The Best of H.P. Lovecraft

Oct 31, 2012 Jonathan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: personal-favourites, classic-literature, classic-challenge, fantasy, fantasy-sci-fi-challenge, gothic, mystery, science-fiction, short-stories

It was only last year that I discovered the joy of short stories thanks to Anton Chekhov and Edgar Allan Poe (although it seems longer since time is a "great ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff"). Since then I have been interested in the great short story authors of all time (as well as writing my own short stories), among whom Lovecraft is often mentioned. So I was very optimistic about this volume of stories when I started to read it - particularly in regards to the 'infamous Cthulhu Mytho...more
It was only last year that I discovered the joy of short stories thanks to Anton Chekhov and Edgar Allan Poe (although it seems longer since time is a "great ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff"). Since then I have been interested in the great short story authors of all time (as well as writing my own short stories), among whom Lovecraft is often mentioned. So I was very optimistic about this volume of stories when I started to read it - particularly in regards to the 'infamous Cthulhu Mythos.'

This volume opened with a brilliant foreword by Robert Bloch which described why Lovecraft deserves to be among the greats of horror writing and short story writing. When I read his stories I found them to have a similar effervescence and mellifluous beauty to Poe and in some parts the simplicity of Chekhov, yet clearly the work was one hundred percent unique. What Lovecraft has done with his short stories is create a world that focuses on the unknown. His terror is not simple blood and gore shock tactics to scare the audience, it is the horror that requires a deeper level of skill, to creep the audience out by linking the narrators to mysterious and creepy terrors. I found the supernatural and science fiction elements of his horror unique to him as while his language may have been similar to other short story artists the themes were completely unique and specific to his work. Very few other short story writers have written short stories that constantly link while telling different stories.

What are the themes of these short stories? Well Lovecraft deals in a variety of themes such as:
dreams, mirrors and hence the self, the 'other', the unknown, the danger of cults and occult powers, corpses, tombs, old ruined houses, cannibalism, science vs. religion, the cosmos, monsters vs. men, crawling and slimy creatures, insanity and psychology.
It seemed to me that Lovecraft believed not in deities as such or had a personal religion but was more a scientist who believed in the power of the cosmos. His view seems that the universe is strange, chaotic and hence unordered by the power of one supreme being but perhaps there may be old powers that exist in the "black seas of infinity" and will exist after people. Of course while my beliefs are very different it was interesting to note this in his fiction. He seemed to still hold a concept of black and white morality despite there being very much a greyness about his stance on human life and the powers in the universe. Curious...

The thing I also loved about the stories was pointed out to me by the foreword. Where most novels and short stories have either an unreliable* or a reliable** narrator Lovecraft wrote stories that had both at once in some strange way. The way he did this was to write first person narratives with characters who had the information but also some kind of flaw to make you doubt where the reliability was or was not. For instance this particularly occurs in the first story in this volume. (view spoiler)

I strongly recommend also that anyone interested in Lovecraft check out the essay he wrote called Supernatural horror in literature. It provides several unique insights and perspectives. I also naturally recommend his tales if you're into short stories or gothic horror fiction that meets a kind of supernatural science fiction horror.

*That is you're never quite sure whether what they're telling you is all the facts or 'the truth' such as in the case of Dracula for instance.
**~~Work it out from my definition of unreliable narrator~~ That is a narrator who you believe to be telling all the facts or at least enough to trust his perspective. Think Nick from The Great Gatsby.(less)

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Jun 19, 2008 Ayla Zachary rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

H. P. Lovecraft is a peculiar writer. His stories are extremely predictable. The first-person narrator, a sober man of reason and science, will halfway through the story start noticing something odd about his surroundings: "It was almost as though [horrifying revelation from the end of the story], but I knew that could not be the case." And then, at the end, when all his reason has been denied, "It was then I knew the terrible truth: [horrifying revelation that we all guessed thirty pages ago]!"...more

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Katey I think you described his stories perfectly. That is exactly the way I feel about them. When reading The Call of Cthulhu, partway through the story I...more
Dec 12, 2009 02:43pm

Lily Bart One reason "The Temple" is one of his greatest stories is that for once the narrator is NOT a professional weirdo who has always been obsessed by the...more
Jun 06, 2011 12:15pm

Kyle I couldn't agree more. The 1st story I read of his was "At the Mountains of Madness". At 1st I was certain that this is what the John Carpenter movie...more
May 25, 2012 06:08am

May 26, 2008 Werner rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of "horror" and of horrific science fiction

