Friday Faction: Dungeon Crawler Carl

The LitRPG genre appears to have got a loot box of its own with the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. LitRPG—or ‘Literary Role Playing Game’ is a genre of fiction in which the protagonists of the story are in a computerised game world, one that they are aware of being in, and have an understanding of the mechanics of the game world they are in. The term itself is barely more than a decade old, but it can be argued that books such as the 1978 Quag Keep by Andre Norton and the 1981 Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes are its precursors. With Dungeon Crawler Carl, the genre reaches a wider audience as the reader follows the exploits of an ordinary joe and his ex-girlfriend’s super-precious show cat, as together they attempt to survive a mega-dungeon and in the process save the world. The result is a knowing satire of roleplaying that combines the fish-out-of-water oddness of Douglas Adams’ The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the bureaucratic cruelty of Stephen King’s The Running Man.

The book opens with the destruction of the Earth, although not all of it, and not by a Vogon Constructor fleet. The Borant Corporation, an alien company from outer space, has bought the planet’s mineral rights and because no-one put in an objection, has flattened every building and turned the inside of the planet into a megadungeon with eighteen levels that the remaining fourteen million survivors of the planet must fight their way through. Of course, not everyone is going to survive, and the book maintains a running count that rapidly decreases as the secrets and lethality of the dungeon are revealed. All of which will be broadcast to the galaxy as one big reality video event—Big Brother or Survivor in a dungeon, if you will. This is how the purchasing corporation plans to recover its costs in the short term, focusing on the exploits and travails of the survivors who do well as Dungeon Crawlers. One such is Carl, ex-Coast Guard marine mechanic, who happens to be outside in the freezing winds of Seattle when the flattening occurs, wearing a leather jacket, no trousers, and a pair of crocs. His choice of clothes, certainly the lack of trousers and proper shoes, becomes a running joke throughout the book. As does his means of fighting—kicking and applying explosives to almost any situation, and his navigating his way around the interface. The latter is done as a computer roleplaying game interface that plays out in the minds of the Dungeon Crawlers.

The reason he is outside is Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk. This is the prize-winning show cat belonging to Beatrice, Carl’s girlfriend. Quickly after Carl finds himself in the dungeon, Princess Donut gets uplifted and turned from a pet into a Dungeon Crawler, and thus into a character in her own right, whilst Carl is classified as her bodyguard. After getting a briefing in a Safe Room, Carl and Donut set out to explore and find an entrance to the next level down, taking down mobs and bosses on the way. As they progress, Carl and Donut learn that there is much more to the dungeon than at first seems. It is built on a regular floorplan with blocks with district bosses rather than something more organic in design and the Artificial Intelligence behind the dungeon tailors the loot boxes that both Carl and Donut receive. So, Donut receives items that enhance her Charisma—after all, she is a princess—and lots of torches, whilst Carl receives items that enhance his feet and ability to stamp and kick, but is never destined to receive any trousers. There are daily updates on the dungeon that occur in response to the Dungeon Crawlers’ actions, television shows which Carl and Donut get scheduled to appear on once they begin to get famous and accrue followers, and politics playing out behind the scenes that this first book only hints at, but which will likely play out in the subsequent books in the series.

In terms of character, Carl himself, does not entirely come across as being wholly likeable. More of an everyman than a hero, in keeping with the genre, he is both aware of Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder and uses that knowledge to his advantage. Given the circumstances, it is understandable that he is exasperated, sometimes angry, by his situation, and that extends to his attitude to his girlfriend, Bea, who is first revealed to be cheating on him and then promiscuously cheating on him. It is a note of poor characterisation, not just in terms of Carl, but also of Bea, upon the part of the author, and it is not the only negative portrayal of women in the book. Several of the monsters, especially the boss monsters are more gross caricatures of women than monsters. Yet, Carl is driven to be the hero, to want to help the survivors from the old peoples’ home that was nearby his home and get them down to Level Two and then Level Three. To do that, he is forced to kill a lot of monsters, including a nursery of goblins, and he does feel guilty about it in exactly the opposite way that the average player of Dungeons & Dragons likely does not. The need to kill to Level up to survive almost assuages the feelings of guilt that Carl suffers from these actions, whilst the revelation that many of the monster denizens are literally waiting in fear for a dungeon crawler to turn up and kill them all, does the exact opposite.

In comparison, Princess Donut is a more interesting and likeable character even though she has the morality and attitude of a cat, uplifted to sentience and full expression. Princess Donut is often more insightful and aware than Carl is, but as a cat she is self-centred and embraces the fame of being a social media star where Carl bridles against it.

Dungeon Crawler Carl combines horror and humour, but not always effectively. The megadunegon as reality and what Carl and Donut have to do is the source for both, but it emphasises the horror more than the humour, which is from the absurdity of the situation. Both begin to weary after a while from the repetition of both and the book being just a little too long to really sustain either. The humour is also a bit too obvious and just not sharp enough to be really satirical, rarely getting above being amusing rather laugh out loud or clever.

Dungeon Crawler Carl ends almost midsentence, or at least mid-decision, rather than on definite conclusion or cliffhanger, so there is no impetus to start reading the next book if the reader has not decided already. Any reader who is not a roleplayer, whether of tabletop roleplaying games or computer games, is less likely to do so, whereas role-players are more likely to do so, since the series is squarely aimed at them, they are going to get the references, and really, there is not a lot of fiction aimed directly at them anyway. For them, the fact that they can buy this at their local bookshop is a bonus as is the fact that they might see the series adapted for television.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is an amiable read, a very knowing poke at traditional roleplaying played out on an absurd stage. It does not quite outstay its welcome, but it could have been sharper and leaner.

Friday Fiction: Welcome to Arkham

Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is just that little bit more than a simple guide to the city at the heart of the H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and the Cthulhu Mythos. In one way it is a simple exploration of the city and its strange history and places as presented in the Arkham Horror family of games published by Fantasy Flight Games, including of course, the Arkham Horror board game and Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and more recently, the roleplaying game Arkham Horror, and in another, it showcases the great artwork from the games. Seriously, the artwork is very, very good. Then in another way, it presents the city and its environs, including the towns and villages of Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, in a way that could be used with any horror roleplaying game. Which means that it could works as a companion to the recently released Call of Cthulhu: Arkham for Call of Cthulhu.

What it actually is though, is a reprint of the Arkham gazetteer that was originally in the Arkham Horror Deluxe Rulebook, published separate to the board game, along with expanded details of Lovecraft Country. Yet it is also more that than that. It is a copy of Welcome to Arkham, the introduction to the city published by the Arkham Historical Society after having been updated, revised, and expanded by the society’s curator, Reginald Peabody. Further, it is his personal copy, complete with notes that he compiled in order to update it, and then, now in hands of his niece, Myrna Todd, it has been annotated with her notes and correspondence with a friend in New York, after she begins investigating Arkham and beyond following her uncle’s disappearance. What this means is that there are multiple layers to this book, on one level a simple guide or artbook, on another a story and mystery. Which means that it can be enjoyed on multiple levels…

Published by Aconyte Books, also responsible for a series of novels set in the world of Arkham Horror, this outwardly guide to Arkham and inwardly the mystery of the disappearance of the guide’s author, begins with a letter to young Myrna Todd from the Miskatonic Valley sheriff, informing her of her uncle’s disappearance, and a letter to her friend in New York, before welcoming the reader to Arkham proper. Starting with downtown, the volume takes the reader from one district of the city to another, visiting in turn, its highs and its lows, its weird and its wondrous. The highs include Independence Square with its balmy tranquillity that contrasts sharply with the Gothic grandeur and tenebrosity of Arkham Sanatorium, with its patients receiving the very best care, but so many lost to a stranger madness. Similarly, the newly opened restaurant, La Bella Luna, offers the wonders of Italian cuisine brought to small town New England, but hides an entrance to the Clover Club, the city’s premier speakeasy, whilst the Palace Movie Theatre brings the best of Hollywood to its big screen on which some moviegoers have begun to see odd shadows at moments when the big feature is not show. The description of the Palace Movie Theatre is accompanied by a fantastic film that never was, Mask of Silver. Meanwhile, the Ward Theatre is going to stage a much-anticipated performance of The King in Yellow, following its premiere in Paris! In rougher Eastown, Hibb’s Roadhouse might claim to be ‘dry’, but it is where the city’s less than reputable citizens go to get a shot of booze, whilst Velma’s Diner, a classic railcar diner, might serve good food, but it where the patrons of Hibb’s Roadhouse go after it shuts for the night.

