Ralph E. Vaughan; Sherlock Holmes vs Cthulhu

 When I buy an collection or anthology I normally flit through the table of contents looking for authors or titles that intrigue me. What I normally do not do is read it from front to back. Often I do not finish every story, intending to come back later, but I have lots of books so this may or may not happen. I have followed Ralph E. Vaughan's blog Book Scribbles for many years and when I saw the post concerning this collection I purchased the book. It came, I read a few stories, and mentioned the purchase here. 

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2016/03/more-new-eldritch-tomes.html

Then some time ago I picked it up, started at the beginning reading to the end, and immediately purchased Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time and other stories, (these are not Lovecraftian, but Holmes does meet Wells or his universe in several really enjoyable stories), read it and purchased his out of print work,  Sherlock Holmes, The Dreaming Detective from ABE. So I guess you can say I liked the first book.

I am not sure if kids still do, but when I began reading books from the library, the Doyle stories were among the first I read. "The Hound of the Baskervilles" I read while alone in the house and it was scary and atmospheric. A great discussion of the stories can be found in Michael Dirda fun and informative book On Conan Doyle, which covers all of Doyle's work, not just the Holmes Stories.

           

I loved the original stories, but as with Lovecraft I also got into the world of Holmes pastiches, a vast landscape. A number of years ago I decided to read all the Holmes pastiches, novels and collections held by the Calgary Public Library. It took many months, there were a lot, he went everywhere, some stories were good, some bad. I remember a particularly long and unhappy encounter with the Giant Rat of Sumatra. So I know my pseudo Holmes stories. And Holmes has meet the Lovecraft Mythos in a number of stories and anthologies. One of the most well known is probably Shadows over Baker Street, which contains the best ever Holmes Lovecraft mish mash "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman, I cannot describe it you must read it. But as always with works of this kind (Lovecraftian or not) the quality of the collection overall was uneven. Still a good read.

This is not to say that all Vaughan's stories are gems, some are better than others, but the quality is quite high and I like what he has done in both collections. To confuse the issue a few comments will relate to both collections, but there is no test later so whatever. I will not address each story, but rather highlight some of the reasons I enjoyed them so much. 

Sherlock Holmes is definitely Doyle's Holmes but possibly a little less stiff, and when they are appear, Watson and Lestrade are a little brighter and a little less, cardboard cutout's. Vaughan has a perfectly good explanation that I accepted immediately. The characteristics of all of them have been exaggerated in Watson's stories to advance the plot. So in reality, and these stories are real, aren't they, they will be a little, (not much) more human. The stories are not based on the rigid Holmes and Watson have a client and solve a case formula. As has become typical of  Holmes pastiche's in general, they are narrated by a number of individuals, as Watson does not always appear. Sometimes Holmes barely appears. The stories cover Holmes for his entire career in one he is an old man on a tour of the United States, in another he is a student on a walking tour. Several of my favourites involve Lestrade and his rather clueless sidekick Sergeant Jacket, who is a big Holmes fan as you can imagine. 

But one of the things I enjoyed the most is that rather than one shambling Innsmouthian after another, Vaughan explores the entire mythos as well as various characters from the works of Doyle and Wells. Some of my favourites are "The Woods, The Watcher & The Warding", "Lestrade & the Damned Cultists", "The Terror out of Time", "The Adventure of the Shattered Men" and from  

Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time and other stories

"The Coils of Time", "Lestrade and the River Pirates", "The Adventure of the Counterfeit Martian" and "The Dog Who Loved Sherlock Holmes" To sum it up these are fun stories, hopefully you can enjoy them as much as I have. 

and let's let Ralph bring this post home. 

from Book Scribbles "Sherlock Holmes vs Cthulhu

A few years ago I posted a blog about when I introduced Sherlock Holmes to HP Lovecraft in The Adventure of the Ancient Gods. If you're interested in reviewing it, you can click on the link in the title and be taken there. However, if you're interested in reading the story, you may have a bit of a problem. Copies of the original fanzine, Holmesian Federation #4 are very difficult to find and can be costly; copies of the chapbook published by Gary Lovisi's Gryphon Books are likewise hard to find and can be even more expensive, especially if it's the first edition with my name misspelled on the cover. Purchasing the book, along with any of my other Sherlock Holmes books published by Gryphon is no longer an option, thanks to a visit by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. That incident led me to republish a later book, which introduced Sherlock Holmes to HG Wells' Time Traveler as Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time & Other Stories. The "other stories" in the book were all new ones I had written after 2005, all either about Holmes directly, in homage to Holmes, or about other characters in the Canon.'

for the full post

http://bookscribbles.blogspot.com/2015/08/sherlock-holmes-vs-cthulhu.html

related posts on Book Scribbles

Sherlock Holmes & The Coils of Time (Redux)

http://bookscribbles.blogspot.com/2013/03/sherlock-holmes-coils-of-time-redux.html

When Sherlock Holmes first met H.P. Lovecraft

http://bookscribbles.blogspot.com/2011/02/when-sherlock-holmes-first-met-hp.html

The Story Behind "Sherlock Holmes, the Dreaming Detective"

http://bookscribbles.blogspot.com/2011/01/story-behind-holmes-dreaming-detective.html

2018? More of less Part 3 (Finally)

  I took some time choosing the last three stories that I read in the past year or so to recommend, because I wanted to select tales I thought about after reading them.  They may not be the best but they did standout to me for one reason or other. Two involve Lovecraft's Dreamland cycle. Lovecraft's Dunsany inspired work is not as significant to the genre as his Cthulhu mythos. Possibly because these works lean more to fantasy than gothic or cosmic horror. I am particularly fond of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and I enjoy seeing what people can do with this theme. 

Black Wings cover by Gregory Nemec and Jason Van Hollander.

That said, I never expected anything like Mark Howard Jones' short story "Red Walls" in Black Wings of Cthulhu 5 . It is definitely horrific. I may come back to this story in another post but for now a quick overview. 

It is a short and very effective story, we are propelled into the story and the traumatic events that befall the narrator with no build up.

"The air was too thick to breath. Or there was too much of it, and coming at him too fast. He has woken far too suddenly., Yet he doesn't remember even falling asleep.

To his horror , he is in mid-air. Flying along at an enormous speed, his mind races to match his velocity. He must have been in an air crash, he reasons. No, he hates flying. He has never flown-not until this moment. " 

And he is not alone, rather he is part of a storm of people shooting along in the air in the same direction, all crying and flailing around. Wow I will leave you there but this one struck with me especially, once I figured out how this fit into the Lovecraft universe.

Nightmare Realm is a collection of original nightmares edited by S.T. Joshi, cover by Samuel Araya. I have just begun delving into the stories but may of my favourite mythos authors are represented, including Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin R. Kieran, John Langan, and Darrell Schweitzer. 

But the story I want to discuss is "In the City of Sharp Edges" by Stephen Woolworth. Alan our narrator is on his first visit to Dr. Ingalls a psychiatrist, to discuss a recurring nightmare. In this nightmare, Alan is lost in a strange Escher-like city constructed of obsidian-like glass.  Alan does not think it is a place people have visited before.

" Because it makes no sense. Doorways that end in stone walls, hallways that seem to go on forever and lead nowhere. vast rooms with no floor." 

and he is not alone in this nightmare city.  

" Can you describe this being?" "It changes. Sometimes it's so cold, it burns, like dry ice. Sometimes it crackles and sparks. hot and stinging, like static on clothes fresh from the dryer. Sometimes it has skin: sometimes, scales." 

If Alan description seems a bit vague, it is because he is blind, experiencing both city and creature by sound, touch and especially smell. Woolworth has really provided us with a thought provoking tale. Even the details of Alan everyday life, like the fact he uses origami to distinguish the denomination of the bills in his wallet or his strategy for searching the internet are new to me and I think add to the otherness of his experience for me. And the story itself is great, well written, nicely paced and imaginative. And when Dr. Ingalls states that dreams cannot kill anyone, it is Alan's reply that seems spot on. 

