Cry Horror!

by H.P. Lovecraft

Original Title The Lurking Fear

• Arthur Jermyn
• Cool Air
• Pickman's Model
• The Call of Cthulhu
• The Colour Out of Space
• The Hound
• The Lurking Fear
• The Moon-Bog
• The Nameless City
• The Shunned House
• The Unnamable

Cover Illustration: Richard Powers

Genres: Horror

191 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This mass-market collection introduced a whole new generation to the works of Lovecraft in the late 50s, particularly in the U.K., and is one of the most influential books of horror and the weird of all-time. I'd already read all these stories over the years, but it's been nearly two decades for many of them, so I figured that my coming across a cheap, near-pristine copy recently was as good a reason as any to revisit these tales.

I think this would be a perfect introductory point for newcomers to Lovecraft's oeuvre, as opposed to just diving full steam ahead into the Cthulhu Mythos. Here, you get a little bit of everything, with many different styles: archaeological expeditions into million year-old, subterranean alien tunnels and tombs ("The Nameless City"), investigations into demon-haunted mountain forests ("The Lurking Fear"), an exploration of a creepy old house with a macabre history and an unnatural fungus pervading the basement ("The Shunned House"), a grave robber relentlessly "hounded" by a winged shadow ("The Hound"), a nightmarish art gallery that just in fact may be true depictions of actual creatures ("Pickman's Model"), and many more.

And of course there are the classics "The Call of Cthulhu" and perhaps my favorite of H.P's longer novelettes, "The Colour out of Space." Not many stories, new or old, are able to conjure up the same otherworldly sense of awe as these two tales, which is the main thing I look for in Lovecraft's work. I don't really find his stories overly "scary" (does anyone ever truly fear for the protagonist's safety while reading these?), but I do experience that inexplicable, chilling "frisson" in many of his better stories, such as the ones contain herein. There are a couple sub-par stories here, such as "The Moon-Bog," which is sort of an earlier, dry run version of the much better "The Rats in the Walls."

Still, of the many vintage Lovecraft collections I own, this is one of the most varied and consistently excellent. I know a lot of collectors of horror paperbacks (including myself) own the early 80s Del Rey/Ballantine series with the Michael Whelan cover art, as they're still so readily available at used book shops (and of course the covers are awesome), but I find those volumes to have only a handful of top-tier Lovecraft in each, while surrounded by a bunch of his lesser tales.

Naturally, everyone has their own likes and dislikes when it comes to ole' H.P. - and he can be very hit-and-miss with me - but I find Cry Horror! (along with The Dunwich Horror and Others and The Colour Out Of Space And Others) to be among the best and most diverse out of all the old-school paperbacks of his work that I've come across.

And you can't beat that Richard Powers artwork.

5 Stars

[John Mayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first grown-up book, a paperback, I ever bought. I'd never heard of Lovecraft. I liked it but wearied of Lovecraft's style by the time I'd finished it (I was, after all, still in grammar school). Traded it for another excellent introduction to horror, _The Macabre Reader_, which introduced me to other great horror writers and solidified my love for the short story, a literary form that has become hard to find. Anyone out there begin their acquaintance with Lovecraft with this or a similar paperback collection?

[East Bay J · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book at an antique store of sorts somewhere for $4.00. My wife and I take occasional excursions into the unknown wilds surrounding the Bay Area and I often find little things “I cannot do without.” Cry Horror was one of those things. Others include all sorts of vinyl LPs, goofy t-shirts, weird dust collectors and drinking glasses featuring pictures of women whose clothing disappears when said glasses are filled with cold liquids. I’ve been a Lovecraft fan since before I could drive and a Lovecraft collection this old (1958) at that price was too good to pass up.

After my purchase, this book sat on one shelf or another for a few years. Honestly. I could have read it at any time but, obviously, did not. Then, after a renewed interest in the writing of Robert E. Howard led to a renewed interest in Lovecraft’s works, I finally got around to giving this one a go.

I read Howard before I read Lovecraft and, at the time, had no idea these guys were pen pals, long distance buddies. I never thought of their writing as anything similar but, once I learned of their association and original publication in pulp mags like Weird Tales, I began to look at the association between the two. I’ve read some of the work of others in the “Lovecraft Circle,” specifically Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber and August Derleth. Knowing what I know now, I most look forward to reading some Clark Ashton Smith and Frank Belknap Long. Something about this collection of correspondents lends something to the reading of their works. It adds a sense of the cultural space and time in which these writers wrote.

Incidentally, in the course of reading up on Lovecraft, who was influenced by Poe, I learned that Mark Twain was about 14 when Edgar Allen Poe died. I would have guessed Poe’s career took place during Twain’s. Shows you what a little research (i.e. education) can do for your point of view.

The eleven tales collected in Cry Horror are a good representation of Lovecraft’s work. Two of my favorites, “Pickman’s Model” and “The Hound” are included, as well as classics like “The Shunned House,” “The Color Out Of Space” and “The Call Of Cthulhu.” Finally getting around to reading Cry Horror also marked my introduction to “Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn And His Family” or, as it’s called here, “Arthur Jermyn.” Most Lovecraft stories are told as a first person narrative and this technique works quite well for the weird tale. It is half journalism, half memoir and it places the reader in the story as kind of a listener in a conversation. Lovercraft’s frequent inclusion of fabricated newspaper stories and quotes from fabricated journals lends a feeling of reality. Another key element is that these stories take place back east where the country is oldest and the woods, hills and even towns and cities have seen a great deal of turmoil. The transition from the 19th to 20th centuries was a spooky time in the United States. Lovecraft capitalizes on the wars, social strife and witchcraft trials wonderfully.

[Abhishek Tripathi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my introduction to Lovecraft; I read it long back when I was in school. These dark disturbing stories by the master of the sinister definitely left a lasting impression on me. At the time I read it, although I had some trouble fully comprehending the dense 'Lovercraftian' prose and the complicated subject matters dealt therein; in stories like 'Color out of Space'; that didn't prevent them from haunting my lonely nights.

The stories in this volume are a good selection. They are quite creepy, dark and as most things Lovecraft, on the borderline of horror and science-fiction; providing a decent introduction and insight into the Lovercraftian world for the uninitiated.