[via Topless Robot]

Crucial Stories

There are so many terrific, iconic stories by HP Lovecraft that no introductory list could ever satisfy completely. But here are eight stories and novellas that will introduce you to the main concepts in Lovecraft's world, as well as exposing you to some of his obsessive preoccupations. You can read the full text of all of these stories at Project Gutenberg.

"At the Mountains of Madness"
The tale of an ill-fated expedition to the mountains of Antarctica, this story explains the ancient, alien history of Earth as well as giving us a glimpse of "the Old Ones," the "shoggoths," and some backstory on the "spawn of Cthulhu." When the expedition discovers an ancient, alien-built city buried beneath the ice, they also find out what led to that city's demise. And let's just say it had to do with giant, shambling, polymorphous beings. What's great about this story is that it explains how many of the spooky, seemingly-magical beasts we encounter in other stories actually have an extraterrestrial (or biotechnological) origin.

"Call of Cthulhu"
While it may not be the very best of Lovecraft's stories, this tale introduces his most legendary monster and the madness it can bring upon the world. Just one glimpse of the tentacled visage of Cthulhu, and the non-Euclidean geometry of his city, is enough to turn an entire boat of tough sailors into shattered husks.

"Shadow Over Innsmouth"
One of my personal favorites in the Lovecraft canon, this story is also one of the more thoughtful, character-driven pieces that Lovecraft ever wrote. It's the tale of an antiquarian who comes across a forgotten, decaying New England town filled with oddly-mutated people who worship a strange deity called Dagon. Here we see Lovecraft dealing with an issue that preoccupies him in many stories - the terrifying and seductive results of a carnal intermingling between alien monsters and humans. Our hero is at first repulsed, then fascinated, by a town whose alliance with Cthulhu's spawn has resulted in a strange (and possibly beautiful) hybrid culture.

"Dunwich Horror"
Here Lovecraft delves deeply into the power of a mystical book he mentions in several stories, the Necronomicon by the "mad Arab Abdul Alhazred." A young antiquarian seeks the mysterious book at Miskatonic University (another favorite fictional institution of Lovecraft's), and then discovers that it holds a key to stopping a terrible force growing inside the barn of a local farmhouse.

"The Colour Out of Space"
One of Lovecraft's most straightforwardly science fictional stories, about a meteorite whose color begins to colonize everything around itself.

"The Case of Charles Dexter Ward"
Sometimes called Lovecraft's only novel, this story is really more of a novella. It is also, like "Innsmouth," a revealing character study as much as it is a tale of historical terror whose claws reach into present-day Providence, Rhode Island. Ward, a young antiquarian (yes, Lovecraft has a lot of these), becomes interested in the papers of his ancestor Curwen, a man who grew rich trading in mysterious items from overseas, as well as in the slave trade. Curwen also built a house outside town, atop a vast underground catacombs devoted to nefarious experiments with the undead. Slowly, Ward is consumed by his obsession with Curwen, eventually attempting a dangerous experiment that will allow him to communicate with this once-powerful wizard from beyond the grave. There are several autobiographical flourishes here too, as Lovecraft sets the story in places familiar to him in Rhode Island, as well as bringing in characters who resemble historical figures in Providence history. It's an incredible, must-read Lovecraft story, full of the historical details that he loved as well as an alternate history of the slave trade that involves spirits as well as people.

"The Horror at Red Hook"
This is Lovecraft's classic story of the ghoulish goings-on beneath the cosmopolitan streets of New York City, where the writer lived for a few years in an immigrant neighborhood known as Red Hook. Here you'll see Lovecraft's usual obsessions - the horror of miscegenation/hybrid cultures, ancient forces from prehistory - set in an urban landscape rarely glimpsed in his generally-rural tales.

"The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath"
This is another of Lovecraft's near-novels, and is a crucial part of the author's surreal "dream cycle" of stories that involve the swashbuckling dream hero Randolph Carter. Unlike Lovecraft's usual heroes, who tend to be nerdy antiquarians or shivering half-monsters, Carter knows how to use a sword and trick the gods. In this adventuresome tale, we follow Carter through the dream world, from a city of cats (Lovecraft was very fond of these furry creatures), all the way to the Moon where a god of space (an "outer god") known as Nyarlathotep or the Crawling Chaos tries to trick Carter into abandoning his quest to dwell one day in a perfect city he once dreamed about.


Crucial biographical details

Though his stories are fantastical, Howard Phillips Lovecraft often pulled bits of his real life into them. Raised in Providence, Rhode Island, at the turn of the twentieth century, Lovecraft was a sickly child who was passionate about both ancient history and astronomy. Some of his first writing is about astronomy, in fact. His fixation on history was related in part to his fascination with pure Nordic cultures, and he once described himself in an essay as a "chalk-white racist."

But he was also a bundle of contradictions. When Lovecraft became a young man, he began contributing to - and eventually editing - the premiere pulp science fiction/horror zine of his day, Weird Tales. Through the group of friends he made while contributing to Weird Tales, he met an independent businesswoman named Sonia Greene. A Jewish immigrant to New York City, she brought Lovecraft to the city and they eventually married. So despite Lovecraft's horror at miscegenation, and his protestations that he was a racist, the one romance of his short life was with a Jewish immigrant.

After their marriage deteriorated, Lovecraft returned to his hometown of Providence in the mid-1920s, where he wrote some of his very best stories. Though he was poor, he was happy living with his aunt in a large house, and often spent his days hiking around Providence and writing in the city's beautiful, light-filled library called The Atheneum. When his aunt died, and then his good friend Robert E. Howard (author of the Conan books and a Weird Tales contributor) committed suicide, he fell into what today we would probably call clinical depression. He grew steadily more destitute, ate poorly (he mainly consumed bread, candies and coffee), and his health declined. He died at the age of 47, in 1937, shortly after completing his novella "The Shadow Out of Time."

The definitive biography of H.P. Lovecraft is S.T. Joshi's H.P. Lovecraft: A Life.

Crucial literary connections

Two of Lovecraft's best friends and correspondents were Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith, both contributors to Weird Tales and famous pulp authors in their own rights. Howard's work is probably remembered more today, with the help of the Conan movies, but Smith's work is usually deemed of higher literary merit. Prime Books is about to issue a handsome collection of Smith's stories called The Return of the Sorcerer.