French Hill is home to the even stranger parts of Arkham. There is Silver Twilight Lodge, the meeting place of the Order of the Silver Twilight, headed by one Carl Sanford, known for its generous charity work, but suspected by some for conducting very dark rituals behind its closed doors. This is, of course, a pleasing nod, to ‘The Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight’ from Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. (These are not the only nods to the source material beyond that of H.P. Lovecraft, as Welcome to Arkham also draws from the pages of the various novels in the ‘Arkham Horror’ range.) Then there is the infamous ‘Witch House’, once home to the reviled witch, Keziah Mason, but now a series of poky apartments let to students at Miskatonic University who complain of a strange rodent that stalks the building with its weirdly human face and hands. These are only the start of the strange locations to be found in Arkham, others including ‘The Unnamable’, a collapsed mansion in the Merchant District that Arkhamites strive to avoid, the Black Cave in Rivertown with its odd geology and fungi and the spelunkers often lost within its depths, and Ye Olde Magick Shoppe in Uptown, a cramped premises stuffed with mouldering books, maps, and artefacts linked to places that geographers have no knowledge of.

Of course, Miskatonic University gets a section of its own, including the Miskatonic Museum and the Orne Library, and as a bonus, a working draft of ‘Book of Living Myths’. This is almost a Mythos tome of its very own, penned by Miskatonic University scholar Kōhaku Narukami, which explores the parallels between classic folklore and the Mythos. Beyond this, Welcome to Arkham draws both the reader and Myrna Todd up and down the Miskatonic Valley, visiting in turn Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport, for similar treatments as that accorded to Arkham. Throughout, the locations are given both a fantastic illustration and a description, but this is not the only artwork in the pages of Welcome to Arkham. There are newspaper front pages reporting on important events such as the widespread, horrific destruction that beset Dunwich and the raid by Federal authorities on Innsmouth. There are also photographs, official reports, tickets, business cards, and plain postcards, the latter penned by Myrna charting the course of her investigation in the disappearance of her uncle, destined for New York, but not yet sent. Some are illustrated as if to appear attached to the pages by a paperclip, but others intrude into the pages, cut off by the neatness of the pages of Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT. Their creation is so good though, that you wish they were real and that every one of them would stick out between the pages and make the book bulge with the many things, artefacts, and documents stuffed between those pages.

If perhaps, there is anything missing from the pages of Welcome to Arkham, it is a map. Arguably, a book which is ostensibly designed as a guidebook, warrants a map. Perhaps the modular nature of the book’s source material, the Arkham Horror board game, and more specifically, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, means that like the source material, the book needs no map. However, if not coming to Welcome to Arkham via either of those games, the conceit of it begs for a map.

Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is the chance to explore the familiar, but from a different angle, that of source material from a board game and a card game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, rather than a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror. Though all draw from the same sources, there is sufficient divergence perhaps that Welcome to Arkham is ever so slightly odd, slightly less familiar. That said, fans of the Arkham Horror board game, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, and the ‘Arkham Horror’ series of novels, will much that they will recognise and enjoy, as will the devotees of the writings of Lovecraft and of Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying. Welcome to Arkham: An Illustrated Guide for Visitors to the Town of ARKHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, and Environs Including DUNWICH, INNSMOUTH, and KINGSPORT is an engaging combination of enticing artwork and literary conceit that constantly hints at the dangers to be found in poking around in places and the doings of people that are best left secret.

Friday Fiction: The Dunwich Horror

The Dunwich Horror is one of horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous stories. It takes place in the mouldering decrepit parts of Massachusetts where the ravines seem to run deep and the trees appear to leap up to ring the stone-topped hills from which strange sounds emanate, and few if any of the villagers appear to work their boulder strewn pastures. Here stands Dunwich, a refuge for those fleeing the witch trials of Salem, decayed and shunned in equal measure, where no man of the cloth has set foot for centuries. The Bishops and the Whatelys, the leading families, such as they are, send their few scions to study at Harvard and elsewhere, and some do indeed return to Dunwich. Yet the worst of these scions, and most precocious—both physically and mentally—is Wilbur Whately, who leaves of his own accord, in search of knowledge that will enable him to make contact with his true father. A mere fifteen when he goes in search of this knowledge, it will ultimately be his undoing and his death will have terrible consequences for the village of Dunwich and the men who accompany Doctor Henry Armitage to deal with the aftermath of Wilbur’s attempts to obtain information from the eldritch tomes kept in the stacks of the Miskatonic University library.

Originally published in April 1929 issue of Weird Tales, The Dunwich Horror has been published many times since and in more recent years adapted into films, graphic novels, audio dramas and radio plays, and even a stage play. One of the latest adaptations is none of these, but an illustrated version of the short story. The Dunwich Horror is published by Free League Publishing, a publisher best known for roleplaying games such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days, Vaesen – Nordic Horror Roleplaying, The One Ring: Roleplaying in the World of Lord of the Rings, and Alien: The Roleplaying Game. It is not the publisher’s first such title. That would be The Call of Cthulhu, the classic of American horror literature and the short story that is arguably H.P. Lovecraft’s most well-known. It has since been followed with At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft’s most famous and only novel, published as two parts, Volume I and Volume II. As with these classics, the Free League Publishing edition of The Dunwich Horror is fully illustrated by French artist François Baranger and presented in a large 10½ by 14 inches folio format.

Much like Lovecraft himself, Baranger draws the reader long up the Miskatonic River to its headwaters amongst the dark hills that surround the village of Dunwich. There is a sense of isolation and decay, shrouded in mist and a gloom of long nights and secrets, the latter brightened by hilltops blazes around which men and things cavort and conspire. Perhaps the most marked sign of decay is the depiction of the traditional New England covered bridge, the wooden walkway leading to it twisted and broken, the bridge itself missing planks and the remaining construction already rotting above the dank waters. As the seasons come and go, the folk of Dunwich comment and chart the strangeness of Wilbur Whately himself and the ongoing construction at the family home. Twice the gloom is broken by fire atop the hillsides, the brightness marred by the unholy reasons for them being lit, once for the birth of Wilbur, then again for his search for answers. It is this search that takes Wilbur to Miskatonic University and here is perhaps the only light in the story, an austere bastion of knowledge caught in the pale winter sun as the looming figure of Wilbur Whately approaches the Orne Library.

Yet this is the only moment of contrast in the depiction of The Dunwich Horror by François Baranger, a moment of calm between Wilbur’s unseemly growth and the thirst for knowledge that will not only kill him, so revealing the ghostly true nature of his form, but also unleash a monstrous horror upon the blighted farming folk of Dunwich. The second half of the novel—the first half being described as a prologue—details for the reasons for reader’s return to Dunwich, the dangerous nature of Wilbur’s researches and the unearthly presence in the village, unseen as it lumbers from one scene of destruction to another. This time though, we are in the company of Doctor Armitage, he and his colleagues equipped with the dread knowledge necessary to banish what that presence might be. The head librarian has already paid the price in the cost to his composure in conducting that research, making clear the insidious effects of looking too much into things that man was not meant to know. The short story and Baranger’s illustrations draw the reader in closer and closer, leaving the expansiveness of the horror’s wake, behind to climb the hill where the fires were once lit. Here in one terrible moment, just as the first half of story revealed Wilbur’s true form in inhuman twistedness, both Lovecraft and Baranger shows us the real ‘Dunwich Horror’.

