Back in 2009, Ellen Datlow’s anthology Lovecraft Unbound: Tales Inspired By the Works of H. P. Lovecraft appeared. The growing popularity of faux-Lovecraft stories was just beginning and Datlow’s book set a new standard for quality. I finally got around to reading Lovecraft Unbound. My favorite story is “Mongoose” by Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear. It’s set on a space station infested with Lovecraftian pests. But, the infestation has opened a dimensional rift so that something big and dangerous has entered the space station. I also enjoyed “The Office of Doom” by Richard Bowes. Someone is foolish enough to request The Necronomicon through Inter-library loan. What would a Lovecraftian College Graduation be like? Joyce Carol Oates will show you in “Commencement.” Ellen Datlow assembled an excellent collection that contemporary antholgies struggle to match. Don’t miss this one! GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Introduction by Ellen Datlow
“The Crevasse” by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud
“The Office of Doom” by Richard Bowes
“Sincerely, Petrified” by Anna Tambour
“The Din of Celestial Birds” by Brian Evenson
“The Tenderness of Jackals” by Amanda Downum
“Sight Unseen” by Joel Lane
“Cold Water Survival” by Holly Phillips
“Come Lurk with Me and Be My Love” by William Browning Spencer
“Houses Under the Sea” by Caitlín R. Kiernan
“Machines of Concrete Light and Dark” by Michael Cisco
“Leng” by Marc Laidlaw
“In the Black Mill” by Michael Chabon
“One Day, Soon” by Lavie Tidhar
“Commencement” by Joyce Carol Oates
“Vernon, Driving” by Simon Kurt Unsworth
“The Recruiter” by Michael Shea
“Marya Nox” by Gemma Files
“Mongoose” by Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear
“Catch Hell” by Laird Barron
“That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable” by Nick Mamatas
“Catch Hell” by Laird Barron
I like the idea behind the stories you named, but I am suddenly slammed with 3 downloaded library ebooks and another 6 regular library books. If you think about it. it isn’t that surprising that someone with as dark a view as Joyce Carol Oates would be a Lovecraftian.
Jeff, Joyce Carol Oates edited an anthology of Lovecraft stories and has written a couple essays about him.
So, The Big Read (that’s a three-word noun) begins with Lovecraftian fiction. Nothing like starting with something you really enjoy, instead of a bulky treatise on the ills of America. This wouldn’t be my cup of tea, but then I’m not a horror fancier.
Rick, I’m easing into the Big Reading Binge with books that have been stacked up for years waiting for me to read them. Look for an eclectic mix of reviews in the weeks ahead.
When I was in grad school in the middle to late ’60s, I knew a woman who was planning a dissertation on Lovecraft. She was ahead of the curve, but unfortunately she never finished writing the dissertation.
Bill, with Lovecraft volumes in the LIBRARY OF AMERICA series, H. P. Lovecraft will inspire hundreds of dissertations!
I read this severl years ago. You can’t go wrong with a Datlow edited anthology. Lot of my favorite short story writers here: Dale Bailey, Brian Evenson, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Shea, Nathan Ballingrud, Lavie Tidhar, William Browning Spencer.
Steve, you’re right about Ellen Datlow. She’s a marvelous editor! I’ve enjoyed all of her anthologies that I’ve read.
I often wonder what HPL would have thought about his current fame.
Jerry, I suspect he would be surprised and delighted!
I do like to cite my favorite next gens of those most directly inspired by Lovecraft…I’m always quick to note the degree to which Lovecraft Circle junior members, and geniuses, Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber picked up HPL’s existential ball and ran with it, fulfilling, I’d suggest, much of the promise that resided in Lovecraft’s work, while incorporating what they learned from him into work that was all their own (the most slavishly Lovecraftian of their work is the weakest). Ramsey Campbell and Fred Chappell top the next gen (where they make the work their own, again), T.E.D. Klein and Thomas Ligotti the next yet, though perhaps Michael Shea and a few others were at least as deserving of pride of place. But people ranging from my old friend A. A. Attanasio to Jorge Luis Borges (actually, that’s not Too far a spread, and not solely alphabetically) have at least turned their hands to the Lovecraftian…
Todd, Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have used Lovecraft elements in their stories to great effect!