Another of Lovecraft's great friends and literary champions was the writer and editor August Derleth, who kept Lovecraft's work in print long after the writer had died. In fact, it is probably Derleth's editorial efforts we have to thank for Lovecraft's cult status today.

One of Lovecraft's greatest influences was the Irish fantasist Lord Dunsany, who wrote about faeries and dreams in a poetic style that finds its way into Lovecraft's work as well. Like Dunsany, Lovecraft wrote reams of poetry but is largely remembered for his fantastical stories.

Crucial adaptations of, and immersions in, Lovecraft's tales

There are so many amazing stories, comic books, and movies that have been influenced by Lovecraft - not always in a good way - that it would be impossible to list them all. But here are some standouts.

Dreams in the Witch House
This was Stuart Gordon's entry in the "Masters of Horror" series on TV, and it's a great, modern-day adaptation of the Lovecraft story. There is even a moment when we see some terrifying geometry that is, in fact, sort of terrifying. Gordon has adapted several other Lovecraft tales, some more faithfully than others. While Gordon's Re-Animator is a true cult classic, it shares almost nothing with the Lovecraft story that inspired it, other than the main character's name, Herbert West. Same goes for Gordon's film From Beyond, which was inspired by Lovecraft too.

Dagon
A truly great Stuart Gordon adaptation, however, is Dagon - based on the short story "Shadow Over Innsmouth." While some of the movie is by necessity campy - sorry, but there is just no way to represent the church of Dagon without some seriously goofy outfits - it captures the poignancy of the original story. The ending of this movie is possibly the most truly Lovecraftian moment I've ever seen committed to film. (See a NSFW clip from the movie here.)

The Resurrected
Based on "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward," this horror movie is true to the original, but occasionally uneven in execution.

Call of Cthulhu (movie)
This silent film is set during the era when the story is supposed to take place - the mid-1920s. So the modern-day filmmakers have tried to create what they imagined a movie of the story would have looked like if it had been released at the same time as the short story itself. And they succeed incredibly well. This is retro-futurism at its finest, with gorgeous, expressionistic sets that look like something out of 20s horror classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Call of Cthulhu (RPG)
My favorite role-playing game ever, in which you can choose to be in a 1920s Lovecraftian scenario, or a contemporary one. Either way, you have to try to finish each quest without losing too many sanity points. Yes, the game has sanity points. Need I say more?

Hellboy (comics)
While the Hellboy comics created by Mike Mignola are not directly retelling any particular Lovecraft story, they are set in the world of the Lovecraft mythos. Several Lovecraftian monsters and wizards make appearances in Mignola's comics, and Mignola's illustrations are in my opinion the very best way to climb inside Lovecraft's crawly, dark imagination. (The image at the top of this post is a portrait of Lovecraft by Mignola.)

The Atrocity Archives
The first book in Charles Stross' Lovecraftian "Laundry series" of stories and novels, this set of stories takes us into a Lovecraftian world where a secret group called The Laundry deals with otherworldly phenomena and Nazis try to harness the powers of Cthulhu.

Evil Dead Trilogy
Sam Raimi's splatstick homage to Lovecraft begins with people who decide to mess around with a copy of the Necronomicon - and find out what it's like to do battle with the dead, from our dimension and others. The series begins with the movie Evil Dead, and ends with Army of Darkness.

The Masks by Ray Bradbury

Masks, myths and metaphors" play an important part in much of Bradbury's work, claim Jonathan Eller and William F. Touponce in their Bradbury study, The Life Of Fiction, and they believe Bradbury gets to the bottom of this obsession in his never-finished novel called The Masks. Filled with images of carnivals, this 1940s novel would have been the purest distillation of Bradbury's obsession with magicians and magic.

The Owl In Daylight by Philip K. Dick

When Dick died in 1982, he was busy with The Owl in Daylight, which is reputed to be concerned with deaf aliens abducting a B-movie composer, artistic genius, new forms of sensory input, an amusement park, or a sci-fi reboot of The Divine Comedy, depending whom you ask. Dick never outlined the plot, so it's hard to say. His wife Tessa published her interpretation of his concept in 2009, but her version is largely her own work, and draws inspiration from Mozart's The Magic Flute.

Irontown Blues by John Varley

We interviewed Varley back in March 2008, and he told us:

One of these days I hope to write a third novel in the Steel Beach, Golden Globe trilogy, entitled Irontown Blues. The reason I haven't written it is that I don't yet know what's going to happen.

People have been waiting for this novel forever, and little is known about Varley's ideas so far. Back in February, he said it's "third in line," after two other novels he's working on. "If I write it, it would be about a cop," he told Xero magazine.

The Pressure of Time by Thomas M. Disch

A sequel to Camp Concentration, about the pursuits of a society of humans become immortal through genetic alterations caused by a plague that swept through the world. A few regular mortals also survive, hiding out in enclaves. Disch explained:

For various reasons, personal and impersonal, I never got back to work on "Pressure", and now I see I won't, alas. Since Camp Concentration (which took 8 months to write) I realise I can't afford to spend such a lot of time on a book that earns only a standards sf advance". The personal reasons included an intense affair with the poet Lee Harwood that lasted about six weeks. After Harwood left him, Disch suffered several months of unrequited love. Disch confessed that much of The Pressure of Time was "inspired by the pangs of despised loved". Disch travelled around, visiting Ireland and Turkey, but suffered writers block. Unable to continue with his own work, he wrote novelisations of The Prisoner and Alfred the Great.

The other books in Octavia Butler's Fledgling series.

Butler died after Fledgling came out, but the book's ending left most people believing she intended to write at least one sequel, if not many. I've heard rumors she'd made notes on a sequel, but can't find any confirmation of that online. Butler also had started a third novel in her Parable series, called Parable Of The Trickster, but was unable to finish it due to a seven-year bout of writers' block. (Octavia Butler's advice on dealing with writers' block? "Fall in love. Why not? You're already miserable.")

