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Category: H.P. Lovecraft

New Treasures: Trail of Cthulhu: Eternal Lies

New Treasures: Trail of Cthulhu: Eternal Lies

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Eternal Lies-smallI haven’t played Call of Cthulhu or its sister game Trail of Cthulhu in a long, long time. But that’s okay, because I still enjoy reading the fabulously creative adventures.

One of the best — and certainly one of the most elaborate and ambitious — I’ve come across in some years is Eternal Lies from Pelgrane Press. A massive new campaign for Trail of Cthulhu, Eternal Lies is packed full of surprises and adventure.

I originally covered it here when it was first released last year (see my original post for more details), but this week I finally got my hands on a copy. I was not disappointed, even after the lengthy wait.

Trail of Cthulhu is a standalone game of Lovecraftian horror, and one of Pelgrane Press’s most successful and acclaimed products. Set in the 1930s, it uses  Robin D. Laws’s GUMSHOE system, which is also the basis for several other successful games, including The Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, and Mutant City Blues. Now in its third print run, Trail of Cthulhu won two Ennie awards for Best Rules and Best Writing, as well as an honorable mention for Product of the Year.

It is superbly supported, with some of my favorite recent RPG releases, including Rough Magicks, Bookhounds of London, Arkham Detective Tales, The Armitage Files, and two omnibus adventure collections: Out of Space and Out of Time.

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A Monster Index for Shub-Niggurath, Cthuhlu or Azathoth: A Review of Lovecraft’s Monsters

A Monster Index for Shub-Niggurath, Cthuhlu or Azathoth: A Review of Lovecraft’s Monsters

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Lovecraft’s Monsters-smallI love H. P. Lovecraft. Moreover, I think he is the foremost horror and weird writer of all time! I’m not going to attempt to defend that claim here other than to say that I personally love his writing style (purple prose and all), his creatures, his gods, his mood setting — all of it! Thus, as I’ve said in another review, I’m pretty much a sucker for any book advertised or alluded to as “Lovecraftian.” It should be no shock then that I bought the recent anthology Lovecraft’s Monsters.

This book is edited by the multiple award-winner SF&F editor Ellen Datlow. Datlow typically compiles her anthologies around certain themes. The title Lovecraft’s Monsters should thus be fairly self-explanatory. But in detail, each story in this volume contains a monster that is from, similar to, or inspired by one of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror stories.

New to Lovecraft and his monsters, you say? Ever wonder who Shub-Niggurath, Cthuhlu, or Azathoth are? Ever curious as to what shoggoths, “deep ones,” or the Hounds of Tindalos are? Wonder no longer! There is a helpful “Monster Index” compiled in Lovecraft’s Monsters, by Rachel Fagundes, that introduces all such beasties. Besides identifying which stories within Loveccraft’s Monsters contain these creatures, the index also points to where they are first found in Lovecraft’s original stories.

I should also point out that this is a very attractive book with creepy illustrations throughout provided by John Coulthart. In fact, there is one illustration for each story and poem (Gemma Files provides two poems here). Coulthart’s work provides the cover illustration as well. These are nice little extras not usually offered in anthologies.

But of course no anthology is worthwhile without some good stories. And thankfully Lovecraft’s Monsters does not disappoint. There are some very well-known authors here, including Neil Gaiman, Joe Lansdale, Caitlín Kiernan, Elizabeth Bear, and Laird Barron. Most of the stories are reprints, including some older works such as Karl Edward Wagner’s. But with the exception of one story, I had never read any of these tales before.

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New Treasures: New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird edited by Paula Guran

New Treasures: New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird edited by Paula Guran

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New Cthulhu-smallMy birthday was last month, and one of the gifts my children bought for me (my children! That’s sweet. And a little disturbing) was Paula Guran’s 2011 anthology New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird. Yes, I do realize the book is very nearly three years old and a bit long in the tooth to be a “New Treasure,” but I’m still so touched that my kids got me a Cthulhu anthology that I’m going to overlook it.

Anyway, it’s a fine addition to any Cthulhu library. It reprints 27 Cthulhu Mythos tales from the 21st Century, including contributions from Neil Gaiman, Kim Neuman, Charles Stross, Marc Laidlaw, Laird Barron, Paul McAuley, William Browning Spencer, Holly Phillips — and even Michael Shea’s chilling novelette “Tsathoggua,” published online here at Black Gate. Here’s the book description.

