TC editors advertising (I refuse to use the term “pimping”) their personal literary items for sale has a long history here on the blog.  Check out this post by Leo Grin (and several subsequent).

Times are dire here in serpent-haunted SEK. Musing on such, a decision was reached by yours truly. Time to lighten the load for the journey into the future.

I own the two-volume set of A Means to Freedom from Hippocampus. I’ll be taking it to Cross Plains this Friday. My firm asking price is $300.  Cash or (possibly) check. The set has been read once. Very minor shelf-wear. Since I’m not a full-blown book collector (much like Leo), I will rely on the expertise of Paul Herman and Jeffrey Shanks as to the exact condition when I reach Howard Days.

Speaking of Paul Herman, he just announced on the Official Robert E. Howard Forum that Paradox has kindly donated a set of AMtF to the Silent Auction for Project Pride.

For any who might feel qualms about buying the set from me, all I can say is that you can contact me after the Silent Auction. However, this is a Darwinian struggle for survival. I’ll take offers whenever they come. I’m really beginning to get an inkling of how REH felt in 1936.

As mentioned in the headline, I am also bringing along the two Night Shade hardcover collections of Wagner’s Kane oeuvre. Once again, minor shelf-wear. My price is a firm $150 for the set.

If neither set sells in Cross Plains, both will go on ebay at a higher price and shipping added into the bargain. I’ll be bringing other cool stuff to Howard Days (as well as a piece for the Silent Auction), so feel free to seek me out. The (by then) former Managing Editor of The Cimmerian blog will be heading back to Dallas after the REH Foundation awards ceremony.

Mythos Con, a new convention celebrating the life and works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, is scheduled for January 6 to 9, 2011, in Phoenix, Arizona. It will feature art, merchants, movies, panels and games. A large number of writers, artists and film makers will attend, including contributors to the Cimmerian print journal like Donald Sidney-Fryer and Chuck Hoffman.

You can find more details on the official website by clicking here.

Thanks to Grim Blogger for the heads-up.

Among Steve Tompkins’ many interesting blog entries written here on The Cimmerian, there was this piece about Lovecraft-inspired motions pictures.  The movie he was looking forward to see (as I am), Del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness, is not even in production yet, but another story written by the Man from Providence should make it to the silver screen sooner. Thanks to Grim Blogger, I learned a few days ago that the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society had released a new trailer for their adaptation of  Howard Phillips Lovecraft‘s horror/science-fiction short story first published in the August 1931 issue of Weird Tales, ”The Whisperer in Darkness.” The film is supposed to be released in October.

Beware, Howard fans, viewing the video embedded in this blog post (thanks to shieldbrother Al for helping out someone who is only semi-literate with computers) might be painful. To see the (impressive) effort of a bunch of enthusiasts, who are genuinely caring for the source material, with this attempt to adapt their favorite’s author creation into film format, is something we’re not accustomed too. No compromise, no update of the story to a contemporary setting in a lame effort to please a modern audience; just the honest attempt to adapt faithfully on the silver screen what was written in the tale. In short, a purist’s dream come true. Exactly what has always been needed for movies based on Robert E. Howard’s stories, and never been supplied. When will the Texan’s tales get this kind of treatment?

The HPLHS is the organization hosting Cthulhu Lives!, a group of live-action roleplayers for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. It was founded in Colorado in 1984 and is now based in California. Its purpose is to celebrate Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos by producing movies, audio CDs, live action gaming, and miscellaneous other stuff like props. In 2005, their first 46–minutes motion picture, The Call of Cthulhu, was also shot in black and white and in ‘Mythoscope’ –a blend of vintage and modern filming techniques used to produce the look of a ’20s/’30s–era movie.

The Whisperer in Darkness, unlike their previous effort, will not be silent. This week-end the crew shot the last scenes with cast members, as you can read in this blog, which regularly provides updates on the project. I’m really looking forward to see the full motion picture.

