Lovecraft Country

What could be scarier than a unknown entity stalking you across the cosmos? Being a person of color in 1950s America of course! Back then you didn't know whether the white man you saw on the corner would shout a racial slur, or whether he might summon a lynch mob to hang you for being in the wrong neighborhood. Against this backdrop, the specter of cosmological horrors from beyond space and time can only make things worse! How do you combine the two? You take a little trip to Lovecraft Country!

Written by Matt Ruff, I picked up this novel in 2018, and have given it a lot of thought in the last year. It's a very interesting work balancing the mundane fears of the African American community already present in the United States in the 1950s with the more esoteric panic of monsters from beyond the veil of time and space. Understandably our protagonists in this story are struggling against both the prejudice of the white community which wishes to 'put them in their place' and the monsters which want to put them in their stomachs.

Told in chapters from the perspectives of various characters it first takes up the mantle of Atticus Turner, a Korean War veteran who did his time fighting the communists for Washington. Sadly, that earns him very little respect from white veterans, and even less from the average white man in the North of the United States. He finds that his father has gone missing. Accompanied by his uncle, George who wrote The Safe Negro Travel Guide (based heavily on the Negro Motorist Green Book), they discover his father has been kidnapped by the mysterious Samuel Braithwhite of Ardham. To free him, he must travel to this remote and rural area to take part in some strange ritual which may cost him his life. There though, he may have an ally in the strange son of his tormentor, Caleb.

From here, the story explores the minutia of life in 1950s America for people of color. Of course, it adds to that by throwing in ghosts, monsters, curses and other sundry issues which would drive the average man mad.

It is a fascinating tale which almost reads like a series of interconnected TV episodes, which ironically is what it was originally opted as. It picks up with ghost stories, interplanetary travel, cursed dolls and even heist plots, all with an overarching battle between equally dangerous wizards in the background. It makes for, what is in effect, an engaging series of short stories wrapped up as a novel. They all tie together quite neatly, making for some very exciting reading.

Ruff tells a fascinating story. One which comes together and has creeps and spooks which could easily come from the real Lovecraft country. It is compelling at its heart because it isn't just a regular series of horror stories. It does its best to examine the challenges facing African Americans in the United States before the Civil Rights era, and uses these characters to tell a frankly fascinating story\ies which can be enjoyed from the comfort of your living room, and will hopefully make you think. For fun stories and some great ideas, I heavily encourage you to read it, and look forward to the series coming out in the future!

Meddling Kids

What happens when you combine the Cthullu mythos with Scooby Doo? You get a ragtag group of 70s kids growing up and returning home to fight horror on a spooky island! Here now is a prime example of some quirky and almost out to lunch Meddling Kids!

From Amazon

Written by Edgar Cantero in 2017 it tells the tale of the Blyton Summer Detective Gang (and their dog Sean) who solved the mystery of the Sleepy Lake Monster in 1977. Picking up thirteen years later, the gang is getting back together because their lives have, since that summer, fallen to pieces. The kids, Peter Manner, Kerri Hollis, Andrea "Andy" Rodriguez and Nate Rogers have aged. In 1990 they find themselves oddly drawn back to Sleepy Lake and the Deboen Mansion where they almost got caught by the machinations of a treasure hunter Thomas Wickley. In the end, he proved to be a goon in monster costume, but the night they caught him, they found themselves facing more than just a man in a mask.

Kerri is now an underachieving alcoholic, Andy is an Air Force drop out, Nate has checked himself into the mental ward and Peter has checked out of life thanks to a drug overdose. The original dog, Sean, has also passed on, leaving his legacy to his grandpup Tim. Has their old nemesis come back to haunt them? Or is something more sinister afoot at Sleep Lake in the Blyton Hills...

Lovecraft's Run

For some odd reason, every summer I find myself caught up in a craving for Lovecraft's scary stories. One would think this would be more reasonable over the fall months or on Halloween. Strange as it is that the sun and the water draw me to tales of Eldritch horror and forgotten forbidden lore, I do enjoy sitting up late at night and reading his terrifying works. Last summer that was how I was able to, in a single sitting, pound out my Lovecraftian horror short The Disappearance of Wilson and I intend to make a stab at another story like that. However, I'm just going to reminisce on some of the stories I have particularly enjoyed and managed to have keep me up over the summer.

