The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)

Book Description

An unparalleled selection of fiction from H. P. Lovecraft, master of the American horror tale

Long after his death, H. P. Lovecraft continues to enthrall readers with his gripping tales of madness and cosmic terror, and his effect on modern horror fiction continues to be felt-- Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Clive Barker have acknowledged his influence. His unique contribution to American literature was a melding of Poe's traditional supernaturalism with the emerging genre of science fiction. Originally appearing in pulp magazines like Weird Tales in the 1920s and 1930s, Lovecraft's work is now being regarded as the most important supernatural fiction of the twentieth century.

Lovecraft's biographer and preeminent interpreter, S. T. Joshi, has prepared this volume of eighteen stories--from the early classics like "The Outsider" and "Rats in the Wall" to his mature masterworks, "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." The first paperback to include the definitive corrected texts, The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories reveals the development of Lovecraft's mesmerizing narrative style, and establishes him as a canonical--and visionary--American writer.

"I think it is beyond doubt that H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century's greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale." --Stephen King

Customer Reviews:

Skillfully anthologized and skillfully written. Haunting tales that encompass the Cthulhu mythos. Highly recommended.......2007-10-01

NOTE: This review is specific to "The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)".

As one of the three Penguin Classic Lovecraft anthologies, The Call of Cthulhu collects the stories that lead up to and include the Cthulhu Mythos, arranged in chronological order with introduction and explanatory notes for each story from the anthologizer, S.T. Joshi. Joshi does an exceptional job selecting stories that create a coherent narrative through Lovecraft's early work, developing themes, and final strong stories; his annotations are interesting and useful both to the casual and studious reader. Lovecraft's writing itself is also exceptional: in this wide selection of short stories, he explores issues of miscegenation, scientific exploration, and the discoveries of the great beyond--from the reaches out outer space to the depths of the sea, wherein ancient inhuman forces lurk, threatening those that come too close to the truth. Skill and quality differs from story to story but is universally high, and Lovecraft's tones are delightfully dark and threatening, occasionally humorous, and always otherworldy. This collection is greatly enjoyable and I highly recommend it.

The Penguin Classics anthologies divide Lovecraft's work into three collections, all edited by S.T. Joshi, all collecting short stories that address central themes in Lovecraft's work. Obviously, this compilation focuses on the Cthulhu Mythos, beginning with Dagon and moving through stories of life beyond death (Herbert West--Reeanimator), miscregation (The Shadow over Innsmouth), life from space (The Whisperer in the Dark), and life from the depths (The Call of Cthulhu). The collection is complete, with a clear focus, and indicates an active development of the theme as Lovecraft's writing matures. Joshi's additions are skillful: each story is given an introduction in the notes, mentioning its place in Lovecraft's career, relevant information, and present themes; the annotations (through numbered footnotes) are removed to the end of the text, maintaining the coherency of the printed stories and giving the reader the option of ignoring them altogether. The annotations run a bit overly-detailed and even off topic at times, but on the whole they are both interesting and useful. In short, Joshi's editing is exceptional, making this an accessible anthology as well as a useful resource.

More important than Joshi's editing is of course Lovecraft's writing. Lovecraft is a true artist of the horror genre; his work is considered classic for a reason. And perhaps none of it is more famous than the Cthulhu mythos, making this a true classic of the genre and a wonderful read. But my recommendation does not rest on how famous Lovecraft or these stories happen to be; rather, it rests on the fact that the writing is exceptional, enjoyable, and haunting. Some of the tropes become repetitive, and not all of the stories match others in quality or lasting impact, but on the whole this is an impressive collection of consistently high quality. The forces present in Lovecraft's writing are dark and insidious, hidden on the edges and in the crevices of human consciousness; those that seek them out find more than they bargain for--some are killed, some driven to madness or suicide. Lovecraft's stories move accordingly, building up auras of suspense, slowly revealing more ominous information, and often climaxing in names, entities, and fates that are all the more frightening for our own inability to comprehend them, pronounce, or describe them. Lovecraft uses words to introduce concepts that are beyond words, concepts that escape description. His writing is atmospheric, haunting, and skillful, and a true delight to read.

