Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
When the Stars Smile Back, March 19, 2003
Within the confines of Lovecraftian tributes there are sometimes successes that combine elements of the fantastical with the bizarre, mixed results that couple the failings of one author with the successes of another, or - in the most rare instances - there are failures that can be found utterly without merit. These are the wonderful worlds that we throw ourselves into whenever purchasing a set of names attributed to a larger creator, and its something I normally fear because I've touched the eye of the proverbial oven one too many times. Still, within The Starry Wisdom, you have something of the middle man of the bunch, giving you pieces of the lore that are actually well-written and concise, as well as pieces that have no redeeming qualities, however. Unfortunately that is the lifeblood of many collected pieces, however, and everything has to be taken as such because of this. Happily, though, I have to say that there are some things in the book that I wouldn't want to be without. Of all the stories within the chronicled tales here, there is an artistic adaptation of Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu done by John Coulthart that is immaculately done. The quality of the work is fantastic and captures the visions within the madness so very well. Few things merit praise as much as this does, and it truly makes the book worth buying by itself. Still, there are other noteable contributions that add to this as well, including a little Robert M. Price (A Thousand Young), some Brian Lumley (The Night Sea-Maid Went Down), David Conway (Black Static), Ramsey Campbell (Potential), William S. Burroughs (Wind Die, You Die, We Die) and a little Allan Moore (The Courtyard). There are also pieces from Grant Morrison (Lovecraft in Heaven), James Havoc and Mike Philbin (Third Eye Butterfly), Henry Wessel (From This Swamp), JG Ballad (Prisoner of the Coral Deep), Dan Kellet (Red Mass), Simon Whitechapel (Walpurgisnachtmusik), DF Lewis (Meltdown), John Beal (Beyond Reflection), CG Brandrick and DM Mitchell (The Exquisite Corpse), Micheal Gira (Extracted From the Mouth of the Consumer, Rotting Pig), Adele Olivia Glawell (Hypothetical Materfamalias), Don Webb (The Sound of a Door Opening), Rick Grimes (Pills Fro Miss Betsy), Peter Smith (The Dreamers in Darkness), Stephen Sennitt (Nails), and DM Mitchell (Ward)that can be hit-or-miss depending on what you demand from your authors. Many of these titles have come and gone through various books in the past, some more than others, and there are many that I really didn't like in the set. Still, the illustrated portion of the book was done in ways that made it seems so wondrously worth obtaining and I'm glad I put it into my collection because of it. For fans of HP Lovecraft's works, then you might want to look into these titles - provided that you don't own them already. I would also suggest picking it up because of the reason I listed before, noting that the illustrated portions of the book are something done in the most commendable of ways. Even if you aren't a fan of Lovecraft but you love some of the things doe with his ideas, then this would be worth at least looking into because of the tendrils making sweet music in the background of nightmarish dreams. To a point, depending on your ownership already, it comes recommended.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Repressed America, June 13, 2006
I can't add to what James Stephen Garrett has said about the merits of this book. I shouldn't respond to the negative reactions and I won't go into detail. Suffice it to say that the reactions to this on the UK website are far more balanced and intelligent than those here on Amazon.com. My impression is that many of those who have responded negatively have missed the point of this volume entirely.
This book was an attempt to rescue Lovecraft from the ghetto of 'pulp' or 'genre' fiction and the Role-playing crowd who have, on the whole, trivialised his most important themes - cosmic horror and alienation, the collapse of civilisation, man's insignificance in the vast scheme of the universe.
Those who were turned off by the scatalogical content should realise that this was merely an attempt to reflect the general miserable thanatoptic state of our culture at present. If you want escapism, please read the Hobbit or Winnie the Pooh.
This was an important book and a thought-provoking one. This is not simple entertainment.
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11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Octopussy, December 14, 2004
"The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft" is far more than a tribute. It is an update, a confirmation of the First Article of Faith of the Esoteric Order of Dagon: that with strange aeons, even Death may Die.
It is a collection of illustrations and poems and wickedly twisted tales that pay homage to the Grandmaster, the Old Man of Providence---and then venture further into the darkness, without an oil lamp. Here you will find stories of a world inverted, of reason cast into the mad grinning abyss of the Universal and Uncaring, of a universe itself unhinged and gone mad. The writing is mad; the illustrations themselves, with which this nasty little volume is peppered, scream their insanity. This is not a safe volume. Here you will find no reclusive bachelor scholars penning correspondence to other sequestered academics.
