Brian Lumley (2 December 1937 – 2 January 2024)

 

This quote is from my Jagged orbit site:

http://ajaggedorbit.blogspot.com

"Logically as one gets older the writers and entertainers you enjoyed over the years begin to pass away. Since January I learned that two of my favourites, Brian Lumley and Brian Stableford had died. I will address Brian Lumley on my HPL site, actually I will make note of Brian Stableford's death there as well as he was not stranger to the mythos. "

I learned of both deaths on the excellent site; 

Adventures Fantastic

https://adventuresfantastic.com/

Since this blog is dedicated to the Lovecraft Mythos I wanted to discuss Brian Lumley  here. Lumley himself provides a wonderful glimpse of his mythos journey in the preface to his novel Beneath the Moors. He notes that the first mythos tale he encountered was Robert Bloch's "Notebook found in a deserted house". While he was intrigued it was not until some ten years later that he encountered Lovecraft's collection Cry Horror and decided to look for more of his work. He contacted August Derleth to buy some Arkham House titles. I will note that some years later I wrote August Derleth's daughter April with the same goal, she was a kind and helpful correspondent. Lumley included some paragraphs based on Lovecraft's work. To his surprise Derleth commented critically on the work, explained where he had gone wrong and mentioned that he was putting together a collection, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Eventually Lumley would have two stories in this collection, "The Sister City "and "Cement Surroundings."

I have read some critical comments about Lumley's work, the main points seem to have been that his work shared some of the same problems as Derleth's. Lovecraft's great aliens Cthulhu etc. became elementals and some of Lovecraft's cosmic vision was lost. Certainly I found that as the adventures of Titus Crow and De Marigny, which appeared in a succession of DAW yellow spines, started to read more like the adventures of action heroes and I did not keep these books. Boy do I regret that now. However over the years I have read and enjoyed much of Lumley's work. I found he developed his own unique voice and his characters and settings often enthralled me. When hardcovers began to appear containing both older and more recent work and with beautiful covers by Bob Eggleton I snapped them up. I have only read one volume of his immensely popular Necroscope series and it was quite good. But my heart belongs to the mythos. Yesterday I read three Lumley stories, "The Night the Sea Maid went down", the wonderfully pulpy "The Fairground  Horror" and the brilliantly Fortean The Nonesuch and Others. I cannot wait to reread more of his work. 

I did want to take a minute to acknowledge Brian Stableford's contribution to the mythos, ( he is one of my favourite writers). I touched on it in my Jagged Orbit post, but I hope in the coming days that I can discuss some of his stores here as well. 

Lovecrcraft, merchandising and me

 

My Mythos journey started at 15 when a friend lent me two books featuring these eerie portraits by John Holmes. (I did return his cpoies) My mother then gave me a copy of The Lurker at the Threshold with a somewhat funky cover by Murray Tinkelman, I am amazed to this day. (Sadly this is not that copy) One could note that two of the three books are primarily by August Derleth, but that is another post. However my love for HPL and the ever expanding mythos was launched. 

Lots of books followed including some of the less expensive Arkham House titles. But then other stuff appeared that did not require trips whether real, via mail or finally virtual to the haunts of used book sellers.

There is kids stuff.

There was science!! Sadly this site does not seem to update any longer but there are lots of fascinating posts.

https://lovecraftianscience.wordpress.com

There are comics, graphic novels and these cool editions illustrated by Fracnois Baranger. Some have quibbled with his illustrations for example this depiction shows what might be a human skeleton in the cavern discovered by the member of the Miskatonic University Expedition to the Antartic. Maybe yes maybe no, but really people, why don't we call it foreshadowing and move on. These great books, great illustrations and I hope to discuss them in more detail in the future.

The there are games. My wife and I love collecting and sometimes even playing (actual physical) games. The more cool plastic figures and stunning graphics the better. And Howard is of course included.

Pandemic Reign of Cthulhu. It is produced by Z-Man games who produce a number of Pandemic games. You move around the world closing portals, and fighting cultists, monsters, and elder gods. It is the simplest and most compact of the mythos games we own. The game are relatively short and quite entertaining.

https://www.zmangames.com/en/products/pandemic-reign-cthulhu/

I cannot find my core box but as we can see Eldritch Horror has produced lots of expansions. Produced by Fantasy Flight games you fight, well you know.

 " An ancient evil is stirring. You are part of a team of unlikely heroes engaged in an international struggle to stop the gathering darkness. To do so, you’ll have to defeat foul monsters, travel to Other Worlds, and solve obscure mysteries surrounding this unspeakable horror. The effort may drain your sanity and cripple your body, but if you fail, the Ancient One will awaken and rain doom upon the known world. 

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/eldritch-horror/

Eldritch Horror requires more space, takes longer and is more complex. There are a number of expansions including not just new opponents and scenarios  but in some cases additional boards. Great fun. 

Cthulhu Death may Die by CMON games. 

https://www.cmon.com

I purchased the base game and the larger Season 2 expansion at our local game store. The Black Goat of the Woods and Yog-sothoth expansions came from Amazon. CMON is currently running a kickstarter for another expansion Cthulhu Death May Die - Fear of The Unknown which has 7 days to go. We have ordered it, but I want to be clear, we are not involved with the company or the kickstarter campaign in anyway. We have purchased other games via kickstarter Wonderland Wars (Alice themed), Etherfields (Fantasy), ISS Vanguard (Space Exploration) and also have several more coming. What they have in common, is they take a long time to manufacture, cost a fair bit to ship and often during the course of the kickstarter you are seduced into adding things to the initial purchase like possibly an Ithaqua, the Wind-Walker, the Lord of the Winds expansion, or Animal Allies for when you are facing the Color Out of Space, but maybe that is just me.

We have never participated in a kickstarter from CMON games so I cannot speak to that. We like the Death May Die campaigns we have played. Like many modern games they take a fair bit of space to play, and have lots of elements to juggle. We also like the beautifully made miniatures that come with the game. Helen and I have both begun painting miniatures again, something we did close to forty years ago when we were first together, (then they were lead) and I plan on painting some of these. I was eyeing the Black Goat last night. Basically I love seeing models for Brown Jenkin (he is over sized so easier to paint) or a Gug or the stunning Tsathogguo figure. Also I am really enjoying seeing them incorporate beings from The Mound, Dreamlands and Lovecraft's story Hypnos. I am not encouraging anyone to purchase the game rather I think that people who like HPL and the Mythos might get a kick out of seeing all the associated tchotchkes. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cmon/dmd-fear-of-the-unknown/description

Halloween Reading

 

  Somehow Halloween has snuck up on me. In Sept. I pulled a pile of my horror paperbacks to go through, started, and then was distracted by my ongoing science fiction discussions with my buddy Doug. Last night I realized Halloween was Monday.  So I was up at 4:00 bringing up decorations and thinking about Halloween. Which for me means books. There are two novels and a short story by Scott Thomas that I always read around this time. Since I have covered them already I have provided the links below. I then decided to expand my reading list and chose Something Wicked This Way Comes (how was this not already on the list), "Dr. Locrian's Asylum" by Thomas Ligotti (a bit of Coultophobia anyone), and Matt's Cardin's "Chimeras & Grotesqueries". I am not going to discuss the Bradbury novel and two short stories here but I certainly am going to recommend them

 The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-halloween-tree-by-ray-bradbury.html

A Night in Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2019/11/new-eldritch-tomes-and-night-in.html

"The Night is A Sea" by Scott Thomas

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2019/01/2018-more-of-less-part-1.html

Since my discussion of the Thomas story is short, I will include it here. 

