Modern Cthulhu Mythos fiction that doesn't suck

[bar1scorpio]

I can't believe no one has mentioned The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya yet.

Hmm, I don't think I'd call it particularly Lovecraftian, but it definitely has some of the elements in it…

Man dealing with his crippling insignificance, phosphorescent dream monsters, sleeping gods that must not be awakened?

[Crocodilian]

I can't believe no one has mentioned The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya yet.

Hmm, I don't think I'd call it particularly Lovecraftian, but it definitely has some of the elements in it…

Man dealing with his crippling insignificance, phosphorescent dream monsters, sleeping gods that must not be awakened?

Those are traditional elements of Japanese folklore obake/kwaidan ghost stories.

The Japanese are animist, and there each living thing (and even things which don't live, like mountains, streams, lakes) have their own spirits.

Men are just "wandering through" their spaces, and have to be careful not to disturb them . . . this was Japanese lore, long before HPL. One wonders whether he came in contact with their stories . . . Lafcadio Hearn had written a famous edition that was quite celebrated ("Kwaidan") around the turn of the century, HPL would have likely been familiar with it.

When you think about it, the HPL world is much more "animist" than it is "Christian". That's one of his revolutionary ideas-- that humans are not remotely in the image of any God, and what's more, the very last thing you'd want as a human is to actually "have a personal relationship with God".

[fubarinpittsburgh]

At The Brokeback Mountains Of Madness

Dude, start typing, right now . . . that is genius . . .

Think about it. Two men. All alone in Antarctica. Probably had to share a tent...

... I'm fairly sure I could sell this story to Troma. 

[Christian O.]

The third volume of the comic, Atomic Robo, while not strictly a Cthulhu Mythos centered story, is about Atomic Robo's first meeting with H.P. Lovecraft and Robo's encounter with the Old Ones. It's pretty funny. Atomic Robo is basically a robot built by Nikola Tesla who has adventures. Like a Science-oriented, humor version of Mignola's Hellboy (which also includes Lovecraftian monsters and is excellent.)



Anyway I highly recommend it.

[TransconaSlim]

I can't believe no one has mentioned The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya yet.

Hmm, I don't think I'd call it particularly Lovecraftian, but it definitely has some of the elements in it…

On the other hand, I do get a sense of unamable dread from the cover...

[Jape]

Thats excellent.

Certainly say that Hellboy is an excellent student of Lovecraft - the Ogru Jahad are blatant Old Ones but Mike Mignola blends it so well with traditional folk lore and cheesy Nazi occultism as to make it very much his own.

Never bothered much with Mythos stuff, was never keen on people trying to 'order' Lovecraft's universe with good/evil and balanced elemental monsters and damn family trees! Cthuga is the fire cousin of water Cthulhu or whatever garbage.

I've written HPL inspired stories before just for fun but even then I'm not keen on what seem to be Mythos writers' hang-ups. Its all purple prose, ridiculously long descriptions and names like Cxuallcedvlla, rather than the underlying philosophy or psychology of Lovecraft that is jumped upon.

[helios1014]

Robert Bloch wrote some cool stoies in the Mythos. Not just the two where Lovecraft is killed but a pirate ship also comes up in one story. http://www.amazon.com/Mysteries-Worm-Cthulhu-Mythos-Fiction/dp/156882176X

[Jake W]

My own method of writing the Mythos is to tone it down and make the creatures etc more in the background rather than the spotlight. I think that makes for more believability as well as more powerful fear.

Couldn't agree more.
Like many people, I was introduced to HPL through the game, but my friend who ran it had the same approach as you, Daniel. Rather than meeting Cthulhu or discovering an extended family of horrors we would spend months tackling mysterious but very human adversaries then, at some point calculated for maximum impact and horror, we might stumble across something utterly alien that tugged at the flimsy fabric of our sanity. But that thing would be a single creature, or piece of information relating to one relatively small thing. The astronomic scale and utter bleakness of the Cthulhu Mythos makes it impossible for a human mind to accept it and continue to function properly. Far better for a player or protagonist to meet someone who has already gone mad and experience horror due to the hints of far more shocking things they get from them!

With this in mind, the anthology I read recently 'Cthulhu By Gaslight', which pits Sherlock Holmes against eldritch powers, was doomed to fail despite some good writing (it contained Gaiman's 'Study in Emerald'). Holmes, with his unflappable faith in intellect and knowledge, is not the right kind of adversary for Lovecraftian mysteries, with their common aspect of being unfathomable and maddening. Worth a read though, but ultimately disappointing.

[helios1014]

I would have to disagree on Holmes. There are two types of Lovecraft protagonist/victims: the dreamers and poets who search for the unknown and are shcoked by it not being what they expected, and the empiricists who are shocked by the world not being the perfect machine they immagined. Holmes is a character of the latter catagory and I could easily have the same fate as the captain from The Temple.

[Jake W]

Holmes is a character of the latter catagory and I could easily have the same fate as the captain from The Temple.

I agree. Which is what led me to expect good things from the book, until I realised that the authors weren't prepared to put Holmes in that position.

It's not a question of Holmes's suitability as a protagonist in a Lovecraftian story, but rather a matter of compatibility between Arthur Conan Doyle's theme of an iron-willed character and Lovecraft's theme of descent into madness. Holmes is the immovable object being struck by Lovecraft's irresistable force. One of them has to give in or it won't work. Unfortunately it's Lovecraft who comes out worst in the collection.

Only one of the tales had Holmes even unsettled by his discoveries, while all the others (of those which featured Holmes - a couple featured other ACD characters such as Irene Adler) had him reasoning his way through, totally unaffected by his research into the occult (he had read the Necronomican in at least one of the stories) and reassuring Watson at the end. Watson is the one who nearly goes mad a few times.

The problem is, IMO, that the stories are not sequential. They're arranged in date order, but none of them occur in the same 'universe' so they don't draw upon a consistent Lovecraft-influenced background. Each re-invents the concept anew and attempts to stay true to the ACD characters. The traditional Lovecraft approach would have story after story describing Holmes descending into madness only to be back to normal for the next one. It wouldn't fit together well as a collection and I suspect the readers wouldn't believe it.
It's also possible that the authors were bigger fans of Holmes than of Lovecraft.

[Chrizzie Frizzie]

The atomic robo cracks me up :-)
Here's another strip along the same lines. Cant remember where I picked this one up, might have been from the podcast comments, so sorry if you've already seen this...

http://www.bogleech.com/comics/comic89-lovecraft.htm

[Ruth - CthulhuChick]

Holmes is a character of the latter catagory and I could easily have the same fate as the captain from The Temple.

I agree. Which is what led me to expect good things from the book, until I realised that the authors weren't prepared to put Holmes in that position.

It's not a question of Holmes's suitability as a protagonist in a Lovecraftian story, but rather a matter of compatibility between Arthur Conan Doyle's theme of an iron-willed character and Lovecraft's theme of descent into madness. Holmes is the immovable object being struck by Lovecraft's irresistable force. One of them has to give in or it won't work. Unfortunately it's Lovecraft who comes out worst in the collection.

Only one of the tales had Holmes even unsettled by his discoveries, while all the others (of those which featured Holmes - a couple featured other ACD characters such as Irene Adler) had him reasoning his way through, totally unaffected by his research into the occult (he had read the Necronomican in at least one of the stories) and reassuring Watson at the end. Watson is the one who nearly goes mad a few times.

The problem is, IMO, that the stories are not sequential. They're arranged in date order, but none of them occur in the same 'universe' so they don't draw upon a consistent Lovecraft-influenced background. Each re-invents the concept anew and attempts to stay true to the ACD characters. The traditional Lovecraft approach would have story after story describing Holmes descending into madness only to be back to normal for the next one. It wouldn't fit together well as a collection and I suspect the readers wouldn't believe it.
It's also possible that the authors were bigger fans of Holmes than of Lovecraft.

I would definitely say it was Holmes-centric. Some of the authors handled it better than others, so I found myself really disliking some stories and enjoying others to a reasonable degree. Watson is rather the perfect Lovecraftian protagonist (well, narrator and sidekick to the protagonist), which is what can make it a good fit--he's following his friend about as they delve into a world he never knew existed.

I enjoyed a handful, but it's been about 8 months since I read it so I'm not sure which. I remember greatly disliking the tiger one.

[Jake W]

I would definitely say it was Holmes-centric. Some of the authors handled it better than others, so I found myself really disliking some stories and enjoying others to a reasonable degree. Watson is rather the perfect Lovecraftian protagonist (well, narrator and sidekick to the protagonist), which is what can make it a good fit--he's following his friend about as they delve into a world he never knew existed.

I enjoyed a handful, but it's been about 8 months since I read it so I'm not sure which. I remember greatly disliking the tiger one.

Yes, Watson fitted very well into it didn't he? He's always been the curious-yet-mystified character that would be perfect fodder for the dark gods.

[Genus Unknown]

I think Holmes would be the Dark God fodder, while Watson would be the one who lived to tell the story, get addicted to morphine, and hang himself in his cell at the sanitarium, surrounded by occult sigils scrawled onto the walls and floor in blood.

[Jake W]

I think Holmes would be the Dark God fodder, while Watson would be the one who lived to tell the story, get addicted to morphine, and hang himself in his cell at the sanitarium, surrounded by occult sigils scrawled onto the walls and floor in blood.

If the stories were written properly