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Chthonic: Weird Tales of Inner Earth
Within the pages of this anthology of weird fiction, you’ll find seventeen international authors that plumb the wonders of the hidden earth at least as deeply as they explore the human capacity for suffering, terror, and even enlightenment. The cavern mouth awaits, as does the cistern with unknown depths, the tunnel that twists and writhes, the abyssal space that hums with nameless activity. Note the faint glow to the walls as you descend: mere phosphorescent fungi... or something more peculiar? There is a sound of rushing water that you can’t place, and the suggestion of drums and strange flutes in the deep. The rock vibrates beneath the soles of your feet, and your headlamp flickers, fails. But then, you knew it would, eventually. This place is not for you, but here you are. Welcome to CHTHONIC: Weird Tales of Inner Earth.
Stories by
RAMSEY CAMPBELL
GEMMA FILES
NADIA BULKIN
ANTONY MANN
H. P. LOVECRAFT
AARON BESSON
CHRISTOPHER SLATSKY
ADAM MCOMBER
JOHN LINWOOD GRANT
SCOTT SHANK
SARAH PEPLOE
ORRIN GREY
S. L. EDWARDS
BELINDA LEWIS
DAVID STEVENS
ADAM MILLARD
and TOM LYNCH
Cover art by Lucas Korte
Interior illustrations by Fufu Fruenwahl
Edited by Scott R Jones
Martian Migraine Press: The Best Kind of Headache
Stories by
RAMSEY CAMPBELL
GEMMA FILES
NADIA BULKIN
ANTONY MANN
H. P. LOVECRAFT
AARON BESSON
CHRISTOPHER SLATSKY
ADAM MCOMBER
JOHN LINWOOD GRANT
SCOTT SHANK
SARAH PEPLOE
ORRIN GREY
S. L. EDWARDS
BELINDA LEWIS
DAVID STEVENS
ADAM MILLARD
and TOM LYNCH
Cover art by Lucas Korte
Interior illustrations by Fufu Fruenwahl
Edited by Scott R Jones
Martian Migraine Press: The Best Kind of Headache
219 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 23, 2018
84 people are currently reading
140 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 5, 2018
I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so disturbed by a book as I have been by Chthonic: Weird Tales of Inner Earth, published very recently by Martian Migraine Press and edited by Scott R Jones. I read the entire anthology over the course of the weekend, finishing it late last night, and I genuinely had trouble getting to sleep after reading the final story. I’m no stranger to creepy or disturbing stories – I’ve read more post-apocalyptic and zombie horror stories than I’ve had hot dinners, to make use of an ancient cliché, and also dabbled in straight-out horror and even some splatterpunk, but I’ve never had this same feeling. I don’t really know how to describe the exact effects that the anthology had on me, to be honest, just that both the individual stories in the collection, and its overarching theme, have stayed with me a lot longer than any other title I’ve ever come across. Given that I’m still a little twitchy and sleep-deprived this morning as I’m writing this, I’d say that makes this anthology a huge success, entirely fulfilling the back cover’s promise that it includes “Stories that plumb the depths of earth at least as deeply as they explore the human capacity for suffering and enlightenment”
The overarching theme for the seventeen stories to be found inside Chthonic is, essentially, tales of horror and suspense and other delightful emotions and feelings under the earth, ideally the deeper the better. So we have stories that take place in caverns, in cave systems, in Hollow-Earth style scenarios, and even in a hotel in London that is entirely located underground. The cover art for the anthology, by Lucas Korte, is a simple but eye-catching design that features what appears to be a green, gently-glowing (or pulsing) cube that looks like it has tracks – or perhaps it’s scar tissue, or an insect’s burrow – across its surface. It’s simple but evocative piece of artwork that really reinforces the theme of the anthology, and it also meshes well with the interior artwork pieces by Fufu Frauenwahl that accompanies each story – very detailed and often quite disturbing black and white illustrations that illustrate a key moment in each tale. I always enjoy it when a publisher decides to commission interior artwork for an anthology – I feel like it’s another way to tie the reader into each story, working best when the piece of art comes before a story, so that you’re already a little tense, a little intrigued by what is represented by that illustration.
