THE DEEP ONES: "Necrotic Cove" by Lois Gresh

"Necrotic Cove" by Lois Gresh.

Discussion begins June 19, 2024.

First published in Black Wings III (2014).



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1879138

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird

ONLINE VERSIONS

No online versions found to date.

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

No online audio versions found to date.

MISCELLANY

https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/interview-lois-h-gresh/
https://deepcuts.blog/2021/09/15/editor-spotlight-lois-h-gresh/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_H._Gresh
https://www.hippocampuspress.com/mythos-and-other-authors/fiction/cult-of-the-de...
https://tinyurl.com/35e9nd6n

That was an interesting story, but so very constrained to Cassandra's subjectivity that I had trouble getting any handle on the "objective" narrative. Where did she get her knowledge of the cove? Was she always ugly because of a prior kinship with the Old Ones?

I don't have access to this one, but I thought that Gresh's story "Mandelbrot Moldrot " in Joshi's stellar A Mountain Walked anthology was probably the oddest one there. And a lot of fun, too. I put the Hippocampus link up above to remind myself to order Gresh's collection! Love her story titles, too.

>2 paradoxosalpha:
I felt that way about the story, too. Also, that subjectivity seemed to me to be diametrically opposed to the spirit of HPL's Mythos tales. Cassandra's transmutation and joining with the Old Ones is, all the while, a working through and a realization of the true nature of her human relationships (or, rather, relationship (singular)), rather than a discarding of it as irrelevant (which I imagine would have been HPL's way of handling such a story).

Yeah, in motivational terms, this one seemed to pick up where "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" left off.

My second reading of this one, and I still liked it. The final disintegration of a human relationship and revelation of its true nature I thought was nicely contrasted with integration into another, alien social arrangement.

I originally read this in Black Wings of Cthulhu 3 which turned out to have a theme of cancer-ridden characters going through several of the stories.

No thanks to a buggy webstore, I finally got hold of a copy of Black Wings of Cthulhu 3, and read the story this morning.

Like >2 paradoxosalpha: and >4 housefulofpaper:, I wondered how reliable Cassandra's descriptions were. I don't see the story leaves us any way to judge - except perhaps to doubt the plausibility of these two old ladies trekking for four hours through the jungle.

Was there a species of mercy in not dragging Tatiana into the rock against her will?

I don't know if name-dropping Yog-Sothoth added anything.