlow  (variant of "Till All the Seas") [as by R. H. Barlow] : Downbeat fragment of end-of-the-world melancholy.
• The Night Ocean (1936) by H. P. Lovecraft and R. H. Barlow [as by R. H. Barlow]: Probably the "weirdest" tale here in the modern sense, as atmosphere and suggestion take front place over specific, horrific occurrences. Extremely strong piece. 

Overall: Essential to the Lovecraft fan and/or scholar, and with enough rewarding tales of horror and the macabre to satisfy the casual reader as well. Highly recommended.

Acolytes of Cthulhu (2001) edited by Robert M. Price

Acolytes of Cthulhu  (2001/ This edition 2014): edited by Robert M. Price:

1. Doom of the House of Duryea  (1936) by Earl Pierce, Jr.
2. The Seventh Incantation (1963) by Joseph Payne Brennan
3. From the Pits of Elder Blasphemy (2008) by Robert M. Price and Hugh B. Cave 
4. The Jewels of Charlotte (1935) by Duane W. Rimel
5. The Letters of Cold Fire  (1944) by Manly Wade Wellman
6. Horror at Vecra (1943) by Henry Hasse
7. Out of the Jar (1941) by Charles R. Tanner
8. The Earth-Brain (1932) by Edmond Hamilton
9. Through the Alien Angle (1941) by Elwin G. Powers
10. Legacy in Crystal (1943) by James Causey
11. The Will of Claude Ashur (1947) by C. Hall Thompson
12. The Final War (1949) by David H. Keller, M.D.
13. The Dunstable Horror (1964) by Arthur Pendragon
14. The Crib of Hell (1965) by Arthur Pendragon
15. The Last Work of Pietro of Apono (1969) by Steffan B. Aletti
16. The Eye of Horus (1968) by Steffan B. Aletti
17. The Cellar Room (1970) by Steffan B. Aletti
18. Mythos (1961) by John S. Glasby
19. There Are More Things (1975) by Jorge Luis Borges
20. The Horror Out of Time (1978) by Randall Garrett
21. The Recurring Doom  (1980) by S. T. Joshi
22. Necrotic Knowledge  (1976) by Dirk W. Mosig [as by Cemetarius Nightcrawler]
23. Night Bus  (1985) by Donald R. Burleson
24. The Pewter Ring  (1987) by Peter Cannon
25. John Lehmann Alone  (1987) by David Kaufman
26. The Purple Death  (2001) by Gustav Meyrink  (trans. of Der violette Tod 1902)
27. Mists of Death  (2001) by Richard F. Searight and Franklyn Searight 
28. Shoggoth's Old Peculiar (1998) by Neil Gaiman 

Excellent selection of Lovecraftian short stories spanning the years 1932 to 2001. Acolytes of Cthulhu is probably better suited to a reader well-acquainted with Lovecraftian weird fiction. Not all the stories are great. But I hadn't run across most of them, making the anthology a lot of fun as it avoids reprinting stories that have become familiar from multiple appearances.

In some stories, the Lovecraftian taint is faint -- perhaps as little as some curious tome of apocalyptic demon lore sitting on a desk. Other stories are just plain nuts, David Keller's "The Final War" chief among them. I won't even try to describe it in detail. It's just plain bananas.

Jorge Luis Borges' nod to HPL, "There Are More Things," gratifyingly appears, and is about as Borgesian a nod to Lovecraft as one could hope for. A piece of juvenilia by Weird-Fiction Historian-Supreme S.T. Joshi is a fun pastiche. 

The stand-out is Randall Garrett's tricky, fun "The Horror Out of Time." The kicker really kicks. Neil Gaiman's humourous "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" closes the anthology with a wink. A squamous, batrachian wink.  Though the winner for best title has to be "From the Pits of Elder Blasphemy" by editor Robert M. Price and Hugh B. Cave, whose career in weird fiction began around the same time that HPL's ended in the 1930's. 

Price has done an admirable job of seeking out stories previously excluded from virtually all Lovecraftian anthologies. They may not all be great, or even good, but they are a historic delight. Highly recommended.

The Color Over Occam (2012) by Jonathan Thomas

The Color Over Occam (2012) by Jonathan Thomas: Set in and around the New England town of Occam, The Color Over Occam is narrated by Occam city clerk Jeffrey Slater.  Slater and his friend Wil run a public access cable show involving their investigations of the supernatural. As the novel begins, they're paddling around the city reservoir -- once farmland but flooded since the 1920's -- investigating claims of "ghost lights" on the waters at night. And they find them. But they're not ghosts.