I’ve just winced again at the first piece of Fruenwahl’s artwork featured in the collection, which accompanies Where All Is Night, And Starless by John Linwood Grant; it’s a close-up of the left-hand portion of a man’s face, and one eye has been brutally plucked out and replaced with some kind of crystalline formation, blood dripping down from the eye socket onto his face. The story itself is one of the best of the entire anthology, a tense piece of fiction following a veteran of the First World War, and the astonishing (and gruesome) story he reluctantly tells his daughter about his experiences as a miner and sapper on the Western Front. Leading a company of men in an attempt to plant a mine underneath the German lines, a sudden rockfall isolates the protagonist and a few of his men; they have no choice but to try and dig deeper to escape, either risking suffocation, starvation, or capture by the Germans. Unfortunately the Germans are the least of their worries, as they uncover something very, very old and very, very malevolent under the French soil. I have read a few tales by Grant, and I think is might be one of my favourites – he brilliantly portrays the stifling, claustrophobic nature of mining, combined with the ever-present fear of being counter-mined by the Germans; and the latter half of the story, as they discover an ancient entity under the earth, is equal parts stomach-churning and chilling, especially when Grant hints at the fact that the entity is as trapped as the men it encounters.
A Song for Granite Khronos by Aaron Besson is definitely on the unconventional side of things – supposedly a story about a new employee of a city’s sewage system being given a tour of the system by a veteran worker, it rapidly descends into insanity, mind-bending knowledge and a fascinating digression into the nature of cities, those who live and work in them, and their symbiotic nature with those who came before them. Highly recommended. UNDR, by Sarah Peploe, is the story about the underground hotel I mentioned earlier in the review; it’s a fairly short story, but it packs in a lot of existential horror, perfectly evoking the soulless, generic nature of your average corporate hotel, and the feeling that I’ve had on occasion that walking down another identikit corridor will lead me into an endless maze of beige carpet and wood-effect doors – or even worse, as the unfortunate characters in this story experience.
To be honest, I almost couldn’t finish The End of a Summer’s Day by Ramsay Campbell, it was so unsettling to me, both as a reader and as a parent; the notion of being the only person in the world convinced that a loved one has changed, quite dramatically, despite the protestations of everyone else around you, is genuinely horrifying; it fits perfectly into the theme of the anthology, and should be required reading for anyone serious about the horror genre. The Harrow, by Gemma Files, is another disturbing story, this time about the nature of obsession and universal truth with a rather stomach-churning ending that had me unconsciously touching my forehead to make sure all of it was still intact. And Nivel Del Mar by Scott Shank was an interesting take on depression, sibling relationships and how we all deal with loss in different ways, and on different timescales.
Moving towards the end of the anthology, I greatly enjoyed (and was disturbed by) Pugelbone by Nadia Bulkin, a stifling and even oppressive tale of family and motherhood in a strange, Fallout-esque underground city called The Warren, that had me cringing several times at the relationship between the Warren’s authorities, the protagonist and her daughter as it unfolded. The Writheby Tom Lynch seemed like the exact sort of tale that Lovecraft himself might have written if he was alive in modern times, mixing up human emotions like a fear of guns and violence with an otherworldly creature that preys on weakness and fear in humanity, and was another story in the anthology that had me cringing in the final sentences. Finally Vault, by Antony Mann, was a particularly good choice of story to end the anthology on, following the dogged attempt by a stubborn man to get his local bank to exchange a counterfeit bank note, only to find that the deeper he goes into the bank, the more that the bank and its workings – quite literally – come together, in an extreme example of synergy of which any corporate trainer would surely be proud.
An assured, confident and above all disturbing collection of short stories and accompanying illustrations, Chthonic is a quality production by Martian Migraine Press, and is by far the most memorable title I have read in a long time – and one that I think will be sticking around in my head for an even longer time.
