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Summary: The Master of Creepy.
Review: H.P. Lovecraft: racist, recluse and undeniable master of scaring the bejeezus out of people. This collection of short stories contains some of Lovecraft's best and most popular work. If you've never read any of his work before, this is the probably his definitive collection and a good place to start. As Stephen King noted in his recent book "On Writing", Lovecraft was not a master of dialogue. There's very little in the way of character interaction. It's this lack of dialogue that can make initial readings difficult for some. What Lovecraft does offer plenty of, is a descriptive prose that paints some of the nastiest picture's ever written. Lovecraft created his own unfriendly little world that only a madman would want to vist, full of bruise-like colors, mishappen or overly symmetrical creatures and mysterious vapours from other dimensions. While one wouldn't want to spend much time with the denizens of this little world, it's easy to get sucked in and find yourself there more and more. The one word that comes to mind when desribing Lovecraft's work is "alien." I've never read any other work that was so comepletely non-terrestrial. Far from the rantings of a madman (and make no doubt, he wasn't exactly playing with a full deck) Lovecraft's matter of fact, almost forensic tone makes everything even more surreal. Lovecraft was a genius for the ability to make his alien worlds and creatures really feel, well, alien. In less than twenty pages, Lovecraft could create a sense of awe and immensity that inferior writers couldn't produce in a thousand. To say that Lovecraft tried to scare people isn't really true, instead he took all the fears people innately possess, like the fear of the unknown, and put them on the page. His stuff reads like a nightmare, where you're not really sure what's going on, but you know it's not good.
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Summary: Lovecraft, indeed.
Review: 4.5 stars. Mr. Lovecraft is a superb writer, a decent story-teller, and a master of dark tales. This collection has some of his finest work and is a great start to any Lovecraft library. Some of my personal favorites are here: "Pickman's Model," "The Call of Cthulu," "The Dunwich Horror," "The Color Out of Space," and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." However, there are many gems missing from this book, many of which can be found in another of his collections "The Doom that Came to Sarnath and other stories." In that collection the stories "The Doom that Came to Sarnath," "From Beyond," "The Festival," and his sojourn into science fiction "In the Walls of Eryx" are all represented. These two collections would seem to be all anyone would really need if it were not for two excellent novellas "At the Mountains of Madness" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward." The latter story being my all-time favorite story of his. Overall, this is a great starting point, but hardly a comprehensive collection. I hope someday his Complete Works are published; but, until then I have this book and 6 smaller works. H.P. Lovecraft is a phenomenal writer, so it is easy to recommend this book.
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Summary: masterful
Review: gloriously haunting tales which prove spine tingling and bone chilling. A true master.
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Summary: Modern Horror 101
Review: If you consider yourself a serious fan of modern horror, you must read Lovecraft. It's almost a cliché to hear a horror writer say they started learning their craft by imitating HPL's style and themes. (Read this collection, then read Stephen King's "Night Shift" collection, and you'll see what I mean. King borrows ideas more than writing style, of course.) Anyway, there's a good reason HPL was so influential: He took horror beyond propriety. Not with sex and violence, but with concepts which might best be called "profane": the indifference of the universe to Man, and Man's ultimate insignificance therein. Obviously, this isn't going to be for everyone. HPL only regarded a few of his own works as really "literary", and those stories are contained herein. Some of these others are still more interesting and original than a lot of modern horror. Some of them will give you a distinct feeling of deaj vu, too. (Didn't I just read this story?) His longer fiction is =also= not for everyone being more "weird" than "horror". (For a great imitation of his longer fiction style, check out L. Ron Hubbard's "Fear".) Anyway, this is a good HPL starter collection. Give it a read.
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Summary: This Will Scare the Excrement Out of You
Review: This is a collection of some of the most classic and best written horror stories ever. Written by the master himself; H.P. Lovecraft. My favourite: The Colour Out of Space; is about a meteour that falls and hits a town. The area around the crash begins to change, and so do the people living near it. Something is living in the well...but what? Very very scary. I couldn't drink my water for awhile after reading it. The Call of Chuthulhu is probably his most well known story in hear. The very start of the Chuthulhu Mythos. The biggest fan fiction ever. His stories are very ambient and usually have the discovery of some horrible, anicent, arcane, heretical thing of old; be it god or altars. Very scary stuff indeed. If you want to read some horror that WILL scare you other than the latest pulp crap that some hack wrote in a week. Get this book. If only In the Mountains of Madness were in this collection. Then you would need no other.
