HP Lovecraft | CW Hawes

Seabury Quinn

In March of 1918 a story appeared in the pages of Detective Story Magazine and the author of the story was Seabury Quinn. The title of the story was “Demons of the Night”.

As near as we can tell, “Demons of the Night” was Quinn’s first fiction sale. That sale began a fiction writing career that spanned over half a century, and saw the production of over 500 short stories and 2 novels. And those numbers don’t include his many non-fiction writings.

Seabury Quinn was the quintessential pulp fiction master, along with such greats as H. Bedford-Jones, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Robert E Howard. He knew how to craft a story that would sell and he wasn’t shy about going where the money was to be found.

In his day, Quinn was an exceedingly popular author. A Weird Tales poll of the magazine’s readers put Quinn as their number one favorite author — ahead of such luminaries as HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, and August Derleth. More Seabury Quinn stories received cover art than any other writer for Weird Tales. As I noted in another post, it was Quinn and his creation, Jules de Grandin, who saved Weird Tales from folding in the early ‘30s, which would have possibly denied us the best of Lovecraft’s work, and such talents as Robert Bloch.

So why is Seabury Quinn denied his claim to fame and basically relegated to a footnote? The answer lies with the politics of the Lovecraft Circle, specifically the machinations of August Derleth.

In order to elevate Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn became the whipping boy. Quinn was a hack and the epitome of what was bad in pulp magazine fiction. Lovecraft, on the other hand, was a genius and represented the highest ideals and possibilities of the pulp magazines. Derleth’s hero worship put the knife in Quinn’s back. And why Quinn, and not someone else? Probably because Lovecraft didn’t like Quinn’s fiction, making him an easy target.

For a long time I held to the common, albeit unfair, assessment that Quinn was a hack. I held that view until I actually read some of his stories. Much to my surprise, his stories are no worse than Lovecraft’s, or Howard’s, or Frank Belknap Long’s, to name three, and in some cases better.

Seabury Quinn was a decent, prolific, and inventive writer, much like Robert E Howard. Quinn was paid more than the other writers for Weird Tales because the magazine’s readers wanted his stories.

Now, thanks in large part to ebooks, publishers are republishing the work of Seabury Quinn, and I am very pleased to see him regaining the recognition he is due.

Yesterday, for Christmas, I received two volumes of Quinn’s work: Demons of the Night and Other Early Tales, edited by Gene Christie and published by Black Dog Books; and A Rival from the Grave, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume 4, edited by George A Vanderburgh and published by Nightshade Books. Santa was indeed good!

In short order, Seabury Quinn has become one of my favorite authors. His books stand right next to the works of Lovecraft and Howard. He’s easily their equal. Sure, he’s different from them. But that doesn’t make him a lesser writer. Seabury Quinn’s stories have immense entertainment value. What more can one ask from a writer?

As always, comments are welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

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The Coming Race

Good Books You Probably Never Heard Of – Part 10

The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1951

As you probably know, I love subterranean settings. I also love Lost Race stories. And Bulwer-Lytton’s 1871 sci-fi novel, The Coming Race, has both. Be still my heart!

The story is fairly simple and straightforward. The unnamed narrator and a friend decide to explore a chasm that an exploratory mine shaft has uncovered.

During the descent, the rope breaks and the friend is killed. The narrator finds himself with no way to get back to the surface and decides to continue his exploration of the extensive chambers he’s discovered. Eventually he enters a vast subterranean world.

The narrator meets a couple of the inhabitants, a man and a boy, who are friendly and welcome him to their world. The narrator learns that the man is an administrator and the boy is his son.

The narrator also meets the entire family, and Zee, the magistrate’s daughter, begins teaching the narrator about the world of the Vril-ya, as the people call themselves.

The Vril-ya are very much superior to humans on the surface of the earth. Their mental powers are phenomenal, and they control a substance called vril, which can heal or destroy.

In time, Zee falls in love with the narrator. Meanwhile, her father, the magistrate, has grown wary of the “primitive” narrator. When he learns his daughter is in love with the stranger, the magistrate orders his son to kill the narrator.

Since you can find a complete summary of the book on the Internet, I’ll just go ahead and tell you the rest of the story.

Zee and her brother take the narrator away, but instead of killing him they take him apart way to the surface. There is a sad parting, and then Zee seals the entrance to the world of the Vril-ya

The narrator makes his way back to the surface and warns the world the Vril-ya will take over the surface of the world when they run out of room underground.

At the time of its publication, The Coming Race, was very convincing and many believe the vril mentioned in the book was real. It’s also claimed that vril was believed to be real by many pre-Nazi occultists, such as those in the Thule Society.

Such is the power of fiction, even today vril continues to make an appearance among occultists, in movies, and in video games.

The Coming Race is free at Project Gutenberg. It’s a historically significant book, and not a bad story — although modern readers may find it slow going. However, Bulwer-Lytton’s description of utopia is quite interesting and helps one through the slow parts.

It’s not often one comes across a book that has had a major impact on history and yet remains rather unknown. Give it a try, after it’s free. You have nothing to lose. In addition, I suspect the book may have influenced HP Lovecraft and his writing of “The Mound”.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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Van Dyne’s Vampires

A writer is a little bit like a god. Gods in all religions are creators. They are responsible for the world as we know it, and for the world we cannot see.

Writers create worlds, both seen and unseen, every day, along with myriads of people. Like gods, writers are creators.

The act of creating is, for me, exhilarating. It is the most exciting part of writing. Someday I hope to have enough money so I can hire someone to do all the other aspects of the writing business so I can just write.

The first audience of a writer is himself. If the story doesn’t interest him, it won’t see the light of day. And it might not even see completion. After all, writers basically write about what they know and they write a story they find interesting. That’s what keeps them going. I suppose the same can be said of deities: they do what pleases them.

Yesterday was supposed to be the official launch day of Van Dyne’s Vampires (Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations, Book 4). However, Amazon is having hiccups in their KDP processing. Consequently, Van Dyne isn’t showing up on the Pierce Mostyn series page and the price (as of this writing) is still listed at 99 cents, which is what I offer as a special deal to my reading list folks. However, since the book is still 99 cents — grab a copy before the Zon finally gets its act together and raises the price to $2.99.

The Pierce Mostyn stories have been a joy to write. More and more I’m growing to truly love Mostyn and company. I’m anticipating a long relationship with him and his world.

Van Dyne’s Vampires is a bit of a departure from the previous three stories, where I riffed on a story by HP Lovecraft. Van Dyne is my own creation. Although characters of his ilk abound. Van Dyne is the Moriarity, the Zeck, the Fu Manchu of Pierce Mostyn’s world. The human evil genius. Never mind that Mostyn also has Cthulhu and his buddies to contend with.

Cthulhu and friends, however, don’t care about us. We are to them as ants on a sidewalk are to us. That is the horror of the Mythos: in the vastness of the universe, we don’t matter. We are nothing. Whether human beings and our little world continue to exist doesn’t even register in the minds of entities greater than ourselves.

The true horror of our quest to meet other intelligent life is that they will be superior to us and not care if we live or die. And maybe for them, things would be better off if we were dead. Be careful what you wish for.

However, for some, the fear of the Mythos might be a bit remote. So I created someone we all can relate to: namely, the bully; the person who uses others to satisfy his or her own needs. Valdis Damien van Dyne is that bully on a mega-scale. He is that egotist who thinks nothing of others — other than how they can best serve his needs.

We’ve all been bullied. We’ve all dealt with users. And when that bully or user has power over us, there is fear we feel deep in our gut. It is far more visceral than the fear of being nothing.

And just as we hope someone will come to our rescue, there is Pierce Mostyn and the OUP. A little bit of the cavalry coming over the hill just in the nick of time. And we like that.

You can get Van Dyne’s Vampires at Amazon, or read it for free if you are a KU member. Enjoy!

Comments are always welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

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The Man Who Saved Weird Tales

…and saved weird fiction.

Really? Weird Tales and weird fiction owe their existence to one man? The Unique Magazine? The magazine of HP Lovecraft?

Actually, Weird Tales wasn’t the magazine of HP Lovecraft. Sure, he submitted stories to WT and had them published (and a few rejected). But HPL actually disdained the commercial press and those who wrote for money, or “sold their soul to Mammon”, as he once put it. Lovecraft was willing to live in genteel poverty and support the amateur press to keep his art pure.

