The Yog-Sothoth Cycle ed. Robert Price

[gog]

ed. Robert Price  - The Yog-Sothoth Cycle, Ramble House (2023)




Who will not shudder at the cry “Yog! So-thoth!” ? Even we Lovecraftians still get a proper chill when we read of it or hear Wilbur Whately shout it in a movie. It is probably the most effective of HPL’s fictive coinages, seeming to conflate hoary—but at least familiar—aspects of ancient myth with things even more outré, a name of three syllables that by themselves articulate Lovecraft’s crucial device of invoking already spooky archaism as a mere pointer to blasphemous mysteries from an even further-removed archaic past. It is linguistically analogous to Lovecraft’s celebrated non-Euclidean geometry: it wasn’t designed by human tongues and the human tongue accordingly cannot keep up with it! But “Yog-Sothoth” is already half-familiar to our memory, hinting at the forbidden rites of Nitocris and Im-ho-tep—and far worse!

The recently-released Yog-Sothoth Cycle contains two Tierney stories: "Lords of Pain" and "Winds of Zarr". This is the first reprint of "Winds of Zarr" since it was originally published in 1975.




TABLE OF CONTENTS



'The Yog-Sothoth Cycle of Myth', Robert M. Price

'Lords of Pain', Richard L. Tierney

'Ophiuchus', Don Webb

'The Threshold of Beyond', Stephen Mark Rainey

'The Sending', Charles Garofalo

'The Ultimate Ultimatum', Robert Bloch

'The Church in High Street', Ramsey Campbell

'Glimpses', A. A. Attanasio

'The Deviltry of Elemental Valence', Edward Lee

'Out of Space, Out of Time', David Langford

'The Winds of Zarr', Richard L. Tierney



Story Notes, Robert M. Price

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

Feb 16, 2023 11:52:45 GMT gog said:

ed. Robert Price  - The Yog-Sothoth Cycle

 It is linguistically analogous to Lovecraft’s celebrated non-Euclidean geometry:

Weirdly the narrator in The Call of Cthulhu, where he mentions non-Euclidean geometry, is named Francis Wayland Thurston. Now William Thurston was an actual American mathematician who did important work in non-Euclidean geometries.
The Call of Cthulhu was written in 1926. William Thurston was born in 1946. It's always interesting when you find coincidences like this.

[helrunar]

Gorgeous cover art. I'm a fan of the 1970 film The Dunwich Horror even though it bears only a passing resemblance to the story. The performances of Dean Stockwell and Sam Jaffe help compensate for the ridiculousness of Sandra Dee and Ed Begley.

H.

[𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr]

[gog]

[helrunar]

Austin Osman Spare was a genius, and possibly psychotic--certainly had a rather sad life after his brief early stint as a darling of cafe society.

Great post! Thanks, Gog.

Hel.