Acolytes of Cthulhu - 'Out of the Jar', 'The Earth-Brain', 'Through the Alien Angle', 'Legacy in Crystal', 'The Will of Claude Ashur' and 'The Final War'

See. Generic.

It's time for a second round of stories from Acolytes of Cthulhu (2014 revision).

'Out of the Jar' (1940) by Charles R. Tanner is a book number, with the narrator recounting the story of a friend who bought a mysterious jar, only for another friend to open it and release a djinn, which definitely didn't net him three wishes. It taps the theme of 'what you think you know is not what you think it is' that pervades much of Lovecraft's work, and which is pretty much the mantra (probably in catchier form) of all cosmic horror history and prehistory.

'The Earth Brain' (1932) by Edmond Hamilton is on the surface a boreal answer to Lovecraft's own 'At the Mountains of Madness', being an account of an Arctic expedition to explore the interior of an ice-covered mountain (being the 1930s, no-one had yet established definitively that the Arctic has no mountains, nor land of any kind,) but it is distinguished by the scale of the threat in both directions. The explorers pierce the chamber of the brain of the Earth itself, and as a result the Earth unleashes a series of devastating quakes in pursuit of the surviving explorer. The combination of worldwide destruction and a very personal beef from the cosmic is unusual, and in many ways makes the cosmic explicable in a fashion which significantly reduces the horror of it.

'Through the Alien Angle' (1941) by Elwin G. Powers is another book number, by which I mean that it is a classically Lovecraftian tale the point of which seems to be solely to be Lovecraftian. A palaeontologist is lured into a trap by the promise of rare volumes, hypnotised and sent through an unnatural angle in the corner of a room. Arriving in an alien city, he strays into the territory of a shoggoth, which pursues him back through another angle to Earth. It has a certain commonality with Lovecraft's 'The Dreams in the Witch-House', but seems almost in a rush to get its weird in and get done.

Next up is a little oddity called 'Legacy in Crystal' (1943), by James Causey. A grasping woman inherits from her dying cousin, but his crystal signet ring brings a strange curse. I call it an oddity because this particular entry reads less like a Mythos story and more like an episode of The Price of Fear or The Man in Black. The cousin's chattels are reclaimed by Satan - like, the actual Satan - and the familiar in the ring is repelled by the name of God. It's not a bad story, but not very Lovecraftian.

'The Will of Claude Ashur' (1947) by C. Hall Thompson on the other hand is hella Lovecraftian, being the last statement of a man who claims to not be who people think he is, but to be trapped in the leprous body of his diabolical brother. There's more romance than the average... than pretty much the sum of all Lovecraft's works, but like hope and goodness it comes to naught in the end.

And then there is 'The Final War' (1949) by David H. Keller MD, in which Cthulhu, God-Warlord of Saturn, gloats over his plans to invade Earth, but is thwarted when some dude deciphers an ancient prophecy and persuades the UN to arm a fleet of airships and build a giant crushy hand to squish Cthulhu's ultimate sexy femme fatale form. I shit ye not. It's about as cosmic horror as Radar Men from the Moon.