I wonder sometimes why he submitted to the pulp magazines at all. He in truth disdained them. I guess even a purist has to eat.

No, Weird Tales was not Lovecraft’s magazine. That is revisionist history started by his proteges August Derleth and Donald Wandrei.

Actually the man who was the defining persona of The Unique Magazine was Seabury Quinn. The man usually relegated to the footnotes of WT history telling.

Quinn was a lawyer, magazine editor, and prolific writer of fiction. He wrote over 500 stories. His published works number more than 5 times that of Lovecraft, and that includes HPL’s ghost written stories and collaborations. Granted Quinn lived 32 years longer than Lovecraft, but HPL was even out written by his younger contemporary, Robert E Howard, who had far fewer productive years than Lovecraft.

In actuality, Lovecraft saw himself first and foremost as a poet. Let’s be honest here. Lovecraft wrote around five dozen stories and maybe half are memorable. It’s also true that HPL would have faded into oblivion were it not for Derleth’s continual paean of praise.

Quinn, on the other hand, had no champion and did fade into obscurity — and only now is being given a fair assessment. And the verdict is that he was a very decent writer. In fact, he was the most popular of Weird Tales’s cadre of authors.

Quinn and Lovecraft made their debut WT appearance in the 7th issue, October 1923. Lovecraft’s contribution was “Dagon” and Quinn’s was “The Phantom Farmhouse”.

Quinn’s story was so popular among WT readers they consistently asked for it to be reprinted. Not the case with “Dagon”. I’ve read both stories. Both are good. Different, but equally satisfying reads — for differing reasons.

Quinn’s occult detective, Jules de Grandin, first appeared in the October 1925 issue of Weird Tales and immediately became a hit with the readers. They couldn’t get enough of the little Frenchman and it was Quinn’s de Grandin who saved Weird Tales from dying in 1931.

The Unique Magazine had financial troubles throughout its entire history. This was partly due to its small readership. Competition for readers was fierce amongst the plethora of pulps and slicks. Not unlike the competition amongst indie authors today for readership.

The first issue of Weird Tales was March 1923. Edwin Baird was the editor. In just 13 issues, Baird had saddled WT with a debt of over $40,000. In contemporary dollars, that’s close to $600,000. Most of this money was owed to WT’s printer.

The publisher, J. C. Henneberger, decided to solve the problem by selling majority interest in the magazine to B. Cornelius, the printer, with the understanding that when the magazine became profitable, Cornelius would get his money back and the stock returned to Henneberger.

In the re-organization, Baird left and Farnsworth Wright took over as editor in 1924 when Lovecraft failed to accept Henneberger’s offer. And even though Wright’s tenure as editor is considered the magazine’s Golden Age, Weird Tales remained an unprofitable enterprise.

By late 1931, Cornelius’s patience had run out (we are talking 7 years here) and he ordered Henneberger to shut the magazine down.

Let’s think about this for a moment. If Cornelius had gotten his way, the history of weird fiction would have been very, very different. The best of Robert E Howard’s horror and fantasy, gone. No CL Moore or Robert Bloch. Much of Mary Elizabeth Counselman’s weird fiction, gone . Most of Carl Jacobi’s weird fiction, gone. We wouldn’t have Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, “The Dreams in the Witch House”, “The Thing on the Doorstep”, or “The Haunter of the Dark”.

The best years of the magazine would not exist.

However, Wright managed to convince Cornelius he had two serials that would turn the magazine around. They were Otis Adelbert Kline’s Tarzan pastiche, Tam, Son of Tiger, and Seabury Quinn’s The Devil’s Bride, the longest de Grandin story Quinn wrote.

The Devil’s Bride ran for six issues and effectively saved the magazine.

