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FSFNET BITNET Fantasy-Science Fiction Fanzine Volume 01 Number 04
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CONTENTS
Editorinomican Mad Orny al-Hazred
Featured Author: H.P. LOVECRAFT Orny
Call of Cthulhu Game Review Mike H.
The Book HPL
The Cthulhu Mythos Merlin
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Editorial
Greetings, and welcome to the Howard Phillips Lovecraft special issue
of FSFnet. I must apologize for the lateness of this issue, but, as
many of you know already, I am in the middle of spending three weeks in
wonderful (?) New York City. I hope that you will find the issue worth
the wait. Future issues should be forthcoming within a few weeks,
depending on how things go here.
Submissions and other response can be sent to my Maine account, and
will receive proper attention, usually within one to five days. If you
have something that you would like to bring to my attention, I will be
using TIGQC489 @ CUNYVM during my stay in NYC, which should last until
the 20th of March.
I would like to thank the contributors for their help, and I would
like to apologize to Eric (@ UCONN) for having to ask him to withdraw a
fine submission, due to length. Merlin's overview of the Mythos is an
excellent article, and Mike's CoC game review is lucid. I hope that
Lovecraft fans enjoy this issue, although there is not enough room to do
his work justice, and I hope that those of you who have not been
introduced to HPL find this issue enjoyable and interesting.
Issue five should be following this issue rather rapidly, and will
definitely appear in your reader queues before the end of the month. It
will contain sequels to stories that appeared in issue three, and, of
course, another featured author... I really ought to start thinking
about who...
Well, you know how it is. Enjoy, and spread the word!
Orny <NMCS025 @ MAINE and TIGQC489 @ CUNYVM>
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Featured Author: HOWARD PHILLIPS LOVECRAFT
H.P. Lovecraft has become one of the most well-known of the early
writers in the pulp science fiction/horror field. His life was very
controversial, and there has been passionate debate over how much of
Lovecraft's work was influenced by his early experiences. However, his
writings remain popular works of horror, and HPL has had many followers
and imitators.
Lovecraft was born and lived all his life in Providence, Rhode
Island. His father was placed in a mental home when HPL was three, and
died of paresis when Howard was 8. His mother, from all accounts, was
psychoneurotic, eventually being institutionalized as well. HPL was
brought up in a very Victorian household, and therefore his emotions and
imagination were suppressed. He was taught to read early, and his
childhood was filled with writing experiments. However, Howard was a
sickly child, and was not exposed to the world outside his home. He was
made very aware of his own shortcomings, with possible psychological
implications.
HPL carried on a number of active correspondances with younger
authors once he had broken into the pulp market, and many people feel
that if he had spent less time on his letters he might have been more
productive; however, for Lovecraft, these epistles were necessary to
help him cope with his incredibly low self-image, to help him deal with
his loneliness, and to gather news and ideas from the vast world outside
his experience.
Lovecraft's style was heavily influenced by Poe, Arthur Machen, and
Lord Dunsany, although HPL also filtered his ideas through his life-
experience. For example, Lovecraft used very little dialogue, for he
did not have a great deal of experience in conversation. Most of his
tales are located in New England, a fact which adds believability to his
tales, but also becomes redundant. HPL distinctly avoided sex in his
stories, and any women who appear are as nonfeminine as his mother.
One of Lovecraft's favorite writing mechanisms is the use of an
ancient, forbidden tome, usually the Necronomicon, a book originally of
his invention, though several hoaxes have been perpetrated. This may
have been borrowed from Poe's "ancient sources" or Robert W. Chambers'
"King in Yellow", but no fantastic book has ever been portrayed as
effectively as Lovecraft's. More recent authors have copied the tactic
with marginal success: Robert E. Howard's "Unaussprechlichen Kulten"
and Robert Bloch's "De Vermis Mysteriis" being examples.
Lovecraft's works are many and varied, beginning with his earlier
tales, to be found in Del Rey's recent reprints "The Tomb" and "The Doom
that Came to Sarnath" and culminating in his popular Cthulhu Mythos
cycle. Most of his work is in the form of short stories, although he
also wrote poetry which is generally considered marginal. In his own
eyes, his best work was the story "Colour out of Space", followed by
"The Music of Eric Zann". I tend to agree with Lovecraft on this, but
would also suggest "The Tomb", "The Doom that Came to Sarnath", "The
Call of Cthulhu", and the Charles Dexter Ward novella. The Del Rey
reprints are all excellent collections, and many other works are
available, if, like some of HPL's characters, one enjoys delving for
arcane and wond'rous tomes of ancient lore.
