Best HP Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos book?

Sluis Van Shipyards

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Does anyone know of a book that has all the HP Lovecraft Cthuhlu mythos stuff in it? If there is one book anyway. I've always seen it referenced in other stuff like Metallica songs and Fallout 3/4, but never read any of it.
 
This one is pretty good too. Has some nice illustrations (that don't always have anything to do with the actual story).
https://wordery.com/necronomicon-h-...MI1Mupi4ay2gIVo7ftCh03TgefEAYYASABEgJ5SfD_BwE

My recommendation for starters is:
The Shadow Over Innsmouth (I'd go with this first. It's my most favourite and it has a good amount of background info for the whole concept)
Call of Cthulhu
Dunwich Horror
At the Mountains of Madness
Dagon
The Doom that Came to Sarnath

Non-Cthulhu related works that are really good:
Rats in the Wall
Thing on the Doorstep
From Beyond
 
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S. T. Joshi edited & annotated a two-volume paperback set some years ago, it has many but not all of the 'mythos' stories.

I got started with the Del Rey paperback collections, which are 2 volumes of horror, 1 of 'dreamlands' stories, and one of the 'collaborations.'

Additionally, all of HPL's writing is in the public domain, and almost all of it can be read electronically online here: http://www.hplovecraft.com/

Welcome to the mythos.


-MJ
 
By all means read Lovecraft but don't over look the people who carried his ideas on like Brain Lumley,Clark and such.

I actually think the man was on to something with his idea that there were things,intelligent things,on this planet way before us.
 
So are most of these short stories or were any full novels?

They vary in length. Most are short stories. HPL's longest single work is actually his description of the city of Quebec.

At the Mountains of Madness and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward are something like 'short novel' length. Charles Dexter Ward is about 50,000 words and might take about 5 hours to read.

The Shadow Out of Time, The Whisperer in Darkness and The Shadow Over Innsmouth would be like long (-ish) short stories.

Most are shorter than those. There is also some poetry, in various styles and of varying length.

Depending on how much you like HPL, and what you like about his fiction, he can be quite the 'gateway drug' to other authors. HPL was influenced by Poe, Machen, Dunsany, Chambers and others. HPL in turn influenced such writers as Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Robert H. Barlow, Stephen King, Alan Moore, Mike Mignola, John Carpenter, Lin Carter, Fritz Leiber, Neil Gaiman, Guillermo del Toro, etc.
 
Thanks, I'll check those out! So are most of these short stories or were any full novels?

Brian Lumley did a whole series starting with a book called Necroscope. Guy that can talk to the dead fights metamorphic vampires. Some government secret project stuff kind of thrown in there as well. Each book is weirder than the last.
 
And, for a fun departure, track down a VHS copy of, or dig up on YouTube, Cast A Deadly Spell. One of the two shining efforts of HBO in the late '80s/early '90s, the other being My Best Friend is a Vampire. Campy, but fun. Plus the cast...! Fred Ward, Clancy Brown, David Warner...
 
Read them online for free: http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/

I also highly recommend Shadows over Baker Street which is collection of short stories pitting Sherlock Holmes against Lovecraft's creations.

Yeah that's a mostly great collection, particularly Neil Gaimans " A Study in Emerald". Near Genius.

And as a fan of crime fiction and Sherlock Holmes (plus a Lovecraftian interest) try these: Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows; Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities by James Lovegrove. They work extremely well.
 
I'd recommend "From Beyond" to a curious reader. It's pretty short and to the point.
Here's my personal reason/decision for reading ATMOM first...

Way back in 1979, when I was all of 11 years old, I read a passage in The Book of ALIEN in which a person had described the artist H. R. Giger as "...a character from an H. P. Lovecraft story." That was my first exposure to Lovecraft's name (which I thought was unusual for a name).

A couple years later, when I acquired a copy of Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials I was re-introduced to the name Lovecraft when I saw the entry for the "Old One," and the story which was its source... At the Mountains of Madness (which I thought was an unusual title for a story).

In the years following, I recall seeing the paperbacks of Lovecraft's story collections - with the amazing Michael Whelan artwork - but I never picked up any of them. Many years later a good friend who I met in art school strongly encouraged me to read some Lovecraft, and recalling those early memories, I knew I had to start with At the Mountains of Madness. And down the rabbit hole I went after that!
 
Another fun movie to watch is "The Gate" (1987). It's got a lot of Lovecraftian/Old Gods elements.

Sort of a kid horror movie. But it's 80's so way scarier than a modern type.
 
I've been following sztriki's suggestions first. So far I'm on Dunwich Horror. I would say the three referenced side missions from Fallout 3/4 (Dunwich building, Dunwich Borers, and The Secret of Cabot House) got the exact creepy thing down pat.
 
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