A Thriller Chiller

illustration by Lee Gibbons

H.P. Lovecraft may be one of the very best writers of the twentieth century. He has a curious tone when you first come to him, but after a while you realise that it really doesn't matter. What he is conveying is a pure terror from beyond the unknown. Lovecraft studied astronomy and this influenced his conception of a 'cosmic' weird fiction. Historically, he was uniquely poised between the twilight of the traditional 'ghost story' and the cusp of a new kind of fiction for a sceptical world that demanded verisimilitude.

His influence is still felt. Lovecraft knew, for instance, that the most terrifying part of the tale is that before the cause of the terror is revealed, and that fire is not as terrifying as ice. After the Monster is shown, in fact it can seem a bit silly, no more than a cheap special effect. Stephen King and Clive Barker are low-rent imitations next to him, relying on the sensational. Yes, those stories are horrible, once the 'monster' element in them is revealed, but it's a different kind of fear.
      He writes everything as if it's absolutely factual. He was interested in forbidden knowledge; he has a way of occasionally inserting something that just conceivably could be true, and this is what gives us pause to question our assumptions about the world. He was clever. He knew how to play on subconsciousness - for one thing, racial fears. He would have recognised King Kong for what it is.
      He got many of his ideas in dreams. No writer conveys that feeling better than him. For me, he's also one of the only writers who truly nails the first-person-past-tense. Michel Houellebecq has written a pretty definitive introduction to him for anyone who wants the lowdown, and he seems to have been pretty unhappy, but there's also some of the guy's own material in the book, which would deserve to stand on it's own even if the man himself had been a three-legged Mexican nasal flautist.

I found these images, along with the extract, in an old Games Workshop manual (and how many writers can say they have one of them?), I will take them down if this offends anyone.

 

THE LAIR OF GREAT CTHULU
Tune: Chattanooga Choo-Choo

Pardon me boy,
Is this the Lair of Great Cthulu?
In the city of slime,
Where it is night all the time.

Bob Hope never went,
Along the road to Great Cthulu,
And Triple-A has no maps,
And all the Tcho-tchos lay traps.

You'll see an ancient sunken city where the angels are wrong.
You'll see the fourth dimension if you're there very long.
Come to the conventacle.
Bring along your pentacle;
Otherwise you'll be dragged off by a tentacle.

A mountain's in the middle, with a house on the peak:
A gnashin' and a thrashin' and a clackin' of beak.
Your soul you will be lackin'
When you see the mighty Kraken.
Oo-oo! Great Cthulu's starting to speak.

So come on aboard,
Along the road to Great Cthulu.
Wen-di-gos and dholes
Will make Big Macs of our souls.

Under the sea,
Down in the ancient city of R'lyeh,
In the lair of Great Cthulu,
They'll suck your soul away!

(Great Cthulu, Great Cthulu -
Suck your soul! -
Great Cthulu, Great Cthulu)
In the lair of Great Cthulu,
They'll suck your soul away.

(Here, there is an obligato saxophone solo, a-la Tex Beneke)

-Joe Carruth and Larry Press

Text & images © 1980-1983 Pentalpha Journal / Games Workshop

Reproduced under fair usage rules, please contact us to remove!