Author John Pelan, editor of Centipede’s Conversations with the Weird Tales Circle, has included Robert E. Howard “Pigeons from Hell,” H.P. Lovecraft‘s “The Outsider,” C.L. Moore‘s “Shambleau,” Clark Ashton Smith‘s “The Dark Eidolon,” Fritz Leiber‘s “Horrible Imagings,” Lord Dunsany’s “Thirteen at Table,” H. G. Wells “The Valley of the Spiders,” Karl Edward Wagner‘s “Sticks“ and Ray Bradbury’s “The Jar” in The Century’s Best Horror Fiction.

This massive (one hundred stories, nearly sixteen hundred pages and over seven hundred thousand words of fiction!) two-volume set anthology by Cemetery Dance Publications is heading to the printer this summer. John Pelan did only one selection per author and has chosen one tale per each year of the twentieth century (1901-2000) as the most notable story of that year. Robert E. Howard’s masterpiece fits right in.

Its (lengthy) Table of Contents:

1901: Barry Pain — The Undying Thing
1902: W.W. Jacobs — The Monkey’s Paw
1903: H.G.Wells — The Valley of the Spiders
1904: Arthur Machen — The White People
1905: R. Murray Gilchrist — The Lover’s Ordeal
1906: Edward Lucas White — House of the Nightmare
1907: Algernon Blackwood — The Willows
1908: Perceval Landon — Thurnley Abbey
1909: Violet Hunt — The Coach
1910: Wm Hope Hodgson — The Whistling Room
1911: M.R. James — Casting the Runes
1912: E.F. Benson — Caterpillars
1913: Aleister Crowley — The Testament of Magdelan Blair
1914: M. P. Shiel — The Place of Pain
1915: Hanns Heinz Ewers — The Spider
1916: Lord Dunsany — Thirteen at Table
1917: Frederick Stuart Greene — The Black Pool
1918: H. De Vere Stacpoole — The Middle Bedroom
1919: Ulric Daubeny — The Sumach
1920: Maurice Level — In the Light of the Red Lamp
1921: Vincent O’Sullivan — Master of Fallen Years
1922: Walter de la Mare — Seaton’s Aunt
1923: George Allen England — The Thing from Outside
1924: C.M. Eddy — The Loved Dead
1925: John Metcalfe — The Smoking Leg
1926: H.P. Lovecraft — The Outsider
1927: Donald Wandrei — The Red Brain
1928: H.R. Wakefield — The Red Lodge
1929: Eleanor Scott — Celui-La
1930: Rosalie Muspratt — Spirit of Stonhenge
1931: Henry S. Whitehead — Cassius
1932: David H. Keller — The Thing in the Cellar
1933: C.L. Moore — Shambleau
1934: L.A. Lewis — The Tower of Moab
1935: Clark Ashton Smith — The Dark Eidolon
1936: Thorp McCluskey — The Crawling Horror
1937: Howard Wandrei — The Eerie Mr Murphy
1938: Robert E. Howard — Pigeons from Hell
1939: Robert Barbour Johnson — Far Below
1940: John Collier — Evening Primrose
1941: C.M. Kornbluth — The Words of Guru
1942: Jane Rice — The Idol of the Flies
1943: Anthony Boucher — They Bite
1944: Ray Bradbury — The Jar
1945: August Derleth — Carousel
1946: Manly Wade Wellman — Shonokin Town
1947: Theodore Sturgeon — Bianca’s Hands
1948: Shirley Jackson — The Lottery
1949: Nigel Kneale — The Pond
1950: Richard Matheson — Born of Man & Woman
1951: Russell Kirk — Uncle Isiah
1952: Eric Frank Russell — I Am Nothing
1953: Robert Sheckley — The Altar
1954: Everill Worrell — Call Not Their Names
1955: Robert Aickman — Ringing the Changes
1956: Richard Wilson — Lonely Road
1957: Clifford Simak — Founding Father
1958: Robert Bloch — That Hell-Bound Train
1959: Charles Beaumont — The Howling Man
1960: Frederic Brown — The House
1961: Ray Russell — Sardonicus
1962: Carl Jacobi — The Aquarium
1963: Robert Arthur — The Mirror of Cagliostro
1964: Charles Birkin — A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts
1965: Jean Ray — The Shadowy Street
1966: Arthur Porges — The Mirror
1967: Norman Spinrad — Carcinoma Angels
1968: Anna Hunger — Come
1969: Stefan Aletti — The Last Work of Pietro Apono
1970: David A Riley — The Lurkers in the Abyss
1971: Dorothy K. Haynes — The Derelict Track
1972: Gary Brandner — The Price of a Demon
1973: Eddy C. Bertin — Like Two White Spiders
1974: Karl Edward Wagner — Sticks
1975: David Drake — The Barrow Troll
1976: Dennis Etchison — It Only Comes Out at Night
1977: Barry Malzberg — The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady
1978: Michael Bishop — Within the Walls of Tyre
1979: Ramsey Campbell — Mackintosh Willy
1980: Michael Shea — The Autopsy
1981: Stephen King — The Reach
1982: Fritz Leiber — Horrible Imagings
1983: David Schow — One for the Horrors
1984: Bob Leman — The Unhappy Pilgrimage of Clifford M
1985: Michael Reaves — The Night People
1986: Tim Powers — Night Moves
1987: Ian Watson — Evil Water
1988: Joe Lansdale — The Night They Missed the Horror Show
1989: Joel Lane — The Earth Wire
1990: Elizabeth Massie — Stephen
1991: Thomas Ligotti — The Glamour
1992: Poppy Z. Brite — Calcutta Lord of Nerves
1993: Lucy Taylor — The Family Underwater
1994: Jack Ketchum — The Box
1995: Terry Lamsley — The Toddler
1996: Caitlin R. Kiernan — Tears Seven, Times Salt
1997: Stephen Laws — The Crawl
1998: Brian Hodge — As Above, So Below
1999: Glen Hirshberg — Mr. Dark’s Carnival
2000: Tim Lebbon — Reconstructing Amy