"How do you know that if all the people who've died from dreams never wake up.?"

I have had the last story for years in my collection Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham House 1990, but did not read it until I noticed it in this 1977 World's Best, cover by Richard Corben.

"My Boat" by Joanna Russ is another Dreamland inspired tale. I am unsure if she has contributed any other Lovecraftean stories but this one is excellent. Russ is considered one of the top science fiction writers and you can certainly see her reputation is deserved. It is nice to see a really competent writer handle a pastiche, "A Study in Emerald" by Neil Gaiman is another story, where high level skill and imagination combine to create an outstanding tale. I love the history of both science fiction and the weird tale and "My Boat" while very much a modern story has a bit of an old fashioned feel, for me. The idea of passages between realities, reminds me of stories like The Blind Spot by Flint and Hall or "Through the Dragon Glass" by A. Merritt. 

The story is narrated by Jim a writer who is trying to sell his agent on ideas for a tv script. Desperate, he beings to tell him of something that actually happened when he was a teenager, something he now needs to tell someone, because something else happened recently that brought it to mind. It is 1952 and Jim and his friend Al Coppolino are seniors in a school on Long Island. Integration is just beginning and Cissie Jackson a small, very withdrawn black girl is placed in their drama class. Initially they object feeling that she has too many emotional problems, but the principle explains that her father was killed by the police in her presence, that she is a genus and that she is not going anywhere. Indeed both eventually befriend Cissie and she and Al become quite close, Al even lends Cissie his Lovecraft books, wow, that's love. Cissie eventually tells the boys that she and a cousin rent a marina slip and have a boat. When pressed, she describes it was a yacht. When they finally visit, Jim however see it is anything but "It is an old leaky rowboat with only one oar, and there were three inches of bilge in the bottom," Or was it, for Jim sees, but has trouble believing, that things and people seem to have changed. 

"I said. ''Cissie, you look like the Queen of Sheba,"

She smiled. She said to me. "Jim, Iss not Shee-bah as in thee Bible, but Shaba. Sha-bah. You mus' remember when we meet her."" 

But Jim never does  at least as far as we know. I was really impressed when I read this, the central concept, as I mentioned earlier is not new. But Russ takes it farther adding layer upon layer, creating a rich, visually  complex story that enchanted me. The plotting is excellent and even Jim, with his doubts and regrets grows and changes and becomes a more rounded character that we can root for.   

I am convinced that I need to read more by Joanna Russ.

So that was 2018, if anyone has read or reads the stories I have discussed, please leave a comment.

Guy 

Cover by Jeffery K. Potter

New Eldritch Tomes, Richard Powers

I have discussed my love of the art of Richard Powers in two earlier posts on this blog as well as my Jagged Orbit blog so I was delighted to find this anthology originally published by Dodd, Mead & Co. in 1958.  

Contents: from ISFDB

6 • Introduction (Deals with the Devil) • (1958) • essay by Basil Davenport
11 • Sir Dominick's Bargain • (1872) • short story by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
24 • Enoch Soames • (1916) • novelette by Max Beerbohm (variant of Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen-Nineties)
49 • A Deal with the Devil • [Jorkens] • (1946) • short story by Lord Dunsany
66 • Satan and Sam Shay • (1942) • short story by Robert Arthur
79 • The Devil and Simon Flagg • (1954) • short story by Arthur Porges
86 • The Devil and the Old Man • (1905) • short story by John Masefield
91 • Threshold • (1940) • short story by Henry Kuttner
106 • Nellthu • (1955) • short story by Anthony Boucher
108 • Threesie • (1956) • short story by Theodore R. Cogswell
116 • Hell-Bent • (1951) • short story by Ford McCormack
134 • The Devil, George, and Rosie • (1934) • novelette by John Collier
152 • The Devil Was Sick • (1951) • short story by Bruce Elliott

Earlier posts

http://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2016/04/horror-anthologies-and-art-of-richard.html

http://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2016/05/horror-anthologies-art-of-richard.html

http://ajaggedorbit.blogspot.com/2015/12/one-of-events-that-propelled-me-from-sf.html