Lovecraft Unbound [Paperback]

Earlier this week I finished Ellen Datlow's new horror-themed anthology, Lovecraft Unbound (2009), featuring 22 contemporary authors riffing on and personalizing familiar Lovecraft themes and settings: impending apocalypse and cosmic horror, Antarctic quests and ancient cities, isolation and loneliness. Given the subject matter, the tone of Datlow's collection could have easily detoured into overwhelming despair.

Lovecraft Unbound, however, is a very well rounded collection and offers a wide range of stories, from irredeemably bleak personal visions (Laird Barron's "Catch Hell") to comical pastiches. While the majority of the stories tend toward the serious, the likes of Richard Bowes, William Browning Spencer, Joyce Carol Oates, and Nick Mamatas bring much-needed levity to the proceedings, providing the collection with a nice tonal balance.

Who am I kidding, though? I like my horror fiction straight up -- dark, scary, and cold sober. Here are a few brief thoughts on such stories, my favorites of the collection.

* Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud team up for the book's auspicious opening, "The Crevasse," which takes place in Antarctica just after World War I. Told in prose pruned to perfection, the authors use Lovecraft's cosmic emptiness, as well as the barren setting, to amplify and parallel the protagonist's profound personal loss. Allow me this hyperbole: "The Crevasse" is Lovecraft by way of Raymond Carver.

* Caitlin R. Kiernan's "Houses Under the Sea" (2007; one of the book's four reprints), the best story in the collection, reinforces Kiernan's place on my list of favorite short story writers. (You disagree? Get thee to her masterful 2005 collection, To Charles Fort, With Love.) A 30-plus-page novella, "Houses Under the Sea" is a straight-up weird fiction masterpiece: arresting in story and adventurous in style, abounding with emotional and intellectual layers, and overflowing with indelibly creepy imagery. It's also a persuasive argument for the power of weird fiction. Quite simply, "Houses Under the Sea" is awesome, the kind of story that keeps me loyal to the genre.

* When I finished reading Laird Barron's novella "Catch Hell," my hands were shaking. Not only with fear induced by the story, but with admiration for Barron's adroit writing. With how he slowly unveiled his characters' identities, imbued the text with deeply personal pain and perversity, and manipulated this reader's expectations from page one -- even the title, seemingly generic, smartly sets up the story's mingling of pagan and Judeo-Christian horror themes. Certainly, Barron is one of the most erudite of horror writers, and "Catch Hell" proves he knows not only his Lovecraft but his Arthur Machen and Ira Levin as well. To this reader, Barron seems intent on producing only major stories, as if he's trying to redefine the horror genre one publication at a time. I think he's succeeding.

Because I can never resist an opportunity for a list, I'll conclude with my ten favorite stories from Lovecraft Unbound.

1) "Houses Under the Sea," Caitlin R. Kiernan (2007; reprint)
2) "Catch Hell," Laird Barron
3) "The Crevasse," Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud
4) "The Din of Celestial Birds," Brian Evenson (1997; reprint)
5) "Marya Nox," Gemma Files
6) "Come Lurk With Me and Be My Love," William Browning Spencer
7) "The Recruitor," Michael Shea
8) "Machines of Concrete Light and Dark," Michael Cisco
9) "Sight Unseen," Joel Lane
10) "Leng," Marc Laidlaw

Lovecraft Unbound is an anthology produced by Dark Horse Comics and edited by the respected Ellen Datlow. It is a large trade paperback with a generous 336 pages, and costs a reasonable $19.95. The cover is an appropriate if uninspiring photo of Lovecraft. Production qualities were good; I do not recall any typos. One thing I really liked was at the end of each story there was a brief biography of the author and a comment by them about how HPL influenced them or their story. This should be a model for other anthologies. In many ways Lovecraft Unbound is very important because it is the first anthology of Lovecraftian themed stories edited by a woman, at least that I know about. Ann K. Schwader and Denise Dumars have released single author collections with a fair number of Cthulhu mythos stories, and Caitlyn Kiernan has written novels with Lovecraftian themes and concepts. Back in 1997 Joyce Carol Oates edited a collection of Lovecraft tales for Harper. In spite of this, the Cthulhu mythos has, until recently, been a sort of old boys club. Lately, however, more and more women have taken up the pen and added their names to the ever widening Lovecraft circle. Elizabeth Bear just won the Hugo for "Shoggoths in Bloom." In particular, the Cthulhu Unbound series from Permuted Press had a significant number of women authors. I wonder if either editor knew the other was going to use Unbound in their title.

