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Martes, Enero 20, 2015

Howard Phillips Lovecraft- Short Story Summaries

And now, for the Horse Power Hateart version.




A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson: A farce of a 200-year old doctor's autobiography.

Ashes (with C.M. Eddy Jr.): Not a very lovecraftian story; a mad scientist experiments with a substance that turns things into white ashes. Nobody dies (except the dog) and the MC and the girl get together in the end and the mean old mad scientist gets his comeuppance. ALSO, why the hell is the name of the character being addressed Prague?
BONUS: "'That night we gave over to the joys of our new-found happiness. Prague, I shall remember that night as long as I live!...Then followed another night of love-making...She gave herself unreservedly into my keeping.'"

At the Mountains of Madness: One of the most definitive Lovecraft Stories, about the history of the Elder Things that once lived in Antarctica until their servants, the Shoggoths, rebelled against them. Introduces William Dyer and Danforth. Notable for having a scene where the aftermath of mass killing is shown. "Tekeli-li!" indeed.

Azathoth: Prose-filled short about the Blind Idiot God himself. Similar to Ex Oblivione. Moar hatred of normal/corporate/industrial culture.

Beyond the Wall of Sleep: Whenever we sleep, we're actually astral projecting into other worlds. Shows HPL's disgust for white trash.

Celephais: Introduces Kuranes, part of the Dream Cycle. Contemptuous of NORP-y folk who aspire nothing but to get rich and be ordinary.

Collapsing Cosmoses: Unfinished story about a race of vegetable beings who have to save the universe from imploding in on itself.

Cool Air: BODY HORROR: The guy froze his insides to stop him from dying/aging, but he turns into a puddle anyway.

Dagon: Definitive Lovecraft story about the shipwreckee who found the stone that is worshiped by the fish-behemoth.

Deaf, Dumb and Blind, with C. M. Eddy Jr.: Even disabled (OMG SO ABLEIST) people aren't safe from being attacked by cosmic horror.

Ex Oblivione: A story about a man who yearns for transcendence from "the Daemon Life." Another story showcasing HPL's resentment of the mundane world.

Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family: AKA "The White Ape", he's actually descended from a Simian princess from the jungle.

From Beyond: Crawford Tillinghast! And his machine that lets people see into the monsters of the air molecules!

Fungi from Yuggoth: A collection of sonnets about Lovecraftian situations.

He: Time Travel and hatred of dark-skinned people. Features yet another le evul magician necromancer, this one with time portals.

Herbert West-Reanimator: Everyone's favorite mad scientist on his adventure to create the perfect undead servant. Tragically nothing like Re-Animator the film. Known for being chock-full with gallows humor.

Hypnos: Rather queer story about one forceful guy and one timid guy who do drugs and fly around astrally and then the forceful guy gets turned to stone after encountering some being in sleep. Possibly a metaphor for gays doing drugs and AIDS.

Ibid: Story that parodies the whole nature of citing things so stringently in the academe. There's this roman guy whose skull gets passed down for generations.

In the Vault: Guy who runs a cemetery gets trapped in a coffin-house. One of the corpses tries to gnaw his feet off after he cuts off its feet at the ankles to make it fit in a short coffin.

In the Walls of Eryx (with Kenneth Sterling): Space travel story, guy gets trapped in an invisible labyrinth while searching for a McGuffin energy cube. Possible origin of associating 4:20 with marijuana use. The MC is rather remorseful to the lizard-men/lesser race by the end.

Medusa's Coil: MISOGYNIST and RACIST story about a woman with magical snake-like hair wreaking havoc on some guy's plantation. The negro woman (a slave ofc) is the only one who supports Marceline (affirming the stereotype that coloured women are devious and untrustworthy!). The Negra living in an outhouse worships the madam/house-Negra like a goddess (she's the stand-in for the White woman b/c she married a White man). Also (SUPER RACIST AND SEXIST), the last line/twist of the story was that Marceline was a NEGRESS. And she was KILLED by WHITE CIS MEN. I mean holy fuck I just can't erasure objectification
/SJW

Memory: Man is dead and memory is a daemon.

Nyarlathotep: The soul and messenger of the outer gods gets introduced and he sends a bunch of Victorian Englishmen to their foggy deaths. One of three Lovecraft stories that actually feature a world-ending threat by a something powerful enough to destroy the world.

Old Bugs: Non-supernatural, non-typecast story about a guy finding his illegitimate son. The man, Bugs, had lost his standing in the educated upper class because of his alcoholism. The woman he was about to marry then had a child with someone else. Eighteen years later, that child wanders into the bar Bugs frequents and tries to get a drink for the very first time, and of course Bugs tries to stop him from ruining his life. The hackneyed moral of this story is that America was better off during Prohibition. Purely not-typecast because the title is not literal and therefore has no bearing on the content of the story, even though by Lovecraft's track record it should have been.

Out of the Aeons: About a mummy who saw a god whose visage turned him to stone. Guest appearance by Randolph Carter in an alien body.

