Paula Guran: The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

Elizabeth Bear — an author who has written a number of New Lovecraftian gems and feels Lovecraft’s views are “revolting” — reminds us: “Authors are read, beloved, and remembered, not for what they do wrong, but for what they do right, and what Lovecraft does right is so incredibly effective. He’s a master of mood, of sweeping blasted vistas of despair and the bone-soaking cold of space. He has at his command a worldview that the average human being, drunk on our own specieswide egocentrism, finds compelling for its sheer contrariness.”

What I term “New Lovecraftian” fiction seldom attempts (although it does occasionally) to emulate Lovecraft’s writing style — a style that’s faults are, admittedly, many. Written with a fresh appreciation of Lovecraft’s universe, its writers do not imitate; they reimagine, reenergize, renew, re-set, respond to, and make Lovecraftian concepts relevant for today.

New Lovecraftian fiction sometimes simply has fun with what are now well-established genre themes. Authors often intentionally subvert Lovecraft’s bigotry while still paying tribute to his imagination. New Lovecraftians frequently take Lovecraft’s view of fragile humans alone in a vast uncaring cosmos where neither a good god nor an evil devil exist, let alone are concerned with them, and devise highly effective modern fiction. But there are other themes to choose from as well.

You’ll find a variety of Lovecraftian inspiration here. But you need not take that from me: each story in The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu is prefaced with an authorial explanation of their tale’s Lovecraftian inspiration.

Here, of course. But elsewhere, too. (I’ve compiled two volumes of reprints of twenty-first-century New Lovecraftian fiction myself.) There are so many fine examples of both fairly recent short stories and novels, they are far too numerous to mention . . . both with and without “Cthulhu” in the title.

While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always be a small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest.

Persistently,

Paula Guran

Summer Solstice 2015

“If we pare back Lovecraft’s stories,” notes Lisa L. Hannett,“pruning the dense prose, tossing out the objectionable elements, what we’re left with are the tantalizing bits: the sea and the stars, the greatest heights and depths of this world of ours. ‘In Syllables of Elder Seas’ explores our tiny, cramped place within the cosmos, and our inability to ever really get out. And on each page — of this piece, and also Lovecraft’s fiction more broadly — there’s the sense that HPL himself is hunkered down beside us, pressed small by the weight of so many limitations.”

Hannett has had over sixty short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld , Fantasy , Weird Tales , Apex , The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror , and Imaginarium: Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony , which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife , was published by CZP in 2015.

To pass the wet hours crammed in his bottle, Aitch counts cylinders.

Tonight, only those he can actually see get tallied: not the darkened hurricane lamp dangling on its chain, not the perforated lid screwed tight on his jar. With some effort Aitch can tilt his head back, turn it side to side, but down is impossible with bent knees wedged under his chin. No points for his short thighs, his shorter shins, his cramped toes. He looks forward, left, right. Starts with what’s closest. An easy ten: thin shadow fingers lifted out of the brine. Bobbing on the breath-rippled solution is another: a sealed, thumb-length leather tube, strung from a cord around his neck. Aitch worries the pouch in his cold grip, its familiar squish comforting. The caul that had helmeted him at birth is preserved inside — to protect him, Mother had promised, from drowning.

To the left of his container, moonglow floats in from the room’s ocean-side porthole — the round window itself too high to view — illuminating a bank of bookcases lining the curved walls. On the floor, six glass vessels are now limned silver-blue: replicas in everything but size, perfect cylinders with threaded brass caps. Each slightly bigger than its predecessor, the largest slightly smaller than the one in which Aitch is currently squeezed. Seven in all.

Seven he’s counted a hundred, hundred times.

Seven months, or more, in each — he’s sure, he remembers — and he’s seven years old, at least.

The eighth will no doubt be coming soon, the rate he’s growing.

On the shelves, a regiment of forty-six candles are snuffed, stiff wax digits raised against shushing lips. He double-checks the number, though he played this game yesterday, and the day before that; the amount hasn’t changed since. The Aunts are frugal with supplies, stingy with any light but the one beacon they shine every night out to sea.

Sometimes Aitch adds that bright beam to his total.

Always, he includes the lighthouse.

He fidgets, as much as possible, a squirming heave in his guts, imagining the view from the Aunts’ lantern room above. The sheer drop from storm panes to ocean. The rocks below, jagged fangs primed to impale. The water’s maw stretching wide, frothing and lashing. Basalt waves gnawing the headland. Salt talons steadily gouging the cliffs, grabbing, yanking . . .

It’s hungry , he remembers saying, staring at the roiling expanse between the lighthouse and reef. Unblinking. Soon after, the Aunts stopped bringing him upstairs. It wants to swallow us.

Don’t be ridiculous , they’d answered, referring to charts on a counter girding the great spinning lamp, marking currents and tides. Eyes filled with stars and swells, ever vigilant. It’s bland as milk out there. Linensmooth sailing. Every seafarer’s delight.

Aitch didn’t think so, but the Aunts still hush him whenever he mentions it. They see calm where he sees squalls. Fair winds instead of hurricanes. Sweet gulls in place of carrion crows. When he’s unbottled and playing in his small chamber, they say he’s at work . Now his tools are scattered on the bare wood floor, next to the washstand: four sticks of brown Conté and nine violet pastels to replace the set he’s scribbled to stubs. These are toys , he tells them, not tools .

It’s like they’re not even listening.

When he draws his dreams, the Aunts interpret squares from his circles. Arrows and directions from houses. Submarines, they say, not the intended sharks. Chevrons and triangles and rampant squiggles — the language is his, he knows its true meaning, but the Aunts read into it whatever they want.

Quietly, Aitch wonders when Mother and Father will come to collect him.

Soon , the Aunts once assured him. Soon enough .