For more than 80 years H.P. Lovecraft has inspired writers of supernatural fiction, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and gaming. His themes of cosmic indifference, the utter insignificance of humankind, minds invaded by the alien, and the horrors of history — written with a pervasive atmosphere of unexplainable dread — remain not only viable motifs, but are more relevant than ever as we explore the mysteries of a universe in which our planet is infinitesimal and climatic change is overwhelming it.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century the best supernatural writers no longer imitate Lovecraft, but they are profoundly influenced by the genre and the mythos he created. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird presents some of the best of this new Lovecraftian fiction — bizarre, subtle, atmospheric, metaphysical, psychological, filled with strange creatures and stranger characters – eldritch, unsettling, evocative, and darkly appealing.

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New Treasures: The Dark Rites of Cthulhu edited by Brian M. Sammons

New Treasures: The Dark Rites of Cthulhu edited by Brian M. Sammons

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The Dark Rites of Cthulhu-smallI first met Neil Baker over a decade ago and was surprised by how much we had in common, including our shared love of genre films. He told vastly more entertaining stories than I did — especially his tales of the British film industry, and working on films like Lifeforce. So I wasn’t at all surprised when he told me late last year that he was joining the noble and distinguished brotherhood of small press publishers.

In an article for Black Gate last month, Neil told us that his first release, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, was a collection of stories dealing with “the more magical aspects of Lovecraft’s tales, smaller, more intimate stories that explored the consequences of humans meddling in powers beyond their understanding.” In a marketplace crowded with a multitude of Cthulhu volumes, this one stands out, with terrific reviews, fabulous design, and excellent interior art by Neil himself. Here’s the book description.

For centuries, students of the forbidden arts have probed the inky recesses of the spaces inbetween. Hapless mortals have invoked monstrous entities from beyond through foul magicks, incantations and rituals. When will they learn that there can be no profit nor joy to be gained through relations with the insidious old ones? These sixteen tales of depravity, sorcery and madness may offer some illumination, but ultimately there can be no salvation for those who dabble in The Dark Rites of Cthulhu.

Featuring terrifying new stories by Glynn Owen Barrass, Edward M. Erdelac, John Goodrich, Scott T. Goudsward, T. E. Grau, C.J. Henderson, Tom Lynch, William Meikle, Christine Morgan, Robert M. Price, Pete Rawlik, Josh Reynolds, Brian M. Sammons, Sam Stone, Jeffrey Thomas and Don Webb and edited by Brian M. Sammons, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu shares cautionary tales set in a multiverse of jealousy, greed, desperation and naivety and is guaranteed to delight students of the Dark Arts and followers of the Great Old Ones alike.

The Dark Rites of Cthulhu was edited by Brian M. Sammons and published by April Moon Books on March 28, 2014. It is 224 pages, priced at $18.99 in trade paperback and just $2.99 for the digital version. Buy it directly from the April Moon website. It gets our highest recommendation.

Goth Chick News: Lovecraft Fans, It’s Time for a Road Trip

Goth Chick News: Lovecraft Fans, It’s Time for a Road Trip

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The Atlas on your phone
The Atlas on your phone

In last week’s coverage of C2E2, I promised to share two of the coolest products from the show in upcoming posts – and I am about to do just that.

Though my buddy and Lovecraft devotee, comic artist Dirk Manning, was hoping for Cthulhu footy pajamas, I believe what I am about to serve up is (almost) as exciting.

Allow me to introduce you to Chris Karr and his Pnakotic Atlas.

Karr was first struck with the idea for the Pnakotic Atlas when driving through Maine. As a fan of Stephen King, Kerr became curious as to the actual locations of some of King’s more famous tales and thought it would be cool if there was a way to easily find some of them. Karr is an app developer by trade and an avid fan of H.P. Lovecraft (in addition to King). He decided to tackle the idea of an atlas that documented Lovecraft locations: a less potentially litigious option, as Lovecraft’s works are in the public domain.

The inspiration for the name Pnakotic Atlas, as all of you Lovecraftians know, comes from The Pnakotic Manuscripts, which are fictional manuscripts created by Lovecraft that first appeared in his short story “Polaris” (1918). They appear again in several other Lovecraft stories, including At the Mountains of Madness (1936), “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” (1926), “The Other Gods” (1933), and “The Shadow Out of Time” (1936).

The fictional library city of Pnakotus is where the Manuscripts are housed and where they, and Karr’s app, get their moniker.

Karr combed through Lovecraft’s works, pulling out any detail he could find about locations (the ones on Earth, anyway), and was able to document approximately 400 potential sites.  Then using the stories as guides, he went about meticulously locating each place on Google Earth.

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In A Land Before Atlantis and Mu: The House of Cthulhu by Brian Lumley

In A Land Before Atlantis and Mu: The House of Cthulhu by Brian Lumley

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oie_214202658YPxSzMI imagine that when most people hear the name Brian Lumley, they think of his vast Necroscope series. You know — the books with the malformed skulls on the covers. If your memory is a little longer, you might think of his August Derleth-influenced contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos series, featuring the supernatural sleuth Titus Crow. And in case you didn’t know, he’s also a prolific writer of really great horror short stories. Even if I didn’t love the stories in his collections, Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi and Beneath the Moors and Darker Places, I’d still love them for their titles.

While I did know about all those books and stories, what I didn’t know was that he’d written a whole series of swords & sorcery tales set in Earth’s earliest days on the primeval continent Theem’hdra. I had read a story in Andrew Offutt’s anthology, Swords Against Darkness IV, called “Cryptically Yours,” but hadn’t realized it was part of a much longer series of adventurous stories of wizards and warriors.

Recently, I learned from from Paul McNamee that Subterranean Press was making a lot of Lumley e-books available at $2.99 a volume. I immediately bought three story collections: Haggopian and Other Stories, The Taint and Other Novellas, and No Sharks in the Med. I’ve dipped into all three already and recommend them all.

My buying spree led me to check out Lumley’s website, which led me to something called The House of Cthulhu: Tales of the Primal Land (2010). I learned it was the first of three collections of adventures from the dawn of time. While Tor Books wasn’t selling it as cheaply as the Subterranean collections, I still hit the buy-button. Within minutes, I was traveling back into the deep ages of the world to the Primal Land, encountering giant slug-gods, sorcerers striving for immortality, amoral barbarians, and old Cthulhu himself.

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New Treasures: Cthulhu Britannica: Shadows Over Scotland by Stuart Boon

New Treasures: Cthulhu Britannica: Shadows Over Scotland by Stuart Boon

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Shadows Over Scotland-smallCall of Cthulhu remains one of my favorite role playing games, despite the fact that I haven’t played it in… woof. Let’s say nearly 25 years.

Part of it, I think, is simple fondness for the source material, H.P. Lovecraft’s marvelously rich and creepy Cthulhu Mythos. But just as much stems from an appreciation for the enormously inventive adventures and supplemental material published for the game over the years, since it first debuted in a handsome box set from Chaosium in 1981.

Sure, I’d love to play CoC again. But until I find the time (and a group to play with), I’m quite content to read the best new releases. Because Call of Cthulhu continues to draw fabulously talented creators and artists and, unlike most RPGs, its adventures are highly readable all on their own.

Take the new Cthulhu Britannica line from Cubicle Seven, for example, which transplants Lovecraft’s horrors to the green and pleasant land of England. So far, there have been four volumes: the Cthulhu Britannica core book by Mike Mason (2009); Avalon: The Somerset Sourcebook by Paul Wade-Williams (2010); Folklore by Stuart Boon, James Desborough, and Gareth Hanrahan (December 2012); and the first hardcover volume, Stuart Boon’s Shadows over Scotland.

(That’s not even including the crazy-ambitious, Kickstarter-funded Cthulhu Britannica: London Boxed Set by Dominic McDowall, which rivals the legendary boxed set Horror on the Orient Express. The London Boxed Set raised £90,412 on a £15,000 goal and will include three books, four large full-color maps, and numerous handouts. The Kickstarter closed on December 12 and the set is scheduled for delivery in August.)

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Vintage Treasures: The Dunwich Horror and Others by H.P. Lovecraft

Vintage Treasures: The Dunwich Horror and Others by H.P. Lovecraft

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The Dunwich Horror Rowena-smallBack in December, in the comments section of my post on “H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D,” Joe. H. noted:

My first encounter with Lovecraft was the… paperback of Colour Out of Space. I was probably too young and had no idea what I was in for — the title story scared the bejeebers out of me (and to this day still creeps me out)… it was actually the Jove edition; the one with the Rowena painting of a Great Old One from “Shadow Out of Time” on the cover. Needless to say, it was the cover that drew me.