You see, Occam was renamed from its original 'Arkham' a couple of decades back. And readers of H.P. Lovecraft's seminal horror story "The Color Out of Space" will quickly recognize that demon-haunted reservoir...

Thomas' first novel is a witty, cynical, often satiric addition to the Cthulhu Mythos. The problems of civic politics (and politicians covering their own asses) make for a welcome new spin on cosmic horror. There are points at which The Color Over Occam is quite funny, and not always bleakly (though Thomas does bleak too!).

I think one can read The Color Over Occam without having read "The Color Out of Space." Or perhaps preferably, read or re-read Lovecraft's story AFTER reading The Color Over Occam. Thomas deftly weaves the original into his novel without imitating Lovecraft's prose or narrative emphases.

While there's drollery and a bit of comic over-emphasis at points in the narrative, the text maintains a sense of verisimilitude throughout. How would a small-town government deal with cosmic horror building in its town? How would an amateur ghost-finder deal with potentially world-shattering events? How will Slater deal with his low alcohol tolerance? Why does office work suck so much?

The Color Over Occam compares favourably with several novels I can think of. Its occasionally hapless protagonist and the cosmic but town-centric events he's trapped within remind me of Ramsey Campbell's Creatures of the Pool and The Last Revelation of Gla'aki. The office- and civic-based comedy repeatedly reminded me of William Browning Spencer's hilarious Resumé with Monsters. And the subject matter recalls Michael Shea's fun, pulpy sequel to Lovecraft's original, The Color Out of Time.

But this novel is also its own self with an unusual mix of wit, satire, cosmic horror, and body horror that pay suitable homage to Lovecraft's great original without attempting to mimic "The Color Out of Space" in form, style, or mood. Highly recommended.

Black Wings of Cthulhu 4 (2015)

Black Wings [of Cthulhu] Volume 4 (2015) edited by S.T. Joshi, containing the following stories:


Artifact by Fred Chappell
Half Lost in Shadow by W. H. Pugmire
The Rasping Absence  by Richard Gavin
Black Ships Seen South of Heaven  by Caitlín R. Kiernan
The Dark Sea Within  by Jason V Brock
Sealed by the Moon  by Gary Fry
Broken Sleep  by Cody Goodfellow
A Prism of Darkness  by Darrell Schweitzer
Night of the Piper by Ann K. Schwader
We Are Made of Stars  by Jonathan Thomas
Trophy  by Melanie Tem
Revival  by Stephen Woodworth
Contact  by John Pelan and Stephen Mark Rainey
Cult of the Dead  by Lois H. Gresh
Dark Redeemer  by Will Murray
In the Event of Death  by Simon Strantzas
The Wall of Asshur-sin  by Donald Tyson
Fear Lurks Atop Tempest Mount  by Charles Lovecraft 


Maybe not quite as good as previous installments in the Black Wings series ('of Cthulhu' is added in each case for the paperback publication; 'Black Wings' comes from a Lovecraft quotation about cosmic horror, a quotation that doesn't contain 'of Cthulhu,' whose wings I've always figured as being a dark, weird green, in case you were wondering). 

Or maybe I read too many new Cthulhu anthologies in too short a time.

There are stand-outs here from Kiernan, Brock, and Schweitzer. The latter's story features the real John Dee on the last day of his life, and it's a solid piece of cosmic quasi-history. The stories range from just this side of Lovecraftian pastiche to more elusive, allusive pieces of cosmic horror.

One thing I'll note again and again is that Lovecraft's literary children tend to be a lot more depressing than their progenitor. Several stories here feature the return of the Great Old Ones and the destruction of humanity, something Lovecraft never went through with. The depiction of these apocalypses never seems to equal what I imagine in my mind, leaving me a bit cold when it comes to the depiction of The Return of the Great Old Ones. Oh, well. Recommended.

The Madness of Cthulhu Volume 2 (2015): edited by S.T. Joshi

The Madness of Cthulhu Volume 2 (2015): edited by S.T. Joshi, containing the following stories:

