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

The Rats In The Walls
The Picture In The House
The Outsider
Pickman's Model
In The Vault
The Silver Key
The Music of Erich Zann
The Call of Cthulhu
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer Of Darkness
The Colour Out Of Space
The Haunter Of The Dark
The Thing On The Doorstep
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dreams In The Witch-House
The Shadow Out Of Time

First time readers expecting something contemporary will be in for a shock. Most of Lovecraft's writing style is straightforward narrative, no characters speaking, and it may seem dry and drab. Most of the time, the protagonist is in the first person and is told from the point of view of that person looking back on the story or reporting it from a journalistic point of view. The stories are set in New England, mostly Arkham, Massachusetts which houses Miskatonic University. Most of them fall under unknown horrors, strange beings from another universe (the Great Old Ones), and things that wouldn't be out of place in the Twilight Zone, Ray Bradbury Presents, or Tales From The Crypt.

One of these stories, The Dunwich Horror, about how a human mutates in the course of the story, was made into a movie in 1970, and that has some actual dialogue.

The Colour In Space is actually an interesting one, portraying the devastating effects a meteor has on a valley and the family living in it, could make a good made-for-TV drama. So could The Shadow Of Innsmouth, about a strange-looking group of people and a weird race found in the Pacific. The protagonist learns the bulk of the story from a Zadok Allen, a 96-year old man who has witnessed a lot in the town, and there is dialogue, mostly from Allen.

The weirdest story is The Shadow Out Of Time, which deals astral travels a man may or may not have experienced, and encountering a race that might have existed back in time.

What brought me to buy one of his collections of short stories was the interest in the Old Ones, powerful beings from another universe who exert their evil powers on Earth from afar.

After reading most of these stories, I'll say it'll take me a while to get into Lovecraft, although I find some of the stories imaginative. As for bloodcurdling and macabre, well, maybe for its day, but not today.

As with most anthos of fiction, there are some truly great stories in this one, some that are so-so, and some that are not so great. "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Music of Erich Zahn" are two of my favorites of this one. "Call" is the story that really is Lovecraft's best-known, I believe. It was the first to establish very well the pantheon of the Old Ones that appear in so many of his later stories (including those in this collection). There have been a number of emulators of his style, and even products by others based on his works (like role-playing games), but it was reading these originals that really made me long for the older days.

Lovecraft makes painstaking effort to establish mood and environment. There are always unknowns, the cornerstone of his horror. Many take the form of investigations of mysterious happenings, and a number of them are similar to others, but that similarity is more in presentation than in the particulars. It seems that he did a very good job of using new concepts in all the contained stories. Some of the stories in this one really could benefit from a reduction in volume. "The Whisperer in the Dark" simply dragged on way too long. Despite the reader being well aware from the narrative of what was occurring, the narrator himself seemed unable to make the simple conclusion of his situation. I really was disappointed in that one.

As stated, these stories are classics, and nearly all of them are wonderful reads. Even some of those that go on too long have something in them of the refinement of the mythology that Lovecraft was creating. This book is a great buy, even in the slightly more expensive trade paperback format.