Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft

I've been reading Lovecraft for 40 years, so I'm probably about to qualify as one of the Old Ones myself. While there's nothing here to touch the master at his best, nonetheless there are some very enjoyable stories in Cthulhu Lives!.

The Book Description says that we have here "Seventeen cosmic horror stories with a modern sensibility," which was not, to my mind, a good sign. To me the "modern sensibility" usually means excessive use of bad language, gore, sex and urban slang that is going to date very quickly. Happily, there is little of that here and the quality of writing is generally very good.

Lovecraft's allusiveness in describing the Old Ones was characteristic of the Mythos and any attempt to describe them in detail would have show more broken the spell. However, he often gave very detailed descriptions of the lesser races and use of some newly described horrors could have been made, but I guess that's a minor criticism.

The stories that really stood out for me were:

1884 by Michael Grey. An alternate history, steampunk story which I could easily see being expanded to a novel. Reminiscent of The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist. Celebrity cameos: Benjamin Disrali and HRH Queen Victoria.

Hobstone by G.K. Lomax. Modern day urban setting, with an obsessional slow descent into madness theme. In addition to Lovecraft, I thought I detected something of an influence from the excellent film Quatermass and the Pit in this one.

On the Banks of the River Jordan by John Reppion. Nice use of epistolary narrative, with emails taking the place of letters and journals. The setting in modern-day Liverpool was attractive to me, living as I do only a 45-minute's journey from the site of the horrors described! But a very good story regardless of that personal link. Reppion's use of his protagonist's research into real and imagined folk-lore is a nice reflection of Lovecraft's use of the scholar-"hero".

Scritch, Scratch by Lynne Hardy is one of the more allusive stories of the collection and very atmospheric. An isolated village, an even more isolated "old dark house," shadowed woods, rats and an eccentric old geezer. I really liked this one.

The Highland Air by Gethin A. Lynes. A period piece that does homage to The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Enough said.

If you like your horror less blood-splattered, then there will be something in here for you to enjoy. show less

The usual apologies about rating an anthology aside, the standouts for me were Universal Constants and The Thing in the Printer which managed to transport the Lovecraft staples of reality breaking geometry to a modern setting. Constants in particular evoked some existential angst hitting cosmic horror from a new angle. 1884 is a dip into Cthulhu by Gaslight. Hobstone's obsession is steeped in classic Lovecraft staples and tone, and in a way is the tonal cousin of The Thing in the Printer. Some of the stories barely feel thematic however, as if quickly adapted to fit this anthology instead of a more generic horror tome.

Alternatives: Lovecraft's Monsters is much better overall. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird is probably the closest to show more this collection. The Abyssal Plain: The R'lyeh Cycle is more concerned with painting the Mythos apocalypse and veering into splatterpunk. show less

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Title: Cthulhu Lives!
Series: Cthulhu Anthology #1
Editor: Salome Jones
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 235
Words: 80K

Synopsis:

Table of Contents

FOREWORD by Leeman Kessler

UNIVERSAL CONSTANTS by Piers Beckley

1884 by Michael Grey

ELMWOOD by Tim Dedopulos

HOBSTONE by G. K. Lomax

ON THE BANKS OF THE RIVER JORDAN by John Reppion

DARK WATERS by Adam Vidler

INK by Iain Lowson

DEMON IN GLASS by E. Dane Anderson

SCALES FROM BALOR’S EYE by Helmer show more Gorman

OF THE FACELESS CROWD by Gábor Csigás

SCRITCH, SCRATCH by Lynne Hardy

ICKE by Greg Stolze

CODING TIME by Marc Reichardt

THE THING IN THE PRINTER by Peter Tupper

THE OLD ONES by Jeremy Clymer

VISITING RIGHTS by Joff Brown

AFTERWORD

My Thoughts:

I rather enjoyed this anthology. Going into Cosmic Horror though, you have to have the proper mindset. There are no heroes overcoming great odds but ordinary people being overcome with hopeless despair and being devoured (whether physically, psychologically or spiritually depends on the story). Madness, mayhem and murder are the key phrases of the day. Finally, the elder gods are dark gods, uncaring, unmoral and barely able to even interact in this reality without destroying it.

If any of those “rules” are broken, it makes for a very unsatisfactory cosmic horror story. Rites of Azathoth was such a book that just didn't work for me. On the other hand, The Private Lives of Elder Things was fantastic and everything you'd want from cosmic horror. I went into this book wondering which course on the path it was going to take. I'm glad to announce it took the better (errr, worse?) path and was truly horrific and terrifying as only good cosmic horror can be!

I did stay up late a couple of nights because I got caught up in the “one more story” syndrome which has come to represent, to me, the pinnacle of the short story collection. If you can't put the book down, it has done its job perfectly.

Salome Jones has done a fantastic job of putting together stories and while some are pushing the edge of graphic, either violently or sexually, none of them go into what I'd classify as gratuitous. After the couple of short story collections at the end of November, I am thankful for an editor who has dash of good taste in what stories are chosen.