• Foreword by Kim Newman
• Introduction by S. T. Joshi
• 20,000 Years Under the Sea by Kevin J. Anderson: Captain Nemo vs. Cthulhu.
• Tsathoggua’s Breath by Brian Stableford: Solid, quasi-historical piece set in Viking-era Greenland resembles some of Clark Ashton Smith's pieces more than HPL.
• The Door Beneath by Alan Dean Foster: Quasi-historical piece set in the 1980's involves Soviets experimenting with stuff they found in the Antarctica of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.
• Dead Man Walking by William F. Nolan: Peripherally Lovecraftian piece from the venerable William F. (Logan's Run) Nolan more resembles a classic Jules de Grandin story.
• A Crazy Mistake by Nancy Kilpatrick: Paranoia and madness follow a researcher doing research into the Cthulhu Mythos.
• The Anatomy Lesson by Cody Goodfellow: Biology!
• The Hollow Sky by Jason C. Eckhardt: Antarctic excavations and global warming and shoggoths in the present day.
• The Last Ones by Mark Howard Jones: A nod to the Deep Ones of HPL's "The Shadow over Innsmouth."
• A Footnote in the Black Budget by Jonathan Maberry: Action Cthulhu!
• Deep Fracture by Steve Rasnic Tem: A typically elusive, allusive piece by Tem.
• The Dream Stones by Donald Tyson: Canadian horror on the East Coast brings the star-stones of At the Mountains of Madness to Halifax. I particularly like how Tyson approximates the first-person narrative of some of HPL's especially freaked-out characters while nonetheless making the story's characters and events very much material that HPL couldn't (and wouldn't) have touched upon in the 1920's and 1930's.
• The Blood in My Mouth by Laird Barron: Rare misfire by Barron puts one of his typically damaged male narrators on a collision course with a vaguely defined alien threat.
• On the Shores of Destruction by Karen Haber: Doom!
• Object 00922UU by Erik Bear and Greg Bear: Fun, slightly overlong science-fiction piece plays with the conventions of 'spaceship finds artifact with something gooshy inside.' The threat in this case dwarfs pretty much any similar threat depicted in a movie or story, though the Bears have trouble firmly establishing the cosmic vastness of an artifact described as being as large as six Jupiters (!).

The omnipresent S.T. Joshi serves up the second volume of a two-part anthology in which many (though not all) stories have been inspired in some way by HPL's chilling 1930's short novel At the Mountains of Madness. It's fun, though a little short on actual cosmic terror and a little long on me needing to take a break from contemporary Lovecraftian fiction. Recommended.

Black Wings of Cthulhu Volume 3 (2014) edited by S.T. Joshi

Black Wings of Cthulhu Volume 3 (2014) edited by S.T. Joshi, containing the following stories:

Houdini Fish by Jonathan Thomas
Dimply Dolly Doofy by Donald R. Burleson
The Hag Stone by Richard Gavin
Underneath an Arkham Moon by Jessica Amanda Salmonson and W. H. Pugmire
Spiderwebs in the Dark by Darrell Schweitzer
One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm) by Caitlín R. Kiernan
The Man with the Horn by Jason V Brock: Weird horror with some nice stylistic touches becomes very (Harla) Ellisonian by the end.
Hotel del Lago by Mollie L. Burleson
*Waller by Donald Tyson: Interesting piece involving cosmic cancer gods and multiple realities. Great Shades of Mnagalah!
The Megalith Plague by Don Webb
*Down Black Staircases by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.: Pulver works in a partial stream-of-consciousness mode here that's fairly unusual for cosmic horror.
China Holiday by Peter Cannon
Necrotic Cove by Lois H. Gresh
The Turn of the Tide by Mark Howard Jones
Weltschmerz by Sam Gafford
Thistle's Find by Simon Strantzas
*Further Beyond by Brian Stableford: Stableford continues the events of HPL's "From Beyond" in faithful, fruitful fashion.

Overall: Another solid entry in the ubiquitous Joshi's Black Wings series of original, cosmic-horror anthologies in the key of Lovecraft. 'of Cthulhu' is added to the title for paperback publication, for sales reasons I'd assume. Stand-outs are noted above. Recommended.

The Madness of Cthulhu Volume 1 (2014) edited by S.T. Joshi

The Madness of Cthulhu Volume 1 (2014) edited by S.T. Joshi, containing the following stories (all 2014 unless otherwise noted):

At the Mountains of Murkiness (1940) by Arthur C. Clarke
The Fillmore Shoggoth by Harry Turtledove
Devil's Bathtub by Lois H. Gresh
The Witness in Darkness by John Shirley
How the Gods Bargain by William Browning Spencer
A Mountain Walked by Caitlin R. Kiernan
Diana of the Hundred Breasts  (1996) by Robert Silverberg
Under the Shelf by Michael Shea
Cantata by Melanie Tem
Cthulhu Rising  by Heather Graham
The Warm by Darrell Schweitzer
Last Rites by K. M. Tonso
Little Lady by Jeanne Cook [as by J. C. Koch]
White Fire by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
A Quirk of the Mistral by Jonathan Thomas
The Dog Handler's Tale by Donald Tyson 

The increasingly omnipresent S.T. Joshi serves up a two-part anthology in which many (though not all) stories have been inspired in some way by HPL's chilling 1930's short novel At the Mountains of Madness. Some go the route of having the story told from new POV's -- "The Witness in Darkness" by John Shirley and "The Dog Handler's Tale" by Donald Tyson both do nicely with these alternate, partially revisionist takes on HPL's original. Darrell Schweitzer offers a similar alternate take, this time on HPL's "Pickman's Model."