This book will not comfort you. It will not give you a whiff of the familiar. It will not tuck you into bed at night. Quite possibly, it will pull itself across your floor with its toothy, fleshy suckers, crawl into bed with you, and introduce you to the glory of the polymorphous Azazoth. Here are 21 short tales (two of them pen-and-ink depictions), four "essays" on Lovecraft (penned, evidently, by deranged former academics in rubber rooms) and the collection's crowning glory, John Coulthart's masterful graphic adaptation of Lovecraft's seminal "Call of Cthulhu". This is a black tome of infestation, sexual evil, corruption.
Think back to the first time you read H.P. Lovecraft; what disturbed you? What was it about "At the Mountains of Madness", or "The Colour out of Space", or "The Call of Cthulhu", or perhaps "The Dunwich Horror" that pinioned you with its nasty pinkish-grey suction pads as you lay there reading---what peeled off your skin and got into your system, infected your blood?
For me it boiled down to two things: the uncaring, merciless, godless void of the universe, in which good and evil were meaningless conceits batted aside by the gibbering monsters barely conscious of petty, pathetic man. The other was the strong undertone of perverse, perverted Sex: think of the miscegenation implicit in virtually all of Lovecraft's work, from "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Shadow over Innsmouth" to "The Horror at Red Hook" and "The Thing on the Doorstep". There are deep and dark vanities to be sated, perversions to be explored that would not have survived the light of the Puritan day, deals to be struck, bloodlines to be entwined, new works of the Flesh to be consummated.
These Beings---these nihilistic Gods, these savage Beasts---don't just want to eat and rule. They want to breed. They want to corrupt. There lies the horror of Lovecraft: there lies the stink, the deadly pallor, the ripe rot, of this glorious collection.
I hate Lovecraft pastiches; those hollow imitators, happy to rob the Master's tomb and string together words like "eldritch" and "antediluvian". Only Brian Lumley's "The Night the Sea-Maid went Down", "Ward 23", and---surprisingly---Alan Moore's overwrought "The Courtyard" get anywhere near to that territory, and even then skirt the worst excesses of the Lovecraftian pastiche.
By far the best tale in the volume is David Conway's warped, wicked, revolutionary "Black Static", which throws SETI, bio-technology, and virtual reality into the cauldron, mixes thoroughly, sets to boil, and conjures up a black feast of horror that takes the Mythos to its logical conclusion.
Ramsey Campbell's fine "Potential", Simon Whitechapel's "Walpurgisnachtmusik", and Robert Price's "A Thousand Young" are all juicy, gory, nasty little tales of amoral players who find themselves played. J.G. Ballard is at his least obtuse and most shivery in the lyrical "Prisoner of the Coral Deep", while William S. Burroughs conjures up the Interzone, espionage, and horrific corruption in "Wind Die You Die We Die".
Grant Morrison is both sick and clever with his "Lovecraft in Heaven" a delicious literary spurt of rotten, leathery decrepitude, a revelatory little tale of realization achieved on the Old Man of Providence's deathbed, when he realizes his nihilistic little horrorverse is all too real. "Pills for Miss Betsy" actually made me physically ill---not because it's gory, but because it's patently out of its mind.
A few of the stories in "Starry Wisdom" are deranged trash---as you would expect of any Cthulhu cult, particularly at the extremes---upper and lower---of the intellectual bell curve. "Hypothetical Materfamilias", while ambitious, is one of them; "From the Mouth of the Consumer: Rotting Pig" is another. Ignore them. Or submerge yourself in them, if you're that far gone---shoggoths don't care about the sanity of their adherents.
I adore "Starry Wisdom". I adore it because it is the very embodiment of anti-pastiche: it takes everything you know about the Lovecraft Mythos and turns it on his rubbery head. And frankly, Lovecraft himself was a man far ahead of his time---and even he hadn't lived through the horror of World War II, of the atomization of human cities, the development of brutal biological weapons, mass genocide in Africa and Southeast Asia, the insanity of 9/11 and suicide bombers. His lonely New England woods and tottering Yankee farmhouses are paved beneath strip malls and 6-lane superstreets and big box stores that only get bigger and more impersonal: would he write about reclusive scholars now?
"Starry Wisdom" carries Lovecraft to the next level. It is corrupt; it is sexual; it is evil. Inject.
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