Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading Jennifer Brozek’s “Dreams of a Thousand Young,” first published in 2014 in Innsmouth Free Press’s Jazz Age Cthulhu collection. Spoilers ahead.
[“Helen wanted to look away, but the gleaming altar called to her.”]
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading Molly Tanzer’s “The Thing on the Cheerleading Squad,” first published in the 2015 anthology, She Walks in Shadows, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. Spoilers ahead.
[“There’s no heaven. There’s no hell. There’s only you, me and this.”]
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading August Derleth’s “The Seal of R’lyeh,” first published in 1962 in The Mask of Cthulhu. (Transcription at the link has difficulty with divisions between words, but appears mostly accurate and readable.) Spoilers ahead.
[“A design which seemed to be of a singularly perplexing seal…”]
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading Jeremiah Tolbert’s “The Dreamers of Alamoi,” first published in Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer’s Swords V. Cthulhu anthology in 2016. Spoilers ahead.
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading Karl Edward Wagner’s “I’ve Come to Talk With You Again.” You can find it most easily in Lovecraft’s Monsters; it first appeared in Stephen Jones’s 1995 anthology Dark Terrors: The Gollancz Book of Horror. Spoilers ahead.
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading H. P. Lovecraft and Adolphe de Castro’s “The Last Test,” a revision of de Castro’s original “A Sacrifice to Science,” first published in In the Confessional and the Following in 1893; the revised version first appeared in the November 1928 issue of Weird Tales. Spoilers ahead.
Welcome back to the Wayward Children reread! Today, in our final installment, we head to the Goblin Market seeking fair value for our travails. Spoilers ahead for In An Absent Dream. It’s available now, and I encourage you to pick up a copy (on sale for six sharp pencils and a quince pie, if you can find the right market stall) and read along!
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading Nibedita Sen’s “Leviathan Sings to Me in the Deep,” first published in the June 2018 issue of Nightmare. Spoilers ahead (but go ahead and read it first, because it’s both short and awesome).
Welcome back to the Wayward Children reread! Today, our Door opens on an Underworld ruled by the Lord and Lady of the Dead, and on a land of sticky-sweet nonsense.
The later books of the Wayward Children series spread out from Every Heart a Doorway like flares from a star, student’s stories continuing onward from where we met them or flashing back to earlier journeys—or sometimes, this week for example, in more complicated directions. Spoilers ahead for Beneath the Sugar Sky.
Welcome back to the Wayward Children reread! Today, our Door opens onto the Moors, a Gothic land of mist and moonlight. Spoilers ahead for Down Among the Sticks and Bones.
If you want to travel to another world, you must yearn for something—something lacking in your life on Earth. Something that a world with the right rules, the right values, might provide. But not only that—there must be something you want, equally strongly, to leave behind…
[“Some adventures are cruel, because it is the only way they know to be kind.”]
When I was a kid, I knew I belonged somewhere else. I couldn’t have told you exactly how I was different—only that I had nothing in common with the people around me, and they recognized it, and told me how strange I was in a thousand ways. At the time, I had no idea how common this was. I got my first computer when I left for college, was introduced to Usenet on my first day in the dorms. In the Before Time, there were no magic windows to learn how different life could be in another town, no place to read my classmates’ own doubts and insecurities, no magic to connect like-minded children across states or countries. Reality was my town, my school, my family—and the only doorways out were stories.
My favorite stories, then, were of people who found a way out of their worlds and into others—new worlds in which they could finally be themselves. My fondest wish was to get swept up by a tornado, trip over a portal, or convince a time-traveling away team to beam me up. Adventures may be dangerous, but they beat the hell out of loneliness. They’re worth it—anything would be worth it—to find out who you are and where you belong.
The other thing about adventures is that they end.
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading Amos Tutuola’s “The Complete Gentlemen,” first published as part of his novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard in 1952. Spoilers ahead. But this story is as much about voice as plot, and our summary can really only do justice to the latter. Go and read!
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading China Miéville’s “Details,” first published in 2002 in John Pelan and Benjamin Adams’ The Children of Cthulhu. Spoilers ahead.
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading Amanda Downum’s “Spore,” first published in Lynn Jamnek’s 2015 Dreams From the Witch House anthology. Spoilers ahead.
Welcome back to the Lovecraft reread, in which two modern Mythos writers get girl cooties all over old Howard’s sandbox, from those who inspired him to those who were inspired in turn.
This week, we’re reading Michael Shea’s “Nemo Me Impune Lacessit,” first published in the March 1982 issue of Whispers. Trigger warning for a man killing the woman who left him, also reference to snuff films. Spoilers ahead.
