[Download free pdf] The Innsmouth Cycle: The Taint of the Deep Ones in 13 Tales The Innsmouth Cycle: The Taint of the Deep Ones in 13 Tales r1v0JEvG4 The Innsmouth Cycle: The Taint of the Deep Ones in 13 zlnV5ihCk Tales mRMbCSMLk PG-51302 7yXAvxBUr US/Data/Literature-Fiction NXeemIpBB 5/5 From 650 Reviews UTHqT87sk From Chaosium Ru6CZzLAx *Download PDF | ePub | DOC | audiobook | ebooks RfpOULlII bYWbCng2V eeEhWce2b 73lczxhWG VD18J1Svk xpCIqMBJD lptxPU3FG 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. "I saw them in a limitless LCso2gz4V stream-flopping, hopping, croaking, bleating-surging inhumanly through the iEINGuyrC spectral moonlight..."By Mark Louis BaumgartThe influence of H. P. Lovecraft, rq4yBjUVk both intentional and accidental, cannot be underestimated, and one of his most 32toKHZwl influential and famous stories is 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' so its only W0x7cSBnh natural that anthologies would be built around this story and its mythos, and NCPiV3n6j when it comes right down to it, Robert M. Price is just the man to do it. "The NjFq6WbTI Innsmouth Cycle" collects both recent and rare Lovecraftian fiction from both TbDoJbtMW professional and amateur venues, with the idea of tracing the literary evolution iOeCmr8hN of the Innsmouth mythology.********And to set the stage for this anthology ZgCIIKQ4J Robert M. Price (Robert McNair Price: 1954--,) gives us 'Ontogeny xQsCp2mlC Recapitulates Phylogeny', which is this books introduction. Unfortunately for O0OcN22RG some of us, it is also a pretty densely worded thesis on assimilation and t71ZntRco alienation, particularly as seen in context of Lovecraft and Lovecrafts fiction. UC8J7QCTC It's a little too thickly worded for me, especially as I didn't have my Thesaurus handy. Still, it was good to read something so scholarly that looks at some of the themes, like racism and xenophobia, in Lovecraftian fiction. And besides, it's short, so get over it already.********Up first is the one-page prose poem 'Of Yoharneth Lahai' by Lord Dunsany (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett: 1878-1957), and it is excerpted from Dunsanys novel "The Gods Of Pegana" and all I can say is that I don't like Dunsany. I have never liked his fiction, and it seems that I'm never going to like Dunsany, and nobody is ever going to make me like Dunsany. And yes, I know that I'm in the minority, however, that said, it's here, and I had to just live with that, so let's just move on.********Up next is 'The Harbor-Master' by Robert W. Chambers (Robert William Chambers: 1865-1933), and Chambers' story deals with cryptozoology as a young man is sent to Black Harbor to check out the veracity of a cranky old man who wants to sell a couple of extinct Great Auks. Only the young investigator finds that the Black Harbor is also haunted by a Gillman, and the Gillman also has the hots for a local winsome lass. This story was originally published in 1904 and probably influenced the movie "The Creature From The Black Lagoon", besides Lovecraft's Innsmouth's amphibious inhabitants. Not Chambers best, and the characters run to type more than anything else, but a lot of fun anyway, and I enjoyed it, and if updated Im sure it would have made a good episode of "The X- Files".********'Fishhead' by Irwin S. Cobb (Irwin Shrewsbury Cobb: 1876- 1944) is next and it shows where Lovecraft got his "Innsmouth Look". Fishhead is a man born from "a Negro father and a half-breed Indian mother" whose color is yellow, whose features resemble that of a fish, and who seems to have a supernatural affinity with local fishlife. While the story is deeply racist in one way, you do end up rooting for Fishhead as this is basically a story of a murder, as the Baxter brothers plan Fishead's death for getting their asses handed to them in a fight with Fishead. The Baxter brothers quickly find that on their mission of vengeance there will be enough death to go around for everybody.