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Cthulhu Fhtagn, Baby!: And Other Cosmic Insolence
Oscar Wilde wrote that "the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their entire lack of style." Not satisfied with that, Will Ludwigsen chooses instead to add humor and flair to the horrors that surround us. Why settle for the lesser of evils in your newspaper when you can read an entire book of stories about zombie-exploiting, plesiosaur-chopping, alien-dissecting, robotically-enhanced, lunatics instead? This premiere collection by Will Ludwigsen brings together thirteen of his best horror, mystery, and science fiction stories from magazines such as Weird Tales, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and Cemetery Dance, plus three originals. Though the work of a single deranged author, these varied tales share a flippant disdain for common decency, courtesy, and sense. Witty and irreverent, they remind us that we have more hope than we think--if only because we have wit and irreverence.
147 pages, Paperback
First published January 12, 2006
36 people want to read
About the author
Will Ludwigsen
25 books42 followersWill Ludwigsen's stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Blood Lite, Interfictions 2, and many other places.
The intersection of these strange and scattered venues seems to be Will's fascination with weird mystery: signs of a dark and sublime imagination behind the universe. If he doesn't see those signs, he's more than happy to add them himself.
The intersection of these strange and scattered venues seems to be Will's fascination with weird mystery: signs of a dark and sublime imagination behind the universe. If he doesn't see those signs, he's more than happy to add them himself.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 26, 2016
I think it not insubstantial praise to say Will Ludwigsen's debut is the most diverse single-author collection of short fiction I can recall reading. This is by no means a work of Lovecraftian horror, as even the few stories in any proximity to that locus are spread far around the dartboard stylistically.
Honestly it's hard to pin down much in the way of a précis here. Early on he published a couple of stories in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, but these are not straightforward mysteries. Some of it might be called straight literary fiction. Like 'And Justice for Doll', the charming story of a retired judge conducting a mock court case with his grandchildren concerning the destruction of some toys.
Occasionally it veers into weird fiction, or into horror. In the case of 'Billy', it's more science fiction, being the account of a young girl growing up on a farm of 'beefboxes' (i.e. living cubes of almost pure meat) which have been genetically engineered to replace cows.
Then there are stories so experimental one isn't sure where to place them. 'Speaking Mouth Dog' is a tongue-in-cheek dissection of the absurdities of literary theory when taken to its extreme, being the story of a baby born deaf, blind, mute and addicted to cocaine who nonetheless becomes the nation's great intellectual treasure when his thoughts are interpreted through computer algorithms.
We have some vignettes, as with the two-page 'Portrait of the Horror Artist as a Young Man' that nonetheless manages to be effective in its characterisation of a father and son and the relationship therebetween. Clearly Ludwigsen has a knack for conveying the humanity of his characters in a minimum of words, and this is obvious in several stories.
The other strength of his writing which came across to me was his pointedly sardonic wit, which is never far from the surface of any story. It is more front-and-centre in some than others though, as with 'You're Welcome'. The story of a guy romantically and sexually obsessed with zombies who inadvertently triggers the zombie apocalypse, the author clearly enjoys playing with tropes while making the audience squirm with his humorous take on our societal taboos.
Will Ludwigsen is not the most prolific of authors but it doesn't matter when the quality is of this calibre. I shall look forward to reading his second collection.
Honestly it's hard to pin down much in the way of a précis here. Early on he published a couple of stories in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, but these are not straightforward mysteries. Some of it might be called straight literary fiction. Like 'And Justice for Doll', the charming story of a retired judge conducting a mock court case with his grandchildren concerning the destruction of some toys.
Occasionally it veers into weird fiction, or into horror. In the case of 'Billy', it's more science fiction, being the account of a young girl growing up on a farm of 'beefboxes' (i.e. living cubes of almost pure meat) which have been genetically engineered to replace cows.
Then there are stories so experimental one isn't sure where to place them. 'Speaking Mouth Dog' is a tongue-in-cheek dissection of the absurdities of literary theory when taken to its extreme, being the story of a baby born deaf, blind, mute and addicted to cocaine who nonetheless becomes the nation's great intellectual treasure when his thoughts are interpreted through computer algorithms.
We have some vignettes, as with the two-page 'Portrait of the Horror Artist as a Young Man' that nonetheless manages to be effective in its characterisation of a father and son and the relationship therebetween. Clearly Ludwigsen has a knack for conveying the humanity of his characters in a minimum of words, and this is obvious in several stories.