I came upon this text as a curious reader that had heard much about Lovecraft but never read his work and did not know where to begin. I was exceptionally pleased with this book, and believe it was an ideal introduction. The combination of Joshi's superb selections and editing and Lovecraft's exceptional writing make this a wonderful starting place, introducing some of Lovecraft's strongest themes, exploring them through his career, and including all number of classic stories. I was impressed with and greatly enjoyed this text, and I highly recommend it.

Great intro to HPL.......2007-08-15

This volume is the perfect introduction to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The Shadow Over Insmouth which was the inspiration for the movie Dagon is worth buying the entire volume. These stories chill you to the bone without being graphic and going for the cheap scare like modern horror tales. Lovecraft lets you use your imagination to let the tension build, and it leaves you thinking of fantastic possibilities long after you put the book down. I highly recommend this volume and the 2 additional Penguin Classic volumes which take in almost all of Lovecrafts major writings.

experience of reading.......2007-07-18

It took me a great deal of time to actually purchase some of Lovecraft's work. I was hearing a lot about it from numerous sources, mostly connected with science fiction, horror, weird imaginative cults and such things. Comic books often immersed themselves into the world that Lovecraft created. Being what it is it offered great many possibilities to explore, create, destroy or modify and never actually lose connection with Lovecraft's vision.

I find this vision strangely fascinating. There is certain richness in those maddening vision, in out-of-this-world words, in whispers from the darkness that makes the sane mane go insane. One can almost feel growing horror of Lovecraft's characters, one can feel threads of sanity breaking, one can feel paranoia, psychosis, fear, and one can connect with these characters.

Lovecraft is master of creating atmosphere. Deserted places, god forsaken cliffs and roads, lost secrets, all are there for reader to feel the weight of nightmares, heaviness of horror that may creep upon ones mind.

Yes, some of these stories are naive, some of them are really bad writing, most of them are predictable in terms of narrative. Yet, there are some which are strangely poetic and beautiful, like Nyarlathotep, and some which, despite great amount of naivete, portrays that feelings of no escape which are maddening and sad like Whisperer in the Darkness.

This edition is indeed "overly-edited" as someone said before, and many of the explanatory notes could be, without any damage to the edition, thrown out. Nevertheless, editor - S.T. Joshi, did great ammount of work and, for anyone who is looking into Lovecraft for reasons other than joy of readin, should start with this edition. It offers secondary literature, and thorough introduction.

So, if you don't mind sometimes peculiar language (after all this was written at the early 20th century), sometimes banal construction, and other kind of structural inadequacies and if you like strong visions, poetic heights, disturbing scenery, and hint of supernatural in everyday banality, than stories of H.P. Lovecraft are just what are you looking for,

AAAARRRGHHHH!!!!! JUST TELL ME THE ENDING!!!!!!!!.......2007-04-09

Well, this book covers just about every Lovecraft story you could want. I bought this book mainly for the story "The Call Of Cthulhu", after hearing about it in the movie "Dagon", and hearing stuff about it in a song or two. I'm not a big fan of reading, but it kept my attention. The only drawback is the damn cliff hangers! Yes, it makes for a dramatic ending, but also after a while kind of gets annoying (hence 4 stars instead of 5). Lovecraft's style of writing is quite different from other authors. But for me, it worked. The title is very accurate when it says "And Other Weird Stories". So be prepared. It's also a nice deviation from most of the other horror books out there today. About 98% of which seem to be about vampires. Each story is unique, in every aspect of the word.

Classic .......2007-03-24

H.P. Lovecraft is, in my opinion, on the same level as Edgar Allan Poe as far as short horror story writers are concerned. This book was the first material by him that I ever read, and I must proclaim that his writing style is nothing short of superb. The words he uses when constructing his elaborate sentences just seem so perfect that I can't help but be in awe. Another thing I love about Lovecraft is that he often describes the monster, but never too much. That way, the reader can create their own interpretation of what the monster looks like. My favorite stories here are "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," and of course, "The Call Of Cthulhu." Horror fans will love this.