H.P. Lovecraft is a classic horror author and a must for horror fans;
however, it must be remembered that he wrote his works for pulp
magazines who were not interested in master works of style. He wrote to
earn his living, which was, at best, meagre, and his unique psychology
and situation left many gaps in his writing style. However, he was also
a master at certain techniques that budding authors should note, and
that horror fans would appreciate.
Orny <NMCS025 @ MAINE>
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Call of Cthulhu GAME REVIEW
Fans of H.P Lovecraft's infamous 'Cthulhu mythos' stories and general
horror buffs now have a role playing game designed just for them:
Chaosium's fantasy role playing game 'Call of Cthulhu'. If you are
bored by standard role playing games, tired of the old 'kill monster,
take its treasure, go on to next monster...' limbo inherent in many
fantasy games, or if you just want to try something different, Call of
Cthulhu may be worth looking into. Based entirely on the world of H.P.
Lovecraft, where mankind is beset by immortal elder gods of
mindshattering power and insane human sorcerers bent on the enslavement
of humanity, this game offers adventurers a different approach to
gaming; Horror based role playing. In this world, players fight
sorcerers and evil humans, lose sanity, and run from monsters a lot.
The enjoyment of it is derived not from successfully killing the enemy,
but from successfully running away before it eats your face off. Combat
plays a small part in this game, which instead centers around detective
work coupled with a general atmosphere of Gothic horror and impending
doom.
The gaming system is remarkably simple, and anyone familiar with
Chaosium's gaming system will find Call to be similar to other Chaosium
games, such as Elfquest, Stormbringer, and Elric. Hit points are
computed in a simple (some might say primitive) way by averaging size
and con. Sanity is a statistic unique to this game, and is used more
often than hit points, with a character being shocked into madness by
'unspeakably blasphemous horrors', as H.P.L. might have put it. The
overall game system is more logic oriented than most others, with a list
of abilities and areas of knowledge somewhat similar to Top Secret, only
more diverse and lengthy. Combat is simple, with parries, critical
hits, and a percentage chance to hit any given target. (Those who value
greater realism in a gaming system may wish to use a system of
'difficulty factors' like that used in the James Bond role playing
game. Assigning a constant chance to hit any target at any range with a
given weapon is not exactly realistic.) However, a clever gamemaster can
make up for any deficiencies in the game system and find a right blend
of realism and simplicity.
Modules for Call are not easy to find, being less numerous than those
of many other games. Most modules published by Chaosium are in the form
of long campaigns, with six or more modules usually linked by a central
theme, and flowing nicely from one to the other. These modules cost
approximately ten dollars, and are well worth it since they provide many
hours of game time. The modules state that they will last for sixty
hours, but a gamemaster well versed in Lovecraft's literature can
stretch it out to at least a hundred hours. That comes to a dime an
hour, a much better deal than most other games can offer. Some titles
to look for are: Shadows of Yog Sothoth, Masks of Nyarlathotep, The
Asylum, The Fungi from Yuggoth, Death in Dunwich and others.
The game itself may prove difficult to find; almost as difficult as
locating books by H.P.L. The easiest way to get a copy of the game if no
local store has it is to order it direct from Chaosium; there are
advertisements in Dragon magazine with the address. Modules will
probably be similar to track down, but an order form is enclosed with
the game, so that is no big problem.
(Note: try to get the second edition of the game. The first is flawed
in several ways, which are corrected in the second edition. Corrections
for the first edition were published as part some modules, including
'Shadows of Yog Sothoth'.)
Mike H. <HONORS4 @ UCONNVM>
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THE BOOK
My memories are very confused. There is even much doubt as to where
they begin; for at times I feel appalling vistas of years stretching
behind me, while at other times it seems as if the present moment were
an isolated point in a grey, formless infinity. I am not even certain
how I am communicating this message. While I know I am speaking, I have
a vague impression that some strange and perhaps terrible mediation will
be needed to bear what I say to the points where I wish to be heard. My
identity, too, is bewilderingly cloudy. I seem to have suffered a great
shock - perhaps from some utterly monstrous outgrowth of my cycles of
unique, incredible experience.
These cycles of experience, of course, all stem from that worm-
riddled book. I remember when I found it - in a dimly lighted place
near the black, oily river where the mists always swirl. That place was
very old, and the ceiling-high shelves full of rotting volumes reached
back endlessly through windowless inner rooms and alcoves. There were,
besides, great formless heaps of books on the floor and in crude bins;
and it was in one of these heaps that I found the thing. I never
learned its title, for the early pages were missing; but it fell open
toward the end and gave me a glimpse of something which sent my senses
reeling.