The other strength of his writing which came across to me was his pointedly sardonic wit, which is never far from the surface of any story. It is more front-and-centre in some than others though, as with 'You're Welcome'. The story of a guy romantically and sexually obsessed with zombies who inadvertently triggers the zombie apocalypse, the author clearly enjoys playing with tropes while making the audience squirm with his humorous take on our societal taboos.
Will Ludwigsen is not the most prolific of authors but it doesn't matter when the quality is of this calibre. I shall look forward to reading his second collection.
April 6, 2025
A bunch of what we could call Ludwigsen's juvenilia, featuring a couple of notions barely fleshed into anecdote (and a weird fixation with what he keeps calling "bums"; not to be overly sensitive, but...really?) and a few basic jokes. The title story is funnier as mockery of the attempt to monetize Weird Tales's brand, ludicrous given the unlikeliness that anyone who doesn't already know what it is is going to want to buy merch, than as an actual tale about the named cosmically horrifying Broadway musical. (Feels like it would have been funnier, and more horrific/comic, if the songs were chirpy Broadway routine, or smarty-pants Sondheim compositions, instead of discordant wailing, etc.)
A couple of keepers: the first-person zombie-sex one is gleefully over-the-top gross, sick and hilarious, in the best 80s Return of the Living Dead/Reanimator sense; the one with the trial in an eight-year-old girl's imagined world is gripping, emotionally and narratively, even, with a sharp-eyed take on grandparenting; the one about Florida, which he says in the notes he has at best mixed feelings about (his fiction's descriptions of the state come across as almost entirely horrified), conveys a truly awful swampy horror; the Civil-War ghost story echoes with the best supernatural fiction from that era, like Bierce's "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"--it captures the diction and tone of the 19th-c spiritualist world acutely, and the ending works. A couple others are cute, if predictable--the rewrite of an incident from Rear Window featuring aimless post-college stoners and the dog they've more or less accidentally acquired; the kid-fear one about where milk comes from is...not for the squeamish; the Loch-Ness-monster one is nicely pro-mystery, and it's the first of his many stories inspired by childhood viewings of In Search Of. In retrospect, not sure how I managed to miss that show; maybe I hadn't fully grown into my own appetite for this, though I remember reading and wholly buying into Charles Berlitz's Bermuda Triangle hooha (the plane radioed that everything was upside down before disappearing!), so not sure how I wasn't on that train when it was running.
A couple of keepers: the first-person zombie-sex one is gleefully over-the-top gross, sick and hilarious, in the best 80s Return of the Living Dead/Reanimator sense; the one with the trial in an eight-year-old girl's imagined world is gripping, emotionally and narratively, even, with a sharp-eyed take on grandparenting; the one about Florida, which he says in the notes he has at best mixed feelings about (his fiction's descriptions of the state come across as almost entirely horrified), conveys a truly awful swampy horror; the Civil-War ghost story echoes with the best supernatural fiction from that era, like Bierce's "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"--it captures the diction and tone of the 19th-c spiritualist world acutely, and the ending works. A couple others are cute, if predictable--the rewrite of an incident from Rear Window featuring aimless post-college stoners and the dog they've more or less accidentally acquired; the kid-fear one about where milk comes from is...not for the squeamish; the Loch-Ness-monster one is nicely pro-mystery, and it's the first of his many stories inspired by childhood viewings of In Search Of. In retrospect, not sure how I managed to miss that show; maybe I hadn't fully grown into my own appetite for this, though I remember reading and wholly buying into Charles Berlitz's Bermuda Triangle hooha (the plane radioed that everything was upside down before disappearing!), so not sure how I wasn't on that train when it was running.
January 5, 2009
Disturbing is the first word that comes to mind with Cthulhu Fhtagn, and I don’t mean it in a bad way! Ludwigsen manages to create an anthology of short-short stories that stretch the imagination — and at times, blow it entirely...
For the entire review please go to the Best Paranormal & Urban Fantasy Review site on the web, Bitten By Books for the review of Cthulhu Fhtagn, Baby! and Other Cosmic Insolence in it's entirety. You won't be sorry.
For the entire review please go to the Best Paranormal & Urban Fantasy Review site on the web, Bitten By Books for the review of Cthulhu Fhtagn, Baby! and Other Cosmic Insolence in it's entirety. You won't be sorry.
December 31, 2011
Grimly entertaining and quite odd.
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April 14, 2013Great book and big thanks to Lisa Rose for turning me on to this guy.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews