Review: Link Arms With Toads! by Rhys Hughes

Rhys Hughes is a prolific writer, but his matching unfettered imagination is an even more impressive quality. His latest collection from Chomu Press, Link Arms With Toads!, reveals the limitless probing by Hughes into spheres few other authors would venture into. You can never quite know what to expect after the title of each tale washes over you. Hughes’ stories are a diverse stage, where whimsy, horror, and rich fantasy take the center in equal measure.

The Unimagined and the Re-Imagined

In his dedication, Rhys Hughes describes his latest collection as “a showcase of Romanti-Cynical stories.” Such a label isn’t far off the mark, but it entails so much more than mere Romanticism and Cynicism, perhaps hidden in the deceptive, hyphenated voids between these genres. Many of these yarns twist otherwise mundane settings into otherworldly vistas vaguely reminiscent of sci-fi and fantasy landscapes.

“The Taste of the Moon” is a perfect example. For Hughes, sending his dimension crossing explorers to chart the mysteries of time and space is too simple, and perhaps overdone. These Khormanauts explore the recesses of Indian restaurants, bent on unraveling the inexplicable business expansionism of these curry houses, equipped with yogurt-filled tanks for survival.

In “Lunarhampton,” Hughes explores the absurdity of Birmingham city establishing a lunar colony, with woefully outmoded technologies and bureaucratic dreams. Readers inevitably find equal measures of comedy and bleakness mixed together. Link Arms With Toads! routinely showcases maddening, humorous paradoxes, without becoming ridiculous. The same theme of meaningful absurdism established in “Lunarhampton” continues in tales like “333 and a Third,” where a man hops across various planes of existence, always ending up in living quarters that are too cramped. The more things change, the more they stay the same. However, in Hughes worlds, even these damning similarities are stunning to observe.

Top Tier Horror Parodies, Re-Spun

Though it’s not a pure collection of the macabre, Link Arms With Toads! serves generous pools of uncanny blackness unlikely to disappoint weird horror fans. Rhys Hughes is a master of parodying some of the greatest names in literary horror. His pastiches are serious, but they carry an equally sardonic tone, alongside inimitably Hughesian ideas that sweep familiar terrors into stranger territory.

“Pity and Pendulum” harkens back to Edgar Allan Poe’s famous ode to psychological and physical torture. Hughes arguably illuminates greater horrors lurking in the dungeons than Poe did, and then he establishes an effective sequel to this classic tale, revealing the unlikely fate of the infamous pit. In “Number 13 ½,” readers receive a convincingly written ghost story in the tradition of M.R. James. Worldly spooks and mysticism about unlikely numbers are brought into a parallel universe, where the slight, but significant differences unveil a horrific conclusion on an authentically Jamesian scale. As if that’s not enough, Hughes introduces a universe tipping reversal in “Oh Ho!” Here, it’s the specter who becomes haunted, rather than his victims.

At the end of the day, consider Rhys Hughes one of the more effective serial killers of traditional genres. The dead bodies of science fiction, fantasy, and melancholy horror will never be found on his property because they are melted down and resurrected as the most magnificent Frankenstein like monsters. Link Arms With Toads! demands a certain level of open mindedness to achieve its maximum effect, and those who give it what it deserves will be richly rewarded with a savory course of wholly original fiction.

 -Grim Blogger

Review: Link Arms With Toads! by Rhys Hughes

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The Earth Rejects Him by Jared Skolnick

An eerily minimalist trailer for The Earth Rejects Him has been uploaded by Lovecraftian film producer Jared Skolnick. Details about this new production are scant, but the inspiration is unsettling enough:

A young boy discovers a corpse while biking in the woods, then faces unexpected and macabre consequences when he tries to bury it.

Jared Skolnick previously created an excellent adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's tale, "The Music of Erich Zann." Look for this latest Lovecraft driven effort to appear sometime in the next year. Although HPL is likely the artistic tip of the spear for this movie, Skolnick states it also takes its cue from the films of Guillermo del Toro and Werner Herzog.

-Grim Blogger

The Earth Rejects Him by Jared Skolnick

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The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath Comic

Lovecraftian artist Jason B. Thompson is at it again. The man who was once crazy enough to help bring H.P. Lovecraft's epic tale, “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” to film is pitching a new mega graphic novel that will span all of HPL's dream stories. This ultimate dream cycle collection will translate several Lovecraft tales into ink that are rarely seen in comics: “Celephais,” “The White Ship,” “The Strange High House in the Mist,” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” Needless to say, the focus on unifying H.P. Lovecraft's dream cycle in the comics is unique.

