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Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu books
The Shub-Niggurath Cycle: Tales of the Black Goat with a Thousand Young
Call of the Cthulhu series
240 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1994
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405 people want to read
About the author
Robert M. Price
417 books240 followersRobert McNair Price is an American theologian and writer. He teaches philosophy and religion at the Johnnie Colemon Theological Seminary, is professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute, and the author of a number of books on theology and the historicity of Jesus, asserting the Christ myth theory.
A former Baptist minister, he was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003. He has also written extensively about the Cthulhu Mythos, a "shared universe" created by H.P. Lovecraft.
A former Baptist minister, he was the editor of the Journal of Higher Criticism from 1994 until it ceased publication in 2003. He has also written extensively about the Cthulhu Mythos, a "shared universe" created by H.P. Lovecraft.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 19, 2015
This book I guess is a victim of its own success. The series was started some years ago when the role playing game (also published by Chaosium) was riding high.
The series aimed at publishing stories from the mythos both famous and not so famous with the idea of bringing back in to print those lesser known or published stories - usually following a specific theme - in this case Shub-Niggurath.
The reason why I say this was a victim of its own success was that ideal I have just mentioned meant that the stories varied ALOT in both style and content but also ease of reading. Some of the connections were very tenuous and I struggled to follow what was going on. I guess that could be said about any themed anthology but with just about everything changing except its connection to the central character and at times even that was only implied.
This series of books (I have lost count of how many there are and the series has evolved over time) represents a massive collection of work much of which you will not find anywhere else - so for a true fan of H P Lovecraft's legacy this series is a must however do not expect to see any work of his in this book.
The series aimed at publishing stories from the mythos both famous and not so famous with the idea of bringing back in to print those lesser known or published stories - usually following a specific theme - in this case Shub-Niggurath.
The reason why I say this was a victim of its own success was that ideal I have just mentioned meant that the stories varied ALOT in both style and content but also ease of reading. Some of the connections were very tenuous and I struggled to follow what was going on. I guess that could be said about any themed anthology but with just about everything changing except its connection to the central character and at times even that was only implied.
This series of books (I have lost count of how many there are and the series has evolved over time) represents a massive collection of work much of which you will not find anywhere else - so for a true fan of H P Lovecraft's legacy this series is a must however do not expect to see any work of his in this book.
March 12, 2016
This is quiet frankly one of the best collections of short stories I've read in a long time. Normally, in a collection, there are a few stories that are below par but this collection varied from excellent down to good; dwelling primarily in the former category.
The stories are printed in chronological order of writing/publication. As the title suggests, they're primarily themed around the Great Old One Shub Niggurath. The early stories concern supernatural tale with a "goat" theme and the later stories are more classically Cthulhu mythos inspired. These earlier stories all very much read like M. R. James' tale of unease; a real pleasure for myself.
As the theme of Shub Niggurath is developed from Lovecraft's original writing, the stories dwell less on the goat aspect and more on the otherworldly horror of S.N.
My one criticism is that some of these stories are shoehorned into this collection to pad it out as they don't, in my opinion, focus on S.N. That said, though, all of the stories are of high quality and I would prefer a collection like this than one with lower quality tales that may be a bit closer to the mark. This one collection I will definitely pick up again to browse through.
The stories are printed in chronological order of writing/publication. As the title suggests, they're primarily themed around the Great Old One Shub Niggurath. The early stories concern supernatural tale with a "goat" theme and the later stories are more classically Cthulhu mythos inspired. These earlier stories all very much read like M. R. James' tale of unease; a real pleasure for myself.
As the theme of Shub Niggurath is developed from Lovecraft's original writing, the stories dwell less on the goat aspect and more on the otherworldly horror of S.N.
My one criticism is that some of these stories are shoehorned into this collection to pad it out as they don't, in my opinion, focus on S.N. That said, though, all of the stories are of high quality and I would prefer a collection like this than one with lower quality tales that may be a bit closer to the mark. This one collection I will definitely pick up again to browse through.
March 1, 2026
I read this years ago, about twenty years ago, in fact, when I was finishing graduate school. I'll be honest, I don't remember if I owned the book and got rid of it or if I got it from the library, but, in any case, I didn't have my own copy for a long, long time. So, when I spotted this at a local antique store for a pittance, I just sprang for it. The question is, would it live up to my now-higher expectations of writing craftsmanship?
Lewis Spence's "The Horn of Vipula" was pulp as they come, with everything that implies: predictability, a not-so-surprise ending, plot "reaches" like miniature deus-ex-machina, and language that strives to be better than it really is. Meh. Not a great start to the anthology.
M.P. Dare tries to channel M.R. James in "The Demoniac Goat". He's largely successful but lacks the full gravitas of the master of the ghost story. Still, a decent enough story about an ostensibly dead priest and his pet goat. Well, who was the pet, really?
Even the editor notes the hackneyed subject matter of J.S. Leatherbarrow's "The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara". I agree with the editor's assessment. Ostensibly, he put it in the anthology for historical reasons. But some history is best forgotten.
I've read and enjoyed Ramsey Campbell's "The Moon-Lens" before, and while many consider it something akin to juvenalia, with a structure that pastiche's Lovecraft's own, I still find something intriguing here. It bridges the gap between folk horror and cosmic horror in a way that highlights the strong points of each. Maybe I just have a soft spot for it, as I would likely rate it more highly than others.
Careful restraint is not the watchword in John Glasby's "The Ring of the Hyades". Lovecraft's greatest folly: naming the un-nameable, describing the indescribable, leaks into Glasby's writing like a Rorschach test of purple prose. The story is alright, but rather predictable for anyone even vaguely familiar with the Mythos. I suppose that makes it a safe read for fans, but it would be jarring for newcomers.