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Summary: Great Stories From A Master of Horror
Review: Writing in the '20s and '30s, and being marginalized by major publishers, H.P. Lovecraft was forced publish his work in various obscure pulp-horror magazines. Unfortunately, his talent as a writer of horror/science fiction wasn't recognized until after his death in the late 1930s, and it was only then that his friends were able to start their own independent publication of his work. Lovecraft's literary talent and the scope of his imagination are well presented in this collection of short stories. Lovecraft admired and emulated the work of Edgar Allan Poe and his short stories follow the same plot structures, themes, and prose as that of Poe's. The narrators are usually avid empiricists such as detectives or scientists who come face to face with the unexplainable. As the story progresses, the narrator's confidence in his logical reasoning or use of the scientific method clashes with the unknown, unfathomable, or unthinkable, and he eventually becomes mad or nihilistic. The stories are almost always in the form of a retrospective narrative whereby the author reassures the reader that he's not mad (i.e. 'After you read what I have to say you will see for yourself whether I'm truly mad...') Many of Lovecraft's stories consist of themes and plots of the occult and his own imagined mythology. Lovecraft developed a mythology (often referred to as the Ctulluh myths) about various races of amorphic aliens who came to live on Earth millions of years ago. Over time, these aliens fought each other and some were vanquished and sealed in their forgotten cities by magic rituals and symbols. Many of the cities, of non-euclidean geometry, are burried in deserts or in antarctic mountains while others lie beneath the sea. Although physically dead, these sentient beings remain active through phenomenal esp powers which they use to control humans. The 'gods' use the humans to spawn and/or to liberate themselves from their prisons. Inspired by his invented mythology of primordial alien creatures, Lovecraft wrote 'That is not dead which can eternal lie, yet in stranger eons even death may die.' So enjoy these wonderful short stories from the master of occult horror. If you love Poe, you will most certainly love Lovecraft.
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Summary: The definition of "Lovecraftian"
Review: There is a select group of authors whose names have become adjectives: "Dickensian," "Borgesian," "Kafkaesque," etc. Well, H.P. Lovecraft is one of this elite crew, If you want to know the definition of "Lovecraftian," check out "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre." This book brings together 16 masterful tales, together with an introduction by Robert Bloch. It is perhaps too limiting to simply define Lovecraft as a horror writer; his stories also demonstrate elements of fantasy, science fiction, satire, and "local color" fiction. You'll get all these "flavors" in this collection. And along the way you'll encounter strange monsters, weird cults, forbidden books of the blackest magic, snippets of an unknown language, and a disturbing warp in the fabric of space and time. Many of these stories, while standing alone as compelling pieces of fiction, also work together towards creating Lovecraft's own personal mythos. Thus, certain elements turn up in multiple stories: Miskatonic University, Cthulhu, and the feared Necronomicon. Lovecraft is a master of complex, collage-like texts that incorporate references to people, institutions and periodicals, both real and imaginary. His style has an unsettling way of warping the reader's grip on reality. In many stories there is a sense that Lovecraft is satirizing the world of academia (some of his narrators and other characters are college professors, or otherwise connected to academia). If you have not yet entered the weird, wondrous world of H.P. Lovecraft, check out this collection. Also recommended: Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror."
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Summary: Deep and Original, for the most part.
Review: If, when people speak of writing for the lowest common denominator, you are the person they're writing for, or if your idea of great fiction is the stuff that appeals to your basest emotions of lust, blood and action in the most shallow, contrived, and superficial manner possible, then this book is not for you, unless of course you're trying to atone for your literary sins. With the exception of "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Thing on the Doorstep", this collection of stories is among the greatest _literary_ outputs of horror fiction...Lovecraft has been called wordy, long, boring...but if you are truly an intelligent reader, you will, at the very least, realise that even if personally you don't like Lovecraft, this volume is still something extremely special, and very rare in the modern era. Lovecraft writes leisurely at first, he builds up the atmosphere convincingly, establishes a sense of not just the surroundings, but of cosmic outerness, and then slowly, he begins to shatter the reader's preconceptions about the nature of the universe, gradually building, actually describing and intimating the very nature and detail of the violation of natural law, until you can sense it, feel the cosmic forces pushing against you, and the final climax opens the gateway to the outer realms fully. Lovecraft does not write about people, and he does not write what was in his time pulp junk and which in our time is considered great writing; his task was to describe and reveal cosmic forces and outer hideousness, and his style reflects this, and fully complements his ideological position. If you find yourself best captivated by something deeper than Koontz or King, and are a sensitive mind, open to a world where anthropocentrism is dead and morality is a local phenomenon, where vast forces are depicted crushing down upon those who unwittingly have become aware of their presence....then this book is for you.
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Summary: A collection of great stories
Review: This anthology contains, for the most part, truly excellent works of horror fiction. Lovecraft is considered by many as the best purveyor of horror fiction of the 20th century, all the more impressive since he did not live beyond the first half. As with most anthos of fiction, there are some truly great stories in this one, some that are so-so, and some that are not so great. "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Music of Erich Zahn" are two of my favorites of this one. "Call" is the story that really is Lovecraft's best-known, I believe. It was the first to establish very well the pantheon of the Old Ones that appear in so many of his later stories (including those in this collection). There have been a number of emulators of his style, and even products by others based on his works (like role-playing games), but it was reading these originals that really made me long for the older days. Lovecraft makes painstaking effort to establish mood and environment. There are always unknowns, the cornerstone of his horror. Many take the form of investigations of mysterious happenings, and a number of them are similar to others, but that similarity is more in presentation than in the particulars. It seems that he did a very good job of using new concepts in all the contained stories. Some of the stories in this one really could benefit from a reduction in volume. "The Whisperer in the Dark" simply dragged on way too long. Despite the reader being well aware from the narrative of what was occurring, the narrator himself seemed unable to make the simple conclusion of his situation. I really was disappointed in that one. As stated, these stories are classics, and nearly all of them are wonderful reads. Even some of those that go on too long have something in them of the refinement of the mythology that Lovecraft was creating. This book is a great buy, even in the slightly more expensive trade paperback format.
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Summary: Great writer
Review: Great anthology. None ever touched him for haunting a landscape in sure, swift movements: "When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions." None ever touched him for disturbingly beautiful prose: "Now I found myself upon an apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut to Arkham, overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town, and confronted with no refuge save the antique and repellent wooden building which blinked with bleared windows from between two huge leafless elms near the foot of a rocky hill." None ever touched him for the swift touch of a hint upon the nerves that only takes on full significance pages later: "The room beyond was darkened as I had known before; and as I entered it I noticed that the queer odour was stronger there. There likewise appeared to be some faint, half-imaginary rhythm or vibration in the air. For a moment the closed blinds allowed me to see very little, but then a kind of apologetic hacking or whispering sound drew my attention to a great easy-chair in the farther, darker corner of the room." Or for the subtlest kind of horror work: "He made no motion as I turned my head to look at whatever he had glimpsed. There was nothing that I could see. Only the incoming tide, with perhaps one set of ripples more local that the long-flung line of breakers." Or for an opening hook: "Whether the dreams brought on the fever or the fever brought on the dreams Walter Gilman did not know. Behind everything crouched the brooding, festering horror of the ancient town, and of the moldy, unhallowed garret gable where he wrote and studied and wrestled with figures and formulae when he was not tossing on the meager iron bed. But I could produce thirty more examples of different facets of this man's work and still not even have begun to talk about "Eich Pee El". And I have not even touched on the... let's say, "unifying" forces behind most of the stories, the shadows and cross-references that make this man's work one of the greatest fictional worlds devised in the 20th century, despite the brevity of his output and his life. This book is the originator that, when I first read it at the age of 14, set free my own library of nightmare images. Like all truly great books (and I will use the word though I refer to an anthology, because indeed for me this tome was like a single book), this is more Fun than it is "great". And as long as sensitive minds seek to expel from their delicate fancies the tumorous touch of the grotesque thing today misnamed a world, and as long as there is a thrill in the lonely wood and the haunted, moonlit beach, and as long as man suspects that he has not been given the universe to rule alone, Lovecraft (that is, his work) will throw off all criticism and continue to sell and to mesmerize.
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