Customer Reviews

The Xothic Legend Cycle: The Complete Mythos Fiction of Lin Carter (Call of Cthulhu)

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Robert M. Price and Chaosium Books have scored big again with the latest entry in their growing "Call of Cthulhu Fiction" catalog which explores aspects of Lovecraftian fiction. Price introduces the whole and each entry in The Xothic Legend with his quite considerable and thorough literary, religious and Lovecraftian erudition and iconoclastic wit. Lin Carter's take on the Mythos in his Xothic Legend Tales is an hommage to, and a pastiche of, both Lovecraft and Col. James Churchward (of "The Lost Continent of Mu" fame). The stories are entertaining, sometimes reverential to their subject matter, and offer the classic Cthulhu Mythos frisson of long-expected terror. A good place for the beginning reader of Mythos Horror, and a must for anyone exploring the background and effoliation of the genre.

He clutches at your brain, does HPL -- & betimes he don't let go. His fictive talons dig deep trenches in ye brain; they slice tatters on yr heart that drip love into ye soul. In this wondrous age of such serious scholarly criticism aim'd at the Old Gent, it's nice -- nigh & again -- to sit back & remember that, for many in ye early days, the Cthulhu Mythos was borne of fun & a sense of play. The writings in this charming book are love songs to a writer & a genre. There is certainly plenty of them between its covers: 271 pages of small print. Like all single author volumes, it's best not to read too much of these tales in one sitting. Carter can be as repetitious as Derleth could be when it came to Cthulhu Mythos plotting. Lovecraft often rewrote himself: "Dagon" was an earlier version of "The Call of Cthuhlu," for example, as "The Nameless City" was perhaps a dim & early echo of what became AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS. Still, if one wants to read fun yet mature fiction, well written and often very imaginative, that pays homage to H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and August Derleth, this is a charming wee book.

Ye Dreadful Contents Be:
"Introduction" by Robert M. Price
"The Red Offering," by Lin Carter
"The Dweller in the Tomb," by Lin Carter
"Out of the Ages" by Lin Carter
"The Horror in the Gallery," by Lin Carter
"The Winfield Heritage," by Lin Carter
"Perchance to Dream," by Lin Carter
"Strange Manuscript Found in the Vermont Woods," by Lin Carter
"Dreams from R'lyeh," by Lin Carter
"Something in the Moonlight," by Lin Carter
"The Fishers from Outside," by Lin Carter
"Behind the Mask," by Lin Carter
"The Strange Door of Enos Harker," by Lin Carter and Robert M. Price
"The Bell in the Tower," by H. P. Lovecraft and Lin Carter.
"The Souls of the Devil-Bought," by Robert M. Price.

I always scowl when I see someone living attach their byline to H. P. Lovecraft's -- usually the tale is not something to which HPL wou'd have wanted his name conjoin'd. In his fascinating introduction to "The Bell in the Tower," editor Price -- well, shucks, allow me to reprint ye entire thing herewith:

How strange that the works of H. P. Lovecraft should include a "canon" of unfinished fragments, a phenomenon reminiscent of A CANTICLE FOR LIEBOWITZ. How much stranger that August Derleth, he of the "posthumous collaborations" with Lovecraft (something reminiscent of Herbert West), never ventured to finish up any of these tantalizing bits and pieces, these Pnakotic fragments. That didn't stop other writers from forcing HPL to participate in a necromantic round-robin.
Brian Lumley undertook a continuation of "The Thing in the Moonlight", though, strictly speaking, this one wasn't originally even a fragment, at least not in the same sense, since it began as an excerpt from a letter in which HPL described one of his dreams. Editor Jack Chapman Miske added the three opening mini-paragraphs and the last two closing ones, publishing it as a makeshift tale in his magazine BIZARRE, Vol, 4, #1, January 1941. ...
"The Book" represents Lovecraft's abortive attempt to make the "Fungi from Yuggoth" sonnet "The Book" into a prose tale. Martin Warnes picked up where HPL left off and finished it up as "The Black Tome of Alsophocus"... You may find this fine story in Ramsey Campbell's NEW TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS.
Lin Carter decided to try his hand at "The Descendent." The present tale, "The Bell in the Tower", is the result. He had planned to include it in a collection to be called THE BLACK BROTHERHOOD, a volume of marginal Lovecraft revision tales and posthumous collaborations. After his death I tried to press on with the project with the cooperation of Ted Dikty, but the Grim Reaper tool Starmont House away along with Ted, and that was that for THE BLACK BROTHERHOOD.
A related idea, also regrettably cut short by the scythe, was for Lin Carter to finish up August Derleth's own Celaeno fragment "The Watchers out of Time", which would have been not only poetic justice, but terrific fun. (Derleth had already incorporated some of Lin's Mythos lore into the story.) Lin's eyes widened with the possibility when I mentioned it to him one afternoon at a meeting of our New Kalem Club, but he never got around to it. I have a feeling, however, that someone yet may.