Shelves: science-fiction

Not well-appreciated in his own time, reclusive and eccentric New England writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft became a household word in the world of weird fiction after his death. His prose style was greatly influenced by Poe, and like Poe, he preferred natural causes for his horror ("supernatural," in one of the alternate titles listed above for this collection, means "uncanny" or "unearthly," not supernatural per se). While his genre was science fiction, he was wholly outside the optimistic and...more Not well-appreciated in his own time, reclusive and eccentric New England writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft became a household word in the world of weird fiction after his death. His prose style was greatly influenced by Poe, and like Poe, he preferred natural causes for his horror ("supernatural," in one of the alternate titles listed above for this collection, means "uncanny" or "unearthly," not supernatural per se). While his genre was science fiction, he was wholly outside the optimistic and technophilic hard SF tradition that dominated the genre pulps of his time, publishing instead mostly in venues like Weird Tales. Much of his work is based on what has come to be called his "Cthulhu Mythos" (a term coined by August Derleth): a vision of malevolent alien races who supposedly ruled the primeval Earth, and whose remnants are still very dangerous. A number of the stories here are part of this body of work (which is often internally inconsistent in details from story to story), and some others foreshadow aspects of it. Several of these are set in his imaginary town of Arkham, MA, seat of Miskatonic Univ. --an interesting place to visit, but not one you'd want to live in. :-) (And nearby Innsmouth isn't even a place you'd want to visit!)

Unlike Poe, Lovecraft's horror is existential rather than situational; an atheist and an uncritical Darwinist (in "The Rats in the Walls," for instance, investigators probing below the sub-basement of Exham Priory find numerous bones of "Piltdown Men" --some trick, since the species was a hoax!), he regarded the universe as a bleak, meaningless place hostile to humanity, and presents his "Great Old Ones" or "Elder Gods" as the embodiment of that hostility. Awareness of their existence is treated as a knowledge that forever annihilates any conception of meaning or rationality in the universe for those unfortunate enough to stumble on them. For Christians, of course, versed in the concept of Satan, the idea that the universe contains super-powerful and evil entities hostile to mankind evokes no surprise, or fear --but readers with a worldview like that of early 20th-century bourgeois materialism probably would find it soul-shattering. Lovecraft fans fall into two groups: those who find this perspective the best part of his writing and eat it up with a spoon, and those (including myself, and apparently Derleth) who don't, and who may even consider it a defect. But his originality, his story-telling ability, his mastery of style and plot, and powerful evocation of atmosphere make his work highly readable and fascinating despite this.(less)

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Mar 05, 2007 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Beautifully written horror that many imitate (ahem, Stephen King) but few can pull off. The real horror of Lovecraft isn't the scariness of the monsters or the gore, but concept that we are pointless blips of dust on the gaping maw of a chaotic, ageless, indifferent universe that constantly destroys itself for no reason at all. Each story reminds you of how puny and ignorant you are but that's a good thing because every character finds out a little too much and goes crazy, gets eaten, sacrificed...more

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Feb 17, 2013 Yasiru rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Allen & Unwin edition I bought The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Tales That Truly Terrify from the Master of Horror is a rather uneven selection of stories, but some of the author's most important work appears, including The Call of Cthulhu, Rats in the Walls, The Dunwich Horror, and the novellas At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow over Innsmouth. I've since found the editions introduced by S T Joshi (I think from Penguin) more informative and balanced in the selections.

Among Lovecraft'...more The Allen & Unwin edition I bought The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Tales That Truly Terrify from the Master of Horror is a rather uneven selection of stories, but some of the author's most important work appears, including The Call of Cthulhu, Rats in the Walls, The Dunwich Horror, and the novellas At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow over Innsmouth. I've since found the editions introduced by S T Joshi (I think from Penguin) more informative and balanced in the selections.

Among Lovecraft's influences, Poe and Dunsany are prominent, and we might perhaps trace much of the unique character of his world directly to these two. From Poe there is the unrelenting descent to madness and doom, which Lovecraft has latch on to the whole world outside of the mind and human movements so crucial to Poe. This gives Lovecraft's work a kind of empirical disposition, which, combined with his penchant for rather rational and expedition-minded protagonists, makes almost all of his stories read like science fiction.

The trace of Dunsany's influence is found in the mythological ambition of the fictional universe. Though the evils are unimaginably potent and bear down mercilessly on the protagonist(s) (and the reader) in every mark of a story's atmosphere like a rolling juggernaut against which any human defiance thrown is shredded to insignificance, behind this mechanical horror is a vast lore whose tantalising indications in the stories suggest more than the apparent malevolence at work. With Dunsany however, the essential character of the gods is symbolic and ostensibly fixed, and human endeavour for meaning (as in Time and the Gods) begets new myths. For Lovecraft on the other hand, symbolism in the mighty forces of his mythos almost always disintegrates over the course of a narrative, and what remains as truly horrific is the relative powerlessness experienced by balanced and rational men of integrity (optimal in some way in modern society's eyes) in a world where the relations themselves are difficult to fathom in everything more fundamental than the thin human layer of sanity.

