Harsh Sentences: H. P. Lovecraft v. Ernest Hemingway

It is just possible that Ernest Hemingway knew the name H. P. Lovecraft. Though they moved in very different literary circles and Hemingway was not known to have ever picked up a copy of Weird Tales. Yet they both earned three-star ratings in Edward J. O’Brien’s The Best Short Stories of 1928, Hemingway for “Hills Like White Elephants,” Lovecraft for “The Color Out of Space.” They both made The Best Short Stories of 1929, too. For Hemingway, that was the likely the beginning and end of their association; there are no mentions of the master of the weird tale in Hemingway’s letters. It was easy, in the 1920s and 30s, to know nothing about Lovecraft.

For H. P. Lovecraft, missing Hemingway would have been much more difficult—nor did he. Though they were very different in their fictional focus, output, and success, Lovecraft and Hemingway were still contemporaries, and there are a number of references to Hemingway and his works in Lovecraft’s letters. These mentions of Ernest Hemingway, who had not yet become “Papa” of later years, reflect more on Lovecraft than on Hemingway himself, but show Lovecraft both coming to grips with a Modern writer of very different style and interests and how Hemingway’s influence spread.

Trends come from deeper sources than what is written on the surface of literature, and the average domestic adjustments of 1980 or 2030 will not depend on the question of whether Ernest Hemingway is suppressed or encouraged in 1930.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, June 1930?, LMM 267

The date on this letter is approximate, but the reference appears to be to the ban of the June 1929 issue of Scribner’s Magazine in Boston, which contained the second installment of Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Lovecraft did not normally read Scribner’s, but his aunt did (ES1.141), and he sometimes read it at the library (ES2.670). This was likely where Lovecraft first encountered Hemingway’s prose. Hemingway came up again in Lovecraft’s ongoing correspondence with Moe circa 1931:

It does not take a microscope to perceive that Ernest Hemingway and John V. A. Weaver have a much greater intellectual command of their material than would the kind of people they depict! But they are right in stripping down to vulgate essentials when they wish to say what they have to say. Life could not possibly be interpreted without this intelligent adaptation of medium to subject matter ….. Indeed, the blank record of the nineteenth century in saying anything of real significance or reality is sufficient proof of the validity of the assumption. […] To suppose a man with the aesthetick and philosophic vision of Hemingway could say anything in the French pastry jargon of Thornton Wilder, or that a sensitive perceiver like Marcel Proust (the one real novelist of the last decade or two) could get anything at all over in the stereotyped phrases and attitudes of the “great tradition”, is to miss the whole point of the purpose and mode of functioning of language. What any guy has to say, is what’s in him–and every fresh combination of a guy and wot he’s got on his chest calls for a distinctly individual use of language. […] Honest depiction of life must be based on realism, no matter how much that realism may be suffused with imaginative overtones derived from subjective attitudes toward reality and dream.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, March 1931?, LMM 285-286

John Van Alstyne Weaver, like Hemingway, worked with American vernacular English; Thornton Wilder was the author of the acclaimed novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), which is set in the 18th century and whose language is full of decorative frills—very different from Hemingway’s usual laconic approach. Hemingway himself would call the book “a well hung together collection of short stories” (LEH 4.152) and elsewhere wrote:

Writing whether you want it or not is competitive—Most of the time you compete against time and dead men—sometimes you get something from a living (contemporary competitor) that is so good it jars you—as the story of Esteban in Thornton’s last book. But as you read them dead or living you unconsciously compete—I would give 6 mos. of life to have written it.
—Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, Sep 1928, LEH 3.434

Was Lovecraft in unconscious competition with Hemingway? If so, it never showed in his work. Yet Hemingway was not wrong. Both writers focused on realism as a key aspect of their writing. Hemingway wanted to write about real things; Lovecraft used realism as the basis for his weird tales, and wrote about one of his dead competitors:

Poe’s spectres thus acquired a convincing malignity possessed by none of their predecessors, and established a new standard of realism in the annals of literary horror. The impersonal and artistic intent, moreover, was aided by a scientific attitude not often found before; whereby Poe studied the human mind rather than the usages of Gothic fiction, and worked with an analytical knowledge of terror’s true sources which doubled the force of his narratives and emancipated him from all the absurdities inherent in merely conventional shudder-coining. This example having been set, later authors were naturally forced to conform to it in order to compete at all; so that in this way a definite change began to affect the main stream of macabre writing.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”

A couple of months after his letter to Moe, Lovecraft would be unknowingly stepping onto Hemingway’s own turf—his southern travels in 1931 carrying him down to Florida, to Miami, and then by motor coach and ferry to Key West itself.

Ernest Hemingway and his second wife Pauline had first come to Key West in 1928. They left and returned again sporadically for the next few years, with an eye toward permanent settlement, and on 29 April 1931 they purchased (with the aid of Pauline’s uncle Augustus Pfeiffer) the large but dilapidated French Colonial-style house on 907 Whitehead Street. They did not, however, move in right away; by May the Hemingway family was on their way to Europe, so that when Lovecraft arrived in Key West on June 10th, the chance of even an accidental meeting was nonexistent. Lovecraft had hoped to make the crossing to Cuba, but he was traveling on a tight budget and could not afford it. What he could afford were expansive letters, describing Key West as he—and perhaps Hemingway—might have seen it:

As utterly isolated from the populous part of the world as Block Island or Nantucket, Key West has retained an unique provincial character differing vastly from that of any other place. It is simple & village-like, & extremely frugal & primitive in all things. Spanish influence is everywhere observable—Cubans being about as thick as French-Canadians in Fall River or Jews in New York. One of the two cinema theatres (both owned by a Spaniard) has its films in the Spanish language. There is, however, no Spanish newspaper. Vegetation is thick, splendid, & tropical—including great trees & surpassing that of any of the other keys. There is, however, no Spanish moss so far as I can see. Under cultivation, the greenery assumes an unbelievable luxuriance in gardens. Coconut palms are frequent.

Unlike Dunedin & Miami, this is an old town with a natural growth; & it is certainly refreshing to be back in such a place. The town was founded under the Spanish regime—though not, I think, till the early 1800’s. The original name is Caya Huesco, (Bone Key) which American usage soon corrupted into the present title of Key West. Early in the American regime it became an army post, & it has always since remained a military & naval station of importance; because of its strategic control of the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico. In the Civil War it pursued the anomalous course of supporting the Federal side despite the secession of Florida as a state. In the Spanish war it was a great naval base & hospital centre. The harbour is of exceptional depth & convenience, & many steamship lines—to Tampa, New Orleans, Havana, &c—converge here. The principal industry—employing most of the Spanish population—is the manufacture of cigars. Next come fishing, sponge-fishing, ship supplies, & fruit growing—the latter accomplished largely on the adjacent keys.

Houses are largely small wooden cottages set in fenced-in gardens, recalling the old America of the 1840’s. Tropic balconies are frequent on both residences & shops, & the latest buildings (though not many new ones are built) have them as well as the old ones. Some shops have folding doors of many sections, which can be so opened as to throw the entire front open to the street—forming a sort of open-air bazaar, as it were. This is especially true of drug stores & soda fountains. In the residences, most front doors have auxiliary doors with shutters like those of blinds—a fashion which also existed in New England during the late Georgian period, & which is well exemplified by fine hillside colonial house at the corner of Angell & Congdon. Some of the houses have window blinds hinged at the top, which open outward like awnings & are propped with sticks. A distinct Latin touch pervades everything. Chimneys are very rare, & roofs tend to come to a central point or ridge like those of most far-southern towns. It is a relief to be in a really old & naturally developed town once again. Miami & all it represents seems in another world—for Key West is one with Charleston & Providence & Salem as a representation of pre-machine-age America. The city has a population (1930) of 12,613; being therefore about the size of Bristol, & somewhat larger than Athol or N. Attleboro. Its size is almost identical with that of my favourite village of Hempstead, Long Island. It is the seat of Monroe County, which includes all the keys. Up to 1911 or 1912 its isolation from the world was even more profound than at present; but at that time the Florida East Coast Railway completed its causeways & opened service from the mainland. Lack of highway access continued to keep it semi-isolated, but in 1928 the present motor route (interrupted by two 2-hour ferry trips) was opened. But for the business depression, these ferries would have been eliminated by this time—but lacking money, the state has not been able to construct the desired causeways. This delay is probably all that saves Key West from tourist invasion, standardisation, & self-conscious showmanship. As things are, the town is absolutely natural & unspoiled; a perfect bit of old-time simplicity which is truly quaint because it does not know that it is quaint. There is only one luxurious winter hotel, & one first-class city hostelry like our Biltmore. I am stopping at the latter—because the poor business season has caused them to quote fine single rooms with hot & cold water at only $1.50. It is the Key West Colonial—owned by the same chain which owns Charleston’s palatial Ft. Sumter Hotel on the Battery. There is a widely advertised roof garden with a magnificent view of the whole city & surrounding keys & ocean, which I intend to investigate tomorrow morning. But my own room has a fine enough view.

The coach drew into Key West at sunset, when the whole tropic scene bore an aspect of ineffable glamour. This approach was along a wide seaside boulevard; & betwixt the observer & the mystical westward gulf there rose a low, picturesque line of old-fashioned roofs & steeples which even the tall skeleton masts of the wireless station could not spoil. On the farther side one could note great ships tied up at the docks—messengers from Caribbean realms of still more enchanting glamour. In reaching the hotel—which is also the bus station—the coach passed through a large part of the town; so that I formed an excellent general impression at the very outset. With the coming of daylight, I shall do further exploration on foot—as well as consulting books in the local library. So far I have studied only the few Chamber of Commerce leaflets procurable at the hotel desk. The local Cubans are very picturesque—& not even nearly as squalid as our Federal Hill Italians. They are addicted to sporty clothes of a flamboyant striped pattern. Most of the younger ones, locally educated, speak fluent English.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 11-12 Jun 1931, LFF 2.909-910

The Key West Colonial was formerly La Concha; and the locals still called it that, as did Hemingway (LEH 3.510). Hemingway’s own description of the town in his letters was much more laconic; two examples highlight some of the differences between the two men:

Tonight is a big night (Saturday) although not so cheerful because another cigar factory has closed down. This is a splendid place. Population formerly 26,000—now around ten thousand[.] There was a pencilled ins[c]ription derogatory to our fair city in the toilet at the station and somebody had written under it—’if you don’t like this town get out and stay out.’ Somebody else had written under that ‘Everybody has.’
—Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins, 21 Apr 1928, LEH 3.382-383

That was was where I went best when I was writing it—Swim all winter—Everybody talks Spanish—The old Gulf stream just seven miles out and all the uninhabited keys to sail to. Good Spanish wine from Cuba on every boat—Whiskey $5.00 a quart—Bacardi 4.00—Fundador 4.50—We’ll get a house and two niggers—[…] The fishing is as exciting as war only you can go home nights. Grand people.
—Ernest Hemingway to Archibald MacLeish, c.9-13 Sep 1928, LEH 3.436-437

Lovecraft was a teetotal and not a sportsman; but both men found charm in the small town, though only one of them was destined to ever return and stay there. Some months after his return to Providence, Rhode Island, the subject of Hemingway came up again:

I like Cather and Hemingway . . . . Hemingway is the sort of guy I intensely admire without any great impulse to imitate him. His prosaic objectivity is a very high form of art—which I wish I could parallel—but I can’t get used to the rhythm of his short, harsh sentences.
—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 18 Sep 1931, LJS 56

Willa Cather won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her novel One of Ours (1922); a thematic companion to Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929), which still seems to have been the only prose of Hemingway’s that Lovecraft had read. Hemingway’s prose style would be marked by Lovecraft in further discussions:

Of course, one oughtn’t to strike a cloying sing-song like Thrift’s pale-Hubbardesque iambicks in the Lucky Dog, or like some of my own “and”-balanc’d periods of yesteryear; but just the same, there’s no excuse for barking out an Hemingway machine-gun fire when one could weave prose which can be read aloud without sore throat or hiccoughs. […] The best prose is vigorous, direct, unadorn’d, and closely related (as is the best verse) to the language of actual discourse; but it has its natural rhythms and smoothness just as good oral speech has.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, 26 Mar 1932, LMM 322-323

Tim Thrift was an amateur journalist whose publication was The Lucky Dog; A Magazinelet of
Uniqueness. The reference is likely to the sometimes long, terse dialogues in A Farewell to
Arms, where an entire conversation could be had in a couple dozen words. Dialogue was not
Lovecraft’s forte, as he himself admitted. As for the content:

As for Mr. Hemingway—opinions may well differ on the exact amount of sanguinary virility best fitted for daily life, but these extremist dicta are well worth recording for correlation with the effeminate pacificism & supineness of other extreme schools of thought.
—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 12 Jan 1933, LJS 309

It’s worth pointing out that Lovecraft had been corresponding with Robert E. Howard for some years at this point, and would make a similar statement on the Texas pulpster who specialized in lusty and bloody adventure:

About the Conan tales—I don’t know that they contain any more sex than is necessary in a delineation of the life of a lusty bygone age. Good old Two-Gun didn’t seem to me to overstress eroticism nearly as much as other cash-seeking pulpists—even if he did now & then feel in duty bound to play up to a Brundage cover-design.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Willis Conover, 14 Aug 1936, LRBO 382-383

While they did not share the same experience of war—Lovecraft’s effort to enlist in the Great War came to naught, and he did not seek to drive an ambulance as Hemingway did—they were neither of them pacifists, and each had their own concerns about masculinity and masculine behavior.

Hemingway’s star was on the rise; A Farewell to Arms was adapted to film and released in 1932. Lovecraft saw it, though he wrote almost nothing about what he thought of it; “about as you say” (LJS 122) would be more helpful if we knew what Lovecraft’s correspondent had said about it. In 1933 Esquire began publishing a series of short essays from Hemingway. One of these, “Monologue to the Maestro” (Esquire Oct 1935), between Hemingway (Y.C.) and a young fan (Mice) appears to have been the subject of discussion:

Mice: Well what books are necessary?

Y.C.: He should have read WAR AND PEACE and ANNA KARENINA, by Tolstoi, MIDSHIPMAN EASY, FRANK MILDAMAY AND PETER SIMPLE by Captain Marryat, MADAME BOVARY and LʼEDUCATION SENTIMENTALE by Flaubert, BUDDENBROOKS by Thomas Mann, Joyceʼs DUBLINERS, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST and ULYSSES, TOM JONES and JOSEPH ANDREWS by Fielding, LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR and LA CHARTREUSE DE PARME by Stendhal, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV and any two other Dostoevskis, HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain, THE OPEN BOAT and THE BLUE HOTEL by Stephen Crane, HAIL AND FAREWELL by George Moore, Yeats AUTOBIOGRAPHIES, all the good De Maupassant, all the good Kipling, all of Turgenev, FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO by W.H. Hudson, Henry Jamesʼ short stories, especially MADAME DE MAUVES and THE TURN OF THE SCREW, THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, THE AMERICAN—

Mice: I canʼt write them down that fast. How many more are there?

Y.C.: Iʼll give you the rest another day. There are about three times that many.
—Ernest Hemingway, “Monologue to the Maestro”

Hemingway’s list of classics is a curious one—but perhaps typical of a disjointed transitional age.
—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 5 Dec 1935, LJS 275

As it happened, Lovecraft himself was creating a list of suggested books for readers as part of the revisions for a textbook titled Well-Bred Speech. They had several titles in common, including Madame Bovary, War and Peace, The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, and Joyce’s Ulysses. But Lovecraft felt it necessary to add: “Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms)” (CE 2.190).

While vastly different in style, that both men shared an appreciation for some of the same authors and works, or at least recognized their importance, should not be surprising. They were only nine years apart in age, both white men raised in America, voracious readers who loved literature. One notable fantasy writer that they both appreciated was Lord Dunsany, who was a major influence on Lovecraft:

Often a wonderful moon and the guy’s would have me read Lord Dunsany’s Wonder Tales out loud. He’s great.
—Ernest Hemingway to Grace Quinlan, 8 Aug 1920, LEH 1.237

Fantasy would be the subject of the final comment from Lovecraft on Hemingway, written only a month before HPL’s death:

I am, incidentally, amused by the definition of fantasy which you quote from Hemingway. The trouble with our literary toreador is, of course, that he tries to draw a parallel betwixt two utterly different and irreconcilable types of aesthetic emotion, each with an antipodal set of goals and origins. Fantaisistes and realists resemble each other only in the accidental circumstance that both usually employ paper and ink. Aside from that, they have no aims or wishes in common.
—H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 5 Feb 1937, LJS 294

The phrase “literary toreador” shows that Lovecraft was at least aware of Death in the Afternoon (1932), Hemingway’s treatise on bull-fighting. It is not exactly clear which statement of Hemingway’s Lovecraft is discussing here, although there is another passage in “Monologue to the Maestro” which may fit:

Your correspondent: Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be. If he doesnʼt know how many people work in their minds and actions his luck may save him for a while, or he may write fantasy. But if he continues to write about what he does not know about he will find himself faking. After he fakes a few times he cannot write honestly any more.