The Three Imposters and Other Stories: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen, Volume 1 ( Call of Cthulhu Fiction Series)

Average customer rating:

More chilling than gore
A Bit Dry But Worthwhile
Convinced to buy Vol. 2
One of the Great Masters of the Macabre
A Review of the Three Imposters with a Calumny against Joshi

The Three Imposters and Other Stories: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen, Volume 1 ( Call of Cthulhu Fiction Series)
Arthur Machen , and S. T. Joshi (Editor)
Manufacturer: Chaosium
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1568821328

Book Description

Some of the finest horror stories ever written. Arthur Machen had a profound impact upon H.P. Lovecraft and the group of stories that would later become known as the Cthulhu Mythos. This first volume of Chaosium's Arthur Machen collection begins with the chilling "The Three Impostors" in its complete form, including the rarely seen sections "The Decorative Imagination" and "The Novel of the Iron Maid." Rounding out the first volume are "The Great God Pan," "The Inmost Light," and "The Shining Pyramid," all are excellent tales. Introduction by S.T. Joshi.

This book is part of an expanding collection of Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction and related topics. Call of Cthulhu fiction focuses on single entities, concepts, or authors significant to readers and fans of H.P. Lovecraft.

Customer Reviews:

More chilling than gore.......2006-08-03

This review is only about the title story, or rather, short novel. It is a circular story, as it ends where it begins. Characters have multiple identities and strange coincidences abound. It is a macabre joke, a foundational book of the cosmic horror a la Lovecraft and his Ctulhu mysteries. It is also a peak of the late Victorian era and much more. What makes it more than a genre story is the poetic quality of its literature. There are paragraphs that would make little perfect prose poems.

Along several months, or years, Dyson and Phillips meet different persons, who have in common the search for a shy and nervous young man with a little black moustache and big spectacles. Each one of these persons tells his or her story in inserted chilling tales, full of the imagery that would later become cliche. This is no cheap horror: it has a great sense of humor, it is not about axe-grinding nor about phantoms and exorcisms. It is pure cosmic horror, the horror of hidden forces and obscure memories of a remote past. It is a horror of strange gatherings and incognoscible conspiracies. The inserted stories are often compiled independently of their contextual frame: "The novel of the Dark Valley" is an adventure in the loneliness of the Rocky Mountains, with a pre-Kafkian touch that makes you go pale. "The novel of the Black Seal" happens in the Welsh wilderness, with a mad scientist and beings from the past. "The novel of the Iron Maiden" includes a collectionist of instruments of torture. "The novel of the White Powder" is about a substance that transforms humans into something indefinible and horrific. Finally, ""The story of the Spectacled Young Man" closes the circle and "explains" everything.

Like a good Englishman, Machen is a master of the understatement. More than showing, he insinuates to let the readers feel for themselves all the weight of the horror of the world, the mysteries that haunt us, and the strangeness of this life. Little surprise, then, that this was one of Jorge Luis Borges's favorite books, since much of his beloved subjects are here: ancient and undecipherable languages; stories lost in time; mirror games; equivocal identities; implacable gods; and somber mansions. Much recommended.

A Bit Dry But Worthwhile.......2005-06-17

Other reviews are longer and more in-depth. This is meant as a quickie.

The title story is the heavy-hitter of this collection; it ties several shorter stories together under one title. The other stories are much shorter but have their twists and turns as well.

The language is not as dry as one might expect from stories written a century ago.

Worth four stars out of five.

Convinced to buy Vol. 2.......2004-05-03

As the title says, I found this collection so intriguing that I will be buying the next volume (The White People and other Tales). The only work that I had previously known by Arthur Machen was "The Great God Pan", which has shown up in so many anthologies that I am thoroughly sick of it, although it is a good read the first few times through. "The Inmost Light" was quite disturbing to me in terms of plumbing the depravity of the human soul. "The Shining Pyramid" was a good supernatural detective story, in my opinion, although the intuitive leaps made by the protagonist would have made Fox Mulder proud. This clearly inspired quite a few of Robert Howard's stories.