Other stories extrapolate sequels ranging from the bleakly funny (Shoggoths raid San Francisco in "The Fillmore Shoggoth" by Harry Turtledove, imperiling an aged HPL and a rock band that plays HPL-inspired songs) to the modernist cool of Joseph Pulver's "White Fire." Joshi also reprints an early Arthur C. Clarke parody of Lovecraft that's an interesting curiosity. 

Cosmic horrors without explicit Lovecraft references seem to make for the best stories in this volume, from Robert Silverberg's atypical "Diana of the Hundred Breasts" to the Wild West grotesqueries of "Little Lady" by Jeanne Cook.

My favourites here, or at least those stories that offered the most chills, are "How the Gods Bargain" by William Browning Spencer and "A Mountain Walked" by Caitlin R. Kiernan. Spencer's story is typically quirky in its tale of high-school jealousies and extraordinarily odd alien edifices. Kiernan works in what is my favourite mode of hers -- the pseudo-documentarian historical narrative -- as she recounts a puzzling encounter involving a 19th-century archaeological dig in America's Old West. In all, recommended.

A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (2014) edited by S.T. Joshi

A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (2014) edited by S.T. Joshi, containing the following stories:

The House of the Worm  (1933) by Mearle Prout
Far Below  (1939) by Robert Barbour Johnson
Spawn of the Green Abyss  (1946) by C. Hall Thompson
The Deep Ones (1969) by James Wade
The Franklyn Paragraphs (1973) by Ramsey Campbell
Where Yidhra Walks  (1976) by Walter C. DeBill, Jr.
Black Man with a Horn (1980) by T. E. D. Klein
The Last Feast of Harlequin (1990) by Thomas Ligotti
Only the End of the World Again  (1994) by Neil Gaiman
Mandelbrot Moldrot (2014) by Lois H. Gresh
The Black Brat of Dunwich (1997) by Stanley C. Sargent
The Phantom of Beguilement (2001) by W. H. Pugmire
 ...Hungry...Rats  (2014) by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.
Virgin's Island  (2014) by Donald Tyson
In the Shadow of Swords (2014) by Cody Goodfellow
Mobymart After Midnight  (2014) by Jonathan Thomas
A Gentleman from Mexico (2007) by Mark Samuels
The Man with the Horn  (2014) by Jason V Brock
John Four  (2014) by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Sigma Octantis (2014) by Rhys Hughes
[Anasazi]  (2014) by Gemma Files
The Wreck of the Aurora  (2014) by Patrick McGrath
Beneath the Beardmore (2014) by Michael Shea 

Omnipresent anthologist S.T. Joshi offers what seems to be his 19th Lovecraftian-themed anthology of the past five years. This one combines new material solicited for this anthology with little-reprinted stories of the past 86 (!!!) years of Lovecraft's influence.

"The House of the Worm"  (1933) by Mearle Prout and "Far Below"  (1939) by Robert Barbour Johnson are both fine and essential texts that echo Lovecraft without necessarily occurring in 'his' universe. They're both stunners in different ways, stunners I don't want to spoil. "Spawn of the Green Abyss"  (1946) by C. Hall Thompson is a fascinating 'parallel' text seemingly inspired by Lovecraft's "The Shadow over Innsmouth."

Of the later reprints, some are terrific and much-anthologized (pieces by Ligotti and Klein are all-timers). Some are terrific and under-anthologized ("The Franklyn Paragraphs" (1973) by Ramsey Campbell, though it really should be bundled with "The Truant" (1973)). Some are interesting, some are seriously wonky (I'm looking at you and your inter-species rape scene, "The Deep Ones" (1969) by James Wade). 

The original stories are mostly solid, though it's always a juggling act to combine a 'Best of' anthology with new material: it can sometimes seem like those old CD's and records that did so with 'Best of' material and 'Three new songs!', all of them sort of sucky. But there's nothing sucky here. 

I really like "Virgin's Island"  (2014) by Donald Tyson, a great slice of pseudo-documentarian horror that reminds one of Lovecraft without aping HPL's style. And it's set off the coast of the Atlantic Provinces of Canada! Gemma Files also adds some delicious CanCon, as Toronto rocks with an insidious alien attack. Michael Shea also delights with one of the hardest things to pull off -- a nod to HPL that's funny, revisionist, and sinister.

In all, a solid anthology with distinguished cuts from the past and present. The historical selections help push A Mountain Walked to highly recommended.

Letters to Arkham: The Letters of Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth, 1961-1971

Letters to Arkham: The Letters of Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth, 1961-1971 (2014): edited by S.T. Joshi: Essential, informative, and educational reading for any reader of horror, and especially for those who admire both H.P. Lovecraft and Ramsey Campbell.

August Derleth was a fantastically important editor and publisher in the realms of the weird. He kept H.P. Lovecraft in print, in book form, for decades until the rest of the world started catching up with the Cthulhu Mythos. And he also published the first book by Liverpudlian Ramsey Campbell after Campbell started corresponding with Derleth back in 1961.

In 1961, Campbell was 15. His first collection -- The Inhabitant of the Lake -- would come out from Arkham in 1964. And while the precocious Campbell's early works would be Lovecraftian pastiches not-dissimilar to some of Derleth's own work, Campbell's growth curve as a writer was startlingly steep. By the late 1960's, his voice was uniquely his own and he'd helped pioneer a new approach to visionary horror.

Derleth and Campbell carry on a lively, wide-ranging correspondence for ten years, though the last three years are a bit spotty because many letters have gone missing. While thoughts on horror are the main attraction, Letters to Arkham also offers a glimpse into the cottage industry that was Arkham House. We also learn just how prolific Derleth was as a writer. And a lover, though some of that may be taken with a grain of salt.

As Campbell notes in his afterword, he was something of a fan-boy in his early letters. But that element gradually slips away, leaving the reader with a dialogue between two friends who never met in person. Their debates on the merits of everything from Peter Sellers to Samuel Beckett are lively and fascinating. Derleth functions as a mentor figure for Campbell throughout their correspondence when it comes to writing and, more generally, living. 

And we find out that Derleth took to the Wisconsin woods where he lived every May to collect morel mushrooms. Thousands of them, their number dutifully reported each year. Fungi from Wisconsin. How Lovecraftian is that? Highly recommended.

The White People and Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen (2011); edited by S.T. Joshi

The White People and Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen (2011); edited by S.T. Joshi, containing the following pieces:

Foreword: The Ecstasy of St. Arthur by Guillermo Del Toro: Nice, brief appreciation of Arthur Machen by the film-maker, whose works often refer directly or indirectly to Machen's work and concepts.

Introduction by S. T. Joshi: A usual excellent historical overview from Joshi.

The Inmost Light  (1894): Pseudo-science based horror with ties to the longer, creepier "The Great God Pan.".

Novel of the Black Seal  (1895): 'Novel' meaning 'Nouvelle' here and below, and not a matter of length. One of several Machen stories dealing with a survived, malign race of 'Little People.'

Novel of the White Powder  (1895): Another piece of pseudo-science based horror. As with the above 'novel,' this was also published as part of the actual 'novel'/short-story cycle The Three Impostors. The 'science' moves into the realm of the occult at the conclusion.

The Red Hand  (1895): A fine piece of horror which uses the style and structure of the mystery story.

The White People  (1904): A towering achievement in first-person narrative in the horror genre, framed by a somewhat wonky but necessary philosophical discussion of the nature of good and evil. One of the most unnerving stories ever told.

A Fragment of Life  (1904) : A slightly weird tale of a young couple chafing at life in a London suburb really grows on one as it builds to a climax reaffirming Machen's love/hate relationship with cities.

The Bowmen  (1914): That famous piece of accidental 'journalism' (it's a short story mistaken at the time for being real) that spawned the World War One legend of ghostly bowmen coming to the rescue of British soldiers.

The Soldiers' Rest  (1914): Another of Machen's brief newspaper short stories meant to buoy spirits during the early days of the Great War.

The Great Return  (1915): A weird tale without horror -- instead, it's a faux-journalistic piece on the Holy Grail in the Welsh countryside.

Out of the Earth  (1915): Very minor piece concerns Machen's underground, malign, and apparently foul-mouthed little people. 

