HP Lovecraft

In an attempt to transfer the concept of 'completed discographies' from music to literature, I will try in this post to discuss the (mostly) complete fiction of HP Lovecraft. I'm no music critic, but at least I do know quite a bit about music. So this is uncharted territory where I am an even greater novice...

Howard Phillps Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author who wrote short and medium-length fiction. His two primary genres were 'weird' fiction (blending aspects of fantasy, science-fiction and, most prominently, horror) and a sort of 'high' fantasy concerning dreams (which I understand was very similar to Lord Dunsany's fiction - which I have never read and have little interest in). 

On a trip to Canada, I ended up buying a short collection of 5 of his Cthulhu Mythos stories. I was aware of Cthulhu as some sort of cosmic deity in pop-culture, but thought it might be worth reading the origins. Well, I liked the stories quite a lot (which is rare as I don't often read fiction) and thought it might be worth reading more. So I bought the most comprehensive collection of his works I could find. I'm sure it's missing some works (especially some stories that HPL ghost wrote for other people) and it doesn't include any of his poetry or non-fiction, but it's more-or-less complete. I will be following it's structure here in moving through his stories chronologically as they were written (approximately). 

For each early story I will provide a brief overview of the story's plot, for later longer stories I will be more vague, before providing some - very amateur - thoughts. So Spoiler Warning - and I feel I should point out that much of the horror/fun in reading these stories is not knowing where they're going, so perhaps don't read this if you think you might read some HPL in future. 
And I'll be giving a letter grade, which I've been doing as I read them. Anything C or above is worth a read. 

So grab your dictionary (absolutely necessary is you read any HPL, the man's a living thesaurus), and let's go. 

The version of the collection I am using is pictured below:

The Beast in the Cave

Plot: A man takes a guided tour of a 'Mammoth Cave', becomes lost from the group, and his torch goes out. He then has a confrontation with some sort of beast in the complete darkness, which he kills with the throw of a stone. The tour guide finds him, and they find that the best was actually a man who had adapted to living in the cave after himself getting lost years ago. 

A lot of HPL's early work is quite hammy, and this first story is a perfect example. Our protagonist thinks his high intellect and natural skill will see him through his solo venture through the cave's labyrinthian tunnels, but he is mistaken. The oncoming 'beast', however, is felled by the (second) throw of a small piece of 'angled limestone'. After running a bit, the guide finds our man, and they go and investigate the 'beast'. The deformities and peculiarities of the beast's form are described poorly, and fail in their attempt to shock the reader (see this done to far greater effect in The Dunwich Horror). And then it ends on the realisation that "the beast of the unfathomed cave was, or had at one time been, a MAN!!!". You really can't help but laugh at the combined all caps, bold, and triple excalamations. 

A poor opening, but you'd kind of expect that as it was written when HPL was 14. 

D

The Alchemist

Plot: Hundreds of years ago, an ancestor of Count Antoine de C killed a dark wizard. The wizard's son, Charles le Sorcier, cursed the father's family to all die at the age of 32. In the present day, Antoine reflects on this story and how all of his ancestors died at the age of 32, and that he is soon to become 32. Wandering around the ancestral castle, now mostly in ruins, he comes accross a trapdoor. He finds Charles le Sorcier, alive through discovery of the elixer of life, and subsequently kills him. 

Firstly, Charles le Sorcier is an awful character name. Sorcier is a sorcerer, gettit? 

The first of HPL's tales to invoke the idea of one being doomed by one's ancestry fails to either cause intrigue or horror. Both this, and the previous story, are far too short (5 or so pages each) to develop the ideas within. And HPL was himself far too young and inexperienced to pull off the ideas within the stories. I do quite like the idea of the sort-of twist that the curse was not really a 'curse' as such, but that Charles just became immortal to personally kill every ancestor at age 32. That's some deep-seated revenge. 

Following his hammy ending in the prior story, we end here with "I tell you, it is I! I! I! that have lived for six hundred years to maintain my revenge, FOR I AM CHARLES LE SORCIER!". Here we have the formatting for emphasis spread over a few sentences, rather than a single word. But the exclamation marks, repetition of "I", italics, then all caps - all hilarious. 

E

Postscript: Blue Oyster Cult made an excellent song about this (not so great) story on their last album The Symbol Remains - check it out!

The Tomb

Plot: Jervas Dudley becomes obsessed with a tomb nearby his family home, and begins sleeping outside of it. Jervas believes that he has gone into the tomb, and found a coffin with the name Jervas on it. Following some dreams which lead Jervas to believe he is the reincarnation of a different Jervas (Hyde) who died in a housefire, his father commits him to a mental ayslum. Though Jervas's father tells him that he has been observed constantly and has never actually been inside the tomb, a servant goes into the tomb and finds that there is indeed a coffin with the name Jervas on it. 

Some mixed themes here. Jervas Hyde died in a fire caused by a lightning strike, and as such his ashes were scattered to the wind. Jervas Dudley's obsession with the Hyde family tomb seems to suggest that JH has reincarnated himself as JD, and longs to be buried alongside his ancestors. Quite understandably, JD is treated as mad by his own family, but it turns out that he had knowledge of the tomb which he should have been unable to come by naturally due to the tomb having been locked. 

This one was slightly hard for me to follow actually. The writing style is much improved over the young efforts, but there's something obfuscatory in his setting out the plot. Not a fan.

D+

Dagon

Plot: Set in WWI, the protagonist is left adrift on a lifeboat following his ship being captured by the Germans. Waking up, he finds his ship has landed on an uncharted island which he determines has recently sprung up due to volcanic activity. Deciding to explore, he climbs a hill which seems to reveal a large canyon. In the canyon is a monolith, with strange hieroglyphs, and a channel of water. Out of the water rises a monstrous sea-creature, which darts to the monolith and seems to bow to it. Our protagonist runs, gets to his boat, and sails away. Deciding he has to forget, or die, the story ends with him seeming to jump off a balcony. 

It is apparently contentious as to whether this is considered HPL's first Cthulhu Mythos story, but to my reading it seems to be. The framing of the story as a suicide note is interesting, and brings in a key HPL theme of how some knowledge is better left unknown. Having seen the sea-creature, the protagnist doesn't believe that he can continue life with the knowledge that beneath the sea lie forms of life which would throw all known science and religion into catastrophe. 

This is also a reasonably well-written HPL story, especially for such an early one. The pacing and descriptions do well to build up the tension, and the reveal of the sea-monster is not overdone. It's a shame that HPL doesn't return to these sort of stories for quite some time. 

B

A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson

Plot: The author describes his life, commenting throughout on his fondness for antiquarian speech and concepts. 

This is an odd little self-parody. Anyone who has read any HPL will know that he almost constantly wore rose-tinted spectacles when thinking about the past, and was incredibly nostalgic of the period when America was new(ly colonised). He also had a fondness for antiquarian words and ways of speaking. This little short story is, then, HPL poking a little fun at himself. It's actually even funnier if you realise he was 17 when he wrote it. Basically, imagine Jacob Rees-Mogg but with a bit more self-awareness and humour. 

I should also say that this is much more funny if you've already read some HPL. Reading it as the 4th story in this book feels odd, and the parody works much better if you have a better understanding of what he's parodying.

C+

Polaris

Plot: the narrator dreams of a great marble city. After repeated dreams, the narrator eventually becomes a resident of the city, and attends his job at a watchtower. However, in the dream the narrator falls asleep, thus waking in the 'real world', and failing in his dream-duty to guard the city. 

I don't know why, but I sometimes find it very difficult to follow what exactly is going on in HPL's dream stories (heavy foreshadowing for Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath below...). Essentially, this is a philosophical thought wrapped up in a thin story premise - are dreams the 'real' world, and reality the 'dream'? It's a question HPL returns to over and over again, and suggests that he had a real longing to live in his fantastical dreams rather than a world of wars, debts, and family. 