Pickman's Model

This was in fact, the first Lovecraft story which ever gave me a nightmare. The story revolves around a reclusive and unusual artist (Robert Pickman) who creates macabre imagery of half-man half-dog creatures who rummage through the underworld. The storyteller relates the news of getting Pickman to tell him how he came up with such terrible ideas and learning an awful truth regarding the author's influence.

I read this one on a cottage trip, and it was part of my inspiration for my own short story. Imagining the wild north of Ontario and what it may hide was a great creepy dream and the waking nightmare of Pickman's creatures lurking on the steps to drag me off to the unknown inspired me to hammer this gem out.

The Call of Cthulu

If you have not heard of this story you clearly don't know your Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926 it was published in February 1928 in the Weird Tales magazine. It is a story revolving around the discovery and perusal of a deceased academics papers relating to a mysterious and gruesome statue and idol confiscated during a police raid in Louisiana. From there it branches out into a sinister tale of an almost apocalypse (in every sense of the word) as the confluence of unlikely events leads a horrible revelation that would drive any man to despair.

This is perhaps, Lovecraft's most well known work, with Cthulu being the creature most associated with Lovecraftian fiction. His cephalopod visage has graced the covers of many books and drawings, and even the nightmares of some! I personally have a picture of him hanging over my bed to ward off nightmares. The story is dark and exciting, with elements of mystery and penny dreadful thrillers, making it entertaining reading from any angle!

The Whisperer in the Darkness

This particular story was one much discussed by a coworker and I years ago. Involving shambling horrors from beyond the stars, it was one which made much hay over the discovery of Pluto back in the day. A researcher at Miskatonic University is contacted by a reclusive professor who, in response to reports of eerie creatures seen floating in the rivers following a period of intense flooding. The professor passes on undeniable truth regarding other worldly origins of these strange creatures, and over time, begins to feel the strain as they besiege his home.

Told largely through a series of correspondence and personal memoirs, it ratchets up the tension over time as the revelations unfold and the academics step steadily closer to madness from the revelations of what they have discovered. Truly a great short read.

The Beast of the Bosporus

This Lovecraftian tale, not written by Lovecraft, but in a delightfully similar vein, takes us out of Lovecrat's usual setting of rural New England, to the world of the 16th Century Ottoman Empire. Having lost the Battle of Lepanto, the Sublime Porte is looking for a way to strike back at the Spanish who have 'singed their beard.' In it we see palace intrigue, terrifying encounters, and a truly epic conclusion regarding powers that should not be tampered with.

Seeing it all done in a place where you don't really expect Lovecraftian horror makes it so much more interesting.

I have talked about it before, and you can find it in Digital Fantasy Fiction Anthology: Uncommon Senses.

Now these are just a small sampling of Lovecraft's works you can find, and one that is a very delightful example of switching up the location of these eldritch horrors! If people are looking for some timeless reads they should definitely check out the works of Lovecraft and his modern successors.

The Necronomicon

The Necronomicon is a name that sends chills up the spine. Penned in the 8th Century by the Mad Arab Abd-al-Hazred, it contains the chilling secrets of the Old Ones and their blasphemous powers. Despite numerous attempts to suppress it and the knowledge it contains, it continues to crop up across history in the hands of those who would use it for ill.

A very troublesome book.

Guest Post: Donald Trump, Liberal Millennials, and THE THING IN THE WOODS

Though the 2016 election was a surprising turn of events for people all around the world as the unexpected candidate Donald Trump snatched the Republican nomination from out of nowhere then created the greatest electoral upset in nearly a century; it is not as surprising as finding a Lovecraftian horror infesting the woods near your where you live. Though maybe for some of you it was. Here author and fellow blogger Matthew Quinn lays out how some of his characters from his recent novel, The Thing in the Woods would most likely have acted if this story were set ten years further on in history during an election year. Being set in rural Georgia (a state which Trump carried with over 50% of the vote) it is easy to see how the ages and occupations of these characters set them out in support of nefarious goings on, or bias them against it and how such biases can be used to make excellent conflict in stories. I'll let Mr. Quinn take it from here and show you what he means.

