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50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The quintessential Lovecraft collection, March 29, 2002
This is basically the essential Lovecraft collection, featuring 16 of his best pieces of fiction and a noteworthy introduction by Robert Bloch, a member of the Lovecraft circle.. Naturally, one can make an argument for other tales that should be included, but the contents as they are represent a compelling cross-section of the master's work over the course of his literary career. It must be noted that Lovecraft's three short novels, which are of course immensely important, are not among these shorter works, but their inclusion in these pages would result in a much longer book that could potentially turn away potential readers. This book more than any other serves as a beacon to new readers yet to discover horror's greatest writer. Every story herein deserves it own review, frankly. "The Rats in the Walls," "The Dreams in the Witch-House," and "In the Vault" (one of my favorites) offer traditional horror tales full of Lovecraftian atmosphere. "The Outsider," perhaps the least satisfying read, is an allegorical tale reflecting an isolated individual's view of society and of himself. "The Silver Key" is a solid representative of the dream-myth stories of the author's earlier years and serves as an introduction to Lovecraft's heroic character Randolph Carter. "The Colour Out of Space" is a singular, science fiction/horror tale counted by Lovecraft himself as one of his favorites. "The Picture in the House" is perhaps Lovecraft's most efficiently horrifying story ever, "The Music of Erich Zann" is an unforgettable tale touching on the great secrets of the unknown, and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" sensationally evokes the horror and depths of influence by unseen agents on this earth. These stories effectively set the stage for the Cthulhu Mythos tales, of which the remaining stories form an integral part. "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Dunwich Horror" herald the full manifestation of Lovecraft's cosmic horror and describe the ambivalent agency of incomprehensible outside forces on mankind. "The Haunter of the Dark" and "The Thing on the Doorstep" highlight even more mysterious access points of the unknown into man's consciousness. I must give special attention to my two favorite Lovecraft tales: "The Whisperer in Darkness" and "The Shadow Out of Time." Much of the action detailed in the first of these stories is related to the reader by way of letters exchanged between an isolated scholar in the hills of Vermont and the narrator, an expert in folk tales who is compelled to believe the ancient stories of alien influences he once preached against. We see no action first-hand until the latter pages, when the protagonist finally visits his correspondent in Vermont and is presented with facts and examples proving the reality of advanced alien life forms; the evolving conclusion of the tale is perhaps predictable to a degree but the final revelation remains quite effective nonethless. I consider "The Shadow Out of Time," written very near the end of Lovecraft's too short life, to be his masterpiece, and it does effectively tie together many of the themes of cosmic horror and alien influence he devoted so much of his time to. A learned man loses almost five years of his life to amnesia, during which time a wholly secondary personality controls his body and masquerades as his old self. After he returns to his body, he continually dreams of a strange world in which he is a "monster" setting forth a record of earth's history. When he discovers a buried megalithic structure underneath the Australian desert corresponding exactly with his dream-images, he is faced with the realization that he underwent a transfer of consciousness with a Great Race of beings who garnered knowledge of space, time, and the universe eons before man's forebears crawled out of the earth's hot oceans.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not all of the best, but essential, February 24, 2001
This book contains 16 of Lovecraft's best works, though you will find a few equally good or even better stories in the other 2 Del Rey compilations. Lovecraft has a unique writing style that separates him from most other horror writers I have read, a tenaciously descriptive style with lots of rare old syllables. Most of the horrors are either dimly described or not described at all, leaving a lot up to the reader's imagination, in line with Lovecraft's famous sentence: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." What we can't see certainly does scare us! Some of the best known stories like "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" are essentials, and my 4 personal favourites "The Shadow Out of Time", "The Whisperer in Darkness", "The Rats in the Walls", and of course Lovecraft's own favourite: "The Colour Out of Space". Highly recommended! If you like it get the other 2 books in the series, or one of the Arkham House hardbacks if available.
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41 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
'Best' of Lovecraft misleading., November 18, 1999
By A Customer
I believe another reviewer has already stated that what is contained in this volume seems closer to a most 'accessible' Lovecraft collection than a best of, although the inclusion of pieces such as the Silver Key does give this volume a higher ratio of excellent stories than the clearly-not-best-of Transitions volume also published by Del Ray. What is missing here are the two mature works, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kaddath and (my particular favorite) At the Mountains of Madness. It is difficult to consider this volume to represent the best Lovecraft when it instead seems to (especially in the first few stories) represent the most generic Lovecraft. Some of the man's best and most imaginative stories are not to be found here, but to give the volume credit, it is certainly a well balenced collection with no genuinely weak stories (though the second one--called something like 'the picture in the house' or something like that, is so absurdly predictable that it is hard to understand how it made it into this volume. On another note, upon recent rereading, I must agree with the introduction that appears in the Arkham house Dagon volume, in which the author (I cannot recall his name) states boldly that Lovecraft's horror has not aged well, while his science fiction and fantasy--especially his fantasy--still feels quite inspired and original. But readers of this volume will miss out on most of Lovecraft's fantasy. What they will get instead are pieces like the Dunwich horror, which as the century closes reads more like a potential script idea for a B film made by the likes of Roger Coreman. If we cannot laugh at the invisible monster as it knocks down trees and eats cows in the backwater community of Dunwich, then we must certainly laugh at the 'action scientists' who seem to be trained in at least 5 different fields and who are reluctant to bring in other help as they alone can protect the earth from the strange invisible monster! I do enjoy Lovecraft tremendously, but there are as many odd things to laugh at as there are trully brilliant things--most of which stem from those things the man thought beautiful and wonderous, not his monsters. To wrap this up then, is Lovecraft the greatest horror author of the 20th century? Well I'll certainly take him over the other hacks who have written in this area, but for all those who seem to think that everything that Lovecraft accomplished was creating the Cthulu mythos and the Necronomicon, I strongly suggest looking beyond the monsters and see what the man was trying to say about the nature of consciousness and those who feel drawn inexplicable to those things mysterious and beautiful whose unearthly source is as intangible as are the passing images of dreams. Lovecraft seems forever to be an author frustrated with communicating that sense of wonder, and in frustration was born Cthulu and all the other horrors; creative works, but not the essential idea of Lovecraft.
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