D

Beyond the Wall of Sleep

Plot: a mental hospital worker describes his experience with a patient named Joe Slater. Joe had frequent episodes where he would lash out and scream about incredible dream-like images. With Joe close to dying, the narrator hooks up his recently invented telepathic machine. Entering Joe's mind, the narrator discovers that Joe is being controlled by a being of light, who must undertake his final battle against his nemesis, another being of light. 

The first, but certainly not the last, of HPL's lengthy descriptions of a person (or peoples) who is the unintelligent, depraved result of backwater inbreeding and regressive evolution. One can laugh now at the shock HPL is trying to convey in that: how could such a person have such fantastic dreams? As if complex dreams were only the domain of the well-bred and sophisticated. 

Anyway, the story is at least relatively easy to follow until the telepathic machine is hooked up and we get all this nonsense about beings of pure light who exist on a higher 'dream' plane. Actually, we find out that all humans become being of light when they dream - the more you know. The story ends with the being telling the narrator they need to defeat their foe near Algol (a star constellation). We then find out that - in the real world - a new star was discovered near Algol, but that it had gone out within a few weeks. All a bit nonsense when you think about the time-gap between stars giving off light and it reaching us, but oh well. 

On the whole, I think this story does a reasonable enough job of getting you interested in why Joe is having these strange outbursts, but the payoff is a bit too 'out there' for the setting. 

C+

Memory

Plot: in the valley of Nis, the 'Genie that haunts the moonbeams' speaks to the 'Daemon of the Valley', asking of the ruined stone buildings and strange apes in the valley. The Daemon replies "I am Memory", and tells that the buildings were built by Man, but that was long ago. 

As page-long stories go, this is ok. We are in a post-human world, where cosmic beings are pondering about what could have built the ruined structures that pepper this particular valley. The presence of apes suggests a cyclical process, where they will eventually evolve again to human beings, who may then be doomed to ruin the Earth once again. 

It's nice enough. 

C-

Old Bugs

Plot: a youth is taken to a secret prohibition bar, and is scared off drinking by a local drunk who turns out to have been in love with the youth's mother years ago before becoming an alcoholic. 

This entire story is basically: DON'T DRINK FOR IT WILL RUIN YOU. As with some other earlier stories, this is pretty hammily written, but like with Reminiscence there is enough humour here to keep you interested. Not convinced it works in its primary purpose, though. As a teetotaller, HPL can never quite describe drinks and drinking properly. 

C

The Transition of Juan Romero

Plot: at a gold mine, the miners discover a deep cavern that they cannot reach the bottom of. A rhythmic beat draws the narrator and a Mexican miner, Juan Romero, to the cavern one night. Romero seems to fall into the cavern, after which the narrator peers over the edge and sees... something? After blacking out, the narrator wakes up to find him and Romero in their beds, but Romero is dead. 

Something HPL does quite well is 'fear of the unknown', and being able to describe the undescribable. Sometimes, however, (especially in some of these early stories) he fails to describe anything at all. When peering over the cliff, the narrator states "but God! I dare not tell you what I saw!", and that's about all we get for as an explanation for what happened to Romero. Not scary, and not particularly well written. 

D

The White Ship

Plot: a lighthouse keeper dreams that a white ship takes him on a fantastical journey through several amazing and wonderous cities. The narrator, however, hears of Cathuria, which is meant to be even more amazing. In trying to find the elusive Cathuria, the ship comes to the edge of the world and falls to its doom. The lighthouse keeper wakes up on a rock, and sees a real-life ship crashing into the rocks due to the light in his lighthouse having gone out.

Maybe it's because I came into HPL for the weird horror, and all this dream stuff was just unexpected. But I really don't like these 'dreamcycle' stories. Effectively, this story is an excuse to lavishly describe (and name) some great dream cities, followed up by another question mark about the link between dreams and reality. Not for me.

E

The Street

Plot: describes the history of a particular street in New England. First laid down as a path by colonisers, the story describes how the changing scenery surrounding the street over about 250 years. The street soon becomes a run-down slum, populated by immigrants. When terrorists meet in the street to plan the downfall of the USA, all of the buildings on the street collapse, killing them. 

Almost everything about this is awful. The writing is the worst example of HPL's indulgence in talking around things without actually getting to the point. And the plot is a xenophobic polemic about immigrants ruining the 'soul' of the locations they move to. Now, I'm not the right person to talk about HPL's xenophobia and racism, but it will come up again a few times... It is worth, though, pointing out the irony of the immigrant-killing street having been built by, um, immigrants.
If there can be one saving thought from this short story, it's the idea that locations have characters which can both weather and adapt to the changing years. 

F

The Doom that Came to Sarnath

Plot: in the land of Mnar, a vast city called Sarnath is founded next to a great lake. On the other side of the lake was the city of Ib, which was populated by strange beings the citizens of Sarnath found repulsive. Sarnarth conquered Ib, killing all their citizens and stealing the idol to their God, the great water lizard Bokrug. 1000 years later, at the regular feast which celebrates the destruction of Ib, a great mist decends over Sarnath, and the waters rise. The citizens of Sarnath flee, and it is implied the long-dead citizens of Ib have taken over the city. In later years, it seems the entire city of Sarnath has been swallowed by the lake, leaving only a marsh and the idol to Bokrug. 

I'm not sure why I gave this story a C when I read it. Thinking about it now, I think I was probably just pleased to read a story that (mostly) made sense and was reasonably well-written. It's far too short (5 pages) to properly detail the rise and fall of a city, and the 'doom' is again far too vague to properly convey to the reader what exactly happened. The implication is that Bokrug is real and had some influence in the fall of Sarnath, but why did he have to wait a full 1000 years? Gods can hold a grudge. 

C

The Statement of Randolf Carter

Plot: Carter relates an account of the occultist Harley Warren. Warren discovers through reading a particular book that there are ways of travelling between our world and the underworld. Finding one such gateway in a graveyard, Warren takes Carter with him to investigate. Warren enters a tomb, leaving Carter outside, though they are able to communicate by telephone. After a few minutes, Warren begins screaming at Carter to block the tomb and leave. After another period of silence, an unworldly voice tells Carter that Warren is dead. 

Randolf Carter is HPL's most frequently reoccurring protagonist, and this is an odd story for him to be in when one considers that most others concern dreams. Overall, this story suffers from many of the early HPL pitfalls. Too vague, too short, and a hammy final line in "YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!". There isn't enough space, and HPL is yet unable to properly convey a real sense of horror here. Having said that, it is still one of the better early stories in that one can follow the narrative easily. 

C-

The Terrible Old Man

Plot: people generally avoid the 'terrible old man', who acts very peculiarly. Three foreign criminals attempt to rob the man, but while one waits outside in the getaway car, the man comes out of his house smiling. The three mutilated bodies of the robbers are later found. 

Another on the pile of HPL's racist stories. Though a cold reading of the plot might suggest that the story is about the terrible old man, it seems the story justifies his actions. There is a bit too much delight in the killing of the foreigners, and in the man getting away with it. A sort of 'this is what you foreigners get if you mess with the locals' message. Lovely. 

E

The Cats of Ulthar

Plot: the story relates why the town of Ulthar passed a law that made it illegal to kill cats. An old couple enjoy killing cats, and do so to any that enter their property. Some travellers come to Ulthar, and an orphan boy named Menes loses his kitten. Suspecting the old couple, Menes prays in an unknown language. One night, all the cats in Ulthar go to the old couple's house and eat them. 

Lovecraft liked cats. A lot. For a short 3 page story, this is very digestible and pleasant. There is no overwriting, no overwrought description. One criticism might be, like with most of HLP's dream stories, the overuse of fantastical place and people names. But this is kept to a minimum unlike some of his other tales. 

B

The Tree

Plot: set in ancient Greece, it tells the tale of two renowned sculptors who are each commissioned to design and build great statues. One of the sculptors dies, and is buried with olive twigs. An olive tree grows very quickly from the spot. The other sculptor finishes his masterpiece, but after a storm the statue is destroyed by a branch that falls from the olive tree. 