Clearly, the crown jewel of this collection is "The Three Imposters." The deeper I got into this novel, the more engrossed I became. It is made up of 14 short stories, each of which is part of an overarching storyline that involves the protagonist, a golden coin, a man with spectacles, and 3 people who are not who they say they are. Each successive short story drew me in further. Some of the best reading I have done in years!

One of the Great Masters of the Macabre.......2003-11-19

Arthur Machen (1863-1947), an English author best known for his eerie stories about supernatural creatures and situations, served as a major influence on later explorers of the macabre. H.P. Lovecraft, for example, cited Machen as an authority and even wrote articles about him on occasion. The introduction to this compilation of some of Machen's best stories, written and edited by S.T. Joshi, underscores the author's ability to shock his Victorian contemporaries, who blasted his works publicly by labeling them obscene. Joshi argues the ridiculousness of this criticism, for Machen actually was an orthodox Anglo-Catholic who presented the concepts of nature as a corrupted influence that only civilization with its strict rules can negate. That's one way to view Machen's work: with a lot of scholarly blather. For most horror fans, it simply does not matter whether this author used horror as a means to support the social status quo. What is important is that Machen wrote cracking good stories that are not only eerie but also inspired future writers in the genre.

The best story in this collection is arguably the first one, "The Great God Pan." This horrific tale boils down to one sublime theme: don't mess with Mother Nature. A doctor performs a brain experiment on a young lady with absolutely horrific results, although the scope of the terror isn't widely known at first. As the story unfolds, we discover that this woman had a physical experience with something beyond our realms of perception, something so bizarre that our frail little minds can barely grasp the implications of such an unholy union. The result is a child, a very special child with a very evil character. This wicked offspring consequently ravages her way through the upper crust of British society, luring men into her clutches and then performing acts on them that cause the dupes to die in a quite terrible manner. There are some clever twists and turns throughout the story, such as bringing one of the doctors present at the beginning of the story back into the plot towards the end, that I quickly realized is a trademark of Machen's writing style. "The Great God Pan," perhaps better than any other story in this collection, shows the influence this author had on Lovecraft and others. Like the author of "The Mountains of Madness," the narrator here only alludes to shocking incidents in an oblique way, leaving it up to the reader to fill in the terrible blanks.

"The Inmost Light" and "The Shining Pyramid," while intriguing in their own ways, do not seem to pack the emotional punch of the "The Great God Pan." One story that does rise to the level of greatness is "The Three Imposters; or, The Transmutations," a sprawling epic that forms the bulk of the book. This is a wonderfully constructed oddity, a larger story built up of numerous interlocking smaller tales that could well stand on their own. Two characters, a Mr. Dyson and a Charles Phillips, encounter three individuals looking for a mysterious man wearing spectacles. The three people tell various stories to one or another of these men, including one set in the American West, a wacky yarn about an overachiever who imbibes a mysterious white powder with horrific results, and "The Novel of the Black Seal," my favorite story by far. In this intense tale concerning our lack of knowledge about the ancient past, a scientist going on retreat to the wilds of Wales mysteriously disappears forever after attempting to prove his theories about a weird little seal inscribed with the most curious markings. Parts of this story read like a mystery novel, as the main character in the story (a female servent/secretary type) discovers the aftermath of weird goings on and attempts to investigate the strangeness. I thought Machen achieved an amazing level of taut pacing with this story, and the conclusion to "The Three Imposters" shows the author bringing together the story in a satisfactory way.

