Other Writers Doing Lovecraftian Mythos stories

[BAYLOR]

Now that line did make me grin. Yes, this is a sentiment I would have never expected to see from S. T. J. -- I'd sooner have expected Harlan Ellison to sing the praises of Jacqueline Susann....*

At any rate: yes, this sounds very intriguing. I'm going to have to look this one up and see if I can get my hands on it.....

*which is not to say I haven't enjoyed some of Lumley's work, even to the point where I have a considerable fondness for certain pieces. But, given Joshi's long-standing comments on the subject....

Lumley wrote a 4 book sequel series the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. It wasn't great but, I found it entertaining.

 

[j d worthington]

Lumley wrote a 4 book sequel series the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. It wasn't great but, I found it entertaining.

Um, I think you got your wires crossed on that one. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was a short novel (or novelette, if you wish) by Lovecraft. Lumley's set of books was simply known as "the Dreamlands series". I've had them on my shelves for quite a long while, but never got around to reading them yet. I have to be in the mood for Lumley, and that hasn't happened in a while....

 

[BAYLOR]

Um, I think you got your wires crossed on that one. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was a short novel (or novelette, if you wish) by Lovecraft. Lumley's set of books was simply known as "the Dreamlands series". I've had them on my shelves for quite a long while, but never got around to reading them yet. I have to be in the mood for Lumley, and that hasn't happened in a while....

Inspired by Lovecraft then ?

 

[j d worthington]

Inspired by Lovecraft then ?

Oh, most definitely. Nor was this the first time Lumley had visited Lovecraft's "Dreamlands",* as he had such stories as "Dylath-Leen" in the collection The Caller of the Black, as well as blending the "Sarnath" setting and incidents (at least by implication) into his story "The Sister City", which he later expanded into the short novel Beneath the Moors... an odd sort of blending of Lovecraft with John Uri Lloyd's Etidorpha, itself a book with which HPL was familiar and which may have inspired certain aspects of some of his tales. Lumley has frequently blended the "Dreamlands" and "Mythos" streams in his work, following HPL's own statement that all his tales were interrelated. In much the same way, albeit to a lesser degree, he makes nods to Lovecraft -- particularly The Case of Charles Dexter Ward -- in his Necroscope series.

*Which, by the way, is a description Joshi has problems with, as in the earlier tales, as he argues quite well, what we have are either dreamers who are dealing with ancestral memories, i.e., "Polaris", or stories of an ancient earth, such as "The Doom that Came to Sarnath", or outright dream-stories, such as "Celephais", whose setting Lovecraft later incorporated into a common "Dreamlands" setting for Kadath.

 

[David Hambling]

I've just order'd a new book that is scheduled to be publish'd next month by PS Publishing: THE DULWICH HORROR AND OTHERS, by British author David Hambling. "Inspired by the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, this stylish new collection of adventure stories fizzes with wit and invention. They can be enjoyed separately, but read them in one sitting and the pieces fit horribly together into a larger and more terrible nightmare." That term "adventure stories" gave me pause--it made me think of Mythos pirate stories or some such thing. What clinched it for me is that, in the email newsletter I got this morning from PS Publishing, they quote the Introduction by S. T. Joshi--and he makes this book sound magnificent.

Mythos pirate stories is a great idea, and there is one story set on the high seas -- though the influence is Joseph Conrad rather than RLS. I'll let you judge whether they really are adventures. The spirit invoked is HPL as science enthusiast rather than as 18th-century prose-monger, so there's a bit more science than in many Mythos stories. I really can't answer for ST's generous praise, but I hope you enjoy the collection.

 

[anno]

The Handsome Family...

 

[BAYLOR]

The 37th Mandala by Mark Laidlaw.

 

[Caledfwlch]

Check out the "Laundry" series of novels by Charles Stross.
They are very Lovecraftian in content, and make ref too the Elder Gods etc quite often.
they are often very funny novels, but really dark too. In a way its kind of "James Bond in the Mountains of Madness"

The idea is, magic is real, all kinds of supernatural beasts and demons are real, they are simply lifeforms from other realities.
It's all about fractal patterns and maths, you use lasers for example to draw a fractal/occult symbols into the floor, turn up the power and you get a portal to another reality. Bob the Protagonist discovered this as a CompSci student at Birmingham University. He devised a program that created fractals, which were doing strange things. He was saved by an agent of the Laundry after his fractal nearly pulled over an entity that would have destroyed the West Midlands. When people discover that this is all real, they only get 1 offer, come work for the Laundry, or vanish into a grave. It's how they control the public from knowing about the spooky stuff.
The Laundry is the British Government Department who's job is to Protect the Queen's Realm from the Scum of the Multiverse.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Great White Space by Basil Copper

 

[SporgyTheReader]

There are more then a few writer who delved into Lovecrafts universe of horror. Who are yor favorites ?