The Terror  (1916): Written in a straightforward journalistic style that's unlike Machen's earlier works of weird fiction that include "The White People" and "The Great God Pan," The Terror is instead the great-grandfather of Max Brooks' World War Z. The Terror depicts its events as real, investigated by the unnamed narrator.  Those events aren't zombie attacks -- they're mysterious deaths breaking out in various locations throughout Great Britain during World War One. Have the Germans landed some sort of hidden force on the British Isles? Is someone using a mysterious 'Z-Ray' to smother people or send them running off cliffs to their deaths? Or is there something wrong with the animal kingdom Machen was writing furiously at this time in his life, forced into newspaper work in order to pay the bills. The Terror isn't the imaginative and literary triumph that the aforementioned stories were, but it's still an enjoyable and often weird book. It's also an important permutation in horror's long love affair with the pseudo-documentarian style. Where 'letters' and 'journal entries' once told us that what we were reading was 'real,' now the journalistic voice does. It's also a mutation of something going back to at least Daniel DeFoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. In that early 18th-century work, DeFoe told a fictional 'you-are-there' story about a real event. Machen embeds The Terror in the real, early events of the Great War and then, like DeFoe, tells everything as a piece of actual reportage. It's a major stylistic leap. There are many fine moments of horror and pity throughout The Terror, along with some marvelously weird images. Machen captures the way fear can travel through gossip when the official channels are trying to hide the problem. A late-novel tableaux of horror at an isolated farm is especially well-managed through the description of the aftermath and through a dead man's journal describing the mysterious and terrible events that led to that aftermath. There are a couple of flaws to note. One isn't so much a flaw as a relative lack of closure. Things just sort of stop. This first flaw is exacerbated by the second, which is the narrator's jaw-dropping, climactic theory about why what happened, happened. It's an explanation totally in keeping with Arthur Machen's beliefs about society. But it's a moment of political and social commentary that will leave a sour aftertaste with anyone who doesn't long to live in a medieval fiefdom. I kid you not. 

Overall: A selection that includes non-horror pieces makes for an interesting overview of Machen's career. Those interested only in Machen's horror output would be better served by seeking out a collection that includes "The Great God Pan" and "The Shining Pyramid." The end-notes to the stories are extremely useful. The cover is the only oddity, as it seems to have been commissioned for a collection that did include "The Great God Pan." Highly recommended.

Back to Cthulhu

Black Wings of Cthulhu 2 (2012): edited by S.T. Joshi, containing the following stories: And the Sea Gave Up the Dead by Jason C. Eckhardt; Appointed by Chet Williamson; Bloom by John Langan; Casting Call by Don Webb; Correlated Discontents by Rick Dakan; Dahlias by Melanie Tem; Dead Media by Nick Mamatas; Houndwife by Caitlin R. Kiernan; King of Cat Swamp by Jonathan Thomas; The Abject by Richard Gavin; The Clockwork King, the Queen of Glass, and the Man with the Hundred Knives by Darrell Schweitzer; The History of a Letter by Jason V Brock; The Other Man by Nicholas Royle; The Skinless Face by Donald Tyson; The Wilcox Remainder by Brian Evenson; View by Tom Fletcher; Waiting at the Crossroads Motel by Steve Rasnic Tem; and When Death Wakes Me to Myself by John Shirley.

When it comes to both the general (horror fiction) and the specific (H.P. Lovecraft), S.T. Joshi's credentials are impeccable. His emendations and annotations to Lovecraft's fiction have been a gift to the reading public, as has his other work.

This is certainly a mostly enjoyable anthology with a somewhat misleading title forced upon Joshi by his publishers. The first of these anthologies was simply entitled 'Black Wings' in its original hardcover publication, a quotation from an essay by Lovecraft about horror. 'of Cthulhu' was added to the paperback release to grab the eye of the reader. However, the addition makes the title of the anthology somewhat erroneous. Writers riff here on all of Lovecraft's output, and on the more general aspects of his approach to cosmic horror. This isn't a Cthulhu Mythos theme anthology. So if you want a Cthulhu Mythos theme anthology, look elsewhere. It will probably also have 'Cthulhu' in the title. They're not hard to find.

None of the stories selected by Joshi are bad in the way that Cthulhu Mythos pastiches can be bad (though I'm definitely not alone in my enjoyment of even the most clumsy of attempts to replicate both Lovecraft's style and content). Really, none of them are bad at all. They do fall within a range that also fails to ascend beyond the level of, 'Well, that was enjoyable.'

But wait. Was I frightened by anything here in a cosmic, metaphysical manner? No. Steve and Melanie Tem's stories do disturb on a metaphysical level. John Shirley's piece is a delightful romp, but not a scary one. Jason Brock's "A History of a Letter" does a solid job as an epistolary work of mounting unease, though the jokiness of the footnotes cuts against total investment. Caitlin Kiernan's story does invest totally in its horrific elements, but it's a character study, not an exercise in terror.

Another problem shared by several stories is, well, an absent middle -- "Dead Media" and "The Abject" pretty much jump from detailed introduction to loopy conclusion. And the loopiness of both sudden conclusions works against horror. It doesn't help that "The Abject" has been critically overdetermined, starting with that title, which is actually attached to a large, scary rock in the story. I kept waiting for a Phallic Mother to appear and, you know, it sort of does.

