The title of this anthology begs a very good question: if a Norwegian steering a yacht square into Cthulhu’s face can’t take out the most nightmarish of H. P. Lovecraft’s eldritch creations, what hope should anyone put in a simple piece of sharpened steel?
Well, for better or for worse, there’s something about a finely wrought blade and a strong hand to hold it that inspires confidence, even when the odds are against us. Very against us, as is the case with the Old Ones. But long odds have never deterred a certain sort of swordsperson...
Mention a “Lovecraftian” tale and people often think first of stories focusing on academics puzzling over ancient scripts, or at least launching expeditions to gather information — even if it is information man was never intended to acquire. And yet, for as long as we’ve had the Mythos we’ve had action-packed, fantastical approaches to the telling of tales familiar to anyone who’s ever been excited by some sort of adventure starting in an inn. Somewhat predictably, Robert E. Howard gave us warrior-class protagonists battling slithery dark horrors; Clark Ashton Smith, rogues and wizards. C. L. Moore’s fiery Jirel of Joiry faced down horrors from beyond space and time; and even Lovecraft himself engaged in the telling of some tales of high adventure from time to time, most notably in “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” The adventures of Randolph Carter in the Dreamlands are everything an adventure-loving reader could want, with our hero knowing when to fight, and more importantly, when to flee. While Lovecraft was less pleased with the overall effect of the tale, it undeniably set the stage for not only countless stories set in the Dreamlands but also hinted at the potential of setting Mythos tales in realms beyond the waking world — or at least our modern world, with its appalling lack of swords.
Even if Lovecraft had never dipped his dainty toes into the pool of “fantasy,” we would still have a compelling precedent for pitting the forces of cosmic horror against the sort of weaponry one usually finds paired with the addendum “and sorcery.” William Hope Hodgeson’s The Boats of the “Glen Carrig,” for example, of which Howie was a fan, has more swashbuckling encounters with obscene, eldritch monstrosities than you can shake a saber at. Then, of course, there is E. R. Eddison’s “The Worm Ouroborus,” which Lovecraft also admired, and which is one of the unsung progenitors of epic fantasy.
Looming — or perhaps more accurately, brooding — over the entire scene, however, are the Gentleman from Providence’s contemporaries, who penned far more accounts of eldritch action than Lovecraft himself, a good many of them historical or secondary-world. Robert E. Howard and C. L. Moore can obviously be credited with creating or at least codifying an entire subgenre of fantasy literature, their brawny brand inspiring countless films, comic books, and works of fiction (Charles Saunders’ Imaro being a favorite of both editors). Then there is the Clark Ashton Smith school of arch fantasy tinged with cosmic horror and human frailty, with which Jack Vance, Michael Shea, and even Fritz Leiber might be said to share a lineage.
Of course, none of this comes as a revelation to most fans of sword and sorcery; it could even be argued that part of what differentiates S&S from other branches of fantasy is the fatalistic pall of the subgenre. It’s not simply that sword and sorcery took off from the Weird Tales crew or that it often involves obscene rites and unspeakable horrors, it’s the amoral timbre of S&S that truly harkens back to Lovecraft, more so than “epic” or “high” fantasy — for whatever the battles won and glory earned, in the end the hours of mortals are brief and tragic, with the chaotic powers that lurk on the edge of mankind’s periphery never truly understood, and certainly never fully banished. Other forms of fantasy deal in absolutes, while sword and sorcery prefers to traffic in moral relativism and cosmic despair.
Swords v. Cthulhu is therefore the natural follow-up to Stone Skin Press’s previous action-packed mythos anthology, Shotguns v. Cthulhu. In that sterling collection, editor Robin D. Laws assembled fifteen modern masters to pen action-oriented Mythos tales of a modern or futuristic bent. Inspired by the quality of those stories, we began our quest to find fantastic (and fantastical) stories of derring-do and strength of arm, and settled... on twenty-two.
John Langan carves open our entry point with “The Savage Angela in: The Beast in the Tunnels.” Like the pulp alchemists of old, Langan fuses seemingly disparate elements into pure gold, though his reagents are (naturally) desperate action, epic monstrosities, and a melancholy sense of doom. Following this initial taste of the great inevitable is Michael Cisco and his “Non Omnis Moriar,” a sequel to Lovecraft’s own “The Very Old Folk,” set in Roman Hispania. Come along with us and follow a small party on an increasingly disquieting expedition into the Pyrenees to discover what befell the lost legion of Lovecraft’s tale. As with the best follow-ups to the master’s tales, Cisco doesn’t seek to one-up the original or explain away its mysteries; instead, he uses it as a springboard for his own brand of profound dread, both existential and intimate.
If the first two stories in the collection offer us different ends of the spectrum as to what Mythos-inspired fantasy can do, then Carrie Vaughn’s “The Lady of Shalott” lies on an entirely different plane altogether. Arthuriana and Lovecraftiana seem a natural fit, and yet while there are eerie threads woven into Vaughn’s story, at first the reader may overlook them for the broader tapestry, a piece that owes its tone to an unmistakable and less somber take on the Knights of the Round Table. As with previous masters of the field, like Clark Ashton Smith and Michael Shea, however, Vaughn proves that when properly executed, a deftly humorous piece can throw the horrors from beyond space and time into stark relief.
Having set the tone for the anthology, we next journey to a place where the real and the Mythological blur together, as A. Scott Glancy takes us high into the Himalayas in “Trespassers.” Glancy knows his way around an action set piece, but he also possesses a historian’s eye for detail, and brings together two unlikely bedfellows for a rousing yarn. Similarly, Remy Nakamura gets some eldritch chocolate in his historical peanut butter with “The Dan no Uchi Horror,” which recasts classic Lovecraft into a wildly different time and place. Imagine Takashi Miike doing to Lovecraft what Kurosawa did to Shakespeare, and you’ve got an idea for the feel of Nakamura’s dark, violent, and sensual samurai thriller.