The overarching theme for the seventeen stories to be found inside Chthonic is, essentially, tales of horror and suspense and other delightful emotions and feelings under the earth, ideally the deeper the better. So we have stories that take place in caverns, in cave systems, in Hollow-Earth style scenarios, and even in a hotel in London that is entirely located underground. The cover art for the anthology, by Lucas Korte, is a simple but eye-catching design that features what appears to be a green, gently-glowing (or pulsing) cube that looks like it has tracks – or perhaps it’s scar tissue, or an insect’s burrow – across its surface. It’s simple but evocative piece of artwork that really reinforces the theme of the anthology, and it also meshes well with the interior artwork pieces by Fufu Frauenwahl that accompanies each story – very detailed and often quite disturbing black and white illustrations that illustrate a key moment in each tale. I always enjoy it when a publisher decides to commission interior artwork for an anthology – I feel like it’s another way to tie the reader into each story, working best when the piece of art comes before a story, so that you’re already a little tense, a little intrigued by what is represented by that illustration.
I’ve just winced again at the first piece of Fruenwahl’s artwork featured in the collection, which accompanies Where All Is Night, And Starless by John Linwood Grant; it’s a close-up of the left-hand portion of a man’s face, and one eye has been brutally plucked out and replaced with some kind of crystalline formation, blood dripping down from the eye socket onto his face. The story itself is one of the best of the entire anthology, a tense piece of fiction following a veteran of the First World War, and the astonishing (and gruesome) story he reluctantly tells his daughter about his experiences as a miner and sapper on the Western Front. Leading a company of men in an attempt to plant a mine underneath the German lines, a sudden rockfall isolates the protagonist and a few of his men; they have no choice but to try and dig deeper to escape, either risking suffocation, starvation, or capture by the Germans. Unfortunately the Germans are the least of their worries, as they uncover something very, very old and very, very malevolent under the French soil. I have read a few tales by Grant, and I think is might be one of my favourites – he brilliantly portrays the stifling, claustrophobic nature of mining, combined with the ever-present fear of being counter-mined by the Germans; and the latter half of the story, as they discover an ancient entity under the earth, is equal parts stomach-churning and chilling, especially when Grant hints at the fact that the entity is as trapped as the men it encounters.
A Song for Granite Khronos by Aaron Besson is definitely on the unconventional side of things – supposedly a story about a new employee of a city’s sewage system being given a tour of the system by a veteran worker, it rapidly descends into insanity, mind-bending knowledge and a fascinating digression into the nature of cities, those who live and work in them, and their symbiotic nature with those who came before them. Highly recommended. UNDR, by Sarah Peploe, is the story about the underground hotel I mentioned earlier in the review; it’s a fairly short story, but it packs in a lot of existential horror, perfectly evoking the soulless, generic nature of your average corporate hotel, and the feeling that I’ve had on occasion that walking down another identikit corridor will lead me into an endless maze of beige carpet and wood-effect doors – or even worse, as the unfortunate characters in this story experience.
To be honest, I almost couldn’t finish The End of a Summer’s Day by Ramsay Campbell, it was so unsettling to me, both as a reader and as a parent; the notion of being the only person in the world convinced that a loved one has changed, quite dramatically, despite the protestations of everyone else around you, is genuinely horrifying; it fits perfectly into the theme of the anthology, and should be required reading for anyone serious about the horror genre. The Harrow, by Gemma Files, is another disturbing story, this time about the nature of obsession and universal truth with a rather stomach-churning ending that had me unconsciously touching my forehead to make sure all of it was still intact. And Nivel Del Mar by Scott Shank was an interesting take on depression, sibling relationships and how we all deal with loss in different ways, and on different timescales.
Moving towards the end of the anthology, I greatly enjoyed (and was disturbed by) Pugelbone by Nadia Bulkin, a stifling and even oppressive tale of family and motherhood in a strange, Fallout-esque underground city called The Warren, that had me cringing several times at the relationship between the Warren’s authorities, the protagonist and her daughter as it unfolded. The Writheby Tom Lynch seemed like the exact sort of tale that Lovecraft himself might have written if he was alive in modern times, mixing up human emotions like a fear of guns and violence with an otherworldly creature that preys on weakness and fear in humanity, and was another story in the anthology that had me cringing in the final sentences. Finally Vault, by Antony Mann, was a particularly good choice of story to end the anthology on, following the dogged attempt by a stubborn man to get his local bank to exchange a counterfeit bank note, only to find that the deeper he goes into the bank, the more that the bank and its workings – quite literally – come together, in an extreme example of synergy of which any corporate trainer would surely be proud.