Certainly this book has gotten more hype online than other titles in this vein; I've even seen on the shelves of local bookstores. It's good but I don't know that it's any better than other mythos books I've read lately. The purpose of the editor in compiling this anthology was to allow the authors to take Lovecraft's contributions and influences, and see what they could create, rather than asking for a new bunch of Cthulhu mythos stories. In a way, it is similar to the 1998 Golden Gryphon anthology Eternal Lovecraft (a least the last third of that book), or perhaps the 2005 Horrors Beyond from Elder Signs Press. It is roughly contemporary with Cthulhu Unbound, although in that series the editors wanted the authors stretching the limits of the Cthulhu mythos (The difference between the Cthulhu mythos and something being Lovecraftian is addressed at length by ST Joshi in The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu mythos. You can think of it as the difference between the monsters being the message vs the place of humanity as a flyspeck in an indifferently hostile cosmos.). more important than any philosophical underpinnings, whether this anthology will be successful depends on the quality of the prose. I mostly liked it, although I had quite a bit of heartburn with it too. When you ask for a Lovecraftian tale, I guess you get what you get and don't throw a fit.

"The Crevasse" by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud - After WWI, a team of Antarctic explorers accidentally stumble across a crevasse in the ice. Maybe there is evidence of ancient alien life there, maybe not. Maybe they are just losing it. This was a pretty engaging tale.

"The Office of Doom" by Richard Bowes - In flashback we find that as a prank, a librarian ordered an interlibrary loan of the Necronomicon from Miskatonic University. Complications ensue that echo down the years. This wasn't bad prose but for me it committed a major faux pas. In a mythos story if you mention HPL wrote fiction, and then it turns out that fiction was real, I find this plot device to be a major turn off. It destroys the mood/world building. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

"Sincerely, Petrified" by Anna Tambour - Some scientists spread rumors that stealing petrified wood from a national park invokes an ancient curse, trying to warp reality by changing people's expectations. Good enough if not especially original concept, but I found the prose pretty flat.

"The Din of Celestial Birds" by Brian Evenson - A man in some unnamed mountain range comes across an abandoned hit and sees a cape of feathers inside a cage. After that his world starts to crumble (fly?) away. This was a well written story but it wasn't really what I think of as Lovecraftian except in a rather tangential way.

"The Tenderness of Jackals" by Amanda Downum - In this story a modern ghoul is on the hunt. It's not really a Lovecraftian ghoul. It's not really a Lovecraftian tale. Pretty good, but perhaps out of place, like some others here.

"Sight Unseen" by Joel Lane - A young man whose father went off the deep end years ago is required to go through his father's estate to see if there is anything worth keeping. He tries to come to grips with his father's madness and how it affected him. Well written if not my cup of tea. Also the alternate reality that possessed the father seems to have been mundane mental illness instead of anything mythosian.

OK, here I am over 100 pages into the book and I haven't really been blown away by anything yet. It's all just OK.

"Cold Water Survival" by Holly Phillips - And now we get a brilliant tale, also set in Antarctica, as some young people make their home on a melting iceberg and seem to see alien shapes inside the ice. This was wonderful.

"Come Lurk with Me and Be My Love" by William Browning Spencer - Another absolute gem! A young man falls for the charm of a cultist's daughter only to find the cult is the truth. Superbly written and with a nice leavening of humor.

"Houses Under the Sea" by Caitlín R. Kiernan - Goodness me, but Caitlin Kiernan can write. This is a masterpiece, perhaps the jewel of this book. The lover of the leader of a cult tries to sort out what happened after a mass suicide.

"Machines of Concrete Light and Dark" by Michael Cisco - Michael Cisco is another outstanding author. This story uses certain Lovecraftian styles and plot devices without really being Lovecraftian per se. A young woman is lured to her doom by her incomprehensible friend.

"Leng" by Marc Laidlaw - This is a terrific story about a mycologist trying to reach the plateau of Leng, to see if there are any new species of fungus there, at the same time trying to find out what became of a previous expedition. Wonderful stuff with a great ending.