The 2016 presidential election was, at least in part, a generational conflict. A significant chunk of Donald Trump's support came from older, more traditionalist people who disliked recent cultural and economic changes. Fears of "cultural displacement" motivated members of the white working class to vote for a man one would think resembles a particularly boorish boss instead of a champion of the little guy. A great many self-identified Christians supported Trump despite his history of rancidly un-Christian behavior for much the same reason.

Remakes in Moderation Please

Well I have to say that I have recently come across some mildly disturbing news thanks to Cracked. That is their lovely article here detailing how we have a slew of remakes to look forward to in the near future.

For those not willing to read the article, a short summary; here we have no less than three Peter Pan remakes coming out in the near future, four series that could only under a generous stretch of the imagination be called Wizard of Oz spin offs (of some sort), two new sets of Tarzan movies, and two films about Hercules, one staring the Rock no less.

And some other kid

Now let me get something off my chest, I'm not against remakes, not at all. I actually like many reboots or re imaginings of old shows. For instance I loved Tin Man's re imagining of The Wizard of Oz universe in a slightly darker and more adult version of the old Oz franchise, I am a huge fan of Peter Jackson's 2005 King Kong reboot, Death Race in 2008, The Godzilla remake in 1998, and I sincerely enjoyed the reboot of The Thing in 2011 (ok not technically a reboot or remake but still something cool finally done in the universe there). Hell until Disney acquired the rights to Star Wars I'd even been hoping to see some Star Wars remakes before I died.

However, there is a thing which makes reboots good, and what makes us want them, the fact that we haven't seen these things in a long time.

The upcoming Godzilla remake will have waited a respectable time (16 years) before putting a major Godzilla piece on the market again (and I say major in all seriousness, the Power Ranger esque Godzilla bits coming out in the 80s don't count) and that's what makes people look forward to it.

The TV series Once Upon a Time is fresh because no one has really done a grand new imagining of the old fairy tales in a long time, and not in such a fresh and fascinating way with a diverse cast of characters and an epic plot.

The upcoming sequel to 300 (300: Rise of an Empire) has waited a long time to reintroduce us to that crazy sword and sandals world we haven't seen in a while. I've been broadcasting all about it on my Facebook page for a while now and the trailers have been out on Youtube so if you don't know about it shame on you!

There's also the upcoming re imagining of the 47 Ronin which looks to be almost 300 in Japan, is a film to look forward to I would personally say with cautious optimism.

You know what separates these things from all the other remakes I've mentioned? They're years apart from each other, seem to be trying to breath new and innovative ideas into a creation, and they can act independently of each other. These remakes seem to not even care that they'll be competing with other remakes of the same story, as if the producers didn't stop and think "Hey we'll be flooding the market with a really similar product to the next guy!" making the potential interest evaporate as you see the same thing over and over again. Hell of all the items on the list the only one I would consider seeing is the one that puts a modern soldier in a post-apocalyptic Oz since that seems like an even darker version of Tin Man.

This is actually a problem I've been having with superhero movies recently. Yes their big flashy blockbuster productions what should I expect? Here's the thing though, we're being flooded with cheap (and sometimes tacky) remakes of films, for example, the Hulk films of the last decade are barely 5 years apart all so Hulk could be shoehorned into the Avengers (Don't get me wrong Avengers was great, but did they really need the remake? We know who Hulk is and he doesn't have anything original to contribute to the series like Iron Man, Thor or Captain America, but I digress). Now we're going to have to contend with yet another series of remakes for Super Man (whose films really can't do anything original to save their lives) and more Batman since it seems they intent on recreating the Justice League, meaning we will probably have to endure another Green Lantern movie (gack) and potentially Aquaman.

Now this version I would see

My issue with these is that they are basically just hashing out old ideas and trying to market them to a new audience. In some cases it works (for the Avengers especially) but for things like Batman and Superman, we're really just whipping the same dead horse and we'll probably be at it for the next decade.

Now although some of these remakes may not end up being awful (I'm willing to bet money they won't be great either) I'm not enthusiastic for their release.

