The Spawn of Cthulhu

As the title implies, 'The Spawn Of Cthulhu' is another anthology of tales of the Cthulhu Mythos combining the work of its creator H P Lovecraft with that of his contemporaries and later acolytes who added to the canon.
Editor Lin Carter uses an interesting premise however, taking a few passages from one of Lovecraft's tales ('The Whisperer In The Dark') where HPL reels off list of the names of various dark entities and lost locales and then tracking down those tales wherein Lovecraft found them.
The results can be surprising. Some of the tales predate HPL's Mythos tales by decades e.g. Ambrose Bierce's 'An Inhabitant Of Carcosa' (1891) and Robert W Chambers 'The Yellow Sign' (1895). The Chambers effort in particular is an obvious huge show more influence on HPL's style.
The other tales are mostly from the usual Mythos suspects - Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Frank Belknap Long etc - but the standard is high although as with all Mythos anthologies, reading such a group of tales together reveals much of the formulaic nature of the cycle.
One of the better Mythos collections though helped along by Carter's introductions to the stories which tie the whole thing together. The companion volume (a non-BAF title) is Carter's 'H P Lovecraft: A Look Behind The Cthulhu Mythos', a more formal exploration and critique of HPL's work. show less

A collection of short stories in the vein of HP Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos. The first story only is by Lovecraft, the rest by his contemporaries and imitators. The stories vary slightly in quality but are true to the feeling of the Mythos. It's a very good example of the early pulp horror that was popular in the earlier decades of the twentieth century.