Dire consequences await many of the protagonists of these tales, at a much higher rate of Dire than that found in Lovecraft's whole output. One of the things that you can count on in modern Lovecraft-related fiction is that down endings and cosmic disaster are the norm and not something that may arrive in the near future but does not arrive in the text itself. When the disastrous ending becomes standard, that standard becomes cliche.

It's an interesting development in horror fiction, suggesting that at least when it comes to the fiction they produce, an awful lot of today's writers are far more misanthropic and defeatist than the notoriously misanthropic and "futilitarian" Lovecraft ever was. Some of them make me long for the Derlethian deus ex machina that ended many (but not all) of Derleth's Lovecraft pastiches.

There may be a fairly high level of literary acumen on display here, but the endings too often echo the endings of the last twenty years of horror movies, in which supernatural evil always triumphs. And when evil always triumphs, as T.E.D. Klein noted in a riff on an earlier critic's musings, then I don't see what the point of the point is other than knee-jerk nihilism. Lightly recommended.

Cthulhu Everlasting

Black Wings of Cthulhu: 21 Tales of Lovecraftian Horror: edited by S.T. Joshi (2011) containing:

"Pickman’s Other Model (1929)" by Caitlin R. Kiernan
"Desert Dreams" by Donald R. Burleson
"Engravings" by Joseph S. Pulver, Jr.
"Copping Squid" by Michael Shea
"Passing Spirits" by Sam Gafford
"The Broadsword" by Laird Barron
"Usurped" by William Browning Spencer
"Denker’s Book" by David J. Schow
"Inhabitants of Wraithwood" W.H. Pugmire
"The Dome" by Millie L. Burleson
"Rotterdam" by Nicholas Royle
"Tempting Providence" by Jonathan Thomas
"Howling in the Dark" by Darrell Schweitzer
"The Truth about Pickman" by Brian Stableford
"Tunnels" by Philip Haldeman
"The Correspondence of Cameron Thaddeus Nash" annotated by Ramsey Campbell
"Violence, Child of Trust" by Michael Cisco
"Lesser Demons" by Norman Partridge
"An Eldritch Matter" by Adam Niswander
"Substitution" by Michael Marshall Smith
"Susie" by Jason Van Hollander

An excellent anthology of all-new stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Lovecraft expert S.T. Joshi. Joshi wisely didn't limit his writers to the Cthulhu Mythos, or even to explicit references to Lovecraft's work. Instead, there's a more general mandate of the weird and the cosmic (or 'cosmicism') at work here, though the explicitly Cthulhuesque is also welcome.

There really isn't a bad story in the bunch, and there are a number of standouts. Laird Barron's "The Broadsword" works within Barron's own Children of Old Leech mythology of terrible doings behind the walls of our world. Norman Partridge serves up a monstrous invasion within a narrative that works within the hardboiled parameters of the novels of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. Ramsey Campbell has some fun with Lovecraft's near-obsessive letter-writing, while the protagonist of Jonathan Thomas's "Tempting Providence" seems to meet the ghost of HPL...or is something much more cosmic and sinister going on? Oh, that three-lobed burning eye!

One of the interesting things about the collection is that three stories -- "Pickman’s Other Model (1929)" by Caitlin R. Kiernan, "Inhabitants of Wraithwood" W.H. Pugmire, and "The Truth about Pickman" by Brian Stableford -- all deal with Lovecraft's transitional-phase short story "Pickman's Model" in various ways. It's a story that was adapted in a mediocre fashion for Night Gallery, but it's also probably the Lovecraft story with the most-quoted final line. Hell, Joanna Russ turned that line into the title of a story!

HPL's original story is transitional in the sense that while it looks ahead to the Cthulhu universe in which horror is all around us, waiting to be discovered, it also uses beings -- Lovecraft's version of ghouls, to be specific -- which are treated in a somewhat more whimsical, less horrific fashion in Lovecraft's Dunsanian novel The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, in which they actually aid the narrator during his voyage through the Dream Lands. These stories offer radically different takes on the original material: the authors definitely don't think the same way about the stately ghouls of Boston.

In any case, Joshi offers a pip of an anthology here, complete with a useful introduction. At least five of these stories (by my count) have already been anthologized in various 'Best of' and Cthulhu compilation volumes, which is pretty good for a book that's barely a year old. And the cover of the paperback is sweet. Highly recommended.

Work Sucks

My Work Is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror by Thomas Ligotti containing "My Work Is Not Yet Done", "I Have a Special Plan for the World", and "The Nightmare Network" (2007): Frank Dominio is a team supervisor at a corporation called New Product. On his own initiative, he comes up with, well, a new product, and briefly presents his idea to his fellow supervisors and their boss, Richard (nicknamed "The Doctor" for initially unknown-to-Frank reasons).