"My wife is a huge fan of the magazine Fortean Times, so our household is well aware of the work of Charles Fort in recording the weird, the uncanny and the just plain odd. Here Thomas has captured the universe spanning scale of Lovecraft with the type of news items beloved of Fort. Indeed our narrator, Emerson a collector of the strange and mystical, is also the writer of the column Emerson Bridge's Journeys to the Border for the newspaper Free Worchester, producing columns taylor made for the pages of Fort's The Book of the Damned. Emerson loves to share the stories he has uncovered like that of the Ice Sisters, 

"As for the Ice Sisters… A boy searching for his missing dog found three dead women dressed in colonial mourning gowns lying in the middle of a field in the Coddington property. They were spaced evenly apart with their heads nearly touching, though their hair and faces could not easily be seen. Each had a dark wooden box enclosing her from the neck up, and underneath, shaped to the dimensions of the boxes and further encasing the women's heads were blocks of ice.  (11)

The story wanders happy along, as we follow Emerson, researching and relating stories as well as assisting in a search for a missing senior, until all the elements come together in a outstanding climax. This story is a wonderful fusion of Lovecraft and Charles Fort and any aficionado of the weird is sure to enjoy it. "

Boo

New Eldritch Tomes

 

This summer a bump in liquid assets due to my advancing age coincided with the arrival of a catalogue in my email basket. Yes I did the mature thing and pondered whether I needed more books, Discussed it with Helen and and said hell yes what's two more given the thousands we have. And the catalogue did happen to contain relatively reasonably priced copies of two books I have wanted for years. (We all remember relatively from school, things appear different depending on where you sit, I think that's how it goes) Yes these are Derleth, but as I discussed in an earlier post when I began reading the mythos I made little distinction between HPL and his various imitators and collaborators. In truth it was hard to get books we could afford in Windsor in those days we took what we found in the drugstore racks, used book stores, and Coles. And opened the covers with eager anticipation, besides we thought Twinkies were food. (oh wait I still do)

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2019/10/wilum-hopfrog-pugmire-may-3-1051-march_27.html

Besides these are by one of the greatest cover artists every to grace Arkham House publications, Richard Taylor and they just happen to complete my collection of the five titles he did for them. And while you can debate the quality of some of Derleth stories "The Fisherman of Falcons Point" in The Shuttered Room and "The Seal of R'lyeh" in The Mask of Cthulhu are two of my favourite Derleth stories.

I knew Taylor was a cartoonist for the New Yorker but I did not realize he was Canadian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Taylor_(cartoonist)

Dreams has a wondrous cover, don't you think.

Rowena Morrill (1944-2021)

 

 Another illustrator that was once a significant force in the science fiction books I used to select from the spinning racks of drug stores and the Wee Book Inn has passed away. Locus provided an excellent overview of her career here.

https://locusmag.com/2021/02/rowena-morrill-1944-2021/

I cannot say that Rowena Morril was one of my favourite illustrators, but at one point, books with her cover illustrations seemed omnipresent. When I decided to pull together a few of my favourites, I was surprised with how few I found. Either I had culled the authors long ago, Piers Anthony or the books are currently misplaced Manly Wade Wellman as the ongoing basement renovations continue. However, I have a few, some of which I love. 

How can you not like Clark Ashton Smith?

This rather tatty Sturgeon is Helen's but as someone who compulsively collects translations of the Divine Comedy there is a lot to like here.

George R.R. Martin writes the best horror/science fiction short stores in the field. "Sandkings" is probably his greatest short story and quite possibly belongs on any list of the top science fiction stories of all time. This is a nice representation.

When I first owned these editions of Lovecraft I did not like them. As was sadly the case with many of my early paperback editions I did not keep them when I bought hardcovers. When I came to realize I wanted to collect the art of HPL as well as the words I had the joy of buying expensive copies in not very good condition so I could add them to my collection. While we are told we become more conservative as we age I find myself moving in the opposite direction in most areas of my life. These are certainly a case in point. Now I really enjoy the flamboyance of Morrill's interpretation of Wilbur Whatetely or the Great Race of Yith. Occasionally I do wonder how Wilbur keep all those bits sufficiently concealed beneath the 1920's equivalent of Dockers that he could ride the bus in search of the Necronomicon. But that is part of the fun of it. Do you have any favourite Morrill covers?