Darrell Schweitzer wrote, in his introductory essay, “Jules de Grandin: ‘The Pillar of Weird Tales’”:

“When you consider that Robert E Howard still had his best Weird Tales material in front of him and that all of CL Moore, Robert Bloch, and many others was yet to come, it is worth pausing to reflect on how much fantastic literature owes to Seabury Quinn’s excitable Frenchman.” (The Dark Angel: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Vol. 3. Night Shade Books, 2018)

So why is Seabury Quinn so little known today? I think the answer is August Derleth and his indefatigable championing of Lovecraft. Derleth placed all Weird Tales writers either in Lovecraft’s circle or outside it. And because HPL did not like Quinn’s writing, Quinn was damned. Because those outside the circle were promptly forgotten.

That Weird Tales was a Lovecraftian world is a myth. A myth created by HPL’s protege, August Derleth. Who also happened to be the second most published Weird Tales author. Much of that due to his “fake” collaborations with Lovecraft.

Stefan Dziemianowicz noted in his essay “‘Loved by Thousands of Readers’: The Popularity of Jules de Grandin”:

“In retrospect, Seabury Quinn’s tales of Jules de Grandin played a vital role in the development of weird fiction, if largely through their relationship with Weird Tales and its readers.” (The Devil’s Rosary: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Vol. 2. Night Shade Press, 2017)

Now that’s not something we weird fiction fans hear every day. Nor something we should ignore.

Comments are always welcome! And, until next time, happy reading!

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Terror in the Shadows-Sneak Peek 2

Yesterday, Terror in the Shadows (Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigations, Book 3) went live. Pick up a copy or read for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.

I have mixed feelings about having most of my books exclusive on Amazon. But the one thing that is difficult to argue against is making more money. All of my books except for The Rocheport Saga are exclusive to Amazon. Hopefully one day soon I’ll be able to figure out how to make as much money going wide as I do now being exclusive to Amazon. But until that day, exclusive it is.

If you have an iPad, you can get the Kindle app to augment iBooks. That’s what I’ve done. There are also ways to read Kindle books on Nook and Kobo devices. A little Internet research will show you how to do that.

Last week I gave you a sneak peek from chapter 1 of Terror in the Shadows. This week’s peek is from Chapter 6. Enjoy!

***

When the big black SUV pulled into the lot, Mostyn and Kemper saw a big old Pontiac a short distance away, not far from the tree line. The car was bouncing, the squeak of the springs just barely audible.

“Looks like someone’s going for a ride,” Mostyn said.

“Idiots.”

“What? You never did that, Kemper?”

“A car? You’ve got to be kidding?”

“Nope.”

“Forget it. Now what?”

Mostyn put the SUV in park and shut off the engine. “Let’s go for a walk.”

They exited the vehicle, flashlights in hand. The old Pontiac stopped bouncing.

“I guess he scored,” Kemper said.

“Hope they don’t regret it.”

“Now who’s the cynic.”

“Just saying. Babies you know.”

“Gotta point there, Mostyn.”

“This way, Kemper.”

Mostyn cut across the lot on a path that would give the occupants of the Pontiac their space. Kemper was next to him. Their flashlight beams illuminated the asphalt, and when the asphalt ended, the short strip of grass before the woods.

Just before the trees, Kemper hesitated. “Awfully dark in there.”

“That it is. And there may or may not be a bogeyman in there.”

“Yeah, right.”

Mostyn and Kemper carefully picked their way into the woods. Behind them, in the east, a golden moon began coming up over the treetops. They heard the Pontiac start and drive out of the lot.

“Bet they’re wondering whose SUV that is,” Mostyn said.

“Probably scared shitless someone was spying on them and will tell their parents.”

Mostyn chuckled. “Probably.”

Out of the darkness a rock knocked Kemper’s flashlight out of her hand. Mostyn turned his off and they dropped to the ground. All around them they heard grunting and feral sounds. Neither one said a word. Whatever was making the sounds, and there had to be several of them, they were obviously looking for Mostyn and Kemper.

Mostyn touched his pistol to Kemper’s hand and then touched her hand with one finger, followed by a second, and then a third.

Kemper wrote “OK” with her finger on Mostyn’s hand and pulled her pistol out of the fanny pack.

Mostyn tapped Kemper’s hand once, twice, three times. They jumped up, and fired into the darkness.

Several rocks came flying in their direction and Mostyn grunted when one connected with his thigh. And then all was quiet.

Mostyn turned on his flashlight and panned the light and his pistol in a circle around them. Nothing. There was nothing but trees and darkness beyond the flashlight beam.

