Jonathan Oliver (ed.) - World War Cthulhu

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Jonathan Oliver - World War Cthulhu (Cubicle 7 Entertainment Ltd, 2013)

Contents:

James Lovegrove - The Aklo Intelligence
Sarah Newton - Nightmares and the Price of Dreams
Paul Finch - Reign of Hell
Rebecca Levene - The Hunger in the Flames
TP Pike - Baby-Steps to Oblivion
John Llewellyn Probert - The Death House
Simon Bestwick - Now I am Nothing
Robin D. Laws - The Egyptian
Greg Stolze - Strange Bedfellows
Gaie Sebold - From Unquiet Waters
Weston Ochse - When I Knew Baseball
Jonathan Green - The Scottish Patient
Archie Black - The Mouse
Lavie Tidhar – Watchers

This is not to be confused with World War Cthulhu by Dark Region Press, edited by Brian Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass, published a year later. Same title, never a good thing.

This anthology is a British production, Cubicle 7 is (was?) a publisher of games.

The focus is different as the American counterpart. These stories are about WWII only.

A few well-known names are here to find. Paul Finch, Lavie Tidhar and Lord Probert, to name a few. Some stories I liked, some I thought bland. Three stories used the same premise of the visitor to a veteran hospital hearing a story, which in its sameness is not the best approach to do an original anthology. Seems the concept isn't inviting versatility, but on the other hand, which pulp-war-tale does?

The more memorable ones were:

John Llewellyn Probert - The Death House
Gibson is send on a mission to discover what terrible experiments the Nazis are doing in the Death House. What he finds does change him in unexpected ways.

Well written tale which embraces its pulpishness, with a truly unexpected and clever original ending which made it fun.

James Lovegrove - The Aklo Intelligence
Very nice concept of British Intelligence codebreakers trying to decipher the Mythos language Aklo the enemy uses. It was a low key story also with a twist. Frankly I would have enjoyed this more if I hadn't read the concept in Alan Moore's Providence earlier. Still, I am a fan of Bletchley Park lore, and this worked for me.

Robin D. Laws - The Egyptian
One of the best written stories in the book by far – if not for the ending, which I thought a huge and lame letdown. A group of American G.I. led by an enigmatic sergeant fighting their way through Africa, Italy and later France gets help by a mysterious soldier they nickname The Egyptian. He knows the sergeant of old, who had done a lot of expeditions for the Miscatonic University, and is there to prove a point, because he is the Messenger from the dark gods.

Weston Ochse - When I Knew Baseball
This was the most successful of those stories trying to do something different with the concept. A Jewish G.I. in a secret battalion fighting the Japanese on the island of Gifu becomes the unwilling handler of the secret weapon they try to use, a thooloo. Interesting and effective idea more in tune with Lovecraftian concepts instead of using just the monsters as props, which of course is the backbone of RPG Cthulhu.

On the whole an enjoyable effort which suffered a bit by some truly by-the-number-stories and of course the sameness of the concept. Still I thought it better than its American cousin, maybe because it also was shorter – the other has 22 stories.