Voyages D'Etudes by Jules Verne

Verne wrote 50 pages, and never finished the rest. The book was rewritten by his son Michel as L'etonnante aventure de la mission Barsac, along with several other works inspired to greater or lesser degree by his father's manuscripts. Esperanto enthusiasts are particularly saddened that in so doing, Michel expunged all references to support for the nascent language, of which Jules was a proponent.

Azathoth by H.P. Lovecraft.

Ia! Ia! Lovecraft started this novel in June 1922, but only wrote a small fragment, which was published afterh is death in the journal Leaves. According to Wikipedia, he described it as "a weird Eastern tale in the 18th century manner" and as a "weird Vathek-like novel." (Vathek being an 18th century novel about Arabia.) You can read the fragment that he actually wrote here. It starts quite stirringly, bemoaning our gray, citified, un-magical existence.

A Sense Of Time by Henry James

Yes, that Henry James. The "Turn Of The Screw" guy. He started writing this romance, about a young man who discovers he can walk through portals into the past, in 1900, but all the time-travel mechanics got too convoluted and gave him a headache. He abandoned it, only to return to work on it in 1914, writing another huge section. In the novel, Ralph Pendrel travels back and takes the place of his own ancestor, but then the woman he loves realizes he's a time-traveler and makes a great sacrifice to help him return to the present.

The Plant by Stephen King

This was King's famous experiment, where he serialized a novel online, and you were supposed to pay him $1 every time you downloaded a chapter. If the percentage of downloaders who paid $1 dropped below 75 percent, King threatened to stop posting the chapters. And eventually, that's what happened. The already-posted chapters have been removed from King's site. The novel is about a paperback editor who receives weird letters (and odd photographs) from a magical weirdo. The editor sics the cops on the magician, who sends him a strange plant in revenge.

The Dark Tower by C. S. Lewis

A story of interdimensional travel including the titular tower (which turns out to be a far-future replica of the the bog-ugly Cambridge University Library), this was supposed to be the original sequel to Out of the Silent Planet. It ends abruptly and some people have accused it of being a forgery.

The Splendor And Misery Of Bodies, Of Cities by Samuel R. Delany

This sequel to Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand may never actually see the light of day. We asked Delany about it a while back and he explained:

I did write about 150 pages of it at some point. But a number of things had come up to undercut it. I've explained it many, many times, and don't mind explaining it again. I was in a major relationship at that time, that kind of fueled the first volume, Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand. And that relationship broke up, and that was the beginning of the Eighties, at the same time the AIDS situation came in.

And after that, Delany's view of the gay community changed somewhat drastically.

The Salmon Of Doubt by Douglas Adams

Adams was working on this book, a Dirk Gently novel, when he died, but he'd decided his ideas for it didn't work for Gently. So he tried first turning it into a standalone novel, and then reworking it into a sixth Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy installment. The version which appears in the book of the same name does star Gently, and involves a client who wants to hire him to find the back half of her cat. According to Don't Panic, the book about Adams by Neil Gaiman (with revisions and updates by Guy Adams), the fragment which appears in the book is actually from several different versions of Salmon which were on Adams' various hard drives. What we have is pieced together from three files — Chapters 2, 8, 10 and 11 are from one file, Chapter 1 is from an earlier draft, and Chapter 9 is Adams' last known piece of writing. It's basically a mish-mash, and an assembly of working notes and fragmentary stuff.

Like the novels we're discussing, this list is decidedly unfinished — what are the books that were never completed, for whatever reason, which you would dearly love to read?

Additional reporting by Josh Snyder, Mary Ratliff and Cyriaque Lamar.

The blog Propnomicon is devoted to creating props based on Lovecraft's mythos, and one of its ongoing projects is to assemble the specimens, tools, and field notes that might have come out of the Miskatonic Antarctic expedition. This prop maker is hoping to be as true to the story and geological history as possible (although in consulting experts, he finds the two sometimes conflict), and has included core samples and fossils in his prop set, as well as illustrations of the Elder Things, their city and, the Shoggoths, and paraphernalia from Miskatonic itself.

From the Mountains of Madness [Propnomicon via Make]

They Come Back, But Not Quite Alive

Torchwood: When Jack Harkness is understandably upset when Owen Harper is shot and killed. But at least he's got the Resurrection Gauntlet to bring him back to life, right? Well, sort of. Owen still walks and talks, but he's not precisely alive. His heart doesn't beat, his flesh doesn't heal, and his reflexes are gone. And, if that wasn't bad enough, he can't even enjoy food or sex anymore, and Weevils follow him everywhere.

Caprica: Granted, the consequences of bringing Zoe Graystone back from the dead are pretty far-reaching. After all, it results in the creation of the Cylons and the eventual decimation of humanity. But when Joseph Adama encounters a computerized copy of his dead daughter, her concerns with being back from the dead are more immediate. Without a living body, she has no pulse and just generally feels wrong, to the extent that she can't stand being semi-alive this way.

"Playback" Arthur C. Clarke: Caprica's borrowed a page from Clarke here, who wrote a tale of aliens who try to bring a pilot back to life after his ship explodes. They manage to restore all of his memories, but have no idea what kind of body he had, and he's a bit depressed to find that he's just a non-corporeal simulation.

"The River Styx Runs Upstream" by Dan Simmons: When a young boy's mother dies, his father has her body resurrected. Although her body has returned, her mind simply isn't there, and she wanders through life as an automaton. The boy's distraught father and older brother eventually kill themselves in their grief, horror, and shame, but the boy doesn't think resurrection's so terrible. He himself goes to work for the Resurrectionists, spending his free time with his resurrected family.

You Bring Them Back Wrong

Doctor Who "The Empty Child:" Well-meaning nanobots attempt to reconstruct a child killed during the London Blitz. But not knowing what a human child looks like, they bring him back as a mindless abomination, with a gas mask for a face and ever searching for his mother. Even worse, the bots decide that this is what all humans must look like, and proceed to transmute healthy children as well.

"The Monkey's Paw" by WW Jacobs: The mystical monkey's paw grants wishes, but never in the way you hoped. After the first wish Mr. White makes results in the death of his son Herbert, his second wish is for Herbert to return. Mr. White never sees his son, but he knows after a horrible accident and a week on the slab, Herbert probably isn't the same. His third wish takes Herbert away.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer "Forever:" Following the same vein as "The Monkey's Paw," Dawn tries to resurrect her dead mother via magic. She also never sees her mother, realizing that what comes back won't quite be her, and breaks the spell before her mother reaches their front door.

