The Taint and Other Novellas (Best Mythos Tales)

Prior to the first American publication of Brian Lumley s ground-breaking, dead-waking, best-selling Necroscope?? in 1988 -- the first novel in a long-lived, much-loved series -- this British author had for twenty years been earning himself something of a reputation writing short stories, novellas, and a series of novels set against H. P. Lovecraft's cosmic Cthulhu Mythos backdrop. A soldier in 1967, serving in Berlin with the Royal Military Police, Lumley jump-started his literary career by writing to August Derleth, the then dean of macabre publishers at his home in Sauk City, Wisconsin, telling of his fascination with the Mythos, and purchasing books by the Old Gentleman of Providence, RI. In addition, he sent a page or two of written work allegedly culled from the various forbidden or black books of the Mythos. Suitably impressed, the master of Arkham House invited Lumley to write something solid in the Mythos as a possible contribution to a new volume he was currently contemplating, to be titled -- what else but? -- Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. And as might well be imagined, that set everything in motion. Forty years have passed since then and a good many words of Mythos fiction written, including critically acclaimed and award-nominated work, stories that have appeared in prestigious magazines such as Fantasy & Science Fiction, and hardcover volumes from publishers all over the world from the USA to China and the United Kingdom to Russia. But while Lumley's novels are all currently available, many of them in hardcover format, his Mythos short stories and novellas have until now remained uncollected. Subterranean Press is proud to correct that omission in volumes that are guaranteed to be the pride of any collector's library of Mythos works other than tales written by H. P. Lovecraft himself. Here in this volume are found the novellas; the future companion volume contains the short stories. And thus the very best of Brian Lumley's works in this sub-genre, including such recent tales as The Hymn and The Taint, are collected and presented for the first time in this much more worthy and durable format...

From Publishers Weekly

Lumley fans will welcome this collection of seven longer Cthulhu Mythos tales from the prolific British author (Necroscope), on whom H.P. Lovecraft was an important influence. One of the earlier selections, The Horror at Oakdeene, set in an insane asylum full of inmates familiar with the Mythos, amounts to apprentice work highly derivative of Lovecraft. Another early effort, Born of the Winds, shows more originality by mixing the usual Lovecraftian imagery (e.g., cyclopean submarine cities of mad angles and proportions) with the Wendigo and Ithaqua, wind-walkers who first appeared respectively in tales by Algernon Blackwood and August Derleth. Perhaps most memorable is the 2005 title story, which, despite being set in Lovecraft's haunted seaport of Innsmouth, avoids Mythos clichés and comes across as distinctly the author's own. (Oct.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Dedicated horror fans immediately recognize the Cthulhu Mythos, the monstrous cosmology invented by H. P. Lovecraft and expanded into a compendious mythology by many other genre hands. The Mythos encompasses a culture of ancient, malevolent beings, many of them submerged in Earth's oceans, that lure susceptible humans into hellish servitude via dreams and telepathy. With a series of mythos-driven novels on his résumé, Lumley is not only the subgenre's most prolific practitioner but also arguably its most imaginative. Collected here for the first time are all his Cthulhuian novellas, including one of his earliest mythos pieces, The Horror at Oakdeene, about a mental-asylum intern who becomes a little too familiar with the inmates' dark obsessions. Other tales describe an encounter with a deadly wind-walking spirit, the fate awaiting an anthropologist who discovers a small-town carnival's stash of Cthulhuian relics, and the tragedy befalling the heir to a cursed Scottish estate. Lumley's knack for nightmarish scenarios and chilling language puts his writings at the forefront of contemporary horror fiction. Hays, Carl

From the Inside Flap

Prior to the first American publication of Brian Lumley s ground-breaking, dead-waking, best-selling Necroscope® in 1988 -- the first novel in a long-lived, much-loved series -- this British author had for twenty years been earning himself something of a reputation writing short stories, novellas, and a series of novels set against H. P. Lovecraft s cosmic Cthulhu Mythos backdrop. A soldier in 1967, serving in Berlin with the Royal Military Police, Lumley jump-started his literary career by writing to August Derleth, the then dean of macabre publishers at his home in Sauk City, Wisconsin, telling of his fascination with the Mythos, and purchasing books by the Old Gentleman of Providence, RI. In addition, he sent a page or two of written work allegedly culled from the various forbidden or black books of the Mythos. Suitably impressed, the master of Arkham House invited Lumley to write something solid in the Mythos as a possible contribution to a new volume he was currently contemplating, to be titled -- what else but? -- Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. And as might well be imagined, that set everything in motion. Forty years have passed since then and a good many words of Mythos fiction written, including critically acclaimed and award-nominated work, stories that have appeared in prestigious magazines such as Fantasy & Science Fiction, and hardcover volumes from publishers all over the world from the USA to China and the United Kingdom to Russia. But while Lumley s novels are all currently available, many of them in hardcover format, his Mythos short stories and novellas have until now remained uncollected. Subterranean Press is proud to correct that omission in volumes that are guaranteed to be the pride of any collector s library of Mythos works other than tales written by H. P. Lovecraft himself. Here in this volume are found the novellas; the future companion volume contains the short stories. And thus the very best of Brian Lumley s works in this sub-genre, including such recent tales as The Hymn and The Taint, are collected and presented for the first time in this much more worthy and durable format...

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