An interesting selection, which confirms Mr Pelan’s good taste. It is nice to look at this fine list of authors and stories and to see the Bard of Cross Plains in such a good company.

The Trade Edition is composed of two volumes featuring full color dustjackets and will cost $150. The Deluxe Traycased Lettered Edition is limited to just 52 copies that will feature a different binding and signatures from many of the living authors, for a hefty $1000. The cover artist is Alan M. Clark.

For those heel-dragging Luddites who still see no use in social/business networking sites, I submit this member’s entry at LinkedIn. Whilst I would aver that some of the info presented on the LinkedIn page of His Sleepiness might smack of both bravado and bragadaccio (and it also displays a poor command of the English language; which is understandable, considering his foreign national status), the bottom line is that The Big C is a mover n’ shaker with an absolutely fanatical grass-roots movement behind him. His message, in a nutshell, is “Change.” Now that he’s begun to use the Interwebs in a strategic fashion, I really don’t see anything that can stop him. Log in (while there’s still time) and become wild and free.  The stars are right.

*My thanks to Metallica for the headline…

I was highly honored to be asked to contribute to “The Challenge From Beyond” yarn, along with you, Miss Moore, Merritt, and Long. I hope my share didn’t weaken the strength of the story too much. The rest of you did fine work, as you all always do. Appearing in a such a company will probably remain my chief claim to fame.

– Robert E. Howard, letter to H. P. Lovecraft, 5th December 1935

Twenty-three years ago today, the reign of Catherine Lucille Moore, the first Queen of Sword-and-Sorcery, came to an end. Miss Moore occupies a vital place in the history of modern fantasy and science-fiction, for not only was she one of the pioneering female speculative fiction authors, but she created what may be the archetypal Sword-and-Sorcery heroine in Jirel of Joiry. Howard’s famous self-deprecation notwithstanding, the fact Howard put Moore on the same level as Lovecraft, Merritt and Long gives an idea of just how great she was.

Like many of my fantasy author discoveries, I came to Moore through Fantasy Masterworks. Though even now I have a substantial backlog to get through–usually after reading one author, I’m possessed with a need to hunt down their other work–I devoured Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams almost as soon as I bought it. Like fellow Weird Tales scribe Howard, Moore’s prose was like a hurricane, carrying the reader through the story without pausing to check the page number. Also like Howard, there is enough subtlety and allusion to make second, third and beyond readings a pleasure, always offering something new to discover.

That is not to say that Moore is a mere clone of Howard, for even outside differences of genre and gender, Moore is resolutely her own voice. The blood and thunder is effective and powerful, but whereas Howard conveys the madness and awful chaos of battle, Moore’s approach is tinged with a startling melancholy. I’d also say that Jirel is a more complex character than her Howardian sister Red Sonya, and perhaps even more than Dark Agnes: she is at once strong yet vulnerable, steely-resolved yet emotional, uncompromisingly feminine yet without her gender totally defining her character.

The great collaboration of Weird Tales legends that is “The Challenge from Beyond” is fascinating to behold. Moore has the unenviable task of starting the story, but she ably sets the stage for things to come: introducing the vague menace of the cube, with enough details to evoke verisimilitude without being concrete enough to dispel mystery. It worked as an ideal platform from which A. Merritt could plunge into otherworldly weirdness, itself leading to Lovecraft’s classic cosmic horror, before culminating in Howard’s bloody-handed rampage, and Long’s conclusion. If only Ghor Kin-slayer had the like…

Moore’s work had sufficient impact on Howard to justify further exploration of her tales, especially the adventures of Jirel, golden-eyed mistress of Joiry, within whose unruly scarlet locks and unflinching resilience one can see reflections of every fantasy heroine to appear since. “Black God’s Kiss” alone is one of the greats of the genre. Martin H. Greenwood seems to agree, placing the story alongside the likes of “The Sword of Welleran,” “An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan,” “The Silver Key” and “The Valley of the Worm” in The Mammoth Book of Fantasy All-Time Greats. Lest one come under the impression that Moore was a one-trick pony with Jirel, Moore’s influence in science fiction is also tremendous, especially in her space-smuggler antihero Northwest Smith, and she went on to a lucrative and productive career in television screenwriting.

Back when I was at college for my higher national diploma in illustration, the final year gave each student a choice for the last project, in the form of a “pitch.” Some chose children’s books as a subject, others album covers. Since I had already done Howard and Smith earlier, I decided to make one for a prospective Jirel of Joiry collection, featuring a cover and two black-and-white plates from “Black God’s Kiss.” It seemed to go over well with my female colleagues, who found it refreshing I clad a Sword-and-Sorcery heroine in full plate armour. It’s fair to say that ever since I read Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams, Moore has cast a spell on me from which I’ve never shaken fully free.

On the back of Paizo’s Black God’s Kiss, it exalts “The First Lady of Fantasy!” At first glance one wonders to whom the title refers to, the character, or her creator–though agreeing with Ryan Harvey, it could equally be an application to both. With all respect to the spouses of statesmen everywhere, such a title is surely not appropriate for Moore: she wasn’t just the wife of a science fiction and fantasy author, she was one herself. Through the lioness Jirel, she conveyed scenes of battle, passion, terror and wonder to match any tale penned by a male author. If Howard and Tolkien could be considered kings of the genre, then Catherine Lucille Moore is nothing less than a queen.

I’ve been reading his contributions on The Cimmerian since I first became aware of the website, though I haven’t by any means perused them all, and won’t have time to before the anniversary of his death on the 23rd.  But after reading just some of his offerings, I can fully believe the statement concerning him in About The Bloggers that “he was likely the single most well-read individual in all of fantasy fandom” and “one of the field’s most perceptive, unique and delightful critics.”  These are tributes whose dead-on-target truth is conspicuous.  Steve Tompkins had wit, perception, wide-ranging knowledge and a command of language that allowed him to express all these with enormous readability.

This means something — actually, a lot — to me personally, since Mr. Tompkins said very kind things about my work, even going so far as to compare Ravens’ Gathering with Poul Anderson’s Hrolf Kraki’s Saga — a compliment that literally made my jaw sag.  If you haven’t read the Saga of King Hrolf Kraki  as Anderson recounts it, and don’t, you’ll be robbing yourself.

Even an incomplete reading of what Steve Tompkins produced shows how broad his tastes were, and all of it was stimulating.  “Green Hell, Golden Civilization,” about Fawcett’s discovery of unexpectedly great achievements in the Amazon basin by its native peoples, made me vow, “I have to find out more about this!” (and I will).  His three-part essay, ”Derleth Be Not Proud,” (nice pun) showed genuine appreciation of Lovecraft’s work and a far more erudite knowledge of his influence than I have.  It taught me plenty about it that I hadn’t known before.

“Thongor.  Brak.  Conan.  One of These Things Is Not Like the Others … “  is such a spirited, passionate — and cogent — defence of REH’s unique quality as a writer that I’ll bet money, if an afterlife exists, Steve is hoisting a beer — or a large Jack Daniels — with Robert E. Howard right now, and that they are finding each other congenial.

That George MacDonald Fraser, Arthur C. Clarke and Charlton Heston were members of his personal pantheon along with Howard is further proof that we’d have been compatible.  Maybe our opinions would have differed sometimes, but I can be sure that Steve’s would always have been well-informed and provided food for thought.  With regard to the men mentioned above, I trust Steve Tompkins is having a drink with them too.

Considering that all of them are gone from us makes me remember some words from another MacDonald.  John D., through the mouth of his high-level beach bum and retriever, Travis McGee.  “They keep emptying out the world. The good ones all stand on trapdoors so cunningly fitted into the woodwork that you don’t see them until it’s too late.  And they keep pulling those lousy trip cords.”

Exactly one year ago, on March 23, 2009, Steve Tompkins passed. Tempus fugit…

Morgan Holmes once wrote on the REHupa blog how he mourned the loss of his friend. He noted back then that some Cimmerian bloggers never knew Steve Tompkins. Indeed, I had not that privilege. When our managing editor Deuce Richardson asked me to join the shieldwall, one of my fears was that my English would not be up to the standards that TC‘s readers were accustomed to. Steve Tompkins’ essays — his weekly production was above and beyond mere “blogging” — set a high standard. I don’t even think that my mastery of French equals his English skills, so how could my skills in the latter language be good enough to not disappoint? I would probably have had about the same feeling if Deuce had asked my overweight self to run after Usain Bolt!

Since I didn’t know him, I won’t presume to speak of Steve Tompkins’ personality. I will only try to explain why I’m fond of his essays, which sent me so many times searching for the meaning of a word in my English-to-French dictionary. Steve Tompkins was a proponent of Sword-and-Sorcery as literature. He defended Howard and JRRT with Cimmerian-like persistence and determination. In my opinion, none embodied better than him the motto of this fine place on the whole wide web: “A website and shieldwall for Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Best in Heroic Fantasy, Horror and Historical Adventure.” His keen, insightful articles displayed the same passion and intelligence, whether he wrote on high-faluting philosophy, literature, history, cinema or mere games. Like my fellow bloggers and probably many of our readers, I’m crazy for REH’s “pseudo-history.” Steve Tompkins understood very well the importance of World-Building, hence he wrote many fine blogs about Howard’s imaginary world.

Many sincere praises and eulogies will probably soon be posted here and on various REH-related websites. That’s very fine, though I would like to point out that something more should be done.

Fellow blogger Deuce once fired up a discussion about Steve Tompkins’ thoughts on the Lovecraft “Mythos” (in a forum dedicated to HPL) where he linked to this remarkable series of articles. After the appearance of a Cthulhu pasticher — let’s call him Mr P. — who leapt to defend S.T. Joshi (Tompkins had some issues with the latter’s book), a bunch of idiotic posters conveniently forgot the original purpose of Deuce’s topic to succumb to a common phenomenon on such messages boards, that is to say: everyone was very excited to have a celebrity among the crew, so quite logically, after discussing the pros and cons of Joshi‘s writings (instead of Tompkins’ excellent essays) the thread turned into further off-topic comments about Mr P.’s next book. Ironically, Mr P.’s writings had been singled out for praise by Steve Tompkins. He didn’t return the compliment. Why did it happen? I asked myself if Mr P. and those guys were not brainy enough to get what seemed crystal-clear to me. How could they not see Tompkins’ sharp-wit? How did they not realize that those texts exuded intelligence? My arrogant inner self thought, for a moment, that I was simply much smarter than them, though I guess it more probable that most of those benighted souls didn’t even bother to read Tompkins’ essays, let alone discuss them. I’m talking of a crowd which was familiar with Joshi, thus definitively receptive to this kind of stuff. Why then? The answer is certainly quite simple. Notoriety. Had Tompkins’ name been as famous as STJ’s, they probably would have read him.

Simply put: Steve Tompkins’ production is not well enough known. In this blogger’s opinion, his talent with words and his critical input on the fantasy field are not as respected as they deserve to be.

I’m certainly not the first one who has suggested this, but it’s worth repeating: if any editor or publisher who understands Mr. Tompkins’ genius is reading and hearing me, I’m begging him. Please do all you can to get his essays into a printed book. It is sorely needed. A volume collecting his best essays could be of interest to Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft and J.R.R. Tolkien fans alike. Put Tompkins in his rightful and righteous place.

Enough with my ramblings. Here are a few words about the late, great, Steve Tompkins that the Gallic division of the REH army charged me to post on its behalf.

From Patrice Louinet, editor and translator of Robert E. Howard in France:

Simply put, Steve was a giant in the field, endowed with an uncommon capacity to grasp and assimilate things. Within a few years, he had become one of the greatest Howard scholars, playing with words as Errol Flynn with swords.

–Patrice Louinet

From Fabrice Tortey, friend of TC and editor of the awarded book in homage to Robert E. Howard, Échos de Cimmérie:

One year ago, Fate struck the Drui of Fear Dunn. A tragic loss for his family and his friends. A hard blow for Howard studies. We sorely miss his insights, his flashes of wit, his erudition. We cherish the more his achievements and we keep the flame of his memory in our heart.

–Fabrice Tortey

Leo Grin once wrote on TC that Don Herron was “the best critic in Howard studies, bar none.” I have a tremendous respect and a special place in my heart for Mr Herron’s essays. When I first read “Conan vs Conantics” ten years ago or so, it was a kind of revelation to me. If you have not read it yet, click on the link. Now. But with all due respect, I have to disagree with Leo. I would certainly cite Mr. Herron along with fine scholars such as Chuck Hoffman or Patrice Louinet among my personal top five, but if I have to say who was the greatest Howardian essayist I’ve ever read, without hesitating, I would name another of his friends: the late Steve Tompkins.

All of his archived posts on The Cimmerian blog can be read here.

Requiescat in pace.

Lovecraft was no fan of the cinema, and it could be argued that his disdain for moving pictures has been returned by a seemingly endless torrent of laughable and unfaithful film adaptations. Still, HPL was always a champion of the amateur artiste. Keeping that fact in mind, perhaps it is not too far-fetched to think that ”Uncle Theobald” (as REH called him) would approve of the ten-minute film recently posted to Youtube which adapts his tale, “The Silver Key.”

One would have to look hard for a more fitting story to commemorate the anniversary of the passage from this mortal coil by the Man from Providence. Lovecraft always seemed fond of the tale, and Robert E. Howard expressed his deep admiration for it at least once. While an “update” in temporal terms, the short film seems to capture a bit of the atmosphere that the Great Old One strove for.

The 14th of March is the nativity of Algernon Blackwood, who was a marked influence on H.P. Lovecraft. In a bit of cosmic coincidence, the 15th of March was an anniversary for the Rhode Island Raconteur, but it would mark that other defining day of a man’s existence on Earth. As with Gaius Julius Caesar, the Ides of March would see Lovecraft pass from this plane of existence through the Veil of Negative Existence.

Even since that day, the shade of Lovecraft has cast a dark shadow over the field of weird fiction–and in my personal reading.

Ben Avery's adaptation of "The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" illustrated by Leong Wan Kok is nothing short of sublime.

I read Lovecraft before I read Conan. Being at college, it’s natural that the disaffected youths on my course would introduce me to the master of cynical cosmic horror, suggesting I’d be pretty good at illustrating some of his weirder creations. My interest was piqued: I read a number of the stories, including the infamous “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” and “At the Mountains of Madness.”

Needless to say, I was floored by the stories. The creatures were certainly new to me, and I adored the repulsive, alien descriptions of the Mi-Go, the Deep Ones, the Elder Things, the Great Race of Yith, and of course the Big Kahuna (Big Kathulnha?) himself. However, that wasn’t all that impressed me: it was that most quintessential of Lovecraftian inventions, cosmic horror. I’d never read horror quite like this, certainly not on this scale. In most horror, the danger is on the personal level: a few lives, perhaps many, menaced by worldly fears. At the absolute limit, human civilization was threatened in some sort of apocalypse involving the undead or some alien invasion. Lovecraft made the situation even more hopeless than that: not merely the reader, his family, his country, or humanity, but the entire cosmos was the victim.

Cthulhu waits dreaming under Rl’yeh for the time when the stars will allow him to emerge, where the lucky ones are those devoured first before they can go mad. Some day, Nyarlathotep could visit untold suffering upon the living things in the galaxy on a whim. At any moment, Azathoth could awaken from his sleep, and rend the universe to pieces in his waking. It’s dark stuff, needless to say. Lovecraft’s own pessimistic worldview imbues his work with a quality that can only be described as abysmal, in the true sense of the word: the fathomless, black gulf of The Abyss permeates his work.

Nonetheless, there’s more to Lovecraft than cosmic horror: his other great contribution to speculative fiction is in his Dreamland tales. Though suffused with no small measure of darkness and the sinister, the Dream Cycle are balanced with a sense of inspiring, almost joyous wonder, the type reserved for tales of Faerie and the Fantastique. Few of the Dreamland stories are as full of this magnificent adventure as “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.”

Far and away, this is my favourite of Lovecraft’s stories, perhaps because it was unlike anything I was expecting. I started off with the cosmic horror and Poe-esque gothic chillers, so I expected the type of doom and gloom Lovecraft does so characteristically. Yet “Dream-Quest” announce from the first paragraph, the first sentence, that this was not going to be an exercise in terrifying revelations about man’s place in eternity.

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the gods, a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things and the maddening need to place again what once had been an awesome and momentous place.

Daniel Lieske's gorgeous rendering of Celephais

Music to my ears, folks. A welcome paradigm shift into my most favoured of genres: adventure! “Dream-Quest” promised everything I love most in fiction–the discovery of new lands and places, encounters with strange and marvellous beings, meetings with fascinating and unusual peoples, the visions of beauty and wonder as yet unseen by explorers’ eyes. Combat with dangerous foes and a mad flight from monstrous horrors are not necessary, but would be relished with aplomb (and they indeed were.) A few paragraphs later, this excitement was galvanized to a fever pitch:

At length, sick with longing for those glittering sunset streets and cryptical hill lanes among ancient tiled roofs, nor able sleeping or waking to drive them from his mind, Carter resolved to go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before, and dare the icy deserts through the dark to where unknown Kadath, veiled in cloud and crowned with unimagined stars, holds secret and nocturnal the onyx castle of the Great Ones.

To go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before. If you’ve ever enjoyed an episode of Star Trek, you might feel a shiver run down your spine at the significance of that phrase. Randolph Carter setting out to explore a strange new world, seek out new life and new civilization, and bravely treading lands yet untrod by the feet of humanity. And explore he does: Carter travels through the wondrous cities of Dylath-Leen, Baharna, Celephaïs, and ancient Sarkomand; he meets eclectic and mysterious beings such as the Zoogs, Moon-Beasts, Night-Gaunts, Ghouls, Gugs, Ghasts, Bholes, and even the Gods of Dreamland; he witnesses the majesty of the Enchanted Wood, the Moon, the Vale of Pnath, the Plateau of Leng, and the enigmatic Kadath itself. Adventure, mystery, danger, terror and wonder abound in this marvelous tale.

What more could one ask for?