World Famous Comics: Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft (Gollancz SF)
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H. P. Lovecraft (Gollancz SF)
By: H. P. Lovecraft Publisher: Gollancz Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Gollancz Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 880 Publication Date: April 28, 2008
Originally written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, H. P. Lovecraft's astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction, and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when they were first published. This tome brings together all of Lovecraft's harrowing stories, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were first released. It will introduce a whole new generation of readers to Lovecraft's fiction, as well as attract those fans who want all his work in a single, definitive volume.
Decent Binding of Lovecraft's Major Work It's a hefty book, and the leather binding has so far held up to my bedside abuse. I was seduced by the promise of illustrations, but they seem to be merely a set of proprietary clip-art stamped onto stories with marginal regard to relevance. A few editorial/typographical misses. Quality paper and typesetting make for easy reading.
I've enjoyed what I've read of the included essay on Lovecraft. It's an enjoyable refresher for HPL fans, and an interesting primer for newcomers. The pages it consumes wouldn't offer much expanded coverage of HPL's oeuvre. In my opinion, most (if not all) of his best tales are included.
I don't regret the purchase. I do regret the general lack of a deluxe edition of Lovecraft's work more suited to the title of this omnibus, e.g. a thick faux-flesh binding a la the Evil Dead commemorative DVD set. Gimmicky, yeah, but what a conversation piece!
The market is ripe for a lovingly crafted edition with relevant placement of the best of Lovecraft artists, annotations in the vein of ST Joshi's work, and definitely a pronunciation and glossary appendix! My vocabulary has expanded since I first read HPL as a teenager, but I'm still tripping on some of his archaisms.
The Amazon price for the hardcover is only slightly more than you'd pay for the softcover at a retail shop. Good deal.
Don't be fooled by this "leather-bound" edition This is a review, by and large, of the hardcover edition of this collection, not necessarily the content itself. You can find reviews of Lovecraft anywhere, and you probably know by now whether you love him or hate him.
This specific edition has been hyped as a luxury tome of Lovecraft's work -- another reviewer even likened it to a "bibliophile's dream" -- so maybe my hopes were too high. Because when this book arrived, my first impressions were that of disappointment, and they haven't changed since.
The description clearly says that it's leather-bound (not even "bonded leather" but leather), which it's clearly not. The cover is a cheap vinyl leatherette, like the same stuff they make sunglass cases out of in Malaysia, or that contact paper you find adhered to your grandparents' kitchen shelves. While being a hardcover book, the pages are glue-bound. Even the cover of my version, the "N" from "Necronomicon" is printed in the crease, which just looks tacky, and suggests a lack of quality control.
Really, this thing just reeks of a cheeseball gimmick, the Lovecraft equivalent of a fake Rolex. It claims to be high-class with a straight face, but then you get hoodwinked with this stinker. Hey thanks, Gollancz.
I would love to own a quality leather-bound volume of Lovecraft's best work (please, Easton Press, heed my call), and I was hoping this would at least approximate such a beast. Alas, it's not even close.
As a collection goes, however, it's not a bad assortment of stories, and the typography looks nice. The illustrations are also good, for the most part. I will echo the complaint that sometimes they don't do anything to enhance the story, and sometimes they're out of context, and sometimes the repeated iconography can be distracting.
Note, when the description says, "just the way they were originally published", that means the stories have been edited from the original Lovecraft-written text for their initial publication. These are not the versions laboriously compiled by Joshi from the original manuscripts, which you can find in other editions. Personally, I'm not that peculiar about this, but I know that others are, so be warned.
I'm tempted to rate this book less than three stars, but in terms of the content, it's not a bad value for the money. Before you shell out the cash, however, I recommend that you look at the Library of America collection of H.P Lovecraft (if you are looking for a single volume of his greatist hits), or especially the four signature Arkham House collections. Arkham House was born to publish Lovecraft and they take it very seriously. These are the best versions available, if you don't mind having the best examples of his work spread across four separate volumes.
Tempting... Being an owner of the Arkham House collection of his works (which is prolly the closest you'll ever have to all of his published works) I was skeptical of this tome. Most of the ones out there now select some of his better stories and leave others out. So while this one was a temptation, I decided to check it out before buying. Suffice to say, it doesn't come close to the Arkham House collection. So I decided to not buy it. So until a book or collection of books can match the works put out in the 4 volumes that AH puts out, I'll just have to wait. A nice illustrated volume would be fantastic! But, alas, such is life. So I would recommend checking out the Arkham House volumes (all 4). From what I can find, those 4 volumes contain all that Lovecraft published (including his letters, essays, fragments and very early works).