And here Frank's troubles begin in the lengthy titular novella.

Thomas Ligotti gets to be described as a unique voice in horror because he really is a unique voice in horror. He can be approximated by imagining some bizarre mash-up of two or three or four other writers (for the record, I'd go with Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Clark Ashton Smith, and Roald Dahl) , but there's no single writer who's truly like him. He's an American original, writer of some of the bleakest, bleakly funniest horror stories of the past thirty years.

His take on corporate horror is singular and tricky. The novella initially seems to exist in the realm of the workplace revenge fantasy, something we've all seen. But the means of Frank's revenge are extraordinarily odd, and become odder as that revenge progresses. This is not Office Space With Ghosts.

People who've read other Ligotti stories may realize around the halfway mark that "My Work Is Not Yet Done" takes place in the same bleak universe as 1999's "The Shadow, The Darkness." One doesn't need to know this to understand what's going on, but it does deepen the experience as we plunge into the Magical Nihilism that is Ligotti's dominant mode of discourse.

But the novella is also horribly funny, as are the two short stories that complete this triptych. Frank Dominio begins the novella with a bleak outlook on humanity in general and his co-workers in particular, and the events of the story show that bleakness to not be enough. The world is much worse than Dominio ever imagined. The revenge scenarios initially carry a certain grotesque zing, but they quickly lose their enjoyability for Frank as he realizes who and what he's up against -- or working for.

Ligotti's fiction can truly unnerve one (as S.T. Joshi has observed), leading one to question the parameters of one's own existence, and the meaning of existence itself. But it's strangely, blackly refreshing because if one rejects the nihilistic cosmos of many of Ligotti's stories, one finds one's own cosmos to be that much more welcoming and benign by comparison. Highest recommendation.

50 States of Horror

American Supernatural Tales, edited by S.T. Joshi (2007)

Contents:

　
"The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving
"Edward Randolph's Portrait" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe
"What Was It?" by Fitz-James O'Brien
"The Death of Halpin Frayser" by Ambrose Bierce
"The Yellow Sign" by Robert W. Chambers
"The Real Right Thing" by Henry James
"Old Garfield's Heart" by Robert E. Howard
"The Call of Cthulhu" by H. P. Lovecraft
"The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" by Clark Ashton Smith
"Black Bargain" by Robert Bloch
"The Lonesome Place" by August Derleth
"The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" by Fritz Leiber
"The Fog Horn" by Ray Bradbury
"A Visit" by Shirley Jackson
"Long Distance Call" by Richard Matheson
"The Vanishing American" by Charles Beaumont
"The Events at Poroth Farm" by T. E. D. Klein
"Night Surf" by Stephen King
"The Late Shift" by Dennis Etchison
"Vastarien" by Thomas Ligotti
"Endless Night" by Karl Edward Wagner
"The Hollow Man" by Norman Partridge
"Last Call for the Sons of Shock" by David J. Schow
"Demon" by Joyce Carol Oates
"In the Water Works (Birmingham, Alabama 1888)" by Caitlin R. Kiernan

　

S.T. Joshi has been at the forefront of critical and academic evaluations and re-evaluations of American horror stories for the last 20 years, most notably in the field of Lovecraft studies. American Supernatural Tales has a list of writers it's mostly hard to argue with (OK, I'd argue against the inclusion of August Derleth and for the inclusion of Edith Wharton, whom Joshi dismisses as a Henry James imitator). OK, I'd also leave out Charles Beaumont. And where's Thomas Disch?

　

The trick with one of these anthologies is to somehow balance the unfamiliar with the familiarly essential, all within the confines of one volume. Virtually all the writers here really are signposts on the road of American horror fiction. Some represent a problem because of the sheer volume of their output; others do not.

　

"The Yellow Sign" by Robert W. Chambers, for instance, really is pretty much the only story one could choose from this prolific writer of a century ago, introducing as it does the trope of the Forbidden Book into American horror. "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" by Clark Ashton Smith is a fine selection from a writer who could supply any one of at least 20 stories for this volume. Henry James's "The Real Right Thing" works as an example of how James used the ghost story for psychological reasons -- and really didn't scare anybody outside of "The Turn of the Screw."

　

This is a great place to start if one hasn't read much horror fiction, American or otherwise. Modern masters such as Caitlin Kiernan and Thomas Ligotti get fairly representative examples. King's "Night Surf," a dry run for The Stand, seems a bit out-of-place, as does Robert Bloch's frankly goofy "Black Bargain," which has not aged all that well. Still, there's a wealth of supernatural fiction here -- solid stories, names to follow, decent biographical and historical information. Highly recommended.