Customer Reviews

The Three Impostors and Other Stories: Vol. 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (Call of Cthulhu Fiction) (v. 1)

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Arthur Machen (1863-1947), an English author best known for his eerie stories about supernatural creatures and situations, served as a major influence on later explorers of the macabre. H.P. Lovecraft, for example, cited Machen as an authority and even wrote articles about him on occasion. The introduction to this compilation of some of Machen's best stories, written and edited by S.T. Joshi, underscores the author's ability to shock his Victorian contemporaries, who blasted his works publicly by labeling them obscene. Joshi argues the ridiculousness of this criticism, for Machen actually was an orthodox Anglo-Catholic who presented the concepts of nature as a corrupted influence that only civilization with its strict rules can negate. That's one way to view Machen's work: with a lot of scholarly blather. For most horror fans, it simply does not matter whether this author used horror as a means to support the social status quo. What is important is that Machen wrote cracking good stories that are not only eerie but also inspired future writers in the genre.

The best story in this collection is arguably the first one, "The Great God Pan." This horrific tale boils down to one sublime theme: don't mess with Mother Nature. A doctor performs a brain experiment on a young lady with absolutely horrific results, although the scope of the terror isn't widely known at first. As the story unfolds, we discover that this woman had a physical experience with something beyond our realms of perception, something so bizarre that our frail little minds can barely grasp the implications of such an unholy union. The result is a child, a very special child with a very evil character. This wicked offspring consequently ravages her way through the upper crust of British society, luring men into her clutches and then performing acts on them that cause the dupes to die in a quite terrible manner. There are some clever twists and turns throughout the story, such as bringing one of the doctors present at the beginning of the story back into the plot towards the end, that I quickly realized is a trademark of Machen's writing style. "The Great God Pan," perhaps better than any other story in this collection, shows the influence this author had on Lovecraft and others. Like the author of "The Mountains of Madness," the narrator here only alludes to shocking incidents in an oblique way, leaving it up to the reader to fill in the terrible blanks.

"The Inmost Light" and "The Shining Pyramid," while intriguing in their own ways, do not seem to pack the emotional punch of the "The Great God Pan." One story that does rise to the level of greatness is "The Three Imposters; or, The Transmutations," a sprawling epic that forms the bulk of the book. This is a wonderfully constructed oddity, a larger story built up of numerous interlocking smaller tales that could well stand on their own. Two characters, a Mr. Dyson and a Charles Phillips, encounter three individuals looking for a mysterious man wearing spectacles. The three people tell various stories to one or another of these men, including one set in the American West, a wacky yarn about an overachiever who imbibes a mysterious white powder with horrific results, and "The Novel of the Black Seal," my favorite story by far. In this intense tale concerning our lack of knowledge about the ancient past, a scientist going on retreat to the wilds of Wales mysteriously disappears forever after attempting to prove his theories about a weird little seal inscribed with the most curious markings. Parts of this story read like a mystery novel, as the main character in the story (a female servent/secretary type) discovers the aftermath of weird goings on and attempts to investigate the strangeness. I thought Machen achieved an amazing level of taut pacing with this story, and the conclusion to "The Three Imposters" shows the author bringing together the story in a satisfactory way.

One of the things I liked about Machen's stories is the emphasis he puts on atmosphere and background. Outside of Dickens, I cannot remember reading another author who describes the squalid streets and alleyways of London as well as Machen does. Joshi mentions this in his introduction to the book, but until you actually sit down and read the stories you simply won't grasp the detail Machen offers on every page. Moreover, this hyper atmospheric writing style extends to stories that take place outside the city as well. As anyone who has read horror knows, atmosphere is as important, if not more so, to a story than nearly any other element. With his bleak descriptions of the seedy London byways, Machen elevates horror to new heights.