One of the things I liked about Machen's stories is the emphasis he puts on atmosphere and background. Outside of Dickens, I cannot remember reading another author who describes the squalid streets and alleyways of London as well as Machen does. Joshi mentions this in his introduction to the book, but until you actually sit down and read the stories you simply won't grasp the detail Machen offers on every page. Moreover, this hyper atmospheric writing style extends to stories that take place outside the city as well. As anyone who has read horror knows, atmosphere is as important, if not more so, to a story than nearly any other element. With his bleak descriptions of the seedy London byways, Machen elevates horror to new heights.

In fact, all of the stories in this collection achieve greatness in their own unique ways. From what editor Joshi said in the introduction to this book, Machen failed to sustain his career in the long run. His later stories didn't sell well at all and seemed to be mere shadows of his former glories. Fortunately, we still have his creepy gems to read and savor today. If I had to rank Machen in the pantheon of grand horror writers, I would place him on more or less an even keel with Lovecraft but below Algernon Blackwood. But that comparison comes from only having read the few stories in this slim book. Certainly there are still Arthur Machen gems out there I have yet to see, so perhaps his stature will rise even higher in my eyes in the near future. Still, if you like Lovecraft and wish to read similarly themed stories, you need to pick up "The Three Imposters and Other Stories" soon. You won't be disappointed.

A Review of the Three Imposters with a Calumny against Joshi.......2003-04-16

If you're familiar with Machen, you've probably read the frequently anthologized chapters of "The Three Imposters" -- "The Novel of the White Seal" and "The Novel of the Black Powder" -- as stand alone short stories. I found that I appreciate them more after having read them in their original context as chapters or "novels" of this odd picaresque (or maybe arabesque) novel. In "The Three Imposters", these "novels" appear as stories narrated by characters within the main plot. It's an interesting idea. However, the "novels" stand out as better stories than the narrative in which they are imbedded. So I'm not sure it's such a good idea. The book ends with a truly gruesome finish -- even for Machen.

This is definitely a worthwhile read even if you've read the aforementioned novels. As usual, skip Joshi's introduction. For example, Joshi finds the source of Machen's numinous sense of horror in -- surprise! -- Machen's Victorian discomfort with sexuality. Not to mention the fact that he was a Christian, too. Ooh those Christians just hate sex! I suppose we are then to believe that Machen undertook the translation of Casanova's "Memoirs" as some sort of penance, like the protagonist's hair shirt in Machen's "Hill of Dreams". (Machen's "Memoirs" is still the standard translation in English, by the way.) Or could it be the case that Machen was more subtle than the freshman composition caricature of a sexually repressed Victorian Anglo-Catholic Joshi draws in his introduction; that in fact one of Machen's great themes is the reconciliation of sensuality with mysticism? Not surprisingly Joshi, who professes a peculiarly coarse and unreflective variety of atheistic materialism, is blind to this possibility.

Whatever happened to E. F. Bleiler or Lin Carter? (Well, they're dead, sadly. But can't Chaosium and Dover find a better editor for their Weird Fiction?)

The White People and Other Stories: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen, Volume 2 (Call of Cthulhu Horror Fiction, 6035) (Call of Cthulhu Fiction Series, 6035)
Average customer rating:

A Refreshing Change

Too Dry, Too Mundane

Volume 2 of Arthur Machen's work

The White People and Other Stories: The Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen, Volume 2 (Call of Cthulhu Horror Fiction, 6035) (Call of Cthulhu Fiction Series, 6035)
Arthur Machen
Manufacturer: Chaosium Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1568821727

Product Description

Born in Wales in 1863, Machen was a London journalist for much of his life.Among his fiction, he may be best known for the allusive, haunting title story of this book, &"The White People", which H.P. Lovecraft thought to be the second greatest horror story ever written (after Blackwood's "The Wilows"). This wide ranging collection also includes the crystalline novelette "A Fragment of Life", & "The Angel of Mons" (a story so widely reported that it was imagined true by millions in the grim initial days of the Great War), and "The Great Return" telling of the stately visions which graced the Welsh village of Llantristant for a time. Four more tales and the poetical "Ornaments in Jade" are all finely told. This is the second Machen volume edited by S. T. Joshi and published by Chaosium. The first volume was The Three Impostors.