Mice: Then what about imagination?

Y.C.: Nobody knows a damned thing about it except that it is what we get for nothing. It may be a racial experience. I think that is quite possible. It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more truly he can imagine. If he gets so he can imagine truly enough people will think that the things he relates all really happened and that he is just reporting.
—Ernest Hemingway, “Monologue to the Maestro”

There is at once a convergence and divergence here between Hemingway and Lovecraft. Both emphasize the necessity of realism in writing; both differ as to the approach. Hemingway’s laconic “just reporting” works for his style of fiction, but as for Lovecraft:

One cannot, except in immature pulp charlatan-fiction, present an account of impossible, improbable, or inconceivable phenomena as a commonplace narrative of objective acts and conventional emotions. Inconceivable events and conditions have a special handicap to overcome, and this can be accomplished only through the maintenance of a careful realism in every phase of the story except that touching on the one given marvel. The marvel must be treated very impressively and deliberately—with a careful emotional “build-up”—else it will seem flat and unconvincing. Being the principal thing in the story, its mere existence should overshadow the characters and events. But the characters and events must be consistent and natural except where they touch the single marvel. In relation to the central wonder, the characters should shew the same overwhelming emotion which similar characters would shew toward such a wonder in real life. Never have a wonder taken for granted. Even when the characters are supposed to be accustomed to the wonder I try to weave an air of aw and impressiveness corresponding to what the reader should feel. A casual style ruins any serious fantasy.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction” (CE 2.177)

Hemingway and Lovecraft, though they never met in person or by letter, were both products of the same era, read some of the same books, wrestled with some of the same issues both in their life and their writing. Both might be seen as modernists; both at least acknowledged the necessity for realism in their fiction, though their approaches to achieving that differed markedly. Each had their harsh sentences in life, and served it ‘til the end.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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Deeper Cut: The Dutch Mythos

I got hooked on Lovecraft when I was just starting to read English, which I taught myself so I could buy and read horror and SF, which was practically unavailable in my own language (Flemish, which is another version of Dutch typical for Belgium, at last for the Flemish-speaking part, since French is our national second language). […] During January-April 1963 I wrote a novelette, titled “De Poort in het duister” (A Way into Darkness”), which was “published” in 6 copies in a carbon-typed fanzine I was “publishing with a friend.” […] I mentioned “A Way into Darkness” several times to correspondents, and it was noted down in one of the Reader’s Guides to the Cthulhu Mythos.
—Eddy C. Bertin, “Darkness: Your Name Is A Story” 63

I was very ill at the start of 1963, and for three weeks I suffered from a high fever and horrible nightmares. I had just discovered the work of H. P. Lovecraft, and in those nightmares I was constantly involved in a very surrealistic battle between immense inhuman forces, who took the form of geometrical patterns, which were fighting a war in a world outside of our space and time. It was around this time that I wrote “De poort in het duister” aka “The Way into Darkness” […] (Boekestein 2014, 7)

It is difficult to say when Lovecraft first came to the Low Countries. Belgian writer Jean Ray appeared in Weird Tales in the 1930s, under the pseudonym John Flanders. Kalju Kirde talks about running across copies of Weird Tales in Estonia during the late 1930s or early 1940s, possibly copies of the British edition of Weird Tales which appeared in the 1940s (Kirde 121). It is not unfeasible that some American pulps or copies of the British Not at Night series containing Lovecraft’s stories appeared in Belgium or the Netherlands at this time. But for the most part Lovecraft appears to have been a stranger to the Dutch and Flemish readers, at least in their native language.

After the death of H. P. Lovecraft in 1937, Arkham House was founded to publish his work and oversee his literary legacy, and began publishing his work in hardcover editions in 1939. Arkham House exercised de facto control of the Lovecraft copyrights, including foreign translations and a proprietary interest in who published Cthulhu Mythos fiction in the United States. During World War II, translations of Lovecraft’s work to non-English markets were largely unfeasible, but after the war the small publisher began to find some success.

French translation collections of Lovecraft’s work began to appear in the 1950s, beginning with La Couleur tombée du ciel (1954, Editions Donoël), and German in the 1960s with 12 grusel Stories (1965, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag), but it would be years before a Lovecraft collection was translated for the Dutch language market. During the 1950s, science fiction and fantasy fandom in Belgium and the Netherlands was largely disorganized, but groups began to coalesce and fan-publications proliferated in the 1960s. (Boekestein 2000; Dautzenberg 174)

Enterprising fans like Eddy C. Bertin would learn English and import British and American editions, and his story “De Poort in het duister” (“The Gate into Darkness,” also published as “A Way into Darkness”) is the first known Cthulhu Mythos story in Dutch, published in the fanzine Nachtmerrie (vol. 4, no. 4, May 1963)…“published” in an edition of only six copies. As Bertin recalls:

I knew Lovecraft from two stories, “The Rats in the Walls” and “the Thing on the Doorstep” (published in two now very rare Dutch horror anthologies), neither of which I really liked. […] There were however very few books of horror available in Dutch, but the English and American paperbacks found in the supermarkets and bookshops contained a much larger variety of it. So I started teaching myself to read english, with a dictionary at hand. […] one of those books I tackled was Best Supernatural Stories of H. P. Lovecraft in a cheap hardcover from Tower Books. I found his language and style very hard reading (for a beginner) but his ideas and images hooked me for life. I started hunting for his other books, discovering the “collaborations” with August Derleth, Arkham House, and later the works of others who had expanded and changed his Mythos, such as J. Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, and so on. (Bertin, “My European Mythos”3)

The first Dutch translation of Lovecraft I’ve found is “Het Ding op de Drempel” (“The Thing in the Doorstep”) in Voor en na Middernacht: Zijnde Vijfendertig Spook en Griezelverhalen Alsmede Andere Fantastische Vertellingen (1949, Elsevier, trans. A. Verhoef; a different edition was also released in 1954); “Ratten” (“The Rats in the Walls”) was published in Griezelverhalen (1959, Het Spectrum, trans. W. Wielek-Berg), and it may be other single stories were translated and published in anthologies or magazines from 1940 to the 1960s, when the first Dutch language collection of Lovecraft would appear.

Macabere Verhalen (1967, Uitgeverij Contact), translated by Jean A. Schalekamp, and began a small boom in Dutch translations of the American horrorist’s work. This was quickly followed by Het gefluister in de duisternis: Greizelverhalen (1968, A. W. Bruna & Zoon, trans. R. Germeraad), and Heksensabbat: Griezelverhalen (1969, A. W. Bruna, trans. C. A. G. van der Broek). The Dutch translation “Heksensabbat” (“The Dreams in the Witch House”) in the latter volume may have inspired Julien C. Raasveld to write “The House of Keziah Mason,” which first appeared (in English) in his ’zine Parallax #0 (March 1971), and was itself later translated as La Mansion de Keziah Mason (Las Mejoras Historias de Fantasmas, 1973); this is the second known Cthulhu Mythos work by a Flemish author.

The Bruna editions also contained the essay “De ‘verboden’ boeken van H. P. Lovecraft” by Aart C. Prins, one of the earliest Dutch critical works examining Lovecraft’s themes. Prins also edited Het Monster in de Lift an andere griezelverhalen (1967, Bruna) which contained the Hazel Heald/Lovecraft collaboration “The Horror in the Museum”, and De Bewoner van het Meer (1968, A. W. Bruna & Zoon), which contained translations of non-Lovecraft Mythos stories by Clark Ashton Smith, Ramsey Campbell, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Robert Bloch. Also in 1968 was published Wie Kan-ik Zeggen Dat er is? (Bruna, trans. J. J. van Olffen), which included several of Derleth’s “posthumous collaborations” with H. P. Lovecraft.

The 1970s saw more of Lovecraft’s work published in Dutch. A. W. Bruna & Zoon began the Bruna Fantasy en Horror series with De droomwereld van Kadath (1972, trans. Pé Hawinkels), and further volumes included De bergen van de waanzin (1973, trans. Heleen ten Holt), and De zaak Charles Dexter Ward (1974, trans. J. F. Niessen-Hossele); their last Lovecraft volume was Het huis in de nevel (1976, trans. Pon Ruiter). The number of different translators who had worked on bringing Lovecraft into the Dutch language at this point likely added to an uneven quality to the fiction—yet it did capture the public imagination, and avid fans became a part of the worldwide network of Mythos fiction writers.

Miscellaneous Lovecraft stories were also translated in various anthologies. One editor used the pseudonym “E. L. de Marigny” (from a character in Lovecraft’s “Through the Gates of the Silver Key” and “Out of the Aeons”) in publishing Fata Morgana (Maulenhoff, 1980) and Griezel-omnibus: Het verschrikkelijke geheim (1982, Elsevier), both of which contained Lovecraft translations. Other anthologies featuring Lovecraft translations include: Vampier! (1972, De Arbeiderspers), 50 beroemde griezelverhalen (1974, Elsevier), Kleine Griezelomnibus 1 (1976, A. W. Bruna & Sons), Land van de Griezel (1976, D.A.P.Reinaert Uitgaven), Van Edgar Allan Poe tot Roald Dahl, De 50 Beste Griezelverhalen (1980, Borsbeek & Loeb), Van Jules Verne tot Isaac Asimov: De 50 Beste Science Fiction-Verhalen (1981, Publioboek/Bart), De Beste Griezelverhalen (1982, K-Tel), De Beste Science-Fiction Verhalen (1982, K-Tel), Duistere Machent (1982, Loeb), and In de Geest van Tolkien (2003, Uitgeverij M). Some stories have been translated more than once, which combined with reprints has led to a little confusion at times.

The Dutch fantasy fan scene was also developing at this time; a notable publication was Drab, “eerste nederlandse tijdschrift voor Horror & Fantasy” (“first Dutch magazine for Horror & Fantasy”). Beginning in 1973 and running irregularly through 1980, it published sixteen issues in four volumes. Roeland de Vust provided three original translations for the magazine: the short story “Yule Ritus” (“The Festival”) Drab 1, No. 3 (1975), the R. H. Barlow collaboration “En de zee was niet meer” (“Till A’ the Seas”) Drab 3, No.2 (1976), and the poem “Waar eens Poe wandelde” (“In a Sequester’d Providence Churchyard Where Once Poe Walk’d”) Drab 4, No. 3 (1978); which issue also included Temme Tams’ translation “Van wat daarbuiten is” (“From Beyond”). In addition to this, de Vust provided a review of L. Sprague de Camp’s biography of Lovecraft in Drab 3, No. 2. Regarding the translations, Roeland de Vust wrote:

For me, translating was a challenge, trying to maintain in Dutch the “ancient” literary style of H.P.L.

A sentiment many of Lovecraft’s translators no doubt agree with.

Sometime in the ‘60s or ‘70s Eddy C. Bertin conceived a project for a booklet of five horror stories, to be published in Dutch, two of them involving the Mythos. One would have been “He Who Feeds on Thoughts,” which would be an adaptation of his science fiction story “De Gedachteneter” (“The Thought Eater,” published in De Achtjaarlijkse God, 1971, Bruna), and the second “The Sound of Silver Rain.” However, the project failed to attract subscribers and was scrapped (Bertin 2008a, 4).

Bertin and Julien C. Raasveld’s contributions to the Mythos were both duly recorded by Robert Weinberg and Edward P. Berglund in the Reader’s Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos (1973). It was through these fan-connections that the next phase of Dutch Mythos work was published—in English! With the death of August Derleth in 1971, the Cthulhu Mythos became free of his more restrictive attempts to control the publication of new Mythos material. Berglund noticed while compiling the Reader’s Guide that there were enough stories by professional authors for an anthology, and at Donald Wollheim’s suggestion solicited Bertin for stories with the idea of proposing the anthology to Arkham House. (Berglund x; Bertin 2008a, 4) Bertin sent him “Hingoo” (“All-Eye”) by Bob van Laerhoven “which I just changed slightly to fit better in the Mythos” Bertin 63) and Bertin’s rewrote “Darkness, My Name Is,” Arkham House turned the anthology down, but Berglund later published it as Disciples of Cthulhu (1976, DAW).

These early works of Dutch Mythos fiction were fairly typical of the time; Bertin’s “Darkness, My Name Is,” Raasveld’s “House of Keziah Mason,” and van Laerhoven’s “All-Eye” are pastiches of various degrees of creativity and skill, and went little beyond what Lovecraft and Derleth had written. “Darkness, My Name Is” however saw Bertin take a step beyond and begin to craft his own original Mythos, introducing his own tome (Von denen Verdammten by Edith Brendall—an occasional pseudonym for Bertin), his own Mythos entity Cyäegha, and an isolated geographic setting akin to Lovecraft’s Miskatonic Valley and Campbell’s Severn Valley. As Bertin put it:

It was never really my intention to develop a series of stories and novelettes dealing with Lovecraftian creatures, but set in Europe—it just happened along the way. Just as Lovecraft himself wrote his Mythos stories loosely, without really trying to put them into a rationalised fictional universe, then so did I. […] (Bertin 2008a, 3)

Bertin quoted from Von denen Verdammten as poems, in German, English, and Dutch. Some of these were published in collections of weird verse for younger readers: “De Weg in het Duister” (“The Way into Darkness”), “De Brandende Kat” (“The Burning Cat”), and “Dunwich Droomt, Dunwich Gilt” (“Dunwich Dreams, Dunwich Screams”) in Griezelverzen 1 (1998, Het Griezelgenootschap). Griezelverzen 2 (1999, Het Griezelgenootschap) included “De trap bij Maanlicht” (“The Stairway by Moonlight”) (Bertin 2008a, 5).

Disciples was successful enough to get French (Las adorateurs de Cthulhu, 1978) and German (Cthulhu’s Kinder, 1980) translations. Fandom was not exclusive by language, so in Belgium, for example, you had publications such as H. P. Lovecraft Inedit: Fantastique et Mythologies Modernes (1978) by Jacques van Herp, published in French, closely following the French translations of Lovecraft and his letters, but adds:

Quant à la quatrième génération elle s’annonce avec Brennan, Walter C. de Bill Jr, Bob Van Laerhoven, Eddy C. Bertin, et compte désormais des européens continentaux. […] On peut espérer plus de la voie ouverte par Eddy C. Bertin. Une nouvelle région maléfique apparait, un lieu maudit en Allemagne. Et l’on se dit que l’Europe offre un vaste champ d’implantation avec ses vieilles cités gothiques, et ces villes mortes. Bertin nous apprend que Ludvig Prinn vécut à Gand et à Bruges avant de monter sur le bûcher à Bruxelles. Il presente Liyuhh, une trduction allemande des Textes de Brendal, se nom Von denen Verdammten, eine Verhandlung über die unheimlichen Kulten des Alten. Et l’on retrouve le climat et la mesure de Lovecraft.

As for the fourth generation, it is announced with Brennan, Walter C. de Bill Jr, Bob Van Laerhoven, Eddy C. Bertin, and now has continental Europeans. […] One can hope for more from the path opened up by Eddy C. Bertin. A new evil region appears, a cursed place in Germany. And we say that Europe offers a vast field of settlement with its old Gothic cities, and these dead cities. Bertin tells us that Ludvig Prinn lived in Ghent and Bruges before going to the stake in Brussels. He presents Liyuhh, a German translation of the Brendal Texts, called Von denen Verdammten, eine Verhandlung über dieunheimlichen Kulten des Alten. And we find the climate and the measure of Lovecraft.

Bertin then translated the English story into Dutch, where it was published by Robert Zielshot in the semi-prozine Essef No. 4 (Feb 1978); he later re-wrote the Dutch version into a two-part novel and sold it to the Belgian gentleman’s magazine Hoho where it appeared in issues 313 and 315 (Feb & Mar 1978) as “De Vallei der Nachtmerries” (“The Valley of Nightmares”) and “De Berg van de Demon” (“The Mountain of the Demon”), adding sex and gore, changing the setting the Mexico, and publishing it under the pseudonym Juan Fernandez Sonando. Bertin would end up re-writing the novel once again and titling it Cyäegha, My Name Is Darkness in 1983, but this longer version was apparently never published (Bertin 1985, 64; Bertin 2008, 5).

The continued publication of Lovecraft and other Mythos fiction (Robert E. Howard was also notable for having many stories translated into Dutch in the 1970s) was having an effect: other Dutch writers began to write their own stories, including Mark J. Ruyffelaert, who published “Het boek Tegrath” (2e Land van de Griezel, ed. Albert van Hageland, D.A.P. Reinaert, 1978) and “Il Vit!” (Tussen Tijd en Schaduw, ed. Danny De Laet, Walter Soethoudt, 1978), where they appeared alongside non-Mythos works by Bertin, Raasveld, and others. Ruyffelaert’s “boek Tegrath” (inspired probably by Jean Ray’s “Le Grande Nocturne” (1942)) and would become part of his own personal Mythos, reappearing in stories such as the “Brieven aan Randolph Carter” (“Letters to Randolph Carter”) series; Marcel Orie would use it as well.

While still writing Lovecraftian pastiche, Ruyffelaert’s fiction draws more influence from some of the later writers, notably by the development of Bubastis (a Dreamlands city, not the ghoulish goddess as conceived by Robert Bloch in “The Brood of Bubastis”) in a series of tales: “Nocturne” in Vierde Ragnarok (1998), “De Droomwereld van Mahal” (“The Dreamworld of Mahal,” 2005), “Paradise Regained” (2008), “Sedlec, Bubastis” (2009), “De beul van Molsheim” (“The Executioner of Molsheim,” 2010), “De ondergang van Bubastis” (“The Demise of Bubastis,” 2014), “Een feestmaal voor kraaien” (“A Feast for Crows,” 2016), and “De vierde ruiter – de Dood” (“The Fourth Horseman – Death,” 2018). Ruyffelaert describes his relation with Lovecraft:

Reading Lovecraft was for a long time a great spiritual comfort to me: my belief in reaching the true haven of inner peace I owe to him. As a 14 year “old” I was confronted with the horror behind the horror and it provided me with an additional career. Lovecraft understood how to make enjoyable art out of his own fears, and then opened up his dream-world to many talented visitors. […] My intention: a salute to that fantasy giant who taught me how to dream. (Ruyffelaert)

In the early 1980s, many of the previous translations and some new ones were collected into an omnibus edition and a new collection: Griezelverhalen (Loeb, 1982) and Het gefluister in de duisternis: Griezelverhalen (Loeb, 1984), the former included the essay “Het fenomeen Lovecraft” by editor Erik Lankester, and the latter a translation of Robert Bloch’s essay “Heritage of Horror”—unfortunately, most of Lovecraft’s letters and biographies and critical studies have yet to see translation into Dutch, leaving the audience with relatively less insight into the man and his work in that language, although Michel Houellebecq’s flawed but popular monograph on Lovecraft was included in De koude revolutie: confrontaties en bespiegelingen, translated by Martin de Haan and published by Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers in 2012.

The 1980s saw a few more efforts from Dutch Mythos authors. First among these was Eddy C. Bertin, who produced two notable Lovecraftian publications. Eyurid: A Lovecraftian Portfolio with Tais Teng (pseudonym of Thijs van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen) was originally published in issues 21-25 of Bertin’s magazine SF-Gids (1976-1978), SF-Gids also published numerous book reviews of Lovecraft and related works published in English and in translation; issues 119 and 120 were devoted to various versions of the Necronomicon. Bertin, following in the footsteps of August Derleth, couldn’t help referencing his own additions to Mythos-lorekeeping in his story “The Piercing of Priscilla Petersen”:

Research in the archives and in Fandata by Jan Meeuwesen and Jos Lexmond, a bibliography of fantastic literature published in Dutch, showed that in the Netherlands alone at least fifteen short story collections by Lovecraft had been issued by various different publishers. Contact, Bruna, Loeb, Bakker, Meulenhoff. Not bad for a writer who’d never even had a single collection published under his name during his own lifetime. Further investigation yielded a rather sloppily produced fanzine, SF-Gods, which was published in Gentbrugge in 1989, nos. 199 and 120 when taken together formed a double issue on the famous Necronomicon. (Bertin 2013, 23)

Eyurid was later published as a standalone loose-leaf portfolio in 1980 by Dunwich House—Bertin’s own small press. (Bertin 2008c, 3) The other was Dunwich Dreams, which ran for eight issues from 1982 to 1984 in the Esoteric Order of Dagon amateur press association, and featured Lovecraftian illustrations by Bertin, editorials, the Mythos story “Concerto for a Satin Vampire” (vol. 1, no. 1), the essays “A Chronological Bibliography of the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft Translated in Dutch Language, and Published in the Netherlands (Holland) and Belgium from 1949 up to March 1983” (vol. 1, no. 3) and “Addenda to HPL Bibliography in Dutch Language” (vol. 1, no. 4). Bertin also placed Mythos stories in the American ‘zine Crypt of Cthulhu, with “The Waiting Dark” in vol. 4, no. 4 (Candlemas 1984), and “The Gibbering Walls” in vol. 8, no. 6 (St. John’s Eve 1989), which were rewritten versions of stories originally written and published in Dutch in the 1970s (Bertin 2008a, 8-9).

This was a very typical practice of Bertin, who remarked:

I don’t translate into English, I just rewrite it and then compare it with the original to see if I missed anything. Most of the stories in Dutch are not Mythos, the Mythos ones are all the rewritten versions and thus are completely different from the originals. “Darkness, My Name Is”, and “Waiting in the Dark”, were rewritten in Dutch from the English originals, and so are the same. (Bertin 2008b, 18-19)

Bertin’s fiction during this period still tended toward pastiche, expanding on Lovecraft’s creations, but he was also expanding on his own corner of the Mythos—“The Gibbering Walls” tying into his previous stories “A Way into Darkness” and “Darkness, My Name Is,” while remaining a standalone tale. Many of the stories involve similar themes, dealing with internal struggles that become externalized in monstrous fashion. In an interview, Bertin wrote:

A recurring theme is the fact that monsters are not born but created by society, just as the monster of Frankenstein turns into a killer because society doesn’t accept him. […] transformation of man into something else is the main theme of all my shorter Mythos fiction. (Bertin 2008b, 18)

Bertin also dabbled in verse, including the poem “Meeting a strange guy, called Lovecraft, close to the cemetery of Providence” which was published in the Dutch magazine Rakis #1 (Oct 1989). Bertin was also an organizer of the “Dunwich Experience,” a multimedia installation that toured Flanders in the early 1980s (Van de Wiele).

A notable problem that Bertin had as a Belgian writer in getting published was dealing with issues of language and dialect:

Publishers and compilers of anthologies often complained about the many dialect words that Bertin used in his texts. Julien Raasveld once told me that the editors of De schaduw van de raaf [The Shadow of the Raven, Bertin’s 1983 collection] went through the text first and erroneously deleted all of the occurrences of the words ‘gans’ and ‘doorheen’ and only then did they actually begin reading it. Why this act of stubbornness? Because it wasn’t literary enough. Apparently the man who expressed himself at conventions in a broad Ghent accent was no different in this respect to the writer in the attic. (Moragie 4)

Many horror writers face discrimination for using colloquial language to better address their audience, so at least Bertin was in good company, but it is a particularly Dutch problem to deal with issues of linguistic determination because of small dialectal differences between the Netherlands and Belgium.

Another Dutch writer who began pursuing the same general path at this point was Jan Bee Landman, who published “The Flood” in Alpha Adventures (Jan 1985) and “The Canals of Delft” in Etchings & Odysseys #7 (1985). The latter story is one of the first by a Dutch writer to use a Dutch setting (Raasveld’s “The House of Keziah Mason” was set in Antwerp), and the description of that old city is as loving as any that Lovecraft bestowed on New England:

By the close of the 20th century it still retained much of its old glory, despite the sacrilegious presence of motorcars, electric lights and parking meters. To the casual tourist it was just another attractive landmark, but to a more sensitive soul it breathed a different atmosphere. In the dark water of the canals, that lay as still and inscrutable as it had in remote ages, he could still see the cruel grave of 16th century heretics and the home of the great little sailing ships that roamed the oceans pugnaciously ins search of exotic goods and slaves. A small light behind some attic window in the depth of night would recall the times when Dutch alchemists worked their silent evils in secret. No number of swarming cars on the market square, between the dizzying tower of the big church and the stolid medieval town hall, could silence the echoes of howling witches that had once smouldered there at the stake. (Landman 71)

Jan J. B. Kuipers also wrote around this time, their story “Het teken van de Geit” (“The Sign of the Goat”) appeared in Brieven aan Satan: de beste griezelverhalen (1990, Meisner, Stichting Fantastische Vertellingen). Kuipers did not write extensively in the Mythos, though some of his stories take influence from or refer to Lovecraft or the King in Yellow, including “Rondom Hygelac” (“About Hygelac,” 2014), “Offa’s bruid” (“Offa’s Bride,” 2016), “Een man van zijn woord” (“A Man of his Word,” 2018), and “De Jutterstoren” (“The Beachcomber’s Tower,” 2019). Much of Kuiper’s Mythos fiction focuses on historical settings; one recurring aspect is Saint Muirgen, a mermaid (descended from Father Dagon and Mother Hydra) which the early church adopted as a saint.

One of the major hindrances for prospective Dutch Mythos writers appears to have been the lack of a Dutch-language market for new Mythos fiction—as opposed to Mythos fiction in translation, which continued sporadically in anthologies. Peripheral works were also translated into Dutch and filtered slowly into the pop culture of Belgium and the Netherlands. For example, the popular Flemish graphic novel series De Rode Ridder, published book 124 Necronomicon in 1987. The book and amulet in that comic derive from the Simon Necronomicon (first published in English in 1977 by Schlangekraft), although it is otherwise a sword & sorcery tale. Roleplaying games also provided an introduction to the Mythos for many, with the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game from Chaosium being a gateway to Lovecraft’s fiction:

My love for H. P. Lovecraft started with a board game. For evenings on end, my friends and I attempted to save the world from slumbering Evil, while trying to maintain our sanity. Nine times out of ten, we succeeded, by clever planning and by careful division of our resources. This was all well and good, until I actually started reading the stories and I realised that ‘winning’ was in fact the exception. (den Heijer 41)

The influence of roleplaying games can be seen in stories like Johan Klein Haneveld’s “Spelavond” (“Game Night”) in Lovecraft in de polder, which explicitly references Call of Cthulhu.

In 1988, Dagon Press published Het Onnoembare: Fantastische Griezelliteratuur In De Traditie Van Weird Tales, Arkham House En De Cthulhu Mythologie: Inleiding, Catalogus En Bibliografie by Dennis Schouten, a comprehensive overview of the Mythos, Arkham House, and Weird Tales for a Dutch audience.

By the 1980s, individual collections by Dutch and Belgian authors were being published that contained their original Mythos fiction. Notably, Eddy C. Bertin’s collections De Griezeligste Verhalen van Eddy Bertin (1984, Loeb) and Krijsende Muren (1998, Babel), and Mark J. Ruyffelaert’s Nocturne (2007, Verschijinsel) collected some of their Mythos works for the first time and made them available to a wider audience. However, there is a discontinuity in the late 1980s: as Bertin put it “the bottom fell out of the market,” and there was very little Dutch science fiction, fantasy, or horror fiction being published (Boekestein 2014, 4).

Because of this, Bertin transitioned to writing and selling horror fiction for a younger audience in the 1990s, focusing on the horror-obssessed Anton and the teenage witch Valentina. Both series began to incorporate elements of his Mythos fiction. The Von denen Verdammten appears in Overal Vuur (1996, Elzenga), Dorstige Schaduwen (1997, Elzenga), Duivelse Dromen (1999, Elzenga), Kille Dromen (2001, Elzenga), and Valentina’s Schaduwboek (2004, Leopold). The Valentina books were translated and published in both German and Swedish (Bertin 2008a, 6-8).

The Dutch magazine/anthology Waen Sinne premiered in 2002, with stories by Martijn Adelmund (as by Maarten Krohn), Jaap Boekestein, Dirk Bontes, Eddy C. Bertin, and Remco van Straten. Jaap Boekestein was also one of the editors, and his story was “Connectie Den Haag” (“The Hague Connection”), which makes reference to the Necronomicon and Von Denen Verdammten and adds Boekestein’s own contributions: the Liber Buccesteynus and Die Unaussprechliche Kosmologieën, which would be used by later authors. About the story, Boekestein later confessed:

At the time that we decided to do a Mythos Waen Sinne, I’d never actually written a Mythos story. I wasn’t even that well versed on the Mythos itself. […] All I basically knew was that Cthulhu was still sleeping, and that every self respecting Mythos author who’d ever lived had, at one time or another, had a go at inventing his own forbidden book or Mythos entity. I didn’t really feel comfortable about trying to invent a new Old One, but creating some evil tome was definitely doable. (Boekestein 2013b, 18)

Waen Sinne lasted two more issues; the second was devoted to Sword & Sorcery, and included Jan Mara’s “Verzengende Angst” (“Flaming Terror”), which references the Mythos. The third was devoted to classical monsters and contained no Mythos content.

Jaap Boekestein’s next two Mythos stories appeared under the pseudonym Claudia van Arkel, “Schepper van dood en leven” (“Creator of Death and Life”) in Pure Fantasy 8 (June 2007), and quickly followed that up with “Drie laatste nachten” (“Three Last Nights,” published in English as “The Devil-God of Captain Underwood”) in Zwarte zielen 2 (Verschijnsel, October 2007). His next story was under his own name, and in another of his zines, Wonderwaan: “Shhh shhh Cth… Shhh shhh Cth…” (Wonderwaan 6, June 2008). “Warme Rode Zee” (“Warm Red Sea”), Wonderwaan 23 (September 2012) and an English story, “Under the Keeper of the Key” which appeared in the erotic anthology Lovecraft After Dark (James Ward Kirk Publishing, 2015), both deal with a combination of the Mythos and BDSM. This reflects his approach to the material:

What kind of people, I wondered, wouldn’t have much of a problem with the Mythos Universe? People who were different from the norm, was my conclusion. People who perceived reality differently. “Transformation is the key. Transformation of both the body and the mind.” If you live in a non-mundane world, you don’t feel mundane fears. The monsters might even welcome you in as one of their own. (Boekestein 2013a, 47)

Boekestein collaborated with Tais Teng on the English-language “Dancing for Azathoth” in The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Vol. 2, (CreateSpace 2017), then back to Dutch for “Het dorp der Engelen” (“The Village of Angels”) in Wonderwaan 41 (Spring 2017). His Mythos story, “Van de Ouden” (“From the Ancients”) appeared in Lovecraft in de polder (2018); it was translated into English and published as “The Allure of the Old Ones” in Cyäegha 21 (Winter 2019). Hallmarks of Boekestein’s Mythos fiction are the use of the Netherlands and especially the Hague as a setting.

Computercode Cthulhu (2005, ebook 2018) by Paul Harland is an original Dutch-language Mythos novel with illustrations by Tais Teng. “Stoor niet Cthulhu’s slaap!” (“Do not disturb Cthulhu’s sleep!”) became an appropriate tagline for Harland’s novel, as the 2000s inaugurated the most active period of Dutch-language original Mythos fiction—likely buoyed in part by the greater ease and lower cost of desktop publishing and print-on-demand works, but also a reflection of a burgeoning market for weird fiction and Dutch and Flemish writers eager to write and publish their own Mythos fiction.

Frank Roger’s Mythos story “Duisternis, duisternis, verzwelg mij” (“Darkness, Darkness, devour me”) appeared in his collection De Trein naar Nergens en Andere Verhalen (2005, Free Musketeers). This is a story of a writer’s search for isolation, sudden inspiration and slow degradation, calling back to Lovecraft’s Gothic roots.

Later that year, Eddy C. Bertin’s “Dunwich Dreams, Dunwich Screams” appeared in Tales Out of Dunwich (Hippocampus Press), a successor volume to editor Robert M. Price’s anthology The Dunwich Cycle (1995, Chaosium), and concerns his latest addition to the Mythos library: Von denen Verdammten, a relatively recent (1907) German text which deals with unspeakable cults—a counterpart to such tomes as Ludwig Prinn’s Vermis Mysteriis or von Junzt’s Unausprechlichen Kulten (created by Robert Bloch and Robert E. Howard, respectively). The story would bring Dagon and the Deep Ones to Dunwich, England, which was the probable inspiration for Lovecraft’s Dunwich, Massachusetts. Bertin would write of the story:

This story is based on my own visit to Dunwich, and my research there. It continues my “European” cycle of Mythos stories, began with “Darkness, My Name Is” and others. I always wanted to write a story about the real dunwich, England, incorporating its weird history into the Mythos. […] Well, I did it now, as my tribute to HPL. (Price 302; cf. Bertin 2008a, 10)

Bertin’s next contribution was “De piercing van Priscilla Petersen” in Horrorarium (2006, Suspense Publishing). As with many Bertin stories, this was not originally a Mythos tale, but became so during its many rewrites. While not strictly a Mythos tale, Bertin also considers “Rose Nere” (“Black Roses”) in Phantoms of Venice (2001, Shadow Publishing) to belong to his conception of the Mythos (Bertin 2008a, 10-11).

