Rough Edges

Howard’s novella “The Vultures of Wahpeton” is one of my top three favorite stories by him. (The other two are “Beyond the Black River” and “Wild Water”, in case anyone is interested.) The protagonist of “The Vultures of Wahpeton” is gunfighting Texan Steve Corcoran. The protagonist of “Sixgun Vixens of the Terror Trail” is gunfighting Texan Steve Cochran. At least one of the characters in this story believes them to be one and the same, that Cochran is simply the notorious Steve Corcoran going by another name. Blosser doesn’t resolve that one way or the other, but I’d say the evidence is pretty strong that Cochran is really Corcoran.

But it doesn’t really matter. Cochran and a companion, a Papago Indian, set out into the harsh landscape of Arizona in search of a fortune in silver that’s supposed to be hidden in a lost and abandoned mission where a massacre took place a couple of hundred years earlier. They run into trouble almost right away, an ambush that proves deadly. Then things are complicated by the arrival of two beautiful young women who hate each other but are attracted to Cochran—or maybe they just want to get their hands on that silver, too.

Pursued by Apaches and bandits, Cochran finally arrives at the so-called Black Mission, only to discover another surprise waiting for him there, and this is the most dangerous and strangest of all. It’s fitting that a story written mostly in homage to Robert E. Howard would have a little H.P. Lovecraft influence, too.

Blosser really nails the pulpish tone of this story with its fast pace, frequent gritty action, and a few spicy scenes with the so-called sixgun vixens. It’s just great fun from start to finish. Then, as a bonus for REH fans, Blosser wraps things up with an entertaining essay about Howard’s Western fiction. If you’re a Howard fan or just enjoy a fine Western adventure yarn, I give “Sixgun Vixens of the Terror Trail” a high recommendation. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and trade paperback editions.

As a matter of fact, the narrator of THE SLAVES OF CTHULHU mentions Fitzgerald and a couple of his novels, and Lovecraft makes an amusing cameo appearance as a character when the narrator pays a visit to Providence, Rhode Island.

THE SLAVES OF CTHULHU is set in the summer and fall of 1923. The narrator/protagonist is Jay Sinclair, heir to the Sinclair diamond fortune, who is tired of being a wealthy young playboy and wants to do something worthwhile with his life. So he decides to become a novelist (there’s the Fitzgerald connection) and rents an isolated house on a lonely island off the coast to have a place to write undisturbed. Only, as you might guess, he winds up being disturbed. Boy, does he.

Nearby is the sinister-looking mansion of notorious libertine and poetess Anastasia Gorsting, who dropped out of public view several years earlier. Anastasia has an occasional party at which the dull, reclusive, and odd-looking inhabitants of the local village gather and carry on in crazed fashion. Strange lights also emanate from Anastasia’s mansion, and Jay hears indecipherable shouts coming from these gatherings. An old friend of Jay’s comes to visit him and seemingly falls under Anastasia’s spell. Jay also meets Anastasia’s beautiful but strange daughter.

Look, I’m no Lovecraft expert, as I’ve mentioned many times in the past, but it seems pretty obvious what’s going on here. And for the most part, it is. However, author Tony Richards does spring a nice twist about three-fourths of the way through the book that I didn’t see coming. It worked well for me, and do did the book overall, although I do have a few quibbles.

The first of those is that some of the words and phrases Richards uses just seem too modern for a tale set in 1923. There aren’t very many of these, but when they cropped up, they knocked me out of the story for a moment. There’s also a continuity glitch where a character has one eye, then two, then one again. That’s a pretty minor deal, too, and it’s a mistake I’ve made myself, but again, it disrupted the flow of things.

My obsessive carping aside, I really enjoyed THE SLAVES OF CTHULHU. Richards keeps things moving along at a very nice pace, the writing does a fine job of capturing the Jazz Age feel (with those minor exceptions mentioned above), and Jay Sinclair is a likable protagonist who at least tries to battle against overwhelming odds. No, this isn’t quite the Gatsby vs. Cthulhu mash-up I thought it might be, but that’s probably a good thing. If you’re in the mood for an entertaining horror yarn, I can certainly recommend this one. It’s available in e-book and trade paperback editions on Amazon. I intend to read more by Tony Richards.

Now, somebody needs to write THE ELDER GODS ALSO RISE. Jake Barnes vs. Cthulhu in Paris. The running of the shoggoths in Pamplona. I can see it now . . .

