Cthulhu's Reign

are symbols of forces in that cosmos-at-large that he described to Farnsworth Wright, for which human endeavors have no significance or validity.

Lovecraft’s fictional mythology developed during his lifetime. That it is not entirely self-consistent and changed from story to story is only to be expected from a body of ancient lore which is only imperfectly understood from possibly unreliable texts and fragmentary hints. He encouraged his friends and colleagues, notably Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, and August Derleth, to use Mythos elements in their stories, and he incorporated their invented gods and forbidden books into his. In “The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930), there is even an in-joke allusion to “the Commoriom myth-cycle preserved by the Atlantean priest, Klarkashton,” a reference to Smith’s Hyperborean series.

After Lovecraft’s death, August Derleth, who had founded the publishing firm of Arkham House to preserve Lovecraft’s writings and who edited numerous anthologies of Lovecraftian and Cthulhu-slanted fiction, in addition to continuing Mythos pastiches of his own, attempted to catalogue and systematize Lovecraft’s mythos, as if it were the Greek or Norse or Hindu pantheon, with each “god” assigned a place and role. This was probably a mistake. You can’t categorize chaos, and Lovecraft’s fiction, if it is about anything, is about cosmic chaos. More seriously, Derleth misunderstood Lovecraft’s philosophy (or chose to reject elements in it) and turned Lovecraft’s nihilistic, impersonal universe into a dualistic one, in which there are forces of “good” opposed to the forces of “evil,” and which sometimes come to mankind’s aid. For Lovecraft, there is no such moral order and no such hope.

There have since been thousands of Cthulhu Mythos stories by other writers since Lovecraft’s time. Fortunately most of them have (at least in recent years) discarded the dualistic, Derlethian “heresy” and have gone back to Lovecraft’s own ideas. There have been numerous Cthulhu Mythos anthologies, of which the book you hold in your hands will certainly not be the last.

But this book does attempt to go all previous ones one better. Where previous Mythos collections and stories have uncovered more forbidden lore, explored the crazed cults which might seek to bring the Old Ones back, or otherwise deal with the ever-present threat of Their return, Cthulhu’s Reign asks the Big Question which very few others ever have: what happens when the Old Ones do return? What happens when Cthulhu “wins”?

There are only the vaguest hints of this in the Lovecraftian canon itself. If the puny efforts of mankind can do little to stave off this doom, what is to stop the catastrophe from happening at any time? Cosmic forces have to line up, we are told. The stars have to be “right.” But what can most of us do about it? Answer: nothing.

We turn again to the key story, “The Dunwich Horror,” in which the half- human Wilbur Whately writes in his diary and describes (on p. 184 of the Arkham House edition) how he intends to go to “the inner city at the 2 magnetic poles” when “the earth is cleared off.” He speculates further, “I wonder how I shall look when the earth is cleared and there are no earth beings on it. He that came with the Ako Sabaoth said I may be transfigured. ”

This leads us directly to the question of survivors. If everyone just dies hideously and quickly, there aren’t many story possibilities. The writers in this book have to do better than that. The results are, of course, not entirely consistent with one another, any more than Lovecraft’s mythos is entirely consistent. These are speculations, possibilities, forebodings, based on dreadful, ghastly, mind-numbing hints from the beginning of time and the furthest depths of space. The entirety of the Answer is not something the human mind can grasp.

Undoubtedly, an Earth ruled by Cthulhu or his minions (or even his enemies, other beings who may in turn displace Cthulhu, as seems to be happening in Fred Chappell’s “Remnants”) will be transformed beyond recognition. At least during the transitional period, some human beings may continue, overlooked by the Old Ones even as humans overlook cockroaches when they aren’t too obvious. Is there some inferior ecological niche humans may still occupy? Some folks may figure, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” and try to join one of those rumored cults which supposedly sides with the Old Ones against the majority of mankind.

Such cults, we are told, have existed since remotest antiquity, very likely inspired in humans by dreams sent by sleeping Cthulhu himself. Cultic worship figures largely in a great number of Lovecraft’s Mythos stories, not just in the Big Three mentioned above, but in such works as “The Festival” and “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Then there is the town of Innsmouth, where the entire society has gone over to an alliance with the Deep Ones. I once (jokingly, I’d like you to believe. heh, heh. ) produced a chapbook of The Innsmouth Tabernacle Choir Hymnal, which we imagine laid out on the pews during services at Dagon Hall, where the faithful may sing (or croak) along to familiar tunes and such lyrics as:

It’s a gift to be squamous,
it’s a gift to have fins,
it’s a gift to have gills
when Cthulhu wins.
When all the stars are right,
on world’s last night,
we will swim in the glory of R’lyeh’s light.

But will they? Do vast cosmic intelligences like Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth make deals, much less keep their promises, with beings they must perceive as vermin or bacteria, if they are even aware of mankind’s existence at all? Are the Cthulhu cultists as deluded and doomed as anyone else? A couple stories here address that very point.

I suppose I should warn you that this isn’t a very cheerful book, what with all that cosmic nihilism inherent in the Lovecraftian worldview. What these stories do is go bravely where few others have, following the Cthulhu Mythos to its ultimate, logical conclusion.

THE WALKER IN THE CEMETERY Ian Watson

When our tourist bus arrived at the side gateway to the necropolis of Staglieno on our tour around Genoa, a couple of cheery garbage men were loading floral tributes into a crusher truck. The afternoon was bright and breezy. Twenty meters’ length of the high perimeter wall and the pavement were stacked with huge arrangements of roses, irises, lilies, and tropical blooms interspersed with palm fronds and other foliage, undoubtedly several thousand euros’ worth of beauty. Into the crusher those were all going, either crammed into a big wheeled green bin first or, if too large, bourne on their wooden frames in the arms of the garbage collectors. Bird of paradise flowers passed by me, as did giant blooms in the shape of large lacquered red hearts from which protruded what looked like long thin white penises with green foreskins.

And all of the flowers and foliage were fresh and perfect, at least until the crusher compacted them.

Questions flew. Our guide, Gabriella, said that the tributes were from just this one day. Owing to cremations, there was no space to let that glory of blooms remain on display.

“But cannot they go to brighten a hospital or an old people’s home?” asked a German woman indignantly. English was the language of this tour.

Her husband said, “Suppose you’re in hospital, or very old, do you wish to see flowers of the dead?” His grey hair cropped very short, he had a noble bearing; I thought of a Prussian general of olden days.

He turned to me sharply, as if to say, Am I not correct, madam?

Startled, I said nothing.

And so we entered a gallery of that amazing cemetery which was to become for us a huge prison and abattoir of mystifying horrors.

Like any good guide, Gabriella began discoursing as we gazed along the first of the lengthy gloomy arched galleries, statues on plinths inside niches, ornate plaques crowded between the niches, the regular slabs underfoot covering the dead sealed away beneath.

“. perhaps our cemetery here in Genoa is the most astonishing in Europe. The revolutionary Enlightenment