Much like a later story (The Very Old Folk), this story seems partly an excuse for HPL to show off his knowledge of ancient history. I didn't like this at all, not least because it's another example of the plot being hidden behind a highly complex writing style that makes it difficult to determine what exactly is going on.  

E-

Celephaïs

Plot: the city of Celephaïs was created by Kuranes in a dream. In repeatedlyy dreaming of the city, Kuranes slowly transitions to living permanently in the dream world, becoming king of the great city. It is suggested that his real body washes up on the shores of Innsmouth, looking like a tramp. 

Another HPL character who longs to live in his dreams rather than the real world. Another story full of weird place names that have no points of reference. Another plot that is mostly hidden behind detailed descriptions of the city. Better than the last one, but still not my thing. 

The Innsmouth mentioned is also different to the one in the much better story The Shadow Over Innsmouth (below). 

E+

The Picture in the House

Plot: a geneologist seeks shelter from a storm in the Miskatonic Valley. He goes inside a seemingly abandoned house, but finds a strange old man. The man seems obsessed with the book Regnum Congo, and we infer that he has become a cannibal which has prolonged his life. The man denies he ever acted upon his desires, but blood starts dripping from the ceiling. That moment, the house is struck by lightning, though the narrator survives.

I quite like this story, and when the blood started dripping from the ceiling I remember actually smiling as HPL had finally written something that was (to me) unexpected and a bit scary. Though he had done it before, in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, this is the first story where HPL writes the dialogue of a simple, backwater Yankee in their accent. Like Irvine Welsh does with Scottish dialogue. It can be effective, but it isn't half difficult to read! E.g. "Queer haow picters kin set a body thinkin'". 
The building tension of realising that the old man is a bit more than academically interested in cannabalism is well done. However I am not a fan at all of the lightning-strike ending. I had recently read Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, which ends in the same way. But here it feels like a cheap escape for the narrator. 

C+

The Temple

Plot: a German submarine commander in WWI documents his final days. After a skirmish, the body of a British soldier is found in the water, and a strange ivory carving is found in his pocket. Strange things start to happen. Crew start going mad, their navigation equipment fails and, after submerging, they are unable to return to the surface due to other equipment failures. Eventually, the commander is the only one left. The submarine eventually lands on the ocean floor, and using a search beam the commander discovers he is in an ancient underwater city. Thinking he sees a light flickering in one of the temples, he puts on scuba gear and leaves. 

I quite liked this for a few reasons. Firstly, it's actually quite funny. HPL seems to delight in making his German commander as stereotypically German as possible. Secondly, it has a lot of interesting ideas: while the boat sinks, the crew see many strange things through the submarine windows; the significance of the ivory carving; and the ultimate landing in the strange underwater city that may well just be inhabited by something...
The main downfall, if you can think of it as one, is that there are no answers to any of these questions. How do the different weird things link together? Who knows. And we never learn of what happens because the entire story is written in the form of the commander's last journal entry, before he sets out to explore the mysterious light. 

C+

Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and his Family

Plot: tells the tale or Arthur Jermyn and his ancestors. Much of the story is devoted to the history of the family, starting with great-great grandfather Wade Jermyn - an explorer of the Congo who had a reclusive Portuguese wife. Decedents looks increasingly peculiar, and there is much hereditary madness. Tracing Wade's African journeys, Arthur discovers a city of white apes that worship a stuffed ape goddess. Arthur hires someone to find the stuffed idol and ship it to him. On inspecting it, Arthur discovers that his family's odd visual traits are very similar to the ape - and realises that this god was actually Wade's strange wife. Arthur kills himself by dousing himself in oil and setting himself alight. 

Bit of a weird one, this. Not for the last time, HPL spends much of the story telling the history of a particular family through the centuries. I'm pretty sure I saw the twist coming, but it was still reasonably well told. I'm just not sure the overall idea - ancestor discovers his family is the product of cross-breeding between humans and strange apes - is a very good one. HPL's racism also lurks in the background as the story definitely has shades of 'interracial breeding is bad', a theme which HPL uses more subtly (though still not subtle enough) in The Shadow Over Innsmouth (below).

C

From Beyond

Plot: the narrator visits scientist Crawford Tillinghast. Tillinghast has invented a device that allows humans to see beyond our own reality. Using it with them both in the room, the narrator sees wild images and horrific aliens that seem to exist in the same space but on a different plane of reality. As Tillinghast explains that these aliens may have eaten his housekeepers, the narrator shoots him. 

A classic HPL scientist who discovers something he was not meant to, and starts going mad because of it. Although unlike many other HPL scientists, Tillinghast seems to have more control over this reality-shifter and the aliens than might be expected. Some of the science talk is a bit obviously made-up (much talk of 'ultra-violet' light) and can pull you out of it, but otherwise I thought this was ok. HPL's writing is still improving, though not quite good enough to pull this plot off very well. 

C-

Nyarlathotep

Plot: more of a poem that a story, it describes the appearance of Nyarlathotep who brings nightmares wherever he visits. The narrator visits a demonstration of Nyarlathotep's powers, and dismisses him as a trickster. Those who watched this demonstration are either killed, driven mad, or experience supernatural visions of a doomed world. 

Nyarlathotep, the crawling chaos, is one of HPL's reoccurring antagonists. We later get more of a grip on who he is, as a sort of emissary of some of the cosmic gods. Here, he is a man who looks like a Pharaoh who has lived for centuries. He travels from city to city, bringing nightmares and despair. Something of a disjunct between his portrayal here and later, but I feel that's par for the course with a lot of HPL's gods and aliens. Anyway, this is fine at building a overall feeling towards Nyarlathotep, if not much else. 

D

The Quest of Iranon

Plot: Iranon is a singer, who claims to be a prince from the great city of Aira, which he has been unable to find to return to. A boy, Romnod, hears about Oonai, a city which he suspects to be the mythical Aira. Romnod and Iranon set out together to Oonai, but when they get there Iranon is saddened to discover it is not actually Aira. They stay and, though initially popular, Iranon's signing is appreciated less and less. Though Iranon appears immortal, Romnod ages and eventually dies. Iranon sets out again to find Aira, but after talking to a shepherd he realises that Aira was a figment of his own imagination. Iranon then rapidly ages and dies. 

One of the few HPL dream cycle stories that I don't dislike - helped by the fact that one can follow the plot with relative ease. Iranon's longing for Aira is well captured, as is his naivety. There is sadness in how Iranon took Romnod under his wing, under what we later find out is a mistaken pretence. And Iranon's realisation that Aira is a city that he has convinced himself is real was genuinely unexpected, and a bit sad. 

C-

The Music of Erich Zann

Plot: a student lives below a mute German musician named Erich Zann. Some nights, Zann can be heard playing strange and amazing melodies. The student asks Zann to play for him, but he does not play the same strange melodies the student hears at night. Some nights, the student sits outside Zann's room to hear the strange playing. One night he hears a commotion and bursts in. Zann is panicked, and writes a long explanation on paper. However a sound is heard outside his window, and Zann immediately starts playing again. The window shatters, with the wind blowing the papers outside. The student looks out, seeing only a horrifying black void rather than the city. The student tries to remove Zann from the room, but discovers that he has died, though is still playing his viol. Fleeing outside, the student sees the skies are clear and it is daytime, and he is unable to find that house ever again. 

Easily the best HPL story since Dagon. The mystery of why Zann is playing the music is well built-up, and the reveal is satisfying. The idea of a mad musician playing wild music to defend against evil sounds escaping through a dark portal is creative, if a little unexplained. Will Zann be playing forever as a corpse to defend against the portal? If not, what will happen once he stops playing? Why was the student unable to ever find the building and street again? I think it's a testament to HPL's improved writing, and skill in raising tension and intrigue that, ultimately, I didn't really care that there were no answers to these questions.

B-

Ex Oblivione

Plot: another prose poem. A man dreams of a great golden gate, and longs to know what lies beyond. He dreams of finding ancient scrolls, giving contradicting accounts of wonders and horror of what lay beyond the gate. The man discovers a drug in the real world that will allow him to enter the gate in his dreams. Going through the gate, the man discovers that the contradictory accounts were both true, as beyond the gate lies death. 