To finish off I know that this blog would never get the ear of major producers, but is it seriously so much to ask of them to jump out of the cardboard box they've been in for the last decade and start trying to embrace some new ideas, writers, or scenarios? Hell would it be too much to ask that we could actually try and market a new superhero to people instead of just rehashing old ones?

If we're going to be dusting off old ideas, why not try some that really haven't been done before? Maybe some of H.P Lovecrafts numerous works in his mythos could be adapted (Aquaman optional)? Perhaps we could get a modern Dune series (yes we had the miniseries in 2000 but would a decent film with a good budget really be too much to ask for by 2020?). Or even say an adaption of the great novel Earth Abides? (Not starring Will Smith or Tom Cruise even).

What I suppose I'm trying to say if we have to dust off old ideas rather than attempt to embrace new ones, we could at least be dusting off old ideas that haven't been done before (or at least in a long time). Let's try fishing up some new fodder instead of digging up the same old corpse before it's body is even cold ok producers?

Until next time readers.

Guest Post: The Strange Death of Sokullu Mehmed Pasha

As a history enthusiast myself this information and the very odd, yet fascinating, version of history it presents is to much to pass up!

Guest blog post from Matthew Quinn of the wonderful blog The World According to Quinn, who is also the writer of many fine stories which may be found on Amazon, and should really be added to your Kindle!

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From A New Look at Sokullu Mehmed Pasha, published at Miskatonic University.

The consensus of historians on the assassination of Grand Vizier Sokullu Mehmed Pasha on October 11, 1579 AD (or 20 Sha'ban 987 AH in the Islamic reckoning) is fairly well-known in our field. The Ottoman Sultan Murad III, alienated from the vizier who had served his father and grandfather so long and ably by his mother Narbanu Sultan and Venetian-born wife Safiye Sultan, took steps to reduce the vizier's influence on government. The vizier's allies were sent to faraway positions or assassinated. Ultimately, a mentally-unstable dervish talked his way into the vizier's office and stabbed him. This kind of intrigue was fairly common in the Ottoman Empire, especially during the period known as the Sultanate of Women.

However, some recent discoveries by Miskatonic University researchers of documents thought lost forever during the civil unrest that wracked Constantinople when the Janissaries were suppressed has shed new light on the circumstances of the vizier's assassination and an incident that took place in 1571.

These documents paint a far more sinister picture of the vizier. They include accusations of dealings with agents of Safavid Persia, with whom the vizier had counseled peace as opposed to the usual border wars, and even black magic. The documents accuse the vizier of, under the influence of an agent of Persian Shah Tahmasp I, acquiring a book of black magic from an Armenian merchant who had visited the long-vacant shrine of a corrupted Sufi order that had been destroyed by Turkish nomads not long before. The use of this book resulted in an incident in Constantinople that killed dozens of Ottoman soldiers, destroyed one war galley and forced the scuttling of a second, and caused significant damage to the Bayezit II mosque.

These accusations against Sokullu are not new, but have been long dismissed as the slanders from his political enemies. However, the mosque was damaged somehow, necessitating repairs by the famed Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan in 1573 and 1574. Furthermore, it is often said that converts make the best zealots. Safiye Sultan was a Catholic before she became a Muslim, while the most recent evidence suggests Narbanu was an Orthodox Greek from Corfu before her conversion. If Sokullu was involved in the dark arts, or was widely believed so, this could have provoked the ire of the Imperial women. They would not wish one so tainted to continue virtually ruling the Ottoman Empire in place of their son and husband. And the dervish orders might be willing to provide an assassin to dispose of the vizier, especially given his (tangential) connection to a Sufi order that had become warped by dark forces.

Of course, this is all just speculation. The documents describe how the soldiers killed in the incident were buried in a mass grave outside Constantinople that was given special attention by Muslim imams, Orthodox Christian priests, and even a Jewish rabbi, while the materials used by Sokullu in the incident were confiscated, burned, and abandoned in Persia. Should this mass grave or the dumping site be found, it would lend credence to the incident described in the documents.

So just why was the Grand Vizier assassinated, and is the author's theory about dark powers manifesting in Constantinople actually true? Read "The Beast of the Bosporus" on Amazon.com or on Smashwords to find out!