They'll Try to Kill You Afterward

30 Days of Night: Dark Days: After Eben Olemaun becomes a vampire to save the remaining citizens of Barrow, he turns to ash when the polar sun finally rises. This sets Stella Olemaun on a quest to bring her husband back to life. But when she succeeds, Eben is still a vampire — and a hungry one at that.

"Herbert West — Reanimator" by HP Lovecraft: Medical student Herbert West is fascinated by life and death, and develops a serum he believes will restart the machinery of the human body. The serum works, but turns the corpses into cannibalistic zombies. West is unrepentant , focused on new ways to find dead subjects for his experiments. Of course, eventually his zombie experiments turn on him.

Practical Magic: After Sally Owens' boyfriend Jimmy turns out to be abusive, she drugs him and accidentally kills him. Fearing prison, Sally and her sister Gillian cast a spell to revive him, but Jimmy's immediate reaction isn't exactly gratitude. He tries to kill Gillian, forcing Sally to murder him once again.

Pet Sematary: Any dead creature buried in the ancient Micmac burial ground comes back to life, just not quite the way you put it in. After losing his young son Gage, Louis buries his son in the graveyard. Sure enough, Gage comes back — and promptly murders his mother.

Lexx: You would think that, given the prophecy that the last of the Brunnen-G would kill His Divine Shadow, the last thing His Divine Shadow would do is resurrect a Brunnen-G corpse. But he did exactly that to Kai, making him one of the living dead as a Divine Assassin. It takes over 2000 years, but eventually Kai does get around to killing him.

Supernatural "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things:" College students and necromancy are always a recipe for trouble. When a broken-hearted boy tries to bring his dead crush back, she's of course got to go zombie and start chomping down on her loved ones.

God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert: For thousands of years, Leto Atreides has ruled over humanity, and always has a ghola — a copy — of his father's faithful friend Duncan Idaho to serve him. But the Duncan ghola's almost inevitably rebel against Leto and try to kill him, forcing Leto to kill all but 19 gholas. Still, Leto keeps bringing in a fresh Duncan ghola after each attempt on his life.

They Bring Death With Them

Pushing Daisies: When pie maker Ned touches dead bodies, they become reanimated, without regard for mutilation or decay. But if he fails to deanimate them after more than a minute, a random person in close proximity dies, taking their place. And for Ned, bringing the dead back to life is further complicated by not being able to touch them, lest they fall dead once again.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer "After Life:" Actually, bringing a body-stealing demon into the world of the living was probably the least of the disastrous consequences of resurrecting the Slayer. Still, when a demon gets loose in Sunnydale, the Scoobies have to kill it before it kills Buffy.

Carnivale: Ben Hawkins has the power to bring people back from the dead, but it comes with a price: one person of Hawkins' choosing must die in exchange for the life. And, try though he might, he can't choose himself.

Torchwood "Dead Man Walking:" Another fun consequence of Owen's walking death is that Death himself comes along for the ride. He's looking for 13 souls to consume so he can remain in the world of the living and slake his thirst for destruction.

It Will Come at Great Personal Cost

The Dresden Files: The sorcerer Hrothbert of Bainbridge committed a crime against his order by bringing his beloved Winifred back from the dead, prompting the High Council to hand down a severe and lasting punishment: they imprison his spirit inside his skull for all eternity. Hrothbert, now "Bob," has been around over a thousand years, but he can't interact with the physical world.

Torchwood "They Keep Killing Suzie:" The other Resurrection Gauntlet actually does bring the dead back to full-fledged life. But naturally there's still a catch: the resurrected person draws life energy from the living wearer, and permanent resurrection means the death of the living wearer.

Full Metal Alchemist: After their mother dies, Edward and Alphonse try to revive her through alchemy. Not only do they fail to bring her back from the dead, they lose physical pieces of themselves in the process, with Edward losing his left leg and Alphonse losing his entire body.

Supernatural: The Winchesters thrive on death and resurrection. When Sam is shot and killed, Dean trades his soul for Sam's life, with the bartering demon collecting in just a year. Sure enough, after a year, Dean dies and head off to Hell.

It Will Attract Unwanted Attention

The Outer Limits "Josh:" When reclusive Josh Butler resurrects a young girl through a strange electromagnetic pulse, it attracts the attention of a tabloid TV reporter looking for a scoop. Unfortunately, it also attracts the attention of the US Air Force, who promptly seize Josh and start performing medical tests.

The 4400: Shawn Farrell manages to bring a bird back from the dead, just one example of his amazing healing abilities. But not everyone is thrilled about his strange new powers, and they bring him to the attention of Jordan Collier, which is a bit of a double-edged sword.

It's Only Temporary

AI: Artificial Intelligence: The evolved mechas who find David frozen beneath the water are able to give the robotic boy his greatest wish: time with his long-dead adoptive mother Monica. The resurrection only lasts a day and can never be repeated. David's okay with the arrangement, since that one day is perfect, but it's a clear audience tearjerker.

They Were Actually Okay With Being Dead

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow assumed that Buffy's death by interdimensional portal had sent the Slayer to a hell dimension, and conjured up some ill-advised magic to bring her back. Unfortunately, Willow never considered that Buffy might actually be in Heaven, leaving her in a major season-long depression as she adjusts to inferior life back on Earth.

Supernatural: Okay, so Dean didn't exactly enjoy his stay in Hell, but he's dealing with some very Buffy-like issues on his return to Earth. He clearly remembers his agonizing time in Hell and got a real taste for torture. And God might have pulled him out of Hell, but his plans for Dean on Earth involve more havoc and torture.

Green Lantern: Maura Rayner is infected with a sentient virus sent by Sinestro and her son Kyle failed to get back in time to save her. He uses his powers to revive her, but she won't have any of it. She senses that, once dead, there's something wrong with being alive and begs him to let her be dead once again.

You Never Really Liked Them in the First Place

The Venture Bros.: Dean and Hank Venture are a tad on the death-prone side, so their father always keeps a few clone slugs around to imprint with their memories. But once they're alive again, he generally treats them as nuisances — or ignores them entirely. But he does find it handy to have a spare organ donor (or two) around.

