COMPL
092 | WWW.SCIFINOW.CO.UK
FIVE
LOVECRAFTIAN
HORRORS
THE CALL OF
CTHULHU (1928)
It’s not his fi nest work, but the
seeds sown here would defi ne
Lovecraft’s legacy. Drawing
on infl uences as diverse as
Tennyson’s sonnet ‘The Kraken’
and Maupassant’s foray into the supernatural,
‘The Horla’, this story introduces key elements
of the mythos, from the terrifying priest
Cthulhu to the fabled Necronomicon. Like that
of his protagonist here, Lovecraft’s ‘somewhat
extravagant imagination’ bore satisfyingly
bitter fruit.AT THE MOUNTAINS
OF MADNESS (1936)
A geologist seeks to prevent
other explorers from returning
to the Antarctic, having
witnessed fi rst-hand the
slaughter of which the ancient
Elder Things are capable. Fingers crossed that
Guillermo del Toro’s long-stalled fi lm version
of this unforgettable story eventually wins
some backing. We can but dream.THE SHADOW OVER
INNSMOUTH (1931)
A student visits the decaying
fi shing town of Innsmouth
and fi nds its inhabitants, with
their ‘fl at noses and bulgy,
stary eyes’ to be weirdly
reminiscent of deep-sea creatures. Could they
be the progeny of an underwater-dwelling
race? Indeed they could. The brilliant 1993
Infogrames point-and-click adventure game,
Shadow Of The Comet, skilfully lifts plot
elements from this classic story in its depiction
of a sinister ‘Illsmouth’.HERBERT WEST-
REANIMATOR (1922)
A gruesome – and
nauseatingly racist – parody of
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,
this early story has entered the
pop-cultural imagination via
Stuart Gordon’s 1985 fi lm Re-Animator and
its sequels. Lovecraft scholar S T Joshi thinks
this is the worst thing Lovecraft ever wrote.
You might well concur, but it’s a sobering
illustration of his very worst aspects for those
of you who might be a bit too attached to your
copy of the Necronomicon.THE CASE OF CHARLES
DEXTER WARD (1943)
Never published in Lovecraft’s
lifetime, this story focuses
again on one of his obsessions:
the possibility of resurrection,
Frankenstein-style. Ward’s
determination to revivify his ancestor, the
wizard Joseph Curwen, is ill advised in the
extreme. Come for the necromancy, stay for
the deadly threat to mankind: all Lovecraftian
boxes ticked.to have mixed feelings about Derleth.
He did create Arkham House Publishing that
made the spread of Lovecraft’s work possible.
But he also essentially swindled R H Barlow,
who Lovecraft wanted to serve as his literary
executor. Beyond the fact that he seems to
have been rather mean-spirited, he also did a
great deal of damage to Lovecraft’s reputation
with his own attempts at Lovecraftian fi ction- much of it derivative and silly – that he
published as tales he had ‘co-authored’
with Lovecraft. He called them, ridiculously,
‘posthumous collaborations’. So, if you picked
up one of the Ballantine editions of his work
from the Sixties you fi nd badly edited Lovecraft
stories set alongside tales based on the germ
of an idea of his or that he had almost literally
nothing to do with writing. Not until S T Joshi
brought out critical editions of Lovecraft’s work
for Penguin could fans read his real body of
work as he meant it to be read.”
Writer Victor LaValle won the 2016 Shirley
Jackson Award for best novella for The
Ballad Of Black Tom. It’s his compelling and
evocative response to Lovecraft’s story, ‘The
Horror At Red Hook’, and is told from the
perspective of Black musician Tommy Tester
as he’s drawn into the diabolical activities
of millionaire Robert Suydam. LaValle, a fan
of Lovecraft’s since childhood, highlights the
subtle changes Derleth made to Lovecraft’s
invented mythology. “Derleth seemed to
waver on sticking with Lovecraft’s bleakest
perspective. He tried to create a bit more of
a good gods versus bad gods perspective,
which seemed at odds with Lovecraft’s original
idea. And yet, despite that criticism, Lovecraft
likely wouldn’t have become a cultural
touchstone without the steadfast champion he
found in Derleth and a few others.”
Poole cites the adaptability of Lovecraft’s
ideas as a key element in the writer’s
continuing popularity. “His creatures
appeared in an early version of Dungeons
& Dragons and have had a RPG system of
their own produced by Chaosium games. The
great Ramsey Campbell began his career
building directly from Lovecraft’s style and
world view. Writers like Matt Ruff, Thomas
Ligotti, Laird Barron, John Langan, Caitlín R
Kiernan, and Victor LaValle have found ways
to pursue Lovecraft’s themes in their work,
often signifi cantly departing from his style.
Filmmakers use his work to go to the darkest of
places while seldom doing direct adaptations:
John Carpenter may be the most well-knownHP LOVECRAFT
INJ Culbard’s Self Made
Hero-published comic
adaptations are glorious.