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Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

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Hardly the best collection from the early Lovecraft acolytes, but one that will certainly appeal to the fourteen-year-old in everyone who loves the Mythos. Editor Price is an admirable scholar of this particular niche in literature, here providing rarely anthologized stories tracing the early evolution of Lovecraft's ideas as practiced by his (generally) less famous pulp fiction contemporaries and fans.

The majority of these offerings are in the "freebooting adventurer meets his doom in forbidden archaeology" vein, a la Conan creator Robert E. Howard - two of whose stories (and only one really a Mythos tale) are duly reprinted, "The Thing on the Roof" and "The Fire of Assurbanipal." Robert Bloch's "Fane of the Black Pharaoh," not one of his best but still not bad, has a British explorer running afoul of an ancient Brotherhood protecting the secrets of a mad Egyptian prophet-king. Clark Ashton Smith's "The Seven Geases" concerns the hypnotic magic of a long-forgotten serpent race, who sacrifice men to their unspeakable dark god. August Derleth - you didn't expect he'd miss out on the act, did you? - collaborates with Mark Schorer on "Lair of the Star-Spawn," detailing a missing archaeologist's plan to stop those same serpent-people from releasing their demon-gods upon mankind. (Derleth is also represented by his own virtual plagiarism of Algernon Blackwood, in "Ithaqua" and "The Thing That Walked On the Wind.") E. Hoffman Price's "The Lord of Illusion" and Henry Hasse's "The Guardian of the Book" tell stories of extraterrestrial wayfarers through the gates of time and space, uncovering ancient and extra-dimensional secrets.

Other offerings include more straightforward horror stories, such as Henry Kuttner's "Bells of Horror" and "The Invaders," C. Hall Thompson's "Spawn of the Green Abyss," Carl Jacobi's "The Aquarium" and Duane W. Rimel's "Music of the Stars." Many of these, like Derleth's stories and Bertram Russell's "The Scourge of B'Moth," are essentially...rehashes of recognizable Lovecraft classics, though one or two are fairly original and worthwhile.

And for those who long for the occasional chuckle-break from all the melodramatically histrionic proceedings, Donald A. Wollheim's "The Horror Out of Lovecraft" and Fritz Leiber's "To Arkham and the Stars" will fit the bill - the latter, especially, as it comically rapes virtually every famous story Lovecraft ever wrote (with love, of course).

These aren't all the stories included in this volume, but they are indicative of the rest - certainly sufficient for anyone to determine whether or not Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos will be worth the "Price."

Now, if you'll excuse me, there's something at my window. It seems to be - oh, my God! Words cannot describe the utter blasphemous horror of the nameless dread somehow made flesh incarnate! Someone save me, before I succumb to that unutterable -

A glance at the table of contents would make this book seem to be a mixed bag; while it contains plenty of little-known stories by Mythos greats, it also has soem commonly reprinted stories by equally great authors such as Howard, Kuttner, and Bloch. This is the risk any anthologist runs in the Cthulhu Mythos; some stories are going to overlap with the contents of other books the reader owns. Price makes up for this in part by including variants of stories: "The Fire of Asshurbanipal," for instance, is not the same as in most of its other print appearances. Ironically, this version is less a Cthulhu Mythos story here than in its more common version, but the story still has that Mythos atmosphere. All in all, considering the strength of the collection as a whole, few Mythos readers are going to mind rereading a few stories

I'd like to type up ye first two paragraph's of Bob's fascinating introduction to this wonderful collection:

"Many readers of the present volume will recognize a more than coincidental similarity between it and August Derleth's TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS anthology that appeared more than two decades ago, in 1969. Derleth had compiled a prime collection of tales written by various authors under the influence of H. P. Lovecraft and employing the props of his system of 'artificial mythology' which Derleth (but not Lovecraft) called 'the Cthulhu Mythos.' To this collection Derleth prefixed a brief exposition of the Mythos as he understood it, so as to provide a context to help the reader better understand the stories that were to follow. It seems appropriate, therefore, in the present case to provide an analogous exposition, especially since the scholarship of the last decades has seen a major reinterpretation of Lovecraft's Mythos.