That Lovecraft's horror is based on the supposition of a will (or a multitude of such existing in an unstable, dynamic equilibrium) beyond human comprehension and everyday perception (and how its actions press on humanity's very survival) may be why he is at once a unique and very much modern author. Where the more realism-inclined write about social alienation and the individual's struggle, Lovecraft is concerned with cosmic alienation as we press ahead as a species as best we can, and when you pit the endless nothing against the human host, the one becomes horror and the other tolerable.(less)

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Jan 14, 2013 J rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story-collections

It hadn’t been a real long while since I last read Lovecraft but I attacked Bloodcurdling Tales with relish. I prefer Lovecraft’s weird tales to his dream quest stuff and that’s what this one’s all about. This book is the perfect introduction to Lovecraft for the newcomer and a great way to revisit his work for the longtime fan.

Many of the classics are here including some of my favorites like “Pickman’s Model,” “Dreams In The Witch House” and “In The Vault.” “The Call Of Cthulhu,” and other stor...more

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Jan 21, 2008 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, horror

Lovecraft is one of the writers people tend to either obsess about or dismiss without a second glance. His writings vary tremendously, in terms of quality. Some of it is really horrible, actually, with absurdly "purple" prose and overwrought hysteria. But there are also really incredible stories among his work too, which conjure up fascinating mythology and alien races, as well leaving utterly disturbing images in the reader's imagination. "The Dreams in the Witch House" is an example of this se...more

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Nov 21, 2008 Jeb rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, anthology

This is perhaps the best starting point for all those interested in finding just what this Lovecraft cat was all about. All of his key stories are here; The Outsider, The Rats In The Walls, The Dunwich Horror, The Colour Out Of Space (Lovecraft's own personal favorite, and more. This may not be the definitive collections like those edited by S.T. Joshi or the uber-classy Library of America volume, but this is the best introduction one can get to H.P. Lovecraft. It's the book that got me hooked.

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May 18, 2008 Phil rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

I read some selections after I verbally assaulted Lovecraft at a gaming session of Dungeons and Dragons. It was pointed out that Lovecraft is one of the intellectual parents of D&D and I had not read any Lovecraft. I was told diplomatically that I needed, "Know your facts before you go shooting your mouth off."

So, I read some Lovecraft. It was kind of what I expected. Dark and gothic with with wet slimy gore rather than dry dusty gore. Lovecraft has a strong if morbid understanding of the u...more

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Aug 17, 2008 Nickie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tales of ancient spells, nefarious secret societies and hideous creatures, meticulously crafted, but devoid of mystery/anticipation. If I can guess the ending, then you're either purposefully writing without intending surprise or you might need to work on your technique. Lovecraft doesn't need my writing advice, so I *guess* he's not bothered about the final pay-off and is all about the intricate all. Good, but not the immersive experience I expected - one for dipping in and out of, but a bit of...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Michael Taylor rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This author lives in my dreams. Not one week goes by that I do not have some crazy Lovecraftian vision in my sleep that rocks me to my core. He is one of the most inspiring horror authors of the 20 century. His concepts of a much bigger and unseen universe just waiting to engulf us in madness crosses the boundries of horror and science fiction into a place where we no longer feel safe. H.P. Lovecraft said the oldest emotion of mankind is fear and the greatsest fear is that of the unknown and his...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Dtaggart rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I started reading the book "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft BloodCurdling Tales of Horror and The Macabre" with great intrigue. I could recall the author's name as a great horror writer, but have never actually read any of his books. When i first picked it up i decided it would be a great idea to consume the collection of books by this well renown author to get an idea of his writing style and see if he was as great of a writer as i have heard. This collection did the rumors justice by supplying grea...more

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Dec 13, 2012 David Stephens rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

One would think after all the bizarre supernatural events that occur in Lovecraft's fictional New England, a larger swath of people around the world would take notice and attempt to do something about them. In some cases, portals to other dimensions or remnants of ancient beings are even located squarely within large cities and, yet, remain undisclosed to the masses. This is, of course, mostly due to two things: because some citizens have a vague knowledge of the evil lurking nearby and wisely c...more One would think after all the bizarre supernatural events that occur in Lovecraft's fictional New England, a larger swath of people around the world would take notice and attempt to do something about them. In some cases, portals to other dimensions or remnants of ancient beings are even located squarely within large cities and, yet, remain undisclosed to the masses. This is, of course, mostly due to two things: because some citizens have a vague knowledge of the evil lurking nearby and wisely choose to stay away from it and because many others display a flippancy toward superstitions, regarding them as wild tales.

For the true believers, though, Lovecraft's stories could certainly act as a warning for anyone planning on unearthing secrets of the haunted backwoods or the sinister urban areas of New England. The stories take readers past the traditional New England of the 1920s and 30s to the nightmarish underworlds that lie beneath. A passage from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" perfectly illustrates the dark eastern landscape: "Collapsing huddles of gambrel roofs formed a jagged and fantastic skyline, above which rose the ghoulish, decapitated steeple of an ancient church." In Lovecraft's world, not even the steeples can keep their heads on.

The stories typically deal with a protagonist who has stumbled upon some unknown species of ancient beings ("cosmic horror") and, therefore, acquires knowledge not fit for the human mind. This knowledge then causes the protagonist to lose control of his sanity or lead a life of paranoia as unknown assailants pursue him. There are stories that fall outside of this formula as well—like "In the Vault," one of my personal favorites—but even within this framework, Lovecraft manages to keep each story fresh and exciting. Revelations are doled out at the right pace, Lovecraft-invented folklore is mixed with true accounts of obscure occultism, and various monsters are described in such a way that gives the basic structure of their forms but never quite completes the picture, leaving readers with only vague impressions of the monstrosities that abound.

One of the big questions for me about Lovecraft's writing is whether he gives away too much information or not. Unfortunately, I feel he often does. There are stories like "The Call of Chtulu" and "The Shadow Out of Time" that almost seem to be informational texts about the Chtulu mythos rather than traditional tales, and here the excess of information might work well. However, in other cases, most notably "The Thing on the Doorstep," stories would have benefitted from revealing far less. It is leaving certain things unknown—as Lovecraft was well aware—that creates real terror. Therefore, I find myself somewhat disappointed that more fear isn't created, but even that doesn't diminish the pleasure I derive from inhabiting the Lovecraft universe and not wanting to leave it.(less)

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Apr 19, 2012 Jonathan Briggs rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reading this collection straight through isn't recommended as that would spotlight H.P. Lovecraft's rather severe limitations as a writer. His dialogue is atrocious. His descriptions are repetitive (except when he resorts to the copout of the horror so horrible it cannot be described). His heroes are generally wussies prone to faint dead away at the hint of an oozing tentacle. And I'm not even going to get into his virulent racism and unfortunate choice in cat names. But taken in smaller doses,...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Ted rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lit-american, short-stories, classics, horror

These are great horror stories dating back close to a century now, from one of the stranger American fiction writers. The fictional worlds that Lovecraft created are located in temporally shifting realms which intersect with everyday reality in usually horrific ways, inhabited by ancient creatures having no relation to the life forms familiar to us. The stories generally involve an interaction between the “other” (these worlds and creatures), and a human being who has somehow come into contact w...more These are great horror stories dating back close to a century now, from one of the stranger American fiction writers. The fictional worlds that Lovecraft created are located in temporally shifting realms which intersect with everyday reality in usually horrific ways, inhabited by ancient creatures having no relation to the life forms familiar to us. The stories generally involve an interaction between the “other” (these worlds and creatures), and a human being who has somehow come into contact with “the other”. (The contact often happens through some type of portal, likely in an old abandoned house or castle, perhaps simply in an outdoors location miles from normal human traffic.) The results of such contacts are always pretty unfortunate for the human, resulting in death or, just as frequently, insanity.

The “other” that Lovecraft created is often referred to as a “mythos”, specifically as the “Cthulhu Mythos” (from a series of stories which refer to one of these ancient beings by that name). To my knowledge, these are the only stories in the horror literary genre that have ever been made into successful games (the Arkham Horror board game, the Call of Cthulhu role playing game).

Other literary works on this rather small shelf (sources for games) are mostly fantasy and science fiction tales. Such “game source” stories that I’m familiar with (with associated games) include:

Frank Herbert’s Dune (same name); Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (same name); Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (same name); Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series (same name); Tolkein’s Lord of the Ring’s trilogy (several games); Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series (same name); Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (on which the boardgame Star Traders was loosely based); the Buck Rogers pulp magazine/comic strip series (same name); and One Thousand and One Nights (which served as inspiration for an offbeat game called Tales of the Arabian Nights).
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Mar 17, 2011 Adam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, lovecraft, cthulhu, dagon

I own all of Lovecraft's stories in various formats. This particular collection contains some of his best work. Of note: "The Call of Cthulhu," probably his most well-known work. It isn't necessarily his best work, mind you, but it's one of my favorites. Maybe I have a secret thing for tentacles--and if so, I guess I need to come to grips (ha, puns!) with that--I don't know. I just know that horror should be precisely that: horrific. A reader of horror should feel their soul freeze ever so sligh...more

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Jan 13, 2011 Jonathan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Sci-fi/horror fans

Shelves: sci-fi-fantasy

H.P. Lovecraft, in the centuries following his death, has moved steadily from cult author to geek favorite to full-blown pop culture icon. The phenomenon of Lovecraft, and especially the Cthulhu Mythos which he created, has manifested in ways the man himself would never have imagined – this past Christmas my brother gave our two-year-old nephew a stuffed plush toy of the cuddly li’l mind-destroying abomination. So it was, as references to Lovecraft’s works continued to pile up on every geek blo...more H.P. Lovecraft, in the centuries following his death, has moved steadily from cult author to geek favorite to full-blown pop culture icon. The phenomenon of Lovecraft, and especially the Cthulhu Mythos which he created, has manifested in ways the man himself would never have imagined – this past Christmas my brother gave our two-year-old nephew a stuffed plush toy of the cuddly li’l mind-destroying abomination. So it was, as references to Lovecraft’s works continued to pile up on every geek blog and webcomic, and I began to play games like the outstanding Arkham Horror , that I decided it was time to read the stories that inspired it all.

This collection of Lovecraft’s works served as an excellent primer to the man and the Mythos. It leads off with a few shorter tales, early works which aren’t connected with the Mythos proper but are valuable to set the mood of the book as a whole. After this brief introduction, we dive right into nine of the most recognizable Mythos novellas, beginning with Big Daddy, “The Call of Cthulhu”. These longer stories, usually set in or around the fictional town of Arkham, Mass, ubiquitously feature an unsuspecting narrator discovering some hideous secret regarding the existence of the ancient, alien, usually malevolent beings who still lurk in the forgotten reaches of the world. Despite the rather ostentatious claim implicit in the collection’s title, the stories aren’t really all that scary. Lovecraft’s ideas certainly would have been shocking in his own day, nearly a century ago, but since then, alien invaders have been done to death. Lovecraft’s plots, again probably more so to modern readers, are most often fairly transparent; the reader has guessed the horrible secret long before the incredulous narrator can bring himself to utter it. These criticisms are not serious, however.

The main attraction of Lovecraft’s works, now as then, is not the thrill of mystery and horror, not the shock of an unexpected twist, nor even the vast collection of otherworldly beings he concocted, but rather the incredible stylistic sense with which he writes. We know what’s going to happen, we know it’s not really that scary, but that doesn’t stop us from being pulled along by the gripping atmospherics of Lovecraft’s prose. A perfect example is “The Shadow Out of Time,” in which the narrator’s final shocking discovery, long guessed by the reader, is still rendered so convincingly that it induces a shudder. Plain and simply, the man can write, and it shows. At times the excessive gloom can be a bit ridiculous, but stepping away from the stories for a moment should be sufficient cure.

And this is not to say that there aren’t any moments of real shock. The overall path of most of the stories may be somewhat poorly concealed, but there are moments in most that reader won’t see coming. And some of the stories aren’t as transparent: “The Color Out of Space” remained a hellish mystery all the way through, while the final horrible revelation in “The Thing on the Doorstep” really did get to me.

Of all the tales here, the one that stuck with me the most was not one of the long Mythos works, but rather a shorter story, "The Silver Key." It borders tangentially on the Mythos proper, and its protagonist, Randolph Carter, appears in at least one other story, but it wasn’t the plot that grasped my attention. Rather, I found myself fascinated by the story’s opening paragraphs, in which Lovecraft builds the philosophical framework in which Carter resides. The author may have intended this brief passage only to set the atmosphere for the tale, but I was so interested by what Lovecraft had to say, intentional or otherwise, about his protagonist’s epistemology that the story itself was rather a letdown. In frank, frighteningly unapologetic terms, Lovecraft has described the classical position of the postmodernist (in itself an amusing irony, but remarkable when one considers he was writing in the late 1920’s). How autobiographical this section is I don’t know, but it seems to me that of all the words of his I’ve read these are the most important to understanding the man’s work.

“When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams,” our narrative begins, and then we are given a brief summary of Carter’s attempts to replace what he has lost. At every turn, however, Carter finds that whatever facet of our mundane world he examines falls short of the beauty of his half-remembered dream world. First he looks to the scientific world, seeking in the mysteries of the atomic or cosmic realms the wonder he had found in his dreams, but he fails to find it in “things whose laws are known and measurable.” Moreover, he cannot ascribe any real import to them, “as the blind cosmos grinds aimlessly on from nothing to something and from something back to nothing again.” Then he turns to the church, “for thence stretched mystic avenues which seemed to promise escape from life,” but he is quickly repulsed by “the owlish gravity and grotesque claims of solid truth” he finds instead (and heaven forbid that anyone, particularly the adherents of Christianity, should lay any claims to objective truth). Having forsaken religion he turns to the humanists, who seek solidarity in our common experience. These, too, are flawed, however, as “they did not see that good and evil and beauty and ugliness are only ornamental fruits of perspective, whose sole value lies in their linkage to what chance made our fathers think and feel.” Unsatisfied and unimpressed with some six thousand years of human philosophy, Carter resumes his search for the key to his dreams.

What fascinates me so much about this brief introduction to a largely forgettable story is the start, uncompromising language Lovecraft uses to describe the world. The examples I’ve quoted are just a small handful in a sea of scornful denunciation. And the scary thing is that he is spot on in his assessments. Religion, if it does not indeed rest upon some overarching objectivity, is simply worthless at best, duplicitous and malicious at worst. Materialism, whether as objective fact or relativistic interpretation, offers no moral guidance; in fact it would seem to condone lawlessness and anarchy. Humanism, though a noble sentiment, is ultimately empty as it lacks any sort of enforcing authority outside of the human agents it purports to govern.

So is Carter correct to seek refuge in his dreams? Let’s examine more closely his ultimate conclusion. At some point during his search, Carter realizes that, “he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.” But he does value one over the other, specifically his dream-world. Why? “Calm, lasting beauty comes only in a dream, and this solace the world had thrown away when in its worship of the real it threw away the secrets of childhood and innocence.” Carter seeks only beauty, but, sentiments concerning the eye of the beholder notwithstanding, in abandoning the objective for the aesthetic he has made aesthetics into his standard of objectivity. Thus his relativism collapses in upon itself, as relativism will always do.

“But wait,” the astute reader will cry, “if Carter’s relativism is illogical, how come you said Lovecraft was correct in lambasting the various proponents of objectivism?” Yes, I did say that, because Lovecraft’s arguments are, as far as they go, quite correct. However, I also inserted a caveat, which will lead said astute reader to the actual, correct option (if you need a hint, read any of the other reviews I’ve posted on this site). Suffice it to say that there is objective truth and that we can know it, though not through any effort of our own.

So there you have it: a collection chock full of intriguing sci-fi/horror tales, and one rather inconspicuous but monstrously fascinating philosophical treatise. Even if the latter isn’t quite your cup of tea, this anthology is still an ideal entry point into Lovecraft’s fiction. The presence of so many of his most indelible tales and characters makes sure of that. If you’re into sci-fi/horror, and want to see how we got from Edgar Allan Poe to Neil Gaiman, pick up this collection.
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Oct 27, 2010 David Waterman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The cover of this book is deceptive. On it are supposed depictions of some of the horrible subjects of the short stories within, in all their gruesome detail. It is Lovecraft's subtlety, however, and not the terrifying imagery that make his writings so effective. Although his writing style can sometimes seem formulaic (beginning with a teaser of the horror to come and following with a description of a New England setting before really starting the narrative), I believe this is only because the f...more

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Mar 03, 2010 Harris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a bit of a slog at times, but I'm glad I read it. None of the stories were scary in the slightest, but quite a few were hilarious. For example, Whisperer in Darkness is about aliens from Pluto who fly to earth at the speed of light using their "ether-resistant wings". There's even some nonsense about disembodied but functioning human brains in jars... Or Dreams In the Witch House, which is about an evil witch and her human-faced pet rat, who run around scaring people in dreams and kindn...more This was a bit of a slog at times, but I'm glad I read it. None of the stories were scary in the slightest, but quite a few were hilarious. For example, Whisperer in Darkness is about aliens from Pluto who fly to earth at the speed of light using their "ether-resistant wings". There's even some nonsense about disembodied but functioning human brains in jars... Or Dreams In the Witch House, which is about an evil witch and her human-faced pet rat, who run around scaring people in dreams and kindnapping children on Halloween and "May Eve"... We also have Dunwich Horror, about some kind of invisible monster who *gasp* ends up knocking over a barn and a house! Truly unspeakable horror...

At first, it all seems quite ridiculous (and it is), but the relentlessly funereal tone wore me down and I eventually became something of a believer. All these stories are about doomed and lonely men of reason, who gradually lose their faith in science and go half-crazy by the end. After a while, it becomes quite fatalistic and depressing, and I grew to enjoy Lovecraft's unapologetically existential vision.

But there's no doubt that all the stories are dreadfully predictable, and his writing style is almost unbearably florid. He writes absolutely terrible dialogue and most of the tales are rather poorly paced, leading to protracted sections of pure tedium. He over-describes everything but takes great pains to convince you that the lurking monsters are undescribable and blasphemous and unspeakable, and that just looking upon them would drive any human to madness. Undescribable or not, Lovecraft never fails to describe them in detail, usually as some painfully generic fish monsters or horribly unimaginative tentacled aliens from Jupiter. These "horrors" are simply never as impressive or as unsettling as the author seemed to think. It becomes a bit much after a while and I just started wishing for some slightly more interesting scenarios or at least some subtlety, but it never happened.

Still, it's alright. I became accustomed to the writing style eventually and even found some nicely written passages. My favourite stories were:

"Rats in the Walls", which was the only story that seriously brought into question the protagonist's sanity, as well as the reliability of his narration. I liked the ambiguity at the end.

"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" which set up a nicely creepy scene and then followed up with a tense and credible set-piece. It's also the only story with a moderately satisfying "twist".

and "The Thing On the Doorstep", which was the only story to make me feel true sympathy for the protagonist, whose weak-will and good nature allow him to be manipulated and abused by his evil wife. This story also has the most sublimely ridiculous twist of the whole book. You see, the evil wife turns out to actually be the evil father-in-law, evilly possessing the body of his dead daughter....

3/5 overall.
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Oct 25, 2009 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, age-adult, horror, classics, sci-fi

It's hard to believe that I went so long without having read H.P. Lovecraft, considering that I love horror and most of my favorite horror authors are influenced by his work. For some reason I thought his stories would be hard to connect with - probably because of the whole "Cthulhu" / made up word thing. I found three of his short story collections at the library and chose to begin with this one largely because it contained the story "The Call of Cthulhu."

The first few short stories reminded me...more It's hard to believe that I went so long without having read H.P. Lovecraft, considering that I love horror and most of my favorite horror authors are influenced by his work. For some reason I thought his stories would be hard to connect with - probably because of the whole "Cthulhu" / made up word thing. I found three of his short story collections at the library and chose to begin with this one largely because it contained the story "The Call of Cthulhu."

The first few short stories reminded me a lot of Edgar Allan Poe, in particular "The Picture in the House," "The Outsider," and "In the Vault" : they were short, had a lot of gothic atmosphere, and usually involved some ironic twist at the end. The other early short stories were strange and only later did I connect them to the "Cthulhu Mythos" that dominates the other half the short stories in this collection. Apparently one of the earlier stories, "The Silver Key," is the start of Lovecraft's "Dream Cycle," and I immediately thought of Joe Hill's
Locke & Key, Vol. 1 Welcome to Lovecraft.

The Cthulhu stories are more science fiction or speculative fiction, and though not all of them feature that monster Cthulhu, they all involve races of alien creatures that lie somewhat dormant deep inside the earth or in the ocean or in the hills of Vermont, creatures which often inspire small cults of worship in strange places. Often there are stones with "weird geometry" covered in unknown heiroglyphs, and mysterious texts like the Necromicon and others that have instructions as to how to release the aliens from their slumber. The aliens are usually described as being of some amphibian or squid-like nature, with tentacles and green skin, which sounds completely ridiculous, but the way they are discovered in the story somehow makes it seem almost possible. Usually the main character is driven mad by the discovery of these secrets.

This was definitely a good book to read around Halloween. I was also a bit disturbed by the geographical proximity of these stories to where I live: Lovecraft grew up in Providence, RI, but he indicates in one story a place past Fitchburg, Ayer, and Gardner, all places I've been and which are about a 20 minutes' drive from my house. I thought the "ironic twist" of some of the stories was a bit weak and obvious, but overall the bizarreness of these alien races lurking in the corners of our own society was what makes these stories memorable.(less)

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Mar 01, 2012 Cliff Riseborough rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I find myself wishing that I had first read Lovecraft many moons ago, because goddamn have I been missing out. The weakest stories are the ones that over describe whatever evil is featured that time, but the good ones...and there are many...let your imagination run wild and fill in the horrible, horrible blanks. So effective, and so good.

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Dec 09, 2011 Earl Grey Tea rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, science-fiction, short-stories

Hooray for xenophobia! Lovecraft's prejudice is not just against those nasty extraterrestrial monsters that drive average human's psyche to the point of oblivion; it also includes oversea immigrants that are from a non-Anglo background. It is interesting to see the mentality of a person from almost a hundred years ago, but it is a bit disappointing that this discrimination in the writing is not just the character reflecting the times, but also is reflecting the author's own mentality.

Beyond the...more Hooray for xenophobia! Lovecraft's prejudice is not just against those nasty extraterrestrial monsters that drive average human's psyche to the point of oblivion; it also includes oversea immigrants that are from a non-Anglo background. It is interesting to see the mentality of a person from almost a hundred years ago, but it is a bit disappointing that this discrimination in the writing is not just the character reflecting the times, but also is reflecting the author's own mentality.

Beyond the bigotry and lack of political correctness, it is good to finally see exactly what exactly is the inspiration for the Arkham Horror board game that I used to play into the wee hours of the night during college. Hats off to Richard Launius for developing Lovecraft's world into a board game assessable to the modern day geek.

As for the text itself, this is no light read. Be prepared to sit down and really focus to decently understand what is going on. Drowsy commutes home on the subway Friday evening are probably not the best place to read this book. The writing style could probably be compared to Edgar Allen Poe; much of the story seems a bit obtuse to me and many of the endings seemed quite anticlimactic. For all of the stories in this collection, Lovecraft used the same style of writing for almost all of the stories. Basically, the (male) narrator starts the story exclaiming that his wits are gone and then proceeds to start from the beginning of the story. For me, this takes the fear out of the story since I know that the protagonist will be alive by the end of the story.

Despite that, there were a few scenes here and there that frightened me to an extent. One notably was from "The Shadow of Innsmouth" which is akin to most of modern day horror of some unknown entity outside your room trying to enter. Another story that I really enjoyed was "The Colour Out of Space." After a tiny bit of research, it turns out to be not only one of his most popular works, but also Lovercraft's favourite (a small tribute to H.P.'s anglophilia) stories. I am not sure if there was an "evolution" or "development" in writing styles from his time period, but as a twenty first century reader, I could really get into this story and flow of the writing made it easy to follow.

Overall, while there were some interesting ideas, concepts and story lines, this book felt more like something I would have to read for an English Literature class and not something I would sit down and just enjoy.(less)

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Nov 15, 2012 Kiel Van Horn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I love reading Lovecraft. He's a brilliant writer, full of insanely imaginative ideas that are just really out there. And, writing in 1920s, his ideas must have been really out there for the time.

Another reason I love reading him is his gift for visceral writing. He knows how to capture the mood of what he's trying to convey.

He grew up in Providence, so a lot of his stories take place in New England. I particularly enjoy reading his renditions of the New England countryside, and reading of pla...more

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Mar 11, 2011 Pamela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bizarre, creepy, fantasy, horror

I admit that I am new to all things Lovecraftian, but I was drawn in from what I'd heard about his influence on modern horror. His stories have a reputation of being extremely scary.

Something may not connect properly in my brain, but I am rarely, if ever, scared by a story. If I am, it's usually a sense of unease prompted by a discussion of some social problem (Fast Food Nation comes to mind here). I don't get the willies or goosebumps from reading about things that go bump in the night. If you...more

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Nov 11, 2010 Libby rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, horror

Honestly, I didn't finish this one. I also have a hard time rating it. I'm not a horror person, but Jay really likes H.P. Lovecraft and wanted me to read this, also I thought it would be fun to read around Halloween. As far as horror goes, it was exactly the kind of horror book I would want to read- lots of insinuation and not too graphic, but good writing. However, as I said before, I'm just not a horror person, and I found myself not wanting to read it. (probably the fact that all my reading l...more

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Nov 21, 2008 Tony Gleeson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is one of the best collections of Lovecraft I've ever encountered, and an excellent place to start if you haven't explored his work. The reader newly introduced to HPL needs to be aware of the anthologies of fragments later completed by Derleth, or never completed at all, as well as the collections of very early Lovecraft stories. There's nothing wrong with any of those and if you become a Lovecraftian you really should ultimately read them. But they're not the real meat and potatoes, the s...more

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Apr 30, 2012 Michael.e.philpott rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own

I've had several people throughout my life say that Lovecraft is a "must read." After having read twelve of his stories, I must disagree. Granted, his prose is of the classic type that I enjoy, however, this only goes so far. First of all, his persistant use of his characters' "disbelief" in the fantastic discoveries they make is believable for perhaps one or two stories, but afterwards it's insulting to the reader. You're not surprising us, Lovecraft, we're reading your stories because we KNOW...more

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Oct 24, 2011 Jordan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, short-stories

A fairly decent collection. Lovecraft uses pretty much the same formula and the same language for most of his stories. It's pretty predictable most of the time. A learned man who is a firm skeptic comes across mysterious circumstances, he investigates looking for a rational and sane explanation, weird things happen, he tries to rationalize when he should probably be running the other way, even weirder things happen, finally he has to concede that something crazy and otherworldly is going on... o...more

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Nov 21, 2009 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: HP Lovecraft Fans, Sci Fi Fans, Horror Literature Fans

I read this book, as the last in my October 2009 horror fiction binge. I first read a short story, Call of Cthulu, from this book in High School when I was first introduced to H.P. Lovecraft.

This is a collection of short stories and Novellas. This book contains:

1) The Rats in the Walls
Wherein a man acquires an ancestral family home and finds the infernal scurrying in the walls maddening.

2) The Picture in the House
Wherein a traveler caught in a rain storm seeks refuge in a curiously anachronistic...more

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Apr 14, 2013 James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The very first H.P. Lovecraft collection I ever purchased and still my favorite one. I believe I got this book in the late Summer/early Fall of 1999 (around the start of my Goth period). It was my first exposure to H.P. Lovecraft, and was pretty much the collection that got me interested in horror short stories. Since then I've gotten many, many other Lovecraft collections and anthologies, but this copy remains my favorite (I especially adore the art by Michael Whelan that graces the front and b...more

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