An assured, confident and above all disturbing collection of short stories and accompanying illustrations, Chthonic is a quality production by Martian Migraine Press, and is by far the most memorable title I have read in a long time – and one that I think will be sticking around in my head for an even longer time.
November 23, 2018
This was a book that forced me to dig deep, pun intended.
Stories compiled in this volume are ostensibly weird tales of inner earth. Since the definition of ‘weird’ as well as ‘earth’ seemingly varied from author to author, I had a fascinating experience reading these stories. Many of them were indeed weird. Several depicted, or were associated with events happening at subterranean levels. But…
First there is the introductory piece from the editor Scott R Jones, titled “The Cave You Fear To Enter…”, putting the stories in perspective. Then we have the stories.
1. “Where All is Night, and Starless” by John Linwood Grant: One of the best stories in this collection, this was a Mythos Tale told in a compact and fast manner. Auspicious beginning.
2. “A Song for Granite Khronos” by Aaron Besson: This was a dark jewel. The way the tale imbued itself with a different tone with passage of pages was a revelation.
3. “UNDR” by Sarah Peplow: Began interestingly, but lost itself at the end.
4. “Tellurian Façade” by Christopher Slatsky: A truly oppressive and horrific tale dealing with what lies beneath, physically, emotionally, metaphorically.
5. “The End of a Summer’s Day” by Ramsey Campbell: More claustrophobic than the others combined, this story proved afresh what a master Campbell was.
6. “The Harrow” by Gemma Files: Great read. Not too surprising, but very well written.
7. “Nivel Del Mar” by Scott Shank: A refreshing story of quest for oneself, this one was enjoyable.
8. “The Rats in the Walls” by H.P. Lovecraft: A classic. Reading afresh reminded me what a great sequel to this one had been written by King in his ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’!
9. “Tending the Core” by Adam Millard: Not exactly a subterranean story in geological sense, but this one did have something profound at its core.
10. “The Dragons Beneath” by Belinda Lewis: Fantasy gone wrong while trying too hard to be subtle, that’s how I would describe this story.
11. “The Re’em” by Adam McOmber: Brilliant! Wish there were more stories like this one in the collection.
12. “Pugelbone” by Nadia Bulkin: A nasty and suitably dystopian tale.
13. “Hollow Earths” by Orrin Grey: Lovely story! This hauntingly beautiful tale truly captured a lot of magic and imagination despite being written in the shape of a prosaic dialogue/monologue.
14. “The Writhe” by Tom Lynch: Too predictable, too influenced by all those 70-s Pan paperbacks. That in itself isn’t too bad, but the story was rather pointless.
15. “Volver Al Monte” by S.L. Edwards: Outstanding. That’s all I can say about this one.
16. “Some Corner of a Dorset Field That is Forever Arabia” by David Stevens: Rubbish. We get to reader more lucidly hallucinatory tales in the daily newspapers.
17. “Vault” by Antony Mann: A darkly farcical tale that enlivens the proceedings again.
Overall, I found this to be a solid anthology. You may enjoy it as well, irrespective of whether you are bathophobic or if spelunking is your hobby.
Stories compiled in this volume are ostensibly weird tales of inner earth. Since the definition of ‘weird’ as well as ‘earth’ seemingly varied from author to author, I had a fascinating experience reading these stories. Many of them were indeed weird. Several depicted, or were associated with events happening at subterranean levels. But…
First there is the introductory piece from the editor Scott R Jones, titled “The Cave You Fear To Enter…”, putting the stories in perspective. Then we have the stories.
1. “Where All is Night, and Starless” by John Linwood Grant: One of the best stories in this collection, this was a Mythos Tale told in a compact and fast manner. Auspicious beginning.