He squatted down and played the beam of light around until he found Kemper’s flashlight. He picked it up and tried the switch.

“Must’ve broken the bulb.”

He heard Kemper say, “Let’s go.”

He stood and they made their way out of the woods. In the middle of the parking lot, Kemper suddenly stopped.

“What is it, Dot?”

“You know those sounds they were making?”

“A lot of grunts.

“Some were. But most of them…?” She paused, her voice tinged with fear, and turned to face Mostyn.

“Go on.”

“They followed the pattern of speech.”

***

I hope you enjoyed the snippet. Comments are always welcome! And, until next time, happy reading!

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Terror in the Shadows – Sneak Peek

The third Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation — Terror in the Shadows — goes live next week. And today I thought I’d give you a sneak peek. Whet your appetite, so to speak.

Terror in the Shadows draws inspiration from the world HP Lovecraft created for his story “The Lurking Fear”. And as I explained last week, Lovecraft utilized the American Gothic fiction theme of the abhuman for the basis of his story.

The term “abhuman” was coined by William Hope Hodgson in his Carnacki stories, among others. The idea itself growing out of Darwinism. If we came from beasts, how are we not beasts? What is it that makes us human? And can we return to the bestial? Or maybe we simply are beasts hiding behind a veneer of civility.

Today’s sneak peek is from chapter 1 of Terror in the Shadows. Enjoy!

***

Mostyn looked out the window. The country through which they were driving could be described as nothing less than idyllic. Yet in all of the United States there are areas no more remote or unknown than parts of Appalachia. In spite of the relatively low height of the mountains, the region possesses some of the most rugged and nearly inaccessible terrain on earth.

From the beauty of the passing scenery, Mostyn once again turned his gaze back to the report. From the Catskills to Georgia, the same occurrences of cannibalism and human carnage. As abruptly as the Georgia horror had begun, in the 1940s, it had ended, news reaching the Federal government too late for war-stretched agencies to do anything about it. Then thirty years later, in the same area, bizarre tales of cannibalism and of the inhabitants of several small communities being torn apart on dark, storm tormented nights. Only blood and body parts being found in the morning.

And once again, as abruptly as the atrocities began, they ceased, news reaching Federal ears too late for any kind of government intervention. These accounts, along with many others, were passed on to the OUP when it was created. This time, however, word reached Doctor Bardon’s ears almost before it had reached the media. And when it did, Doctor Bardon jumped on it.

Mostyn read about the three reported incidents that had occurred so far this year in West Virginia, the four that had occurred last year, and the one the year before that. Brutal murders. Evidence of cannibalism. Vague reports of hairy, beast-like creatures that walked upright with an oddly human gait.

Around him were the sounds of Baker’s camera, Kemper’s and Cashel’s discussion, and Jones softly singing some ‘80s song. Somewhere out there, in the lush greenery of the hills they were passing through, was a hidden horror, a lurking fear that was terrorizing the people in the vicinity of the hamlet called Heirloom, West Virginia.

Four days ago, in the middle of a wild nighttime thunderstorm, was the most recent occurrence. In the little unincorporated village of Shiloh, located several miles to the southeast of Heirloom, a witness reported seeing at least half a dozen shapes, “things” the witness had called them, come out of the dense forest. That’s all the person saw because he’d found his missing dog and was on his way home.

The next day, however, the entire community quickly became aware of the disaster that had struck in the night. The Ardilla and Bosk families had been murdered in their sleep and eaten. Raw. The perpetrators showed no concern about hiding the dead or of concealing evidence. The county sheriff got numerous fingerprints, handprints, and casts of bare feet. Samples of hair were also collected. The forensic analysis concluded the hair was human, as well as the teeth marks on the bones.

And that’s when Doctor Bardon stepped in and claimed jurisdiction. Mostyn looked at Bardon’s small neat script and read his conclusion:

The incidents in the Catskills and those that occurred in Georgia in the 1940s and 1970s are too similar to these current incidents to ignore. Your mission is to determine the source, assess the danger level, and take appropriate action to eliminate the threat, if a threat exists, to the United States of America.

Mostyn’s gaze returned to the scenery outside his window. Somewhere out there was a horror that had been quietly at work for nearly a hundred years. Perhaps more. A horror hidden in the shadows of this beautiful paradise.

***

I hope you enjoyed the snippet. Comments are always welcome, and until next time — happy reading!

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HP Lovecraft — His Influence

Lovecraft primarily saw himself as a poet. Fiction was, for him, a sideline; something at which he made the occasional buck to supplement his meager inheritance, which he shared with two maiden aunts. Yet, the literary impact of that fiction is huge. As a poet, though, he was mostly mediocre.

The very first Lovecraft story I read was “The Colour Out Of Space”, which Groff Conklin included in his fabulously wonderful Omnibus of Science Fiction. A truly outstanding sci-fi anthology. I read “The Colour Out Of Space” sometime back in the early 1960s when I was in elementary school. And it captured my imagination.

The next time I ran into Lovecraft was in my senior year in high school when I bought the Beagle Books reprints of the Arkham edition of Lovecraft’s fiction and Ballentine’s Fungi from Yuggoth & Other Poems.

One of the first stories I read in those paperbacks was “The Lurking Fear”, which plays on the classic American gothic theme of the abhuman. The abhuman is the degenerate, bestial human. The human that has regressed to a point where he or she no longer functions as a human, but as a beast.

At that time, the theme was new to me and I was fascinated by it. Reverse evolution, as it were. But there’s also the metaphysical question of just exactly what is it that makes us human. Are we angels that are prone to sin? Or are we beasts with but a veneer, a mask, of civility?

In Terror in the Shadows, I explore the abhuman theme by building on Lovecraft’s story. And I give one possible explanation for why the abhuman might come into existence. I’ll give you a hint: it doesn’t have anything to do with a mother’s love, or lack thereof.

There is a wide range of opinion as to Lovecraft’s storytelling ability. There are those who place him second to Poe. There are those who think he wrote drivel. I’m somewhere in the middle. When Lovecraft was firing on all cylinders, he knocked the ball out of the park. The problem is, he didn’t always fire on all cylinders. In fact, a lot of the time he didn’t. He was quite inconsistent as a writer.

From early on, I maintained that Robert E Howard was consistently a better writer than Lovecraft. But when Lovecraft was on top of his game, he was second to none. That’s why I think Lovecraft developed such a devoted following. Other writers saw his rare genius and also saw him as an approachable person, which allowed Lovecraft to share his opinions with other writers and hopeful writers. HPL was one of the 20th Century’s great epistolarians.

I appreciate Lovecraft from the perspective of a reader as well as from the perspective of a writer. Possibly his single most important contribution to the craft of writing is his emphasis on atmosphere. When reading one of Lovecraft’s stories, one cannot escape the mood, the feelings, the details, the colors that all lead to a general feeling of dread. For Lovecraft, the atmosphere was everything. Without it, the tale of terror would be nothing.

But atmosphere is important in all genres of fiction, because it sets the scene. It lets us know what we see and touch and taste and smell. The atmosphere instills in us a general feeling, whether of happiness or terror, joy or dread. Whenever a writer can create an atmosphere that lets me see and touch and smell, I thank Lovecraft.

If character is king in storytelling, then atmosphere has to be the queen.

HP Lovecraft was a literary giant who produced but few gems. But the ones he did produce blind us with their light. I think I’ll stop now and go read once again “The Colour Out of Space” — the story that for me started it all.

Comments are always welcome, and, until next time, happy reading!

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Stairway to Hell is Live!

Stairway to Hell, the second Pierce Mostyn Paranormal Investigation, went live officially yesterday.

I did a soft launch over the weekend to my VIP Readers. They got a reduced price bonus. If you want to get in on future Pierce Mostyn extras, become a VIP Reader!

So what’s all the fuss about Pierce Mostyn anyway? And what’s so special about Stairway to Hell? I’m so glad you asked!

Special Agent in Charge Pierce Mostyn works for the Office of Unidentified Phenomena. The OUP actively works those X-File cases, and Mostyn is one of their top agents. Unlike Fox Mulder, Mostyn has the support of the bureaucracy. Well, at least those very few bureaucrats who even know the OUP exists. Because officially it doesn’t.

