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 Mammoth Book of Cthulhu (2016) edited by Paula Guran, containing the following stories:
- “In Syllables of Elder Seas” by Lisa L. Hannett
- “The Peddler’s Tale, or, Isobel’s Revenge” by Caitlín R. Kiernan
- “It’s All the Same Road in the End” by Brian Hodge
- “Caro in Carno” by Helen Marshall
- “The Cthulhu Navy Wife” by Sandra McDonald
- “Those Who Watch” by Ruthanna Emrys
- “A Clutch” by Laird Barron
- “Just Beyond the Trailer Park” by John Shirley
- “The Sea Inside” by Amanda Downum
- “Outside the House, Watching for the Crows” by John Langan
- “Alexandra Lost” by Simon Strantzas
- “Falcon-and-Sparrows” by Yoon Ha Lee
- “A Shadow of Thine Own Design” by W. H. Pugmire
- “Backbite” by Norman Partridge
- “In the Ruins of Mohenjo-Daro” by Usman T. Malik
- “Legacy of Salt” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- “I Do Not Count the Hours” by Michael Wehunt
- “An Open Letter to Mister Edgar Allan Poe, from a Fervent Admirer” by Michael Shea
- “I Dress My Lover in Yellow” by A. C. Wise
- “Deep Eden” by Richard Gavin
- “The Future Eats Everything” by Don Webb
- “I Believe That We Will Win” by Nadia Bulkin
- “In the Sacred Cave” by Lois H. Gresh
- “Umbilicus” by Damien Angelica Walters
- “Variations on Lovecraftian Themes” by Veronica Schanoes
The Mammoth Book of Occasionally Lovercraftian Horror, Occasionally Written by People Who Despise H.P. Lovecraft would have been more accurate. In her sloppy, poorly researched introduction, editor Paula Guran admits that the title is a bait-and-switch: “This anthology has little to do specifically with Cthulhu and everything to do with ‘new Lovecraftian fiction.’ ” Why call it The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu? Because Cthulhu sells, now more than ever.
There are a few stand-outs. OK, one. “Outside the House, Watching for the Crows” by John Langan is excellent, evoking fear and cosmic horror in the seemingly most mundane of situations. “In the Ruins of Mohenjo-Daro” by Usman T. Malik is also a solid piece, though it fails to stick the landing. Admittedly, HPL occasionally failed to stick the landing. But Malik may be a writer to watch.
Caitlin Kiernan, W.H. Pugmire, and Brian Hodge deliver solid work, none of it all that related to the Cthulhu Mythos (Kiernan riffs on HPL's Dunsanian period; Pugmire is, well, Pugmire, and God bless him for it; and Hodge's story is a solid one with unusual elements that goes on about five pages too long). Norman Partridge riffs on HPL's pre-Cthulhu "The Hound" to decent effect, albeit with a dud of an ending. Laird Barron seems to have had an homage to Clark Ashton Smith and Jack Vance sitting on his desk when the call for submissions came in -- or at least that's what his atypical, mildly diverting "The Clutch" reads like.
That's about it. Looking at the titles of the stories, I note that I can't remember what most of them were about. I think HPL got accused of misogyny in Paula Guran's introduction, which is actually a very difficult case to make. However, Guran doesn't give the impression of having read much about HPL in that introduction. Honestly, it's possible she's never read any HPL. That could explain how one gets an anthology with Cthulhu in the title and pretty much no Cthulhu in the stories.
The final piece, a biographical attack on HPL's racism and anti-Semitism that we're apparently supposed to believe is a story, is a hell of a way to end the anthology. It's easy to score points off HPL's racism. Writing a great story that deals with that racism -- a story like David Drake's "Than Curse the Darkness" or Elizabeth Bear's "Shoggoths in Bloom" -- requires talent, something the writer of the concluding 'story' does not seem to possess.
It didn't help that the writer quotes a racist outburst about New York by then-Atlanta Braves reliever John Rocker near the beginning of her 'story.' The quote dates from 1999. How long was this shitty essay... sorry, 'story'... sitting in a drawer? Why resurrect the words of a now-forgotten relief pitcher in a screed... sorry, 'story'... about H.P. Lovecraft? Oh, well. Hidey ho. So it goes.