"In the Black Mill" by Michael Chabon - This is the only story in the anthology I have read previously, but heck if I can remember where. HPL names abound here, for example Yuggogheny Hills and Carlotta Brown-Jenkin. Apart from these in jokes, this is a great story of a secret society controlling a small town in the service of an ancient evil.

"One Day, Soon" by Lavie Tidhar - In this pretty good story a man loses himself inside time, inside a book.

"Commencement" by Joyce Carol Oates - Although Ms. Oates is perhaps the most famous author in the book, this story didn't do much for me. As part of a celebration of graduation at an unnamed university, there is a ritual much like Tlacaxipehualiztli. The anonymity of it all weakens the story. It was also predictable.

"Vernon, Driving" by Simon Kurt Unsworth - OK, a decent story about what desperation can lead a man in love to do, but not Lovecraftian or mythos in any sense.

"The Recruiter" by Michael Shea - Good, in the same way all of Mr. Shea's stories are well written, but this is not my favorite of his work. An elderly man is swept up by an entity he doesn't understand.

"Marya Nox" by Gemma Files - What a nifty little story! A temple consecrated to Our Lady of Night is violated, and everyone pays the consequences.

"Mongoose" by Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear - This is a space opera short story and actually is about transdimensional rifts and the Hounds of Tindalos. It is pretty darned good.

"Catch Hell" by Laird Barron - I just recently read The Imago Sequence and have become a huge fan of Laird Barron. This is a wonderful story, more about the other, the fantastic, and how it can affect damaged people. Not really mythosian but has a Lovecraftian feel in the same sense as The Wicker Man (not the remake, the novel or the first movie).

"That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable" by Nick Mamatas - This is a post mythos apocalyptic piece, and is a good, if brief, story.

So what is my bottom line? I'm not sure! I was hoping for much more than I got, but maybe I'm just greedy. Some of these stories are as good as any Lovecraftian tales I have read, for example the ones by Kiernan, Spencer and Phillips. Most were well written and highly effective, but a few were more tedious. All such anthologies are a mixed bag, I guess. I think general horror fans would like it and there is much here to please the dedicated Lovecraftian. However, for me the best modern Cthulhu mythos or Lovecraftian anthology remains Dead But Dreaming.

H. P. Lovecraft's work stands as foundational for generations of writers. His continued influence is everywhere: in movies, television, and role-paying games. Search "Lovecraft" on Google or Amazon and be bombarded by free homage websites and numerous collections of his tales, as well as collections featuring contemporary stories inspired by his legacy.

"Lovecraft Unbound", edited by Ellen Datlow, stands above them all. In a collection boasting the quality one has come to expect from a Datlow-anthology, twenty-two of today's best writers present their visions of Lovecraft, managing to invoke a timeless, nameless dread in new, fresh ways. There's no "weak" story in this collection, but some of the most memorable are:

"The Crevasse", by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud, in which a doomed expeditionary team discovers something ominous and unearthly deep beneath the icy Antarctic wastes. "Sincerely, Petrified" by Anna Tambour is a tale in which two academics discover the risks of tampering with the power of myth-making. In "The Din of Celestial Birds" by Brian Evenson, a man stumbles down a mountainside with no memory of what's happened to him, and a strange skin aliment, and the certainty that something inside him is clawing its way to the surface.

"Come Lurk With Me and Be My Love" and "In the Black Mill", by William Browning Spencer and Michael Chabon, respectively, are absolutely hilarious, tongue-in-cheek pastiches of Lovecraft that are extremely well written; the first about a doomed suitor who meets the "wrong kind of girl", the second featuring the classic, doomed Lovecraftian scholar whose curiosity outweighs his survival instinct. On the other side of the spectrum, "Houses Under the Sea", by Caitlin R. Kiernan is a chilling story that invokes all the watery terror that Lovecraft inspired in "Dagon" and Shadows Over Innsmouth", without ever mentioning either tale.

Finally, among the best are "Sight Unseen" by Joel Lane and "Catching Hell" by Laird Barron, because they feature two "Lovecraftian" deities/beings that don't often see treatment, and the anthology's ending story, "That Of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable", by Nick Mamatas, which manages to inject Lovecraft with a bit of Raymond Carver, or mix Lovecraft into Raymond Carver, whichever describes it best.

Wondering what to get for the shoggoth who has everything? Look no further.

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