Red Dwarf: Nearly the entire complement of the Red Dwarf is killed off in the first episode, only to be resurrected in the eighth season thanks to a little nanobot magic. Lister is no longer the only human in the universe, but he and his cohorts immediately run afoul of the newly reconstructed crew.

It Makes for Unnecessary Sequels

And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer: We said goodbye to several major characters from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series (as well as the entire planet Earth) at the end of Mostly Harmless. Presumably Eoin Colfer's sequel will see Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Trillian ride again, and Arthur's none too pleased about it.

The film focuses mostly on Lovecraft's influence, and includes interviews with luminaries like Guillermo Del Toro, Neil Gaiman, John Carpenter, Caitlin Kiernan, Stuart Gordon, Ramsey Campbell, and Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi.

Learn more via the Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown official site.

Much of Coulthart's work is inspired by mysticism and Lovecraftian horror. He has frequently collaborated with comic book writer Alan Moore, and illustrated David Britton's Lord Horror, a Lovecraft-themed book so controversial, it was declared obscene and banned by a Manchester magistrate. Coulthart's 2006 book, The Haunter of the Dark: And Other Grotesque Visions includes selections from Lord Horror, as well as illustrations based on Lovecraft's own stories and attempts to visually represent the cosmic entities he describes.

[John Coulthart via Dark Roasted Blend]

R'lyeh
Cthulhu Rising
Azathoth
The Call of Cthulhu — Opening Page

The Haunter of the Dark — Federal Hill
The Haunter of the Dark — Inside the Church
Yuggoth
Dagon
R'lyeh

Nyarlathotep

Shub-Niggurath


Yog-Sothoth

The Dunwich Horror — Wilbur Whateley

Ron Howard revealed the first tiny details of his film to the LA Times. Howard called the whole project "challenging as it's the first time he's translated a graphic novel.

"It very cleverly uses H.P. Lovecraft in a fictional way, but there's some loose biographical elements. But it certainly has the flavor and the tone of Lovecraft. The character is a very young Lovecraft."

The film is loosly based on Image Comics' graphic novel The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft which has received fair reviews. Still the worry of a Lovecraft versus Cthulhu showdown makes us nervous, but we'll keep positive, for now.

The Thing

There are two movie versions of The Thing, which is itself based on a short story by John Campbell called "Who Goes There," but every iteration shares the same basic structure. An alien beneath the ice of Antarctica gets thawed out by a lonely group stationed on the continent during winter. It slowly picks off members of the group, perhaps most spectacularly in John Carpenter's movie version, which is packed with terrific, gory effects of alien/human slaughter.

"At the Mountains of Madness"

This classic short story by H.P. Lovecraft is about a group of explorers who discover an ancient city buried beneath the ice in an Antarctic mountain range. Within the city, they find evidence that Earth's earliest inhabitants were aliens who took up residence in the once-temperate South Pole. They lived in a state of advanced civilization, occasionally having problems with other alien groups (like Cthulhu's spawn, which live in the sea). But finally their city descended into decadence, and the polymorphous slave beings known as Shuggoths began to take over. Eventually it emerges that some of the Shuggoths still live, and the human expedition may have released them upon the world.

The X-Files movie

The 1998 movie that came out of the popular alien-paranoia TV series includes a final set of scenes that take place in a secret underground lab in Antarctica, where aliens are being studied. We know the aliens are dangerous, and are associated with the black oil that has been mind-controlling several humans in the show. As the movie ends, a spaceship beneath the lab rises up and takes off. More black oil to be unleashed on the world? Aliens finally freed from prison? We may never know.

Alien vs. Predator

A group of explorers travel to Antarctica (this plot is starting to sound familiar, isn't it?) to investigate a mysterious heat signal in an ice field. They discover a vast, underground structure that looks sort of like a temple. It turns out to be a holding tank for aliens, and a group of predators have awakened them in order to have a fun hunting expedition. Unfortunately the human explorers are caught between the predators and aliens, and some of them get used as alien-hatching vessels so the predators can have their fun. When things get out of control, the humans have to decide whether to ally themselves with the dangerous predators if they're going to escape alive – and prevent the aliens from being unleashed all over the Earth.

Alien

It's possible to claim that the original 1970s Alien movie is about ice-bound creatures awakening to kill, kill, kill. The aliens that Ripley's vessel stumbles across are on what seems to be a frozen planet.

"A Colder War"

In this short story by Charles Stross, a Cold War-era nuclear submarine finds a Cthulhu-esque creature beneath the ice. It's an even greater threat than nuclear war, and makes the cold war pale by comparison.

Mammoth

Perhaps one of the greatest kitchen-sink monsters ever created, this movie's eponymous creature is discovered frozen whole in the arctic ice. But when the ice melts and (of course) the mammoth escapes, we discover that not only is it a reanimated paleolithic beastie, but it's also controlled via wireless by a group of hostile aliens and it's got the power to suck people's lifeforce out using its trunk. So it's an alien-controlled vampire dinosaur. And it's pissed. Watch the alien vampire mammoth wreck havoc among drunken teens, including Summer Glau (!) at a rave in the forest!

Transformers

In the first Transformers movie, evil Deceptacon leader Megatron is found deep beneath the ice, and as he thaws, his evil world-destroying powers grow.

Demolition Man

In the movie version of Demolition Man, set in the near future, supercriminal Phoenix is thawed out of deep freeze to face trial. Unfortunately he kills everybody in sight and escapes, to engage in a zillion acts of crime in a city unprepared for such a dangerous criminal. Luckily the city is able to defrost our cop hero too, whose skills dealing with violence were honed during Phoenix's era.

Dinosaurus

In this flick from 1960, a team constructing a harbor on a Carribbean island accidentally unearth two dinosaurs, a T-Rex and a brontosaurus. Of course the kaiju are struck by lightning and brought back to life for a mega-rampage – though sadly they aren't controlled by aliens or capable of sucking people's souls out. A caveman is brought to life with them, and serves as is the friendly defrosted foil to the dinos.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms

This classic 1952 Ray Harryhausen movie basically started the giant atomic monster genre. A "Rhedosaurus" is awakened in arctic circle by atomic bombs, and unleashes monstery, claymation madness upon the world.