According to Thompson, all four stories that make it into the book will be heavily revised from his original designs, expanded, and made into full color productions. Originally, his well drawn Lovecraft adaptations only saw a limited circulation. His last graphic editions of these tales appeared when HPL was just becoming truly hip to the power of online media, a time when Lovecraftian graphic novels were few and far between.

Jason B. Thompson is also the latest Lovecraftian producer to utilize Kickstarter.com as a method of raising capital for his endeavor. To date, the power fund set up to launch this project is doing surprisingly well. Kickstarter is rapidly becoming a new way for innovators involved with the weird to harness the power of web fundraising as a means to make their nightmares into realities.

Thompson's artistic prowess and appreciation for Lovecraft's fiction is certainly deserving of support. Pick up The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath on DVD to see what he has to offer. Despite being sold out for years, second hand copies continue to circulate on sites like Amazon. Better yet, chip in to his Kickstart fund, which has already raised over $6,000 at the time of this writing. Like many other fundraisers, his includes special prizes for heavy contributors.

-Grim Blogger

The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath Comic

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Stefan Grabinski Gets an Ebook

Weird fiction's migration to the electronic medium is quickening. Polish author Stefan Grabinski is the latest to join the likes of contemporaries and grand masters from literary horror's past on e-book shelves everywhere. Or, more appropriately, the marketplace of Amazon's Kindle, which currently dominates the e-publishing world.

Grabinski's debut in e-book form arrives with a definitive edition of his collection, The Motion Demon. This edition includes all the contents of the increasingly expensive and out-of-print hardcover published by Ash-Tree Press. Fortunately, unlike some e-book efforts, this is no mere bundle of stories cobbled together by an amateur.

The Motion Demon is edited by Miroslaw Lipinski, the world's foremost authority on Grabinski translation and scholarly analysis. He has arguably done for the "Polish Poe" what S.T. Joshi managed to do for Lovecraft. Meanwhile, the most affordable English paperback which nicely introduces his strange stories remains The Dark Domain by Dedalus European Classics.

The curious transition of Stefan Grabinski is just the latest one to round out 2011, as the weird fiction community begins invading e-publishing. This year has also seen small presses like Tartarus dipping into e-books, and a large blast of new titles related to H.P. Lovecraft on Kindle.

-Grim Blogger

Stefan Grabinski Gets an Ebook

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HP Lovecraft Books: Three Ways to Complete Your Collection

Buying H.P. Lovecraft books to complete a collection is a previously unimaginable experience, thanks to the diverse options now available. From the humble days when HPL’s fiction was tightly controlled by Arkham House, to the explosion of Lovecraft at the publishing presses ever since his work passed into public domain, offering have expanded at a stunning rate. Still, there are only three quick and easy ways to complete a Lovecraftian collection, or at least come extremely close to it. Use these books to complete your personal collection of Lovecraft’s dark fantasies in a cost effective way.

Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft

Two fat volumes from Gollancz represent the cheapest way to bring together the Providence author’s best known and most obscure writings. Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft binds together his most well respected efforts, from the fragmentary “Night Gaunts” to late, complex novellas such as “At the Mountains of Madness.” This nearly nine hundred page tome is one heavy paperback, but it is sturdily constructed and nicely illustrated.

With the arrival of Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre, Gollancz has created a high quality companion volume that taps Lovecraft’s lesser known pieces. In this book, HPL’s juvenile pieces, poetry, and important non-fiction tie ins like “Supernatural Horror in Literature” and “The History of the Necronomicon” cross paths. An excellent sampling of his collaborative and ghost written stories are thrown in for good measure.

Both gigantic volumes are edited by Stephen Jones and illustrated by Les Edwards. Together, they represent the quickest and cheapest path to collecting all of Lovecraft with the fewest books possible.

The Del Rey Lovecraft Collections

Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Del Rey’s H.P. Lovecraft books represented a widely acceptable way to obtain his tales in a mass market form. Though these collections are extraordinarily cheap on the mass market, you’ll need four Del Rey books to complete a Lovecraft collection. The big themed collections begin with The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, a book clearly designed to draw in newcomers.

Under the Del Rey imprint, the saga continues with The Road to Madness and Dreams of Terror and Death: The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft. These H.P. Lovecraft books constitute themed volumes built around his early fiction and dream addled tales, respectively. They chart an affordable path to a comprehensive collection, and the cover art by Michael Whelan remains nothing short of iconic.

Most recently, Del Rey’s fourth book came out, granting readers access to Lovecraft’s collaborations and ghost written pieces. The Horror in the Museum does what a only more expensive Arkham House book was previously able to do. If you’re willing to throw bibliophilic preferences to the wind, snapping up this volume with the other three Del Rey collections is a great way to get all Lovecraft essentials onto your shelves.

