Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of H. P. Lovecraft

by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, August Derleth (editor)

Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre: The Best of H. P. Lovecraft

book data

1338 ratings, 4.24 average rating, 115 reviews (more data...)

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published

May 12th 1987 (first published 1982) by Ballantine

binding

Paperback, 432 pages

isbn

0345350804 (isbn13: 9780345350800)

description

Introduction by Robert Bloch. Wraparound cover art by Michael Whelan. Contains: The Rats in the Walls; The Picture in the House; The Outsider; Pickm...more

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All ratings | 5 stars (586) | 4 stars (526) | 3 stars (188) | 2 stars (32) | 1 star (5) | avg 4.24

all | this edition

Ayla

Ayla rated it:

06/19/08

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 th...more

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Werner

Werner rated it:

05/26/08

bookshelves: science-fiction

Read in January, 2001

recommends it for: Fans of "horror" and of horrific 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 wh...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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2 comments

Jeremy

Jeremy rated it:

11/02/07

Read in September, 2000

recommends it for: People who aren't afraid to look into the abyss ( because it might be looking back).

Lovecraft has put a name to my fears. He has explored fear with his language and uncovered what really rankles humanity: nothing. It is the unknown nothing, the something at the edge of the darkness, the idea that maybe we are alone or even more frightening, maybe we're not.

It has been said his dialogue is archaic and unformed and that certainly is a valid criticism, but his writing shines in other methods and the sense of grandeur, of dread, of vastness is captured perfectly.

I'll giv...more

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Jeb

Jeb rated it:

11/21/08

bookshelves: anthology, horror

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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Phil

Phil rated it:

05/18/08

bookshelves: fantasy

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in January, 2006

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 un...more

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3 comments

adam

adam rated it:

03/05/07

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, sacrifice...more

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Tony Gleeson

Tony rated it:

11/21/08

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...more

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Erica

Erica rated it:

05/04/08

Read in March, 2008

recommends it for: Lovecraft fans

I tried reading this book about a year ago but, I ended up leaving it in my bio lab and I never saw it again. Fortunately, my roommate's boyfriend is a big Lovecraft fan and let me borrow his entire collection. I glad he did.

I enjoy a good horror story on occasion and Lovecraft's are ok. However, for every story that I read and enjoyed in this volume, there were two that I didn't. I found a lot of these stories very tedious and now that I think about it, those that I didn't like were the one...more

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Nikki

Nikki rated it:

04/23/08

After years of hearing references to Lovecraft and the mythos he created, I finally decided to check it out. I'm about half way through this collection of short stories. It's easy to see how influential he's been to modern horror writers. For instance, many of his tales take place in or mention a city called Arkham, which might have inspired the creation of Stephen King's Castle Rock. The scope of the whole thing is actually pretty amazing. The stories themselves stand the test of time, and ...more

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Mike

Mike rated it:

01/21/08

bookshelves: fantasy-sci-fi-horror

Read in June, 2007

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" ...more

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James

James rated it:

03/29/08

Read in March, 2008

okay. so this is the third time i've read this book in the last 10 or 12 years, and every time, it almost feels completely new. it's just so dense that it takes a long time to read and what you absorb one time really only makes up a fraction of what you remember. maybe after reading it 3 or 4 more times, i'll remember certain stories in full. who knows.

either way, it's a wonderful book, and a great selection of lovecraft's work. it's dripping and oozing with paranoia, revulsion, and hor...more

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Luis

Luis rated it:

08/12/07

Read in January, 1992

I've read the Lovecraft stories in this volume and others a bunch of times. I caution the reader, though, that every time I have recommended Lovecraft to an adult, the adult has scoffed at him as overblown and baroque. I don't disagree with this sentiment but I find that Lovecraft's self-conscious ornamentation adds rather than detracts from the world he creates. For historical reasons, Lovecraft is a must-read. He is generally credited as being the forerunner of modern horror and one of the...more

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Shinywen

Shinywen rated it:

01/15/08

Lovecraft has an annoying habit of not actually revealing his climactic moments in great detail a lot of the time. He does the "it could not be named...it could not be described...it drove men mad to look upon it!" thing. But that said, it kind of makes sense when you consider the time period he was writing in and the fact that his irrational, illogical, and supposedly incomprehensible storyscapes and monsters are a rebellion against the rational, scientific trend that was going on at ...more

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Matthew

Matthew rated it:

10/29/08

This is not a book to read straight through in one sitting. It is more like something to open up when you're in the mood for a special kind of dread. Lovecraft's obsession with decaying New England archictecture and fabricated blasphemous religions can get monotonous.

Lovecraft is patient in building his scares. The terror mounts slowly and steadily with intricate descriptions of strange doings in New England, but the last few pages are almost always boring after the monster/source of terr...more

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Elizabeth

Elizabeth rated it:

11/27/08

Read in October, 2008

recommends it for: people not averse to horror stories

It was fun at first, but all the stories became the same after oh, say, three. He's not a bad writer (Victorian and quaint, a fun thing in a horror story writer), but he seems fixated on cannibalism. All of the stories are about cannibalism in some form or another. I just wish he had some other trick to pull out of his hat.

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Hanson

Hanson rated it:

08/11/07

Well...I'm not at all a horror fan either in movies or in books, but Lovecraft was introduced to me by a friend when I was 18-ish and has had a deep impact on my mind. Maybe because I was working in an old 19th century brick building in the stormy darkness of late autumn while listening to some crazy music when I read it. Every year when it gets dark and windy I think of this book.

Lovecraft's writing is from the 1920's and consists of a mixture of dark science fiction and wh...more

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Cullen

Cullen rated it:

02/12/08

bookshelves: horror, lovecraftian, short-stories

This is the first collection of Lovecraft’s work I ever read, and it’s a great primer for someone interested in his fiction. The best of the stories include "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Colour out of Space," "The Dunwich Horror" (my personal favorite), "The Dreams in the Witch-House," "Pickman's Model," and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

Several of the stories in the book have been translated to film. "The Call of Cthulhu&q...more

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Ramjet

Ramjet rated it:

(review of isbn 0345463293)

11/30/08

What can I say about lovecraft that wasn't already said. He's the inspiration of just about every modern day horror writer and I think that he's probably the best. Read rats in the walls and the music of eric zann, those are two of my fave from this collection.

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Urania

Urania rated it:

08/02/08

Read in February, 2008

I received this book as a gift from a friend and reread Lovecraft for the first time since my childhood; it turns out that I'm still fond of Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and the rest of those Lovecraftian creations.

I generally enjoy Lovecraft for the flavor infused in his work, and many of the short stories collected in this compilation are great examples of his sense of style - though some of the stories included are definitely better than others, hence my 3-star review. "The Shadow Over Inn...more

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Stephen

Stephen rated it:

01/09/08

Read in June, 2006

Falling between two horror masters (in my opinion) Poe and King, Lovecraft takes a simple formula and to great effect creates terrifying and amazing landscapes. Although the language takes a bit of dictionary work to get used to, it's well worth it.
My favorite stories (I have two short story collection books, I can't remember if they are all in this one) are "The Colour Out of Space", "At the Mountains of Madness", "Shadow out of Time", "Whisper in the Dark&q...more

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