New Eldritch Tomes (not really) and Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams and Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country

 I wanted to put a post together and was waiting to gather some things I wanted to share. First off I have not been buying as many old paperbacks lately. I basically have accumulated lots and decided to hold off for a while. However will searching the basement for Blaylock's The Elfin Ship for another project, I found two books that really belonged upstairs with my main collection. Initially I assumed that The Phoenix Tree was part of Lin Carter's Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, it must have been the unicorns and dragons that fooled me. However the authors on the cover had a distinctly weird tales or horror vibe. I have been collected a number of slim horror collections from the 1970's and this Stoker collection for 1974 by Quartet Books fit right in. 

I also wanted to mention a couple items that I thought would be of interest to readers of this blog. The first is a documentary I just watched on Vimeo, Clark Ashton Smith: The Emperor of Dreams directed by Darin Coelho Spring. Smith is a favourite author and I thought this was a great overview of his life and career. It featured a number of tours by Smith scholar, Donald Sidney-Fryer. There were interviews with S.T. Joshi, W.H. Pugmire, and an extensive interview with Harlan Ellison on Smith's influence on his work. Ellison also mentions how he first encountered Smith's "City of the Singing Flame" in Derleth anthology  The Other Side of the Moon. I found the interview with Smith's stepson Prof. William Dorman particularly interesting. The documentary also featured some of Smith's painting and sculptures and I have to admit I has really impressed. The b&w reproductions in my copy of The Fantastic Art of Clark Ashton Smith did not do them justice and led me to undervalue them.

Author John Langan reviewed the documentary for Locus here,

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/john-langan-reviews-clark-ashton-smith-the-emperor-of-dreams/

And you can see the trailer here, (I really recommend it)

 https://vimeo.com/281911751

Lastly I want to recommend Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country by Edward Parnell and I am only on chapter eight. (Finished, a powerful but poignant (okay sad) memoir)

Parnell has written a beautiful and engaging memoir combining his personal history with an overview of the supernatural fiction and film that informed his childhood. Parnel's discussions of the works of authors like Machen, Blackwood. M.R. James, Alan Garner and William Hope Hodgson and films like The Wicker Man or The Blood on Satan's Claw are enhanced by visits to significant locations in their creators' lives and works. 

Readers of W.G. Sebald (who I love) may recognize some similarities. There are b&w photographs of the author and his family or the locations he visits. The work consists of descriptions of trips interspersed with personal anecdotes, capsule histories, observation of the local birds and the landscape.

But I think Parnell is more deeply immersed in his subject than Sebald sometimes was. This process seems vitally important to Parnell. His visits to the locations where these authors lived and worked become meditations on his own life and a trigger for his own memories. I have mentioned before that Helen is a big fan of The Fortean Times. One phenomenon which she made me aware of was the concept of The Haunted Generation, as mentioned in the link below; 

" The phrase ‘Haunted Generation’ comes from an article of that title by British broadcaster and writer Bob Fischer for the June 2017 issue of Fortean Times magazine, the purview of which is ‘the world of strange phenomena’. Fischer, who was born in 1973, discusses his childhood exposure to a popular culture thematically preoccupied with mysticism and the supernatural;"   

From 

‘A LOST, HAZY DISQUIET’: SCARFOLK, HOOKLAND, AND THE ‘HAUNTED GENERATION’ by David Sweeny

 

http://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/a-lost-hazy-disquiet-scarfolk-hookland-and-the-haunted-generation/

A link to the actual Fortean Times article is here.

https://hauntedgeneration.co.uk/2019/04/22/thehauntedgeneration/

I think Parnell's work provides an interesting example of the phenomenon. I have found it riveting not just for his discussions of supernatural fiction in Britain but also as an exercise in memoir.    