In fact, all of the stories in this collection achieve greatness in their own unique ways. From what editor Joshi said in the introduction to this book, Machen failed to sustain his career in the long run. His later stories didn't sell well at all and seemed to be mere shadows of his former glories. Fortunately, we still have his creepy gems to read and savor today. If I had to rank Machen in the pantheon of grand horror writers, I would place him on more or less an even keel with Lovecraft but below Algernon Blackwood. But that comparison comes from only having read the few stories in this slim book. Certainly there are still Arthur Machen gems out there I have yet to see, so perhaps his stature will rise even higher in my eyes in the near future. Still, if you like Lovecraft and wish to read similarly themed stories, you need to pick up "The Three Imposters and Other Stories" soon. You won't be disappointed.

Some of the best prose I have ever had the intense pleasure of reading. Machen's works, and especially this novel, are essential reading for anyone who appreciates stylish occult horror over the merely grotesque. He was a master craftsman at weaving together ancient Celtic and pre-Celtic legend with the gothic and macabre themes of witchcraft and the paranormal. Machen was one of the great masters of macabre and fantasy literature and it's a crime that his works aren't more available.

This slim volume collects together various Machen classics including The Great God Pan and The Shining Pyramid. What makes it invaluable, however, is the title story, or rather series of stories. The Three Imposters is constructed somewhat in the style of the anthology horror pictures of the seventies such as 'From Beyond the Grave', with various short stories being strung together using a crude framework of continuing characters. Some of these stories have been available for some time (the Novel of the Black Seal is in Chaosium's own Hastur Cycle Volume) but it's been many years since it's been possible to read them in their correct context. If you've never read the weird and stylish stories of the man who was born in Wales, failed his exams to get into the Royal College of Surgeons, and so went onto to write tales of shape-shifting demons and tentacle-sprouting mutated humans, all way before Lovecraft, then here's your chance to get stuck in.

I can't give this collection a higher rating--I'd give it
eight stars if I could. And that's not even because I'm
acquainted with the editor of this volume! Which I am,
but I've been into Arthur Machen since the early 1980s when
I got into him via getting into H. P. Lovecraft and Co.
at that time. Since Machen is a primary influence on Lovecraft,
Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard and others of the circle
and even far outside that circle, anyone who's seriously
interested in classic horror/supernatural fiction could not
do better than to familiarize themselves with this volume,
at the very least. Every piece in this collection is sterling,
but my personal favorite are the main tales within tales that
comprise "The Three Imposters," most remarkably "The Novel of
The Black Seal," a strange tale of the legendary "little people" or faeries of the Welsh hills that Machen knew so well from
his childhood. These aren't "nice" faeries, but rather malevolent ancient beings who despise any trespass on their
territories under the earth. This tale was the basis of
a well-known song by the gothic rock band Bauhaus entitled
"Hollow Hills," which takes its eerie inspiration directly from
events in Machen's tale. A fine song and a fine tribute to
a master storyteller.
Lament, repent....oh mortal you. indeed! repent and go
buy this collection! don't waste time and put down that
dreary Anne Rice novel you were gonna buy instead....you will
not be sorry you did so.

arthur machen is a great writer. his approach to his own material is calm, cold and scientific. sometimes it feels like a public servant writing a report (by that I am refering to his technical approach, like detective novels, this does NOT mean boring, it means details, objective considerations, etc), without passion. arthur machen most times only hints at what's going on, maybe letting some character come with a theory (this is what I mean by scientific). his style is suggestive. not being a passionate writer, machen doesn't carry you away, but he sure can make you believe his stories. his stories mostly dwells at one thing (a personality change, for example), making the story sometimes too boring. his greatest accomplishment is his stories about the little people, where there are many interesting stories.