A rumination on nothingness being preferable to being. And, again, dreamland being better to reality. It can also be read as a sick man preparing himself for death, and coming to terms with it. Either way, not for me. 

D

Sweet Ermengarde

Plot: a parody melodrama. Ermengarde must decide whom to marry. The rich, elderly, and villainous 'Squire Hardman. The handsome but poor Jack Manly. Or the sophisticated but unfaithful Algernon Reginald Jones. 

This is genuinely very funny. It plays on the tropes of the C19th century romance novel very well: a naïve young girl who's only decision is who to marry, a father who is trying to organise the marriage in order to remedy his own financial woes, a dastardly villain vying for the girl's affections, a 'I'm your real mother' twist at the end. And overall, just the highly complex and contrived plot. Well worth checking out. 

B+

The Nameless City

Plot: the narrator investigates an ancient city in the desert. Digging down through the ruins, the passage ways are very low and narrow. Descending deeper and deeper, the narrator discovers artwork and carvings which seem to tell the history of the city. He discovers that the city was built and inhabited by strange reptilian creatures who walked on all fours (hence the low ceilings), and that these creatures are actually still alive in a deep cavern.

Quite a few HPL staples here. A narrator who continues searching despite mounting evidence they should stop. An ancient city, populated by ancient beings. Those beings still being alive. Handy artwork which does the expository work of explaining what is going on. This generally works as a template for better stories that would come later (see At The Mountains of Madness), and when placed against those later stories is clearly inferior. It is still compelling though, HPL's writing always drives you to want to know how it all ends. 

C

The Outsider

Plot: the narrator has always been alone, and seems to live in a dark castle, surrounded by forest. Deciding to free himself from his prison, the narrator climbs the tallest tower in the castle. Eventually coming upon a ceiling trapdoor, the narrator finds on pushing through that he is on the surface of another world. He tries to talk to some people but they run terrified of him. Looking in a mirror, the narrator discovers that he is a ghoul (or zombie?). 

I quite like the plot of this. The solitude and sadness described of the narrator at the beginning is poignant, as his want to climb to freedom. The discovery that he is some sort of monster, and is unable to return to his dark castle, is a nice twist as well. I like the ruminations on the inner monologue of a monster, and where they came from. However the story is significantly let down by obscurities and vagueness in the writing. The beginning part, in particular, is difficult to follow. And his description of climbing the tower is poorly done. 

C-

The Moon-Bog

Plot: Denys Barry returns to his native Ireland to reclaim his ancestral land. Despite warnings of a supernatural nature from all of the locals, Denys decides to drain the local bog in order to redevelop the land. Denys awakens one night to the wraiths of the bog luring the workers to their doom - seemingly turning them into frogs. Denys is also seemingly turned into a shadow. 

This is terrible. Predictable, ineffective, not scary. Very unlike HPL to write something so unimaginative and rote. 

E

The Other Gods

Plot: Barzai the Wise, and his pupil Atal, go in search of the gods. The gods are rumoured to congregate and dance on the mountain Hatheg-Kla. Scaling the mountain, Barzai finds the gods, and is initially jubillant. Atal, who is a ways behind Barzai in climbing the mountain, then hears Barzai scream that the gods of Earth are guarded by 'Outer Gods' of hell and seemingly falls to his death. Atal escapes to tell the tale.

A mix of dream cycle and horror, this one. In a relatively short space (4 and a bit pages) we get a scholar obsessed with finding knowledge which humans should not be privy to, that scholar finding it, and then being doomed for it. This is effectively the plot to half of HPL's better stories. But it's relatively well written, and we get told (mostly) what happens. We also get introduced to the idea that there are gods of Earth, but also 'outer' gods. The pantheon is being created...

C-

Azathoth

Plot: description of a world that has lost all wonder and magic. A man dreams of travelling to the outer cosmos (or dream world?).

Apparently this is the opening page of a novel that was never finished - or even barely begun. Wikipedia tells me that the idea for this novel later turned into The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. Notable, perhaps, for being the first mention of one of HPL's more-used gods: Azathoth, but the actual text of the story here doesn't mention it at all. 

D

Herbert West - Reanimator

Plot: Herbert West's student describes his disappearance. West and the student invent a serum which can reanimate corpses. They steal dead bodies to test their serum on in order to refine it. They take more and more risky and extreme measures to get 'fresh' bodies (required for the reanimated corpses to retain brain function). After the outbreak of WWI, West begins further experiments on reanimating individual parts of bodies. West is eventually murdered by a group of the very corpses he has been reanimating. 

There are a lot of good ideas in this story. It is apparently one of the first portrayals of zombies as scientifically created, rather than by magic. West is also a classic HPL protagonist, being undone by his obsessive quest for knowledge and the perfection of his formula. There are significant negatives, however. The plot is entirely predictable. There are not-so-subtle hints throughout that West's 'failed' attempts at reanimating corpses were actually successful, and that these mindless zombies are seeking their revenge - and so one sees the ending coming a mile off. More annoyingly, as the story was serialised, each 'chapter' spends about a page recapping the story. A sort of 'previously on...', and with 6 chapters it gets tired very quickly. There is also something a bit artificial in the cliff-hangers at the end of each chapter, which were attempts at getting readers to by the next issue of Weird Tales. 

C-

Hypnos

Plot: the narrator is a sculptor. He makes a friend, and together they embark on adventures in their dreams. One evening, the friend goes through a dream-barrier to a forbidden and unknown area of the dreamscape. They wake up and the friend is terrified, saying that they should never fall asleep again. They use drugs to stay awake, but one evening the narrator awakes to find only a statue of his friend in the room. The police tell him his friend never existed. 

A mix of dream and horror, this one. But, for me, another story that's too vague. The description of dreams is very fantastical, but there are few hints as to what the friend actually does in going beyond a particular barrier in the dreams. And the nightmares which they suffer later are not explored very much. As to the ending - was the friend real? Well, that one's for the reader to work out. 
I know that not-explaining everything can be effective in leaving the reader in suspense, but I think this goes too far in the other direction. 


D-

What the Moon Brings

Plot: a prose poem. A dreamer is afraid of the moon, and in the moonlight sees many fantastical and horrific images. The narrator tries to escape by jumping into the sea, preferring death to madness. 

I'm sure some people like this sort of thing, but again the high level of abstraction doesn't work for me. There's a run of stories here that I don't like...

D

The Hound

Plot: two graverobbers open the grave of a famous tomb raider, and steal a jade amulet. The amulet seems to draw the sound of hounds, and one of the robbers is killed by a mysterious creature. The other robber tries to return the amulet, but it is stolen. Going mad, he returns to the tomb raider's corpse to find it holding the amulet and howling, like the hounds he has been hearing. The narrator flees and intends to commit suicide. 

I didn't dislike this story that much, but it is far too short to pull off the plot which, in itself, isn't a bad one. It is quite predictable, though, and quite hammy when the corpse starts howling like a hound. The idea of a mysterious amulet from a corpse which dooms its finder is also done in The Temple. 

D

The Lurking Fear

Plot: the narrator investigates the destruction of some homes, seemingly caused by strange creatures. The narrator discovers many strange tales and myths concerning the nearby Martense mansion. The Martenses were shunned by neighbours, and kept to themselves over the centuries, though it was now thought that the mansion was empty. Eventually, we discover that the strange creatures are ape-like beasts created through centuries of inbreeding by the Martense family. The narrator arranges the destruction of the mansion and surrounding area, but is worried one of the creatures escaped. 

This is a bit more the HPL that people know, though no alien gods - yet. A narrator who investigates a strange occurrence despite the danger to himself and others. Local, uneducated inhabitants who believe in myths which the educated narrator thinks ridiculous. And - another HPL trope - inbreeding leading to the devolution of humans into strange ape-like creatures. This is quite a good story overall, with a decent mystery to keep you going. The general themes of the story, though, are done better in the next one. Also, this story suffers from some artificial cliff-hangers due to serialisation, as Herbert West did. 