"As the title of this volume implies, there has even been a shift in nomenclature in regards to the Mythos. Especially in reference to the body of fictitious lore as it appears in the stories of Lovecraft himself, it seems better to refer to it as 'the Lovecraft Mythos' after its creator, rather than 'the Cthulhu Mythos' after one of the dread entities mentioned in it. As with most things, we must understand the origin and development of the Mythos before we can venture to say we know what it is. The definition of a thing includes its history. Hence, the following sketch of the Lovecraft Mythos and its evolution into the Cthulhu Mythos."

Price has thought long and hard about all of this, and his views are extremely interesting. Some of the introduction seems written to counter the hostility toward Derleth from they who have attacked and perhaps misunderstood him. "Interpreters from Richard L. Tierney and Dirk W. Mosig on have hotly repudiated this whole schema, derisively dubbing it 'the Derleth Mythos.' They saw Derleth's framework, especially in the Christian parallel, the imposition of a Good versus Evil schema foreign to Lovecraft's original, morally neutral conception. While such an understanding would indeed represent the grossest rendering of the Lovecraftian fabric, I am not convinced that critics have correctly understood Derleth at this point." Critics have derided Bob Price for his ideas as well, since the topic of the Mythos gets many people emotional, defensive and antagonistic.

Whatever one thinks of it, the Cthulhu Mythos is not going to go away. Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, it has expanded like shoggoth-tissue under the hands of other writers. Some of the best of them, and some of the less than best, are between the covers of this fun book. They are:

"The Thing on the Roof," by Robert E. Howard

"The Fire of Asshurbanipal," by Robert E. Howard

"The Seven Geases," by Clark Ashton Smith

"Fane of the Black Pharoah," by Robert Bloch

"The Invaders," by Henry Kuttner

"Bells of Horror," by Henry Kuttner

"The Thing That Walked on the Wind," by August Derleth

"Ithaqua," by August Derleth

"The Lair of the Star Spawn," by August Derleth and Mark Schorer

"The Lord of Illusion," by E. Hoffmann Price

"The Warder of Knowledge," by Richard F. Searight

"The Scourge of B.Moth," by Bertram Russell

"The House of the Worm," by Mearle Prout

"Spawn of the Green Abyss," by C. Hall Thompson

"The Guardian of the Book," by Henry Hasse

"The Abyss," by Robert A. W. Lowndes

"Music of the Stars," by Duane W. Rimel

"The Aquarium," by Carl Jacobi

"The Horror out of Lovecraft," by Donald A Wollheim

"To Arkham and the Stars," by Fritz Leiber

One of the finest features of a Robert M. Price Mythos anthology is that he often restores the text as it was originally written. When Derleth published "The Aquarium," he excised those portions of it that concerned the Cthulhu Mythos. In TALES OF THE LOVECRAFT MYTHOS, those Lovecraftian portions are restored.

Some of the stories are not so great, one must admit. I was surprised at how bad the Mythos fiction of Henry Kuttner seems to me. And I found it questionable to reprint both of Derleth's tales together in one book, they are so similar to each other. (It was these two tales by Derleth that inspired Brian Lumley to write one of his finest Mythos tales, "Born of the Winds," which is reprinted in his fine collection, THE TAINT AND OTHER NOVELLAS).

But many of the stories are extremely good, such as "The Abyss," by Doc Lowndes. Writes Bob Price in his introduction, "'The Abyss' by Robert A. W. Lowndes has appeared more than once since its first publication in the February, 1941, issue of STIRRING SCIENCE STORIES. But all the reprints have featured an updated, revised version. Though we may trust the author's judgment and respect his decision to improve his work, we are pleased to satisfy your antiquarian curiosity by presenting the original 1941 version, in keeping with the pulp era focus of this book." The story is amazingly good.

"The Lord of Illusion" is the E. Hoffmann Price draft of the Lovecraft-Price collaboration, "Through the Gates of the Silver Key." Here we can see how much of the original text (not much!) was kept by Lovecraft when he wrote his version of the tale.