Customer Reviews:

A Refreshing Change.......2005-11-29

I often find myself drawn to the explicit- gore and carnage, ala Bentley Little and Richard Laymon, so the sublety of Machen's writing was quite a departure for me. The style is quite beautiful- this is a talented writer whose prose will sweep you away with its pure visual beauty.

You will not grasp the entire sequence of events first in these tales, you may have to read them a second time, but that is a pleasure given the author's pleasing style. Perhaps it is time to take a break from the overt that is so prevalent in books and films today, and return to a kinder, gentler time where what is not said can be even more horrifying than what is thrown in your face. This is Machen.

Too Dry, Too Mundane.......2005-06-17

Other reviews are longer and more in-depth. This is meant as a quickie.

Too many of these stories are short (three pages) and rather limp. I prefer stories that are either longer (more development) or harder-hitting (with action/horror/experimental text/uniqueness/something!).

And unlike the first volume in this series, the language is dry. When combined with the more mundane subject matter, this book does not merit the four stars I gave "The Three Impostors".

Worth three stars out of five.

Volume 2 of Arthur Machen's work.......2005-04-16

I was vary impressed by Chaosium's first collection of Machen's work, which was THE THREE IMPOSTERS AND OTHER STORIES. "The Three Imposters" was a narrative of interwoven tales describing a paranoid man's encounter with three people who are not who they seem. Each is an excellent story in its own right, but the whole is greater than the sum. Considering the success of the first volume, I decided to try the second.

If you don't know Arthur Machen, he wrote "weird" stories in the late Victorian - Edwardian period. They all have a distinctly British flavor that reminds me of M.R. James. Most of his stories are set in his homeland of Wales, where something of charm and magic remains beneath the hills. By necessity he began to write for a newspaper later in life, and a fictional account he wrote for the paper on spectral guardians for British troops in WWI became the "Angel of Mons" stories you can still read about today.

THE WHITE PEOPLE AND OTHER STORIES is an eclectic collection of Machen's weird stories, his poetry, and some of his later writings for newspapers. Despite being a fan of Lovecraft, I have always wondered what HPL meant when he consistently referred to a protagonist hinting at things unknown (to others), dropping outlandish names and meaning more than is said. Well, he borrowed this technique from Machen's "The White People", a story made to look like a young girl's diary. Her journal is just a collection of thoughts and experiences, and many things are hinted at as reminders to herself which we will never understand, but these brief glimpses are horrible enough. Machen's poetry collection, "Ornaments in Jade", also struck me as weirdly beautiful but also indecipherable. More is unsaid than said, hinted at than revealed. I felt that it relied on some code, a common frame of reference, that has been lost over the course of a hundred years. Perhaps his contemporaries felt the same way.

There are other interesting compositions in this volume. "The Red Hand" brings back the investigating protagonists from "The Three Imposters," with a not-too-dissimilar plotline. "A Fragment of Life" seemed to be a glimpse into the everday life from a time long ago. It is almost novel length and simply describes the common affairs of a couple in turn-of-the-century London. If this sounds uninteresting, you'll have to read for yourself how a masterful author makes common situations uncommon. Finally, there are a series of stories written from Machen's journalistic days. Besides a group that are all related to the "Angel of Mons" category, there are a few others that describe other supernatural phenomena and are written in the first-person. They are so straight-forward and sincere that sometimes it is difficult to remember they are meant to be fiction.

Machen's overarching theme is that the material, everday world is merely a shadow of reality and that true living must penetrate that shadow to see the glories beyond. This is something he truly believed and it is evident in all of his stories. The reason these stories continue to frighten and thrill is that we desire to see what is beyond the veil, but we are also afraid of what we will find.

