The Works of H. P. Lovecraft - Review Appendix N
Returning to exploring the books and stories that inspired Dungeons & Dragons, we are looking at H. P. Lovecraft - and that’s actually his real name. I’m a little jealous. This month we looked at five of his first written (not published) short stories: The Alchemist (1908), The Tomb (1917), Dagon (1917), A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1917), and Polaris (1918).
These short stories aren’t very long, only about a ten-minute read for each of them, if that. So if you didn’t do your homework for this article, I highly encourage you to give them a read. The best part is that all of H.P. Lovecraft’s work is in the public domain, which means you can read and explore these stories for free.
But now, let’s go ahead and talk about what we are going to read for next month. Of the 29 authors mentioned, we’ve only read from 7 of the authors. Which means I’m rolling a d20! (sorry Jack Williamson and Roger Zelazny, you don’t get to take part in my random dice roll) I rolled 5 (L. Sprague de Camp), 8 (P. J. Farmer), and 15 (Andrew J Offutt) - and I gotta be honest. I don’t feel like reading any of those options when I looked them up, so I’m just going to pick Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny cause I can do whatever I want in my own book review series. I sure hope Zelazny’s book is good, especially since Neil Gaiman said that Zelazny was a major inspiration for him.
I just want to give a heads-up that this book review involves the topics of suicide, self-harm, mental illness, and cosmic horror. If these topics aren’t for you, how about checking out a previous book review - like The Face in the Frost!
The Work of H. P. Lovecraft
I’ve read several of Lovecraft’s short stories before this, though I think I had only read Dagon (of the five I’m reading) before but I couldn’t recall any details of the short story before I read it. In addition, I’m pretty sure I hadn’t read his stories in over 5 years so I entered pretty hazy on what I had read, though I remembered enjoying what I did read (which was basically just Cthulu stuff, Innsmouth, etc). It’s not surprising that Lovecraft has left a major impression on our pop culture, but it probably helps that his work is in the public domain and there was a push by many scholars in the 60s/70s to bring his body of work to the public attention (which is pry why he got mentioned in Appendix N while Poe, Chambers, and other horror writers weren’t).
These stories turned out to be pretty good, especially since they were his early work, and well… based on my experience with Robert Howard’s early Conan work… I was a bit worried. Though, I should also mention that I didn’t read any of his more controversial stories that involved racist caricatures. Lovecraft began his career very conservative and had racist opinions about other people and their cultures, but mellowed out when he actually started meeting new people and having new experiences. Though, based on his letters later on in life, he didn’t mellow out completely on the racist ideologies and still held some terrible opinions on others, but it was also the 1920s/1930s so I guess I can’t expect much from our ancestors.
I think the main thing we should take away from that is that we should all get out of our routine and meet new people. That’s what our hobby is all about, meeting new people, creating long-lasting friendships, and expanding our views on the world.
Review
insert drumroll
4.25/5
The stories were good. I enjoyed them. I’d reread (most of) them again. But they aren’t his best work. They hold the imagination well, they have interesting elements to them but… their twists have also been done a million times by other creators (who may have been inspired by Lovecraft). Unfortunately, with their age, they lose some of the uniqueness they no doubt had when they were first written and when no one was doing what Lovecraft was.
As with other short stories, there is a frustration that you aren’t really getting to the meat of a character or learning much about the world. What you do get are tastes, but sometimes you just want a bigger bite of information or greater character development… which is just me complaining about short stories, though not all short stories do that to me. Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) is a fantastic group of short stories that fully realize a world and its characters in its limited pages.
But I suppose that’s enough of my complaining about short stories. Let’s talk about each one that we read and go over my thoughts on them.
The Alchemist
Our first story finds us following a man whose entire family has, for hundreds of years, died upon reaching the age of 32 in mysterious ways. The family has slowly dwindled to our protagonist who resides in his family’s old castle that has slowly been rotting away. We find our protagonist, almost 32, exploring the ruined parts of the castle where he finds a trapdoor. He finds a passage that leads him to a man, who tries to kill him. Our protagonist survives, which can’t be said for all of Lovecraft’s protagonists, and it is revealed that this was a sorcerer, or alchemist, who had been decimating our protagonist’s family for generations. They had used their knowledge of alchemical recipes to keep them alive for hundreds of years.
This was an interesting story with a lot of promise and ideas to steal. I think this would be a fantastic mission to run in something like Call of Cthulu or even in Dungeons & Dragons if you wanted a haunted castle and play with the idea of a revenant or a revenge-focused lich who really needs to calm down.
I would’ve loved to hear more about the alchemist, but that is a thing that Lovecraft does. He never explains a mystery, never gives the reader more than the barest of descriptions of horrific creatures, and doesn’t bother to address magic and how it may or may not work. There isn’t much else to say about this short story, beyond it not being as tight as it could be. It’s a pretty short story, it tells a specific thing, and then leaves the reader to ponder. There isn’t a lot left to ponder, but it at least gives you ideas on how to use it in your games.