The third of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories to be adapted by François Baranger, his depiction of The Dunwich Horror is one of brooding claustrophobia and leaden shadows, seeming only to let up when the tale looks skyward and to the monstrosity unleashed by Wilbur Whately’s branch of the family. As before, the likelihood is that the reader of this book will have read H.P. Lovecraft’s story previously, probably more than once, but François Baranger brings the story to life in sombre tones and startling revelations that match the text perfectly as it reveals much about the Whatelys and the mythology Lovecraft was creating. This new depiction of The Dunwich Horror is perfect for dark nights upon which new readers can discover this classic horror story, whilst old fans can come back to stalk the crepuscular valleys and hills of this corner of New England and be reviled at its secrets once again.

Magazine Madness 30: Parallel Worlds Issue #06

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickstarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

—oOo—

The sixth issue—and it is the sixth issue and not the correctly numbered fifth issue—of Parallel Worlds was published in February 2020. As with previous issues, it contains no gaming content as such, but rather discusses and aspects of not just the hobby, but different hobbies—board games, roleplaying games, computer games, films, and more. Previous issues placed an emphasis on everything else—books and films in particular—rather than gaming, and although that emphasis remains, with Parallel Worlds Issue #5, the magazine began to strive for a more balanced mix of content. It also became better organised, continuing the colour-coding of the various sections, so that the issue’s interviews are together and its tabletop content is together, but just arranging the order of articles in different sections so that they flow thematically from one into the other and so give a touch of continuity in places. The articles also got more interesting and informative, resulting on a far more readable issue which covered horror and Science Fiction, roleplaying communities, films and books and computer games. In the case of Parallel Worlds Issue #5, this countered the issue that the magazine does not support the tabletop gaming hobby very well. This continues with Parallel Worlds Issue #6, which has a Science Fiction theme.

Parallel Worlds Issue #6 opens with the first interview in the issue. This is by Marc Cross with the leaders of ‘South London Warlords’, the long-running wargames club. This is part of the ‘Know Your Community’ strand, highlighting communities dedicated to tabletop gaming. In the case of the South London Warlords, it highlights their activities in making the hobby of wargaming a welcoming one, and in particular, the staging of Salute, the one-day wargaming event. At the time of the review, both it and the club have been running for fifty years, and this interview was nicely timed before the then next event. The wargaming strand continues with Rob Sawyer’s ‘BattleTech – Faster, My Giant Stompy Robot’. Written and published to coincide with the release of the computer game, MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, this gives a history and overview of the now forty-year-old intellectual property which developed from the single robot combat game into a franchise that has supported numerous board and miniatures games and supplements and sourcebooks for both, collectible miniatures games, collectible card game, over one hundred novels, numerous computer games, and a Saturday morning cartoon. The lengthiest piece in the magazine, it is not wholly comprehensive, since it really only explores the original situation in the Successor States, that detailed in the original boxed set and supplements that followed, rather than the later period with the coming of the Clans and subsequent events. Nevertheless, it provides a very good introduction to the setting and even includes one or two facts that that are new to this longtime BattleTech fan.

If ‘BattleTech – Faster, My Giant Stompy Robot’ is relevant today because 2024 is the fortieth anniversary of Battletech, Chris Cunliffe’s ‘Play Safe’ is equally as relevant today because it explores the still topical issues of how to handle consent at the table in roleplaying. He makes the point that as roleplaying games have evolved and focused more on story in the last few decades, it has been accompanied by more mature and more difficult content that not every player would want to see included in what is their play. As a response, there has been a rise in the number of safety tools available which a Game Master and her players can deploy to establish the subjects and areas that they do not want to experience or explore. The X-Card is perhaps the most well-known, but not the earliest and not the most nuanced. The earliest perhaps are the ‘Lines and Veils’ introduced by Ron Edwards in 2004 in Sex and Sorcery, a supplement for the Sorcerer roleplaying game, so they date back two decades now in 2024. However, there are issues with those too, and consequently Cunliffe explores other options as well. In the process, he provides the reader with a range of choices so that he can decide which one toolset works best for him and the rest of his group. This is a solid introduction to the subject and very useful.

Christopher Jarvis’ review of the board game Lifeform is decent, but given the fact that it is inspired by the film Alien, feels as it should have been reviewed in Parallel Worlds Issue #5. The ‘Mini of the Month’, this time written by Angus McNicholl about an Authorised Bounty Hunter miniature sculpted and manufactured by Corvus Belli for the Infinity Science Fiction skirmish game, continues be an uninteresting space filler. At worst, it could be reduced to a single page in future issues, at best, it could be cancelled as a regular feature and its space devoted to almost anything else that would undoubtedly be actually interesting.

The first of two Thinkpiece articles in Parallel Worlds Issue #6 looks at the lack of female representation in various media, primarily genre media. ‘Creative Equality’ by Jane Clewett and Ben Potts looks at their role in Science Fiction, fantasy, and horror, how they have broken ground, like Mary Shelley with Frankenstein or Shirly Jackson with The Haunting of Hill House, but progress in their representation has been limited, despite for example, female writers having won the Hugo award for best novel several times in the last few years. The same situation applies in video games too, with more video game protagonists being male than female still despite the greater number of players being female. It is a disappointing article to read and a pity that Parallel Worlds is not around today to return to the subject to assess the situation four years on.

The second Thinkpiece connects to the first piece on TV & Film. In the Thinkpiece, ‘Think Bigger: Megastructures’, Thomas Turnball-Ross explores the history of the megastructure in Science Fiction, which of course, began with Larry Niven’s Ringworld. Since then, megastructures have been a feature of the Halo series of computer games, films such as Pixar’s WALL-E, and more. Not just ringworlds, but also Dyson Spheres, arks, and the Stanford torus. Numerous different media are mentioned here, such as Ian M Banks’ Consider Phlebas and Elite Dangerous, but you wish that each was given a clear and proper illustration so that the reader has some idea of what they look like. Otherwise, this is a serviceable introduction to what it describes as a civilisation’s ultimate manifestation. Indeed, one of the tropes in Science Fiction for megastructures is for them to have been abandoned and the identity of the builders lost, but rediscovered as part of their exploration. That goes all the way back again, to Niven’s Ringworld. This is a companion piece to Allen Stroud’s ‘The Big Dumb Object’ from Parallel Worlds Issue #5, and there is some crossover between the two.

There is another purpose for the megastructure discussed in the following article by Jane Clewett. In ‘Why Watch… Babylon 5?’, she asks whether one of the biggest Science Fiction television series of the nineteen nineties worth watching after almost three decades since it was first broadcast. The series really was groundbreaking in terms of its characters, the sweep of its plot and character story arcs, the presentations of its alien species, and the use of computers to create its special effects. The latter look dated now, as does its attitude to LGBT issues, but then that was not its fault and it did at least hint at their inclusion. So that is not really a fair criticism. The megastructure in the series is Babylon 5 itself , a giant space station built to facilitate and foster peace between the galactic powers, and is a character in part itself. The article does a good job of selling the series and making clear that it is worth checking to see if the potential watcher will enjoy it.

