The Starry Wisdom : A Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1871592321 ISBN 13: 9781871592320

Publisher: Creation Books, 1995

Synopsis

23 contemporary visions of cosmic transformation, mutation and madness - many inspired directly by the thoughts and writings of H P Lovecraft, others reflecting his strangely presentient themes, perhaps unwittingly, in their own bizarre sub-texts.
Here the primal beings of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stalk a post-modern landscape of social collapse, ethnic cleansing, genetic engineering and nuclear devastation - nightmare prophecies from his pulp pages which have now come chillingly true. The undercurrents of sexual and ecological displacement which powered Lovecraft's work have finally been laid bare, providing this maligned genius with a long-overdue retrospective and revealing him to be a true prophet of the 20th century.
The Starry Wisdom includes a host of brand new, previously unpublished prose and graphic works, plus select reprints which are now shown in a brand new light, forming a fascinating document which will appeal not only to readers of H P Lovecraft, but to all lovers of innovative art and literature in the science fiction, horror and fantasy genres.

About this title

About the Author:

Member of underground band 'Photographed by Lightning from 1984 to the present, releasing music on Fierce (home of the Pooh Sticks), Situation Normal and ONEIROS MUSIC labels. Author of "Savoy - A Serious Life", a biography of Savoy Books and a study of the New Worlds 60s SF scene and its legacy. (pub Savoy Books) ("Winner of the International Horror Guild Award for Outstanding Achievement (best nonfiction title), 2004"). Short fiction, interviews and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including 'Rapid Eye', 'Beat Scene', 'Nox', 'Cold Cuts III', and 'Impulse'.

John Ramsey Campbell (born 4 January 1946 in Liverpool) is an English horror fiction author. Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T. E. D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today". Campbell's supernatural horror novels include Incarnate (1983), in which the boundaries between dream and reality are gradually broken down; and Midnight Sun (1990), in which an alien entity apparently seeks entry to the world through the mind of a children's writer.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

RECOGNITION by ALAN MOORE Heat, fierce and lurid, cooks the hunched hotel-room shadows into boiling ink. Old water spits and sizzles from the radiator joints, their copper fittings thick as vertebrae and leaking dirty steam. A blind is drawn across the room's one window closing out the Boston night, adorned with faded robins, bleached vines and the memory of flowers. Here is the ragged wheeze of sulphur-bitten lungs. Here are the woman's muffled squeals, made down her nose. The sallow, vaguely foreign-looking manager is standing by the wardrobe, queerly still, gas-mantle stuttering on the wall behind him splashing careless light upon his back, a yellow urinary glaze upon his oiled black hair, its slick topography. His Easter Island face is lost in shadow, save there, where the gaslight catches on his glistening cheek and errant muscle twitches. By the door, the Cuban maid turns off her hearing aid and swallows hard against the parching heat. She grips the tunic of the bell-boy beside her, digging four grey nails into his sleeve while he sips hesitantly from a pale blue cocktail cigarette that's balanced in the other hand. His uniform, a threadbare Burgundy, is tainted with a sickly orange by this wan, uneven light and half unbuttoned down the front, blotched dark with gin. Stood in the juddering mantle-glow, their shadows cringe amongst the huge primeval flowers disfiguring the sweltered wallpaper. They stare towards the bed. The Devil, red as tamarind, kneels in a rose of sweat-fogged sheets between the woman's arsenic-whitened thighs. His hairless body glistening as though freshly painted, one raw hand about each of her ankles where damp mocha hose is bunched. Her hands are bound with salmon shreds of nightgown to the condensation-beaded metal of the bed-head, fingers opening and closing like the thin limbs of albino crabs kept too long from the light. Balled up into a fist of silk her underwear is crammed into her mouth so that her cheeks bulge like an infant's. One suspender, spittle-silvered, has escaped the parted lips to trail across her chin. He pulls her onto Him, onto His frilled crustacean shaft and her vagina steams. Convulsed by great magnetic shudders He is roaring, snorting like a murdered horse as He ejaculates, an orgasm of jewels that floods her womb with Turquoise, Jade and Chrysolite. Salt streams of Beryl and Jacinth run down between her legs, the blue-ticked mattress turned to a cathedral-glass of brilliant stains. ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Creation Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1871592321
• ISBN 13: 9781871592320
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: D.M.Mitchell