C-

The Rats in the Walls

Plot: an American, Delapore, returns to his ancestral English home. He renovates his estate, much to the chagrin of nearby residents. Delapore and his cat hear rats scurrying in the walls frequently. Through investigating and dreaming, Delapore learns that his family were cannibals, who kept 'human cattle' in a subterranean city. Investigating below his mansion with some friends and colleagues, Delapore discovers the underground city, with cages filled with human bones. Going mad, Delapore attacks one of the friends and begins eating him. Committed to an asylum, Delapore continues to hear the rats in the walls and claims it was the rats that ate his friend, not him. 

There's a lot to like about this. We've got a double-classic HPL protagonist: an intelligent and inquisitive mind who searches for the truth to his doom, and that same man is also doomed by his ancestry. A running theme in much HPL work is that of ancestry and bloodlines (which is where some of the racism and classism surely comes from). It's unclear whether it is truly an outbreak of madness or Delapore giving in to an inherent vice, but either way - he becomes what his family has been for centuries. It's good reveal too, which I didn't see coming. 
We can't discuss this story, however, without acknowledging that the cat in the story is called '[n-word] man'. HPL allegedly had a cat by that name when he was a child, but the number of times he refers to the cat by name in the story is 'a lot' and really jars you each time. If you read the censored versions which rename the cat 'Black Tom', this is well worth a read.

B-

The Unnamable

Plot: Carter, a writer of weird horror fiction, meets with his old friend Manton. They are in a graveyard, and Carter tells Manton of a thing which haunts the area. The thing defies any description. They are seemingly attacked by the thing, and wake up in a hospital. Although initially sceptical of the idea that an entity could defy description, Manton agrees that it "was the unnameable!". 

Tonally, this is a very strange tale. You can effectively split it into two halves, the first being a comedy, the second being a horror story. Carter (seemingly, though not definitely, Randolf Carter from HPL's other stories) is here clearly a play on HPL himself. Much of the initial dialogue between Carter and Manton centres on a criticism of Carter's weird fiction stories which rely too heavily on entities and events which the characters cannot properly describe - showing that HPL was very much aware that he was relying on the same devices too often in his own stories. 
The story then pivots, and seemingly attempts to justify this literary technique by introducing an antagonistic horror which Manton later agrees was indeed beyond description. 
I enjoy the self-deprecating humour of HPL here - made much more funny if you've read most of his horror stories up to now - but the attempt to make it a true horror story is unnecessary. 

C-

The Festival

Plot: the narrator visits his relatives in Kingsport. The relatives are strangely dressed, and point the narrator to read the Necronomicon. He goes with them to take part in some sort of celebration, taking place underneath the church on the hill. They end up in some underground cavern which has a large lake/river (maybe even sea?) in it. The cloaked people summon strange flying beasts, but the narrator refuses. The relative's face falls of, revealing it to have been a mask, and the narrator throws himself into the water before he goes mad. He awakens in a hospital, being told that he was rescued after walking off a cliff. 

Some interesting ideas here. But, for me, far too many unanswered questions and vagueness. It is suggested at the end that the entire experience by the narrator was a dream - as when he looks over Kingsport he sees a different city to the one he entered at the start of the story. Did he imagine the entire thing?
On re-reading the Necronomicon at hospital, he finds a passage which seemingly alludes to the ritual he observed. Did he have some supernatural vision of the past? Did he actually get transported to the past?
And what was the whole ritual about anyway? Were all the cloaked beings wearing masks, and if so what were they? Why did they summon the flying creatures? Where were they going?
Eventually, HPL finds the sweet spot where he leaves enough unanswered for you to ponder, but also tells you enough so you understand what's going on. But not here.

D-

Under the Pyramids (aka Imprisoned with the Pharaohs)

Plot: Harry Houdini goes on holiday to Egypt. Houdini helps break up a fight while on a tour of Cairo, and ends up being invited to the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza. This is all a ruse to capture him, and he is tied up and dropped down a pit under the Sphinx. Freeing himself (obviously), he feels around in the dark and ends up going further underground. Keeping unseen, Houdini discovers a procession of human/animal mummies led by two ancient Pharaohs. The procession seems to provide offerings to a great 5-headed tentacled beast, but Houdini realises that the beast was actually just the paw of a much larger beast - perhaps the beast that the Sphinx is based off of. Houdini escapes and wonders if it was all a dream.

This was actually written in collaboration with Houdini - loosely based on an allegedly true story where Houdini was abducted in Egypt. This is one of the first HPL stories (Cf The Tree) to also, partly, work as a vehicle to show off how much HPL knows about a particular subject. In this case, Egypt and the Pharaohs. It doesn't half get in the way of the plot, when he does this...
But anyway; this story is too long. There's rather too much exposition and scene-setting before Houdini gets captured. And, again, why was he captured in the first place? If it was to kill him, why didn't they? Was it to show him the offering and huge creature? Why? 
It does get good once he gets tied up and thrown down the pit, though. 

C-

The Shunned House

Plot: the narrator is interested in a house that is shunned by the local people. There are many unexplained and strange deaths associated with the house, which the narrator explains in detail. When visiting the house, the narrator notices a strange glowing fungus in the basement, and the mouldy outline of a body on the floor. The narrator and his uncle decide to camp out in the basement to see if they can find anything. The uncle falls asleep, but is awakened by terrible nightmares. The narrator sleeps, but is awakened by a scream; he sees a yellow vapour arise from the floor, it has a monstrous shape full of eyes and an insectoid head, but quickly disappears. Turning to his uncle, the narrator discovers that he is dissolving into a sludge with the faces of all of those who have died near the house. Escaping, the narrator later returns to dig up the house and pour acid into the foundations. On digging, the narrator finds a huge elbow, suggesting that a much larger creature is buried under the land the house is on. Pouring the acid, the fungus turns to ash, and the strange deaths stop occurring. 

Long description of the plot needed for this one. It also doesn't do well to portray that at least 1/3 of the story is taken up by a history of the house, and those who have died there. HPL likes doing that, giving a detailed history. But it does help set up the mystery of the house - why are there so many deaths? Why is the house shunned by the local community?
The narrator - classic HPL protagonist driven by curiosity in the face of danger - drags in his uncle, who ends up being killed by the vapour creature. Of course, there are still a lot of unanswered questions here too. The entire horror seems to be caused by the giant buried creature, which itself seems to be linked to the French family who built the house on their ancestral graveyard. There are several hints that the French family were occultists of some sort. I can buy most of this, to some extent, as an explanation. The disconnect for me is how the body is linked to the vapour creature... Is the glowing fungus, which is growing out of the body, a separate horror? Just a few too many missing links for me, but I still like the overall effect of this story.  

B-

The Horror at Red Hook

Plot: Detective Malone, of Red Hook, New York, describes the case of Robert Suydam. Suydam, previously a strange man who kept to himself, starts to look youthful and becomes engaged to a woman. When the newly-wed couple leave on a ship, they are soon killed by an unseen creature. Malone investigates Suydam's house, finding a secret cavern underneath. Malone discovers a hellish landscape, and a ritual which is seemingly being done to bring Suydam back to life. The cave inexplicably collapses, and Malone is the only one left alive. 

The story is told in 7 sections. The first two are devoted entirely to describing Red Hook as a slum, full of immigrants who congregate in gangs and cause crime. The rest of the story is a rather unimaginative tale of devil-worshipers and occultists. The hatred of foreigners, on full display here, is apparently a result of HPL moving to New York, where he himself felt a foreigner due to the mix of cultures. 
Uninspired, predictable, and overtly racist. Skip. 

E+

He

Plot: the narrator describes how much he hates New York after moving from New England. He meets a man dressed as if he was from a previous age, and follows the man to his house. The man describes a squire who discovered secrets from native Americans concerning long-life and other strange knowledge. The squire killed all the natives so that only he had the knowledge. The man shows the narrator a vision of the future which horrifies him. The spirits of the native Americans rise up, and kill the strange man, who turns out to be the squire in his story. 