Next, L. Lark transports us into a realm of sun-drenched mytho-history for “St. Baboloki’s Hymn for Lost Girls.” Her poetic prose recasts cosmic horror in the language of fable, and we find that by normalizing the weird our perception shifts from unsettled to sympathetic. Bringing us back north, John Hornor Jacobs splashes our face with cold seawater and presses colder steel into our hands. In “The Children of Yig” he transports us to a bloody vision of the Viking age, where a young woman with nothing to lose and everything to prove must hold her own against perils as extreme as any in the sagas.
In “The Dreamers of Alamoi,” Jeremiah Tolbert takes us yet farther afield, to a fantastical land that feels by turns firm under our feet and then fleeting as a curious dream. The result is pleasantly disorienting, but the longer we stay, the more the world solidifies around us, and very soon it coalesces into a frantic nightmare from which the only escape is to plunge ever deeper.
Just as we wake from the strangeness of Tolbert’s vision, newcomer Ben Stewart’s “Two Suns over Zululand” starts off at a gallop and never slows down, as Zulu warriors struggle to repel a deadly invasion — and not the one they’ve been expecting. With breakneck pacing and mounting dread, Stewart’s breathless story balances brutal action with keen characterization and cosmic horror.
After the heat and intensity of Stewart’s tale, you’ll want to join us in a strangely familiar tavern to quench your thirst, catch your breath, and relax with a game of chance: Orrin Grey’s “A Circle That Ever Returneth In.” At first, it seems like a cheeky diversion, but like all sport to be found out here in the outer dark, this game is rigged, time and space distorting along with the pages to deny us even the solace of death.
As we stumble in a daze from Grey’s story, we find ourselves back in the world we know, outside a tranquil abbey in medieval Germany. Here, Wendy Wagner welcomes us home with “Ordo Virtutum,” which introduces the famous abbess and visionary Hildegard of Bingen to another mystic — one who may seem familiar to certain pilgrims. Wagner’s tale is siege horror at its finest, and as is so often the case when survivors try to insulate themselves from what lurks outside, the chilling question is... how long can they hold out?
No compendium of Lovecraftian fantasy would be complete without a voyage to the Dreamlands, and Andrew S. Fuller’s swashbuckling “Black Moon, Red Sails” layers its sinister escapism with real-world terrors that eclipse any cosmic threats. Afterward, M. K. Sauer’s “The Thief in the Sand” similarly provides Mythos comfort food, while blazing its own path through the trackless dunes, as it spins its yarn of greed with an unconventional protagonist holding the distaff. From these distant sands we then journey to northern England, where Jonathan L. Howard drags us deep into the bowels of the earth for his “Without Within,” set during the English Civil War.
From this known place we travel to unknown stars. Set in an environment yet more treacherous, Jason Heller’s “Daughter of the Drifting” takes us to a realm mercifully undreamed… at least, prior to this tome. Melding crisp narration with an unreliable landscape, Heller forges a piece as haunting as it is downright weird.
Bouncing us back to Earth and back in time, Natania Barron’s “The Matter of Aude’” submerges us in the Song of Roland, that classic chanson de geste set during the reign of Charlemagne. No mere pastiche, Barron’s piece captures the romanticism of the original while subtly contrasting the hopelessness of a mortal in the Mythos with the lot of women in such antique tales, and indeed, history itself.
This somber reality is flipped on its ear in “The Living, Vengeant Stars” by E. Catherine Tobler, which gloriously breaks all the supposed thou-shalt-nots of Mythos fiction as it delivers epic battles, doomed heroism, and a conflict older than our solar system. Then, from the blackness of space to the blue of the open sea, we set sail with Carlos Orsi’s “The Argonaut,” which might have been called “Errol Flynn Goes to Hell.”
Out of these waters teeming with violence we crawl back to shore, only to find ourselves in the past — specifically, to Eneasz Brodski’s version of ancient Rome, in “Of All Possible Worlds,” a place very different from what we’ve seen in history books. There are gladiators and barbarians here, priests and legionnaires, but not of the sort we expect, and the dangerous atmosphere thickens with every page, like the pungent incense used in some unspeakable rite.
Much of Mythos fiction focuses on the unwinnable nature of the struggle against the outer dark, where victory is only ever temporary, and meaningless on the cosmic scale. Yet without some glimmer of hope, there cannot be much tension, something demonstrated by Laurie Tom’s Three Kingdoms-set epic “The Final Gift of Zhuge Liang.” Instead of ending with the death of hope, hers is a tale that opens in that dark territory, and builds from there into an action-packed tale of friendship standing up in the face of inhuman foes. Complementing Tom’s piece is “The King of Lapland’s Daughter,” a wildly different meditation on the nature of camaraderie and hope by Nathan Carson. His alt-history Lapland is a land at once familiar and alien, and offers no false promise of a better tomorrow for we who are doomed by birth and damned by the fates.
Finally, our journey ends (or does it?) with Caleb Wilson’s spectacular “Bow Down Before the Snail King!” When our curtain descends, it is over a scene of desperate battles and subtle wit, bizarre adversaries, and equally strange heroes. This sly yet melancholic elegy for our anthology has style to burn and a structure that will make all lovers of non-Euclidean storytelling sit up and take notice.
So, grab your humble cutlass, your iklwa spear, or one of legend’s greatest swords, and journey with us from ancient Rome to feudal Japan, from the Dreamlands to lands there are no names for in the tongues of men. Prepare to confront the horrors that lurk on the edge of our world, always watching, always hungry, and whatever you do, don’t forget your cold steel…
Molly Tanzer and Jesse Bullington, Autumn 2015