Of course, folks like Lovecraft et.al. gave passing, almost in-jokes, mention of friends within some of their stories, some authors made them an actual important element of the novel such as Fritz Leiber, Jrs award winning OUR LADY OF DARKNESS uses Clark Ashton Smith! More recently, CAS appears in the novel SHADOWS BEND, whose brief the story plot explanation goes Though Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, and H.P. Lovecraft, originator of the Cthulhu Mythos, carried on a lively correspondence for a number of years, they never actually met. According to L. Sprague de Camp, biographer of both men (as quoted in the Afterword of Shadows Bend), their admirers have ever since thought it a pity that these two exceptional men failed to shake each others hand. But what if Howard and Lovecraft had met? And what if the impetus for their meeting had been a series of events eerily resembling Lovecrafts own weird fiction? Thats the premise of Shadows Bend, which propels Howard and Lovecraft on a supernatural road trip, with nothing less than the future of the world at stake. The book begins with Lovecraft on a bus, travelling to Texas to enlist the help of Howard, whom he thinks is the only person who might possibly believe the frightening tale he has to tell. Arriving precipitously at Howards home in the middle of a violent storm, Lovecraft blurts out his story. A collector of antiquities, he recently acquired a Kachina doll whose features, strangely, recall those of the Old Ones of his fiction -- ancient, powerful extraterrestrial beings who became trapped on earth and now lie sleeping in deep hidden places. Inside the dolls clay head he discovered a bizarre alien Artifact, imprinted with the face of Cthulhu, most powerful of the Old Ones. Since then hes been pursued by horrible nightmares and a sense of being watched, and by the dread that elements of his invented mythos are somehow taking form in the real world. Howard agrees to help, and together they set out to consult their friend, fellow weird fiction writer Clark Ashton Smith, who claims to have found an actual copy of a translation of the Necronomicon -- a book that Lovecraft always believed he himself invented, as part of the imaginary world of his stories. Along the way theyre joined by a mysterious red-haired woman named Glory, and encounter an ancient Indian shaman, who has strange things to tell them. Dodging attack by hordes of maddened animals, eluding pursuit by two ghastly minions of Cthulhu, it becomes clear that Lovecrafts fear is fact: his fiction isnt fiction at all, but a glimpse of a dark, hidden reality, that is now emerging to menace all the world. Does anyone know of any other time where our Emperor is used as an key element in a story? Did it work? :)
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 23:45:19 +0000
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