Ito Junji

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

The last three horror books I read - Wellman's Worse Things Waiting, T. E. D. Klein's Dark Gods, Mark Samuels' Glyphotech and Other Processes - had stories allusive to Lovecraft, building the plots out of his life or work. It's extraordinary his presence!

 

[Randy M.]

I think

The last three horror books I read - Wellman's Worse Things Waiting, T. E. D. Klein's Dark Gods, Mark Samuels' Glyphotech and Other Processes - had stories allusive to Lovecraft, building the plots out of his life or work. It's extraordinary his presence!

Agreed. I began to realize how pervasive his influence was years ago when I first read Jorge Luis Borges' The Book of Sand and saw one of the stories was dedicated to Lovecraft. Borges seemed amused by HPL, but that he'd heard of him at that time -- early '80s I think; at least when I read the book -- surprised me. Like Borges himself, it occurred to me he must be a fairly well-known unknown writer. (Well, such was Borges' reputation at the time.)

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

Don't be fooled by Borges; he was an expert on fantasy fiction and probably knew Lovecraft well before "There are more things" showed up in The Book of Sand (1975). But I think Borges was ambivalent towards Howie; I faintly remember him (in a preface? a review? an interview?) comparing Lovecraft to some other horror writer (I forget whom) and claiming that he had Lovecraft's imagination without the flaws of his style. Always an enemy of the "baroque", Borges likely didn't cotton to his purple prose. I know that in his 1967 interview with Richard Burgin he implicitly said that he already knew Lovecraft by then - and he didn't like his stories very much.

Borges certainly neglected Howie at times when attention was expected. I just looked up the index of The Book of Fantasy (1940) he edited with his friends Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, and Howie isn't there. In hindsight that's a remarkable oversight.

Then, after The Book of Sand, Borges also failed to edit a Lovecraft volume for his collection of fantasy, "La Biblioteca de Babel" (1983-1987): titles by Jack London, Machen, Chesterton, Meyrink (!), Dunsany, but, again, no Howie.

Actually, you made me investigate this matter further, and obviously someone on the net already wrote all about this:
https://shipwrecklibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/Paper-St.-Armand-Lovecraft-and-Borges.pdf

As I expected, Borges was mostly appalled at the style:

"This fact is confirmed by Paul Theroux, who in a 1978 conversation with Borges “about horror stories in general” elicited the perverse revelation that “I like Lovecraft’s horror stories. His plots are very good, but his style is atrocious. I once dedicated a story to him.”5 Ultimately, Borges’s attitude toward Lovecraft can only be described in terms of a syndrome of attraction-repulsion, an aesthetic of extreme polarities or a metaphysics of paradox, similar to the Mysterium tremendum as described by Rudolf Otto.6 Both horns of this dilemma demand their own special polishing."

Crikey!

Rudolf Otto! Syndrome of attraction-repulsion! The Mysterium tremendum! Everything with Borges always has to be so ****ing highbrow and erudite It's a neat essay, but in 30 pages this dude fails to mention that since the 1920s Borges absolutely loathed purple prose. It's a simple matter of reading his earliest book reviews for Ultra, El Hogar and Sur. Borges was in Spain in 1927 when young Spanish poets were rescuing Góngora from oblivion, after 300 years of him being dismissed as a mediocre poet by the Academy - and Borges sided with the Academy's opinion! Borges, like so many Spaniards and Latin Americans the time, believed that Spanish-language writers were afflicted by the "baroque" disease: too much attention to style, too much empty verbosity, obscurity masking lack of ideas, a scourge associated with the 17th century style. Wanting to be modern (not to mention highly influenced by French and English literatures), Borges as a contrarian favored the simple, straightforward, clear style of the likes of R. L. Stevenson, Wells or Machen. Of course a writer keener on displaying ideas transparently would be repelled by Howie's lovely purple prose. There's no big enigma, no recondite explanation. It's as if it's shocking a writer happens to think one of his peers sucks at style.

 

[Randy M.]

One of Borges' favorite English language writers was G. K. Chesterton, so his assortment of push-me-pull-you attitudes was probably predictable.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

Now Chesterton's a writer Borges adored! When he edited a collection of short-stories by him, Borges remarked in the prolog that reading Chesterton had given him some of the happiest hours of his life. He loved him so much he was actually relieved a putative meeting between them never happened. Borges tells that once Chesterton was slated to visit Argentina, and Borges had been invited to integrate the welcome committee. For someone reason Chesterton's trip was cancelled, and Borges looking back thinks it was for the best, that way reality didn't sully his limpid image of his idol.