Doctor Who, "The Ice Warriors"

A new ice age is sweeping over the world, and a team of scientists and maniacs is desperately trying to find a way to roll back the glaciers. And then they find a weird Viking warrior-esque figure trapped in the ice for millions of years... and when the ice defrosts, the figure awakens!

Heroes

At the end of last season's superhero soap Heroes, Tracy uses her freeze-ray powers to freeze . . . herself! She goes mega-icy and then shatters into a million pieces to save the son of her dead, ultrastrong mutant genetic clone "sister" Nikki. But she'll be back this fall in the new season, all thawed out and healed up and ready to engage in all kinds of evil.

Frankenstein's Monster

In this early-70s comic from Marvel, the Frankenstein monster emerges from an arctic glacier twice: Once to battle Dracula, who injures him; and a second time in the modern world, aided by Frankenstein's distant, gothy relative Victoria Frankenstein. Though revenge and killing were among his goals after his first thaw, by the time he thawed a second time he was ready to fall in love (with Victoria) and fight for great justice (with Iron Man). Frankenstein's Monster teaches us that taking a second ice nap can be redemptive.

Terminal Freeze

In this novel by Lincoln Child, a group of explorers living in "Fear Base" underneath "Fear Glacier" encounter – surprise – something they need to be afraid of. It's a frozen, catlike creature that they plan to defrost when they return to civilization. But unfortunately it defrosts before the group makes it home, and people start dying. This is yet another tale in the sub-sub-genre established by "Who Goes There," the short story on which The Thing is based.

The airship paintings are part of Amend's "Airships and Tentacles" series, in which he combines Jules Verne-inspired technology with Lovecraftian monsters. They're all available as prints at Amend's store, which also features Amend's other steampunk-inspired paintings and engravings, such as "Nautilus 20,000 Leagues," also below.

[Myke Amend via Dark Roasted Blend]

Behold the Machine
Antarctic Experiment
Sabicu
Engraving from "Sabicu"
The Rescue
Nautilus 20,000 Leagues

Scott makes realistic, incredibly detailed models of trilobytes and insects from PVC, and lectures on arthropods, evolution, and ecology at Vancouver's Stanley Park. But his imagined creatures, many inspired by the art of H.R. Giger and the tales of H.P. Lovecraft, are biofiction at its best — organic-looking beasties that look like they'll slither to life at any moment.

[Bugmaker's Flickr via Dark Roasted Blend]

Baby
Alien Embryo
Sandworm
Parasite
Crawler
Pickled Critter
Crazy Critter
Sand Creature
Brainworm
Baby Deep One
Dissection
Critter Looks Up
Martian Maggot
Alien Embryo
Beasty
Swamp Critter

I don't read much horror, but I enjoy it when I do; I love the Great Old Ones such as William Hope Hodgson and H.P. Lovecraft, there's Clive Barker of course, Joe Lansdale and Dan Simmons have some powerful stuff too. I've recently discovered Joe Hill and am entranced by his style. (I understand his father has written some books as well.) When a horror story really works for me, I throw the book against the wall with a shriek and hide behind the sofa. Then, trembling, and in tears I crawl across the floor in supplication and pick up where I left off. Laird Barron does this to me.

It seems the best horror conveys an utter hopelessness against the Unknown. All the extensive arcane lore, mad skills, or big guns we might have is futile against that which lurks in our nightmares. Lovecraft's Cthulu Mythos is legendary for its vast eldritch deities brimming with power, but generally oblivious to humanity's petty actions. Woe betide the hapless mortals who opened the wrong book or wandered through an innocently shambolic ruin. Like Lovecraft, that Eskimophobic shut-in from Providence, Mr. Barron's tales peel back the flimsy facade of reality and the Universe suddenly boils over in maggots, chitinous genitalia, and biting eyeballs.

Although clearly a student of the master's themes, Barron has his own voice, which is about as far away from H.P.'s fussy antiquarian style as you can get. The writing in The Imago Sequence has been hard-boiled in mescaline, like Jim Thompson tripping his balls off. Rather than adopting Lovecraft's bestiary of unpronounceable space gods, Barron has devised his own collection of creepy creatures. One major but as yet unseen figure is the malevolent entity that some worship with the name Belphegor. In at least three of the stories he uses an interesting theme of Lovecraft's: Scary Old People. They could be a symbol of ancient knowledge and the and the impending fate that awaits us all, or just childhood memories of having to kiss wretched Great-Aunt Mildred. Either way Barron reminds us to respect our Elders, otherwise they will eat our brains.

Many of the stories take place in the present day in the American Northwest particularly around Olympia and Eastern Washington state. There are some notable exceptions. The previously unpublished "Procession of the Black Sloth" is a bleak disorienting descent into Hell set in Hong Kong. A grizzled Pinkerton agent tracks down a vicious killer to a Gold Rush town in "Bulldozer", it could be described as Cthulu in Deadwood. "Hallucigenia"is about a wealthy man trying to come to grips with a bizarre and horrible incident that has left his life shattered. It made me think of the best of Clive Barker, only better. The title story deserves to hang in the same nightmarish gallery as "The Picture of Dorian Grey" and "Pickman's Model". "The Imago Sequence" is a notorious trio of photographs sought after by rich and eccentric collectors. One of these sends his agent, an ex-wrestler turned kneecap-busting debt collector, to hunt down the mysterious third image. His investigation uncovers a labyrinth of conspiracy, crime, and macabre cults, or something even worse.

No wan, scholarly dweebs here. Barron's protagonists are often Big Tough Guys. These bruisers have seen hard times and done whatever it takes to survive them. Of course this can't prepare them for what the author has in store for them. From each opening line you know these guys are Doomed — but you're compelled to follow them to their fate. And readers really will feel for them. These aren't cookie-cutter macho cartoon goons. Each one is a nuanced and complex character with interesting backstories. Men who struggle to make sense out of a world that's bigger and more dangerous than they realized, and then they end up in a Laird Barron story. Tragic really.

