Best of
Lovecraftian

2009

Lovecraft Unbound


Ellen DatlowWilliam Browning Spencer - 2009
    Howard Phillips Lovecraft may have been a writer for only a short time, but the creations he left behind after his death in 1937 have shaped modern horror more than any other author in the last two centuries: the shambling god Cthulhu, and the other deities of the Elder Things, the Outer Gods, and the Great Old Ones, and Herbert West, Reanimator, a doctor who unlocked the secrets of life and death at a terrible cost. In Lovecraft Unbound, more than twenty of today's most prominent writers of literature and dark fantasy tell stories set in or inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. 9 • Introduction (Lovecraft Unbound) • essay by Ellen Datlow 11 • The Crevasse • short story by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud 31 • The Office of Doom • [Dust Devil] • short story by Richard Bowes 43 • Sincerely, Petrified • short fiction by Anna Tambour 73 • The Din of Celestial Birds • (1997) • short story by Brian Evenson 85 • The Tenderness of Jackals • short fiction by Amanda Downum 99 • Sight Unseen • short fiction by Joel Lane 113 • Cold Water Survival • short story by Holly Phillips 139 • Come Lurk With Me and Be My Love • short fiction by William Browning Spencer 161 • Houses Under the Sea • (2006) • novelette by Caitlín R. Kiernan 195 • Machines of Concrete Light and Dark • short story by Michael Cisco 213 • Leng • short fiction by Marc Laidlaw 239 • In the Black Mill • (1997) • short story by Michael Chabon 267 • One Day, Soon • short fiction by Lavie Tidhar 277 • Commencement • (2001) • novelette by Joyce Carol Oates 305 • Vernon, Driving • short fiction by Simon Kurt Unsworth 315 • The Recruiter • short fiction by Michael Shea 331 • Marya Nox • short fiction by Gemma Files 347 • Mongoose • [Boojum] • novelette by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette 375 • Catch Hell • short fiction by Laird Barron 413 • That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable • short fiction by Nick Mamatas

The Sea of Ash


Scott Thomas - 2009
     A Victorian Englishman summons a strange puppet-like being to an old Colonial Inn. A doctor returns from the Great War and discovers a mysterious naked woman at the edge of the Atlantic. A contemporary collector of arcane books retraces the steps of these other men -- adventurers who sought out the mysteries of neighboring dimensions. In THE SEA OF ASH, Scott Thomas takes us along as three men from three different centuries experience the wonders and horrors of an unknown New England. "Never had the universe felt so vast, and I so small within it. I had, through circumstance, been made aware of something, but of what? Something either too horrible or too beautiful for humans to know." —From The Sea of Ash

High Planes Drifter


Edward M. Erdelac - 2009
     In this acclaimed first volume, four sequential novellas and one bonus short story chronicle the weird adventures of THE MERKABAH RIDER. In THE BLOOD LIBEL, The Rider fights to save the last survivors of a frontier Jewish settlement not only from a maddened lynch mob, but from a cult of Molech worshippers hiding in their midst. In THE DUST DEVILS, a border town is held hostage by a band of outlaws in league with a powerful Vodoun sorcerer. In HELL'S HIRED GUN, The Rider faces an ex-Confederate sharpshooter who has pledged his allegiance to Hell itself. In THE NIGHTJAR WOMEN, The Rider drifts into a town where children cannot be born. Here an antediluvian being holds the secret to his fugitive master's insidious plan; a plot that threatens all of Creation. Finally, never before collected, THE SHOMER EXPRESS. On a midnight train crossing the desert, a corpse turns up desecrated. Someone stalking the cars has assumed its shape, and only The Rider can stop it.

Mongoose: Part I


Elizabeth Bear - 2009
    They have been published in a variety of places online and in short story compilations, and are also available as audio plays on Drabblecast.In the future, humanity has established space stations throughout the solar system using a combination of mechanical and organic technology. Life is a constant struggle: danger comes not only from competition over limited resources and the remorseless vacuum of space, but also inter-dimensional predators, brain-stealing aliens, Space Pirates in Living Ships, feuding between various ideological sects and cults, and the warped creations of their own eldritch science turning against them.Each story is stand-alone, featuring a different protagonist and containing only passing reference to the others. There are three stories in the Boojumverse so far:- "Boojum"- "Mongoose"- "The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward"

Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon


Dan Clore - 2009
    . . cacodaemoniacal . . . lucubration . . . Have you ever wondered about the meaning of these and other esoteric words used by Lovecraft and his colleagues? In this immense dictionary, the product of years of scholarship and research, Dan Clore not only defines thousands of words found in the work of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and others, but supplies their derivation and, most impressively, provides parallel usages of the words from centuries of English usage, citing authors ranging from Cotton Mather to Henry Kuttner, from Edmund Spenser to Samuel R. Delany. This is a volume that scholars of English usage, enthusiasts of fantasy and horror literature, and readers who love the beauty of the English language will find richly rewarding . . . either to read from beginning to end or to dip into as the mood strikes them. Dan Clore is a free-lance writer and scholar who has published articles in Lovecraft Studies, Studies in Weird Fiction and numerous other journals and critical anthologies. His fiction is collected in The Unspeakable and Others, first published in 2001.

Harlan County Horrors


Mari AdkinsEarl Dean - 2009
    Young women, twisted by pain, call for love and revenge by the light of the moon. A dead dog by the side of the road is more than it seems. In Harlan County, Kentucky, the supernatural and the mundane mingle in the depths of the earth, filling the mines with powerful forces that draw people down and corrupt from within.Harlan County Horrors is a regional based horror anthology by Apex Magazine submissions editor Mari Adkins. It features stories by Alethea Kontis, Debbie Kuhn, Earl Dean, Geoffrey Girard, Jason Sizemore, Jeremy Shipp, Maurice Broaddus, Robby Sparks, Ronald Kelly, Stephanie Lenz, Steven Shrewsbury, and TL Trevaskis - along with an afterward by Preston Halcomb.

Fistful of Feet


Jordan Krall - 2009
    Lovecraft, and foot fetish enthusiasts.Screwhorse, Nevada is legendary for its violent and unusual pleasures, but when a mysterious gunslinger drags a wooden donkey into the desert town, the stage is set for a bloodbath unlike anything the west has ever seen. His name is Calamaro, and he's from New Jersey.Featuring Cthulhu-worshipping Indians, a woman with four feet, a Giallo-esque serial killer, a crazed gunman who is obsessed with sucking on candy, Syphilis-ridden mutants, ass juice, burping pistols, sexually transmitted tattoos, and a house devoted to the freakiest fetishes, Jordan Krall's Fistful of Feet is the weirdest western ever written.