The reasons this was 3 ½ stars instead of higher is because in one story the writer specifically states how the puny god of the christians is as nothing before the darkness of the elder gods. It was the specificity that irked me. I probably wouldn't have minded nearly so much if all the religions were lumped together in that statement, but nope, had to specifically talk about Christianity. sigh.

I've got another couple of volumes of cosmic horror anthologies after this one but I might stretch them out a bit. Too much darkness isn't good for the soul after all. Just like eating a whole bag of cheetos isn't good for the body.

★★★✬☆ show less

“I’ll go and get someone.” She stood, backed away. Glay made no move to follow her, sat there staring at his scarlet threads, looking lost in the corner of his web, connected to the walls of the office by lines of gossamer. Spider or fly? she thought.
“It won’t help,” he said.
“What won’t help?”
“We’re moving away. The planets are spinning and the stars are moving and we’re moving too, farther and farther away from what we were. The Earth moves around the sun, and the sun moves around the centre of the galaxy, and the galaxy moves within the centre of the universe, wheels within wheels within wheels, all moving and changing and altering as we’re altering. And it’s the universal constants, Rebecca. They’re show more changing.”
She was at the door. “I’m going to the medical centre. I’ll be back in a bit.”
He didn’t move. Sat there. Looking down at the carpet, the drawing pins pinning the red string to the floor. He muttered something.
“What was that?” she said.
Glay looked up at her. Rebecca had never seen his eyes so sad. “Everything will be different now.”
She walked quickly to fetch the doctor, but Glay was gone when she returned.

I do not expect all short stories to have their endings wrapped up neatly, and that goes double for Cthulhu Mythos stories, but I don't like stories to stop dead with no explanation at all and there were a couple of stories early on that I felt left the reader high and dry. On the other hand, "Ink" handles an enigmatic ending very well, as I found it one of the most powerful stories in the book even though nothing is really explained.

My other favourites are towards the end of the book, where there were a few stories with a lighter, humorous take on the Cthulhu Mythos, and I especially liked "Visiting Rights". I thought it was just going to be about the conflict between the boy's divorced parents with his mother's boyfriend bringing the mythos into the story via his spell book, and it is about that, but everything else that is going on came as a big surprise.

With a themed anthology there is always a risk with that the stories will not be different enough, but Chulhu Lives! is an enjoyable collection with a good variety of stories, some strongly linked to Lovecraft's stories while others were linked more subtly, some frightening, others humorous, stories set at different time periods, and even a couple from the point of view of non-human entities.

My other favourites were "Coding Time", "The Thing in the Printer" and "Highland Air", while "Scritch, Scratch" was also very effective although I can't say I actually liked it due to the forests full of mouldering rat skeletons (what were the council thinking of to get rid of the rat catcher when it should have been obvious he was needed by the huge amount of rats he was catching every day!).

Note: I read an uncorrected proof copy, but the quotation above is taken from the published book, via the sample available on Amazon's Look Inside. show less

Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft contains a selection of stories that allude to Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Some are creepy tableaux with nights dark and stormy and places dilapidated and haunted. Others explore the creeping existential dread found in the prosaic.

Two standouts are Michael Grey's "1884" and Gethin A. Lynes' "The Highland Air." Both are set in the Victorian era and leavened with small details that add to the stories' atmospherics. A casual implication by Lynes that the influence of Cthulhu is, in part, responsible for the Kelly Gang's rampaging neatly illustrates the timelessness of Cthulhu's power and the vastness of its reach.
Several other stories, while interesting, are too brief or too nebulous show more to immerse oneself in their creepiness. This vagueness serves to stymie the horror, not enhance it. show less

My only qualm with this book is the first story - it's poorly constructed and reads like a nerd's wet dream.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a nerd and I can enjoy a good fantasy story, but this is just plain rubbish. I almost didn't pick this book back up after I got through the first story because I thought "Well, if the first story is this bad...what's the rest of this book like."

However, I did pick it up once again and finished reading it all in one sitting. The remaining stories are fantastic. Just the right amount of nods to Lovecraft with great modern elements and some excellent twists.

Grab a copy, it's an ebook, and enjoy - just skip the first story.

I've read most of H. P. Lovecraft's original stories of the Old Ones and their effects on the world of his time, as well as several anthologies of "new" (post-HPL) Cthulhu-mythos stories. This collection is fit to stand with any of those latter volumes. Thought the quality of writing varies nearly as much as the various writers' approaches to the mythos, overall it's very good, and a number of the ideas and treatments are highly original. While Cthulhu himself scarcely appears in them (usually as a vague reference to a winged, tentacled thing), these writers capture the essence of great, pervasive evil behind the common world's façade. The evil often gradually comes to light through different means, from early photography ("1884" by show more Michael Grey), well-meaning but woefully wrong officials ("Scritch, Scratch" by Lynne Hardy), and especially modern technology ("Universal Constants" by Piers Beckley, "Coding Time" by Marc Reichardt, "On the Banks of the River Jordan" by John Reppion, and "The Thing in the Printer" by Peter Tupper). All-in-all, a fine addition to my library of Lovecraftian horror. show less