Robert M. Price (1) (1954–)

This was a disappointing read, for a few reasons. One of them is that the book doesn't even do what it says on the tin: only a small minority of the stories have any real connection to Shub-Niggurath, either explicit or implicit. A witch, a straight-up evil goat, or something vaguely creepy happening while somebody is near a tree (but not connected in any way with the tree) do not, in fact, make something a "tale of the black goat with a thousand young". Sigh. However, there's a few genuine show more Mythos stories in here. Honestly, most of them just aren't very good.

CW: I should flag up that there's a lot of sex in some stories, and rape in at least two of them.

"The Curate of Temphill" is the worst, I think. Content-wise, its treatment of homosexuality is very questionable, and as the sole female character is a lesbian antagonist, you can imagine her treatment is frankly appalling. From a thematic perspective, it's got little to do with Shub-Niggurath unless you consider any hint of a goat to be enough (Price clearly does). But there's also a total lack of credibility in the story, where the new reverend of a village is handed documents claiming to be secret missing bits of the Bible. In the story, he immediately accepts them at face value, and revises his entire religious outlook instantaneously on this basis alone. The thing is, there have been countless documents claiming to be extra gospels, additional prophecies, Real True Original versions of various Biblical stories, and so on. On top of that, there are all the books which are canonical in one variant of Christianity but not another (the entire Apocrypha? the numerous books which various early Christian groups agreed not to include?). An actual clergyman, as the protagonist is meant to be, would absolutely be fully aware of this. He might mention the documents to the church hierarchy, since they could be of historical interest, but behaving as he does in the story is stretching suspension of disbelief several miles beyond breaking point. show less

A nice palate cleanser to the Case for Christ. Very sarcastic delivery that livens up the sometimes dreary subject matter, in many ways held back by the shortcomings of the progenitor book. What's readily apparent in the disingenuous nature of Strobel's book, the false dilemmas and outright preaching for a very specific evangelical christianity under the wafer thin guise of being a serious search for the truth, is revealed to be a much more sinister concoction of outright lies by people with show more real credentials. Price takes the time to go through the book step by step and actually check the casual remarks thrown out in Strobel's book, and a stunning amount of Bible quotes are just made up. "Lying for Jesus" is one of the most bizarre moral pretzels out there. 'Deception is okay because it's all in service of saving souls' is not just insultingly dishonest but one of the weakest conceptions of theology - you really believe in a God that would be fooled by this, from both parties? show less

Price argues that liberal Protestant scholars who produce reconstructions of the "historical Jesus" are creating their own Jesus icons to authorize a liberal religious agenda. Christian faith invariably tends to produce a Jesus capable of playing the role of a religious figurehead. "Jesus Christ" functions as a symbolic cloak for several hidden agendas. This is no surprise, since the Jesus Christ of the gospels is very likely a fictional amalgam of several first-century prophets and messiahs show more and of purely mythic Mystery Cult redeemers and Gnostic Aions. Price shows the origins of Jesus figures and how they may have finally merged into the patchwork savior of Christian dogma and argues that there is good reason to believe that Jesus never existed as a historical figure. Responsible historians must remain agnostic about a "historical Jesus" and what he stood for. show less

The Chaosium-published "Cycle" books, as edited by Robert M. Price, generally take a Cthulhu Mythos "entity" and supply a full range of literature for it: the key Lovecraft stories, likely prior influences, and later derivations. In this case, center stage is given to the Deep Ones of "The Shadow over Innsmouth." I almost skipped re-reading the Lovecraft story itself, since it is the longest in the book, and I always have other things to read. But I'm glad I didn't: it's one of my favorites, show more and it really held up to the repeat reading, which was further enhanced by some of Price's remarks in the general introduction, where he discusses the initiatory dimension of the tale. Given the fondness that I have for "The Shadow over Innsmouth," I thought the other stories might have a hard time measuring up. But I found this collection very strong on the whole.

With the exception of the three poems placed at the end, the contents are arranged roughly chronologically by date of first publication. Price has identified three predecessor stories. The first and least relevant is the brief Dunsany Pegana piece "Of Yoharneth Lahai." It may be the source of the name Y'ha-nthlei as Price contends, but it contributed no substance to Lovecraft's Atlantic citadel of the Deep Ones. "The Harbor-Master" was the first Robert W. Chambers story I had read that wasn't in The King in Yellow, and it was quite good; in fact it may goad me to read the remainder of In Search of the Unknown, the site of its original publication. "Fishhead" by Irvin S. Cobb is an effective little tale also. But in both the Chambers and Cobb stories, the ichthyoid men are isolated freaks of nature, whereas the terribleness of the Lovecraftian Deep Ones has a great deal to do with the extent of their society, or even conspiracy.

That element is played up well in a number of the latter-day tales, most especially "Innsmouth Gold" (Vester), "Custos Sanctorum" (Johnson), "Rapture in Black" (Rainey), "Live Bait" (Sargent), and "Devil Reef" (Glasby). I preferred these 1980s and 90s pieces to the 1960s and 70s work of James Wade and Franklyn Searight, although the Wade stories in particular can be seen as predecessor tales themselves to Alan Moore's splendid Neonomicon. The majority of the newer stories have very explicit links to the original Lovecraft story, usually mentioning Innsmouth by name and often setting their principal events in the same mythical New England town. Geographic outliers include Big Sur ("The Deep Ones"), Chicago ("Rapture in Black"), and Essex, England ("Custos Sanctorum").

The high level of inter-textual continuity is surprising, in that none of these stories are mere pastiches. I was profoundly charmed by the mystical "Transition of Zadok Allen" which concludes the prose section of the book. The trio of poems at the end are of mixed value, and they are sequenced by increasing length and greater conformity to the contents of "The Shadow over Innsmouth." The whole collection is quite worthwhile, and I would recommend it to fans of weird horror generally, beyond addicts of Lovecraftiana. show less