The Dutch fantasy magazine Wonderwaan premiered in 2007, the publication of the NCSF (Nederlands Contactcentrum voor Science Fiction/Dutch Science Fiction Society). As the editors Jaap Boekestein and Marcel Orie put it:

We both grew up reading about the Lovecraft Circle and “pulps” like Weird Tales and Wonder Stories, always wishing that there were still magazines like these out there, to which we could pitch our own attempts at writing weird fiction. In a way Wonderwaan is a homage to these pulps. Wonderwaan (an invented word which combines the Dutch words for “wonder” and “delusion” aims to collect the best fantastic stories from Holland and Belgium. We select well-known themes and clichés from the pulp era, and challenge our authors to put new and strange spins on them. (Boekestein & Orie 3)

Since then, a number of issues of Wonderwaan have been dedicated to Mythos fiction, including issues 6 (June 2008, “Cthulhu Fhtagn!”), 8 (December 2008, “Iä Yog-Sothoth!”), 23 (September 2012, “Iä Shub-Niggurath!), 24 (December 2012, “Azathoth!”), 36 (December 2015, dedicated to Ruyffelaert’s Brievan aan Randolph Carter series), and 41 (Spring 2017, “Dromen vanuit R’lyeh”). In addition, individual stories are scattered among regular issues. The contributors included a number of familiar names such as Eddy C. Bertin, Mark J. Ruyffelaert, Jaap Boekestein, Jan J. B. Kuipers, Tais Teng (“Lovecraft, My Love”), and Mike Jansen, one of the editors of Lovecraft in de polder, who contributed to Wonderwaan with “Opdracht in Amlwch” (“Assigned to Amlwch”).

The magazine also introduced several new writers to the Dutch Mythos, most notably Marcel Orie with “Ansichtkaarten uit Carcosa” (“Postcards from Carcosa”) in Wonderwaan 6 (June 2008), followed by “Een handleiding voor later, voor na de apocalypse” (“A Manual for Later, for After the Apocalypse”) in Wonderwaan 24 (December 2012), “Keizer der waanzin” (“The Emperor of Madness”) in Wonderwaan 33 (March 2015), “Dode mannen dromen niet” (“Dead Men Don’t Dream”) in Wonderwaan 37 (Spring 2016), and “Het feestmaal onder de catacomben” (“The Feast Under the Catacombs”) in Wonderwaan 48 (Winter 2018). Marcel Orie’s “De poppen van dr. Edelweiss” (“The Dolls of Dr. Edelweiss”) also appeared in 2015 in both Ganymedes 15 and Cyäegha 14. Orie’s work is characterized by a conscious effort to expand the Mythos, tying into the work of Lovecraft, Ruyffelaert, Thomas Ligotti, and others. Their major invention was the Wurmwater, a kind of limbo or hell populated by the ghosts of pirates and criminals—including the Marshes of Innsmouth.

Other writers whose Mythos and Lovecraftian fiction appeared in Wonderwaan include Cornelis Alderlieste with “Fantoompijn” (“Phantom Pain”), Frank Daman with “Trô d’diâle” (a nonsense title, possibly means “The Devil’s Pit”), Auke Pols with “De ademer van de wateren” (“The Breather of Waters”) and “Overleef jij het maan-beest?” (“Can You Survive the Moon-beast?”), Jos Lexmond with “Weg…wachter” (“Gone…watchman,” translated as “The Watcher of the Way,” reprinted from Spaciale Aanbieding‘s 153-157, June 2009-April 2010), Nieske den Heijer with “Het doek” (“The Canvas”), Chantal Noordeloos with “De hongerende diepten” (“The Starving Depths”), Martijn Adelmund with “Schipperskind” (“Skipper’s Child”), Richard Meijer with “Vakantie Bali” (“Bali Holiday”), Jack Schlimazlnik with “Van oude goden, de dingen die niet voorbij gaan” (“Of Old Gods, The Things That Don’t Pass Away,” a play on the Dutch classic “Van oude menschen, de dingen die voorbijgaan” by Louis Couperus (1906)), and Tom Thys with “De Lijkenkrabber” (“The Corpse Scraper”).

The importance of Wonderwaan in the development of Dutch Mythos fiction has been to both recognize the fanbase for Mythos fiction among readers and to provide a market for new writers. Much as Weird Tales provided a receptive forum for writers and fans of weird fiction, Wonderwaan has served as a locus for the development of the Dutch Mythos, the special issues helping to emphasize the different voices and takes on the Mythos setting.

Outside of Wonderwaan, a few other stories found a home too. Tais Teng’s “De Tempel van Cthulhu” appeared in the ebook Met Gebroken Oog en Botte Klauw (2011, Verschijnsel), and the humorous short-short “Growing up in the Cthulhu Home for Deserving Orphans” was posted to DeviantArt in 2019. Eddy C. Bertin’s “My Fingers are Eating Me” appeared in The Whispering Horror (2013, Shadow Publishing). The latter story has a typically Bertinian convoluted history of rewriting and publishing (Bertin 2008a, 9-10).

Another important ‘zine has been Graeme Phillips’ Cyäegha. From the very first issue in 2008, which includes an Eddy C. Bertin interview and article “My European Mythos,” the zine has worked to bring the Dutch-language Mythos to a wider English-speaking audience, often featuring the first English translations of Dutch Mythos fiction and insights and commentary from the most prolific and important Dutch and Flemish authors of Mythos fiction. This is especially the case in the nine “Dutch/Flemish Special Issues,” which have brought the majority of Dutch Mythos work into English translation. In 2015, Phillips also began publishing the ‘zine Forbidden Knowledge, which includes translations of the introduction to Wonderwaan’s Mythos special issues.

Lovecraft in de Polder (2018, EdgeZero), edited by Laura Scheepers & Mike Jansen, is the first book-anthology of Dutch-language Mythos fiction. The list of authors includes both newcomers and old familiar names: Boukje Balder, Jaap Boekestein, Anaïd Haen, Johan Klein Haneveld, Abram Hertroys, Mike Jansen, Peter Kaptein, Jan J.B. Kuipers, Roderick Leeuwenhart, Django Mathijsen, Mark J. Ruyffelaert, Jack Schlimazlnik, Tais Teng, Dack van de Bij, and Adriaan van Garde. In discussing the impetus for the anthology, editor Mike Jansen noted of Dutch Mythos fiction:

My own experience, from compiling four Ragnarok anthologies for Babel Publications, judging four years of the Millennium Prize and three years of the EdgeZero competition, is that perhaps one story in fifty submitted falls within this category. So from almost 4000 stories (King Kong Award, Millennium Prize, Paul harland Prize, Harland Awards, Fantastels and Trek Sagae) written by nearly 1500 Dutch and Belgian writers, since the King Kong Award first began in 1977, we are talking about maybe eight stories Compared to the English-language production this is a mere drop in the ocean.

However, in general, the production of genre stories has dramatically increased over the past two decades, and a quick count of all of the stories submitted to these competitions shows that more than half of them were written in the last ten years. This means that there have been so many new Lovecraftian stories added in such a relatively short period of time that an anthology of these stories written by the top Dutch writers has become an increasingly enticing prospect. (Jansen 2)

Reception was mixed, however; Tom Thys in reviewing the book noted the speed in which the anthology was assembled:

Unfortunately, this has resulted in a somewhat lopsided collection as some of the stories fail to rise above mere pale imitations of the various rituals and creatures of the Lovecraftian pantheon. I really have to be strict here: the authors should have been given more time and the editors should have taken more time to select and streamline this collection. (Thys 4)

Also in 2018, Eddy C. Bertin died. The Dutch science fiction and horror community mourned the loss of one of their earliest and most prominent voices. Yet he left behind a legacy that continues to grow, as more writers use Cyäegha and Von Denen Verdammten. As he put it:

From the very beginning I’ve always tried to create my own version of the mythos, and in my own modest way, I think I’ve succeeded. (Boekestein 2014, 7)

Those who recall that South Africa featured as the setting of “Winged Death,” ghostwritten by H. P. Lovecraft for Hazel Heald and published in Weird Tales (March 1934) may wonder if any Lovecraftian fiction has been published in Afrikaans. As in the Netherlands, South Africa has a rather small market for science fiction, which was dominated by English-language imports from the United States and the United Kingdom (Byrne 522). Letters from South Africa were published in Weird Tales in the 1930s and 40s, and addresses published in WT show members of the Weird Tales Club in South Africa during Dorothy McIlwraith’s editorship. Unfortunately, I have been unable to verify any information on an Afrikaans translation of Lovecraft, or any Mythos works published in Afrikaans.

Works Cited

Berglund, Edward P., ed. (1996). The Disciples of Cthulhu Second Revised Edition. Oakland, CA: Chaosium.

Bertin, Eddy C. (1985). “Darkness: Your Name Is A Story: On The Writing Of ‘Darkness, My Name Is’” in Etchings & Odysseys #6, 63-64. Madison, WI: The Strange Company.

__________ (2008a). “My European Mythos” in Cyäegha #1 (Spring 2008). UK: Graeme Phillips.

__________ (2008b). “Interview: A Conversation with Eddy C. Bertin” (trans. Graeme Phillips) in Cyäegha #1 (Spring 2008). UK: Graeme Phillips.

__________ (2008c). “The Creation of ‘Eyurid’” in Cyäegha #2 (Winter 2008). UK: Graeme Phillips.

__________ (2013). “The Piercing of Priscilla Petersen” in Cyäegha #8 (Spring 2013). UK: Graeme Phillips.

Boekestein, Japp (2000). “Dutch and Flemish fandom, fifties and sixties”

__________ (2013a). “Afterword” (trans. Graeme Phillips) in Cyäegha #8 (Spring 2013). UK: Graeme Phillips.

__________ (2013b). “Afterword” (trans. Graeme Phillips) in Cyäegha #10 (Winter 2013). UK: Graeme Phillips.

__________ (2014). “Dissecting Eddy C. Bertin in Nine Questions” in Ghosts of a Different Dream. UK: Graeme Phillips.

Boekestein, Japp and Marcel Orie (2012). “Weird Dreams from Wonderwaan” in Cyäegha #6 (Spring 2012). UK: Graeme Phillips.

Byrne, Deirdre C. (2004). “Science Fiction in South Africa” in PMLA, Vol. 119, No. 3, Special Topic: Science Fiction and Literary Studies: The Next Millennium (May, 2004).

Dautzenberg, J. A. (1981). “A Survey of Dutch and Flemish Science Fiction (Panorama des SF néerlandaises)” in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Jul., 1981).

den Heijer, Nieske (2013). “Afterword” (trans. Graeme Phillips) in Cyäegha #9 (Summer 2013). UK: Graeme Phillips.

Jansen, Mike (2018). “Introduction: Foreward to Lovecraft in de Polder” (trans. Graeme Phillips) in Cyäegha #21 (Summer 2019). UK: Graeme Phillips.

Kirde, Kalju (1989). “Recognition of Lovecraft in Germany” in Books at Brown XXXVIII-XXXIX. Providence, RI: The Friends of the Library of Brown University.

Landman, Jan Bee (1985). “The Canals of Delft” in Etchings & Oddyseys #7, 71-81. Madison, WI: The Strange Company.

Moragie, Max (2019). “The Ghent Night-Writer: ECB” (trans. Graeme Phillips) in Cyäegha #22 (Autumn 2019). UK: Graeme Phillips.

Price, Robert M. (ed.) (2005). Tales Out of Dunwich. New York: Hippocampus Press.

Ruyffelaert, Mark (2013). “Afterword” (trans. Graeme Phillips) in Cyäegha #8 (Spring 2013). UK: Graeme Phillips.

Thys, Tom (2019). “Lovecraft in de polder” in Cyäegha #21 (Summer 2019). UK: Graeme Phillips. First published at hebban.nl

Van de Wiele, Patrick (2018). “Vaarwel Eddy, Mijn Vriend”.

van Herp, Jacques (1978). H. P. Lovecraft Inedit: Fantastique et Mythologies Modernes. Special edition of “Ides… et autres.” Belgium.

Note: With thanks and appreciation for the help of Roel Konijnendijk, Roeland de Vust, Graeme Phillips, and Ben Joosten. Any mistakes in the above are my fault, not theirs.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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Deeper Cut: C. L. Moore Before The Pulps

Well. . . when I was in my early adolescence, I had a series of fairly serious illnesses and I had to be taken out of school. I spent a great deal o f time in bed, entertaining myself by reading everything 1 could get my hands on. It’s strange, but I don’t know how I ever got my hands on Weird Tales because it was strictly frowned on in my family—it was trash! But somehow, I did and I was thoroughly delighted with them. They were a brand new marvelous world. I’m sure I must have been thinking about those things for some years after I recovered. . . after I had finally gone through school and college. I had to stop college after three semesters and was very fortunate in finding a job. Still, I hadn’t done a lot of writing in this field, although I had written a bit for my own amusement at various times-melodramatic stuff, very adolescent and fun to do.
—C. L. Moore, “Interview: C. L. Moore Talks To Chacal” in Chacal #1 (26)

Catherine Lucille Moore’s first professional publication in pulp magazines was “Shambleau” (1933), in the pages of Weird Tales. The immense acclaim of her initial spate of stories from 1933-1940, when she married Henry Kuttner, has become part of the legendry of pulp fiction. Yet while C. L. Moore seems to have emerged full-grown like Aphrodite upon the waves, what this really means is that a great deal of what she wrote before she began her professional pulp career has sadly been lost—either never published, or published and largely forgotten.

The earliest such work is technically juvenilia, though it extended into adulthood:

Ever since we were about nine a friend and I have been evolving a romantic island kingdom and populating it with a race which, inevitably, is a remnant of Atlanteans. We’ve a very detailed theology and mythology, maps all water-colored and scroll-bordered and everything, a ruling house whose geneology and family tree and so forth has been worked out in tbales and charts from the year minus—oh, just about everything that two imaginative girls could think of over the space of fifteen years. (Heavens, has it been that long?) We have songs and long sagas of heroes, and a literature full of tradition and legends, and we even made and colored a series of paper dolls to illustrate the different types and their costumes, and then there were wars and plans of battle, and we have the maps of all our favorite cities, and we’ve written a good deal of history. And that history is what I take seriously.

We centered on a favorite period, around 1200-1250, and the history gradually became the biography of the outstanding man of that generation, and for the past ten years at least I have been writing, off and on, about this rather picaresque hero and his adventures. If I think of it I’ll send you a sample or two. It mostly comes in short snatches, just as the mood seized me. And of course a lot of it is romantically school-girlish, and a lot full of undergraduate tragics, because it’s grown up with me and has a long way to grow yet.

Odear, now you have me started—I hadn’t thought of this for nearly a year, since my friend moved out of town and I took up the fantasy writing. Gee, it was fun. The hero’s name was Dalmar j’Penyra, and he had red hair and black eyes and was a priate and a duke and a mighty lover and quite invincible in anything he chose to undertake. How we used to thrill over his escapades. He died in 1256, at the age of 35 (that seemed to use the absolute ultimate at which a man might remain even remotely interesting) and we almost wept whenever we thought of it. Bless him, he does seem awfully real. We used to make sad little songs about it—The girls who died for Dalmar, tonight they sleep a chill—the honey lips are dust now, the throbbing throats are still, and peace is on the high hearts that beat for him so warm, and peace is on the black heads that lay on Dalmar’s arm. Their hearts have ceased from sorrowing, their tears no longer fall—the narrow bed, the cold bed, the grave enfolds them all. Oh, girls who died for Dalmar, and lie tonight so low—
—C. L. Moore to R. H. Barlow, 10 Sep 1934, MSS. Brown Digital Repository

In a later interview, Moore specified this friend was her cousin:

What happened was that I had a cousin with whom I was very close, and we used to make up romantic tales of mythical kingdoms. We would take, long, long walks in the neighborhood under the trees—it was a lovely time in the world to be alive—and we each worked out or own fantasy kingdom with dashing young heroes and lots of swashbuckling adventure. Then we began separately to write it out. It was not anything that either of us considered offering for publication; it never occurred to us. I found some of it not too long ago, some writing from back in my early teens. The writing style has not changed very much except for one thing: I never said anything once when I could say it five times. It was intolerably dull to read. The writing is all right, but the repetition is hideous!

[…]

I think my cousin with whom I developed the mythical kingdom and I would have gone on in that Vein if she hadn’t had to move away and if I hadn’t had the job. But it was there, and it would have to have come out one way or another.
—”CA Interview,” Contemporary Authors vol. 104 (1982), 326-327

Bits and pieces of these poems about Dalmar j’Penyra are included in some of Moore’s letters to R. H. Barlow and H. P. Lovecraft in the period, and those fragments to Lovecraft in Letters to C. L. Moore and Others are the only ones published. Moore did not publish much poetry during her pulp career, but like many other Weird Talers she had a knack for it. One poem believed to have come from Moore’s typewriter made it into newsprint:

The Spirit of St. Louis with pilot Charles Lindbergh had completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight in 1927; pilots could be heroes in the 1920s, and there is more than a hint of fantasy in this verse.