Pickman's Model: Very chilling story about Richard Pickman and his model ghouls. "IT WAS A PHOTOGRAPH FROM LIFE."

Poetry and the Gods: Girl gets transported beyond by her love of poetry.

Polaris: An evil star stops a man from saving his city from an attack by invaders. This dreamer guy is entrusted to protect the city from presumably dark-skinned invaders (again) but he fails when the pole star sings him a tune. And now he is stuck in boring, everyday life, left wondering if what he left behind was reality instead of fantasy.

Sweet Ermengarde: A HILARIOUS parody story of romances, Ermengarde is a total Mary Sue who can get any boy she wants despite her age of not-eighteen. It is revealed that she is actually a wealthy heiress! And that's not even counting the pile of gold found on her surrogate parents' farm! Jack Manly and Squire Harding are two overblown caricatures of the dashing hero and dastardly villain, respectively.

The Alchemist: The protagonist is alone and must confront a family curse.

The Battle that Ended the Century: Parody story about some boxing fight between aliens in the very far future. Guest starring all of HPL's friends.

The Beast in the Cave: The man is a monster, the monster is a man.

The Book: Some pleb invokes the power of Yog-Sothoth. Also has concentric rings of fire. Unfinished snippet?

The Call of Cthulhu: The most famous mythos story, starring Big C himself. Francis Thurston Weyland narrates and is the NEXT target of the Cthulhu Cult!

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: Identity theft via ancestor resurrection. Big baddie gets confronted and defeated at the end.

The Cats of Ulthar: Don't mess with cats.

The Challenge from Beyond (with several): A story worked on together by five authors about a transformers-like cube the falls to earth. Also the MC becomes ruler of the worm-people.

The Colour out of Space: Great story about the most alien being ever to exist-a new, undiscovered colour. Some pretty trippy imagery and euthanasia.

The Crawling Chaos: Dream/vision adventure, the planet goes explode.

The Curse of Yig: A woman and her husband find out that snake people are real during a camping trip out in the desert. She is tormented by Freudian fake-outs throughout the whole thing, until the AMAZING twist at the end.

The Descendant: Unfinished story, crossover with the Nameless City. Moar about family members and curses and dream exploration yadda yadda yadda.

The Diary of Alonzo Typer: Haunted House Apocalyptic Log

The Disinterment: AWESOME story with a grim twist-his head ISN'T ON HIS OWN BODY.

The Doom that came to Sarnath: Don't kill off an entire lizard race, they'll come back as ghosts and sic their god on you.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: LOTR-type adventure in the Dream Cycle, starring Randolph Carter. He has to find the majestic sunset city of his dreams but the Inner Gods of Earth are being dicks about it. Nyarlathotep appears as the Wicked Witch of Kadath. Also, ghouls (including Richard Pickman) and night-gaunts (gargoyles) appear. There are some pretty cool battle scenes too.

The Dreams in the Witch House: Walter Gilman, Brown Jenkin, Keziah the Witch, and the Tall Dark Man (Nyarlathotep) star in this story about dimensions and stuff. Notable for having infant sudden death.

The Dunwich Horror: Fantastic story about the half-breed Whateley brothers, and a rare one since the Horror is confronted and defeated in the end.

The Electric Executioner, with Adolphe de Castro: Unintentionally humorous story about some guy who meets a crazy man on a who invents an electric killing machine...OR DID HE? Shoddy astral projection and Cthulhu references aside, this story actually could have been scary if the crazy man molested the guy so he'd get late for his wedding.

The Evil Clergyman: MC is doomed to be in a priests' body forever.

The Festival: Orgy in the Underworld.

The Ghost-Eater, with C. M. Eddy, Jr.: Hotel haunting story with werewolves, not Japanese.

The Green Meadow: A Greek message filled with plenty of prose is found in a meteorite.

The Haunter of the Dark: Lovecraft's jive at Robert Bloch, featuring Nyarlathotep.

The History of the Necronomicon: Canon history.

The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast: The Hero don't get the treasure.

The Horror at Martin's Beach: FINALLY, a story where an eldritch abomination gets to terrorize plenty of people simultaneously.

The Horror at Red Hook: Another racist story, now with more ritual/Satanic imagery.

The Horror in the Burying Ground: Premature burial.

The Horror in the Museum: Rather modern, the characters show emotion and everything. There is actually a part where the human villain dresses up as a monster in a very Scooby Doo-esque fashion.

The Hound: 1st appearance of the Necronomicon, with more guys being close and obsessed with arcane matters.

The Last Test, with Adolphe de Castro: A story that is dreadfully boring by Lovecraftian standards, but actually has characters expressing emotion and concern for each other. It reveals Lovecraft's (or de Castro's?) modern sentiment in the form of Alfred Claremont, who regards all things as useless and finite, fit only for dissection. He has to cure a disease which may or may not be caused by a madman "Thibetan" immortal who's trying to undermine him. It tries to be political intrigue, I guess, but falls flat.