Another semi-autobiographical opening, which is just about how much HPL hates New York because it's full of foreigners. We also get hints that the 'horror' the narrator sees in the future is a multicultural New York, populated mostly by Asians. Oh no, so scary. 
It's a bit annoying. In another setting, with more thought, a man who is killed by the spirits of the very native Americans who gave him secret knowledge is not a terrible premise for a story. But everything that surrounds it is pretty awful. Also skip. 

E

In The Vault

Plot: an undertaker gets trapped in the vault where coffins and bodies are kept over the winter. He stacks coffins with the intention of climbing them to escape through a high window. He escapes, but before he does his foot breaks through one of the coffins, and he gets a bad scratch on his leg. It is later discovered that the broken coffin contained a person who the undertaker didn't like, and it seems that the scratch on his leg was caused by the body's teeth. 

This feels a more standard, even cliché story of a dead body getting some revenge from beyond the afterlife. You see, the undertaker had used a coffin meant for someone much shorter, and had to cut the dead body's legs off in order to fit him in. The 'bite' is therefore revenge for the undertaker's slight against this dead body. 
The story is well written, though. The conceit is a bit rote - he gets trapped by a gust of wind slamming the door shut - but other than that the sense of darkness and desperation is effective. Overall, it's a bit of grim fun. 

C+

Cool Air

Plot: the narrator moves into an apartment. In the apartment above lives a strange doctor, whose room is kept constantly refrigerated. The narrator suffers a heart-attack one day, and the doctor saves him. They grow close, and the doctor reveals an obsession with avoiding death. One day, the refrigeration system fails, and the frenzied doctor asks the narrator to find someone to fix the system. On returning, the narrator finds the doctor has begun decomposing. 

A decent enough tale, but with an ending you can see a mile away. So many hints are dropped throughout, that the doctor is somehow keeping himself alive by reducing his body temperature, that it's beyond belief that the narrator doesn't cotton on before finding the body. You get the same kind of frustration here as you get watching a mystery film/show where the audience is told the ending well before the protagonist is allowed to work it out. 
Having said that, HPL is still able to keep you interested in reading how the tale unfolds, and how the narrator will react to discovering the truth. 

C+

The Call of Cthulhu

[NB From here-on, I will be shortening the plot sections to some basics. HPL's stories begin getting longer, with some novellas and novels coming up]

Plot: Francis Wayland Thurston investigates the papers of his dead uncle. Through the investigation of a bas-relief (wall carving), Thurston discovers an ancient cult that worships ancient god-like beings (such as Cthulhu). The story ends with the suggestion that Cthulhu was accidentally woken.

As the most famous of all of HPL's stories, and with Cthulhu a prominent pop-culture phenomenon, I'm not sure what I can say here. 
This is, I think, the first HPL story since Dagon (and perhaps Erich Zann) to make the source of the horror the cosmic unknown. And it is very effective. Thurston pieces together the story bit by bit, in short chapters. The overall effect is not to give the reader full knowledge of the Cthulhu-worshiping cult, or even knowledge of what exactly Cthulhu is, but there are enough fragments for the reader to make their own conclusions. Conclusions that question our relationship with the cosmos, that tap into fears that other-worldly or ancient beings could wipe us out if the feeling came to them. 

A

Pickman's Model

Plot: Richard Upton Pickman is a renowned painter of horrible images, though shunned by most of the art world. The narrator visits Pickman, and sees many of his private paintings which are even more horrible. In the basement, they hear a noise, and Pickman goes into another room - after firing gunshots, Pickman tells the narrator it was only rats. The narrator leaves, but finds that he accidentally took a piece of paper from the basement with him. The unfolded paper is a photograph, revealing that Pickman's paintings are based on real monsters. 

This feels like an excuse for HPL to describe a variety of horrible images/scenes. The narrator walks around Pickman's house, describing (some of) the paintings he sees, and the horror they instil. The final painting is of a Ghoul-like creature biting the head off of a man, and it is suggested that it is this Ghoul which the narrator found the photograph of, and was the source of the noise which Pickman left to deal with. 
It's ok, but relies far too much on us being just as scared as the narrator. If anything, the narrator's constant cries of terror at the graphic paintings make the overall effect more humorous than scary. 

C+

The Strange High House in the Mist

Plot: near the town of Kingsport are some very tall cliffs by the sea, on top of which is a strange house. The narrator, Thomas Olney, sets out to visit the house. After much difficulty in trying to find a route up the cliff, he eventually reaches it through a window - as the only door faces the cliffside (it is a sheer drop from the door to the sea below). Olney listens to the mystical tales of the resident, while Neptune and other gods come into the house from the door. When Olney leaves the house, he seems to leave his soul behind. 

This feels more of a Dream Cycle story than a horror or 'weird' story. There is a sense of false reality - does the house exist? Is it an illusion? Who was the resident? What exactly happened in the house? Did Olney really leave his soul behind, or did he just have such a life-altering experience that he was simply never the same?

Will we ever find out? No.

D

The Silver Key

Plot: Randolf Carter is losing the ability to enter the dream world, which he prefers to the 'real' world. One night, he dreams of a strange silver key left to him by his dead grandfather. Returning to his childhood home, Carter finds the key in the attic. He goes to a cave he played in as a boy, and somehow the key turns back time so that he is a child once more. 

Two annoying things out of the way first. Though written before, this story is chronologically after the Dream Quest (see next entry). Secondly, it is a direct prequel to another story called Through the Gates of the Silver Key - it is my opinion that these two Silver Key stories should be read together. 
HPL very much dipping back into the 'are dreams better/more-real-than reality' well here. As well as the use of Randolf Carter, who also appears in The Statement of Randolf Carter and The Unnamable. It's a bit odd, actually, that Carter's previous two appearances were in a straightforward 'horror' story, and a mixed satire/horror story. Yet this story shifts Carter to being a Dream Cycle character, obsessed with the same reality/dream divide explored in The White Ship and Polaris. It is done better here, though, as HPL also links this longing for the 'dream world' with nostalgia for the past. Is the past a dream? Can we only truly dream when we are children? These are interesting themes and ideas, mostly well executed once you step back from the story. 
However, the shift in the story to the past - when Carter discovers and uses the key - is so smooth that it's quite difficult to work out what's happened. Has Carter travelled in time? Is he in a dream? Are those two different concepts? The story doesn't care. 
As a final footnote, the sequel (Through the Gates of the Silver Key) overexplains the ending of this story, and shifts us back into almost-horror territory. And that's a bit disappointing. The Silver Key's USP is its themes and mystery. 

D+

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

Plot: Hahahahahahahaha. 

On Wikipedia, it says that some HPL fans find this novella 'unreadable', while others enjoy its extreme high-fantasy. I am firmly in the former camp. 
So the plot, sure. Basically, Randolf Carter goes on a quest in the 'Dream World' to find a mountain (Unknown Kadath) where the Gods congregate. On the way: Carter gets catured and taken to the Moon before getting rescued by the cats of Ulthar; Carter gets taken to a sort-of underworld where he finds Richard Pickman, who is now a Ghoul himself; Carter gets taken to Nyarlathotep but escapes; Nyarlathotep finds Carter again on Kadath (which the Gods have now deserted) and tricks him into being taken to Azathoth. 
This is pure nonsense, and bad storytelling. Carter gets taken from set-piece to set-piece, and is deus ex machina-ed out of every single threat by some ridiculous good fortune. Carter is not a character in any real sense - he exists only to move the 'story' to different locations in the dream world where things 'happen'. Along the way, Carter meets many people who have appeared in previous HPL stories (look them up on Wikipedia if you care - I certainly don't). There is also an abundance of high fantasy names of people, creatures, and locations which all blend into some primordial alphabet soup. And some of the names are too similar. In the space of about 3 pages we're introduced to gugs, ghasts, and ghouls. What?
This feels a bit like an attempt to pull together a significant number of HPL's previous stories (horror and dream) and knit them together in some grand narrative. It fails, hard. And as one of HPL's longest works, it's even worse. I wanted to stop and move on, but I read the entire thing because I'm a completionist. And you know what? The ending actually made me laugh. While Carter is spiralling towards Azathoth, the primordial chaos, he remembers he is in a dream, and so simply wakes up. One only wishes he'd woken up sooner. 