As the title says, I found this collection so intriguing that I will be buying the next volume (The White People and other Tales). The only work that I had previously known by Arthur Machen was "The Great God Pan", which has shown up in so many anthologies that I am thoroughly sick of it, although it is a good read the first few times through. "The Inmost Light" was quite disturbing to me in terms of plumbing the depravity of the human soul. "The Shining Pyramid" was a good supernatural detective story, in my opinion, although the intuitive leaps made by the protagonist would have made Fox Mulder proud. This clearly inspired quite a few of Robert Howard's stories.

Clearly, the crown jewel of this collection is "The Three Imposters." The deeper I got into this novel, the more engrossed I became. It is made up of 14 short stories, each of which is part of an overarching storyline that involves the protagonist, a golden coin, a man with spectacles, and 3 people who are not who they say they are. Each successive short story drew me in further. Some of the best reading I have done in years!

This review is only about the title story, or rather, short novel. It is a circular story, as it ends where it begins. Characters have multiple identities and strange coincidences abound. It is a macabre joke, a foundational book of the cosmic horror a la Lovecraft and his Ctulhu mysteries. It is also a peak of the late Victorian era and much more. What makes it more than a genre story is the poetic quality of its literature. There are paragraphs that would make little perfect prose poems.

Along several months, or years, Dyson and Phillips meet different persons, who have in common the search for a shy and nervous young man with a little black moustache and big spectacles. Each one of these persons tells his or her story in inserted chilling tales, full of the imagery that would later become cliche. This is no cheap horror: it has a great sense of humor, it is not about axe-grinding nor about phantoms and exorcisms. It is pure cosmic horror, the horror of hidden forces and obscure memories of a remote past. It is a horror of strange gatherings and incognoscible conspiracies. The inserted stories are often compiled independently of their contextual frame: "The novel of the Dark Valley" is an adventure in the loneliness of the Rocky Mountains, with a pre-Kafkian touch that makes you go pale. "The novel of the Black Seal" happens in the Welsh wilderness, with a mad scientist and beings from the past. "The novel of the Iron Maiden" includes a collectionist of instruments of torture. "The novel of the White Powder" is about a substance that transforms humans into something indefinible and horrific. Finally, ""The story of the Spectacled Young Man" closes the circle and "explains" everything.

Like a good Englishman, Machen is a master of the understatement. More than showing, he insinuates to let the readers feel for themselves all the weight of the horror of the world, the mysteries that haunt us, and the strangeness of this life. Little surprise, then, that this was one of Jorge Luis Borges's favorite books, since much of his beloved subjects are here: ancient and undecipherable languages; stories lost in time; mirror games; equivocal identities; implacable gods; and somber mansions. Much recommended.

In my own opinion, Arthur Machen was the best author before Lovecraft in helping us see the "cracks" in reality -- those gaps in our everyday way of looking at the world through which almost anything may come out at us. This stories of this collection (and its companion volume) have a certain haunting beauty to which Machen's rather straightforward prose is an obedient servant. Chaosium is to be highly commended for keeping these stories in print.

Subtle but penetrating, Arthur Machen's sinuous prose slips over the reader like a chill London fog. The path he traces in the novella and three short stories that comprise this book veers from the mundane course of daily life into searing glimpses of what haunts the periphery of the known.
A momentary vision of that horror splinters the mind of the seer and cracks open a doorway to the world in "The Great God Pan." Cryptic markings and the disappearance of a girl in the hills of the countryside lead to a shattering revelation in "The Shining Pyramid."
Take the journey with Machen, and by the end you'll agree with one of his characters in "The Three Impostors" ..... "that matter is as really awful and unknown as spirit, that science itself but dallies on the threshold, scarcely gaining more than a glimpse of the wonders of the inner place."

I bought this book thinking it would make for good reading around Halloween and I could not be more pleased. Arthur Machen's tales spin together cult science, mysticism, and Victorian horror to create very atmospheric stories that touch on the darkest human fears. An innocent investigator often narrates these tales after being drawn into a deeper investigation of a news headline that has thrilled the public - getting pulled into the dark secrets that underlie the headline and have been overlooked or ignored by the officials.