After all, in its infinite wisdom, the US government deems it’s in our best interest that we remain ignorant of the potential threats and dangers to us from what’s out there.

But what is out there? To learn that, my friends, you’ll have to stay tuned to this channel. The only channel bringing you this super classified information. Because the people have a right to know!

So where exactly is this hell that the stairway leads to? Conforming to tradition, hell is down. It is beneath our feet. It is in the subterranean world of K’n-yan.

What’s more, the K’n-yanians, while “human”, aren’t homo sapiens. In fact, they aren’t even from this planet. Or even this dimension. There distant ancestors were the original worshipers of The Great Old Ones. Those insane blasphemies of unwholesome anti-physics.

HP Lovecraft, before he died, got hold of an account of someone who’d been to K’n-yan. Lovecraft disguised fact as fiction, as he often did, in a story called “The Mound”.

Now, decades later, another entrance to K’n-yan was discovered. Stairway to Hell is the account of Mostyn’s detainment, along with his team, in the subterranean world. And, following Lovecraft, I’ve disguised truth as fiction. Which is simply a safeguard, because we all know the truth is out there.

Get Stairway to Hell on Amazon.

The truth will set you free.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

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The Worlds Beneath

Google maps is a wonderful thing. I can get a look at just about any place on this planet. There are few unexplored, or little explored, places left on the globe. However, as my friend Jack Tyler noted last week, “Step into any cavern anywhere… and anything is certainly possible.”

Google has yet to picture what’s beneath our feet. That territory is fair game for the fertile mind of any novelist.

And I am glad it is. Caves and caverns are fascinating places. Although I don’t think I have it in me to be a spelunker, a touch of claustrophobia puts the damper on pursuit of the hobby, I can enjoy the pastime from the comforts of my armchair.

The internet is ripe with photos of our subterranean world, both natural and man-made. Real places that exist below ground.

Actionsquad.org is an absolutely fascinating site to see what lies below the surface of Minneapolis and St. Paul. There’s also gregbrick.org and Brick’s book, Subterranean Twin Cities. Along with scores of articles and blog posts. And that’s just for what’s beneath Minneapolis and St. Paul.

I used Actionsquad.org and Brick’s book to create the underground world of the neo-Aztec cult in Festival of Death. But what’s even better than a simple adventure in a cave or cave system, is an entire subterranean lost world. I think that’s what makes A Journey to the Center of the Earth so interesting. And enduring.

Bulwer-Lytton’s 1871 novel, The Coming Race, which had a profound impact on occultists during the 1920s and 1930s, is set in a subterranean world inhabited by a race of beings who call themselves the Vril-ya. These beings have harnessed an energy source they call Vril. The book is about the accidental visit of a young man to the land of the Vril-ya and tells of his adventures there and his return home. The book ends with a warning that the Vril-ya are running out of space underground and they see the surface as fair game. Knowing the secrets of how to use Vril, the Vril-ya will make us their slaves.

Supposedly, there was a Vril Society in Weimar Germany. Vril was also claimed to be the power source for the UFOs spotted after World War II. And it is thought the Thule Society conducted a search for sources of Vril energy, and later had an influence on the supposed occultism of National Socialism.

I wonder if Bulwer-Lytton ever thought his imaginary subterranean world would cause such hoopla?

In the March, April, and May 1935 issues of Wonder Stories, Stanton A Coblentz’s novel, In Caverns Below, was published. It’s the story of two men who are exploring a mine shaft and become trapped below ground due to an earthquake. They find themselves in a vast subterranean world inhabited by two countries, Wu and Zu, which are locked in perpetual warfare.

These countries are technologically far advanced compared to 1935 America and Europe. They have death rays and land ships capable of tunneling through the earth.

The novel was republished in 1957 as Hidden World, and was seen as a satire on the cold war between the West and East. Coblentz, however, most likely used the novel to warn readers of the waste warfare generates, the massive destruction it causes, and how it keeps people in a perpetual state of enslavement to the state. Something along the lines of Orwell’s perpetual war for perpetual peace. Coblentz also raised awareness that the only ones who really profit from war are the large corporations because of their obscene profits. A warning about the military-industrial complex long before Eisenhower.