"The Horror out of Lovecraft" is little more than a piece of fan fiction, and it borders on parody. However, its author, Donald A. Wollheim, went on to create DAW Books, the paperback publisher who published lots and lots of Mythos novels &c. Both he and Doc Lowndes would probably have rescued H. P. Lovecraft's fiction from oblivion had Derleth and Wandrei not established Arkham House for that especial task. (But thank Yuggoth for Arkham House!!!!)

TALES OF THE LOVECRAFT MYTHOS stands as a wonderful tribute to H. P. Lovecraft and the way he inspired others to weave their works around his Mythos. It is a fun anthology that I have returned to again and again for the sheer pleasure of reading these amusing tales.

Robert Price does an excellent job of compiling seminal tales from the pulp magazines from the Weird Tales era. Intended as a companion piece to August Derleth's collection, "Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos", the focus here is on tales which spawned some of the more interesting concepts in what would be later termed the "Cthuthlu Mythos."

As you'd expect with any anthology, this collection is a bit of a mixed bag, but worthwhile for its inclusion of some of the more hard-to-find tales, which are often neglected in anthologies of the genre. Also of note is Price's lively discussion of the "Cthuthlu\Lovecraft Mythos."

In the end, this is a fine addition to the cannon of anthologies which attempt to demonstrate Lovecrafts's influence over the "weird fiction" genre and the group of writers who contributed to Lovecraft's "universe."

Recommended!

This is a solid collection of "pulp" stories out of the Lovecraft tradition ranging from fair to excellent. Some of Price's selections may be arguable, for instance, Howard's "The Fire of Ashurbanipal" or Smith's "The Seven Geases". Both have produced tales that are rooted firmer in the Lovecraft mythos, but the first is the alternate version of the tale of the same title, difficult to find, and the second is simply one of Smith's best stories. Even the Derleth contributions are good tales, centering around his more intruiging and more independent creation Ithaqua. A couple of oddities and relics round off the book.

Price's introduction and defense of Derleth's systemizing of the mythos is less than successful. He argues, more or less, that the roots of the elemental system and the struggle of good vs. evil deities lie in Lovecraft's own tales. For instance, both Derleth's and Lovecraft's protagonists bestow upon the entities negative moral adjectives and connotations. Although I agree with Price that Derleth has been lambasted undeservedly by many contemporary critics, his arguments, in the end, are unconvincing. Though Lovecraft and Derleth both describe the evil from an antropocentric view, Derleth's objective description of the Cthulhu Mythos is explicitly in analogy with Christian mythology and, one should admit, systematic theology, while Lovecraft is objectively explicit in the complete indifference, chaos, and contingency that is breaking in upon a mechanistic materialistic reality.

The two stances, and thus the frames of their tales, couldn't be further apart from each other. If Derleth and Lovecraft weren't that different in the end, as Price suggests, the question arises why Derleth's stereotypical tales (which were really clever advertisings for his Arkham House) easily published in the worst pulp magazines, while Lovecraft barely sold any of his own. One could make an analogy with the immensely popular Hammer films of the sixties and seventies, usually depicting stereotypical struggles between good and evil, and the many contemporary horror films that reached deeper than mere dichotomies have been largely forgotten. Even so, Price offers valuable points in defense of Derleth and criticism of recent Lovecraft scholarship.

This is a lovely historical exercise by editor Price, as it collects about 20 stories in the Lovecraft mode, primarily from the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's, when Lovecraft's widespread Affinity Group, created in large part by Lovecraft's own inexhaustible letter-writing to aspiring writers asking for advice, was still in its infancy. Never has so peculiar a writer-as-person been so generous of his time with other writers. It's all part of the weirdness of HPL.

Price does a nice job selecting little- or never-before-anthologized stories by both significant writers working with Lovecraft's concepts and cosmology (August Derleth, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Henry Kuttner, Clark Ashton Smith) and by writers whose names and stories have been long forgotten. I can't say as I was scared by the stories here, but a lot of them do evoke that existential dread and instability that is one of the hallmarks of the "cosmic horror" that Lovecraft tended to prefer.

