The Watchers Out of Time (Masters of Horror)

Rating:
Summary: Merely okay...
Review: I'd give it 3 and a half stars, if half a star was possible. Derleth's take on Lovecraft follows a certain theme that doesn't change all that much from story to story: thin, white, bookish, guy inherits spooky old house by some half-forgotten relative/friend; weird stuff happens that he can't explain; bookish guy inevitably does research in old tomes at Arkham; and the story ends in a paragraph of italics that's supposed to fill you with a sense of horror. The sense of spookiness that permeated throughout Lovecraft's stories is absent, replaced by an extremely predictable italicized ending. I have to agree with the reader from San Francisco, the Good gods versus the Bad gods was not a great idea. Of course it doesn't really matter, since a few gods are merely mentioned in passing when the bookish guy does research at Miskatonic. Derleth seems to prefer Lovecraft's theme of evil rednecks in the backwoods of Massachusetts rather than promoting anything in the Cthulu mythos. All in all, stay far far away from this book if you've never read Lovecraft, and if you have read him than you don't really need to be in a hurry to pick this one up.

Rating:
Summary: Merely okay...
Review: I'd give it 3 and a half stars, if half a star was possible. Derleth's take on Lovecraft follows a certain theme that doesn't change all that much from story to story: thin, white, bookish, guy inherits spooky old house by some half-forgotten relative/friend; weird stuff happens that he can't explain; bookish guy inevitably does research in old tomes at Arkham; and the story ends in a paragraph of italics that's supposed to fill you with a sense of horror. The sense of spookiness that permeated throughout Lovecraft's stories is absent, replaced by an extremely predictable italicized ending. I have to agree with the reader from San Francisco, the Good gods versus the Bad gods was not a great idea. Of course it doesn't really matter, since a few gods are merely mentioned in passing when the bookish guy does research at Miskatonic. Derleth seems to prefer Lovecraft's theme of evil rednecks in the backwoods of Massachusetts rather than promoting anything in the Cthulu mythos. All in all, stay far far away from this book if you've never read Lovecraft, and if you have read him than you don't really need to be in a hurry to pick this one up.

Rating:
Summary: A Little Too Harsh . . . .
Review: I've just read the reviews previously posted here for The Watchers Out of Time. Perhaps some of this criticism is a little harsh. I do agree that there's been some deception -- surely the fault of neither Lovecraft or Derleth, since both men were long dead when this edition was published.

The stories are all credited simply to H.P. Lovecraft on the front cover. But -- confusingly -- the back cover describes the book as a joint effort of Lovecraft and Derleth. Then we get more confused when, looking at the back of the flyleaf, we discover that ALL the stories are copyrighted by August Derleth alone.

Derleth and Lovecraft knew each other, and they did do some genuine collaboration. But I think this volume is predominantly Derleth's work. One of the other reviewers guessed "95% Derleth's" as I recall. I could believe that.

When I say the other reviews are too harsh, I mean that August Derleth was a pretty good author in his own right. At his best, when Derleth writes these gothic tales he rivals Lovecraft in narrative and tone. Some of these stories are very good actually-- well worthy of "Weird Tales" and other pulp collections of the time.

Unfortunately, one of Derleth's limitations when writing Lovecraftian material was his conventional religious belief. He tended to spin Lovecraft's cosmic "old ones" into something resembling Christian devils or demons. This loses much of the very chilling alien flavor of Lovecraft's original mythos. There is always a kind of nihilistic despair haunting around the edges of real Lovecraft stuff-- e.g., "At the Mountains of Madness."

All in all, one must agree that the book is less than what is advertized. And yet, Derleth is a good writer and his tales can be enjoyable. I enjoyed the book and hate to see it so roundly and harshly panned. The problem is-- this is just NOT really H.P. Lovecraft's writing.

Rating:
Summary: A Little Too Harsh . . . .
Review: I've just read the reviews previously posted here for The Watchers Out of Time. Perhaps some of this criticism is a little harsh. I do agree that there's been some deception -- surely the fault of neither Lovecraft or Derleth, since both men were long dead when this edition was published.

The stories are all credited simply to H.P. Lovecraft on the front cover. But -- confusingly -- the back cover describes the book as a joint effort of Lovecraft and Derleth. Then we get more confused when, looking at the back of the flyleaf, we discover that ALL the stories are copyrighted by August Derleth alone.

Derleth and Lovecraft knew each other, and they did do some genuine collaboration. But I think this volume is predominantly Derleth's work. One of the other reviewers guessed "95% Derleth's" as I recall. I could believe that.

When I say the other reviews are too harsh, I mean that August Derleth was a pretty good author in his own right. At his best, when Derleth writes these gothic tales he rivals Lovecraft in narrative and tone. Some of these stories are very good actually-- well worthy of "Weird Tales" and other pulp collections of the time.

Unfortunately, one of Derleth's limitations when writing Lovecraftian material was his conventional religious belief. He tended to spin Lovecraft's cosmic "old ones" into something resembling Christian devils or demons. This loses much of the very chilling alien flavor of Lovecraft's original mythos. There is always a kind of nihilistic despair haunting around the edges of real Lovecraft stuff-- e.g., "At the Mountains of Madness."

All in all, one must agree that the book is less than what is advertized. And yet, Derleth is a good writer and his tales can be enjoyable. I enjoyed the book and hate to see it so roundly and harshly panned. The problem is-- this is just NOT really H.P. Lovecraft's writing.

Rating:
Summary: Fifteen of August Derleth's less inspired Mythos tales
Review: It is most unfortunate and wrong in more ways than one that this collection of stories is passed off as the work of H.P. Lovecraft. All of these stories were written by August Derleth, who was inspired by various little notes Lovecraft left behind, but the only indication of the true ownership of the tales comes in the list of sources from which these stories were assembled, a section quite easy to overlook by the general reader. Any Lovecraft disciple must have mixed feelings about August Derleth. His contribution to the Lovecraft legacy is undeniably significant; in the years after Lovecraft's death, Derleth almost single-handedly kept his memory alive, forming historic Arkham House to publish the master's stories himself. Derleth's contribution is much more controversial when it comes to extending the Cthulhu legacy, however, for his conception of the Mythos is significantly different from that of Lovecraft; Derleth tended to see things in black and white, good vs. evil. This bifurcation of the Mythos legacy is in sharp contrast to Lovecraft's original vision of a world where good and evil do not exist per se. Reading Derleth's Mythos stories poses a danger of the reader conflating Derleth's ideas and conceptions with those of Lovecraft, and I for one strive to keep the original legacy intact in my mind. This danger is exacerbated by Derleth's frequent citation of events and characters from Lovecraft's original writings. Dunwich and Innsmouth serve as frequent settings for these stories; familiar names such as Wilbur Whateley and the Whateley clan, Obed Marsh and his batrachian (which seems to be Derleth's favorite word) descendants are encountered at every turn; and all manner of dark tomes are referred to, those introduced by members of the Lovecraft Circle as well as others Derleth invents himself.

August Derleth was a perfectly competent writer capable of producing an impressive story every now and then. For the most part, however, his work is overly formulaic and repetitive, and, while he tries very hard to write the kind of stories Lovecraft wrote, his stories just don't captivate the reader or come alive with the type of overwhelming, cosmic menace that seemed to live in the very words Lovecraft put to paper. The fifteen stories collected here are remarkably similar in plot and presentation, and that helps make this a somewhat tedious read at times; sometimes the only real spark of interest generated in my mind was a curiosity to see just how commonplace a spin a given story would place on Lovecraft's otherworldly cosmology. When Derleth did dare to color outside the lines, his attempts come off rather strangely and almost comically. A case in point is The Dark Brotherhood, a tale in which a band of strange men bearing an incredibly strong resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe introduce a character clearly based on Lovecraft himself to a vision of another world. Having these alien creatures adopt the image of Poe makes the story memorable to the reader at the expense of the story's effectiveness.

You really won't find anything here that did not originate with Lovecraft; Derleth seems to have a literary mold in which he mixes Mythos beings and characters in random fashion from one story to the next. As I say, though, Derleth is a competent writer, so few of these stories are painfully hard to read; judged outside of the context of Lovecraft, they are effective albeit repetitive. As a Lovecraft fan, I enjoy Derleth's stories (and I might note that his best are to be found not here but in The Mask of Cthulhu and The Trail of Cthulhu), but they are just so lifeless that the memory of them begins to fade as soon as I finish them. I believe there is material here capable of entertaining both the Lovecraft devotee as well as the general horror fan. The important thing to keep in mind, though, is that these stories really should not be attributed in any way to Lovecraft, no matter what the book cover might want you to believe.

Rating:
Summary: False advertisting
Review: Talk about false advertising. Derlith's name doesn't even appear on the front cover of binding. Only Lovecraft's. If I had known, I wouldn't have bought it!

Rating:
Summary: Posthumous collaboration best avoided
Review: The stories contained in this book were written by August Derleth as "posthumous collaborations" with H.P. Lovecraft. What this meant was that Derleth would take a sentence or two from Lovecraft's writing, often a quote from the Necronomicon or a description, and bill these as the writing of both of them. The plot and the writing were all Derleth. On the cover, Carroll and Graf bill the work as entirely Lovecraft's; this is a surprising bit of deception which could turn readers off from the true writing of Lovecraft.

What this means is that these stories are a far cry from Lovecraft's best work. In fact, for the most part they are a far cry from Lovecraft's worst work. They are utter pastiche; they also hit on every possible cliche of the horror world, Cthulhu Mythos or not--the Deep Ones; revenge beyond the grave; the curse passed down in the family; and so on. While it is possible to go some distance with these ideas, Derleth does not; he is bound by Lovecraft's style and does not treat the plots with any imagination.

Someone truly immersed in the Mythos might enjoy reading these stories, because they are the work of one of Lovecraft's tutees. Derleth's work in publishing the work of Lovecraft and other Mythos authors was invaluable, and credit is due him for this; however, the reader wishes Derleth had stuck to publishing what Lovecraft really wrote, not expanding his story credits.

Rating:
Summary: Derleth is such a FAKE
Review: These stories were written by August Derleth based on a few notes by Lovecraft. These stories are NOT by LOVECRAFT. Derleth is not even in the same category as Poe, Lovecraft, King. It is such a shame that this book mentions Lovecraft as an author when it isnt his work at all.

Rating:
Summary: Plagiarizing plagiarism - Derleth at his best (worst)!
Review: Warning: This is not Lovecraft. These stories are 'posthumous collaborations', meaning that Derleth snatched a few impressions or sentences from Lovecraft's notebook, and wrought a mediocre (and often worse) tale around it.

I dislike Derleth's mythos tales because his stories are just all the same. They follow the same guidelines. When you have read the first three tales you've read 'em all. Person inherits a house from a dead relative, and upon arriving encounters all the tomes invented by the 'Lovecraft circle'; surprise, relative was a warlock/wizard who summoned something that's still around, or has plans to make a grand return. Luckily (though not always) the fiends are blasted back to the abyss with the aid of their own tomes. In this volume all tales go like this, with the exception of the odd few.

Another reason why I dislike Derleth is because he altered the 'Cthulhu mythos' to his own system of Good guys and Bad guys. This is not necessarily bad, some Lovecraft-fans like that for their reasons, and one can't argue about taste. Every writer who plays with Cthulhu gives it his own spin. Yet, unlike Lovecraft and only a very few 'Mythos' writers, Derleth systemizes everything into one 'mythology'. With Derleth, the 'entities' become real gods, and are put into a system of the elementals, and therefore are subjected to certain laws. As they are subjected by laws, humans can seek help of this system to eradicate the beasties often easier than changing a light bulb.

Take for instance his story 'The Dweller in Darkness' (not in this book, but in anthologies Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and the interesting The Nyarlathotep Cycle). Here, the mysterious Nyarlathotep comes down from space at night (for some reason which I cannot grasp) in some remote forest patch to have a good time with his all to well known idiot fluteplayers. Well, two guys (who of course know ALL the hideous tomes from the Miskatonic University) have some notes from their professor friend who disappeared at the same spot where Nyarlathotep is partying. This professor already knew all about Cthulhu, Hastur, Yog-Sothoth, Ithaqua and Azatoth (so much for the 'secret' cults who worship these critters) and he tried to figure out which of the Old Ones is on holidays in the forest patch. To make a long tale short, the two buddies go to the forest, and banish Nyarlathotep. One would think they'd need all the hideous rituals that can be found in ALL the Mythos tomes (all of which shouldn't work anyway) around here, including some very rare herbs and artefacts, and the aid of an ancient occultist raised from the dead to do it. Wrong. They just recite two lines of Mythos-talk (i.e. Ia, fthagn, mglww nfta'k etc.) at the moment some important stars are visible above the treeline, and BAM. Gone is Nyarlathotep! Squishing a fly is just a tad easier. Unconvincing, and definitely NOT fear-inspiring. Derleth just puts all the Lovecraft-names of tomes, monsters and places down on paper, and then connects the whole thing with sentences. As a title he jots something down like The Drooler at the Doorstep or The Terror in the Treetops, and he reckons he has produced yet another yarn. Unfortunately, he's not the only one who does so. Cosmic fear is reduced to tooth-ache hackwork. It seems to be a curse Lovecraft left that no matter how good a writer is, writing a Lovecraftian tale brings inexorably the worst out of him or her, save for a very few exceptions.

Most of Derleth's horror tales border on plagiarism (read his "The Ancestor" and the Leonard Cline's "The Dark Chamber".) It becomes worse when an author plagiarizes himself.

Rating:
Summary: Plagiarizing plagiarism - Derleth at his best (worst)!
Review: Warning: This is not Lovecraft. These stories are `posthumous collaborations', meaning that Derleth snatched a few impressions or sentences from Lovecraft's notebook, and wrought a mediocre (and often worse) tale around it.

I dislike Derleth's mythos tales because his stories are just all the same. They follow the same guidelines. When you have read the first three tales you've read `em all. Person inherits a house from a dead relative, and upon arriving encounters all the tomes invented by the 'Lovecraft circle'; surprise, relative was a warlock/wizard who summoned something that's still around, or has plans to make a grand return. Luckily (though not always) the fiends are blasted back to the abyss with the aid of their own tomes. In this volume all tales go like this, with the exception of the odd few.

Another reason why I dislike Derleth is because he altered the `Cthulhu mythos' to his own system of Good guys and Bad guys. This is not necessarily bad, some Lovecraft-fans like that for their reasons, and one can't argue about taste. Every writer who plays with Cthulhu gives it his own spin. Yet, unlike Lovecraft and only a very few 'Mythos' writers, Derleth systemizes everything into one 'mythology'. With Derleth, the 'entities' become real gods, and are put into a system of the elementals, and therefore are subjected to certain laws. As they are subjected by laws, humans can seek help of this system to eradicate the beasties often easier than changing a light bulb.

Take for instance his story `The Dweller in Darkness' (not in this book, but in anthologies Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and the interesting The Nyarlathotep Cycle). Here, the mysterious Nyarlathotep comes down from space at night (for some reason which I cannot grasp) in some remote forest patch to have a good time with his all to well known idiot fluteplayers. Well, two guys (who of course know ALL the hideous tomes from the Miskatonic University) have some notes from their professor friend who disappeared at the same spot where Nyarlathotep is partying. This professor already knew all about Cthulhu, Hastur, Yog-Sothoth, Ithaqua and Azatoth (so much for the `secret' cults who worship these critters) and he tried to figure out which of the Old Ones is on holidays in the forest patch. To make a long tale short, the two buddies go to the forest, and banish Nyarlathotep. One would think they'd need all the hideous rituals that can be found in ALL the Mythos tomes (all of which shouldn't work anyway) around here, including some very rare herbs and artefacts, and the aid of an ancient occultist raised from the dead to do it. Wrong. They just recite two lines of Mythos-talk (i.e. Ia, fthagn, mglww nfta'k etc.) at the moment some important stars are visible above the treeline, and BAM. Gone is Nyarlathotep! Squishing a fly is just a tad easier. Unconvincing, and definitely NOT fear-inspiring. Derleth just puts all the Lovecraft-names of tomes, monsters and places down on paper, and then connects the whole thing with sentences. As a title he jots something down like The Drooler at the Doorstep or The Terror in the Treetops, and he reckons he has produced yet another yarn. Unfortunately, he's not the only one who does so. Cosmic fear is reduced to tooth-ache hackwork. It seems to be a curse Lovecraft left that no matter how good a writer is, writing a Lovecraftian tale brings inexorably the worst out of him or her, save for a very few exceptions.

Most of Derleth's horror tales border on plagiarism (read his "The Ancestor" and the Leonard Cline's "The Dark Chamber".) It becomes worse when an author plagiarizes himself.