********Then comes up 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' by Lovecraft (Howard Phillips Lovecraft: 1890-1937) himself. In this story a young man decides to take a tour of New England before settling down to adulthood, and while in Newburyport decides to take a bus to the decrepit Innsmouth and take a look around. When he gets there he finds it a surly, broken-down, degenerate slum with the buildings rotting and collapsing. As he's interested in New England architecture he then spends the day wandering about the town looking at its buildings, and as he does so he not only gets the attention of the natives, but of the town drunk Zadok Allen. After enough illegal hootch Allen tells the young man the secret history of Innsmouth. Unfortunately, Zadok talks too much, and to the wrong person, and so, the narrator finds himself the new center of entertainment of the inhabitants, both human and not, of Innsmouth, and he quickly finds himself stranded in town with no way to get out. Then a chase happens as the populace decides to make him one with the fishes, and not in a good way. This is a story that has already happened, and the narrators telling of the incident. That the unnamed narrator may have escaped is no surprise, the end of the story is all about the incidents that happened, and what eventually happens to the narrator after his adventure. Despite the obvious, Innsmouth always struck me as a metaphor for the urban decay that happens when the only source of income a town has disappears.********The fifth story is 'The Deep Ones' by James Wade (1930-83) and in it Dorn is an expert on the psychic sciences, and he is looking to upgrade his employment when he is contacted by Dr. Frederick Wilhelm to study dolphins. Well, the money's good, so he goes to investigate the psychic link between dolphins and humans, and at Wilhelms institute he does this with the help of Josephine Gilman, no relation to the sf author Laura Anne Gilman, who is related to the Innsmouth Gilman's, and between the two of them, and hypnosis, they find that those who live and sleep beneath the waves are real and looking to awake and to conquer, and the dolphins are their servants. Then the story takes another twist as Josephine finds that she is on her way to be a mother, mysteriously. Also getting mixed up into all of this is cult leader Alonzo Waite, and who is dedicated to stopping the upcoming apocalypse. This is more of an apocalyptic science fiction story than a horror tale, and it is a clear transition from the gothicness of Lovecraft to the more modern approach of writings that involve Lovecraft's mythology as this story is told in both a straight narrative, and in epistolary form. Underrated, this story works as both a science fiction and a horror story.********Up next is another Wade story, the short 'A Darker Shadow Over Innsmouth' was published during the height of the Vietnam War and Wade's story is one long scream of frustrated satire. Wade's story has the United States government taking over Innsmouth, and having the inhabitants discovering that there is even a greater horror than the Deep Ones, and it's us. Humans have managed to dwarf the Old Ones with their war profiteering, their exploitive ways, and now we have become the greater evil.********Franklyn Seabright's (1935-) father was a contemporary of Lovecraft, and a correspondent of his, so it's no surprise that Franklyn would turn out a great bit of satire about trophy hunting. In 'The Innsmouth Head' Trumbell is a fisherman, and looking for better game fish, ventures his motorboat into Innsmouth waters, and their persistence pays off big time, because they catch something big. Big and unusual. We know it's a Deep One, but since they can't eat it, or keep all of it, they just settle for keeping the head (!). Trumbell then has the head stuffed and mounted. But, even dead the head has an unholy influence; all that it comes into contact with the mounted head, from the taxidermist to Trumbell himself will have bad dreams, and worse. The fun part is watching Trumbell go from stable to psychically breaking down like a sugar cube in the rain.********Henry J. Vester, III was a mainstay in the Lovecraftian fan and semi-prozines of the seventies and eighties and in 'Innsmouth Gold' Thaddeus Miller Hess is a young man in 1924 and he becomes fascinated by the bus driver from Innsmouth and so the driver becomes under scrutiny from the twenty-four-year-old. As he watches the bus driver, Hess sees the man dump something behind a sand dune. Investigating, Thaddeus finds a treasure for the deep ones. The story then goes from typical Lovecraftian fare to a combination of weird horror/gangster story. Has a neat ending in which we realize that the past, along with evil, never dies, and revenge is always waiting in the wings for the unwary.********Told in an epistolary form, 'Custos Sanctorum' by Roger Johnson (1947-) tells the tale of Israel Martyr telling the tale to his cousin in Essex about how newcomer Walter Garlick has come to Wabsey to settle down and join "The Esoteric Order of Dawn". Well, wanting is cheap, so first of all Walter has to prove himself to the inner circle. While Walter is of the blood, something goes wrong with the test, something mysterious and fatal.