Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

I'd like to type up ye first two paragraph's of Bob's fascinating introduction to this wonderful collection: "Many readers of the present volume will recognize a more than coincidental similarity between it and August Derleth's TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS anthology that appeared more than two decades ago, in 1969. Derleth had compiled a prime collection of tales written by various authors under the influence of H. P. Lovecraft and employing the props of his system of 'artificial mythology' which Derleth (but not Lovecraft) called 'the Cthulhu Mythos.' To this collection Derleth prefixed a brief exposition of the Mythos as he understood it, so as to provide a context to help the reader better understand the stories that were to follow. It seems appropriate, therefore, in the present case to provide an analogous exposition, especially since the scholarship of the last decades has seen a major reinterpretation of Lovecraft's Mythos. "As the title of this volume implies, there has even been a shift in nomenclature in regards to the Mythos. Especially in reference to the body of fictitious lore as it appears in the stories of Lovecraft himself, it seems better to refer to it as 'the Lovecraft Mythos' after its creator, rather than 'the Cthulhu Mythos' after one of the dread entities mentioned in it. As with most things, we must understand the origin and development of the Mythos before we can venture to say we know what it is. The definition of a thing includes its history. Hence, the following sketch of the Lovecraft Mythos and its evolution into the Cthulhu Mythos." Price has thought long and hard about all of this, and his views are extremely interesting. Some of the introduction seems written to counter the hostility toward Derleth from they who have attacked and perhaps misunderstood him. "Interpreters from Richard L. Tierney and Dirk W. Mosig on have hotly repudiated this whole schema, derisively dubbing it 'the Derleth Mythos.' They saw Derleth's framework, especially in the Christian parallel, the imposition of a Good versus Evil schema foreign to Lovecraft's original, morally neutral conception. While such an understanding would indeed represent the grossest rendering of the Lovecraftian fabric, I am not convinced that critics have correctly understood Derleth at this point." Critics have derided Bob Price for his ideas as well, since the topic of the Mythos gets many people emotional, defensive and antagonistic. Whatever one thinks of it, the Cthulhu Mythos is not going to go away. Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, it has expanded like shoggoth-tissue under the hands of other writers. Some of the best of them, and some of the less than best, are between the covers of this fun book. They are: "The Thing on the Roof," by Robert E. Howard "The Fire of Asshurbanipal," by Robert E. Howard "The Seven Geases," by Clark Ashton Smith "Fane of the Black Pharoah," by Robert Bloch "The Invaders," by Henry Kuttner "Bells of Horror," by Henr

While H.P.Lovecraft retains his premium slot among those who shaped the 20th Century horror writing and have been influencing the trends even today, his writing is something that we tend to approach warily. He specialised in too much of everything: words, descriptions of the "unspeakable", helplessness of the protagonists despite all the arcane knowledge they possess, etc., except in plot and action. The jewels in this book are blasphemously superior to those works despite being located in the mythos created by Lovecraft himself. Most of these stories are tautly paced,with credible characters often working against a realistic background, with the antagonists being sufficiently horrifying without being vague. Highly recommended.

my first experience with pulp came through this collection, and it is still my favorite. the early masters of pulp and their greatest stories (or almost) are collected here. this collection is excellent, particularly as an introduction to pulp. it's not too weird, focuses a lot on descriptions and understandable plots. gathered here are writers like kuttner, howard, hall thompson, derleth........ filled with masterpieces. great stories.

Robert Price does an excellent job of compiling seminal tales from the pulp magazines from the Weird Tales era. Intended as a companion piece to August Derleth's collection, "Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos", the focus here is on tales which spawned some of the more interesting concepts in what would be later termed the "Cthuthlu Mythos." As you'd expect with any anthology, this collection is a bit of a mixed bag, but worthwhile for its inclusion of some of the more hard-to-find tales, which are often neglected in anthologies of the genre. Also of note is Price's lively discussion of the "Cthuthlu\Lovecraft Mythos." In the end, this is a fine addition to the cannon of anthologies which attempt to demonstrate Lovecrafts's influence over the "weird fiction" genre and the group of writers who contributed to Lovecraft's "universe."Recommended!

A glance at the table of contents would make this book seem to be a mixed bag; while it contains plenty of little-known stories by Mythos greats, it also has soem commonly reprinted stories by equally great authors such as Howard, Kuttner, and Bloch. This is the risk any anthologist runs in the Cthulhu Mythos; some stories are going to overlap with the contents of other books the reader owns. Price makes up for this in part by including variants of stories: "The Fire of Asshurbanipal," for instance, is not the same as in most of its other print appearances. Ironically, this version is less a Cthulhu Mythos story here than in its more common version, but the story still has that Mythos atmosphere. All in all, considering the strength of the collection as a whole, few Mythos readers are going to mind rereading a few stories