The Loved Dead: It's funnier when you imagine the main character as Dexter Morgan. He just loves death so much (he LOVES the dead SO MUCH), he'd rather die by his own hands than get picked apart by the angry mob.

The Lurking Fear: Plenty of gore and mystery, with quite threatening horror(s) who enjoy ripping off faces.

The Man of Stone: Petrifaction made easy, thanks to a tale of love gone wrong.

The Moon-Bog: Don't build castles near Irish swamps.

The Mound: Epic story about underground telepathic Indians with the power to arrange, de-materalize and re-materialize molecules. Perhaps a subtle flipping-off to Spanish explorers.

The Music of Erich Zann: Very subtle story about a musician who has to calm down creatures every evening.

The Nameless City: Adventure story, possible connection to The Descendant.

The Night Ocean, with R. H. Barlow: TBH, his purpliest prosiest story ever to purple prose. NORP-hating (he calls such people puppets) to the max. Waxing deep about a personified nature (in this case, the sea) to the max. No outright horror, although it contains some David Lynch-y type creepiness. Contains an unsettling amount of description.

The Other Gods: Don't interfere with the dance of the gods, maybe they weren't the ones you were looking for.

The Outsider: NOT BY NEIL GAIMAN. MC = undead.

The Picture in the House: Cannibalism.

The Quest of Iranon: And you know who Iranon was? Idealism/innocence.

The Rats in the Walls: Cannibalism again, product of madness. ALSO FEATURES A CAT NAMED "MR. NIGGER-MAN."

The Shadow out of Time: His best story, featuring the Great Race of Yith, his best aliens.

The Shadow over Innsmouth: Racist story that discourages racial intermixing. DUDE'S GOT THAT ' INNSMOUTH LOOK'!

The Shunned House: Elbow in the basement.

The Silver Key: Another "longing-for-Nostalgia" story and entry in the Dream Cycle. Randolph Carter is old now, but he finds a Silver Key that lets him travel back in time and space.

The Slaying of the Monster: Yeah, sure you did.

The Statement of Randolph Carter: 1st appearance of Randolph Carter and Harley Warren. "YOU FOOL. WARREN IS DEAD!"

The Strange High House in the Mist: 2nd appearance of the Terrible Old Man. The house takes people's idealistic, imaginative selves and makes them stay there with Poseidon.

The Street: Anthropomorphized street (Danny the Street?). Mentions terrorism and civil war. The invaders of the street? Nasty foreign dark-skinned folk trying to ruin good WHITE land's values. Good lord this guy hated people with more melanin than him. In modern times, this could all be chalked up to xenophobia in our post-9/11 world. LOL

The Temple: Atlantic undersea adventure, probably parodies 20,000 under the sea

The Terrible Old Man: awesome short story, three thieves get their spines bent by a queer old man living alone with pendulum-bottles and Spanish gold, set in Kingsport.

The Thing in the Moonlight: Almost a werewolf story.

The Thing on the Doorstep: Asenath and Ephraim the Innsmouthers, Body Switching and Transgenderism, oh my!

The Tomb: Obsession with woodland area, the tomb.

The Transition of Juan Romero: Not racist at all, several Mexicans just happen to work in mines.

The Trap: Dimension brouhaha about mirror's ability to capture people. The wizard guy isn't all antagonistic for once. MC isn't a disturbed cultist shut-in for once, and is sociable to the victim, a schoolboy.

The Tree: Two sculptors with a close relationship, then they get consumed by art, after one has a tree growing at their head when they died.

The Tree on the Hill: This is the precursor to N. The tree is SHUB-NIGGURATH! Also something about refraction and magick crystals capturing alien dimensions.

The Unnamable: Randolph and a friend get whacked by an invisible daemon-punk.

The Very Old Folk: Romans and Faeries and Pompeii, we get it.

The Whisperer in Darkness: 1st appearance of the Yuggothians. Heavy conspiracy story.

The White Ship: Adventure story, more dreamlands.

Through the Gates of the Silver Key: RANDOLPH CARTER = YOG-SOTHOTH! What happens to Randy after he de-ages himself. Also, he accidentally kills his own cousin. Some Uncle Tom named Etienne is his friend.

Till A' the Seas: One of the best apocalyptic stories ever, this one envisions what the earth looks like when humanity has totally and completely died. Shows utter hatred of evolution, in the sense that, if humanity was the pinnacle of evolution, why did they die out so easily? "And now the earth was dead."

Two Black Bottles: Curses and almost-zombies.

Under the Pyramids: Harry Houdini wanted HPL to write a story about him. Yeah. However, it was bretty gud and had actual (lovecraftian!) scares.

What the Moon Brings: Apocalypse story with worms and grossness, induced by yet again drugs (was HPL a junkie or what?).

Winged Death: Karmic revenge via flies that steal people's minds into their bodies.

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