There is a excellent discussion of Parnell's book with an interview with the author here. Parnell states,

"I went back to Norfolk and thought hard about whether I would like to write such a book – a book concerned with ghost stories and films and the places around Britain that fed into them. And I decided that I did. Because I’d grown up obsessed from a young age with the supernatural and horror. Like a lot of children born in the 1970s, my early years had been surrounded by morbid public information films and terrifying, offbeat TV programmes aimed at, but quite probably unsuitable for, our age group; without knowing it, I was part of what the Fortean Times has come to term the ‘haunted generation’."

https://folkhorrorrevival.com/2019/12/27/ghostland-review-and-interview-with-edward-parnell/

Cover credits;

The Bram Stoker Companion unattributed

The Phoenix Tree unattributed

Genius Loci Frank Wakefield

A Rendezvous in Averoigne Jeffrey K. Potter

The Other Side of the Moon Virgil Finlay?

Emperor of Dreams Ned Dameron

May Cthulhu be good to you.

 

"There is snow on the ground

And the valleys are cold

And a midnight profound

Blackly squats o'er the wold:

But a light on the hilltops half-seen hints of feasting unhallow'd and old."

from Yule Tide by H.P. Lovecraft

https://kmalexander.com/2016/12/21/h-p-lovecrafts-creepy-christmas-poem/

On Safari in R'lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera by Elizabeth Bear.

  I have, I believe, remarked about how coincidence plays a large part in my life and my reading. Lately, I have been reading non-fiction from the library. As normal, the topics reflect my choice of fiction; the Sirens of Mars by Johnson discusses the search for life on Mars, Ancient Bones by Bohme, the evolution of apes and hominids in Europe and Kindred by Sykes provided an overview of the current research on Neanderthal's. The last two works that I discussed on my blog Jagged Orbit, Simak's "The Whispering Well," and Bradbury's The Halloween Tree touched on evolution and early man. Obviously, something is going on. Perhaps deros are shooting rays into my brain to direct my reading (see Richard Sharpe Shaver), or maybe stuff just happens.

Early this morning, Bear's story appeared on the Tor.com banner and, well, it had both R'lyeh and Carcosa in the title. I was up with insomnia anyway, so here was a gift. I just discussed three of Bear's mythos stories, and this did not disappoint. It starts in true pulp fashion with the protagonist and her companion reloading their weapons as they shelter behind a flimsy barricade. A tentacle has just smashed her GoPro, so we are in reasonably familiar territory. Then Bear proceeds to tell us how we got here. "My name is not Greer Griswold. I’m approximately fifty-two years old. I don’t know who my birth parents were, and my adoptive parents are dead. I have never married; I have no children; I have very few close friends. I’m a physicist at a notable northeastern US institution you would have heard of if I named it." 

Spoilers ahead, I suggest you read the story first, then see if you agree/disagree with me.

And while your there I recommend Lavie Tidhar's stories "Judge Dee and the Limits of the Law" and "In Xanadu".

  

Greer decides to take a DNA test; she is nearly one-twentieth Neanderthal (yeah!!), but 10.2% is undetermined. Luckily one of her few friends is Michael Roberts, a geneticist at the same institution. Roberts initially dismisses her results as contamination in the sample. But after additional research, he finds similar results appeared in a thesis that eventually was rejected. This leads them to the author Albert Gilman a recluse living on Cape Ann. I will stop the summary; the story is available on the Tor website. Why did I like it. Bear is a fine writer; I loved this line, "Unless his peculiar transformation had been more than merely cosmetic and he’d returned to the deeps like a hatchling sea turtle." She is also very inventive. Her story Dolly is a lovely discussion of the rise of sentience in a robot.

https://ajaggedorbit.blogspot.com/2017/03/dolly-by-elizabeth-bear.html

I fully intend to discuss her story 'The Deeps of the Sky', a brilliant first contact story that can be read here. 

http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/bear_06_18_reprint/

How inventive since Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu", writers have struggled with describing his concept of non-Euclidean geometry. Bear does not struggle, she nails it 

“Octagons,” I said. “Traditionally, they don’t interlock without small squares to make up the corners.”

“But honeycomb?”