The Yellow Sign and Other Stories: The Complete Weird Tales of Robert W. Chambers (Call of Cthulhu Fiction)

Average customer rating:

truly weird
Few pearls in too many pages
More Than You May Want To Know
Pleasing and Artistic, but boring at times
A recommended pick for fans of Lovecraft

The Yellow Sign and Other Stories: The Complete Weird Tales of Robert W. Chambers (Call of Cthulhu Fiction)
Robert W. Chambers , and S. T. Joshi
Manufacturer: Chaosium
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Xothic Legend Cycle
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ASIN: 1568821700

Product Description

This massive collection brings together the entire body of Robert W. Chamber's Weird fiction works, including material unprinted since the 1890's. Chambers is considered a landmark author in the field of horror literature for his KING IN YELLOW collection, which itself represents but a small portion of his weird fiction work. These stories are intimately connected with the Cthulhu Mythos introducing such manifestations as Hali, Carcosa, and Hastur. This book contains all the immortal tales of Robert W. Chambers, including "The Repairer of Reputations", "The Yellow Sign", and "The Mask". These titles are often found in survey anthologies. In addition to the six stories reprinted from THE YELLOW SIGN (1895) this book also offers more than two dozen other stories and episodes. These narratives rarely have appeared in print. Some have not been published in nearly a century. Stories are collected and edited by Lovecraftian Scholar S.T. Joshi.

Customer Reviews:

truly weird.......2003-04-09

very inventive. very original. and ha sure knows how to keep the reader from knowing what's going on. but he is too anarchicc in style, suddenly taking a long path AWAY from the horror. for example, he suddenly creates a love story in the middle of building a horror story with great promise. he can make a story become an unclear blur. he doesn't obey any rules, and it does not suit the stories.

Few pearls in too many pages.......2002-12-30

Editor S.T. Joshi warns all the readers that Chambers can reach sometimes the nadir of literature and that he tried to not include the worst thing in this collection.
Nevertheless the disappointment is high as soon as you end the book and realize that only the first 88 pages are worth reading (that is the King in Yellow)on a total of 643.
In the remaining 555 pages ideas are scarce, character are monodimensional and there's a disturbing sense of racism.
I'll advise Cthulhu and Weird tales fan to get a book with only the Repairman of Reputation (which is indeed a marvelous story) unless they are truly collectors.

More Than You May Want To Know.......2002-06-29

I eagerly bought this book based on the King in Yellow tales by Chambers I had read years before. Yipes! Chambers wrote a ton of really dreadful stuff--silly, immature nonsense. Despite editor Joshi's disclaimers in the introduction that Chambers wasted a lot of his talent pandering to popularity, I don't think his comments adequately criticized the awfulness of much of this massive volume. Chambers undoubtedly could create real chills, but how the author of the King in Yellow short stories could descend into such pap is beyond me--what a disappointment and what a bore. Unless one is a total fanatic and has to have everything Chambers wrote that has a "fantastic" element, save your money and buy a small volume about the Yellow King. The only thing "fantastic" about most of these stories is how fantastically dreadful they are.

Pleasing and Artistic, but boring at times.......2002-01-06

The first half of the book (The Yellow Sign sub-book) was fantastic. It was imaginative and scary. My favorite story was THE REPAIRER OF REPUTATIONS.
After The Yellow Sign, though. The book gets more and more tedious. Not to say that all the stories are bad, but some are, and most are very hard to read- and it's a big book.
So, I recommend this to any Cthulhu Mythos fan as a literary "source" for Lovecraft and great info on The King in Yellow (which may have inspired the idea for The Necronomicon).

A recommended pick for fans of Lovecraft.......2001-03-06

Yellow Sign And Other Stories is a recommended pick for fans of Lovecraft, providing a collection of weird tales in the Lovecraft tradition of subtle horror and lurking underlying monsters. At the heart of it all is a 'Yellow Sign' and a horrible book which brings terror to those who dare to open it and mysterious beings who support an ancient horror. The stories are linked in tone but stand alone as excellent tales.

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Call Of Cthulhu And Other Weird Stories
P Lovecraft
Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJQIZ8

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

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The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
H. P./ Joshi, S. T. (Edt)/ Joshi, S. T. Lovecraft
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OJDR4S

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