There was a formula - a sort of list of things to say and do - which
I recognized as something black and forbidden; something which I had
read of before in furtive paragraphs of mixed abhorrence and fascination
penned by those strange ancient delvers into the universe's guarded
secrets whose decaying texts I loved to absorb. It was a key - a guide
- to certain gateways and transitions of which mystics have dreamed and
whispered since the race was young, and which lead to freedoms and
discoveries beyond the three dimensions and realms of life and matter
that we know. Not for centuries had any man recalled its vital
substance or known where to find it, but this book was very old indeed.
No printing-press, but the hand of some half-crazed monk, had traced
these ominous Latin phrases in unicals of awesome antiquity.
I remember how the old man leered and tittered, and made a curious
sign with his hand when I bore it away. He had refused to take pay for
it, and only long afterward did I guess why. As I hurried home through
those narrow, winding, mist-cloaked waterfront streets I had a frightful
impression of being stealthily followed by softly padding feet. The
centuried, tottering houses on both sides seemed alive with a fresh and
morbid malignity - as if some hitherto closed channel of evil
understanding had abruptly been opened. I felt that those walls and
overhanging gables of mildewed brick and fungoid plaster and timber -
with eye-like, diamond-paned windows that leered - could hardly desist
from advancing and crushing me... yet I had read only the least fragment
of that blasphemous rune before closing the book and bringing it away.
I remember how I read the book at last - white-faced, and locked in
the attic room that I had long devoted to strange searchings. The great
house was very still, for I had not gone up till after midnight. I
think I had a family then - though the details are very uncertain - and
I know there were many servants. Just what the year was, I cannot say;
for since then I have known many ages and dimensions, and have had all
my notions of time dissolved and refashioned. It was by the light of
candles that I read - I recall the relentless dripping of the wax - and
there were chimes that came every now and then from distant belfries. I
seemed to keep track of those chimes with a peculiar intentness, as if I
feared to hear some very remote, intruding note among them.
Then came the first scratching and fumbling at the dormer window that
looked out high above the other roofs of the city. It came as I droned
aloud the ninth verse of that primal lay, and I knew amidst my shudders
what it meant. For he who passes the gateways always wins a shadow, and
never again can he be alone. I had evoked - and the book was indeed all
I had suspected. That night I passed the gateway to a vortex of twisted
time and vision, and when morning found me in the attic room I saw in
the walls and shelves fittings that which I had never seen before.
Nor could I ever see the world as I had known it. Mixed with the
present scene was always a little of the past and a little of the
future, and every once-familiar object loomed alien in the new
perspective brought by my widened sight. From then on I walked in a
fantastic dream of unknown and half-known shapes; and with each new
gateway crossed, the less plainly could I recognize the things of the
narrow sphere to which I had so long been bound. What I saw about me,
none else saw; and I grew doubly silent and aloof lest I be thought mad.
Dogs had a fear of me, for they felt the outside shadow which never left
my side. But still I read more - in hidden, forgotten books and scrolls
to which my new vision led me - and pushed through fresh gateways of
space and being and life-patterns toward the core of the unknown cosmos.
I remember the night I made the five concentric circles of fire on
the floor, and stood in the innermost one chanting that monstrous litany
the messenger from Tartary had brought. The walls melted away, and I
was swept by a black wind through gulfs of fathomless grey with the
needle-like pinnacle of unknown mountains miles below me. After a while
there was utter blackness, and then the light of myriad stars forming
strange, alien constellations. Finally I saw a green-litten plain far
below me, and discerned on it the twisted towers of a city built in no
fashion I had ever known or read of or dreamed of. As I floated closer
to that city I saw a great square building of stone in an open space,
and felt a hideous fear clutching at me. I screamed and struggled, and
after a blankness was again in my attic room sprawled flat over the five
concentric circles on the floor. In that night's wandering there was no
more of strangeness than in many a former night's wandering; but there
was more of terror because I knew I was closer to those outside gulfs
and worlds than I had ever been before. Thereafter I was more cautious
with my incantations, for I had no wish to be cut off from my body and
from the earth in unknown abysses whence I could never return...
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
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THE CTHULHU MYTHOS
The Cthulhu mythos developed from Howard Phillips Lovecraft's
experimentation in the media of modern horror in the magazine Weird
Tales in the 1920's and 30's. The Mythos embodies a pantheon of evil
beings from other space-time continua, many of whom possess divine
powers. A fictitious history of the interactions of these beings and
their alien worshipers on this world and other distant planets comprises
the core of the Lovecraft mythology. The underlying theme of these
stories lies in the attempts of these beings to achieve physical
manifestation on Earth and the methods that foolish mortals utilize in
this goal.