“Hexagons,” I said. “Like the basalt pillar we were on. Your bathroom tiles, those are octagons. With the little black squares between the corners, because that’s how topology works.”

Well, that was how topology worked where we came from. Here, apparently octagons interlocked." 

I love good mythos tales, I love prehistory, and I am interested in DNA and evolutionary science and increasingly, I love Elizabeth Bear's sf short stories and mythos tales. 

Photos

Detail from "Moving to New Hunting Grounds" by Zdenek Burian, I received my first book in the Augusta/Burian series on prehistoric life, Prehistoric Sea Monsters (they aren't) as a child and the die was cast.

Kindred, I borrowed this from the library and realized I would want to reread it and make notes in the text. So I returned it so the next in line could enjoy it and got my own copy from a local bookstore who delivered it and some Jeff Vandermeer books. 

On my next visit to my local library branch I found three more books on Neanderthals on the shelf. I had to request Almost Human on Homo naledi from another branch but I was able to get it before the library closes again until the new year and I thought it made a nice addition to the photo. 

Be careful out there.

Black Helicopters and The Tindalos Asset by Caitlin R. Kiernan (To Frank Belknap Long the father of the Hounds)

  Anyone who has followed my blog knows I love the works of Caitlin R. Kiernan. However, I don't love all of them. Some works are too sexualized, topical (with references to serial killers, snuff films), perhaps too modern or contemporary for me. But she writes enough works that I enjoy that I am always ready to read more. The themes I enjoy and which I think she does quite well at are science fiction, UFO conspiracy theories, Lovecraftian/mythos fiction and stories related to the work/ideas of Charles Fort. I have previously discussed the first volume in The Tinfoil Dossier series, Agents of Dreamland here 

https://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2017/04/agents-of-dreamland-by-caitlin-r-kiernan.html . 

I will avoid repeating myself, so if you want to read my take on Kiernan's work, I suggest you start there. In the Author's Note to The Tindalos Asset, Kiernan provides information on the genesis of the three works and I will paraphrase it here. Agents of Dreamland was written in about six weeks in the summer of 2015. and was published by Tor 2017. Tor released volume two, Black Helicopters in May 2018. A shorter version appeared in the Subterranean Press collection Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea in 2015. I originally read this version in a latter Subterranean Press collection. 

The original version of Black Helicopters, which I preferred, predated Agents of Dreamland. While some elements appear in both novels, the expanded Tor edition feels like it has shoehorned into the sequence which has become The Tinfoil Dossier. The Signalman does not appear until page 149 of the 196-page novel and even then seems perfunctory. Immacolata Sexton disappears, and instead, we have another deathless/long-lived Barbican operative called Ptolema, the Eygptian, Ancient of Days. One thing I noticed is that this story has multiple characters, primarily women, who seem to have a number of names. There are the albino twins Bete and Ivoire, their handler Dr. Twisley, and the soldier mathematical savant 66. Childhood and how it moulds identity does seem to be an important theme.

  

 I will not discuss the plot in great detail. There are two main threads one deals with an invasion of shoggoths from the seas around Deer Island, Maine. The second revolves around the history of the twins and the efforts of various groups to control or destroy them. There is a lot of interplay between various agencies with conflicting and sometimes inexplicable agendas. The action does not proceed chronologically. The narrative moves between the past, the present and even the far future. Keirnan dates the chapters, and this does help. My wife and I watched the X-Files for many years, and I tended to prefer the standalone episodes, often with supernatural plotlines. The long, complex unfolding of conspiracies turned me off. Here I think the plot might have grown too convoluted for me. It seemed to grow more and more intricate like the origami swans Bete is obsessively making until I could not follow the pattern anymore. Not a bad read but it was my least favourite in the series

