“Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories” by H. P. Lovecraft – Your Horror Essentials

Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft (Book cover))
The influence H. P. Lovecraft had on the world of literature, art, music and other kinds of media is rather hard to overstate; countless have inspired themselves from his timeless and horrifying works generally centered around unstoppable and indescribable terrors lurking beneath this world, generally leading his characters into madness, leaving them to a fate worse than death.

It is rather hard to choose one single work as being the quintessential one which should be read by all, which is why Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft was put together.

To explain it as basically as possible, the book is an anthology of numerous short stories by Lovecraft, including the titular classic “Call of Cthulhu”, as well as “Dagon”, “Celephais”, “Nyarlathotep”, “The Outsider”, “Herbert West - Reanimator”, “The Rats in the Walls”, “The Colour Out of Space”, “The Whisperer in Darkness”, and others.

In other words, it is an attempt to extensively cover all the different kinds of horror stories Lovecraft has brought to us over the years, and they range from a three-page exploration of a man whose mind is escaping from reality to a sixty-paged, morbid and terrifying encounter with a hidden alien species.

I firmly believe that even if you are not a great fan of horror, you are still going to find something to your liking here for many of these stories don't simply aim to scare you, but to unsettle you, make you uncomfortable at the ideas they bring forth.

If you haven't yet had the opportunity to read something by Lovecraft, then I believe the first thing you are going to notice is his writing style. He truly had a one-of-a-kind knack for manipulating the English language, seldom repeating himself and yet still managing to make one sentence flow into the next one seamlessly.

His talent for delving into madness and describing unsettling events and landscapes certainly comes to the fore, often leaving you feeling like you are actually there, but wishing you weren't.

His characters are all mostly rather singular and interesting, especially the protagonists with the minds of which we more often than not get rather well-acquainted with, following them in a sense of their journey through insanity, fearing for them and hoping to God they make it out of there alive.

I will admit that consider the age of these stories, some of them may feel a touch tame by today's standards, and even the more gruesome and naturalistic bits of it won't have you reeling in shock and disgust; Lovecraft aims for psychological horror above all else anyhow.

Even the more predictable and less reputable stories are still worth reading in my opinion, if only for Lovecraft's writing prowess and the atmosphere persisting throughout his works.

Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft (Book cover))
All in all, if you are a horror fan and are looking to explore one of the greatest pioneers and masters of the genre, to immerse yourself into a world where unspeakable doom lurks at every turn, then you definitely cannot pass up on The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories; it will most certainly satisfy your cravings for a while.


Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 - March 15, 1937)

Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft
(August 20, 1890 - March 15, 1937)


Personal site

Howard Philips “H. P.” Lovecraft was an American author who, sadly, only truly achieved fame posthumously, becoming recognized as one of the greatest pioneers of the horror genre. He is mostly known for writing the fabled Necronomicon as well as numerous short stories such as the timeless Call of Cthulhu.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

“The Locked Door” by Freida McFadden – Roots of a Lost Innocence

Image
  Freida McFadden has been quietly writing some exciting and original thrillers in her spare time from being a practicing physician, and The Locked Door is one of her latest offering in the genre.  It tells the story of Nora, a surgeon and daughter of a serial killer now in jail, who sees her life assaulted from the dark as someone begins to recreate her father's work with the exact same signature.
Read more

“The Lost Colony” by A.G. Riddle – A New Home Among the Stars

Image
A.G. Riddle's Long Winter Trilogy Series is one many of us will remember for the amazing story it brings of humanity's last stand against an overwhelming enemy in times of hopelessness. In The Lost Colony , the third book in the series, we follow James and Emma on their own respective struggles as humanity tries to settle itself on a new planet with an unseen danger none could have foreseen.
Read more

“The Girl on the Stairs” by Barry Ernest – The Small Thorn you Can’t Ignore

Image
Girl on the Stairs , by Barry Ernest and with a foreword written by David Lifton, is an exploration of one specific aspect of the JFK assassination. More precisely, it looks into what a little girl by the name of Victoria Adams saw on that day while standing in the staircase of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald was supposedly making his escape.  Actually, it is more about what she didn’t see than what she did see. Victoria was on the staircase Oswald supposedly used, at the exact same time he supposedly used it. If he were to be there, even the little girl she was, Victoria would have noticed a nervous man quickly running down the stairs. However, she says that on that day, she was alone there, with nobody to be found, especially Oswald.
Read more

“Winter World” by A.G. Riddle – Ice Age from the Void

Image
A.G. Riddle is a true literary explorer seeking to push humanity to its limits and beyond, setting them on a desperate collision course with something beyond its understanding in Winter World . With a sudden ice age dawning on humanity entire swathes of land become uninhabitable and people begin dropping like flies, with anarchy reigning supreme. Looking to the stars for a miraculous solution, the remnants of humanity find a massive mysterious object floating near Mars ...whatever it is, our civilization's hopes of survival rest entirely in its hands.
Read more

“Three Comrades” by Erich Maria Remarque – The Other Side of the Barricade

Image
The two World Wars have been documented, discussed and depicted from virtually every perspective imaginable, ranging from small children caught in a crossfire all the way the leaders of each country. However, it seems that here is a startlingly small amount of attention dedicated to the small hiatus period between the two wars, a time during which many changes came to pass in Germany in a very short amount of time.
Read more