Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Something Fishy This Way Comes!




Recently picked up Shadows Over Innsmouth and Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth, two handsome and highly readable volumes edited by Stephen Jones and reprinted by Titan Books featuring Lovecraft's infamous New England fishing village. They are full of some weird new spins on what happened in Innsmouth before and after the events related by Lovecraft's notorious narrator.


I first encountered this tale in middle school when I got my mitts on this handy volume of misbegotten lore. Lovecraft sank deep into my imagination and I've been a fan since, especially of the story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". If you haven't read it before, then by all means take some time to read one of Lovecraft's moodiest longer stories. It builds, like all his good stuff, with a steady beat of weird and weirder.

I discovered recently that this story might well have been inspired, at least in part, by the story "Fishhead" by Irvin S.Cobb, a Kentucky writer of some note from the early 20th century. This story also has some echoes of The Creature from the Black Lagoon too. Here's a link to read the whole odd thing.

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