Because the idea of a common mythos of places, races, and deities
appears only gradually in HPL's work, no real attempt was made to make
the cycle logically coherent until 1926 with the publication of "The
Call of Cthulhu". Further, HPL encouraged other authors, particularly
Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, and
Frank Belknap Long, to enlarge upon the Mythos in their own fiction.
Following HPL's death in 1937 a host of other writers have made notable
contributions to the Cthulhu cycle. Thus, stories throughout the mythos
are often contradictory or overlapping, making a glossary of the
elements of the cycle difficult. For reasons of simplicity and space,
only those places, races, and deities which were mentioned in at least
two of HPL's own stories are included.
DEITIES:
The Elder Gods - Elsewhere referred to as the "Great Ones" and the
"Other Gods". They are a group of semi-benevolent deities which
struggle against the "Old Ones". HPL left this group greatly
undeveloped and unexplored with the exception of the deity Nodens, "Lord
of the Abyss", who aids the protagonist of "The Dream-Quest of Unknown
Kadath".
The Old Ones - The group of evil deities whose intrigues are the
subject of most of the cycle's stories. These deities often have both
incorporal and corporal forms. The primary goal of these beings was to
extend their influence into the modern world. All of the following gods
are considered "Old Ones":
Yog-Sothoth - The "All-in-One and the One-in-All of limitless being
and self - the last, utter sweep which has no confines and which
outreaches fancy and mathematics alike", Yog-Sothoth resembles an evil
Brahma, the Hindu god of the unification of all existence. He co-rules
the pantheon of Old Ones with Azathoth. In spite of his seemingly
indescribable form, we are told in "The Dunwich Horror" that he
resembles "an octopus, centipede, spider kind o' thing" which is capable
of physical manifestation on earth.
Azathoth - "The blind idiot god who sprawls at the center of ultimate
chaos", "circled by his flopping horde of mindless amorphous dancers,
and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a demonic flute held in
nameless paws." He, "the Lord of all Things", and his antithesis Yog-
Sothoth the "One-in-All", comprise a dialectical universe. Though he
never visits our dimension, he is seen by many astral voyagers in the
Mythos.
Other Gods - Often confused with the Elder Ones because of their
name, these are the direct servants of Azathoth: the dancers and
players. They often visit the highest peaks of the world as in "The
Other Gods".
Shub-Niggurath - "The Goat with a Thousand Young". Direct servant to
both Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth, he is the Pan-like fertility god.
Nyarlathotep - "Soul and messenger" of the Other Gods, Nyarlathotep
is represented in two forms: As "crawling Chaos" and as "The Black
Man". In the later form he is instrumental in organizing the ceremonies
of witchcraft which allow the aliens to visit this dimension.
Cthulhu - A semi-divine being who is referred to as a priest of the
gods. He leads an aquatic race called the Deep Ones who descended to
earth from the stars. He has been imprisoned in R'lyeh by the Elder
Gods.
RACES:
The Deep Ones - A species of aquatic humanoids which inhabit the deep
ocean trenches of the earth. Most attend their god Cthulhu who is
imprisoned on the island of R'lyeh, though some have chosen to settle
near coastal fishing villages as demonstrated in "The Shadow Over
Innsmouth". They seem to be governed by Dagon who is the immediate
subordinate of Cthulhu.
The Old Ones of Leng - Ancient race of aliens who inhabited
magnificent cities near the southern pole. They made a treaty with the
Deep Ones to insure that each remains in their respective realms. They
are said to tentacled, barrel-shaped beings with starfish-like heads and
membranous wings.
The Shoggoths - A race of giant, amorphous creatures developed by the
Old Ones of Leng to be used as manual laborers. They eventually
rebelled and destroyed their masters' civilization.
Mi-Go - A race of crab-like beings which were identified with the
Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas by HPL.
PLACES:
R'lyeh - The sunken island of Cthulhu which periodically rises from
the depths at different points in the oceans of the world. It is the
city of the Deep Ones and prison of their god.
The Plateau of Leng - The home of the Old Ones located in Antartica.
"At the Mountain of Madness" gives the best description of this place.
Kadath - The home of the Elder Gods which lies in the "frozen waste"
beyond Leng. It is the goal of all who seek truth and enlightenment.
Arkham, Massachusetts - A fictitious town which was the setting of
many of HPL's stories. It is patterned after Salem and is the site of
the Miskatonic University, whose library contains one of the forbidden
copies of Abdul Alhazred's Necronomicon.
Innsmouth, Massachusetts - Another fictitious village created by HPL.
This town is located near the site of an off-shore settlement of Deep
Ones, with whom the town has forbidden commerce. The town is modeled
after Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Per Adonai Eloim, Adenali Jehova, Adonai Sabaoth Metraton....
Joseph (Merlin) Curwen <P0575175 @ UMVMA>
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