By Lyndsey Holder
Cthulhu’s Reign. Editor: Darrell Schweitzer. DAW; Original edition (April 6, 2010). ISBN-13: 978-0756406165.
I don’t generally read introductions, but this one was awesome. Darrell Schweitzer seems to understand all of the things that make Lovecraft’s writing so powerful. He puts into words the things I’d always thought in my head about what exactly comprises a Lovecraftian tale.
After reading such an impassioned introduction, I was surprised that the very first tale, Ian Watson’s “The Walker in the Cemetery”, seemed so far from the genre. Lovecraft’s writing was fairly asexual and, though he tended towards misogyny, I find it hard to think of rape – even when perpetrated by Cthulhu himself – as being at all Lovecraftian. The idea, I suppose, was to take the sex out of it, to have humanity defiled to its very core, but it was written less like violation and more like the kind of tentacle rape you’d expect when watching hentai. The line “How often will Cthulhu play with me stinkingly again…?” made me cringe. I feel like I need to grab an Ouija board and contact the spirit of Howard himself so that I can prostrate myself at his spectral feet.
After reading that first story, I was concerned that the introduction had given me the wrong impression of the tales within, but the rest of the stories were exactly the kind that the introduction had pumped me up to read.
“Sanctuary” by Don Webb is a tale of a small town in Texas dealing with what happens when the stars are right. The imagery is fantastic, the protagonist so delightfully normal. Lovecraftian protagonists tend to be overwrought intellectuals, so it’s nice to read a story about a blue-collar man. I loved its wry humour.
Next came the slow burn of “Her Acres of Pastoral Playground” by Mike Allen. My favourite sorts of stories are the ones where everything that you had been confused about in the beginning clicks into place in the end, and you realize that what you had thought was a tiny, personal drama is actually huge and all-encompassing. Everything, even the things that seemed insignificant, was all instrumental to this grand affair which is culminating in this one moment where it all becomes clear to you and, for that one instant, you are part of the story. I live for stories like this, for moments like that.
I have a special place in my heart for Ken Asamatsu’s “Spherical Trigonometry”. I love the way that the Apocalypse (the Apocthulhypse?) happens in it, and I loved the nod to “The Hounds of Tindalos”: the mythos-infected creatures can’t get at you if there are no angles. This was such a clever story, weaving bits and pieces of Lovecraftian lore into modern day so deftly.
Many years ago, I came upon an essay written by someone who claimed to be a devout Christian. In his essay, he attempted to answer the age-old questions about why God would allow suffering, pain and all of the other horrible things that we humans experience. God, he wrote, would be considered a sociopath if He were a human. However, He is so far beyond our spectrum of thought and being that what is sociopathic for us is something utterly different to Him. The essay left me certain that its author must only be devout in his faith because he believes God to be a horrible, vastly powerful entity who can be infinitely cruel and it’s better to try to keep Him happy with you. “The New Pauline Corpus” by Matt Cardin reminds me of this essay, drawing parallels between the Bible and the Cthulhu mythos.
Laird Barron’s “Vastation” was fantastic. Honestly, I think it’s one of my favourite pieces of his I’ve ever read, and Lovecraftian to its core. I can’t tell you how much I love a story that makes me realise that the author is smarter than I am and manages to do this without making me feel like an idiot (Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash as opposed to Mark Millar’s Wanted). The whole point of Lovecraft is that the Elder Gods are faster, stronger, bigger, smarter, better in every way than you are, and to read a story about this written by someone who in turn makes you aware of the limits of your own brains is really quite wonderful.
I really did enjoy this anthology, especially the introduction, which was really more of a Lovecraft Manifesto, a call to arms for fans everywhere. There are people out there who know how to do Lovecraftian fiction well – this book is proof.
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