The ‘TV & Film’ articles in the issue continue the discussion pieces of ‘Let’s Talk About... The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’ from Parallel Worlds Issue #03, ‘Let’s Talk About... Ad Astra’ from Parallel Worlds Issue #04, and ‘Let’s Talk About... Joker’ ‘from Parallel Worlds Issue #05. Those articles were two-handers, but in Parallel Worlds Issue #06, it becomes a three-hander between Allen Stroud, Ben Potts, and Jane Clewett. Together, they discuss Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Numerous controversaries have been and gone since the release of the third and final part of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, so the divisive nature of this film—and the trilogy in general, has faded into memory. So it is interesting to return to the divided opinions prevalent at the time and see them discussed in a courteous and enjoyable manner. Each of the three contributors has a very different opinion.

For the books strand, Connor Eddles provides a solid overview and history of the Amazing Stories pulp Science Fiction magazine in ‘Pulp Pioneers’, Ant Jones reviews The Blackbird and the Ghots and Catching Light in ‘Self-Pub Review’, and Jane Clewett delves into ‘the luminaries – chose your social media adventure’. The first two of these are quick and breezy, whereas the third uses Susan Dennard’s The Luminaries, a six-month long adventure presented via a series of choices on Twitter to direct the story, as a springboard to examine the state of interactive fiction. This covers books like the Fighting Fantasy series and television programme such as Black Books’ ‘Bandersnatch’, before ultimately returning to the starting point, unsure of whether the publication of the original ‘choose your own adventure’ story will work in print as well as it did online.

Tom Grundy’s review of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin follows, whilst in ‘The Mysterious Case of Dentra Rast’, Allen Stroud returns to the fiction he wrote at the time of his work on the Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game involving the character Dentra Rast and see what happened next. What did happen took place in another game all together, EVE Online, and is quite surprising. An interesting article for fans of both computer games. Lastly, the issue is rounded out with a short story also by Allen Stroud, ‘Lost at the Wedding’, which is quite enjoyable.

Physically, Parallel Worlds Issue #6 is cleanly and tidily presented, and on the whole, it is a bright and breezy affair. Unlike in previous issues, there is less of the stretching of the content to fit the pages, so the magazine feels fuller and tighter. However, that does not apply to ‘Mini of the Month’.

Parallel Worlds Issue #6 has a lot of enjoyable and interesting content benefiting from its strong Science Fiction theme, in particular the article on BattleTech and safety in gaming stand out. The latter in particular, feels timely and actually connected and relevant to the gaming hobby, something that gaming articles in previous issues did not usually achieve. Overall, Parallel Worlds Issue #6 continues the improvement begun in Parallel Worlds Issue #5 and it is beginning to become a magazine that you want to read.

Magazine Madness 29: Parallel Worlds Issue #05

The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickstarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.

—oOo—

The fifth issue—and it is the fifth issue and not the erroneously numbered sixth issue—of Parallel Worlds was published in the autumn of 2020. As with previous issues, it contains no gaming content as such, but rather discusses and aspects of not just the hobby, but different hobbies—board games, roleplaying games, computer games, films, and more. Previous issues placed an emphasis on everything else—books and films in particular—rather than gaming, and although that emphasis remains, Parallel Worlds Issue #5 strives for a more balanced mix of content. This, combined with more interesting and informative articles, results in a far more readable issue which covers horror and Science Fiction, roleplaying communities, films and books and computer games. It also feels better organised, continuing the colour-coding of the various sections, so that the issue’s interviews are together and its tabletop content is together, but just arranging the order of articles in different sections so that they flow thematically from one into the other and so give a touch continuity in places. If the fact remains that Parallel Worlds does not support the tabletop gaming hobby very well, this is at least countered by the interesting articles in Parallel Worlds Issue #5.

Parallel Worlds Issue #5 opens with ‘Priya Sharma – The Nicest Person in Horror’, an interview by Allen Stroud with the multi-award-winning author of British Fantasy Awards and Shirley Jackson Award, renowned for her short stories. Priya Sharma, does indeed, come across as a nice person, answering the interviewer’s mix of standard and more interesting questions with enthusiasm. Although short, the interview is informative and intriguing enough for the reader to find out more. However, Allen Stroud’s second interview with Elsewhen Press manages to be both long and feel longer. It explores the independent publisher’s process of selecting and developing a book and bringing it to print, along with some advice for aspiring authors. Where the interview with Priya Sharma was intriguing enough for the reader to want to find out more, this is not the case with this second interview. Not only is it less personal, but it also does not focus enough on the books published by Elsewhen Press beyond showing their covers.

The third interview inaugurates ‘Know Your Community’, a new feature in Parallel Worlds, highlighting communities dedicated to tabletop gaming. The first interview is with Dean Henry and Anthony Wright, two administrators of ‘The Dungeons & Dragons Community Group’ on Facebook. Although brief, it allows the pair to explain how they run and moderate the community they have created across various platforms as well as their policy of avoiding toxic issues which can arise in such communities. Overall, a decent start to what will hopefully be an interesting series of features focusing upon different gaming communities.

‘Aliens – Are They Out There?’ by Tom Grundy is the first to explore the theme that runs through the issue. In this ‘Thinkpiece’, he explores the question of the likelihood of there being extraterrestrial life out there in the universe. He works through the problems raised by the question, looking at the equation formulated by astronomer Frank Drake to estimate how many rocky planets there are in the Milky Way galaxy and the ‘Fermi Paradox’ which asks, if there is intelligent life out there, then where is it? The article cannot, of course, answer the question, but instead it raises numerous questions and highlights how much we do not actually know. The result is a thoughtful piece that gets the issue’s theme off to a good start.

The theme is continued by Allen Stroud’s ‘The Big Dumb Object’. The term is surprisingly modern, barely a few decades old, and describes an alien object of immense size. Stroud points to Larry Niven’s Ringworld and Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama as classic Science Fiction stories with Big Dumb Objects at their heart, but pushes the concept into other genres too, for example, pointing out that in the fantasy genre, the Big Dumb Object tends to be stationary. In roleplaying, the Big Dumb Object is best used as a mystery—just as it is in fiction—and be something to explore and be revealed to the Player Characters. It is another thoughtful article that is let down by some strange decisions. First, the article is part of the magazine’s ‘Generic Adventure Module’ series, but whilst generic, it is not a module. It is an examination of the idea and it might be used in roleplaying, not a module that can be picked up and run. The series title is misleading. Then, whilst it talks about how the Big Dumb Object can be roleplaying, it only looks to film, television, and books as inspiration. In other words, it ignores the format the article is intended for. Surely, there must be roleplaying adventures or settings which have Big Dumb Objects which could have been mentioned here, but there are none. There is, of course, A Doomsday Like Any Other, the 1986 scenario published by FASA for use with its Star Trek: The Role Playing Game,which is a terrific adventure involving a ‘Doomsday Machine’ like the planet killer encountered by the USS Enterprise in the episode, ‘The Doomsday Machine’. Lastly, the author mentions that there is actually a ‘BDO adventure module’ available to download from the publisher’s website and adapt to the Game Master’s system and setting of choice. Why not include it in the issue? There are certainly articles which could have been replaced and the issue could have been all the better for it.

‘The Big Dumb Object’ is the first of the three entries in the issue’s ‘Tabletop Games’ section. Christopher Jarvis follows it with a review of ‘The Quacks of Quedlinburg’, the Kennerspiel des Jahres award winner of 2018 and Allen Stroud’s entry for ‘Mini of the Month’. The latter is surprisingly good and not the typical waste of space that previous entries for ‘Minion the Month’ have been. Here the author expresses his love for the Genestealer Cult armies and his frustration at discovering that Games Workshop no longer supported them. That would change, subsequently, but in the meantime, the author builds his own, so there is a pleasing sense of story to this particular entry in the magazine’s regular feature. The Genestealers also being heavily inspired by the Xenomorphs of Alien means that the short article continues the issue’s theme.

‘Finding Jin Yong’ is the first of two entries in the issue’s Books section. Here Jane Clewett asks why the bestselling Chinese author of ‘Chinese Lord of the Rings’ is so little-known outside of China. Ultimately, the issue may well be that Jin Yong was too prolific an author and the length of his Condor trilogy too much of a commitment for publishers. That said, the first few books have been published in English and if the reader is ready to make the commitment to a long-running wuxia fantasy epic, they can easily be found. The article forms a good introduction to the genre and the first of the books, so again this article nicely hooks in the reader into wanting to know more. The other entry in the Books section is ‘The Infinite Hex Crawl’ by Anthony Perconti, which looks at Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Library of Babel’. This is a good introduction to a fascinating story which describes an infinite library whose shelves are filled with every iteration and every variation possible of every book ever written. The nearest roleplaying parallel is Dying Stylishly Games’ The Stygian Library, but this article suggests that there is more than enough in the short story which could be adapted and developed to a roleplaying situation. Or at least, simply provide a fascinating read.

The ‘TV & Film’ articles in the issue continue the discussion pieces of ‘Let’s Talk About... The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance ‘from Parallel Worlds Issue #03 and ‘Let’s Talk About... Ad Astra’ from Parallel Worlds Issue #04. The series consists of two-handers between Tom Grundy and Jane Clewett in which they talk about reactions to and thoughts on a particular film. For Parallel Worlds Issue #05, the film is Joker, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix. The film divided audiences and so it is between the authors here. The other ‘TV & Film’ entry continues the issue’s theme. In ‘Alien: How Ridley Scott Reinvented Science Fiction’, Sam Long looks at the seminal Science Fiction horror film and its effect upon the genre, and how it has been replicated and imitated since. The article neatly places the film in the context of the period of its release and its genre, and the comparisons it draws with those other imitative films, such as John Carpenter’s The Thing and Pitch Black are more interesting than its look at the wider film franchise as it develops. Overall, this is a good introduction to and overview of what is now regarded as a classic Science Fiction film and a classic horror film.

The alien—and Alien—theme of Parallel Worlds Issue #05 comes to a close with Richard Watson’s ‘Alien Isolation’, which looks at how the 2014 computer game managed to capture the feeling of being stalked by and facing a Xenomorph, with few means to stop it and most obvious thing to do being to run and hide, scared and alone. It really sells the virtues of the computer game as a horrifying experience, one of being alone and being prey. However, its inclusion highlights a missed opportunity. If Alien can be explored via the medium of computer game, why not others? Certainly, at the time of the release of Parallel Worlds Issue#05, there had been games based on it, including a board game from Leading Edge Games in the nineties and then more recently, Alien: The Roleplaying Game had been published in 2019. Then there are obvious imitators such as the MOTHERSHIP Sci-Fi Horror Roleplaying Game,published in 2018, which would have been worth examining as a part of the issue’s theme. This is disappointing in its lack of scope. ‘Alien Isolation’ is the first of two entries in the ‘Video Games ‘section. The other is ‘Space Engineers’ by Louis Calvert. This is a Science Fiction computer game of engineering, construction, exploration and survival in space and on planets. Its focus is on building spaceships, space stations, planetary outposts, and so on, and then travelling to explore planets and gather resources to survive and build. The article brings to life the fun of playing the game and the joy of the community built up around its play, as well as charting its ongoing development. The issue is brought to a close with ‘The Purpose’, a decent piece of ‘Original Fiction’ also by Louis Calvert.

Physically, Parallel Worlds Issue #5 is cleanly and tidily presented, and on the whole, it is a bright and breezy affair. In places though, some of the articles feel stretched as their layouts could have been much tighter, an issue that hampered the first three issues.

With the fifth issue, Parallel Worlds continues to improve the magazine in terms of content and writing. The issue contains some excellent articles that are genuinely interesting and informative, that make the reader want to discover more. Above all, there is more in the issue that is actually enjoyable to read. Hopefully, Parallel Worlds Issue #5 is a sign of better things to come.

Friday Fiction: A Call To Cthulhu

From the delightful Where’s My Shoggoth? to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu for beginning readers, there have been numerous attempts to meld the Cosmic Horror of Lovecraft’s fiction with the children’s author of your choice or in the children’s book format. Some are simple as the Mythos ABC books, whilst others are clever parodies, such as TinTin meets Lovecraft and Ken Hite’s Where the Deep Ones Are published by Atlas Games. At the same time, whilst many can be read by or to children, they often inject a sense of humour into the highly baroque and densely descriptive style of Lovecraft’s writing and this acts as a counter to the cosmic horror and the unknown at the heart of his fiction. Of course, today, Cthulhu and his ilk are known far and wide across multiple media, if not necessarily, the actual details of the story where he appears. A Call To Cthulhu follows this well trod path and not only acknowledges the original story where great Cthulhu first appeared, but many others by H.P. Lovecraft.

A Call To Cthulhu is written and drawn by Norm Konyu and published by Titan Books as part of its Nova imprint for teenage readers. Described as “part comicbook, part artbook, part unsuitable-for-toddlers storybook”, it is a thoroughly modern imagining of Mythos, coming at it via an all too familiar aspect of contemporary life to look back at and reference Lovecraft’s major stories and creations one by one. Cthulhu though, remains the central figure and for reasons that will become clear never strays from the narrative, a lurking, looming figure despite the distances between the narrator and the Great Old One. The conceit of A Call To Cthulhu is that of an unwanted telephone call, one received by Cthulhu himself on his mobile telephone from an unknown caller. Reception it seems, is excellent near the Pacific oceanic pole of inaccessibility, let alone on the ocean floor! It must be something eldritch. The caller—it could be Lovecraft himself or simply the narrator, being shown only in silhouette at the table in the library where he has been reading more than safe for his sanity of the Elder Gods—then begins to berate and castigate Cthulhu for his monstrous nature and inhuman attitudes, complaining how he cannot sleep, that he hears rats in the walls, and hates him, and would give him a wedgie were he a step closer!

The irreverent tone does not just apply to Great Cthulhu, but almost every creation of Lovecraft comes in for a tongue lashing. These, as is most of the book, are presented in richly coloured double spreads contrasting with the text on its stark white pages. The style of the prose is simple, being in the ‘ABCB’ rhyming style, making easy to read—especially aloud. For example:

“Born of the Nameless Mist
Yog-Sothoth is a jerk
Outside of the Galaxy
Where he tends to lurk”

and

“Sharks can be scary
So can a two-headed calf
But penguins, dear Cthulhu
Really?
Are you having a laugh?”

Thus A Call To Cthulhu takes the reader to Dunwich of ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and the Antarctic of ‘At the Mountains of Madness’, but these are not the only stories and places referenced in the book. The narrator in turn takes us to the empty quarter of ‘The Nameless City’, the worst town on the coast of New England in ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’, sidesteps into the Dreamlands for an encounter with ‘The Cats of Ulthar’, and beyond in pursuit of Kadath in ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’, before a final confrontation with the eponymous Old One he is awoken and the pirate ship, the Alert, is rammed into his head! All told A Call To Cthulhu encompasses fifteen of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories. Of the author’s choices, all but two can be regarded as well known. The lesser known ones here are ‘The White Ship’ and ‘The terrible Old Man’, and whilst there is nothing wrong with their inclusion, they do take the place of more well known stories such as ‘Herbert West, Reanimator’ that on recognition alone would have merited inclusion. Another issue is that ‘At the Mountains of Madness’ has two double spreads devoted to it rather than the one of everything else, but arguably that is the largest of Lovecraft’s stories and so deserves the extra attention.

After having been told where to go by the narrator and Cthulhu has flown off in disgust, A Call To Cthulhu comes to a close two sections of reference material. The first of these asks, ‘Who was H.P. Lovecraft?’ The answer is is given in a short, one page biography which does not stray away from being honest about his social attitudes and racism. It does not dwell on them unnecessarily, but it does make it clear that he had them. The second is a story and illustration key that explains each image and its associated story. This is a useful and pleasing inclusion for the reader wanting to know more and understand the references.

