The Survivor and Others

August Derleth's "Posthumous Collaborations"

by H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth

1."The Survivor"
2."Wentworth's Day"
3."The Peabody Heritage"
4."The Gable Window"
5."The Ancestor"
6."The Shadow Out of Space"
7."The Lamp of Alhazred"

Cover Illustration: Richard Powers

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

143 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1957

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

[Miglė · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories are fun to read as long as you don't compare them with other stories by Lovecraft (the ones in this book were unfinished and completed after Lovecraft's death by August Derleth), but one inevitably does compare.
I mean, they are well written, but there's not much of a surprise in them. The Lovecraftian mythology is employed, but for some reason it didn't invoke the supernatural horror in me. I liked "The Ancestor", because it was something quite unexpected (also, if you're not bothered by the assumption that some of the tribes and societies are more 'primitive' than others), and the others were more like variations of Lovecraftian theme.

Also - oh god the cover :|

[Oleksandr Fediienko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Відгук на однойменне оповідання.
Антиквара Елайджу Етвуда зацікавив у місті Провіденс, штат Род-Айленд, будинок, зведений в 1697 році. Раніше там жив доктор Жан-Франсуа Шарьєр, який помер в 1927 році. Етвуд вирішує орендувати будинок і, попри те, що орендар і юристи, які опікуються будинком, спершу відмовляють його від цього, йому все ж вдається їх переконати.
Така їхня неохочість змушує Етвуда дізнатися більше про колишнього власника. Про нього майже нічого не відомо, проте на могилі написали рік поховання і місця його проживання – Байонна, Париж, Пудучеррі, Квебек, Провіденс. Але щось не збігається. Згідно з проведеними Етвудом дослідженнями, був інший доктор Жан-Франсуа Шарьєр, який жив у 17 столітті і жив у зазначених місцях, але він не міг бути тим самим, якого поховали в 1927 році.
Та найдивніше стається, коли він знаходить щоденник доктора, в якому той описував свої досліди над рептиліями. Шарьєр вважав, що певним чином можна продовжити людське життя до тривалості життя плазунів. І записи в щоденнику охоплювали три століття – від народження першого Шарьєра до смерті другого…
Етвуд вже деякий час відчував чиюсь присутність, але не був готовий до побаченого. Він націлює світло ліхтарика на подобу людини, покриту темною лускою, і в паніці висаджує у неї чотири кулі зі свого пістолета. Потвора висковзає з будинку і ховається у криниці на подвір’ї. Впевнений, що вона смертельно поранена, Етвуд спускається вниз і знаходить там тіло, спотворене обличчя якого все ще нагадує обличчя Шарьєра, яким він його бачив на портреті у будинку.

[Rod Hunrichse · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Survivor was a great tale (I feel represented since my nick is Alley'Gator), but apart from that, mixes other mad scientist story with Lovecraft's insane and dark world. You can guess what turns out.

The other stories are very repetitive (unless you read theese first), and I agree with a previous reviewer, to be stretching Lovecraft's bubble gum, but we all will continue to look for more content from this genius even if it is a co-production based on a napkin.

Consume with care.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

According to the introduction, these stories are written (I infer nearly completely) by August Derleth based on notes left by Lovecraft; they are written very clearly not by Lovecraft but by someone who knows a lot about Lovecraft’s oeuvre and wants to show it. Derleth does his best to drop in references to other Lovecraft stories throughout the stories; it gets a bit overbearing at times, and partly because he drops in so many references that there isn’t much in the way of suspense. We know what’s going on long before the narrator does.

In most cases, the narrator goes out of his way to avoid making logical conclusions; in “The Survivor”, the narrator writes that:

Certainly the truth of the matter never once occurred to me; I am not by nature any more skeptical than an antiquarian might be expected to be; but the true identity of my visitor did not, I confess, suggest itself to me despite all the curious interlocking circumstances which might have conveyed a greater meaning to a less scientific mind than my own.

That less scientific mind is a playful jab at the reader, who by that point in the story knew with certainty what the curious interlocking circumstances portended.

The final story, “The Lamp of Alhazred” doesn’t just drop in Lovecraftian references, it drops in Lovecraft himself, or at least the caricature of him and his life. It’s an attempt to give Lovecraft a peaceful afterlife. Tim Powers did this much better in “The Dispensation” in Down and Out in Purgatory.

Derleth has a reputation for having significantly altered the Cthulhu Mythos into one of good vs. evil; that isn’t evident here. One story does equate the great ancient conflict with the Christian story of the war in heaven, but the reference is only to say that Christianity is a debasement of something far older than man, not that the war between the Great Ones and the Elder Gods was a war between good and evil. Neither good nor evil really entered into it, in that story.