E

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

Plot: Charles Dexter Ward becomes increasingly obsessed with his ancestor, alleged witch Joseph Curwen. 

I was very apprehensive about reading this. It is joint with Dream Quest for HPL's longest works. But I needn't have worried, because this is really quite good (if a bit of a retread of some previous ground). 
The story's first few chapters spend their time exploring Ward's character, and his motivations for investigating the history of his long-dead ancestor. We also get a chapter set in the past, which tells of Curwen's alleged mystic experiments, and his ultimate death by the hands of the local villagers. Eventually, Ward starts to become learned in the ways of the occult, and conduct the very same experiments that got Curwen killed three centuries ago. I won't spoil more of the plot, but there are a few twists (some you can see coming, some you can't) along the way. 
I think I like this so much because it takes some Lovecraftianisms (doomed by your ancestry; obsession with alchemy and the occult; a rational and objective investigator who discovers a little bit too much of the truth) and combines them into a compelling and well-written narrative. 
The main criticism, I think, is that some of the horror elements that are 'explained' later in the story are too much. HPL tries to incorporate just a few too many 'things' and concepts in the latter parts of the novel - the plot would have held up without any suggestions of vampires, for example. Oh, and because we go back in time and there's dialogue and letters, the reader also has to slog through quite a bit of old-timey words, phrasology, and type. For example, typed letters which are quoted in the novel use superscript for two-letter words, e.g.: "yᵉ" is meant to be "ye" which is meant to be "the". Was that a thing in the 1600s? I don't know, but you have to get used to it. 

A

The Colour Out of Space

Plot: a strange meteorite lands in rural Boston farm. It is later destroyed by lightning, leaving behind a stange aura/colour. The colour infects the land, killing the crops and driving the resident mad.

Easily my favourite HPL story. As with many HPL tales, it is told from the perspective of an investigator who has to piece together what happened. The slow pace builds the anaticipation and horror perfectly. The concept of an alien colour is also so original that it still feels fresh and interesting 100 years later. That the entire concept of the story surrounds a 'new' colour also works in HPL's favour, as he is able to use his ability to describe the indescribable in a way that doesn't feel cheap or a cop-out. 

The seeping madness of the farm residents is expertly described through the eyes of a neighbour, and it is genuinely creepy how the family do not realise what is happening to them, eventually leading to one of HPL's best ever reveal scenes.

Could not recommend this highly enough for anyone interested in sci-fi horor fiction. I also understand the Nicolas Cage film based off of this story is very good - I'm very excited to watch it. 

A+

The Descendant

Plot: William investigates the strange old man who lives at Gray's Inn.

A few pages of an unfinished story, so difficult for me to say much. Feels like it could have been the start to a decent story - William buys the Necronomicon and begins to decifer it. We also get some disconnected history of a Lord Northam and his ancestor who have searched for a Nameless City. Presumably these two aspects would have been connected at some point. 

Interesting but barely the first 5% of a story.  

D

The Very Old Folk

Plot: the narrator describes a dream where they were an ancient Roman military officer who is sent to investigate 'hill people' who are rumoured to be conducting evil rituals. 

Written in the form of a letter, and seemingly never intended for publication. This is to be filed along with The Tree and Under The Pyramids as vehicles for HPL to show off just how much he knows about a particular subject - in this case, Roman military history. Skip. 

E

History of the Necronomicon

Plot: a brief publication history of the dreaded Necronomicon by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. 

Also never seemingly intended for publication, this feels more like a personal note HPL wrote for himself so that he could be consistent in referring to different editions of his fictional occult text in his stories. Interesting bit of miscellany. 

C

The Dunwich Horror

Plot: tells the story of the Whatley family, who have had some dealings with Yog-Sothoth...

From The Colour Out Of Space onwards, HPL gets onto a bit of a winning streak with his weird/horror short stories. Combining some 'doomed by ancestry' themes with his new(ish) alien/god concepts. We are also, kind of, spoiled with TWO grotesque creatures; more tentacles and eyes than you could ever want. 

This is apparently the next HPL film that director Richard Stanley wants to make (after Colour) - and this will be the more difficult adaptation because the story has no real throughpoint. The first two 'chapters' provide the exposition for the Whatley ancestry and their strangeness, after which the main character we follow for a while is the highly intelligent, tall, and rapidly ageing Wilbur Whatley. Until he dies about half way through, at which point the perspective shifts to Miskatonic University Librarian Henry Armitage - and we get a more standard HPL-style investigation into the weird goings on at the Whatley's house. No idea how you adapt this to film, but I look forward to seeing the attempt. 

Having read this twice now, it's not quite as good the second time as much of the anticipation is in the mystery (hence my not spoiling much here), but I still applaud the imagination behind this tale. It's super weird. Also worth complaining about is critical dialogue being spoken by country yokels - annoyingly difficult to read. 

A

Ibid

Plot: a parody biography of a Roman scholar, Ibidus. It traces the ownership of Ibidus's skull.

This is apparently the third of HPL's great parodies (for the other two see The Reminiscence of Dr Samuel Johnson and Sweet Ermengarde), the target of satire this time: academic scholarship. Filled with pointless footnotes and irrelevant asides, one can see what it's getting at. As a scholar, you'd think I would really like this, but - though I enjoy its absurdity - I just didn't think it was very funny. Perhaps because the target is (C19th) historians, and I'm not familiar with that style. 

C

The Whisperer in Darkness

Plot: Albert Wilmarth and Henry Akeley correspond by letter, discussing the strange crab-like body parts which were washed up in the Vermont floods of 1927...

This is my second favourite HPL story. I really like the format of the first 2/3 of the story being told mostly through lettered correspondence, combined with Wilmarth's reflections on Akeley's letters. It is the story of a sceptic (Wilmarth) slowly being persuaded through reasoning and evidence. What is he being persuaded of? Well, that would be telling. 

The tone is not very horror-ey until the final section of the story, where Wilmarth actually visits Akeley to see the 'evidence' in person. There is also the introduction of a sci-fi concept (perhaps most famously used in Futurama) that has since become cliché, but works very well here. 

A+

At the Mountains of Madness

Plot: William Dyer leads an expedition to Antarctica. After discovering frozen specimens of creatures unknown to science, Dyer discovers an ancient city. He and his grad student, Danforth, explore its secrets...

This novella can be broadly split into two Acts. The first is the initial exploration of Dyer and his crew, culminating in the discovery of the frozen creatures. The second concerns Dyer and Danforth discovering an ancient city high in the nearby mountains; and their subsequent exploration of it. 

I really, really like this story, especially the first Act. It's much more ambitious in scope and setting than most of HPL's previous work (or maybe it's just not set in New England...). Though a bit clunkily done (through Dyer and Danforth viewing murals which handily tell the history of the city - a la The Nameless City) we also get a pretty comprehensive history of HPL's Earth, and its population by various alien and god-like races over millennia. Interesting stuff. 

There are, however, a few stupid/annoying things here. Firstly, there is an overdose of HPL showing off how much he knows about a) Antarctic exploration, and b) fossils. Secondly, HPL is not very good at describing locations in a way that helps you understand the spatial geography - his description of the ancient city helps you imagine what it looks like, but it all gets complicated when he's describing the movements of Dyer and Danforth. Thirdly, giant penguins. 

Not an easy read, but if you've tested the HPL waters and like his Cthulhu stuff, this much longer piece is worth reading. 

A

The Shadow over Innsmouth

Plot: a student, Robert Olmstead, on a gap yah (I'm almost being serious) checks out the strange town of Innsmouth. He is forced to stay the night, and disovers the Esoteric Order of Dagon...