2. “A Song for Granite Khronos” by Aaron Besson: This was a dark jewel. The way the tale imbued itself with a different tone with passage of pages was a revelation.
3. “UNDR” by Sarah Peplow: Began interestingly, but lost itself at the end.
4. “Tellurian Façade” by Christopher Slatsky: A truly oppressive and horrific tale dealing with what lies beneath, physically, emotionally, metaphorically.
5. “The End of a Summer’s Day” by Ramsey Campbell: More claustrophobic than the others combined, this story proved afresh what a master Campbell was.
6. “The Harrow” by Gemma Files: Great read. Not too surprising, but very well written.
7. “Nivel Del Mar” by Scott Shank: A refreshing story of quest for oneself, this one was enjoyable.
8. “The Rats in the Walls” by H.P. Lovecraft: A classic. Reading afresh reminded me what a great sequel to this one had been written by King in his ‘Jerusalem’s Lot’!
9. “Tending the Core” by Adam Millard: Not exactly a subterranean story in geological sense, but this one did have something profound at its core.
10. “The Dragons Beneath” by Belinda Lewis: Fantasy gone wrong while trying too hard to be subtle, that’s how I would describe this story.
11. “The Re’em” by Adam McOmber: Brilliant! Wish there were more stories like this one in the collection.
12. “Pugelbone” by Nadia Bulkin: A nasty and suitably dystopian tale.
13. “Hollow Earths” by Orrin Grey: Lovely story! This hauntingly beautiful tale truly captured a lot of magic and imagination despite being written in the shape of a prosaic dialogue/monologue.
14. “The Writhe” by Tom Lynch: Too predictable, too influenced by all those 70-s Pan paperbacks. That in itself isn’t too bad, but the story was rather pointless.
15. “Volver Al Monte” by S.L. Edwards: Outstanding. That’s all I can say about this one.
16. “Some Corner of a Dorset Field That is Forever Arabia” by David Stevens: Rubbish. We get to reader more lucidly hallucinatory tales in the daily newspapers.
17. “Vault” by Antony Mann: A darkly farcical tale that enlivens the proceedings again.
Overall, I found this to be a solid anthology. You may enjoy it as well, irrespective of whether you are bathophobic or if spelunking is your hobby.
October 31, 2021
With any short story anthology, there are going to be some clunkers and some truly magnificent stories. Luckily for this one, there was only one tale I fought my way through and didn't fully enjoy, but it wasn't awful. The rest were decent and more than half truly wonderful to read!
January 23, 2023
I really liked these short stories they had a very creepy feeling around them.
May 15, 2021
This collection contains 17 horror stories focused on the subterranean. Most of them are at least solid, a few are truly brilliant and only a few left me disappointed. For better or worse they are all rather short and well written, so I never found myself slogging. My first complaint was that some stories hinted at bigger problems happening in the protagonists’ lives, but didn’t give us enough details and then ended abruptly and it seemed like none of it mattered. Which… Is a Lovecraftian approach, I guess. But it irked me. In later part some stories got confusing and I’m not sure if it’s the writing or me reading them at 3am. But overall the quality of the anthology is very high and I would recommend it to any enthusiast of Weird Tales and Lovecraftian horror.
My favorite stories were:
“Where All is Night, and Starless” by John Linwood Grant: imaginative, quite well-thought-out and claustrophobic, what’s not to love?
“A Song for Granite Khronos” by Aaron Besson: this was so frigging weird, I’ll never look at the coffee the same way again.
“UNDR” by Sarah Peplow: despite being one of the stories I wrote about above (hinting at bigger stories), I quite enjoyed it. It was nice to see cosmic horror taking place in a modern setting, not some long-forgotten corner of the Earth.
“The Rats in the Walls” by H.P. Lovecraft: looks, it’s Lovecraft. Need I say more?
“Hollow Earths” by Orrin Grey: very interesting story, told in the form of dialogue/confession/written record. I loved the imagery.
“Vault” by Antony Mann: at first I was annoyed at the obnoxious protagonist, but as the story progressed, it got creepier and creepier and the ending was exactly what he deserved.