Anyway, save your money. If you're going to buy a new anthology of Lovecraftian-themed stories, look for S.T. Joshi and avoid Paula Guran. Avoid this book in particular. It's a waste of money.
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.
Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume 1 (2013/Published 2014): edited by Laird Barron and Michael Kelly, containing the following stories:
- The Nineteenth Step by Simon Strantzas: Not so much a story as an opening that's missing a middle and an end.
- Swim Wants to Know If It's as Bad as Swim Thinks by Paul G. Tremblay: Sharp and nasty character study suddenly turns into a vaguely observed (and possibly completely subjective) invasion of Lovecraftian horrors.
- Dr. Blood and the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron by A. C. Wise: Well, it's sort of funny, and it sort of feels like something that was written in about 1970 for the magazine Weird Heroes, given that the genre tropes it spoofs are all very, very, very old.
- The Year of the Rat by Chen Qiufan: Nice dystopian satire in translation from the Chinese would be pretty much at home in an issue of Galaxy magazine from 1955.
- Olimpia's Ghost by Sofia Samatar: Something to do with Sigmund Freud but I never really cared what or why.
- Furnace by Livia Llewellyn: Solid bit of weird horror reminds me a lot of late-career Thomas Ligotti...which makes a lot of sense when you realize that it's from a Ligotti tribute anthology.
- Shall I Whisper to You of Moonlight, of Sorrow, of Pieces of Us? by Damien Walters Grintalis: The pomposity of the title has literally erased the story from my memory. Honestly, it's like an episode title from Season 3 of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.
- Bor Urus by John Langan: Typically solid Langan piece with a really spooky, disturbingly dream-like climax.
- A Quest of Dream by W. H. Pugmire: A tip of the hat to H.P. Lovecraft's Dream-Cycle stories. There's really only one W.H. Pugmire story, a sort of Swinburne-meets-early-Lovecraft fragment, and this is another one of those. Enjoyable, rotted twee.
- The Krakatoan by Maria Dahvana Headley: Promising start, completely goofy weird ending.
- The Girl in the Blue Coat by Anna Taborska: Solidly written and observed ghost story of the Holocaust.
- (he) Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror... by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.: No memory of this.
- In Limbo by Jeffrey Thomas: Twilight Zone-like set-up for a keenly observed character study. Very reminiscent of a lot of stories that appeared in Charles Grant's Shadows anthologies in the 1970's and 1980's.
- A Cavern of Redbrick by Richard Gavin: Very nice weird tale with a disturbing either/or conclusion that offers closure without a definitive answer to what just happened.
- Eyes Exchange Bank by Scott Nicolay: Really the 900-pound gorilla of this anthology super-collides splatterpunk and kitchen-sink horror with some great riffs on Poe and the Decadents.
- Fox Into Lady by Anne-Sylvie Salzman: Mostly unpleasant, amorphous, mythy.
- Like Feather, Like Bone by Kristi DeMeester: Story fragment about some gross stuff.
- A Terror by Jeffrey Ford: Excellent period piece depicts Emily Dickinson's first meeting with Death.
- Success by Michael Blumlein: I could imagine this story as having been written by someone like Robert Sheckley or Cyril Kornbluth and published in a 1957 issue of Galaxy magazine, only at about one-third the length. As is, it's almost monstrously attenuated.
- Moonstruck by Karin Tidbeck: A sort of inert bit of dark fantasy shading into a postmodern folk story.
- The Key to Your Heart is Made of Brass by John R. Fultz: This one, enjoyable as it is, would be more enjoyable if it were the script to a Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant comic-book story from 1979, preferably illustrated by some very baroque and murky European comics artist of the time.
- No Breather in the World But Thee by Jeff VanderMeer: The usually subtle and understated VanderMeer cuts loose, to increasingly dire and unengaging effect. It may be a satire of weird-fiction tropes the writer has grown tired of. It's sort of a rubbery, pointless, "shocking" mess.
Barron casts the net so wide for his definition of the Weird in his introduction that the term becomes almost meaningless. And the extraordinarily broad reach of the contents bear this out. It seems less like an attempt to come up with a new genre and more like a land grab. Nonetheless, there's a lot of good stuff here. In all: recommended, a little lightly.
