Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror

✍ Scribed by Joshi, S T

• Book ID: 107080284
• Publisher: Ps Publishing
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 499 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781848630611

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

The best of the 22 stories that H.P. Lovecraft scholar Joshi (_The Rise and Fall of the Cthulhu Mythos_) has selected for this all-original anthology take their cue from the 20th-century horror master without slavishly imitating him. High points include Laird Barron's The Broadsword and William Browning Spencer's Usurped, cumulatively creepy studies of Lovecraft-style locales where inexplicable supernatural phenomena suggest an otherworldly dimension intersecting our own. Both Caitl?n R. Kiernan's Pickman's Other Model (1929) and Brian Stableford's The Truth About Pickman riff neatly on Lovecraft's ghoulish classic Pickman's Model. Ramsey Campbell's unsettling The Correspondence of Cameron Thaddeus Nash encapsulates the entirety of Lovecraft's unique ambitions as a horror writer in the rambling letters of one of his unbalanced (fictional) correspondents. A few tales are too insular to be appreciated by any but hardcore Lovecraft fans. (May)
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From Booklist

In introducing this exceptional set of original horror tales, editor Joshi places a little extra emphasis on the term Lovecraftian to describe its contents. Instead of simply mimicking Lovecraft’s distinctive gothic style or spinning stock variations on his famous Cthulhu Mythos, the contributors use Lovecraft as their inspiration for a breathtaking range of colorful new ideas and literary styles. Laird Barron and Philip Haldeman abandon Lovecraft’s New England to put their Lovecraftian monsters in the Pacific Northwest, while William Browning Spencer and Donald R. Burleson place theirs in the Southwest. A hard-boiled crime story is followed by stories of psychological terror and some in which Lovecraft himself is a character. Standouts include Caitlin R. Kiernan’s “Pickman’s Other Model,” wherein sketches by Lovecraft’s eccentric painter are discovered depicting a disgraced actress’ true, bestial nature; and Stanley C. Sargent’s “Black Brat of Dunwich,” which cleverly deconstructs Lovecraft’s classic “The Dunwich Horror,” about a half-human creature lurking in rural New England. The high level of craftsmanship throughout will delight even horror fans completely unfamiliar with Lovecraft. --Carl Hays