My favorite stories were:
“Where All is Night, and Starless” by John Linwood Grant: imaginative, quite well-thought-out and claustrophobic, what’s not to love?
“A Song for Granite Khronos” by Aaron Besson: this was so frigging weird, I’ll never look at the coffee the same way again.
“UNDR” by Sarah Peplow: despite being one of the stories I wrote about above (hinting at bigger stories), I quite enjoyed it. It was nice to see cosmic horror taking place in a modern setting, not some long-forgotten corner of the Earth.
“The Rats in the Walls” by H.P. Lovecraft: looks, it’s Lovecraft. Need I say more?
“Hollow Earths” by Orrin Grey: very interesting story, told in the form of dialogue/confession/written record. I loved the imagery.
“Vault” by Antony Mann: at first I was annoyed at the obnoxious protagonist, but as the story progressed, it got creepier and creepier and the ending was exactly what he deserved.
June 22, 2021
Another great collection from Martian Migraine Press. Chthonic's theme is tales involving the earth and what lurks beneath the surface. As is common with a Martian Migraine collection, this theme can be stretched pretty far in its interpretation, but in wonderful way. Like 'Resonator', this collection gels around its theme extremely well. Ranging from firmly 'weird' stories to more straightforward horror and science fiction, I did not find a single weak entry.
The expected Lovecraft inclusion is 'The Rats in the Walls', for the uninitiated that's the one with the famously badly named cat. Though on this upteenth reading it strikes me that the cat is treated a bit as a protagonist/hero, alerting the humans to danger, accompanying them in trying to investigate and stop it. Which made me reflect on it a bit differently.
I particularly loved John Linwood Grant's WWI period piece, Orrin Grey's 'Hollow Earths', and the deeply weird and nonlinear 'Some Corner of a Dorset Field that is Forever Arabia' by David Stevens, but as I said, there is not a weak entry in here.
The expected Lovecraft inclusion is 'The Rats in the Walls', for the uninitiated that's the one with the famously badly named cat. Though on this upteenth reading it strikes me that the cat is treated a bit as a protagonist/hero, alerting the humans to danger, accompanying them in trying to investigate and stop it. Which made me reflect on it a bit differently.
I particularly loved John Linwood Grant's WWI period piece, Orrin Grey's 'Hollow Earths', and the deeply weird and nonlinear 'Some Corner of a Dorset Field that is Forever Arabia' by David Stevens, but as I said, there is not a weak entry in here.
December 4, 2022
As is standard for most anthologies, this has the good, the bad, and the just plain misguided. While the majority are enjoyable enough, beginning the book with the two best stories makes the rest feel a little underwhelming, although the last story is a piece of quirky fun which leaves you ultimately quite happy in picking this book up.
February 16, 2024
Well, there were a couple of not too good ones, but the majority were good. And there were a couple of great ones, too! Everything had a subterranean theme, and many featured a cosmic-horror theme. Nothing particularly scary, I have to say tho!
CW: On the unhappy side, there's a Lovecraft one, which had a cat named using a racial slur.
CW: On the unhappy side, there's a Lovecraft one, which had a cat named using a racial slur.
October 30, 2019
More body horror than inner earth horror
I was hoping for Lovecraftian tales or something close, and while those often have some body horror, they don't revel in it like this volume does. "Hollow Earths" is the only one that came close to what I expected.
I was hoping for Lovecraftian tales or something close, and while those often have some body horror, they don't revel in it like this volume does. "Hollow Earths" is the only one that came close to what I expected.
October 12, 2023
A Good Collection.
I am not sure what I was expecting from this title. I enjoyed most of the stories, one or two were a slog to get through.I
Regarding the Lovecraft story, it contains the repeated use of a word that's forbidden in today's society. If you are easily offended, I'd skip that story, which would be a shame as it's actually a good story.
I am not sure what I was expecting from this title. I enjoyed most of the stories, one or two were a slog to get through.I
Regarding the Lovecraft story, it contains the repeated use of a word that's forbidden in today's society. If you are easily offended, I'd skip that story, which would be a shame as it's actually a good story.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews