Cthulhu's Reign [Mass Market Paperback]

The premise of Cthulhu's Reign is simple. What happens to humanity after the rising of R'lyeh? Most Cthulhu mythos fiction is concerned with discovering the existence of humanity's true place in the order of things or about cultists trying to bring back Cthulhu. Cthulhu's Reign takes a different perspective.

The book is a very nice mass market paperback with 309 pages, including a 7 page introduction, and a few pages of authors' biographies. All stores were newly published for this book; I did not see any major typographical errors. The attractive cover art shows immense tentacles rearing up out of the sea but I am not sure who created it, even after going over the book carefully. I was familiar with about half the authors in this volume. I was captivated by the uniformly high quality of the writing; there was not one story that I did not enjoy immensely. I have some beefs of course that I suppose I need to get out of the way. First, as a bibliophile I would have loved a limited edition hardcover, with interior illustrations. In fact, the last mythos anthology I can think of offhand that was published directly as a mmpb was Miskatonic University in 1996! Most such books at least start life as a trade paperback. Perhaps DAW only markets mmpbs? Perhaps it says something about the increasing popularity of fiction inspired by HPL's creations? My second issue is that the title is not listed as volume 1 in DAW's new series of Lovecraftian fiction. Oh, well, I can dream. The introduction by Darrell Schweitzer is, frankly, brilliant. It tells you just about everything you need to know to appreciate where these stories are coming from, and shows off his scholarly credentials to boot. If you never read anything by HPL, he suggests you read The Dunwich Horror, The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow Over Innsmouth to get the gist. You can find the text of these stories free on line, if you are not a Lovecraftian and want to approach this book with proper frame of reference. The stories in Cthulhu's Reign are quite thematically similar but they are not really monster stories at all, like so many mythos stories are. This is more a series of meditations of human nature at the end of things, a sort of subset of post apocalyptic fiction, this time with tentacles. That makes the anthology all the more fascinating and, I think, broadens its appeal. Having a boatload of talented authors to call upon helped too!

Here are the contents:

The Walker in the Cemetery by Ian Watson - Ian Watson is new to me. Of all the contents, I found the prose here to be the most awkward. At first I was hesitant but I became an enthusiastic fan as Cthulhu spawn traps some surviviors of R'lyeh's rising and a game of cat and mouse ensues.

Sanctuary by Don Webb - Mr. Webb has a collection with many stories of interest to Lovecraftians, When They Came. A small village in south Texas has so far been overlooked, mstly, by the earth's new masters. This was absolutely wonderful. I hope Mr. Webb writes more mythos soon.

Her Acres of Pastoral Playground by Mike Allen - Another new author to me, Mr. Allen gives us a wrenching picture of a man struggling to hold his family together in the face of hopelessness.

Spherical Trigonometry by Ken Asamatsu - Asamatsu san edited the landmark series of Japanese mythos stories, Lairs of the Hidden Gods, published in 4 volumes by Kurodahan Press. His presence adds an international feel to the anthology. Everyone knows the Hounds of Tindalos cannot move through curved space. So what to do about that?

What Brings the Void by Will Murray - Will Murray has written a number of Cthulhu mythos stories, notably To Clear the Earth from The Shub Niggurath Cycle; I hope we see more from his pen soon. A NRO operative tries to use his psychic abilities to get intel on the invaders in this engaging story.

The New Pauline Corpus by Matt Cardin - Mr. Cardin has a collection, Dark Awakenings coming out from Mythos Books. It will contain his previously hard to get novella, The God of Foulness. Wow, what a magnificent story! A theologian tries to reconcile what has happened with what he spent his life studying.

Ghost Dancing by Darrell Schweitzer - The estimable editor of Chtulhu's Reign is a Lovecraftian scholar who wrote the biographical Discovering HP Lovecraft. He also wrote one of my favorite mythos stories, Why We Do It, found in Dead But Dreaming. What can you salvage at the end of all things? The allusion to the Ghost Dancing movement was acute.

This is How the World Ends by John R. Fultz - Mr. Fultz wrote a short novel online, The Wizards of Hyperborea, perhaps more in the vein of Clark Ashton Smith. Alas I don't know if the work is still available; I have not seen it in print. When R'lyeh rises will you fall, fight or be assimilated? Like many other stories here, the protagonist is moved to cling to his humanity.

The Shallows by John Langan - I am unfamiliar with the work or Mr. Langan but I have to remedy that! The Shallows is another brilliant story, as moving for what is says as much as what it doesn't, as a man clings to his daily routine.

Such Bright and Risen Madness in Our Names by Jay Lake - Another new author for me. A man, or what was once a man, joins with others to resist what has happened. The prose and plotting were top notch.

The Seals of New R'lyeh by Gregory Frost - Apparently Mr. Frost will be appearing at the 2010 Odyssey Writing Workshop; he is new to me. OK, we would like to think we will all behave nobly when the worst comes. Why then did I chortle so much while reading about these two petty crooks who keep trying to get aleg up, with mixed results.

Holocaust of Ecstasy by Brian Stableford - Mr. Stabelford has a short mythos novel coming out soon from Perilous Press, The Womb of Time. The title of this story comes from a line by HPL. What exactly he meant is open to speculation, so Mr. Stableford gives us his meditation on what the future holds.

Vastation by Laird Barron - I loved Mr. Barron's collection The Imago Sequence with the incredible story Old Virginia; his new collection Occultation will be out soon from Nightshade Books and I hope it has some Lovecraftian stories. Vastation was fascinating and complex, with layered prose and was also wonderful.

Nothing Personal by Richard Lupoff - Mr. Lupoff is well known to mythos fans for his collections Terrors and Visions. A first alien encounter doesn't exactly go as planned in this gripping story.

Remnants by Fred Chappell - I confess I could not stand Mr. Chappell's novel, Dagon, but I like his short fiction. Remnants may actually have been the most upbeat of all the stories here.

I think this book is a triumph. Although a Cthulhu mythos anthology, it focuses on the human response to the unthinkable. I really liked all of the stories and some were flat out brilliant, where usually in this type of book there are more than a few dogs; I credit Mr. Schweitzer's selection of talented writers for this. Furthermore Cthulhu's Reign is an inexpensive mass market paperback, making it a bargain. I only hope Mr. Schweitzer and DAW have more such books in the planning stages.

PS: The editor is not the only one who can use Cthulhu in a limerick:
A tentacled Old One named Cthulhu
In space devoured Captain Sulu
The Enterprise tasted
Not so bad when well basted
With the crewmen all crying, boo hulhu

HPL avoided writing his own story on this theme - Old Ones conquer Earth - IMO because the topic offers too little creative possibilities. Old Ones trying to infiltrate Earth = many options for stories, Old Ones ruling Earth = Game Over, humans run around like cockroaches caught when one turns on the light in a Manhattan kitchen at 4 AM, and are crushed like bugs after some futile scurrying. That summary covers maybe 90% of the content herein, so if you read straight through, you will get mighty bored.

Schweitzer's career as editor and author has trod a fine line between the professional horror field and the murkier fanfic realm of some dude in Mom's basement cranking out six page Cthuluian pulp mags on his Mac. Schweitzer knows both kinds of writers and reached out to them for this collection. This collection treads a similar path between writers you probably have never heard of even if you read a lot of horror, and more well-known guys like Langan, Lupoff, & Barron. The split is roughly 50/50 with all the big names towards the rear of the book.

My favorite story is actually probably the worst one in here, Ian Watson's "The Walker in the Cemetery" feels like a classic MST3K episode - "Terror of Mini-Cthulhu" or "I Married an Elder God". Tourists in a Genoan cemetery are isolated in a little time pocket during the Fall of Mankind and are stalked by a 7 foot tall Cthulhu (not the Spawn of Cthulhu mind you, the big kahuna himself). The characters somehow leap to all kinds of inexplicable conclusions involving the CERN particle accelerator and then the lead stereotype. the Militaristic Elderly Prussian, postulates there might be a smaller version of Cthulhu in the cemetery somewhere and if only they can find and kill dwarf Cthulhu, they will kill all the bigger ones including their stalker. They all grab shovels and rakes and start looking for Baby Cthulhu, but the 7 foot tall Mini-Cthulhu is all they find. This is more than enough to keep them occupied.

Mini-C disembowels some fodder with his claws, rips one guy's head and spinal cord out a la Mortal Kombat, and generally acts like an octopoid (and more effective) Tom with the rapidly diminishing (and virtually ineffectual) tourists playing the roles of Jerry. Watson even gives us an itemized list of name, nationality, and profession so we can use it as a score card to see who's still standing. The characters have so little personality that the few caricatures we are exposed to (the dumb Evangelical Christian Americans, the superstitious Italian peasants, the Tragic Honeymooners, etc) stand out from the anonymous ranks.

When the roster diminishes, Mini-C decides to be sporting and leaves out plates of salami & pasta to keep the survivors alive longer so he can toy with them further. (He gets these from Bennie's Inter-Dimensional Deli, a well-known R'ylehian eatery...OK, kidding about the deli. The food source is not mentioned specifically.)

Anyway, this hybrid of Friday the 13th and the Call of Cthulhu continues interminably, and then we have euthanasia by judo strangulation, tentacle rape (complete with Hentai trademark Irresistible Feminine Ecstasy), the Bride and Child of Cthulhu, and souls transmigrated into statues. This is an unintentionally hilarious read but fortunately (?) the rest of the collection is not quite so absurd.

Anyway, among the lesser known writes, Webb is excellent, Asamatsu good, and the rest kind of tread water. Cardin's theological essay linking the New Testament with Cthulhu stands out for its oddity but not in a good way. It is both a bit of a philosophical stretch and also not really a story as not much happens besides a shell narrative framing the essay. Schweitzer's own piece is mediocre, not his best stuff, and the Murray story is disappointing as it seems to be setting up a plot involving psychic spies & human resistance and then goes nowhere other than the usual soul-shattering doom and despair. Among the pros, most are OK, Langan and Lake are very good, and Barron excellent.

If you really, really, really like the Cthulhu mythos, and indeed read nothing else but Cthulhu fic and Permuted Press zombie lit, get this. If you want to see Cthulhu deliver Italian food to tentacle fodder tourists, get this. Other than these pretty small sub-groups, general readers and even mainstream horror fic fans can probably pass on this. Datlow's "Lovecraft Unbound" has much higher quality content available for HPL fans that are looking for mood and stylistic proficiency rather than big monsters smashing buildings with tentacles. Few of these stories achieve the existential subtlety of Lovecraft's best work, and most aim for the quick and obvious effects of supernatural apocalypse fiction by taking very similar paths.

All of Lovecraft's stories hint at a time in the future when Cthulhu and other terrible things from beyond space and time will return to bring the earth back under "their dark and terrible sway." The stories in this collection are all versions of what the world is like after this has happened.

I also liked the introduction by the editor and found his insight into the philosophical difference between Lovecraft's work and those of some of his followers really interesting. He mentions how Lovecraft wrote in world where there were things so totally outside of the human sphere of understanding, so totally alien, that not only could we barely understand them, but that we were as unworthy of there notice as some kind of insect larvae would be to us. We do not merit there attention except maybe as food. Some of the authors who went on to write stories in in the Cthulhu Mythos wrote them in terms of good fighting evil. The editor goes so far as to call this "Derlethian heresy" in that it denies the core of Lovecraft's view of the universe as "a vast, impersonal, mindless chaos, in which we exist purely by biological-chemical accident, and on a very small scale. His utterly inhuman monsters are symbols of forces in the cosmos-at-large for which human endeavors have no significance or validity." It is in the realization that the moral order we impose on our universe is just a frail concept and has no meaning to these creatures that descend upon us, that true horror begins. The horror we would feel if we were treated like we treat chickens or cattle or even yeast. All the stories in this anthology follow what the editor would call Lovecraft's philosophy.

I don't know how anyone who had not read at least some of Lovecraft's original stories would like this as a stand-alone collection of horror stories. If you haven't read at least "At The Mountains Of Madness", "The Call of Cthulhu", "Nyarlathotep", "The Shadow Out of Time" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", I can't imagine how you would understand what is going on in some if not most of the stories. If you enjoyed Lovecraft's work, this has some interesting takes on what will happen when the stars are right. =)