Friday, March 18, 2011

More Lovecraft short stories:

Polaris
A guy sees a city in another time/place. Finally one day he becomes a part of it. In it he's supposed to keep watch from a tower for when the enemy attacks. He falls asleep. Possibly a certain evil star played a role... Where are we really? Who are we really? Hard to tell... Goes well "Happy Ghosts".

The Green Meadow
A diary is found with a large meteorite. It's a longwinded diary. Very prettily written while saying hardly anything, but seemingly "real" just from the preponderance of description... He sees something at end real awful which isn't explained at all. The End.

Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Doctor at the mental institution realizes one of his patients is possessed by alien higher intelligence. Which is engaged in a long term fight with some creature that is at some far away star. Alien briefly and vaguely explains and then leaves patient's body as it dies. Nobody believes doctor. The End.

Memory
One page long. Genie and Demon talking. Man is extinct and forgotten.

Old Bugs
About a drunk who stops a kid from starting to drink. Turns out the drunk had been engaged to the kids mother long ago. Published 40 years after it was written. Long after Lovecraft was dead. Pretty good story though. Like something on the Twilight Zone.

The Transition of Juan Romero
Miners dig into some bottomless pit. The actions lead us to believe some strange god is in it. It leads one of the peons into it and kills him. The other people claim the peon (and his friend) never left their room. Then the pit disappears. There is something about this story. A beginning of really touching on Lovecraft's alternate gods. Hardly anything happens but this one has more weight to it.

The White Ship
Even more dreamy... "ethereal" than other Lovecraft stories. They somehow combine a high level of detail with being extremely vague. Like a dream I suppose. In this one the white ship takes him to a heaven like place. Where eventually he gets bored and goes on searching for some other place. But he doesn't find it. Ends up back in really boring old reality.

The Doom That Came to Sarnath
One city and people totally destroy a strange race of humanoids. A 1000 years later the humanoids return and attack. Later no remains of the magnificent city of 1000 years are ever found. The End. Again Lovecraft goes on and on describing the setting, the surroundings, while saying almost nothing. No dialogue/characterization. And almost nothing happens. No attempt to put a plot together. It's like Lovecraft gets this tiny image in his head of one little happening and somehow without adding anything but a ton of detail on the setting he manages to write a "complete" story.

The Statement of Randolph
Sillier one. Two guys go off and one digs a hole in the ground, or was it a grotto? Then he yells to the other to run away from the unspeakable horror! The other doesn't until something speaks and says his friend is dead. The End.

The Terrible Old Man
Three guys plan on robbing and old guy. Instead the old man kills them. All second hand as usual. No decription of how. The End.

The Tree
Two sculptors who are great friends are in a competition for a king. The one dies during it and is buried. A strange looking tree grows up out of his grave and it's limb ends up destroying the statue the other sculpture was making. The End.

The Cats of Ulthar
Old couple kills cats. Gypsy kid's cat is killed. Kid uses some kind of magic and all the cats in town go and kill and eat the old couple.

Lovecraft purposely uses larger obscure words. Somehow this does add to his stories although without the Kindle dictionary function it always just annoyed me before.