Beneath the earth’s surface is a great place to put prehistoric worlds. Jungles are disappearing and by means of satellites we see everything. So what better place to discover dinosaurs and cavemen than underground? It’s what makes Pellucidar so exciting. Sword and sorcery, sword and planet, and planetary romance — all right beneath our feet, instead of out there among the stars.

And because Pellucidar proved to be so popular, Burroughs had lots of imitators.

HP Lovecraft created his own subterranean world in The Mound, ghost written for Zealia Bishop. It is the world on which I based Stairway to Hell, which will make its publication debut on 26 February.

Lovecraft’s world of K’n-yan is advanced far beyond us. But their pursuit of pleasure, coupled with exceedingly long lives, has led K’n-yanian society to intense ennui and cruelty. Toss in the Cthulhu Mythos, and we have an evil world par-excellence. Or more accurately, a world in which nothing remains of significance.

Subterranean fiction it is alive and well. From primitive worlds to advanced races to the Cthulhu Mythos, there’s something for everyone — right beneath our feet.

Comments are always welcome, and, until next time — happy reading!

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Subterranean Terror And Adventure

From “The Subterranean World” by George Hartwig, 1872. From the MIT Library website.

I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for a story or novel set somewhere beneath the earth’s surface. I suppose I can lay this odd predilection of mine squarely on Jules Verne’s doorstep.

After all, what kid, especially a young boy, hasn’t read A Journey To The Center Of The Earth? My first exposure was a comic book version. Then I read the novel, and afterwards saw a movie version. I was hooked.

When writing my first novel, Festival Of Death, I discovered there are caves beneath Minneapolis! That was all it took. I just had to set part of Tina’s and Harry’s case in the labyrinths beneath the city.

There’s something about subterranean worlds and settings that captures our imagination in a way no other setting does. Perhaps it’s the idea of the hidden and mysterious right beneath our feet. There’s also the notion that below ground is associated with death, and by extension evil.

I suppose it all started with Hades — the land of the dead in Greek mythology. A mysterious realm prohibited to the living with but rare exceptions.

Of course we can’t forget Dante’s Inferno. Another portrayal of the realm of the dead. And equally as forbidding as the pictures portrayed in the Greek myths.

It was in the 18th-century that subterranean fiction really got its start as something separate from portrayals of the land of the dead.

There’s Ludvig Holberg’s Nicolai Klimii inter subterraneum, published in 1741. Nicolai Klim spends several years exploring an earth inside our earth.

In 1788, Giacomo Casanova (yes, that Casanova) published the 5-volume Icosaméran. The “book” is an 1,800-page story of a brother and sister who discover a subterranean utopia.

The 19th century saw a proliferation of novels and stories with subterranean settings.

The 1820 sci-fi novel Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery
Poe’s 1838 novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
The above-mentioned novel by Verne, published in 1864
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, published in 1871
In 1881 there appeared Mary Lane’s hollow earth novel, Mizora, complete with feminist themes!
William R Bradshaw’s 1892 sci-fi novel The Goddess of Atvatabar (Avatar?)

The above are just a few of the many novels making their appearance before the reading public during the 1800s.

In the 20th century, subterranean fiction continued full-steam ahead. Burrough’s Pellucidar series. Rex Stout’s Under the Andes. Charles R Tanner’s Tumithak of the Corridors. Sean O’Larkin’s Morgo the Mighty; Otis Adelbert Kline’s Tam, Son of the Tiger; and Stanton A Coblentz’s Hidden World. To name just a few.

JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis have subterranean worlds, as does L Frank Baum. There was even a Choose Your Own Adventure hollow earth book: The Underground Kingdom (1983).

And the above are only a few of the 20th century’s offerings. The outpouring of novels set in subterranean worlds hasn’t abated. It’s a setting that continues to inspire.

HP Lovecraft made use of the theme in at least 4 of his stories:

The Beast in the Cave
The Transition of Juan Romero
The Festival
The Mound

And I make use of a subterranean world in my forthcoming Pierce Mostyn adventure: Stairway to Hell.

Life below ground was never so good. If you have a favorite subterranean novel, let me know in the comments. Until next time, happy reading!

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