New Lovecraft Anthology

[j. d. worthington]

Well, I've been posting my thoughts on some of these stories in the April reading thread, but as there may be some who are interested in this particular book but not in that particular thread, thought I'd go ahead and provide some links to those comments here:

April’s Audacious Attempts at Assailing Avenues of Literary Adventure.

April’s Audacious Attempts at Assailing Avenues of Literary Adventure.

More thoughts will be posted as I have a chance to get further along....

[w h pugmire, esq.]

Spawn of the Green Abyss will now be published by Centipede Press, probably in the summer or fall of 2012. The title will probably be changed, and they are considering A Mountain Walked: Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Jerad will be bringing the book out in both a trade edition and a signed limited edition.

Black Wings II will also be out next year, so that's two S. T.-edited Lovecraftian anthologies. It will be interesting to see if this current trend of new Mythos anthologies continues throughout next year. New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird comes out next month.

[j. d. worthington]

I must admit that I prefer the original title. Much as I love (well-done) Mythos fiction I, too, am grown tired of the ubiquitous "Cthulhu" label on everydamnthing which bears even a faint resemblance to "Lovecraftian" work (whether involving the mythos or not). It simply saps the color out of things when it all becomes so bloody repetitious. "Spawn of the Green Abyss" may not be a stunning literary achievement as far as titles goes, but it darned sure beats yet another reiteration of "Great Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos" sort of thing... No offense to Jerad (who does marvelous work, and I applaud him for it), but even A Mountain Walked (though I think it should include the somehow even more disturbing "or Stumbled"which would be a fine title in and of itself, and, for anyone in the least familiar with HPL, quite enough to clue them in this is mythos fiction) is lessened with that subtitle....

On the other hand, I am by no means against the plethora of mythos fiction which seems to be appearing -- even though I can't possibly keep up with it all. There is a fair amount of dreck, yes, but we also have some really fine achievements using this material to go in their own direction....

[w h pugmire, esq.]

I have received my contributor's copy of Black Wings of Cthulhu, which will be officially released next month. It is a handsome sturdy trade paperback and retains the wonderful jacket illustration of the hardcover, with just the change in title marring the image. I am delighted to have the book available in Amerika as trade pb and hope this results in it being read by many more Lovecraft fans. I haven't read too many reviews of it, but I think the fans prefer it to Lovecraft Unbound (a book that I love, but many complained that its tales were not sufficiently "Lovecraftian"). P. S. Publishing should be releasing Black Wings II in hardcover next month, and then Titan Books will reprint it in England and ye USA as trade pb.

S. T. will also be editing another Lovecraft-themed anthology for Titan, for which he is soliciting original stories. He's becoming a very busy Mythos editor! The new Derleth!