Crawling Chaos Volume One: Selected Weird Fiction 1917-1927

by H. P. Lovecraft, Colin Wilson (Introduction)

Overview

H. P. Lovecraft, one of the great obsessive writers of the 20th century, naturally chose the pulp genre of "weird horror" in which to exorcise his acute anatomical alienation and existential torment. Within the matrix of his grotesque yet complex mythology, Lovecraft was able to conjure a hideous universe lying just beyond our own; his relentless style and language forging a convoluted, midnight-purple literary form which ultimately achieves a veritable "pornography" of horror: the accumulation and repetition of his demonic visions climaxing in orgasms of cosmic revulsion.
Crawling Chaos comprises a chronological collection of this unique writer's best work; from his distinctive collaborative pieces, prose-poems and early tales of the gruesome and bizarre, through to the maturation and efflorescence of his personal cosmology, the Cthulhu Mythos.
This new expanded edition, published in two volumes, has been enhanced by stories not previously included; Volume One includes the bonus stories "Herbert West, Re-Animator" and "The Shunned House". With an introduction by acclaimed author Colin Wilson.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781902197364
Publisher:	Creation Oneiros
Publication date:	05/31/2012
Series:	Tomb Of Lovecraft , #4
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 — March 15, 1937) was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction. He is now regarded as one of the leading horror authors of the 20th century.

Colin Wilson (born 26 June 1931 in Leicester) is a prolific English writer who first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson has since written widely on true crime, mysticism and other topics.

Read an Excerpt

The aperture was black with a darkness almost material. That tenebrousness was indeed a positive quality; for it obscured such parts of the inner walls as ought to have been revealed, and actually burst forth like smoke from its aeon-long imprisonment, visibly darkening the sun as it slunk away into the shrunken and gibbous sky on flapping membranous wings. The odour arising from the newly opened depths was intolerable, and at length the quick-eared Hawkins thought he heard a nasty, slopping sound down there. Everyone listened, and everyone was listening still when It lumbered slobberingly into sight and gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness.
Poor Johansen's handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing cannot be described — there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by designs, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated, floundering at the edge of the water.
Steam had not been suffered to go down entirely, despite the departure of all hands for the shore; and it was the work of only a few moments of feverish rushing up and down between wheels and engines to get the Alert under way. ......