Not Free SF Reader A big commemorative edition with the cool title. This selection is put together by Stephen Jones, and would appear to include all the best Lovecraft stories. There are probably a few lower tier stories that I might quibble with and choose some others instead perhaps, but he couldn't fit them all in a book this size, at least. At 3.94, no complaints about this great bunch of stories.
There's also a lengthy essay about Lovecraft as an afterword, tracing his history, and it also pictorially enhanced.
Very well done (as long as no Elder Gods destroy us all, now).
Necronomicon : Dagon - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Statement of Randolph Carter - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Doom That Came to Sarnath - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Cats of Ulthar - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Nameless City - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Music of Erich Zann - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Lurking Fear - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Hound - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Rats in the Walls - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : Under the Pyramids - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Unnamable - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : In the Vault - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Outsider - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Horror at Red Hook - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Colour Out of Space - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : Pickman's Model - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Call of Cthulhu - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : Cool Air - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Shunned House - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Silver Key - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Dunwich Horror - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Whisperer in Darkness - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Strange High House in the Mist - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Dreams in the Witch-House - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : From Beyond - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : Through the Gates of the Silver Key - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : At the Mountains of Madness - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Shadow Over Innsmouth - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Shadow Out of Time - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Haunter of the Dark - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Thing on the Doorstep - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Case of Charles Dexter Ward - H. P. Lovecraft Necronomicon : The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath - H. P. Lovecraft
Marine monstrosity.
4 out of 5
Investigating legions of monsters equals fair chance someone dies.
4 out of 5
Monster mash, idol's revenge on old city destroyers.
4 out of 5
Pussy killers meet their self-imposed feline fate.
3.5 out of 5
A traveller finds a city under the sand, and exploring, a doorway into it. He explores for a time, but strange noises start coming close: "I fell babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the nameless city: That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die." He eventually makes it out.
4 out of 5
Fresh bodies needed for zombie study? Find a great war.
4 out of 5
Really bad playing.
3 out of 5
Mansion demon.
3.5 out of 5
Winged dog amulet cult symbol.
3 out of 5
Cat not up to Roman god stuff and rodents.
4 out of 5
Pyramid duel and stuck like an Egyptian.
3.5 out of 5
Demon diary.
3.5 out of 5
Tomb rearrangement injuries.
3.5 out of 5
Bookworm discovers scary stuff.
4 out of 5
A detective's investigation leads to a rather nasty Lilith ritual.
3.5 out of 5
Meteor's spectrum perversion brings madness and grey death.
After opening the iron box and finding what was in it, no one can find Randolph Carter anymore.
4 out of 5
Yog-Sothoth worshipper's precocious son a chip off the old block find the blokes from Arkham.
4.5 out of 5
Trust your dogs to tell you if monsters like the Outer Ones from Outer Space are bad, not the rambling letters of spook old friends.
4 out of 5
Old man's Elder Ones undersea tales.
4 out of 5
Talented broke mathematics students should choose other places to study than in a house in Arkham with space-time continuum conduits, witches, and vampire rats.
4.5 out of 5
If you look for space monsters, they just might get you.
4 out of 5
Randolph, in disguise tells of space, time, Necronomicons and Ancient Ones. One hell of a trip.
4.5 out of 5
Miskatonic Antarctic geology expedition uncovers alien architecture, Old One warfare evidence, and some definitely not dead Shoggoths.
4.5 out of 5
Small town's Esoteric Order of Dagon proves more than a little fishy.
4 out of 5
Western Australian evidence of Great Race timespanning colonisation and communication.
4.5 out of 5
Painter type investigates a temple of the Starry Wisdom sect, and some scary looking notes, ends up leaving some of those himself.
3.5 out of 5
"It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer. At first I shall be called a madman--madder than the man I shot in his cell at the Arkham Sanitarium." Pretty much sums it up, really.
4.5 out of 5
Lengthy investigations of Yog-Sothoth are bad for your mental health.
3.5 out of 5
Your average tourist generally knows where he is going and doesn't seek out Great Old Ones and consider encountering the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep. Randy is an adventurer that is not even close to easily scared.
5 out of 5
Not described right This book is pretty good but the second i opened it i saw the words 'Edited by' on the cover and i also saw it said all stories were in the original form so i don't know what this is all about.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