The imagery in The Imago Sequence is especially vivid. Barron's language can be disturbing brutal, but always quite lyrical. He cites the poet Wallace Stevens as another influence. He claims to be working on a novel and I know for a fact his publisher is eagerly awaiting it. I am too. Horror fans will enjoy these creepy, terrifying and beautiful tales of damnation. Certainly scared the crap outta me and I liked it.

You can purchase The Imago Sequence from Night Shade Books
or support your local independent bookseller.

Commenter Grey_Area is known to the mindless gibbering dancers as Christopher Hsiang. He is sleeping with the lights on although he knows it will be of no help when They come for him.

Like most of Gordon's work - except perhaps for Dagon - "Dreams" is a very loose interpretation of Lovecraft. In this adaptation, a graduate student at Miskatonic University (of course) is looking for a quiet apartment where he can complete his dissertation on string theory. He's figured out that by building special "non euclidean" shapes, two universes can intersect!

And that's just what happens in his weirdly-shaped apartment, where a witch and her human-faced rat come through the walls and force him to do their bloody bidding. Which seems mostly to involve slaughtering his neighbor's kid, whom he has been tricked into babysitting. But first, before the baby-killing, the witch gratuitously seduces him in the witchiest possible manner. And reveals why witch sex is always unsafe.

This is Lovecraft, so no, things do not end well. Unless you consider having your guts eaten out by a rat with a human face while you're locked up in a mental institution.

Dreams in the Witch House via IMDB

The eighteenth variation of Rachmaninov's "Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini" always seemed sweet and romantic to me, but it means something very different to this Weird Tales author:

WeirdTalesMagazine.com has more. While you're there, don't forget to download that free issue, because it has enough marvelous fiction, poetry, and book reviews to fill an entire afternoon — not to mention an exploration of sleep terrors and funky masks, a guided tour through Lovecraftian Dreamland, and an interview with Hellboy's Mike Mignola.

[WeirdTalesMagazine.com]

My favorite of his creations is the above-pictured "Growth and Remission," but Archer (with Lovecraft up his sleeve) has so much more to showcase. Check out the thrilling images below, and then head over to WeirdTalesMagazine.com to see the rest. This is the sci-fi art gift that'll keep on giving 'till May 2009.

In novels, movies, radio shows, and comic books throughout the 20th century, Fu Manchu is portrayed as a cunning genius who uses arcane methods and secret societies armed with knives to plot evil murders of white people and the preservation of Chinese power. Fu Manchu quickly came to personify the yellow peril, and has served as an inspiration to many other racist depictions of Asian villains like Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon and Dr. No in James Bond.

Long before Westerners feared terrorists and sentient supercomputers, there was the yellow peril. "Pulp magazines in the 30s had a lot of yellow peril characters loosely based on Fu Manchu," says William F. Wu, a pioneer in Asian science fiction writing in the U.S. "Most were of Chinese descent, but because of the geopolitics at the time, a growing number of people were seeing Japan as a threat, too."

In his 1982 book The Yellow Peril, Wu theorizes that the fear of Asians dates back to mongol invasion in the Middle Ages. "The Europeans believed that Mongols were invading in mass, but actually, they were just on horseback and riding really fast," he writes. Most Europeans had never seen an Asian before, and the harsh contrast in language and physical appearance probably caused more skepticism than transcontinental immigrants did. "I think the way they looked had a lot to do with the paranoia," Wu says.

The numbers issue is also a recurring theme in yellow peril science fiction: Westerners fear the idea of Asians taking over. In 1927, Lovecraft wrote about "squinting Orientals that swarmed from every door" in The Horror at Red Hook; that same year, in a novella called The Invading Horde, Arthur Burks predicts that Asians "breed like flies, and must eventually find some place for their expanding population or perish."

To be fair, Asians weren't always depicted as purely evil. Another well-known character from pre-World War II America was Mr. Moto, the super-polite, clean-cut Imperial Agent of Japan created by novelist John P. Marquand. For the most part, Mr. Moto was just a superb guy—fluent in many languages, a judo master, and the world's best private investigator. But in later films, especially after the war broke out, Mr. Moto also ended up taking on an evil persona.

Asians were to the 1920 and 30s what aliens, robots, and sentient computers are to present day science fiction: real or perceived threats to social order. "Science fiction is always really about its own time," Wu says. "It's what many authors call a shotgun approach to the future. Wherever people are in time, the current sociopolitical and scientific questions of that time are what you write about."

About a half decade after the yellow peril years, Asian influences reappeared in popular science fiction, but with a slightly different tone. William Gibson's Neuromancer and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner are just a couple of famous examples. "Asian cultural markers are often used as shorthand for the future," says Claire Light, an Asian-American science fiction writer. Light sees a link between this trend in entertainment and the sudden success of the Japanese economy in the 70s and 80s: "At the time, most Americans just thought of Asians as the technological power of the future," she says.

The speculation that China will dominate the world is still prominent in science fiction, yet strangely enough, today's science fiction about China still isn't necessarily about Asians. Joss Whedon's Firefly and Serenity notoriously don't have any Asian characters in them despite the premise of a dominant Chinese culture. "He's a smart guy who turned navel gazing into high art, but he's not really a great world builder," Light says, noting that she only saw a handful of Asian extras—including one in a conical hat!—in Serenity.

"All of the older yellow peril stuff is really goofy. It's extreme to the point of being humorous, and anyway, it's too old to worry about." Wu laughs. "It's the newer stuff that concerns me."

Wu's 1989 cyborg comedy, Hong on the Range, is still one of the only sci-fi novels with a non-perilous Asian protagonist. But this may change soon. Light, who is also a board member of the Carl Brandon Society, a non-profit for minority authors of speculative fiction, points out that the number of Asian science fiction writers has doubled in the past decade. Other minorities are filling out the ranks of science fiction authors too.

If you ask me, an ethnically-diverse group of scifi writers will make the very best future. You know, one without all the peril.

Chill is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's story "Cool Air." The flick follows an employee in a supermarket named Sam. His boss is a bit of a weirdo who has a "skin disease" that forces him to live in freezing temperatures. Of course it's later revealed that the icy air is in fact keeping his boss alive, so he can skin poor victims and stitch their hide across his own, thus prolonging his undead existence. This mad scientist movie also includes one hideous Igor-esque henchman, because what's the point of being a evil scientist if you don't get sidekicks?

Chill Movie Trailer

[Chill Myspace]

About the size of a thick tombstone, including over 400 pages of mostly full-color art, with nonfiction by Harlan Ellison, Thomas Ligotti, and others, this absolute stone-cold classic is a testament to the publisher’s attention to detail and Lovecraft’s enduring influence. It also provides a wonderful gallery setting for H.R. Giger, Bob Eggleton, John Coulthart, Michael Whelan, Lee Brown Coye, Virgil Finlay, Ian Miller, Gahan Wilson, John Picacio, Harry O. Morris, J.K. Potter, and many others.

Often, the images in the book mix fantasy with Lovecraft’s take on “cosmic horror,” the idea that the universe is hostile and inert.

In SF-nal terms, Bob Eggleton interprets that cosmic horror as alien influence:

Lovecraft's elder gods, unspeakable ones,shamblers and so on...were all in reality malevolent aliens from other worlds. They were ancient and evil, but the fact they're from another world is lost in the mists. His stories had references to astronomy, astrology and science and yet took this 180 turn into something scary and dark. Nigel Kneale, for instance wrote the Quatermass series in much the same way. Quatermass & The Pit was truly Lovecraftian.

John Coulthart notes, too, that:

The young Lovecraft was a keen astronomer who became acquainted at an early age with a sense of cosmic scale, the vastness of the universe and so on. That combined with a natural pessimism, and his later atheism gave him a strong sense of human insignificance in the face of cosmic enormity. ‘We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity,’ as he says at the opening of "The Call of Cthulhu."'

Not exactly the most uplifting of messages, but definitely powerful—and revolutionary within genre at the time.

“His problem as a writer was that most Western supernatural fiction up to that point had some kind of Christian dimension to it, even if this wasn't directly stated,” Coulthart says. “That was obviously a problem for an atheist writing a form of fiction which needed something malevolent at its core. His solution was to replace the Devil and the Christian idea of evil with vast extra-dimensional entities which disturb or threaten us because we mean as much to them as microbes do to human beings.”

Disappointingly (to us at least), Harry O. Morris rules out a literal cephalopodic element to the idea of cosmic horror:

[It’s] not a giant squid descending from outer space, but rather an all pervasive sense of dread that permeates everything we think we know including our faces in the mirror and the knives and forks at the dinner table.

For Ian Miller the concept is more visceral, citing films like Alien as Lovecraftian in mood: “Things hidden in the shadows, in tight dark place, dangerous, scratching, moving, creeping, stalking, mysterious, and always at the peripheries of one’s vision waiting in the shadows to spring out and bite you...Things arcane. Airless dark places with strange smells. Dark cupboards. Things that scratch and suffocate. Tight shoes and fish eyes...I suspect fear fueled by adrenalin gave rise to the notion of warp speed, though I'm sure some would disagree.”

How, then, do these artists put their own personal stamp on something so strong and powerful on the page, and thus indelibly imprinted upon readers’ minds?

For Eggleton it’s trying to give “a kind of epic feel to [the paintings]. A sense of the familiar and then at the same, something alien and bizarre.”

Morris’ approaches Lovecraft through ambiguity: “For me, the best way to express this uncomfortable aura visually is to leave portions of the picture undefined, in shadow, and influenced by chance/chaos. Also, I'm inclined to try and convey a sense of timeless antiquity which seems to be a cornerstone of Lovecraft's vision.”

John Picacio also believes the best Lovecraftian art doesn’t try to show everything. “It leaves something to the imagination....a few conceptual voids here and there, purposely left for the mind to fill with something personal and therefore much more potent....I think trying to literally illustrate a Lovecraftian monster usually misses the mark. It’s just not as scary anymore because the terror has somehow been contained in the lines and the strokes, and therefore distilled. That’s why his stuff is so difficult to effectively translate to comics and film although so many have tried.”

Coulthart is one of those creators who, in addition to his Lovecraftian paintings has successfully translated the icon’s vision to comics:

I wanted to take Lovecraft's fiction seriously on its own terms, something which—in the comics world especially—wasn't happening very often. When I started illustrating his work in the 1980s there was little apart from the Lovecraft special issue of Heavy Metal from 1979 which had attempted that. I tried to match his dense writing style with an equally dense and detailed drawing style and tried to make things look solid and historically accurate. I've always been interested in architecture and Lovecraft's concept of alien architecture continues to fascinate.

This might make the art seem ultra-serious, but it’s not all “cosmic.” As Jerad Walters, the genius behind Centipede Press points out:

Some of the artwork is humorous or whimsical, and rather good-natured. There's a difference in humor between the ‘Deep One’ Horrora Model Kit image, which is more nostalgic, and the ‘Where the Great Old Ones Are’ image, which is just a send-up of HPL and Maurice Sendak, and the black humor of the Gahan Wilson piece, which is just over-the-top. It is the black humor of some of the works that works best in the book, for me at any rate. I think that the humorous side comes out because all of these bleak, nihilistic visions of Lovecraft can be so dreary and depressing that a send-up of it all is just inevitable.

All of these approaches and many more are showcased in The Art of Lovecraft; the gallery above can only begin to hint at the variety, depth, and jaw-dropping quality of the book. It’s a stunning love letter to a long and storied tradition.

As for those tentacular horrors, Walters says:

I don't think any reader of weird fiction can ever look at tentacles the same way after Lovecraft. I remember boiling some squid and chopping off the heads, putting them off to one side of the cutting block, planning to save them for something, until my wife quite reasonably asked if I was out of my mind.

Or, as China Mieville writes in "M.R. James and the Quantum Vampire":

The spread of the tentacle—a limb-type with no Gothic or traditional precedents (in “Western” aesthetics)—from a situation of near total absence in Euro-American teratoculture up to the nineteenth century, to one of being the default monstrous appendage of today, signals the epochal shift to a Weird culture....The “Lovecraft Event,” as Ben Noys invaluably understands it, is unquestionably the centre of gravity of this revolutionary movement; it’s defining text, Lovecraft’s ‘The Call of Cthulhu,’ published in 1928 in Weird Tales.