At age 18, C. L. Moore enrolled at the local Indiana University and took classes for three semesters (Fall 1929, Spring 1930, and Fall 1930). However, Black Tuesday struck in October 1929, signalling the beginning of the Great Depression, and her family’s finances required her to leave school and gain employment, which she did. While associated with the university, however, Moore contributed to its school magazine The Vagabond, publishing three short stories: “Happily Ever After” (The Vagabond Nov 1930), “Semira” (The Vagabond Mar 1931), and “Two Fantasies” (The Vagabond Apr 1931). The University has since made these public domain materials available online.

In 2013, these three stories saw print commercially in the Galaxy’s Edge magazine, issues #2 (May 2013, “Happily Ever After”), #3 (July 2013, “Two Fantasies”), and #6 (January 2014, “Semira”), as well as best-of and omnibus editions.

None of these fragments and short works—the Dalmar stories, “The Spirit of St. Louis” poem, or the three amateur fantasies during her brief university period—have any obvious direct connection with C. L. Moore’s pulp fiction. That is, Northwest Smith does not appear to be Dalmar j’Penyra with a raygun, and if there was a prototype of the flame-haired Jirel of Joiry, she isn’t obvious. (There are certain interesting parallels between Dalmar and Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis, but Moore is not known to have had a hand in those stories and the parallels might well be coincidental.) Yet what these works make clear is that before C. L. Moore made her pulp debut she had already done years of prep work, reading and writing fantasy and adventure stories, developing her poetic sense, crafting the skills that would serve her well in her pulp career.

Such insight into developing writers is rare; readers today might be a bit spoiled with how much of the early and private work, even the juvenilia, of pulp writers like H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith is available for the right price. Most pulpsters, however, are blanks before their professional debut. We are fortunate to have these early examples of C. L. Moore’s work, which give us a glimpse at her process and development. For while she would polish her prose and improve her style and speed during her legendary career, it is evident that she was building on a foundation that went right back to childhood fantasy worlds, drawing on her love of fantasy, mythology, and adventure until—at last—she took the chance to submit something for publication.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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Deeper Cut: Métal Hurlant/Heavy Metal/Metal Extra Lovecraft Special

France, 1974. Jean Giraud (Mœbius), Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, and Bernard Farkas came together to create Les Humanoïdes Associés, a publisher for a new type of comic magazine: Métal Hurlant (“Howling Metal,” 1974-1987). Initially released as a quarterly and focused on science fiction, Métal Hurlant featured some of the best international comic artists of its time, as well as some of the most daring content, not just featuring sex, drugs, and rock & roll—but humor, horror, gory violence, politics, and philosophy.

The magazine was successful enough to inspire spin-offs in other countries, largely based, at least initially, on material translated from Métal Hurlant. So in the United States and Commonwealth countries, Anglophones could read Heavy Metal (1977-2023), with various special issues, spin-offs, graphic novels, and other projects; in Italy, the localized version of Métal Hurlant lasted only 12 issues (1981-1983), with several standalone Metal Extra issues, though the sister magazine Totem lasted longer (1980-1984). In West Germany, Schwermetall (“Heavy Metal,” 1980-1984) lasted a respectable 57 issues under its first publisher, and eventually ran to issue 219/220 (1998). Spain had their own translation of Métal Hurlant in the 1980s, the Netherlands had Zwaar Metaal (“Heavy Metal”), Denmark had Total Metal, Finland had Kylmä metalli (“Cold Metal”), Sweden had Tung Metal (“Heavy Metal”) and Pulserande Metal (“Pulsing Metal”), Turkey had Heavy Metal Türkiye…most of these international runs didn’t last long, but they spread the stories and art far and wide.

The creation of Métal Hurlant coincided with a number of other trends. H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and other early contributors to the Cthulhu Mythos became more widely available thanks to paperback reprints, and with the death of August Derleth, Arkham House lost its grip on the Mythos. New anthologies like The Disciples of Cthulhu (1976) proved that anyone could now play with the shared universe that Lovecraft and his friends had created. Argentinian master Alberto Breccia began and completed a series of Lovecraft adaptations for comics from 1973-1979, many of which first appeared in the Italian magazine Il Mago. Underground comix in the United States like Skull Comix (1970-1972) were giving way to semi-prozines like Star * Reach (1974-1979), and publishers also found they could side-step the Comics Code Authority by publishing magazines like Creepy (1964-1983) and Eerie (1966-1983) instead of standard-size comics, all of which featured material inspired by or adapting Lovecraft. H. R. Giger’s Necronomicon art collection was published in 1977, and quickly inspired the aesthetic for the film Alien (1979).

There was, in other words, a small revolution in Lovecraftian art, comics, and fiction in the 1970s. Not all at once, but from many different angles—and Métal Hurlant, the international crossroads where underground American artists like Richard Corben; French masters like Mœbius, Druillet, and Nicollet; Swiss artists like Giger; and Argentinian masters like Breccia could all come together at once.

That is what happened in September 1978, when Les Humanoïdes Associés published a 150-page special issue of Métal Hurlant dedicated to H. P. Lovecraft. The idea was so attractive that the next year, the English-language Heavy Metal magazine released their own Lovecraft special issue to coincide with Halloween, and when Métal Hurlant was translated in Italy, they released a one-off Metal Extra special issue dedicated to Lovecraft.

All three of these magazines share certain common elements, largely because the English- and Italian-language productions included material translated from the French special Lovecraft issue. Yet they were each different as well…and that’s kind of fascinating in itself, how these three magazines represent three different takes on the material, each tailored for their respective audience.

What follows is a survey: what each Lovecraft special issue contains, and by comparison, what they do not contain. To avoid excessive repetition, each issue and its unique contents are discussed separately, and then a single section discusses all the shared features. Because this is a long, image-heavy post, a table with links is provided to aid navigation:

Métal Hurlant Special Lovecraft (Sep 1978)
Heavy Metal H. P. Lovecraft Special Issue (Oct 1979)
Metal Extra Speciale Lovecraft (Nov 1982)
Shared Content
Cultural Impact

Métal Hurlant Special Lovecraft (Sep 1978)

150 pages, counting covers, the table of contents, ads, etc., Métal Hurlant Special #33 bis (“extra”) was one of several themed issues released by Les Humanoïdes Associés, with the other themes including Fin du monde (“the End of the World”, #36), Rock (#39), Guerre (“War”, #42), and Alien (#43). Not every feature in this issue involves Lovecraft or the Mythos, but a majority do. There are errors in the table of contents as printed, so a full list is given here.

Features involving Lovecraft or his creations are marked in bold; color pages are marked [c].

Front Cover: H. R. Giger
“La cimetière” (illustration) by Souchu, 2-3
Advertisement for Heilman by Voss and A l’Est de Karakulac by Daniel Ceppi, 4
Table of Contents, 5
Edito triste./Edito gai by Philippe Manœuvre, 6
“La Chose” by Alain Voss, 7-12
“Lettres de Lovecraft” by François Truchaud, 13
“La Retour de Cthulhu” by Alan Charles & Richard Martens, 14-15
“La Nuit du Goimard: Un ecrivain nommé Habileté-à-l’amour” by Jacques Goimard, 16-18
“Le Monstre Sur le Seuil” by Norberto Buscaglia & Alberto Breccia, 19-29
“Je m’appelle Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by François Truchaud, 30-32
“L’Homme de Black Hole” by Serge Clerc, 33-36
“Hommage à HPL…” (uncredited), 37-39
“Petite bibliothèque lovecraftienne” by François Truchaud, 40-41
“La Trace Ecarlate” by Jean-Jacques Mendez & Daniel Ceppi, 42-43
“Excursion Nocturne” by Frank Margein, 44-47
“Le langage des chats” by Nicole Claveloux, 48-49
Untitled illustration by Richard Martens, 50
“L’Indicible Horreur d’Innswich” by Philippe Setbon, 51-52
“Amitiés Rencontres” by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 53-57
“Barzai le Sage” by Marc Caro, 58-65
Advertisement for Richard Corben’s Den, 66
[c] “Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury” by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 67-70
[c] “L’énigme du mystérieux puits secret” by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 71-74
“A la Recherche de Kadath” by François Truchaud & M. Perron, 75-78
“H. P. Lovecraft 1890-1937” by George Kuchar, 79-81
“Les Bêtes” by Dank, 82-84
Advertisement for Le Diable by Nicollet and Les Naufragés du Temps by Paul Gillon, 85
“Le Necronomicon” by Druillet, 86-96
Advertisment for La Boite Oblungue by Edgar Allan Poe and La Rivier du Hibou by Ambrose Bierce, 97
Advertismenet for Les Trafiquants d’Armes by Eric Ambler
“Les 3 Maisons de Seth” by Dominique Hé, 99-101
“Les 2 Vies de Basil Wolverton” by Yves Chaland, 102-103
Advertisement for back issues of Métal Hurlant, 104-105
Advertisement for Métal Hurlant posters, 106
[c] “H.P.L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet, 107-109
[c] “Ktulu” by Mœbius, 110-114
“Plat du Jour” by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 115-117
“Le Pont Au Dessus de l’Eau” by Luc Cornillon, 118-119
“Cauchemar” by Alex Niño, 120-129
“H. P. Lovecraft au cinéma” by Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, 130-131
“L’Abomination de Dunwich” by Alberto Breccia, 132-146
Back cover by Richard Martens

Unique Content

Front Cover: A plate from H. R. Giger’s Necronomicon (1977).

“Cauchemar” (“Nightmare”) by Alex Niño is a 10-page black-and-white comic that showcases a series of nightmares realized in surrealistic and highly detailed form; Niño pays homage to the styles of other artists, naming Heinrich Kley, Arthur Rackham, Phillip Druillet, and Jean Giraud (Mœbius). Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.

Edito triste./Edito gai (“Sad Editorial/Gay Editorial”); “Edito triste” is written as by “Abdul Fernand Alhazred”, while the “Edito gai” (as in happy, not homosexual) is by Philippe Manœuvre. Both concern how the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft Special came together.

“Je m’appelle Howard Phillips Lovecraft” (“I am called Howard Phillips Lovecraft”) by François Truchaud is a brief biographical sketch of Lovecraft’s life, fairly accurate for the compressed time and space, with illustrations by Richard Martens and Druillet; the Druillet illustration is the same as the cover to the Lovecraft special issue of L’Herne (1969).

“La Nuit du Goimard: Un ecrivain nommé Habileté-à-l’amour” (“The Night of Goimard: A Writer Named Able-to-Love”) by Jacques Goimard is an essay on Lovecraft’s fiction, illustrated by Perry’s silhouette of Lovecraft.

“Le Monstre Sur le Seuil” (“The Monster on the Threshold”) by Norberto Buscaglia & Alberto Breccia is an 11-page black-and-white comic adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Breccia’s art combines traditional pen-and-ink with collage, which leads a strange, otherworldly aspect to the artwork.

“L’énigme du mystérieux puits secret” (“The Riddle of the Mysterious Secret Well”) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon is a 4-page color comic where an investigative duo investigates a mysterious well and uncovers some counterfeiters; slightly reminiscent in overall style to Hergé’s Tintin. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.

“Lettres de Lovecraft” (“Lovecraft’s Letters”) by François Truchaud is a review of Lettres 1 (1978), the French-language translation of the first volume of Lovecraft’s Selected Letters. Illustrated by Mœbius’ cover for Lettres d’Arkham (1975).

“L’Indicible Horreur d’Innswich” (“The Unspeakable Horror of Innswich”) by Philippe Setbon is a short fiction that purports to be the last story written by H. P. Lovecraft, complete with a mock reproduction of the original manuscript written on an envelope, based on the famous At the Mountains of Madness envelope.

“Petite bibliothèque lovecraftienne” (“Little Lovecraftian Library”) by François Truchaud is a brief survey of Lovecraft-related material available in French publications, as well as some related publications such as The Occult Lovecraft (1975) and H. P. Lovecraft: A Biography (1975) in English.

Back cover by Richard Martens, based on a photo of Lovecraft.

Heavy Metal H. P. Lovecraft Special Issue (Oct 1979)

This material is taken, for the most part, from a bizarre and eldritch tome written in a strange tongue, the “Homage á Lovecraft” issue of Métal Hurlant. We trust it will add just the right touch to your Hallowe’en festivities.
—Sean Kelly, editorial for Heavy Metal vol. III, no. 6

96 pages, counting the ads, table of contents, etc., which makes for a thinner magazine that can still be side-stapled. Heavy Metal magazine vol. III, no. 6 is part of the normal numbering rather than an extra or one-off issue. While it draws much of its material directly from the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft special, the publishers chose not to reproduce all of the Lovecraft material from the French.

What didn’t they translate? The text pieces, the Georges Kuchar reprint, several of the more humorous and less Lovecraft-related comics, a couple pages of Druillet’s Necronomicon, and oddly the Breccia adaptation of “The Thing at the Doorstep.” What remains isn’t exactly entirely dedicated to Lovecraft, either, so that the “Lovecraft” issue has rather less Lovecraft-related material in it than might be expected.

Maybe there was a crunch with time to put the issue together, or some issues with the right. However, they also added a few things that didn’t appear in the Métal Hurlant issue, notably the J. K. Potter cover and “The Devil’s Alchemist,” a work of fiction. Unlike the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft special, the majority of Heavy Metal pages are in color, including colorizing some works that were in black-and-white in Métal Hurlant.

Lovecraftian items are marked in bold; color pages are marked [c]; items from the Métal Hurlant special are marked with an asterisk (*).

Front cover (“Mr. Lovecraft”) by J.K. Potter
Advertisement for Strategy & Tactics, 1
[c] Table of Contents, 2
[c]Advertisement for Job Cigarette Papers, 3
“…Thirty-one…” (editorial) by Sean Kelly w/ J. K. Potter, 4
[c] Advertisement for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 5
[c] “Final Justice” by Chateau, 6-14
[c] Advertisement for Heavy Metal posters, 15
[c] Advertisement for Heavy Metal subscriptions, 16
[*] “The Dunwich Horror” (“L’Abomination de Dunwich”) by Alberto Breccia, 17-25, 74-80
[c] [*] “Ktulu” by Mœbius, 25-29
[c] “Xeno Meets Dr. Fear and Is Consumed” by Terrance Lindall & Chris Adames, 30-31
[*] “The Thing” (“La Chose”) by Alain Voss, 32-37
[*] “The Beasts” (“Les Bêtes”) by Dank, 38-40
[c] [*] “The Man from Blackhole” (“L’Homme de Black Hole”) by Serge Clerc, 41-44
[c] [*] “H.P.L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet, 45-47
[c] “Love’s Craft” by Sean Kelly & Matthew Quayle, 48-49
[c] [*] “Dewsbury’s Masterpiece” (Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 50-53
[c] Advertisement for back issues of Heavy Metal, 54-55
[*] “The Necronomicon” by Druillet, 56-61
[*] “The Language of Cats” (“Le langage des chats”) by Nicole Claveloux, 62-63
“Chain Mail” (letters page, but comic by Christopher Browne) 64
[c] Advertisement for Dragonworld, 65
[c] “Pat and Vivian” by Frank Margerin, 66-68
[c] “The Alchemist’s Notebook” by David Hurd & William Baetz, w/Walter Simonson, 69-73
[“The Dunwich Horror” continued, 74-80]
[c] Advertisement for The Grailwar by Richard Monaco, 81
[c] “Bad Breath” by Arthur Sudyam, 82-89
[c] Advertisement for Heavy Metal books/graphic novels, 90-91
[*] “The Agony Column” (“Amitiés Rencontres”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 92-96
Back cover (“Elizabeth”) by George Smith

Unique Content

Front cover: “Mr. Lovecraft” by J.K. Potter. Before digital image manipulation programs existed, Potter was producing strange, disturbing images with a combination of photographs, airbrush, and traditional pen and ink. The effects, with Potter’s imagination, could be quite stunning. In this instance, he uses it to place Lovecraft in a cosmic scene. Potter would lend his talents to several future Lovecraft-related projects, including the cover for Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1990).

“The Alchemist’s Notebook” by Byron Craft (as by David Hurd & William Baetz) is an original work of Mythos fiction, with illustrations by Walter Simonson. A note on the first page says that this story is “an excerpt from the novelization of the upcoming movie, The Cry of Cthulhu“—but the film never made it past pre-production (Cthulhu Calling: An Interview with Byron Craft). In 2016, Craft published the full version of the novelization as The Alchemist’s Notebook, which was later changed to The Cry of Cthulhu.

“Bad Breath” by Arthur Sudyam is an 8-page comic that is principally black-and-white with color tints on Selected panels and figures; it follows an amorous young man whose bad breath is impacting his love life, and the solution he attempts has horrific—and amusing—consequences. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.

“Final Justice” by Chateau is a 9-page color comic where a couple in Europe to write a book on historical crimes watch the re-enactment of a medieval murder at an ancient chateau. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.

“Love’s Craft” by Sean Kelly is a poem, accompanied by an illustration by Matthew Quayle. Tentatively Lovecraftian based on the title, but with no direct references to Lovecraft or the Mythos.

“Pat and Vivian” by Frank Margerin is a 3-page humorous comic about a woman awoken by a strange entity at the door. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.

“…Thirty-one…” (editorial) by Sean Kelly, discussing Lovecraft in brief. Accompanied by a photo-manipulated image of Lovecraft by J. K. Potter.

“Xeno Meets Dr. Fear and Is Consumed” by Terrance Lindall & Chris Adames is a two-page color fantasy/horror comic with a distinct textured painting style. Young Xeno, asking a fundamental question about certainty, sets off in dreams to find Dr. Fear—and does. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related.

Metal Extra Speciale Lovecraft (Nov 1982)

Cui, questo numero speciale di Métal Hurlant e un vero e proprio “omaggio” nei limiti è nei termini in cui puo esserlo una realizzazione a fumetti. Essa però dimostra sino a che punto è giunta oggi l’influenza del “solitario di Providence” e del suo mondo di sogni, di miti, di realtà alternative. E’un “ommagio” che ciascun disegnatore o scrittore ha estrinsecato secondo la sua predisposizione, il suo modo di vedere, il suo atteggiaento mentale, culturale, di spirito. E cosi (non ci si meravigli di ciò) vi saranno controbuti (fumetti) “seri” e meno seri o aprtamente ironici, allucinati e satirici. Un autore è amato non soo quando si prende sul serio il suo universo incubico (come ne L’uomo del Buco Nero, Il capolavoro di Dewsbury, ecc.), ma anche quando ci si scherza su, fra il serio e il faceto (Cthulhu), lo si prende aperamente in giro (La traccia scarlatta, Escursione notturna, Il ritorno di Cthulhu e cosi via).

Hence, this special issue of Métal Hurlant is a real “homage” to the extent that a comic book production can be. However, it demonstrates how far the influence of the “solitary of Providence” and his world of dreams, myths, and alternative realities has reached today. It is an “homage” that each artist or writer has expressed according to his predisposition, his way of seeing, his mental, cultural, and spiritual attitude. And so (don’t be surprised by this) there will be “serious” and less serious or overtly ironic, hallucinatory and satirical counterparts (comics). An author is loved not only when his nightmare universe is taken seriously (as in The Man from the Black Hole, Dewsbury’s Masterpiece, etc.), but also when he is joked about, half-jokingly (Cthulhu), and openly made fun of (The Scarlet Trail, Night Excursion, The Return of Cthulhu, and so on).

Gianfranco de Turris, Metal Extra Speciale Lovecraft, 5

English translation

Instead of trying to publish this as part of their regular series of issues, the editors in Italy essentially excerpted the majority of the Lovecraft comics content from the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft special and squeezed it into a 100-page (counting covers) square-bound Metal Extra issue. They also added some additional materials not in either the Métal Hurlant or Heavy Metal Lovecraft special issues

Lovecraftian items are marked in bold; color pages are marked [c]; items from the Métal Hurlant special are marked with an asterisk [*].

[*] Front Cover by Mœbius
Table of Contents, 3
“Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by Gianfranco de Turris, 4-5
[*] “Annunci sul Gironale…” (“Amitiés Rencontres”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 6-10
[*] “Barzai il Saggio” (“Barzai le Sage”) by Marc Caro, 11-18
[c] [*] “Ktulu” by Mœbius, 19-25
“Il Nome e la Cosa” by Luigi de Pascalis, 24-26
[c] [*] “La Traccia Scarlatta” (“La Trace Ecarlate”) by Jean-Jacques Mendez & Daniel Ceppi, 27-28
[*] “H. P. Lovecraft al Cinema” (“H. P. Lovecraft au cinéma”) by Jean-Pierre Bouyxou [uncredited], 29-30
[c] [*] “Il Capolavoro di Dewsbury” (Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon, 31-34
[*] “Il Ritorno di Cthulhu” (“La Retour de Cthulhu”) by Alan Charles & Richard Martens, 35-36
[*] “La Cosa” (“La Chose”) by Alain Voss, 37-42
[*] “Alla Ricerca di Kadath” (“A la Recherche de Kadath”) by François Truchaud & M. Perron, 43-46
[*] “H. P. Lovecraft 1890-1937” by Georges Kuchar, 47-49
[*] “Il Linguaggio dei Gatti” (“Le langage des chats”) by Nicole Claveloux, 50-51
[*] “Il Piatto del Girno” (“Plat du Jour”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi, 52-54
[*] “Escursione Notturna” (“Excursion Nocturne”) by Frank Margerin, 55-58
“R. H. B.” by Andreas & François Rivière, 59-66
[*] “H. P. L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet, 67-69
“Incubo Londinese” by Riccardo Leveghi, 70-72
[c] [*] “Il Ponte dull’acqua” (“Le Pont Au Dessus de l’Eau”) by Luc Cornillon, 73-74
[c] “Oltre L’autore Lovecraft” by Onomatopeya, 75-82
[*] “Le 3 Case di Seth” (“Les 3 Maisons de Seth”) by Dominique Hé, 83-85
[*] “La Bestie” (“Les Bêtes”) by Dank, 86-88
[*] “L’Uomo di Black Hole” (“L’Homme de Black Hole”) by Serge Clerc, 89-92
[*] “Le 2 Vite di Basil Wolverton” (“Les 2 Vies de Basil Wolverton”) by Yves Chaland, 93-94
[*] “Omaggio a H. P. Lovecraft” (“Hommage à HPL…”), 95-97
“Piccola Bibioteca Lovecraftiana” by Gianfranco de Turris & Sebastiano Fusco, 98

Unique Content

Front Cover is a colorized version of Mœbius’ depiction of Lovecraft at his desk from Lettres d’Arkham.

“Howard Phillips Lovecraft” by Gianfranco de Turris is a two-page editorial-cum-introduction to the issue and Lovecraft, illustrated with reproductions of photos of Lovecraft.

“Il Nome e la Cosa” (“The Name and the Thing”) by Luigi de Pascalis is a short work of fiction about the Golem of Prague, accompanied by illustrations by Massimo Jacoponi, a photo of Lovecraft, and Perry’s silhouette of Lovecraft. Other than the illustrations, no explicit Lovecraftian content.

“Incubo Londinese” (“London Nightmare”) by Riccardo Leveghi is a short work of fiction. Illustrated by Bradley, Druillet’s cover art from L’Herne, a photo of Lovecraft, and two images from Lovecraft’s letters. Other than the illustrations, no explicit Lovecraftian content.

“Oltre L’autore Lovecraft” (“Beyond the Author Lovecraft”) by Onomatopeya is an 8-page fotonovela-style comic about Lovecraft’s life and literary afterlife, a montage of photos tinted, textured, and collaged together with speech bubbles and text boxes to provide a humorous but largely accurate narrative.

“Piccola Bibioteca Lovecraftiana” (“Little Lovecraftian Library”) by Gianfranco de Turris & Sebastiano Fusco; while sharing essentially the same title as its counterpart in Métal Hurlant, this is a brief listing of the relevant Arkham House volumes and the Italian translations of Lovecraft and related materials, including August Derleth’s “posthumous collaborations.”

“R. H. B.” by Andreas & François Rivière is an 8-page, black-and-white comic about Lovecraft’s friend R. H. Barlow.

Shared Content

Listed below are the shared features, drawn from the original Métal Hurlant issue and also appearing in either or both of Heavy Metal and Metal Extra, along with notes on differences between the versions and necessary context.

“A la Recherche de Kadath” (“Alla Ricerca di Kadath,” “In Search of Kadath”) by François Truchaud & M. Perron is a 4-page black-and-white fantasy pictorial map of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands in a lavish, detailed style. Appears in Métal Hurlant and slightly smaller in Metal Extra.

“Amitiés, Rencontres” (“Annunci sul Gironale…,” “The Agony Column”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi is a 5-page black-and-white comic. The French title translates literally as “Friendships, Meetings”, and the Italian as “Announcements in the Daily,” but in context it might better be called Personal Ads. The nameless protagonist is in police/medical custody, and flashes back to when he answered a personal ad in the paper, and received a response. When he goes to meet the woman, he is waylaid: the whole setup has been a trap. Not explicitly Lovecraftian. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.

“Barzai le Sage” (“Barzai il Saggio,” “Barzai the Sage”) by Marc Caro is an 8-page comic composed of several extremely dark, heavily-exposed photos of a sculpture of a figure in various poses and backgrounds; the text is derived from Lovecraft’s “The Other Gods.” Appears in Métal Hurlant and in Metal Extra, where text boxes replace the original typed text annotations.

“Excursion Nocturne” (“Escursione Notturna,” “Noctural Excursion”) by Frank Margerin is a 4-page black-and-white comic that is wordless until the final panel; the whole is a careful set-up of horror tropes with a comedic flourish. Not explicitly Lovecraftian. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.

“Hommage à HPL…” (“Omaggio a H. P. Lovecraft,” “Homage to Lovecraft”) by uncredited is nominally a 3-page black-and-white cut-out diorama inspired by Lovecraft; though the content is more descriptive of general witchcraft and I haven’t been able to source any particular Lovecraftian inspiration. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.

“H. P. L.” by Jean-Michel Nicollet is a 3-page color fantasy painted comic. A pair of fantasy creatures travel through a city to where a suited, winged figure sits on a throne atop a pillar, and asks a sphinx-like riddle. A panel reveals the figure has the face of Lovecraft. While slight in terms of content, and the events play out with a dry humor, the artwork is fantastic. Nicollet would go on to do many painted covers for weird fiction translated into French, including collections of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, etc. The winged, demonic Lovecraft would reappear on the cover of Robert Bloch’s Retour à Arkham (1980). Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.

“H. P. Lovecraft 1890-1937” by Georges Kuchar is a 3-page biographical comic of Lovecraft’s life, which first appeared in the U.S. underground comix Arcade #3 (1975). Kuchar exaggerates certain elements of Lovecraft’s life and personality for comedic effect, but largely follows the available scholarship and characterization of H.P.L. in 1975. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.

“H. P. Lovecraft au cinéma” (“H. P. Lovecraft al Cinema,” “H. P. Lovecraft at the Cinema”) by Jean-Pierre Bouyxou is an article on cinematic adaptations of Lovecraft up to that point, which was essentially The Haunted Palace (1963), Die, Monster, Die! (1965), The Shuttered Room (1967), Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968), and The Dunwich Horror (1970); although they also mention Necronomicon – Geträumte Sünden (1968) and Equinox (1972). Originally published in Métal Hurlant and translated for Metal Extra. Illustrated with stills from The Haunted Palace.

“KTULU” by Mœbius is a 5-page color comic; a group of politicians, finished with a week’s work, descend to a strange place and ask Lovecraft where to find a Ktulu to hunt. A surreal, sardonic work that owes little to the Mythos but echoes Mœbius’ other work of the period, like Le Garage Hermétique; the image of Lovecraft on a high throne oddly echoes Nicollet’s “H.P.L.” Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.

“L’Abomination de Dunwich” (“The Dunwich Horror”) by Alberto Breccia, a 15-page black-and-white adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror”—and a fairly faithful and evocative adaptation, with particular care given to Wilbur Whateley and his unnamed twin. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Heavy Metal; many of Breccia’s adaptations of Lovecraft stories first appeared in Italian in the magazine Il Mago, which may be why Metal Extra chose not to reprint it.

“La Chose” (“La Cosa,” “The Thing”) by Alain Voss is a 6-page black-and-white adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter.” Voss elaborates on Lovecraft’s story a bit, making Harley Warren more sinister and flamboyant, and the grave they break into becomes an elaborate sepulchre, but is otherwise very faithful. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.

“La Retour de Cthulhu” (“Il Ritorno di Cthulhu,” “The Return of Cthulhu”) by Alan Charles & Richard Martens is a 2 -page black-and-white comic. “Uncle Nyarlathotep” narrates a tongue-in-cheek account of the ritual that results in the reincarnation of H. P. Lovecraft. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.

“La Trace Ecarlate” (“La Traccia Scarlatta,” “The Scarlet Track”) by Jean-Jacques Mendez & Daniel Ceppi is a two-page, slightly humorless, mostly wordless spectacle. Métal Hurlant printed the comic in black and white, but Metal Extra added a bit of red to actually illustrate the “scarlet trace,” which works much better.

“Le Chef d’Œuvre de Dewsbury” (“Il Capolavoro di Dewsbury,” “Dewsbury’s Masterpiece”) by Yves Chaland & Luc Cornillon is a 4-page color comic that ells an original Lovecraftian story, somewhat in the vein of “Pickman’s Model,” with the mysterious Dewsbury taking the place of Pickman, but truncated and dedicated to not showing the unnamable horror. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.

“Le langage des chats” (“Il Linguaggio dei Gatti,” “The Language of Cats” ) by Nicole Claveloux is a 2-page black-and-white comic, and adapts an excerpt from “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” involving the cats of the Dreamlands. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.

“Le Pont Au Dessus de l’Eau” (“Il Ponte dull’acqua,” “The Bridge over the Water”) by Luc Cornillon is a 2-page comic where a man attempts to commit suicide by leaping from a bridge, and finds himself embattled by a protoplasmic tentacled entity. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related, though some might call it Lovecraftian. Published in black-and-white in Métal Hurlant, and colorized in Metal Extra.

“Les 2 Vies de Basil Wolverton” (“Le 2 Vite di Basil Wolverton,” “The Two Lives of Basil Wolverton”) by Yves Chaland is a 2-page black-and-white comic. In Lord Whateley’s residence is uncovered the diary of an old servant, Basil Wolverton (after the comic artist), who had long served the family. The diary describes how Wolverton was a mad genius who sought to use the life-forces of others to extend his lifespan and rule the world—but he chose as his experimental subjects Black slaves, and found afterward his he fell into idleness and stupidity. The story is effectively a brief echo of the kind of weird racism typical of 1920s and 30s pulp fiction, although the artwork is excellent. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.

“Les 3 Maisons de Seth” (“Le 3 Case di Seth,” “The 3 Houses of Seth”) by Dominique Hé is a 3-page black-and-white comic in the form of a document about an artist’s visit to an ancient temple in Egypt, where he received a vision of the eldritch entity Suthluhlu. The artistic depiction of Egyptian pyramids, temples, statues, hieroglyphs, etc. is exquisite in its precision, though the Lovecraftian content itself is slight. Appeared in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.

“Les Bêtes” (“La Bestie,” “The Beast”) by Dank is a 3-page black-and-white comic. The narrative is slight, a soldier or servant informs a man that the Beasts are back, which turn out to be a collection of fanged dinosaurs (and, bizarrely, a rhinocerous of unusual size) that are mowed down with guns; the hunter leaves strange three-toed tracks as he leaves after the slaughter. It’s a surreal bit of fluff, striking for its visuals, but deliberately obtuse. Not explicitly Lovecraftian. Appeared in Métal Hurlant, Heavy Metal, and Metal Extra.

“L’Homme de Black Hole” (“L’Uomo di Black Hole,” “The Man from Blackhole”) by Serge Clerc is a 4-page comic. Howard Phillip Wingate, horror author, recalls a visit to Arkham, where he encounters Nathaniel Jenkins, a retired doctor who lived at Blackhole Cottage, and participates in his experiments. What he sees there causes him to flee, but he hears once more from Jenkins, whose brilliant mind has succumbed… The story is a pure pastiche of Lovecraft, with little visual and written nods scattered throughout. Published in black-and-white in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra, but in color in Heavy Metal.

“Le Necronomicon” (“The Necronomicon”) by Druillet is 11 pages of black-and-white pseudo-script and illustrations, laid out as pages from an alien manuscript; a photograph of Lovecraft is included on the frontispiece. Druillet’s recension of the Necronomicon was released near-contemporaneously with Al Azif (1973) by L. Sprague de Camp, the Necronomicon (1977) by Simon, and The Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names (1978) ed. by George Hay. Yet where the others focused primarily on producing some kind of decipherable content or referenced existing cultures and systems, Druillet deliberately made his pages evocative but untranslateable—and as a result, universal across all languages. Published in Métal Hurlant and Heavy Metal, with some slight differences in presentation.

“Plat du Jour” (“Il Piatto del Girno,” “Dish of the Day”) by Vepy & Daniel Ceppi is a 3-page black-and-white comic. A hooded figure buys a spider, takes it home, cooks it up, and serves it to a bed-written individual in a rat costume. The tone is slightly ghastly, but also slice-of-life. Not explicitly Lovecraft-related. Published in Métal Hurlant and Metal Extra.

