Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

To see work like this by so many authors who have been influenced by Lovecraft's writing is a wonderful thing - and when the list includes such names as Robert Bloch, Steven King, Philip Jose Farmer, Fritz Lieber, Brian Lumley and Ramsey Campbell, you know that you're dealing with a true force in literature.

The perspectives on Lovecraft's works are amazing in their diversity - Joanna Russ's "My Bost" is particularly different and beautiful, and Richard Lupoff's "Discovery of the Ghooric Zone" is one of the interesting things that a truely obsessed Lovecraftian scholar will ever read.

There are no bad stories in here - that's not easy to say about an anthology of work like this. My personal favorite is Fritz Lieber's "Terror From the Depths", but other stories like "Cold Print" and "Sticks" bring new dimensions to Lovecraft's great works. Every piece in this book is a wonderful additon to the Cthulhu Mythos.

If you're looking for original work by Lovecraft, this isn't it. But if you're trying to learn a little bit more about his work, and see some perspectives on his work by some of the great authors of our time, please do yourself a favor and pick this up.

The only disappointment that I had with this book was that there was not more from the master himself. However, for fans of the genre, this is fantastic compilation of chilling tales from some of the best. Look for great contributions from Robert Bloch and Stephen King!

The editors of this book obviously made a very pointed effort to pick those stories that are not only tied to the Cthulhu Mythos, but are actually worth reading. The stories by Lovecraft, Derleth and Bloch are the best in the book, and even Stephen King gets a short tale in. There probably should be a couple more Cthulhu Mythos follow-ups to this as there are several good selections that didn't make it into the book.

I read the Necronomicon when I was sixteen. I didn't know about all the stories written around it's macabre theme. This book is a collection of well written Cthulhu Mythos stories. It only contains two H. P. Lovecraft stories, yet all the stories sparked my imagination. Well worth finding in your local library if present