A Call To Cthulhu is a slim volume, but beautifully illustrated veering the comic depictions of Cthulhu as he reacts to the unexpected caller and the more ominous depictions of the peoples, places, and things of the Mythos. Throughout there is a immense sense of scale, of things constantly looming over the reader, whether it is the Colour erupting in the sky in ‘The Colour Out of Space’ or the three-engined Dornier skiplane as it dips between the previously hidden peaks of the mountains and the strange city with its cyclopean architecture in ‘At the Mountains of Madness’.

As much as the narrator yells and screams at Cthulhu, telling the Great Old One how much he hates both him and other aspects of the Mythos, the comedic effect of this is contrasted by an underlying sense that the narrator is also frightened of them both. There is just enough of an edge to A Call To Cthulhu to hint at the horror of the Mythos, to suggest that it is something to be sacred of rather than to laugh at, but without truly scaring the younger reader or the listener who is having this book read to them. This though makes the book more appealing to the older reader as well as the Lovecraft devotee who will appreciate and understand the underlying fear and know its sources.

A little sharper, even spikier than most Lovecraft adaptations for children and younger readers, A Call To Cthulhu is a pleasure to read and a delight to look at. This is a Lovecraftian children’s book that can be read at bedtime and enjoyed by children and non-children alike.

Friday Fiction: At the Mountains of Madness Volume II

At the Mountains of Madness is horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s longest and one of his most famous stories. It takes the form of a series of letters, written by Doctor William Dyer, a geologist from Miskatonic University, who in late 1930 led an expedition to the Antarctic which would end in disaster, madness, and death following the discovery of the remains of prehistoric lifeforms unknown to science, buried in the permafrost and the remains of a cyclopean city behind a mountain range the height of the Himalayas—previously never seen before, the city long abandoned for terrible reasons which are ultimately revealed at the denouement of the story. Specifically, Doctor Dyer’s letters have been written in an effort to prevent a second, and much more important and widely publicised expedition which is being mounted to the Antarctic from following in the same path. The story has a strong sense of atmosphere and environment—the ice and snow, and extreme low temperatures play a major role in the narrative, serving as a starkly frigid backdrop against which its events take place and its equally stark revelations as to the horrid and horrifying events in the past and their dark influences upon the origins of mankind.

Originally serialised in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of Astounding Stories, At the Mountains of Madness has been published many times since and in more recent years adapted into songs, musicals, graphic novels, radio serials, and more. The very latest adaptation is none of these, but an illustrated version of the novel. At the Mountains of Madness is published by Free League Publishing, a publisher best known for roleplaying games such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, this is not the publisher’s first such title. That would be The Call of Cthulhu, the classic of American horror literature and the short story that is arguably H.P. Lovecraft’s most well-known. As with that classic, the Free League Publishing edition of At the Mountains of Madness is fully illustrated by French artist François Baranger and presented in a large 10½ by 14 inches folio format.

At the Mountains of Madness Volume I only took the protagonists as far as the upper reaches of the Elder Thing city, it closing at the point where the protagonists are preparing to enter the city’s subterranean depths. Baranger’s final illustration was subtly ominous, the stonework of the wall around the entrance to the tunnel below the Elder Thing city casting a skull-like shadow… It is Baranger’s gorgeous artwork that stood out in the first volume and again, his superlative illustrations capture the frigid, shattered, and alien of the Elder Things on the other side of the Mountains of Madness in the second volume, At the Mountains of Madness Volume I. If the first volume was dominated by wide panoramas of the Antarctic wastes, his artwork balances that here with a sense of height that dwarves the explorers, Doctor William Dyer and the student, Danforth. As they delve deeper into the city and Dyer begins to translate the hieroglyphic murals, the art changes to match, illustrating it in time to Lovecraft’s text as both men learn the long history of the city and its strange inhabitants. Thus there is a switch back and forth between the city in ruins and the city as a living place for the Elder Things, sense of stillness in the former and movement in the latter. No more so than in the terrible confrontation between the Elder Things and the Cthulhu Spawn, an eldritch battle over which great Cthulhu looms. In the text, Dyer notes the sense of awe at the alien city and again that is matched by the Baranger from the first page to the last.

The tone changes as the Elder Things devise and develop the terrible protoplasmic intelligences known as Shoggoths. Even their appearance seems to overawe the Elder Things, imbuing the alien creatures with sense of sympathy and even fear on their behalf...! This though turns shock as the two men first discover the remains of the missing Gedney and his dog—whose disappearance was detailed in At the Mountains of Madness Volume I—and the strange giant albino penguins! Then find out what happened to the Elder Things that were woken in the first half and who were responsible their nemesis—the dread Shoggoth! The final scenes are a rush, as the Shoggoth threaten engulf Dyer and Danforth and the two men make a desperate escape from the city and to their aeroplane. Only in the final scene, do we focus at all upon either of the men, a look of sheer terror upon Danforth’s face as he takes one last terrible look at where he has just come from!

The text for this second volume of At the Mountains of Madness, as with the first, are taken from the standard version of Lovecraft’s story. Although there is no change to the text in terms of content, there is in terms of emphasis, there in places being sentences and paragraphs being placed in a larger font. This is often jarring and does not match Lovecraft’s story, feeling unnecessary given that Branager’s illustrations are there exactly to deliver that emphasis.

If the reader was disappointed to have to wait for At the Mountains of Madness Volume II is after At the Mountains of Madness Volume I, then that wait has been worth it. At the Mountains of Madness Volume II is a stunning book, but then again, so was At the Mountains of Madness Volume I. François Baranger fantastically depicts and contrasts the present and the past of the city beyond the Mountains of Madness in this second volume, just as the second volume as a whole, contrasts the stark alienness and openness of the Antarctic with the oppressive heights of the ruins of the Elder thing city. Of course, At the Mountains of Madness Volume II is not a standalone book, yet its artwork almost transcends the necessity for the first volume. Together, At the Mountains of Madness Volume I and At the Mountains of Madness Volume II combine to retell H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness in a glorious fashion that will delight readers who already know the story and readers who are new to his cosmic horror.

Colouring Cthulhu IV

Okay. Remember back in 2017 and that weird thing when colouring books were popular once again. Not just for children, but for adults. Walk into any bookshop and you could find a colouring book on any subject or for any intellectual property you care to name, from the Harry Potter Colouring Book, the Vogue Colouring Book, and The Kew Gardens Exotic Plants Colouring Book to the Lonely Planet Ultimate Travelist Colouring Book, the Day of the Dead Colouring Book, and the Escape to Shakespeare’s World: A Colouring Book Adventure. I gave them as presents, but in all honesty, I had and have no interest in colouring books. Except that Chaosium, Inc. published a colouring book, one inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. It being from Chaosium, Inc. and it being inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft piqued my interest enough to want to review it, but the main reason to do so was to see if I could review an actual colouring book. Well, I could, and the result was a review of Call of Cthulhu – The Coloring Book: 28 Eldritch Scenes of Lovecraftian for you to Color. However, it turns out it was not the only Lovecraft-inspired colouring book.

The latest is Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. Published by Mythos Monsters, it is the second colouring book by artist Jacob Walker, following on from the earlier The Colouring Book Out of Space: A Lovecraft inspired adult coloring book. It collects some twenty-five illustrations, in turn portraying some of the classics of Lovecraft’s works and others. This includes Cthulhu, Dagon, Nyarlathotep, The King in Yellow, and more, as well as places such as R’lyeh, the Dreamlands, the Mountains of Madness and beyond. These are all presented on single sheets which are perforated for easy removal and can be coloured in using pencils, inks, or marker pens, depending upon the colourer’s choice.

