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3.0 out of 5 stars
Fifteen of August Derleth's less inspired Mythos tales, Jun 19 2006
It is most unfortunate and wrong in more ways than one that this collection of stories is passed off as the work of H.P. Lovecraft. All of these stories were written by August Derleth, who was inspired by various little notes Lovecraft left behind, but the only indication of the true ownership of the tales comes in the list of sources from which these stories were assembled, a section quite easy to overlook by the general reader. Any Lovecraft disciple must have mixed feelings about August Derleth. His contribution to the Lovecraft legacy is undeniably significant; in the years after Lovecraft's death, Derleth almost single-handedly kept his memory alive, forming historic Arkham House to publish the master's stories himself. Derleth's contribution is much more controversial when it comes to extending the Cthulhu legacy, however, for his conception of the Mythos is significantly different from that of Lovecraft; Derleth tended to see things in black and white, good vs. evil. This bifurcation of the Mythos legacy is in sharp contrast to Lovecraft's original vision of a world where good and evil do not exist per se. Reading Derleth's Mythos stories poses a danger of the reader conflating Derleth's ideas and conceptions with those of Lovecraft, and I for one strive to keep the original legacy intact in my mind. This danger is exacerbated by Derleth's frequent citation of events and characters from Lovecraft's original writings. Dunwich and Innsmouth serve as frequent settings for these stories; familiar names such as Wilbur Whateley and the Whateley clan, Obed Marsh and his batrachian (which seems to be Derleth's favorite word) descendants are encountered at every turn; and all manner of dark tomes are referred to, those introduced by members of the Lovecraft Circle as well as others Derleth invents himself.
August Derleth was a perfectly competent writer capable of producing an impressive story every now and then. For the most part, however, his work is overly formulaic and repetitive, and, while he tries very hard to write the kind of stories Lovecraft wrote, his stories just don't captivate the reader or come alive with the type of overwhelming, cosmic menace that seemed to live in the very words Lovecraft put to paper. The fifteen stories collected here are remarkably similar in plot and presentation, and that helps make this a somewhat tedious read at times; sometimes the only real spark of interest generated in my mind was a curiosity to see just how commonplace a spin a given story would place on Lovecraft's otherworldly cosmology. When Derleth did dare to color outside the lines, his attempts come off rather strangely and almost comically. A case in point is The Dark Brotherhood, a tale in which a band of strange men bearing an incredibly strong resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe introduce a character clearly based on Lovecraft himself to a vision of another world. Having these alien creatures adopt the image of Poe makes the story memorable to the reader at the expense of the story's effectiveness.
You really won't find anything here that did not originate with Lovecraft; Derleth seems to have a literary mold in which he mixes Mythos beings and characters in random fashion from one story to the next. As I say, though, Derleth is a competent writer, so few of these stories are painfully hard to read; judged outside of the context of Lovecraft, they are effective albeit repetitive. As a Lovecraft fan, I enjoy Derleth's stories (and I might note that his best are to be found not here but in The Mask of Cthulhu and The Trail of Cthulhu), but they are just so lifeless that the memory of them begins to fade as soon as I finish them. I believe there is material here capable of entertaining both the Lovecraft devotee as well as the general horror fan. The important thing to keep in mind, though, is that these stories really should not be attributed in any way to Lovecraft, no matter what the book cover might want you to believe.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A Little Too Harsh . . . ., May 20 2004
I've just read the reviews previously posted here for The Watchers Out of Time. Perhaps some of this criticism is a little harsh. I do agree that there's been some deception -- surely the fault of neither Lovecraft or Derleth, since both men were long dead when this edition was published.The stories are all credited simply to H.P. Lovecraft on the front cover. But -- confusingly -- the back cover describes the book as a joint effort of Lovecraft and Derleth. Then we get more confused when, looking at the back of the flyleaf, we discover that ALL the stories are copyrighted by August Derleth alone. Derleth and Lovecraft knew each other, and they did do some genuine collaboration. But I think this volume is predominantly Derleth's work. One of the other reviewers guessed "95% Derleth's" as I recall. I could believe that. When I say the other reviews are too harsh, I mean that August Derleth was a pretty good author in his own right. At his best, when Derleth writes these gothic tales he rivals Lovecraft in narrative and tone. Some of these stories are very good actually-- well worthy of "Weird Tales" and other pulp collections of the time. Unfortunately, one of Derleth's limitations when writing Lovecraftian material was his conventional religious belief. He tended to spin Lovecraft's cosmic "old ones" into something resembling Christian devils or demons. This loses much of the very chilling alien flavor of Lovecraft's original mythos. There is always a kind of nihilistic despair haunting around the edges of real Lovecraft stuff-- e.g., "At the Mountains of Madness." All in all, one must agree that the book is less than what is advertized. And yet, Derleth is a good writer and his tales can be enjoyable. I enjoyed the book and hate to see it so roundly and harshly panned. The problem is-- this is just NOT really H.P. Lovecraft's writing.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Posthumous collaboration best avoided, Feb 22 2002
The stories contained in this book were written by August Derleth as "posthumous collaborations" with H.P. Lovecraft. What this meant was that Derleth would take a sentence or two from Lovecraft's writing, often a quote from the Necronomicon or a description, and bill these as the writing of both of them. The plot and the writing were all Derleth. On the cover, Carroll and Graf bill the work as entirely Lovecraft's; this is a surprising bit of deception which could turn readers off from the true writing of Lovecraft. What this means is that these stories are a far cry from Lovecraft's best work. In fact, for the most part they are a far cry from Lovecraft's worst work. They are utter pastiche; they also hit on every possible cliche of the horror world, Cthulhu Mythos or not--the Deep Ones; revenge beyond the grave; the curse passed down in the family; and so on. While it is possible to go some distance with these ideas, Derleth does not; he is bound by Lovecraft's style and does not treat the plots with any imagination. Someone truly immersed in the Mythos might enjoy reading these stories, because they are the work of one of Lovecraft's tutees. Derleth's work in publishing the work of Lovecraft and other Mythos authors was invaluable, and credit is due him for this; however, the reader wishes Derleth had stuck to publishing what Lovecraft really wrote, not expanding his story credits.
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by H.P. Lovecraft