H.P. Lovecraft: Masters of the Weird Tale

Centipede Press is the Lamborghini quality publisher of the horror world, and that extends to their gigantic tome, H.P. Lovecraft: Masters of the Weird Tale. Don’t think of this 1200 page Cyclopean terror as just a very expensive hardcover. It herds together all Lovecraftian necessities into a slipped case deluxe edition, and pairs it with a separate book of rare HPL photography unavailable elsewhere.

The only downfall of H.P. Lovecraft: Masters of the Weird Tale is that it may only be a high end avenue to getting nearly all H.P. Lovecraft books in one for a limited time. Centipede Press has limited this museum of a book to three hundred copies. Unless that changes, this miniature Lovecraft library will probably slide into the hands of a few hundred lucky collectors, and live on only as legend. At least, until the next deluxe press dares to place Lovecraft’s fiction into an equally outstanding presentation.

H.P. Lovecraft books will undoubtedly continue to multiply as the years pass. However, shortcuts that let you complete your collection will probably remain modest, well kept secrets, available only to true Lovecraft fanatics.

-Grim Blogger

HP Lovecraft Books: Three Ways to Complete Your Collection

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Dance of the Damned by Alan Bligh Expands Arkham Horror Franchise

There are rare times when Lovecraftiana comes full circle. It happened with Chaosium, where the company manufactured H.P. Lovecraft's febrile horrors into a popular franchise of role playing games, only to turn their sights back to the text realm with books. Many of their collections subsequently collected scenarios into full blown stories in the older Cthulhu Mythos tradition.

Now, Fantasy Flight Games, the entity behind the Arkham Horror board games, appears to be set on doing the same. Their first book, Arkham Horror: Dance of the Damned, is slated for a December release. It follows the adventures of a Miskatonic University librarian and bounty hunter as they fight to unravel a supernatural mystery in Lovecraftian Kingsport. This is due to kick off a more comprehensive trilogy called "The Lord of Nightmares."

Alan Bligh is a writer behind several other books serialized from gaming series. However, he seems to be a newcomer to the circles of Lovecraftian and weird fiction. Hopefully, this will result in a surprise win for Arkham Horror's foray into book form. Lovecraft purists and weird fiction literary fanatics shouldn't expect groundbreaking experiments in supernatural literature with Dance of the Damned, but it's likely to offer gamers and adventurous Lovecraftians a fun ride.

-Grim Blogger

Dance of the Damned by Alan Bligh Expands Arkham Horror Franchise

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The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham

As the Cthulhu Mythos ages, it must probe its tentacles into successively stranger territory to achieve favorable responses from readers. As a result, we get books like The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham, written by Nick Mamatas and Brian Keene. Curiously, the volume mashes, inverts, and reconstructs parody not just from H.P. Lovecraft, but from Hunter S. Thompson's infamous drug fueled journey across Las Vegas.

Like Thompson's living nightmare masquerading as atmospheric mind alteration and social commentary, Keene and Mamatas set out to make Lovecraft's Arkham even tripper than it is by default. The Damned Highway actually journeys through multiple Cthulhu hot spots, including Innsmouth and the bewitched hills of New England. The narrative is notable for throwing politics into mix, since few modern Mythos tomes dare to tread in that direction, even if the monstrous corruption exposed is primarily that of the Nixon years.

There's something oddly humorous and chilling about throwing Nixon and his underlings into an environment seething with cultists. After all, the President is one of the few on record who discussed observing the ritualistic hijinks in Bohemian Grove.

As far as literary style goes, Keene and Mamatas break their usual boundaries with this book, and that's a good thing. This is a frontal assault on convention. The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham snaps the chains around familiar Lovecraftiana, and pushes both authors into uncharted territory. While any Lovecraft fan hopes the Cthulhu Mythos won't devolve into parody-upon-parody, well executed and imaginative tales like this one can play a pivotal role that innovates and entertains.

-Grim Blogger

The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham

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The Spoken Word: Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood on Tape

Ever wondered what some of weird fiction's finest writers sounded like? Wonder no more. A newer CD collection of voice recordings called, The Spoken Word: British Writers, carries the ghostly whispers of Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen. Literary horror masters from the UK and abroad are known to have produced limited recordings, but they are usually confined to family estates, as in the case of Robert Aickman. This CD captures what is believed to be Machen's only voice imprint left for posterity, and one of the handful produced by Blackwood that's still easily accessible.

Interesting enough, The Spoken Word puts Machen and Blackwood in potent literary territory. They share the stage with Kipling, Conan Doyle, Tolkien, and many other household names. Frankly, products like these do a service to British and world literature. They place weird writers with exceptional talent squarely where they belong - next to literary idols who chose to keep their use of the supernatural comparatively sparse.

-Grim Blogger

The Spoken Word: Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood on Tape

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