Thomas M.K.Stratman (ed.) – Cthulhu's Heirs (Chaosium, 1994, 270 p.)
This book contains a new collection of Cthulhu Mythos fiction, the first in many years. Included are 18 original short stories, one original long poem and two rare reprinted stories. Think of this work as a window and as you throw back the curtains you will find more than 20 writers' vision into the landscape of Lovecraft Country. Through the glass of this window you can witness hidden truths and places best left unimagined.
Content:
Introduction: The Nameless Manuscript - Thomas M. K. Stratman
Watch the Whiskers Sprout - D. F. Lewis
The Death Watch (1939) - Hugh B. Cave
The Return of the White Ship: The Quest for Cathuria (1989) - Arthur William Lloyd Breach
Kadath/The Vision and the Journey - poem by T. Winter-Damon
The Franklyn Paragraphs (1973) - Ramsey Campbell
Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock - Robert M. Price
1968 RPI - Joe Murphy
Those of the Air - by Darrell Schweitzer and Jason Van Hollander
Mr. Skin - Victor Milán
Just Say No - Gregory Nicoll
The Scourge - Charles M. Saplak
Pickman's Legacy - Gordon Linzner
Of Dark Things and Midnight Places - David Niall Wilson
The Likeness - Dan Perez
An Early Frost - Scott David Aniolowski
Scene: A Room - Craig Anthony
The Seven Cities of Gold - Crispin Burnham
Shadows of her Dreams - Cary G. Osborne
The Herald - Daniel M. Burrello
Typo - Michael D. Winkle
Star Bright, Star Byte - Marella Sands
While a new anthology of Lovecraft-fiction was maybe a big thing in 1994 – nowadays this has become kind of a cottage industry -, Chaosium kind of dropped the ball with its third entry into Cthulhu fiction. The second was a collection of
Robert Bloch. While it is nowadays no problem to look all those writers up, in 1994 this was nearly impossible. For the casual interested reader to go without any writers introduction whatsoever was the wrong move. Quite a few of the writers were unknown, a few never published much.
The introduction by the editor, his only publication in Mythos work, can either be read as tongue-in-cheek – "every writer endured delays, rewrites, minimum advances and in most cases the final rejection of his or her efforts" – or dismissing his own work. Joshi did a review in Lovecraft Studies #31 which I unfortunatly don't have access to. I wonder what he thought about the stories.
As these are (mostly) original stories, they seem not to be very successful. A minority was reprinted only in collections. Frankly the quality is uneven. Did we really need a sort of prequel (or sequel) to Ramsey Campbell's
The Franklyn Paragraphs by Robert M. Price? The answer is no, it is a clumsy attempt at a Campbell pastiche. The Hugh Cave story is equally forgettable, the Mythos connection is rather flimsy. I guess there is an audience for
KADATH/The Vision and the Journey by t. Winter-Damon, an attempt to turn the narrative of
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath into a poem. 19 pages of small print in verses is not for me. (Of course this is another story only for the initiated; without any explanation for the new reader what this is about I wonder how the reception was.)
A few contributions are well done or at least interesting.
The Likeness by Dan Perez, who published a handful of stories in Greenberg anthologies, is short and to the point. A story about a young woman who gets a full body tattoo of a page from the Portuguese translation of an old book by a guy named Abdul Alhazred - the writer cleverly omits even the brand name Necronomicon - , which really transforms her life. And that of her boyfriend, who is introduced to a new and very final variation of the hard sex he so loves. For once the sex – which maybe was kind of seldom in Mythos stories – is an important part of the narrative and not some tacked on exploitation. It is quite a shame that this never was reprinted.
Those of the Air by Darrell Schweitzer and Jason Van Hollander is a well done and kind of touching variation of
The Dunwich Horror. Typo by Michael D. Winkle is one of those Miscatonic University stories, full in the spoof mode, which I ordinarily can't stand. But I have to confess it merited a smile.
And Shadows of her Dreams - by Cary G. Osborne is one of those writer get visions from Cthulhu stories, which takes an established Mythos concept and tries to do something new with it. At least the allusions to the horror publishing industry and the pulps are not as obnoxious as with other writers.
While it was nice to have some new Mythos fiction, this is rather mundane.