Cultural Impact

In the decades after the Métal Hurlant Lovecraft Special was published, many of the stories and artwork have been reprinted in various formats and languages. Today, you can find collections of Druillet and Breccia’s Lovecraft comics and art in several languages. What might strike readers, however, is that the bulk of the three issues do not consist of adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories, but also comics, art, fiction, and nonfiction about Lovecraft himself. That issue, and to a degree the English and Italian magazines it inspired, was a nexus of Lovecraftian art and fiction that helped to further the spread of not just Lovecraft’s Mythos, but the myth of Lovecraft and his life, inexplicably entwined with his creations.

For many readers, one of these issues was their first introduction for Lovecraft. For some, it was an example of what Lovecraftian comics and art could be, unfettered by censorship or expectations to conform to commercial standards of what a comic or Lovecraftian work should be like. These works aren’t pornographic or particularly graphic, but they vary from reverent to irreverent, ghoulish to enchanting. Lovecraft and his work are interpreted many different ways by different creators—and that’s okay. There’s room for all those different approaches, and many more.

Métal Hurlant is being published in a new series. Perhaps appropriately, in August 2024 they published a new Lovecraft special—reflecting a new generation of talents to flex their imaginations and showcase their skills. It is a testament to the cultural impact of that first mammoth issue, but also a reflection that these specials are part of an enduring tradition. Creators that are happy not just to read about Lovecraft, his fiction and letters, but to participate in the process and add to the body of art and literature he inspired.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” (2015) by Jilly Dreadful

On page 50, quire E, on the 7th leaf, on the face of one of the only decorative plates in the book, an illustration, beneath which these handwritten words appear (Translations are my own):

Idh-yaa Lythalia Vhuzompha
Shub-Niggurath Yaghni Yidhra (names of lesser outer goddesses)
Dare licentiam ad ut eam in servitium vestrum Arma capere milites,
(Give her permission to arem soldiers in your service.)
—Jilly Dreadful, “De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae”
in She Walks In Shadows (2015) 51

There is a strong strain of bibliophilia that runs right through the heart of the Mythos, its authors and readers. Part of the game was creating eldritch tomes like the Necronomicon and Unaussprechlichen Kulten, some of them with detailed backstories, strange and terrible authors, and blasphemous contents that were often only hinted at—secret histories, oddly effective spells, sanity-sapping diagrams and illustrations.

Yet very few Mythos tomes are written by women. Even fewer are written for women.

The patriarchal bias in the Mythos tome bookshelf is largely an unconscious one. It wasn’t that Lovecraft and his contemporaries couldn’t conceive of women mystics and magicians, they just didn’t make them the authors of any books. Likewise, female-presenting Mythos entities were in the minority, and didn’t start to increase in number, variety, and importance until relatively late, with the introduction of entities like Cthylla (see “In His Daughter’s Darkling Womb” (1997) by Tina L. Jens) and Ammutseba (see “Ammutseba Rising” (2015) by Ann K. Schwader), and the expansion of entities like Mother Hydra (see “Objects From the Gilman-Waite Collection” (2003) by Ann K. Schwader) and Shub-Niggurath (see “In Xochitl in Cuicatl in Shub-Niggurath” (2014) by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas).

How women interacted with the male-dominated cult space of the Mythos, and why they did so, may seem like questions directly born out of second-wave feminism—but while there have been efforts to address those issues, directly or indirectly (see “A Coven in Essex County” (2016) by J. M. Yales), in practice such explorations have been relatively rare and limited in scope. Because beyond writing a feminist lore for the Mythos, there needs to be a narrative attached to it, a story that demands telling that uses that lore in some essential way.

That’s what makes Jilly Dreadful’s “De Deadbus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” so much fun. The experimental format is the breadcrumb trail of a bibliophilic investigation, but the mythology is different in focus from the typical Mythos lore. What it outlines is a representative undercurrent to the popular literary cults of Cthulhu, Hastur, Nyarlathotep, and other Mythos entities normally presented in a male aspect; and that aspect has not to do with gender than sex.

Woodcut features worm-like Idh-yaa; sylvan Lythalia; Vhuzompha covered in multiple sets of eyes, mouths, as well as male and female genitalia; horned goat goddess Shub-Niggurath suckling infant devil at breast; many-tentacled Yaghni; and beautiful dream-witch Yidhra.
—Jilly Dreadful, “De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae”
in She Walks In Shadows (2015) 53

If it were just another story of yet another researcher finding yet another eldritch tome and falling prey to its influence, that wouldn’t be terribly original; something to be judged on the execution, like a panel of judges marking their scorecards. However, there is a shift near the end—a final twist of the knife which, if it isn’t entirely foreshadowed, rather makes the piece. It breaks a wall that is rarely broken in Mythos fiction, and addresses the reader directly.

There is room for more elaboration on the secret history and alternate Mythos theology suggested by this story; perhaps some other writer will pick up the ball and sketch their own elaboration, add their own little flourish to what Jilly Dreadful has started here. That is how the Mythos grows, after all.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Innsmouth Park” (2025) by Jane Routley

The day Oswald arrived, he called us to my father’s study and said peremptorily, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a spinster sister with a small portion is nothing but a burden to her relatives. I want you silly women married and out of my household as soon as possible.” Then he burned my father’s extensive collection of coastal plants and butterflies and sold his library.
—Jane Routley, “Innsmouth Park” in Into the Cthulhu-Universe (2025) 76-77

We don’t like Oswald.

Jane Austen’s role in weird fiction is underappreciated, largely because she herself didn’t really write any (although Northanger Abbey is a biting satire of the Gothic novel, and a must-read for Gothic fans which even Lovecraft acknowledged, which has to at least classify Austen as weird fiction’s strange aunt.) Yet the world she described, the characters and milieu she envisioned, have been enduring and influential far beyond the genre she initially worked in. Generations of writers have called back to Austen, and mashups like Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (2009) by Austen & Ben H. Winters, Regency Cthulhu (2023) by Andrew Peregrine & Lynne Hardy, and Secrets & Sacrifices: A Regency Cthulhu Novel (2024) by Cath Lauria all point to a similar rainy-day afternoon brainstorm:

Why not mix Austen and Lovecraft?

“In ’forty-six Cap’n Obed took a second wife that nobody in the taown never see—some says he didn’t want to, but was made to by them as he’d called in—had three children by her—two as disappeared young, but one gal as looked like anybody else an’ was eddicated in Europe. Obed finally got her married off by a trick to an Arkham feller as didn’t suspect nothin’. But nobody aoutside’ll hev nothin’ to do with Innsmouth folks naow. Barnabas Marsh that runs the refin’ry naow is Obed’s grandson by his fust wife—son of Onesiphorus, his eldest son, but his mother was another o’ them as wa’n’t never seed aoutdoors.
—H. P. Lovecraft, “The Shadow over Innsmouth”

Lovecraft did not live in Austen’s world, but the New England society that Lovecraft came from retained some of the same social mores and norms as in Austen’s day. Marriages were not just alliances of mutual love and affection, but involved perceptions of respectability and status, and practical concerns of money and temperament. While women in the UK have more options today than they did in the late 18th/early 19th century, the societal obsessions with marriage, reproduction, and compatibility are still there for many.

Jane Routley in “Innsmouth Park” takes this to heart. She drops an Innsmouth gent into an Austen scenario. Between the Oswalds of the world and the intelligent, meek, and slightly inhuman (but very wealthy) owner of Innsmouth Park, readers might suspect that they know the outcome of this short story before it gets three pages in. However, Routley does have a twist or two for the readers, and manages to pull off a solid story out of what could easily have been a farce.

As in any mashup, the tone tends to be rather light, and in this case favors Austen over Lovecraft. Nothing wrong with that; Austen’s strength was her setting and characters, and the Mythos is a flavor that mixes well into different settings. What makes it fun, however, are the little flourishes, the nods to both Austen and Lovecraft, and the very careful effort to build up the relationship between protagonist Eugenia and her potential suitor Rowah Marsh. We get to see things, not from the Lovecraftian point of view, but from the Austenian.

Whoever asked the Marsh daughter how she felt getting married off “by a trick?” Would she have been relieved to be out from under her domineering father, or lost and at sea among people she had never met before? Was it a step down or a step up in terms of her lifestyle and freedoms? We don’t get those questions or answers in “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” but you can be damned sure if Austen was writing that story that we would.

Routley recognizes this. While the story is filled with witty lines and little nods to her literary forebears, at the core the story is played straight. If you really did read an Austenian take on “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” it would have the same basic outlines as “Innsmouth Park.” We don’t like Oswald because he represents all the overbearing dudebro assholes we have to deal with in our own lives, but in the specific Austenian context he plays the necessary role of the manifest social norms that are forcing the woman protagonist out of the family home and into a suitable marriage (other options, such as being a governess, being considered but found unsatisfactory.)

That is really what makes “Innsmouth Park” work; the choice that is made is ultimately not driven by green or love or lust, but a practical consideration of limited options and the available alternatives. Faced with a momentous life decision, Eugenia zeroes in on what really matters to her, and the priorities may or may not surprise the Lovecraft fans—but the Austen fans will understand.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“The Tunnel” (2025) by Zoe Burgess

Ever since Helen Vaughan saw ‘the face of The Great God Pan’ and Lavinia Whately gave birth to the spawn of Yog-Sothoth, a sexual undercurrent has existed in cosmic horror. Rarely seen but its effects often felt, eroticism helps to shape tales of the uncanny and unfathomable.
—Back cover copy of Beyond Desire (2025)

Lovecraftian erotica is not the same as erotic horror. However horrific some elements of Lovecraftian erotica may be, it is a rare story that manages to mingle terror and titillation, rather than just use the tropes of the Mythos in another erotic fantasy with eldritch entities. “Cthulhu for Christmas” (2023) by Meghan Maslow or Tentacles and Wedding Bells (2022) by Margaret L. Carter owe more to cozy romances than horror for their structure, just as Booty Call of Cthulhu (2012) by Dalia Daudelin is more of a straight sex tale, and “The Vulviflora of Vuutsavek” (2008) by Charlotte Alchemilla Smythe is an exercise in pastiche. It is a relatively rare story that tries to find the balance between fear and lust, that plays the two forms of excitement against each other on a knife’s edge, that is unsettling in its sensuality.

This is a difficult balance, yet it seems to be what Zoe Burgess aims for in “The Tunnel.” The beginning of this story was featured in the Flash Horror 250 Contest in 2024, and if that visceral opening whets a reader’s whistle, Burgess goes much deeper—and gets more explicit—as the story is developed in her joint collection with Tim Mendees: Beyond Desire: Tales of Erotic Cosmic Horror (2025); the volume also contains “Writhing Mind” (2022) by Zoe Burgess.

Like in that story, “The Tunnel” is a tale of obsession, of an almost fetishistic desire for knowledge and sensation. There’s a quality reminiscent of Clive Barker’s “The Hellbound Heart,” the familiar outlines of which have been seen in many weird and erotic stories over the decades. Shades of Dr. Raymond’s search in Mary’s brain for the Great God Pan, or of William’s desire to uncover real magic through the artifact in The Invitation (2017) by InCase The language of the story is deliberately decadent, emphasizing the physical, the intimate, and hinting at something more than merely carnal.

This was what awoke Izzy’s companions, and they were greeted by faces of fear and adjective horror as the iron shell melted away to reveal the throbbing flesh-like pages of the manuscript inside.
—Zoe Burgess, “The Tunnel” in Beyond Desire (2025) 166

There is a literalness to the descriptions that is reminiscent of “Night Voices, Night Journeys” (2005) by Inoue Masahiko (井上雅彦), but it is probably more accurate to say that Burgess knows the tropes of the genre and plays to them. Familiar images remixed, recombined, carefully arranged. The tunnel of the title is both physical distance for the protagonist Izzy to transverse and the metaphysical vagina to be reborn from. The reader is just along for the ride, the voyeur of a journey of discovery and self-discovery:

Izzy held onto tarlike hips and almost felt like they were pushing deeper into the unknown, as that hot cavern pulsated and caressed as well.
—Zoe Burgess, “The Tunnel” in Beyond Desire (2025) 175

Metaphor and description break down on such an ecstatic psychosexual journey. Burgess strives to capture both novel sensations and something beyond that, some spiritual contagion that warps and fills and makes the sex act something profoundly more than just sticking tab A into slot B, repeat as desired. The story is essentially a spiritual descendant of the climax of Ramsey Campbell’s “The Moon Lens,” a story of initiation and transformation; while the cosmic horror is not called Shub-Niggurath, Burgess’ Void Walker has some of the same attributes.

More than anything else, “The Tunnel” by Zoe Burgess is an effort to tell an erotic horror story in the Lovecraftian mode. Not by invoking Cthulhu and the Necronomicon, but by trying to invoke familiar images and aspects as she tells a raw, uncensored story of transgression, transfiguration, and finally a kind of transcendence. When Izzy goes back out into the world, born from the tunnel, they are a carrier of a strange and terrible disease of knowledge, one which they desire to spread—and isn’t that so very familiar, readers of the Mythos?

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“The House of Idiot Children” (2008) by W. H. Pugmire & Maryanne K. Snyder

Tell my sad little life story? I was a weird kid. Believed I was a Witch when very young, as did my older sister. She and I used to practice what we thought was magick. Grew up knowing I was a sissy (loved playing house with the neighborhood girls, but always dressed LIKE them, wearing play dresses &c) and being tormented for it by grown-ups, kids at school, and thus I became an introvert and created my own realms of reality where I could be safe. My best friend in high school was Jewish, and that began a Jewish identification. Later I learned that I AM Jewish on my mom’s side of the family.
—W. H. Pugmire, “An Interview with W. H. PUGMIRE” (28 Feb 2009) by Jeffrey Thomas

There is a fine distinction between Jewish weird fiction and weird fiction that takes Jews or Judaism as its subject. Jewish weird fiction should be, ideally, written from a Jewish point of view; that may or may not involve aspects of Jewish religion or culture, but it should definitely have that viewpoint—and ideally, it should be written by someone who has lived experience to lend verisimilitude and authenticity to the story, who can approach the story as someone other than an outsider looking in. A good example might be “My Mother Was A Witch” (1966) by William Tenn.

A story doesn’t have to have a Jewish point-of-view to be about Jews or Judaism. Innumerable examples of Christian supernatural fiction reach back to Jewish religion and folklore to tell a story that is still focused, primarily, on a Christian point of view. The Wandering Jew in legend and literature may be Jewish in name, but their characterization follows the narratives conceived by predominantly Christian writers.

“The House of Idiot Children” (2008) by W. H. Pugmire & Maryanne K. Snider is, I suspect, their attempt at Jewish weird fiction. It follows Rav Samuel Shammua, a teacher in a small Jewish community who works at a school for autistic students. The description of the students reflects common depictions of autistic savants, formerly and derogatorily known as idiot savants:

They sat there, some very still some moving slightly back and forth, all staring into the air before them. Samuel shocked himself to feeling suddenly jealous. What did they see as they looked into nothingness. What did they listen to with an inner ear? The world saw these children as idiots who would always have difficulty functioning with the normal ear; and yet these children each contained a singular degree of genius. One was a mathematical genius. Another had memorized huge portions of Torah and Talmud in both English and Hebrew. And Moshe, who sat awaiting him, had excelled in the art of gematria […]
—W. H. Pugmire & Maryanne K. Sinder, “The House of Idiot Children” in Weird Tales #308 (26)

As in many of his stories, Pugmire slightly reworked the language in subsequent publications, so for example in An Imp of Aether (2019) he wrote:

[…] saw some students who, sitting at various tables awaiting instructors, watched his entrance, some very still, some moving slightly to and fro. Samuel shocked himself with feelings of sudden jealousy. What did they see with their autistic senses, what could they hear with an inner ear? The world saw these children as idiots who would always have difficulty functioning in the “normal” world; and yet these children each contained a singular degree of genius. One excelled in mathematics, another had memorized weighty portions of Torah and Talmudic lore, in both English and Hebrew. And mOshe, who sat awaiting him, had excelled in the art of gematria […] (44)

Autistic savants have their in supernatural literature, like the young girl Tiffany in Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) who uses her knack for puzzle solving to solve the Lament configuration. Such peculiar aptitudes can interact oddly with certain aspects of Jewish culture. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, each of which can also represent an associated number, a practice called gematria. This overlap of linguistic and mathematical concepts has significant interest with topics like cryptography, the interpretation of certain Jewish and Christian religious texts, as well as Kabbalah and other occult systems. The intersection of these different areas of interest has been a fruitful area for creatives, such as the film Pi (1998) where a genius Jewish mathematician’s investigations into the nature of π reveal a number which might be the secret name of God.