The Tomb
The Tomb follows our protagonist, Jervas, as they discover a mausoleum as a child. They are obsessed with this mausoleum throughout their childhood, during their teenage years, and as an adult. Because the padlock is so strong or rusted closed, they are unable to enter the mausoleum so instead they sleep beside the tomb often.
During one of these times when they sleep next to the mausoleum, they awake and realize they know where the key to open the tomb is located. They unlock the tomb and find a coffin with their name, Jarvis, written on it. From then on, they sleep in the empty coffin each night, yet anyone who watches Jervas thinks he is only sleeping by the tomb like he has done for all these years. This continues until one night, he sets out for the tomb at night with a storm coming. During his sleep, he sees his home, a mansion, restored to its former state and hosting a large party, which Jervas attends until lightning hits and burns down the mansion, including Jervas as well. He then wakes up to two men holding him while he is screaming, and his father looking on.
From here Jervas believes he is the reincarnation of a “Jervas Hyde” who wished to be laid to rest in the family tomb, as he was not when he cremated by the burning mansion, his ashes flung away. Jervas is then sent to a mental asylum, but it is discovered within the sealed tomb, that there is a coffin with a plate on it that reads “Jervas”. The story ends with Jervas telling the reader that he has been promised by his family that he will be buried in the coffin when he dies.
This story didn’t do much for me. Of the five I read, this was definitely the weakest for me. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me until I looked up more information on the story, and even then… it’s fine. The main character isn’t very interesting, which means the characters aren’t very interesting in here since you don’t really learn about anyone else but the protagonist. It could definitely be shortened into something more interesting to read, but even then… the story itself just doesn’t do anything for me. There are no stakes, it’s more of a slice of life for someone with mental health problems than true horror.
Dagon
Finally a story with true cosmic horror! This story opens up with a sailor adrift at sea after escaping a German naval ship during the early days of World War I. The sailor eventually finds himself stranded on a chunk of land that has been raised from the sea floor, and he must wait three days for the black mire to dry out enough for them to walk across its muddy surface. As the sailor explores this new land, he reaches a hill that sits on the edge of a massive canyon, and at the bottom finds a white stone object that he refers to as the monolith and is covered in unfamiliar hieroglyphs.
As the sailor studies the monolith, a strange, otherworldly creature crawls out of the water and begins worshiping at the monolith. The sailor then flees back to his boat and pushes it out to sea where they remain adrift until they are picked up by another boat. We next find our narrator in a mental hospital where he is retelling this tale for us, though his drugs are being to run out and it is revealed that the story is part of a suicide note. Though the story ends with the sailor screaming about a hand and that something is at the window.
This is probably my favorite of the five stories I read, mostly cause it has that first look at cosmic horror that Lovecraft is so well known for. I very much enjoyed the idea of a sailor lost at sea, stumbling across some ancient land and religious site (basically going on an unholy pilgrimage, even if they don’t realize it), and finding something so horrific that they can only flee.
Which brings us to something that Lovecraft is quite adept at doing. His horror is never explained, his monsters are not fully detailed, instead, he relies on the narrator to fill in the blanks. This doesn’t always work out well (like the first story we reviewed) but here it works very well. The creature rising out of the ocean could be an aboleth, a kraken, a whale, or any other ancient creature found at the bottom of the ocean, far from view. While some might believe it is Dagon itself, I’d doubt that since it is described as worshipping at the monolith, which if you are the god that the monolith is dedicated to, you probably aren’t worshiping yourself. Then again, maybe Narcissus would disagree.
In addition, this is a great location to bring into your naval campaign. The party stumbles into a chunk of land that seems to have been dredged up from the bottom of the ocean and they find weird hieroglyphs, ancient religions, and horrific monsters that seem to be from other worlds. How horrifying and exciting!
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
This story isn’t so much a story, but rather written in the style of a memoir. It doesn’t so much as provide a story, but rather presents a series of small vignettes where you learn more about the narrator - and slowly come to the conclusion that something just isn’t right. It isn’t until near the end that you realize that the narrator is over 220 years old. This goes to explain why the text is written in an antiquated way.
This story isn’t very exciting, but it is interesting. I enjoyed the way it was written and how it slowly revealed that the narrator was so old. It is a slow burn but still has some charm to it. The biggest thing is that this is obviously H. P. Lovecraft poking fun at his writing style. Many people may find Lovecraft’s style to be antiquated itself.