(Hmmm … Rowena also pulled me to Clark Ashton Smith with her City of the Singing Flame cover.)

Naturally, I went searching for evidence of a Jove edition of The Colour Out of Space, and it didn’t take long to find. In the process I also discovered the companion volume, The Dunwich Horror. Both were published by Jove in 1978; see them side-by-side here.

This is why I love collecting paperbacks. I have the Arkham House three-volume set of Lovecraft’s collected fiction in hardcover, but I still find different editions delightful — particularly the compact and inexpensive paperbacks, and especially when they’re as eye-catching as these two. Rowena is a very gifted artist and her interpretations of a Great Old One (on The Colour Out of Space) and Wilbur Whateley (for The Dunwich Horror and Others) are wholly unique and vibrantly real.

Of course, the other reason I love collecting paperbacks is the joy of the hunt, and by late December I was on a hunt for both volumes.

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Terror in the Heroic Age: Lovecraft and Culbard’s At the Mountains of Madness: A Graphic Novel

Terror in the Heroic Age: Lovecraft and Culbard’s At the Mountains of Madness: A Graphic Novel

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At the Mountains of Madness Culbard-small“At the Mountains of Madness” is one of my favorite Lovecraft tales. It was originally serialized in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories; I was first exposed to it through the brilliant audio adaption from Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, which I listened to during a snowy commute through lonely back highways in Illinois in the winter of 2010. Marvelous stuff.

So in November, I was very intrigued to read James Maliszewski’s review of a recent comic adaptation by I.N.J. Culbard. Here’s James:

In 124 pages, Culbard succeeds in re-telling one of Lovecraft’s best tales in a fashion that’s both engaging and true to its source. That’s harder than it sounds…

Culbard deftly pares the story down to its essentials, in terms of action, dialog, and exposition. The story thus moves along at a fairly brisk pace, something that cannot be said of the novella, love it though I do. Second, the artwork, which, to my mind, recalls Hergé’s Tintin series, contributes greatly to a sense of narrative motion, which is vitally important in an adaptation of a long and complex story like this one. Furthermore, the artwork suits the subject matter perfectly, recalling as it does (at least to me) stories of late 19th and early 20th century exploration in the still-dark corners of the globe… Even though I already knew the plot intimately, I found Culbard’s strong, clear, almost innocent, illustration style gave it new life, something I didn’t think possible.

Sold! I especially enjoyed James’s description of artwork that recalled “stories of late 19th and early 20th century exploration in the still-dark corners of the globe.” I asked for the Culbard’s graphic novel version for Christmas and my lovely bride was kind enough to deliver.

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New Treasures: The House of R’lyeh: Five Scenarios Based on Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

New Treasures: The House of R’lyeh: Five Scenarios Based on Tales by H.P. Lovecraft

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The House of R'lyeh-smallI feel like I’m in the middle of H.P. Lovecraft week.

On Sunday I talked extensively about Lovecraft, a propos of his inclusion in the latest round of Advanced Readings in D&D. This morning I invoked his name while discussing Robert Bloch’s Nightmares collection. Now here we are again, with the latest collection on adventures for one of my favorite role-playing games, Call of Cthulhu, based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft.

I bought my first CoC adventure — the classic Shadows of Yog-Sothoth — over 30 years ago (yes, I’m aware that’s longer than most of you have been alive. Shut up), and the most recent, Cthulhu By Gaslight, last April. I haven’t played CoC in years (decades, probably), but the adventures are marvelously inventive and always a pleasure to read for a veteran game master like me. But The House of R’lyeh has extra appeal for Lovecraft fans of all kinds, not just CoC players, I think: it draws directly from five of the Master’s short stories. I’m looking forward to digging in and seeing how successful it is.

The House of R’lyeh contains five Call of Cthulhu scenarios that follow or expand upon events in five of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories: “Pickman’s Model,” “The Haunter of the Dark,” “The Hound,” “Arthur Jermyn,” and “The Nameless City.” Set in Boston, Providence, the British Isles, continental Europe, and the Middle East, none of the scenarios need be played at set dates or in a set order, but they could be run in the order presented to form a loose campaign using optional link between scenarios to draw investigators from one to the other.

Alternatively, the scenarios may be used to supplement classic Call of Cthulhu campaigns such as The Shadows of Yog-Sothoth which suggests that its component scenarios should be interspersed with others.

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