The only real alteration to the mythos is that Derleth tries to make all the pieces fit together, by re-using them as much as possible, something that Lovecraft did, at best, behind the scenes rather than upfront as Derleth does.

I bought this book at the same time that I bought Fungi from Yuggoth and Other Poems, and mainly for the purpose of completing my collection of this series. As with Fungi, I didn’t go into it expecting much. That said, it was oddly enjoyable; Derleth clearly loves the topic and that love shows through. The stories are genuinely fun to read.

There’s also a lot to be said for a good cover, and this has a fascinating one. It looks great next to the rest of the Ballantine Lovecraft paperbacks, which generally had great covers throughout their incarnations.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. This was a Derleth book. A lot of this stuff was super derivative of Lovecraft's stuff. The Survivor was OK, Wentworth's day was pretty good, The Peabody Heritage was extremely derivative, The Gable Window was pretty good but also highly derivative of the previous collaboration The Lurker at the Threshold. The Shadow out of Space was a worse version of The Color out of Space + The Shadow out of Time (this is obvious by the title). However, those stories were both really awesome, and this story is pretty damn good as a result. The Lamp of Alhazred is probably my favorite story in the book because it has H.P. Lovecraft (or an extremely thinly disguised alter ego of him) as a main character! That makes it kind of gimmicky, but its still fun.

All in all, these are slightly poorer written and not nearly as convincing or detailed as Lovecraft's original work. Still worth a read if you are a fan of the genre though.

[Jaden · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all. H.P. Love craft and his mythos are wonderful. All the bits of reoccurring lore that are beautifully woven into his stories continue to interest me with their continued depth. August Dereleth did a wonderful job finishing these stories. I could not decipher where his words began and Love crafts notes ended. Every story in this book was well written and interesting, I never had trouble engaging in any one of them. My only complaint is that most of them followed very similar arks with slightly different endings. Overall great collection of short and often scary short stories.

[[on hiatus, probably forever] The rockabilly werewolf from Mars · Rating 2 out of 5]

(I've had this book for a while, but somehow I didn't remember to add it until now)

The stories aren't great (not nearly as bad as some people say, though; they're entertaining enough if you're in the mood for old pulp horror), but that cover has to be one of the greatest of all time.

[Arnita Medina · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like 3.5, it was okay

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright for a quick read. All the stories were kind of the same.

[Alvaro_atm92 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've only read The Survivor, but I couldn't find the simple tale. Quite interesting tale to show us some of the story behind the frog people, quite more explicit than the normal Lovecraft stories, but he was dead so didnt have too much to protest about it xD

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was great fun to be back in Lovecraft's world again. These 7 stories were outlines that Lovecraft left behind, and August Derleth fleshed them out. They basically had the feel of 'reminders' of the actions that took place in his earlier works. The Survivor, the Peabody Heritage (the best of the lot), and the Gable Window all had the standard plot of a man who moves into the home of a deceased wizard and slowly discovers the house's secrets. Wentworth's Day reminds me of the 3rd story in Creepshow II. The Ancestor is your archetypical 'secrets man was not meant to know' tale. The Shadow Out of Space is naturally an homage to the Shadow Out of Time, and The Lamp of Alhazred is really about Lovecraft's creative process in writing. If this were your first Lovecraft book, you might give it 4 stars, but I took off a star because it's not that original if you've read the writings he did in his lifetime.

[Mark Woodland]

A last collection of stories from Lovecraft. OK if you like horror, but I've never much liked Lovecraft's writing. Perhaps it's the lack of quality of the writing; he knows how to set a good mood, but I usually find that the storytelling lacks depth. Lovecraft wrote a LOT of books, and I think that may be a key factor. He had to write fast to maintain that kind of output, and Stephen King he ain't. This is an interesting collection IF you're a Lovecraft fan.

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

The difference between Lovecraft and Derleth is definitely noticeable here. Was it just me, or were some of the plotlines almost identical (to each other and to other Lovecraft works)?

Derleth also laid some things on with a really heavy hand...this might have been fan service, I guess. However, the pointed references to the mythos could not have been less subtle if he bolded, capitalized, and underlined each instance of "the Mountains of Madness".

[Michael Steinhour · Rating 4 out of 5]

These tales, based on notes left after Lovecraft's death and written by August Derleth, are still original and frightening all these years later. Last night I read The Shadow Out of Space before going to bed...and I had dreams that the Ancient Ones were coming for me.

This morning I awoke to the realization that I need to make a button that says: "Can't sleep, Cthulhu will eat me."

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tis is a collection of stories that Lovecraft had not completed as of when he died, and that were completed by August Derleth afterwards. An excellent collection - Derleth did a great job of completing them.