My favorite story is one that wasn’t a reprint when it was published in a men's adventure magazine. “The Man Who Couldn’t Die” by Gardner F. Fox appeared originally in the August 1961 issue of ADVENTURE, the iconic pulp-turned-MAM. Fox, of course, is a legendary name in comic book history and also wrote scores of well-received paperbacks in various genres. This science fiction story is about a sociopathic criminal whose brain is transplanted into a robot body so he can go on a space voyage outside the solar system in search of habitable planets. Of course, what he decides to do instead is to become the greatest criminal overlord the solar system has ever seen. But then, as you might expect, things don’t turn out exactly as he plans . . . This is an excellent, fast-moving yarn with a nice twist at the end. I really had fun reading it.

Another well-known SF author, Theodore Sturgeon, contributes “The Blonde With the Mysterious Body”, from the April 1962 issue of MEN. This one appeared originally as “The Other Celia” in the March 1957 issue of the science fiction digest GALAXY. It’s a wryly humorous, genuinely creepy tale about voyeurism.

“The Hunted” by Rick Rubin, from the October 1961 ADVENTURE, is a top-notch story about humans on the run from robots bent on hunting them down. The twist ending is a little predictable, but Rubin, whoever he was, does a really good job of creating suspense and keeping things moving at a brisk pace.

In horror fiction, you don’t get much more well-known than H.P. Lovecraft, who is represented here with his story “The Rats in the Walls”, reprinted from its January 1959 appearance in SENSATION. The story appeared first in WEIRD TALES in 1924. Another horror tale that appeared first in WEIRD TALES (in 1940) is Manly Wade Wellman’s “Song of the Slaves” from the April 1959 issue of CAVALIER. As you’d expect from a Wellman story, it’s very well-written, and even though you’ll probably see the ending coming, it’s still really effective and downright chilling.

Elsewhere in this volume, you get stories about vampire bats, vampire tarantulas, giant lizards, man-eating trees (by Robert Moore Williams, the veteran SF and Western pulpster), devil worshippers, virgin sacrifices, crazed chicken choppers (a truly weird but good story), mad doctors, evil Nazis (but I repeat myself), and a really good Korean War/Civil War story that reminded me of the great Haunted Tank comic book series. Add some fine essays and introductions by Mike Chomko, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and editors Deis and Doyle, and you’ve got one of the best volumes so far in the Men’s Adventure Library. I had a wonderful time reading ATOMIC WEREWOLVES AND MAN-EATING PLANTS, and I give it a very high recommendation. It’s available in hardback (with a bonus story) and paperback editions.

While I’m only a lukewarm Lovecraft fan, I do find the Mythos pretty interesting, and I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever read by Will Murray, so I was happy to discover that Murray has published THE WILD ADVENTURES OF CTHULHU, a collection of ten Lovecraftian stories he wrote for various anthologies. Thankfully, he doesn’t try to recreate Lovecraft’s style in these stories, although after reading his novels written in the styles of Lester Dent, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Norvell Page, I don’t doubt for a second that he could have written Lovecraft-like prose if he’d wanted to.

No, these are more straight-ahead tales, some with a good deal of action, and most of them involve agents of the Cryptic Events Evaluation Section, which is part of the National Reconnaissance Office (both fictional creations by Murray). As a result, what we get isn’t exactly U.N.C.L.E. vs. Cthulhu, but there’s a hint of that, as Murray acknowledges in his introduction.

The stories have an epic scope, ranging from the Arctic to the Antarctic to the depths of the Pacific Ocean, and they usually end badly for humanity. Despite that, some of them manage to achieve a considerable amount of dry humor, as well as being appropriately creepy and downright terrifying at times.

The overall outlook in THE WILD ADVENTURES OF CTHULHU may be pretty bleak, but I enjoyed it. The stories are well-written and move right along, and Murray obviously knows his stuff when it comes to Lovecraft’s work. If you’re a Lovecraft fan or a Will Murray fan, or both, I give it a high recommendation. It's available in both e-book and paperback editions.

"The Dunwich Horror", which appeared originally in the April 1929 issue of WEIRD TALES, takes place around a farming community in Massachusetts, in an area where the hills have ancient stone circles atop them and some of the folks who live thereabouts have strange habits, like the Whately family, especially young Wilbur Whately, who is born and grows up in the course of this story but grows up to be something other than human . . . and that's just the beginning of the weird, potentially cataclysmic things that happen.

Once again, Lovecraft injects some dialogue and action into this yarn to go along with the all the richly detailed creepy stuff. The climax is downright thrilling. Not only that, but there are also a few unexpected (at least by me) touches of humor in this story. Granted, the lines are more droll than they are laugh-out-loud funny, but still, I'll give Lovecraft credit for making me smile.

I know I said I might continue with this series after Halloween, but I believe I've changed my mind. Honestly, as much as I've enjoyed the tales, I'm about Cthulhu-ed out. I'm sure I'll return to the series, and to other horror stories, in the future, and right now I'm planning to make a whole month of it again for Halloween next year. I'll have one more horror-related post tomorrow (not Lovecraft or Cthulhu), and after that I plan to go back to reading Westerns and mysteries for a while.  

After complaining about the slow pace and lack of dialogue in other Lovecraft stories, this one is much different. It still doesn’t just race along, but it moves fairly well, there’s a lot of dialogue, and Lovecraft actually shows us most of the action instead of just summarizing it, achieving some real suspense along the way. And then at the end, there’s a twist that’s a real gut punch.

“The Shadow Over Innsmouth” was published originally as a stand-alone novella by some outfit called Visionary Press in 1936, then reprinted in the January 1942 issue of WEIRD TALES. I’m sure those of you who are more familiar with Lovecraft and his career than I am know a lot more about the origins of this tale than I do, and if you’d like to weigh in in the comments, please do. I’m going to settle for saying that this is a wonderful yarn, and I have a feeling it’s going to stick with me. I kind of wish I’d read this sitting on my parents’ front porch in the summer of 1967 or ’68 . . . 

I decided to go ahead and read more of the Cthulhu Mythos stories, so why not go right to the source? H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” was published in the February 1928 issue of WEIRD TALES and reprinted many times since. It’s a very impressive piece of inventiveness. In this one story, Lovecraft lays out the basis for a huge number of stories by many different authors: the Great Old Ones, vast cosmic beings that come from beyond the stars, landed on Earth in the planet’s infancy and are still alive, although dormant and hidden away in vanished cities, waiting to be called back to life by a cult of their devoted followers, at which time they will lay waste to humanity, or at least try to. Although not necessarily evil by their own standards—they’re beyond the concept of good and evil—to humans they represent the greatest horrors imaginable, or, in some cases, unimaginable.

“The Call of Cthulhu” itself is a good story, fast-moving by Lovecraft’s standards, in which the narrator investigates several related series of events that gradually reveal the terrible truth to him. One section of the story set in the Louisiana swamps and another on a mysterious South Seas island could have been really good adventure yarns if Lovecraft had done more than summarize them. Even at that, they’re pretty exciting, especially the climactic battle between a ship and the reborn Cthulhu.

This is a good example of why so many authors latched on to the Cthulhu Mythos and wrote their own stories set against that background. It’s such an epic concept, filled with the potential for drama, conflict, and action, that born yarn-spinners such as Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, and many others, naturally would see the possibilities. From what I’ve read so far, it seems to me that Lovecraft’s stories function more as a series bible than as satisfying stories of their own (although I’m warming up to his style and see its appeal).

I’m going to continue reading these stories, including some of the other authors who wrote Mythos stories, and even though this started as a Halloween-related project, it’ll probably take me longer than that. So bear with me, even though many of you probably read all these stories years or even decades ago. They’re new to me.

I’ve seen Frank Belknap Long’s name in books and magazines countless times over the decades, but I’ve read very little by him. The title of his story “The Hounds of Tindalos” sounded familiar to me, so I decided to give it a try. It was published originally in the March 1929 issue of WEIRD TALES, reprinted in the July 1937 issue of WT, in AVON FANTASY READER #16 in 1951, and in many collections and anthologies since then. I read it in THE CTHULHU MYTHOS MEGAPACK, an e-book anthology published by Wildside Press.

I’m not well versed enough in all the Mythos stuff to know exactly how “The Hounds of Tindalos” is connected to Lovecraft’s work, so I read it as I would any other yarn, looking to be entertained. And I was. It’s the tale of Frank Chalmers, a student of the occult who is convinced that through a combination of drugs and mathematics that he can see into both the past and the future. He enlists the aid of a friend of his, the narrator of the story, who is supposed to pull him out of his drug-induced trance if things start to go wrong.

Well, don’t things always go wrong in stories like this? There are things man was not meant to know, after all, and when you stare into the abyss, be careful that the abyss doesn’t stare back at you. (Hint: It always does.) So when Chalmers discovers cosmic horrors beyon his ken, those horrors discover him, as well, and decide to follow him back to our earth.

I can see where this is a Lovecraftian story, but Long spins his yarn with a lot more dialogue and narrative drive than the Lovecraft stories I’ve read so far, but also without the really creepy style at which Lovecraft was so skilled. As a result, “The Hounds of Tindalos” is faster and more fun but lacks some of the impact of Lovecraft’s tales. I enjoyed it quite a bit anyway and am glad I read it.

I do have a very indirect connection with Frank Belknap Long. In the Sixties and Seventies, he worked for Leo Margulies’ Renown Publications and was the associate editor of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE for quite a while. Not while I was selling to MSMM, however. Sam Merwin Jr. came in to run the magazine a few years before I started submitting stories there, but if I’d gotten around to it a little earlier, I might have gotten rejection slips from Long, too.