Regardless, I think Lovecraft’s idea that you don’t grow out of the way you talk or write is interesting. When we see people like vampires in our fiction, rarely do they have an antiquated accent or use ‘old-timey’ words. Instead, they are pretty modern unless they are supposed to be the ‘oldest’ of their kin. In this story, the narrator is only 200 years old and it would’ve been easy for them to change to match their time period but no, they are set in their ways. Perhaps that is something to use in my own game where older creatures speak in more antiquated ways to help drive that point to the fore. Maybe ‘elven’ is just the ancient language of the world, they just never bothered to change it to match the current lingo since they are still thinking about it.
Polaris
We find our protagonist viewing the night sky from his window, focusing on the Pole Star, Polaris. He continues to explain the starscape above him, and how he once saw an aurora over his house in a swamp. This led to him dreaming of a city of marble lying on a plateau between two mountains, the Polaris above the city. This city was filled with strange inhabitants, speaking a language he didn’t know but could understand.
There were many other times that the narrator dreamed of being in the city, and eventually wished to actually join the city instead of just being an incorporeal visitor. One night, he accomplishes just that, gaining a physical form and becoming a true inhabitant of the city. He gains the knowledge of his new identity, and that the city he was in, Olathoë, was being besieged by an enemy known as the Inutos.
While the others in the city are engaged in combat with the Inutos, the narrator is sent to a watchtower to signal when the Inutos arrive, alerting the city. When he arrives in the tower, he notices the Polaris in the sky and feels an evil presence from it. Slowly he drifts to sleep, failing in his duty to protect Olathoë, and wakes up in his house. The narrator becomes convinced that his life on Earth is but a dream, a cursed dream that he can never wake up from. Perhaps because he betrayed Olathoë by falling asleep.
It’s an interesting story to close out on. I think it has a lot of things I can mine for my games, and I love the idea of a city you can only visit in your dreams (which, if you do too, check out our posts on Dream and Exploring the Dream). Unfortunately, the story is very narrative-focused and so we don’t really learn much about the city or its people. We are told that the city is magnificent and wonderful, that the narrator never wants to leave it - but we aren’t ever given a reason. It’s kind of a blank slate that we can fill with our own imagination… but I’d have liked more details… mostly so I can use those details in other places, maybe as an homage to this story.
Regardless, perhaps the ruins of Olathoë can still exist in my game. And on a watchtower overlooking the city, is a magically-preserved and sleeping watcher.
The Good
I really enjoyed these stories. They are filled with a dozen ideas each, and the more you read through the stories, the more ideas you are going to be able to find. You can also see what Dungeons & Dragons has been inspired by (and stolen) across these stories.
Not only that, but they are also easy to read. I know Lovecraft has his critiques complaining about his writing style, but I had an easier time reading his stories than something like The Dying Earth or The Elf King’s Daughter. It feels more modern to me, though I don’t know if I’m just being weird or if I need to read more modern books and stop reading so much 70s and 80s fantasy.
The Bad
Apparently, women just don’t exist in our past. Never mind that they make up ~50% of our population. None of these stories have women in them, whether briefly mentioned or have any speaking roles. To be fair, I guess, these stories are largely about a single person and their encounters, not about talking to a large number of people or day-to-day drama. But still. I can be grumpy about this and bring it up every time it happens as a reminder to others that it should not be normal that stories only contain white, straight males
The other thing is also just a hallmark of this horror, and isn’t really a complaint so much as a desire for more. I want more information on this world, I want more information on the monsters, I want more information on others. These stories were all very centric towards the protagonist, with very little information given to the reader that you could completely trust. While I know it is the style of these short stories, after five of them, I wanted something different that could provide more to dig my teeth into.
Takeaways
There is a ton to get from these short stories. I’ve read some other stories from Lovecraft, the ones to do with Cthulu, and I remembered how much I was inspired by those. These stories are very interesting, not just as a reading exercise, but as a way to bring horror into your game. I’ve complained before that horror is hard to do when you have a group of super-adventurers who you can’t simply kill because they saw something scary. Kind of defeats the purpose of them being super-adventurers.
But you can have horrible things happen to the people of the world. The Alchemist is a great story that you can take and augment for your game, letting the heroes be the ones who protect the man from the generational serial killer.
Or have them stumble onto a chunk of ocean floor and fight horrific monsters, but keep the true evil monster, like Dagon, obfuscated and unknowable.
Or have their dreams be filled with a city under siege by monsters, but they can only watch helplessly as the watcher passes into sleep and they must find a way to wake up the watchman or save the city.
There are tons of ways that you can play around with each story, and I’m excited to take those ideas and use them at my table. Once I read a few other things, as a cleanser, I want to check out a few more short stories and steal a few more ideas for my games.
Other Media
If you enjoyed these short stories, here are a few recommendations I can make for you:
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Sphinx, etc)
John Dies at the End (2007) by David Wong / Jason Pargin
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances (2015) by Neil Gaiman
The Martian Chronicles (1950) by Ray Bradbury
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