Here we find one perfect example of modern Lovecraftian fanaticism. The initial love for HPL's tales, the desire to write in the Lovecraftian vein, the formation of a neoteric Kalem Club (there is still one such group that meets in New York), the sense of brotherhood with HPL and the original members of the Lovecraft Circle. It is intoxicating -- it's what made me a professional Mythos writer today. Now, for me, the rule of applying Lovecraft's name to one's own byline is that one MUST ape Lovecraft's style as perfectly as possible. Derleth imagined that he did this with excellence -- but it was all in his imagination: his posthumous collaborations "with" Lovecraft do not sound like H. P. Lovecraft; they sound like "lesser" Lovecraft, & no one except the very young & gullible are fool'd. Lin Carter has done much more than add his own ending to a Lovecraft fragment: he has gone back and revised Lovecraft's actual text, which to me is rather scandalous. In so doing, he has alter'd Lovecraft's original text of the author's authentic voice. Yet his narrative is consistent, and this tale sounds more like Lovecraft than anything Derleth compos'd.

"Dreams from R'lyeh: A Sonnet Cycle" was charmingly publish'd in a slim volume of Lin Carter's verse by Arkham House in 1975. (I have review'd the volume here at Amazon.) It is Lin's own "Fungi from Yuggoth," and it's not bad. His very playful introduction to the sonnet cycle is reproduc'd in this Chaosium book.

People have condemn'd these tales as being repetitive, unoriginal, boring, un-Lovecraftian; yet I find myself returning to these stories time & again, for the sheer pleasure of reading delightful Cthulhu Mythos fiction by a man who had more talent than has been acknowledg'd. This book is an eldritch love song, by a man who ador'd ye magnificent Works of H. P. Lovecraft. The book is edited and annotated by another troubled soul who also loves the Mythos and who is extremely knowledgeable concerning the history of the Cthulhu Mythos and they who created it; Bob Price's wee introductions are fill'd with facts and ideas about the Mythos and it's history that is simply fascinating to read & ponder. THE XOTHIC LEGEND CYCLE is a delight in every way, and I highly recommend it to they who love playful yet reverent Lovecraftian pastiche. (Just don't pay some rip-off book seller more than fifty bucks for it! YOG-SOTHOTH!)

What does it say when the best story in an anthology dedicated to the work of a single author is the one piece that was not written by said author? I love Lin Carter's fantasy work. Thongor is the best of the Conan knockoffs (but I don't consider Elric or Fafhrd/Mouser to be Conan clones) and his other takes on genre favorites are usually dead on. But the stories here are the same thing over and over again. You get the usual litany of Lovecraftian gods and books in every story. There is the same plot of a strange inheritance that brings doom in almost every story. And you get the italics to denote horror ad nauseum. I like Cthulhu stories with slight differences or updating. Clark AShton Smith could do it. Ramsey Campell managed to do it after his early slavish imitations, but Carter never got out of the groove. The best Carter story is a short tale telling the usual barbarian vs. evil sorceror tale from the sorceror's side. Other than that, these stories should have been seeded one at a time in other Chaosium books in order to curb the sameness.

As usual for the Chaosium series, editor Price gushes academically about minor entries in the Lovecraftian Derby, and it's never more evident than in this collection of Lin Carter's mythos tales. Carter was a supremely talented editor and a good heroic fantasy writer (I love his Throngor novels) but his mythos writing falls prey to juvenile adoration and extremely flimsy plotting. Price's attempts to defend Carter's over-categorization of the mythos merely exacerbates the silliness of most of Carter's work. Interesting for mythos completists, but newcomers should seek other books in this series that deal with multiple authors (highly recommended: "The Hastur Cycle" and "The Nyarlathotep Cycle").

These are the "Big Kahuna's" of Supernatural Horror. A very well compiled selection of Cthulhu Mythos by Chaosium & Robert Price. Price's introductions to the short stories are educational and perhaps even a bit witty. His writing is even better.
A 'Must Have' for Weird Tale, Lovecraft, or any horror fan.