I am writing this because I doubt my sanity. The eldritch horrors I will relate may well undo yours. Stop reading this before you too are ensnared by Cuthulu's evil or have to get a dictionary.


HEY, I SAID STOP AND I MEANT IT!

A guy called P.H. Cannon had a while back written a small collection of Lovecraft parodies featuring P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie and Jeeves entitled Scream for Jeeves. To say it was strange would be a bit of an understatement. The stories parodied were The Rats in the Walls (renamed Cats, Rats, and Bertie Wooster), Cool Air (can't recall the new name), and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (renamed The Rummy Affair of Young Charlie). One more point is that the cover illustration made a lot more sense after I had gotten a chance to read The Rats in the Walls.

I tremble as I write this. The eldritch dictionary horrors which my mind recoils from include my being able to do him justice with a pale imitation of his complex sentences that are interspersed with short simple sentences and that can have a comic effect by the mere juxtaposition along with the extreme vocabulary, but that seem to be drawn from the inner horror of Cuthulu's soul; assuming Cuthulu has a soul. That I can joke even after the unnatural things I have seen is an unholy testament to my fragile grasp on sanity.

Here's a tale of Cthulhu I found that is quite disturbing and yet at the same time a bit goofy.

http://www.logicalcreativity.com/jon/plush/01.html

I ♥ Lovecraft. After just one story, too!


I'm working on The Annotated Lovecraft, and have read "The Rats in the Walls."

The novella, At The Mountains Of Madness, by H. P. Lovecraft, is an excellent entry in his Cthulhu Mythos.

It depicts an expedition to Antarctica that discovers a chain of mountains taller than any other in the world. However, it is what is behind those mountains that is the most astonishing. An ancient alien city. Said city appears to be deserted, but perhaps something might still be lurking there. Something too horrible for the human mind to comprehend.

As with most Lovecraft stories, this one is told through first person narrative. However, unlike many other Lovecraft stories told in this format, the protagonist is actually, given a name here, William Dyer.

Going in, one just has to remember when this novella was published. As TV Tropes says, Science Marches On. It was easy to depict an alien city in Antarctica in the early 1930's (The Mountains Of Madness) that it would be today, when there are countless satellites orbiting the Earth. If you can get past that, then you might enjoy this one.

There have been a few attempts to bring this novella to the big screen. As of yet, none have succeeded.

Recommended.

Gou Tanabe did a two volume manga adaptation (though looking at it, the only way you'd know it was a manga is because the panels read right to left) of At the Mountains of Madness that is quite good and has some really spectacular two page spreads. Not too long ago, he finished an adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu that hopefully will be available in the States and is currently adapting The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Sounds good.