The third volume, The Tindalos Asset, was begun in 2017 and completed in 2019. Some sections appeared in Ellen Datlow's Children of Lovecraft (2015) as "Excerpts from An Eschatology Quadrille." I loved The Tindalos Asset. It is a wonderful homage to Charles Fort as well as a great continuation of the story of the Signalman and his fight against the end of the world. The story begins with a visit by the Signalman to Ellison Nicodemo. (The book is dedicated to, among others, In Memory of Harlan Ellison (1934-2018) Visionary. Hero. Mentor. Friend.) Nicodemo was once one of Albany's most effective assassins. However, something went horribly wrong, and I mean horribly, during an assignment in Atlanta. Now she is an alcoholic drug addict, slowly killing herself in a filthy apartment in LA's Koreatown. The Signalman, who was once Nicodemo's handler, has been sent by Albany to recruit her for one last assignment. It seems Jehosheba Talog, Mother Hydra's current best bud and Nicodemo's Atlanta target, has come back and in a big way. We have strange deaths, even stranger births, bizarre ritual murders, weird weather, extinct animals, cryptozoology, mass hysteria in asylums incuding the Butler hospital in Providence, R.I of course, outbreaks of nightmares and stuff falling from the sky. Lots of stuff, big stuff, "Why, that's nothing. Pshaw, even. We got a goddamn sixty-five-foot sperm whale-Moby-Dick's own great-great-grandkid-stretched across the Pennsylvania Turnpike. " (85). The pace at which the incidents detailed in the dossier is terrific, one breathtaking revelation layered on atop the other, each worth of Fort himself. Why does Albany think Nicodemo can help. Well, not only was she an effective assassin in her own right but when she is in danger, a "hound" appears from a handy angle to defend her. It is all here Kiernan at her best she has summoned Fort's legions, 

“A procession of the damned: By the damned I mean the excluded. We shall have a procession of data that science has excluded. Battalions of the accursed, captained by pallid data that I have exhumed will march. You'll read them, or they'll march. Some of them livid and some of them fiery and some of them rotten. Some of them are corpses, skeletons, mummies, twitching, tottering, animated by companions that have been damned alive. There are giants that will walk by, though sound asleep. There are things that are theorems and things that are rags. (Charle Ford, The Book of the Damned. 

She brings us quotes from Lewis Carroll and Tennyson. Keirnan's own background in palaeontology means her pallid data in often geological and marine-based. Her extensive knowledge of Lovecraft has us revisit the house on Benefit Street in Providence R.I., otherwise known as "The Shunned House." I have followed Kiernan's blog for years, and I know she does a great deal of research to add a level of reality to her otherwise fantastic tales. So we begin to know things about the recurring characters that bring them to life. What beer they drink, songs they listen to, movies they watch. On the plane, Nicodemo is drinking National Bohemian and smoking Chesterfields. The Signalman's mixtape includes Connie Francis and Kitty Wells, he references John Ford westerns, and his watch was "made in 1888 by the Elgin Watch Company of Elgin, Illinois. We get the scientific names of many of the critters that fall from the sky or the cutting edge materials used in the interrogation room. This level of detail is supplied to make the story live, but it is not laboured; the pace of the story is not slowed; it is just there. Without the details, the scientific names, the historical references, the quotes, the names of the songs or bands playing on the jukebox, a Kiernan story would seem incomplete or colourless. And how do all these elements fit together to make a mythos tale? Is a marriage of Charles Fort and HPL. made in heaven or hell?

“It is our expression that the flux between that which isn't and that which won't be, or the state that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a rhythm of heavens and hells: that the damned won't stay damned; that salvation only precedes perdition. The inference is that some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels. Then the sub-inference is that some later day, back they'll go whence they came.” 

- Charles Fort,The Book of the Damned

"Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again." 

- H.P. Lovecraft, Necronomicon

I think they go very well together.

Cover Credits:

Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea, Illustration Lee Moyer, Photograph Kathryn A. Pollnac

Black Helicopters, photograph Don Seymour, design Christine Foltzer

Agents of Dreamland, design Christine Foltzer

The Tindalos Asset, design Christine Foltzer

The Hounds of Tindalos

Arkham House, Hannes Bok

Jove/HBJ, Rowena

Belmont, Uncredited

To Charles Fort With Love, Richard Kirk