Robert M. Price (ed.) – The Azathoth Cycle (Chaosium, 1995, 235 p.)
Content:
The Mad God: An Introduction to The Azathoth Cycle - Robert M. Price
Azathoth - Edward Pickman Derby
Azathoth in Arkham - Peter Cannon
The Revenge of Azathoth - Peter Cannon
The Pit of the Shoggoths - Stephen Mark Rainey
Hydra (1939) - Henry Kuttner
The Madness Out of Time (1986) -Lin Carter
The Insects from Shaggai (1964) - Ramsey Campbell
The Sect of the Idiot (1988) - Thomas Ligotti
The Throne of Achamoth (1985) - Robert M. Price and Richard L. Tierney
The Last Night of Earth - Gary Myers
The Daemon-Sultan - Donald R. Burleson
Idiot Savant - C. J. Henderson
The Space of Madness (1993) - Stephen Studach
The Nameless Tower - John S. Glasby
The Plague Jar - Allen Mackey
The Old Ones' Promise of Eternal Life - Robert M. Price
I had never read this, so I used the opportunity.
Volume 6 seemingly didn't deserve a back-text, it is just the Azathot quote by Lovecraft. Perhaps the reasoning was that this is being bought only by the initiated, so why bother.
The introduction by Price is informative as usual, even if some of his conclusions like linking Lovecraft's conception with Gnosticism seem a bit artificial.
That there basically were no Azathoth stories in the Mythos or the deity never amounted to much more then name-dropping – said quote on the back-text – doesn't hinder Price to make an anthology of it.
It starts badly, with one of those long – and terrible – poems, this time even written by a fictious writer, namely Edward Pickman Derby, the doomed hero of "The Thing on the Doorstep."
Azathoth in Arkham - Peter Cannon
The Revenge of Azathoth - Peter Cannon – Two sequels to "The Thing on the Doorstep", which could as easily been included in the later published Innsmouth volume. The stories are not great but also not bad; I like the version of body-swapping sorcerer Ephraim Whaite in Moore's
Providence much more, though.
The Pit of the Shoggoths - Stephen Mark Rainey. The connection to the topic is just again random, like the title says it is about Shoggoths. The ending may be the most anticlimactic in the book.
Hydra - Henry Kuttner. An old story from Weird Tales, also at best average. "This reads much as a fanzine story", says the editor. Not that this story is not by the number, one of those self-styled explorers of the unknown takes a drug, leaves his body and delivers a collegue to the realm of Azathoth, who wants to escape it with help of said explorer. Nothing like the editor trashing his own selection, which is even more amusing when having to wade next through another unreadable Lin Carter Mythos nonsense.
The Madness Out of Time -Lin Carter. This is so bad that the editor again describes it as "the narrative was too evidently mere connective tissue to hold together the Mythos data". So why put it in this book? Here Lin writes in the first person as Alhazred, and it is exactly as bad as it sounds.
The Insects from Shaggai – Ramsey Campbell. This also only qualifies because of Azathoth name-dropping, but at least it is still a nice and entertaining story and prompted a visit of
Cold Print, Mr Campbell's mythos collection.
The Sect of the Idiot - Thomas Ligotti. Ligotti always merits a re-reading. I guess this must be one of his most recognized tales, and it is interesting that it first appeared in Price's fanzine
Crypt of Cthulhu. Who would have thought?
The Throne of Achamoth - Robert M. Price and Richard L. Tierney. This on the other hand is another of those historical Simon of Gitta stories. I already mentioned that I think them deathly dull. This makes no exception.
The Last Night of Earth - Gary Myers. According to the introduction Meyers did a few Dunsanian tales; this reads like a CAS plot and fails as such.
The Daemon-Sultan - Donald R. Burleson. It is not badly written and tries to stay true to HPLs Dunsanian stories. Still those Dreamland stories are IMHO usual so slight and plotless, and this is no exception. L'Wei Kath wanders the world in search of the Daemon-Sultan, finds a seer, drinks some drug, catches a glimpse of the chaos, looses his marbles and spends the rest of his life playing some flute. O-kay.
Idiot Savant - C. J. Henderson. For me the best of the new stories. A typical Mythos university story. Young Dr Andrews gets the thankless work to check the estate of mathematician Dr Coleman, which nobody of the faculty understands. It is shortly after The Conflagration, a mysterious catastrophe like an A-bomb which killed two million people in the state of New York. Andrews can't make heads or tails of Coleman's work or his stacks of papers, which the deceased left in strange arrays in his office. Unfortunately Andrews also doesn't recognize that janitor Gary is an autistic genius who understood the work of his friend "Doc Mike" and what the patterns keep in check. It all ends badly for Andrews when he deletes some equations on a board.
Apparently this is a bridge-tale for two of Henderson's occult novels with detective Teddy London, written as Robert Morgan. It has an original idea, a competent plot, a well developed connection to a HPL story, and is entertaining.
The Space of Madness - Stephen Studach. Australian Studach's story on the other hand I didn't like much. A deep-space explorer finds Azatoth hanging in space. The end.
The Nameless Tower - John S. Glasby. A Mythos pastiche devoid of any new idea, one of those doomed academics expedition in the desert stories. If you ignore the sheer unoriginality of it right
down to the italics ending, it is readable. Still I am glad that I never ordered the collections of Glasby's Mythos stories from Ramble House.
The Plague Jar - Allen Mackey. Here is the next excavation in the desert story. Because one isn't enough. Even if I think that some of these characters, Saudi Arabian academics who dig in the desert for lost Irem, are not in the least believable, the story is competently written.
The Old Ones' Promise of Eternal Life - Robert M. Price. The editor describes this as pseudo-scholarship, linking the Alhazred quote
That is not dead to Gnosticism. One can't deny that his arguments have a certain logic, and it has 28 footnotes on sources. Granted, of you are a bit interested in religious myths and know a rudimentary thing about it, it is kind of fun. But why this is included is anyone's guess. Guess Price needed abother 10 pages filled.
A typical Chaosium production. Most of the writers are from the Lovecraft fandom, two like Rainey and Henderson gained a reputation. Again not a must-have.
Last time I read a few chapters I was 59. Still think that both Carter and de Camp are tone-deaf when it comes to Howard and write a terrible Conan. But I have a soft spot for the novel. It was among a few others my introduction to Howard when I was 14 or 15, and it left an impression. It has something of a Sinbad movie, and the ending is well done. The translation missed the foreword, I think. Or I skipped it.