Here There Be Monsters

by Tim Curran

14 Tales of Lovecraftian horror

In a lonely house on the moors, a man encounters a soul-eating monstrosity from beyond time and space. A scientist peers into another dimension and finds something peering back. A mentally ill woman battles a nameless entity that has drained the emotions from the human race. An evil 17th century wizard grows like a fungus on a living scholar. A zone of blackness old as the Big Bang threatens to devour the Earth. The horrible, winged servitors of an ancient Egyptian god rise from the tomb to seek vengeance. A hideous, undimensioned horror hides in a ruined church...

Here there be monsters.

Table Of Contents

The Slithering
The Shadow Of The Haunter
Noctulos
Six Feet Of Moldering Earth
The Procyon Project
The Pestilence That Walketh In Darkness
Eldritch-Fellas
Seal Of Kharnabis
The Naming Of Witches
The Eyes Of Howard Curlix
The Blowfly Manifesto
The Wreck Of The Ghost
The Thing With A Thousand Legs
Nemesis Theory

Genres: Horror, Lovecraftian, Anthologies, Cthulhu Mythos, Weird Fiction, Short Stories

284 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 29, 2016

About the author

Tim Curran lives in Michigan and is the author of the novels Skin Medicine, Hive, Dead Sea, Resurrection, The Devil Next Door, and Biohazard, as well as the novella The Corpse King. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh&Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Inhuman, and anthologies such as Shivers IV, High Seas Cthulhu, and Vile Things.

For DarkFuse and its imprints, he has written the bestselling The Underdwelling, the Readers Choice-Nominated novella Fear Me, Puppet Graveyard as well as Long Black Coffin.

Find him on the web at: www.corpseking.com.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

While there are a number of modern horror scribes putting their own spin on Lovecraft, for my money, no one does it better than Tim Curran. To be fair, I've not read many of these authors yet, but Curran definitely shows his HPL influence in these 14 Lovecraftian short stories.

Highly recommended...especially for Lovecraft aficionados!

[Chris Berko · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit I don't know much about Cthulhu Mythos nor have I read much by H P Lovecraft, in fact only a few of his stories here and there. My experience comes from Cody Goodfellow and W. H. Pugmire, I've read many stories by both of those guys, but Tim Curran is one of my favorite writers so I said to myself if I was going to delve into this stuff why not do it with Mr. Curran? I don't normally do whole collections of short stories either, but Tim Curran...
Every story was at least very good and a few were great. I am really impressed by the final four with my favorite being The Blowfly Manifesto which is very Blade Runner-esque and super cool. Good stuff, I'm glad I read it.

[Charles van Buren · Rating 1 out of 5]

Overt attack on the veracity of Christianity and the Bible

This review is from: Here There Be Monsters (Kindle Edition)

I was doing pretty well with this collection of short stories in the Lovecraft vein until I got to number 8, Seal of Kharnabis. Other than a tendency to be overly verbose, Curran can write. However, Seal of Kharnabis contains an approximately page long, gratuitous attack on the truth of Christianity and the Bible. My objection is that this attack adds little to the story line. I know that many authors whom I admire are agnostics or atheists but they don't actively attack religion in their writing so I keep reading their fiction. However, it is fine with me if an author attacks Christianity specfically and religion in general, but I don't have to read or recommend that author. If Mr. Curran really wanted to be bold, he should have worked-in Islam and the Koran in a manner similar to his references to Christianity. Of course there is no organized effort by Christians to kill those who disagree.

I could easily rewrite the offending passage to make it racist, pro-nazi, sexist, anti-semitic, anti-Islamic, anti-homosexual or just about anti anything else. Would it still be just fiction?  Unimportant?

My point is, the author did not have to make the story anti anything. He chose to make it anti-christian. I choose to no longer read his work. I chose to not recommend his work and gave my reason for not recommending it.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovecraftiana or Mythos— no matter how you describe it— has certain limitations. It's kind of compulsory to be florid about your descriptions and insert words like 'eldritch', 'gibbous', 'batrachian' etc. therein. Plots are also bound to be severly restricted to certain tropes. However, authors often find out new ways to invoke cosmic horror by linking it with something that human mind has envisage and inflict upon others in almost infinite ways.
Evil!
The current book contains fourteen such works penned by one of the finest horrorsmiths of our times. Not all of them are of equal quality or freshness. But some of them succeed in creating rather deep impressions.
My favourites were~
1. The Slithering;
2. The Shadow Of The Haunter;
3. The Procyon Project;
4. The Pestilence That Walketh In Darkness;
5. Eldritch-Fellas;
6. Seal of Kharnabis;
7. The Eyes of Howard Curlix.
Several of the other stories got caught up in the web of two-penny words and lost the plot. Some were frankly boring, because an excess of adjectives kill the pace. But these seven stories were very-very good indeed.
Recommended to lovers of Mythos.

[Alex Budris · Rating 4 out of 5]

After spending all morning at the optometrist's office, there's nothing like an Icy Blue energy drink and some Lovecraftian fiction from Tom Curran. My pupils were dilated but thru the blur I thought I saw an amorphous abomination from hell. It had come to steal my brain and drag me down into an inky black abyss, and I couldn't stop yelling "Help me, Mr. Curran, help me!" But it was not to be: the man was just too darn busy jotting down fantastic descriptions of unnamable monstrosities and other eldritch beings. Describing the indescribable; the author is very, very good at this, and it gives him a leg-up over the countless other practitioners of Mythos fiction. "The Blowfly Manifesto" with its prose-poem imaginings of internet VR circuitry infested with CPU viruses from beyond the stars. "Six Feet of Moldering Earth" is a truly ghastly story of possession. Every story in the book (with the exception of, just my opinion, the a-little-too-playful "Eldritch Boys") burns and crackles like a cosmic nuclear fire. Plus a big thumbs-up to the author for doing his homework and researching everything from particle physics to whaling vessels. These little details throughout the stories make them shockingly believable. Highly recommended. 4 stars.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth it if you're a fan of Lovecraftian horror

Each story offers a great deal of atmosphere and weirdness. There is also a bit of the Lovecraftian poetic and lyrical sensibility. It's an acquired taste though. So if you don't like Lovecraftian fiction, don't get it.

[Caitlyn White · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories ranged from good to great. They covered all the Lovecraftian tropes, but were greatly enhanced by Tim Curran exploring the characterisation of the protagonists (something Lovecraft failed to do), and also because they featured way more action than the original mythos tales.

[Marianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I normally love everything Tim Curran writes, but I really found this one hard to get through.

[Hilliard Emmanuel McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the individual experiences with the Old Ones, but my favorite story was the The Pestilence That Walketh In Darkness. The story-telling was incredible and I love the history of other mythical creatures told by Mr. Cray as he listens to Mr. Clabe tell a story about witches, family and how the Old Ones were invited in. The Nemesis Theory was good, but very long. I am glad that story touched on the Mi-Go, a race of beings hardly mentioned about in many Lovecraftian books and stories. Overall, I think it was a great read for Lovecraft followers and I look forward to reading more stories about Lovecraft, the Mad Arab Abdhul Alhazred, and others writers that can reveal more experiences with the Old Ones, the Outer Gods and the creatures that serve these dark masters of pain and horror. Great Read!

[John R. Dailey Jr. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A BAG OF ELDRITCH NASTINESS IT IS...

Hello, pretty good stuff in here. Probably 75 percent of the stories are really good. The remaining 25 percent are O.K. Very profound use of adjectives. Thanks.

[Andrew Dorfschmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good hovercraft fun...


Wide variety of Lovecraftian stories. Entertaining for sure. From noir to gangster satire, to original true evil invasions. Fun read for sure