After the classic quote from The Call of Cthulhu, begins with a depiction of the most iconic of Lovecraft’s creations, Cthulhu himself. In ‘Resurrection in R’lyeh’, he pulls himself up out of the sea under the waxing crescent of the moon, amidst the tops of the non-Euclidian spires of the city below. It is not the only depiction of Cthulhu, the other, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, a close-up of the great god. Numerous gods are illustrated, such as ‘Yig, Father of Serpents’ and ‘Ithaqua Hunting’, whilst in ‘The Crawling Chaos’ he appears in Ancient Egypt, perhaps as the Dark Pharoah, perhaps as The Crawling Chaos itself. Of the various species, an Elder Thing perches atop an obelisk, ‘The Mi-Go of Yuggoth’ appears from nowhere, and a horde of unnamed Deep Ones swarming forth as ‘Dagon Lord of the Deep’ looms… There is often a cosmically comic sensibility too, such as in ‘Alhazred’s Book, The Neccronomicon’, where the scholar is being assailed by tentacles that thrust up from the very book he is studying, or another scholar attempts to ‘Dispel the Horror’. In general, Human involvement is limited to the poor unfortunates facing the ‘Shoggoth from the Void’ or a Ghoul poses as ‘Pickman’s Model’.

The style of Jacob Walker’s artwork here is clear and open with clean lines and plenty of space. There is however, a familiarity to many of the poses, the Mythos often to be found atop something and looming forth out of the picture towards the viewer. This is the case whether it is the batrachian inhabitants with ‘The Innsmouth Look’ looking out at the viewer, the ‘Grave Eating Ghoul’ pulling itself from the graveyard, or the ‘Byakhee Sentinel’.

In terms of inspiration, Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft draws from Lovecraft’s and others’ fiction to focus upon the gods, the races, the monsters, and more. Barring the aforementioned ‘Pickman’s Model’, there are few if any scenes inspired by or depicted in the fiction. This is very much a monsters of the Mythos colouring book rather than a broader Mythos colouring book. Which is as intended, but it does mean that Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft is less useful as a source of inspiration for the Keeper of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, or as a means to illustrate something in Call of Cthulhu—both advantages held by Chaosium, Inc.’s Call of Cthulhu – The Coloring Book: 28 Eldritch Scenes of Lovecraftian for you to Color. To be fair, Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft was not created with either feature drawn in, but any Keeper of Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition expecting them will be disappointed. Of the two, Call of Cthulhu – The Coloring Book: 28 Eldritch Scenes of Lovecraftian for you to Color is definitely the more interesting and has more to say.

Ultimately, that leaves the point of Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft—the artwork. Clean and simple, every illustration awaits the one thing we are used to seeing in other depictions of the Mythos, and that is colour. The unfussy style of artwork means that this is easy to apply, whether you are a long-time devotee of the Cthulhu Mythos or a three-year-old being introduced to non-Euclidean artwork in readiness for preschool, whether you want to work subtle changes of colour or bold swathes. Color the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft is then simply okay. The illustrations are decent, and whilst the combination of Cosmic Horror and colouring book is still undeniably weird, it is still just okay.

Friday Fiction: The Gutter Prayer

The Gutter Prayer is a fantastic novel of worldbuilding and tumultuous change. The debut from Gareth Hanrahan—an author best known for his many roleplaying credits, from The Persephone Extraction to The Pirates of Drinax—and much more besides, it opens with a prologue written in the second person that narrates a burglary upon the House of Law in the city of Guerdon. It gives a strange, almost impersonal point of view to the beginning of the novel, the identity of the narrator not quite clear, but oh so important as the events of the story reveal later. The burglary though is a failure, forcing its perpetrators, Carillon, an orphan newly returned to the city after years away as a refugee, Rat, a young Ghoul not wanting to join his kind below, and Spar, a Stoneman, cursed with a disease which causes him to ossify into stone, and ultimately die if he does not receive injections of the serum, alkahest, to flee. In the wake of an explosion they know nothing about, the trio splits up, chased by the Tallowmen, waxworks which keep going as long as their wick remains alight, created by the Alchemists Guild to help enforce the laws and keep the peace. That explosion and the identity of the narrator in the prologue set off a chain of events which reverberate throughout the rest of novel.

Guerdon stands at the heart of the novel, a fantasy-industrial city-port which remains neutral in the ongoing Godswar afflicting other nearby nations. Religious strife underlies its history though, religious freedom allowed in the city because the Church of the Kept Gods threw down the dark rule of the Black Iron Gods and their vile servants. In recent times, the influence of the Kept Gods has diminished as the power and influence of the Alchemists grew and turned Guerdon into the soot-strewn industrial powerhouse that it is today. In the narrow streets and through the warrens of the smugglers’ tunnels lurks the Brotherhood, the city’s thieves’ guild—of which the novel’s central trio are members—whilst below are stranger factions still. Both are Lovecraftian in nature, the Ghouls feeding upon the city’s dead lowered into corpse chutes by the Church of the Kept Gods, whilst the Crawling Ones, amorphous collective masses of worms which can take on humanoid shapes, plot for greater power and influence in the city above at the expense of the Ghouls.

Once past the prologue, the story switches back and forth between various character points of view, initially Carillon, Rat, and Spar, in turn providing different views of the city and thus nbuilding and building Guerdon. They counterpart each other, Carillon impulsive and impatient, Spar physically slowed into terminal patience, with the pragmatic Rat between them. Guerdon though, forms a character of its own as the author serves up one aspect of the city after another, often seeming to throw them away before moving onto the next, leaving the reader to wonder if he will ever return to explain or expand. The three central protagonists, plus Guerdon itself, are not the only characters given time in the spotlight. Carillon has a starchy cousin, Eladora, who provides a different perspective upon their extended family; the three are hunted by Jere, a thief taker with connections; and Aleena, foul-mouthed and weary, who as a Saint of the Kept Gods channels their power. Not all of the other characters in the novel are accorded such treatment and consequently, some are underwritten.

The Gutter Prayer is also a tale of responsibilities, each of the three central characters gaining them, often unwillingly, due to the events of the novel, in the case of Carillon coming to her as a result of the vents of the prologue. In turn, they pull each of the three away from their central friendship which is so strong at the beginning of the novel, especially as the pace of the book picks up and up as their stories and the book comes to a climax.

Most obviously, in terms of genre, with its guilds and gods, thieves and cults, The Gutter Prayer is a dark fantasy, and whilst the industrialisation of alchemy in Guerdon does push it towards the steampunk genre, the novel is neither pseudo-Victorian nor obsessed with mechanical technology. It is rather Dickensian in both its character and its griminess, but The Gutter Prayer is ultimately more of a horror story, and whilst the author’s depiction of the Crawling Ones and their servants is suitably Lovecraftian, the truly creepy creations in the novel are the Tallowmen and the Gullmen. The latter appear only a few times in the novel, but that is enough, because seagulls given arms and legs is not something that you want to be thinking about. The former though, are a constant presence and threat—chasing, watching, guarding, herding… Each is the facsimile in stretched wax of their former self, vaguely self-aware, but always knowing that if their wick is extinguished, then so is their soul.

Throughout it is interesting to see the author going through the process of world-building through the narrative rather than the construction we are used to seeing done via roleplaying supplements. Although there are mentions of the wider world and then just the one fantastic excursionary scene, the action of The Gutter Prayer is confined to Guerdon itself. As much as the city is brought to life, there is still very much left for the reader to wonder at and hope that the author returns to in later books. Were The Gutter Prayer a roleplaying supplement, then perhaps it would be a different matter. In terms roleplaying, any number of rules sets could be used to portray Guerdon and its inhabitants, for example, Into the Odd would work.

The Gutter Prayer is a fast-paced—sometimes too fast-paced as the reader tries to keep up—and grim and grimy dark fantasy. It evokes a wonderfully sooty and tarnished sense of place in Guerdon and explores it through a cast of engaging characters who face difficult choices and undergo often traumatic transitions. The Gutter Prayer is a great introduction to Guerdon and the Black Iron Legacy series, and an exciting and engaging debut novel.

Friday Fiction: At the Mountains of Madness Volume I

At the Mountains of Madness is horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s longest and one of his most famous stories. It takes the form of a series of letters, written by Doctor William Dyer, a geologist from Miskatonic University, who in late 1930 led an expedition to the Antarctic which would end in disaster, madness, and death following the discovery of the remains of prehistoric lifeforms unknown to science, buried in the permafrost and the remains of a cyclopean city behind a mountain range the height of the Himalayas—previously never seen before, the city long abandoned for terrible reasons which are ultimately revealed at the denouement of the story. Specifically, Doctor Dyer’s letters have been written in an effort to prevent a second, and much more important and widely publicised expedition which is being mounted to the Antarctic from following in the same path. The story has a strong sense of atmosphere and environment—the ice and snow, and extreme low temperatures play a major role in the narrative, serving as a starkly frigid backdrop against which its events take place and its equally stark revelations as to the horrid and horrifying events in the past and their dark influences upon the origins of mankind.

Originally serialised in the February, March, and April 1936  issues of Astounding Stories, At the Mountains of Madness has been published many times since and in more recent years adapted into songs, musicals, graphic novels, radio serials, and more. The very latest adaptation is none of these, but an illustrated version of the novel. At the Mountains of Madness is published by Free League Publishing, a publisher best known for roleplaying games such as Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days and Forbidden Lands – Raiders & Rogues in a Cursed World, this is not the publisher’s first such title. That would be The Call of Cthulhu, the classic of American horror literature and the short story that is arguably H.P. Lovecraft’s most well-known. As with that classic, the Free League Publishing edition of At the Mountains of Madness is fully illustrated by French artist François Baranger and presented in a large 10½ by 14 inches folio format. 

However, this is only At the Mountains of Madness Volume I. Running to just sixty-four pages, the text of the story only takes the protagonists as far as the upper reaches of the Elder Thing city, it closing at the point where the protagonists are preparing to enter the city’s subterranean depths. Fortunately, the fact that  the reader will need to wait for the second part to see more of Baranger’s gorgeous artwork is the first volume’s only downside (all right, to be fair, the large format of the book makes it difficult to place on almost any book shelf). This though should not persuade the reader from perusing the gorgeous pages of At the Mountains of Madness Volume I, for Baranger illustrates every page, brilliantly realising many of the novella’s many scenes. These begin in the dusty halls of Miskatonic University, quiet and contemplative, Doctor Dyer putting pen to paper to warn the upcoming expedition, before leaping into the joy and hope of his own expedition as it sets sail from Boston for the South Pole. There, the large folio format grants space to capture the sense of scale to the expedition’s task, to the southernmost continent itself, and ultimately the city of the Elder Things itself, with wide, glorious vistas of the Antarctic and later the shattered, alien city—all bare, starkly white and icy. A later piece inverts this, depicting Dyer and his colleague, Danforth’s flight through the city with a dizzying sense of depth as it threads its way between colossal ruins.

Contrasting this is the closeness of the expedition, working and discussing the discoveries made, almost huddling together for warmth and to maintain a human connection. Here the colours are darker and use muddier tones as the expedition discovers the remains of the Elder Things in the caverns below the ice and later perform autopsies upon them. There is a nod to The Thing in these scenes, dripping menace and mystery as the weird corpses thaw and strange fluids fall to the floor, drop by drop. Baranger’s final illustration is subtly ominous, the stonework of the wall around the entrance to the tunnel below the Elder Thing city casting the a skull-like shadow…

At the Mountains of Madness Volume I is a stunning book. The likelihood is that the reader of this book will have read H.P. Lovecraft’s story before, probably more than once, but François Baranger brings the story to life in rich, gorgeous colour that captures both the grandeur and scale of the expedition’s discoveries as well as the dread claustrophobia of its mysteries and realisations. At the Mountains of Madness Volume I is a glorious way for new readers to discover H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness and for veteran readers to revisit its mystery and madness anew. 

Friday Fiction: H.P. Lovecraft’s Dagon for beginning readers

Much like the earlier H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu for beginning readers, the cartoon cartoon artwork and simple prose of H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon for Beginning Readers would suggest that it is a book for children. Unlike the various Call of Cthulhu ABC books to the delightful Where’s My Shoggoth? which have successfully melded the Cosmic Horror of Lovecraft’s fiction with the children’s author of your choice in a format which can be enjoyed by children, H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon for Beginning Readers uses the form of the children’s book to retell a tale of cosmic horror whose conclusion might be a legitimate response to the cosmic horror at its heart, it is a conclusion that is highly unsuitable for younger readers.

Published by Chaosium, Inc., what H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon for Beginning Readers does is bring both the prose style and the art style of Theodor Seuss Geisel—or Dr. Seuss—to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, or rather to one of Lovecraft’s earliest stories, ‘Dagon’. This is written as the last testament of an ex-sailor driven to drugs by a strange encounter in the Pacific during his service in the Great War. When his ship is captured by an Imperial German sea-raider, he escapes in a lifeboat, but with little idea of where he is, he drifts aimlessly until he suddenly awakes to find himself on land again, but not land he has ever seen. It is a mire of black mud, lifeless and undulating, reeking from the stench of decaying fish, perhaps thrown up from the sea floor. Searching for a way to the sea, he makes his way to the only landmark of note, a hill, beyond which he finds a chasm. Inside he discovers a monolith crudely carved with creatures of the sea and depiction of fish-like men, but then he is disturbed by a fish thing of great size and hideousness.  Fleeing to the surface and a great storm, the narrator next awakens in a San Francisco hospital, but when tells his tale, no believes him and no expert can corroborate his experiences. As time on the strange island haunts his nightmares, his fears grows that the fish thing and others will come for him and mankind, and as scratches are heard at his door, he is driven to suicide.

As with H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu for beginning readers, author and artist R.J. Ivankovic presents H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon for Beginning Readers in the anapestic tetrameter rhyming cadence and art style of Dr. Seus. Yet where the combination of styles leavened Lovecraft’s sometimes heavy style and effectively portrayed the horror of story in H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu for beginning readers, in H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon for Beginning Readers is not quite as effective. The text is sparse, but often feels forced, verses interspersed between great swathes of blue and black, that only serve to give the book an incredibly bleak look and feel. That may well fit the source, but it does not make for as riveting a story as in H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu for beginning readers. Then there is the ending, which renders H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon for Beginning Readers unsuitable for any but a mature audience, and certainly not for ‘beginning readers’.

Ultimately, the issue with H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon for Beginning Readers is the source story. It begins well enough, the encounter with the Imperial German Navy commerce raider being given a nicely done piratical touch, but once it descends on the desolate mire of the strange island, there is little that R.J. Ivankovic’s art can do to lift the bleakness of the story and there is little that he can do with the text either, which feels leaden despite being in anapestic tetrameter. It does not help that the sparseness of the text—as much as it enforces the bleakness of both story and art—actually breaks up the story.

Nevertheless, the artwork in H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon for Beginning Readers is excellent, inspired by and perfectly aping the style of Dr. Seus. Although cartoon-like, this art never shies away from portraying the horror described in the text. Yet the  bleakness of both story and art, the terrible nature of the end, do make that horror explicit and overbearing, and so H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon for Beginning Readers is not suitable for any but mature readers—as Chaosium makes clear—and it is all just a little blue. There is no doubt that the format really works, as seen in H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu for beginning readers, so hopefully the author will select a better story for the next story in the series.