Price's lengthy introduction is also invaluable, as it sets forth both a timeline for extra-Lovecraftian additions to the Cthulhu Mythos and an explanation of the manner in which certain writers and editors (most notably Derleth, Lovecraft's unbelievably important literary executor and Boswell in all but title) helped shape the Mythos after Lovecraft's death in 1937, giving it the now-familiar shape and hierarchy it didn't have during Lovecraft's lifetime.

And there were turfwars over Lovecraft's legacy -- Derleth was quite possessive of the Mythos, for good and ill, though overwhelmingly good: without the publishing house, Arkham House, Derleth initially created to preserve Lovecraft's work in hardcover, both Lovecraft and a lot of other fantasy writers might have vanished forever before the early 1960's boom in fantasy brought them widespread renown and paperback sales for the first time in their careers. If Lovecraft's work now seems potentially immortal -- and possibly the single most important American fantasy corpus of the 20th century -- then Derleth deserves a lion's share of the credit. Often compared to Edgar Allan Poe, HPL possessed one major, posthumous difference from Poe: he had a great and tireless champion of his work taking care of it.

Although I'm a pretty big Lovecraft fan, and of other authors that contributed to his mythos, I actually hadn't read most of these. While some are fairly well known members of the Lovecraft "Circle" ( a group of his friends and writings correspondents), most either are lesser known ones, or I guess weren't.

It's starts off with two by Robert Howard, both commonly anthologized, but in a twist, the ending is different in this version ("Fire of Asshurbanipal").

There are a couple tales by Henry Kuttner, a famous author in his own right, who sadly doesn't have much in print any more.

Some August Derleth stuff, which like most of his work, almost gets it right. He has nice ideas, but fails to capitalize on them. For instance, the story introducing the Tcho-Tcho. But the ending of it was just one of those Deus Machine things, almost literally.

You also get to read the original version of a story HPL rewrote (E. Hoffman Price's story, The Lord of Illusion). It's quite different, not as good, but not bad, either.

In truth, most of the stories aren't that well written, mostly for a Lovecraft fan that just has to read everything related to his work. But a couple were quite good. The Aquarium by Carl Jacobi is both amusing and creepy at the same time. So many authors try to parody Lovecraft but it comes off as either tacky or just dumb (the last two stories in the book fall prey to that). But this was well done.

And the longest tale in the book, "The Spawn of the Green Abyss". It doesn't seem to be overtly Lovecraftian, except perhaps something of a melding of the traditional myths about mermen and sirens with that of the Deep Ones (though it's not explicit). Very much a heart wrenching tale and captures I think the spirit of the Deep Ones (even though it wasn't exactly them) better than any of the explicit Deep One stories I've read.

Well, most people out there already put it down about this book contents.

I would say that you'll find some fine work in the book, and I'm certainly refering to "The Seven Geases" by Clark Ashton Smith. IMO the very best tale in the book and just for this story, I would have buy the book. It's a pure gem!

After that we have good reads for most of the book and some few poor stories. Sorry R.E.Howard fans, but his 2 tales are just plainly boring... So if you can make it out past the first 2 stories, you'll end up liking this anthology.

the story's are very bland, and theres really no plot development in most of them, neither do you care for the characters, its like reading a good story rewritten by a 10 year old, at first they seem to be headed in the right direction, but as you get to the exciting part they get lazy and just end the story either really fast or in a very unsuspected and dull way. If youre really interested in good ¨Lovecraftian like¨ stories go for some C.A.Smith, or George R.R. Martin. or something else not this.

While H.P.Lovecraft retains his premium slot among those who shaped the 20th Century horror writing and have been influencing the trends even today, his writing is something that we tend to approach warily. He specialised in too much of everything: words, descriptions of the "unspeakable", helplessness of the protagonists despite all the arcane knowledge they possess, etc., except in plot and action. The jewels in this book are blasphemously superior to those works despite being located in the mythos created by Lovecraft himself. Most of these stories are tautly paced,with credible characters often working against a realistic background, with the antagonists being sufficiently horrifying without being vague. Highly recommended.