Pugmire and Snider play with this idea:

“A twenty-third Hebrew letter, a letter of fire.” The elder man raised his hand so as to thoughtfully stroke his beard. “An angelic letter. A letter out of which nothing is formed.”

Samuel’s face felt odd, and he ran his hands over it, trying not to shudder. “You know of this?” His voice was laced with fear, for never had he experienced such a conversation. The mysteries of cabalistic lore were something with which he had never trafficked. He had seen certain friends of his become utterly obsessed with studying the Zohar and other such books, to the detriment of everything else. It was a lure in which he had no wish to find himself entangled.
—W. H. Pugmire & Maryanne K. Sinder, “The House of Idiot Children” in Weird Tales #308 (26)

Unlike “The Chabad of Innsmouth” (2014) by Marsha Morman or Dreidel of Dread: The Very Cthulhu Hanukkah (2024) by Alex Shvartsman and Tomeu Riera, this story has nothing to do with the Lovecraft Mythos. Yet there is something indelibly Lovecraftian in how Samuel Shammua is drawn into this esoteric study—an idea that madness and genius as linked, even as savanthood and autism are linked in Shammua’s mind.

“They’re not like others, that’s the point!” Samuel suddenly shouted, his face flushed with anger. “They are special creatures, for whom we especially care. What the hell is normal, Avram? Were you a normal kid? Our religious and ethnic heritage makes us outsiders in the normal world, that’s why we’re hated, that’s why madmen seek to destroy us.”
—W. H. Pugmire & Maryanne K. Sinder, “The House of Idiot Children” in Weird Tales #308 (29)

All of these elements come together in this story in an ending that is expected, and yet powerful. We the readers never learn the final mystery, which Moshe and the autistic children know and which Samuel Shammua learns. It is a literally ineffable truth, a knowledge beyond the scope of human experience. Whatever flaws the story might have in its depiction of autistic children, this was a deliberate and researched effort to weave together these disparate threads into a story that tried to express a weird tale from a Jewish point of view.

“The House of Idiot Children” was first published in Weird Tales #308 (Jan/Feb 2008). It was slightly revised and republished in The Tangled Muse (2008, Centipede Press), and then slightly revised again for An Imp of Aether (2019), which appears to be the authors’ final version.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Neural Mechanisms of Analgesia” (2023) by Mary Hollow

Dear Ms. Hollow. You don’t know me, but you and I share a mutual acquaintance, through whom I had the opportunity to read the draft of your horror story about the exotic fruit that turns pain signals into pleasure. I much enjoyed the prose of your story, but I have some relevant information that I would like to share with you.
—Mary Hollow, No One Came For Me: Weird and Primal Horror Stories

Lines of literary descent are not always easy to trace. If a writer goes out of their way to mention Cthulhu or the Necronomicon, then we can say with some certainty that they’ve read Lovecraft, or that they’ve read somebody that read Lovecraft, and so on. Without such concrete citations, it can be tricky to assign influences with any certainty. Would we say that Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation owes a debt to H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space?” Well, probably not within earshot of Vandermeer.

Fiction is like that. Writers can play with the same subjects, but may arrive at parallel approaches. We can only note the parallels. Fortunately, in this case, in the afterword to her collection, Mary Hollow gives thanks to Thomas Ligotti, so it is easy to say that yet, “Neural Mechanisms of Analgesia” (2023) is a story in the Ligotti lineage of weird fiction.

There’s a relation to Lovecraftian fiction, a similarity, but a distance as well. Hollow doesn’t cite the Necronomicon or Arkham, doesn’t try to fit her work into someone else’s mythology. As a medical horror, there is a distant echo of “From Beyond” and other gland stories, the clinical detachment that threads its way to a kind of sublime understanding regarding some fundamental function of life.

If you prick us, do we not bleed?
—William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venus Act 3, Scene 1

The story takes the form of a letter to Hollow herself. The epistolary format offers some advantages; like with “Machines Are Digging” (2009) by Reza Negarestani, there is that fine frisson as scientific citation and rational argument segues into something else. That moves beyond science fiction and touches on something else, something that goes beyond science in a direction that approaches—not the mystical, but a kind of revelation that limits rather than expands the possibilities of life. The opposite of wonder is not terror, but a kind of disenchantment that negates wonder, cancels it out.

The book offers up the pholosophical conundrum of what it means to have an experience that evaporates as soon as it is over.
—Mary Hollow, No One Came For Me: Weird and Primal Horror Stories

There is that aspect of—not exactly pessimism, but the kind of microscopic focus of ultra-sanity that strips away the comforting illusions of life, or even of weird fiction. There is no Elder Sign to ward of the neurological realities of the pain response in humans, no resonator to smash to hide from what was always around us all the time. Imagination can offer no comfort, and when stripped away there is only a kind of philosophical numbness. The reader ends the story burdened with knowledge, but there is nothing to do with that knowledge.

Does it matter if Hollow draws from Lovecraft or Ligotti? Only insofar as we can recognize the connection, the thematic parallels with their works. Hollow is working in a tradition, though not borrowing from anyone’s mythology in doing so. A reminder that as fun as the Mythos is, there is much more to Lovecraftian literature than just the Mythos.

“Neural Mechanisms of Analgesia” is published in Mary Hollow’s collection No One Came For Me: Weird and Primal Horror Stories (2023). It has not yet been reprinted.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters to August Derleth: Christine Campbell Thomson

While Weird Tales found success on the newsstands of the United States, early efforts to publish hardback reprint anthologies stalled out after the first volume. In the United Kingdom, however, editor and literary agent Christine Campbell Thomson managed to launch a successful line of reprint anthologies, the Not at Night series, which drew heavily from Weird Tales—and inspired many imitators. August Derleth’s first story at Weird Tales, “Bat’s Belfry,” made it into the second volume, More Not at Night (1926), and other stories of his made their first hardback appearance in subsequent volumes. Though Derleth did not think highly of the series as a whole, he must have been aware of it as a market.

The file of correspondence at the Derleth Archive of the Wisconsin Historical Society between Thomson and Derleth covers the years 1934-1954, comprising 34 separate letters for a total of 43 pages, all from Thomson. It is not clear from extant correspondence if Derleth had heard directly from Thomson before 1934; presumably, Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright or their London agent handled most of the commercial details of reprints. However, on 12 Feb 1934 Wright returned Derleth’s story “The Metronome” again, and Derleth apparently decided to skip the middle man and submit it to Thompson and Not at Night directly.

Dear Mr. Derleth,

Thank you so much for your note. I am most interested in your criticism. The general opinion here in England is that the ninth issue is well ahead of most of its predecessors and equal to any of them. Incidentally, I notice that you choose in every case an American author and not an English one as coming up to standard. Here, the general run of opinion is the other way round. Interesting.

I have read “The Metronome” and like it. I am not making a final selection at the moment, but I want to keep this story by me—which is tantamount to my taking it, but I wait always to get out the agreement until we have got the volume complete. I am afraid Selwyn & Blount won’t let me pay more than £3.3.0 for the book rights over here. Is this possible for you? You retain the English magazine rights, of course.

Yours sincerely,
—Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 22 Jan 1934

The ninth entry in the Not at Night series was Keep on the Light (1933); it is difficult not to side with Derleth on this one, as the US entries reprinted from Weird Tales include Robert E. Howard’s “Worms of the Earth,” Mary Elizabeth Counselman’s “The House of Shadows,” and Clark Ashton Smith’s “Isle of the Torturers,” while many of the British entries are less well-regarded (and some have never been reprinted). It is possible the opinionated Derleth may have made a comment about “The Black Hare” by Flavia Richardson (a pseudonym of Thomson) or “Golden Lilies” by Oscar Cook (Thomson’s husband), which would not have endeared him to his potential editor. However, Thomson was a businesswoman first.

“The Metronome” was accepted for and published in Terror at Night (1934); Farnsworth Wright also changed his mind and accepted the story for Weird Tales, so it was published in the Feb 1935 issue, and Derleth was paid twice for the story—one of the benefits of foreign markets. Derleth inquired whether Thomson’s agency would work to play his other stories in British markets, rates involved, etc., and Thomson was willing. Most of their short, businesslike correspondence during 1934-1936 concerns issues of what rights to various works that Derleth retained and was willing to let Thomson attempt to market.

Accounts sheet for sale of “The Metronome”

The exchange rate for British pounds (pre-decimal) to U.S. dollars was about 1:4, so Derleth was perhaps a bit unhappy to find that his three guineas came out to only about $10.33 after fees, postage, and taxes. Still, Weird Tales only offered $20, or about half a cent a word, so Derleth didn’t do too bad overall.

Thomson scored a small coup when she sold Derleth’s story “Hawk on the Blue” (based on a story in a letter from Robert E. Howard) for 8 guineas (although after various costs, this came out to a bank draft for $26.94). Other stories were met with various comments; Regarding “Muggridge’s Aunt,” Thomson wrote: “I am not quite certain whether it is horrible enough for Not at Night, the readers of which like their blood laid on with a soupladle” (Thomson to Derleth, 24 Sep 1934). About “Gus Elker and the Fox,” Thomson wrote “we feel that it is too American to place over here” (Thomson to Derleth, 12 Oct 1934).

Through 1936, Thomson continued to act as Derleth’s British agent, generally failing to sell much of anything, though with the occasional success, and often a degree of unctuousness.

Dear Mr. Derleth,

We are going to have a Coronation Omnibus “Not at Night” next Spring and I want to include “THE TENANT”. The fee, being for purely reproduction work, is to be £1 per story, but I know that the money is of less importance to you than the publicity and I would dislike to have an Omnibus compiled from the previous eleven volumes without one tale bearing your name. I am contributing an introduction myself and shall refer to your other work, of course.

Yours sincerely,
—Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 17 Nov 1936

“The Tenant” did appear in the Not at Night Omnibus (1937), but the brief introduction doesn’t refer to that or any other work by Derleth (to be fair, it doesn’t mention any other author’s work either, and is dated February 1936; such things happen in publishing).

The final letter of the first part of Thompson’s correspondence to Derleth is dated 29 Apr 1937; there is then a gap. With the international postage rates and rather poor returns, it seems likely that Derleth gave up on Thomson as an effective British literary agent. Whatever the case, the correspondence was resurrected in 1941. In the intervening period, H. P. Lovecraft had died (1937), August Derleth and Donald Wandrei had formed Arkham House (1939), and Nazi Germany had invaded Poland, sparking World War II in Europe (1939). Derleth was apparently hoping Thomson might be interested in publishing an anthology he had put together: Someone in the Dark (1941).

You probably don’t know that even before the war I was trying hard to get a publisher to do pretty much what you are doing—a Library of authors of Weird Stories—I got one volume by Edmond Hamilton out but then life got too difficult. I have a collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s tales here, just waiting, and had planned to get in touch with you for a volume in due course. (By the way, I am sorry to see from your jacket flap that H. P. L. is no more. He was indubitably a master of his craft.)

I will go round and see what can be done about an English edition of this volume – though it will be difficult, owing to the paper shortage and the embargo on the importation of sheets. but I will certainly investigate the possibilities.
—Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 20 Oct 1941

The Edmond Hamilton volume was presumably: The Horror on the Asteroid and Other Tales of Planetary Horror (1936); a year or two later, Thomson divorced Oscar Cook, which seems to have ended the publishing arrangement for the Not at Night series and apparently put the kibosh on further weird publishing plans for a bit. The mention that Thomson had a manuscript collection of Lovecraft stories on hand must have come as a surprise, because in the next letter we read:

I am very much interest in the booklet and also in all that you tell me in your letter of your activities. I got the H. P. Lovecraft stories some years ago (about three or four at least) and my recollection is that I obtained them from Farnsworth Wright. At that time we sold the Edmond Hamilton tales to a small but satisfactory firm called Quality Press (still going) and at that time the Directors wanted to try and do a cheap popular line of horror stories, corresponding to the “Not at Night” series. The scheme fell through owing to the general slump and tightness of money, etc. but I have still got the Lovecraft stories here. There [sic] were all tear sheets. The Hamilton book was called “The Horror on the Asteroid” and I got it originally through David Hampton and subsequent dealings were with Dr. Schwarz, who appeared to be Hamilton’s agent. later on. [sic] I’ll try and get you a copy and send it over but so much stuff has been destroyed by enemy action that I may not be able to lay my hands on one.
—Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 31 Dec 1941

Farnsworth Wright had contemplated a collection of Lovecraft’s stories from Weird Tales as far back as the 1920s, but the dismal sales on The Moon Terror (1927) shelved any such plans indefinitely. In a later letter, Thomson says she may have gotten the tear sheets from Julius Schwartz, a teenage fan who was acting as Lovecraft’s agent in 1935-1936 and managed to sell At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time to Astounding Stories. In the same letter, she lets him know of her failure to sell Someone in the Dark due to wartime difficulties, and ads in response to Derleth’s dislike of Hamilton’s space opera stories:

I agree with you; I can’t do with interplanetary tales; I get giddy right away and feel that there is quite enough to deal with in and around this planet without bringing in the others. I could never care for the Edgar Rice Burroughes [sic] “Mars” stuff, which had some vogue years ago when I was very young!
—Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 2 Mar 1942

Never ask an editor her age; Thomson was born in 1897, and would have been in her teens when A Princess of Mars was published in 1912. Still, this might explain some of her choices for the Not at Night series, which tended toward the strictly supernatural, grisly, and earthbound over interplanetary fiction. The last letter of this part of the correspondence concerns the ongoing paper shortage and the war effort:

Dear Mr. Derleth,

We have been going through our stored MSS. and find we have a number of short stories by yourself, all of which I think are just copies. May we destroy these? The have been offered in all likely places without success. We have also the tear-sheets of the H. P. L. stuff; can I send these for the war effort also as they, again, are only copies; we have also tear-sheets of Seabury Quinn, are you looking after his work also and can you give me authority to destroy?

Yours sincerely,
—Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 11 Mar 1942

Derleth’s answer is unrecorded; though he probably cared little for tear-sheets (or the postage to have them shipped back to the United States) and had no involvement in Seabury Quinn’s affairs at the time. Here again, the correspondence breaks off, since the bid to find a British buyer for Someone in the Dark had failed, and the Lovecraft material Thomson had on hand was only copies of stuff Derleth already had.

The final letter in the file is dated 7 July 1954. The war had ended, the world upended, and Weird Tales would end its 31-year run later that year with the September 1954 issue. After WWII, editor Dorothy McIlwraith had made several attempts for a British edition of Weird Tales to be published, including a 28-issue run by Thorpe & Porter that ran from 1949-1953. Derleth’s Cthulhu Mythos tale “The Black Island” appeared in the January 1952 issue.

Dear Mr. Derleth,

It is many years since we corresponded, and the other day some one left a more or less current copy of ‘Weird Tales’ in the office and I took it out to read over lunch and found your firm still existing and good story by you called ‘The Black Island’. And so I am writing to you and hoping that you have not quite forgotten my name. I still have—and shall never part with—your ‘Place of Hawks’ and ‘Some One at the Door’ and the beautiful collected H. P. Lovecraft which you gave me. Now I am writing for information! I am doing a book on the Western tradition and mystery (chiefly of course the Celtic and the West referring to these islands and not to U.S.A.,) but for this I am doing a lot of reading round the subject and I am wondering you would let me know just how much of the Chtulhu [sic] myths are based on any fact. I am of course a believer in Mu, Atlantis and that sort of stuff; but so little is available about Mu, other than such books as ‘The Children of Mu’, that I wondering just how much of the Lovecraft-Derleth material is purely imagination based on scientific reading and how much is based on what you and I would reasonably call ‘fact’. If there is any of the latter, I shall go through the Lovecraft material again and if possible give a passing reference to his work and yours in the book in the introductory chapter of the sources, etc. of our mystery teaching in the West. If it is all fiction, it must go.

[…]

I would like to send you the best wishes for the Arkham Press and for the high standard of production which you had before the war and hope—and indeed am sure—that it is keeping its level.

Yours sincerely,
—Christine Campbell Thomson to August Derleth, 7 Jul 1954

This was presumably the early stages of what would become The Western Mystery Tradition (1968), published under her married name Christine Hartley. Whether or not Derleth took the time and postage to respond, there is no reference to Lovecraft in the book.

The Thomson-Derleth correspondence is superficially slight, since most of it is impersonal and concerns only the frustrating call-and-response of Derleth’s attempts to sell things to the British and Thomson’s typical replies that she tried and no one would bite. Yet what is interesting about this correspondence is that it gives at least some insight into what Thomson did—and did not—know about weird fiction, some of her attitudes on the kinds of stories she did and did not like, her awareness of the British markets and her general ignorance of what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. To ask Derleth in 1954 if the Cthulhu Mythos was real shows how far Thomson’s finger was from that particular pulse.

Yet, despite a rocky start, this was apparently a professional and polite relationship, and a rare glimpse into several “what might have beens” in Lovecraft and Arkham House publishing.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.