Often, HPL protagonists are mostly blank slates who are observing (or discovering) others' experiences of horror. Their main character traits are intelligence and inquisitiveness (to a fault). Olmstead, however, is front and centre to the horror here, and is actually a bit unlikeable. To me, anyway - he's characterised as a typical rich student, travelling before starting his studies, and feeling entitled to do whatever he wants. 

Though I overall appreciate this story, I did not wholly like it. To slightly spoil a reveal that occurs about halfway through, Olmstead discovers that the townspeople have an agreement with the sea-dwelling alien/gods the Deep Ones, part of which requires humans to breed with them. Knowing HPL's personal racism, it doesn't take much of a leap to see the story as - at least partially - a commentary on the dangers (to society) of interracial breeding. And even if some other parts of the story are interesting, this lurks in the background of the entire plot and kind of makes me feel uncomfortable. 

Difficult to grade, this one. It's good, but it might make you shift in your chair if you think about it too much. 

B+

The Dreams in the Witch House

Plot: Walter Gilman, a student, rents out the (in)famous haunted room in the 'Witch House'. Gilman experiences increasingly strange dreams - or are they?

There are a lot of interesting ideas in this story, but they're all driven by a sub-standard plot. Gilman is haunted by an evil witch (not exactly original when compared with some of HPL's recent creations) and her familiar: Brown Jenkin, a large rat with a human face. His dreams involve his falling through the strange geometry of the room, into a sprawling cosmic vista, before emerging at some other location in space and time. Essentially, HPL is describing a portal. It is clearly very difficult to describe the indescribable chaos of travelling through time and space. It's like trying to describe on paper what happens to Dr Strange when The Ancient One taps his head when they first meet - words can never quite capture the striking images. 

Portals to other worlds, the blending of magic and science, the blending of dreams and reality (again) - all ideas that a compelling story could be spun from. But it's a shame that this one isn't. However, it is still better than a lot of HPL's early work. 

B

Through the Gates of the Silver Key

Plot: at a meeting to discuss the dividing of Randolf Carter's estate, following his mysterious disappearance, a strange man tells everyone what he believes happened to Carter...

At the end of The Silver Key, Carter appears to disappear into his past. This sequel, co-written with E Hoffman Price, tries to explain what happened to Carter next. In short, Carter dreams his way to the 'Ultimate Gate' (it's unclear if this is the same inpenetrable wall/door in Hypnos), and passes through. He meets Yog-Sothoth and learns that there are an infinite number of alternate Randolf Carters spread across space and time. He then is sent into the consciousnesses of one of these Carters: an alien on a planet a long time ago, in a galaxy far away...

Much like Kadath, this seems to me an attempt to link together a bunch of different stories. HPL and Price are trying to link HPL's 'dream' stories with his horror/Cthulhu stories. It doesn't work. 

There are some redeeming features - I enjoy the cuts to the 'present' in the lawyer's office, and the lawyer himself who scoffs at all this fantasy nonsense. The sections of Carter trapped in the alien body are also good. But on the whole, not a fan. And you can see the 'twist' a mile away. 

C+

The Thing on the Doorstep

Plot: Daniel Upton explains why he killed Edward Derby, his friend. Derby is young and naïve, though interested in the occult. He marries the strange and confident Asenath Waite, but soon Upton believes that they are switching bodies...

It's actually difficult to discuss this story without spoiling The Shadow Over Innsmouth - so that's the first bit of advice, read Shadow first otherwise this story will make no sense, especially the ending.

This isn't HPL's best work. In this glory period of his later career, this feels more like a hark back to his more standard horror stories. This is basically a body-swap horror story, with the evil Waite forcing her husband to switch bodies with her so that she can carry out her evil rituals. There are a few twists and turns along the way (like usual, some you can see coming, others not). It has been pointed out that Waite is one of HPL's only female characters who actually does anything, but that this is complicated by the body-swapping. And she's the antagonist, so not the best at female representation is HPL. 

Still better than many of his early tales, this just stands out as not-quite-up-to-standard, and also doesn't have the cosmic/alien aspect (overtly) that provides the horror in HPL's later stories. 

B-

The Evil Clergyman

Plot: the narrator investigates an old haunted house. He finds an object and uses his torch to view it. The narrator seems to see images from the past, including an evil clergyman. The clergyman appears to see the narrator, but falls back when the torch is shined on him. The man who let the narator into the house tells him that he has become the evil clergyman, and shows him in a mirror. 

A lot happens in 4 pages. Pulled from a letter HPL wrote, this is more of a base plot idea than a story in itself. Man goes to haunted attic, and begins to see the horrors that occured there, before becoming the very man who committed them. You can imagine that this could have been expanded to a more full story, along the lines of HPL's earlier stories. 

C-

The Book

Plot: the narrator gets an ancient evil book, and when he reads it he has strange visions and dreams. 

Another unfinished story - only 2.5 pages. Hard to see where this one might have gone, as so many HPL stories involve reading an evil, forbidden text.  

D

The Shadow Out of Time

Plot: Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee believes that he has been the victim of the Great Race of Yith - ancient alien beings who transport their consciousnesses forward in time in order to chronicle the history of the Universe. In order to investigate, Peaslee sets up an expedition to Australia to see if any ruins from the Yithian civilisation can be found...

The last HPL story to really push the boundaries of imagination and sci-fi, I like this a lot. As with other HPL novellas, this can broadly be split into 2 Acts. The first concerns Peaslee's history, and his realisation of what has happened to him (a point of criticism is that the reader works it out a fair bit before Peaslee does). The second concerns the expedition, which includes William Dyer from At The Mountains of Madness - though he has little to do with the plot, which is a shame as his experience in investigating ancient alien cities could have come in useful...

The race of Yith (and their enemies, the flying polyps) are another truly alien race, in that their appearance is very un-anthropomorphic. HPL returns to strong form in instilling in the reader the feeling of insignificance in the grand scheme of everything. Humans are just one of a dozen races that have reigned supreme on Earth. There were races before us, there will be races after us. We're just one chapter in the history of the Universe. 

For the continuity critic, it is a bit of a shame that the Elder Things (the aliens from At The Mountains) did not mention the race of Yith in their mural history which Dyer described, as it is explained in this story that the Yithians and the Elder Race did some warring. But I guess HPL had not thought of the Yithians at the time...

A

The Haunter in the Dark

Plot: Robert Blake becomes increasingly interested in the strange church he can see from his flat. The church is shunned by those who live nearby, but Blake enters the church to find it abandoned. Blake finds a strange artefact, and accidentally summons an evil creature (perhaps Nyarlathotep).

Another protagonist doomed by his curiosity. HPL's final story was another departure from the cosmic horror he had been crafting in his later career, though retains links to that continuity. Further HPL staples include a secret cult, a strange artefact, and a vague ending that requires you to do some thinking to work out what actually happened. 

This is a good story for HPL to have ended on, though the previous story is much better. 

B+

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So, what do I think of HP Lovecraft after reading all of this? Obviously, with such a high number of stories, the quality is going to vary quite a lot. There are high highs, and low lows. But in general, there is a significant uptick in quality following The Call of Cthulhu, as HPL begins exploring the cosmic horror which he is probably now most known for. 

I mostly like the writing style he adopts. Most stories (even the early ones) are from the perspective of the narrator 'retelling' or recording their experience to warn others of what they have discovered. One odd consequence of this which becomes more and more obvious the more you read is that there is extremely little dialogue in HPL's work. Narrators recount summaries of conversations, the conversations are rarely relayed in full unless required for the plot. When there is dialogue, it is almost always written in the accent and dialect of whoever is speaking - a quirk which is as interesting as it is difficult to read. 

I'd recommend anyone read the stories I've given A grades to. Sci-fi fans may like the B stories. Cs are for those who liked the B and A stories and want more. Anything D or below can safely be skipped unless you really want to.  

Right, now I'm off to finish the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe (probably read these authors the wrojng way round didn't I?). Doubt I'll do a post for Poe, but you never know...