During my years as an editor, I had an unbreakable rule that I would never publish my own work in an anthology I was editing. Price, in his . . . uh, work(?) "A Thousand Young" provides a shining example of why every editor should take this ethical stance. I hated this story. It was a twelve-year old's darkest sexual fantasy. Oh, and trigger warning: R**E. Yeah, no. No stars, not even one. Just . . .don't.
Odd that a story so poor as Price's should be followed by a sandal and sorcery story so nearly perfect as Richard L. Tierney's "The Seed of the Star God". Price can't write them, but he can pick them! Now I'm wondering if there is a full collection of Simon of Gitta's tales. I would read that! Sword, sorcery, and sacrifice in the decadence of the Roman Empire. SPQR!
It's not the story that sang to me. Glen Singer's "Harold's Blues" is an old tale, a very tried and true tale, about selling one's soul for music. You already know the story, from start to finish. But the register in which this was sung . . .well, that's where the magic lies. That old, dark magic that brings songs and storms and screams in the night. Familiar, but unsettling.
Lin Carter may have been a better writer of Lovecraftian tales than Lovecraft himself. "Dreams in the House of Weir," a story steeped in the mythos, but with just a modicum more of restraint than HPL lacked, teases the horror out instead of bashing readers over the head with it. There's a slow pull on the thread of cosmic horror here that unwinds one's sanity. If your dreams become wondrous, you should start to fear.
. . . and Carter further demonstrates his skilled pen by way of the poem "Visions from Yaddith," which is quoted in the previous story. I'm rather curious which came first? The story? Or the poem? Each path carries some interesting implications about the writing process that I need to ponder on a while. I could see each having its benefits, and I've done both, but without much intentionality. I must think on this. It's been a while since I've tried my hand at poetry.
I wavered on M.L. Carter's "Prey of the Goat". It swung from interesting to hackneyed, back to good, then to trite, wallowing in mediocrity. In the end, I'm in the "meh" camp, with a slight twinge of "interesting," but not interesting enough to take me beyond a bland assessment. Could-have-beens and all that rot.
"Sabbath of the Black Goat" carried a not-so-surprising ending. Add to this the hyper-compressed, yet somehow thin info dump by Stephen M. Rainey and you have a rushed, middling story. I suspect there was some word count restriction on the story, but whether the story should have been longer or shorter is difficult to say. It's clear, though, that the pulp suit just doesn’t quite fit right.
Another Price story, but this one co-authored with Peter H. Cannon, "The Curate of Temphill" reads somewhere between M.R. James and Umberto Eco; meaning I quite liked it. I have to attribute this to the co-authorship(?), something I've done myself with good results (with author Brendan Connell, whose work I continue to greatly admire). This tale of Templars and heretical prophecies is an unexpected and welcome find in such an anthology. No Old Ones here, but they are not needed.
David Kaufman's "Grossie" might be the most effective story of this anthology (and also has the worst title, though it fits). It's as subtle as Lovecraft is unsubtle. There is a menace of place here and the faint aroma of ancestral evil, just enough to pique the imagination, just enough for the reader to really feel the underlying horror without facing it directly, an underlying genius loci with inimical intent. Don't be fooled by the puerile title. Another tale where the Old Ones don't make a direct appearance, and they don't have to. In fact, having an "unspeakable" horror show its face would have destroyed this beautiful (but dark) story.
"To Clear the Earth" is a story lost and found to me. I remember, in the mid-90s, reading a mythos story that made a deep impression on me. It was cosmic horror writ-large, on an Earth-ending scale, but in more of a science fiction paradigm than horror. The setting was Antarctica (which makes me wonder why it wasn't in the Antarktos Cycle). And here it is, by Will Murray (also the author of the Doc Savage and Destroyer series). It doesn't resonate as much now. I was surprised by the ending (which I had forgotten), so that wasn't the problem. I think it might be the pulp-adventure tone of the second half of the story, or maybe it was the info-dumping that took place throughout. I guess it was needed back in the day, but nowadays the Mythos lore is so common as to be trite. Or maybe I've just played so much Call of Cthulhu that I recoil at explanatory passages, especially ones about the Necronomicon. In any case, the story, while good, didn't have the same magic (nefarious or otherwise), as it did last century.
So, alas, the me of twenty years ago enjoyed this anthology far more than the me of now does. Age happens. Experience happens. Nostalgia happens. And sometimes, nostalgia is deceptive. Live and learn.
Lewis Spence's "The Horn of Vipula" was pulp as they come, with everything that implies: predictability, a not-so-surprise ending, plot "reaches" like miniature deus-ex-machina, and language that strives to be better than it really is. Meh. Not a great start to the anthology.
M.P. Dare tries to channel M.R. James in "The Demoniac Goat". He's largely successful but lacks the full gravitas of the master of the ghost story. Still, a decent enough story about an ostensibly dead priest and his pet goat. Well, who was the pet, really?
Even the editor notes the hackneyed subject matter of J.S. Leatherbarrow's "The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara". I agree with the editor's assessment. Ostensibly, he put it in the anthology for historical reasons. But some history is best forgotten.
I've read and enjoyed Ramsey Campbell's "The Moon-Lens" before, and while many consider it something akin to juvenalia, with a structure that pastiche's Lovecraft's own, I still find something intriguing here. It bridges the gap between folk horror and cosmic horror in a way that highlights the strong points of each. Maybe I just have a soft spot for it, as I would likely rate it more highly than others.
Careful restraint is not the watchword in John Glasby's "The Ring of the Hyades". Lovecraft's greatest folly: naming the un-nameable, describing the indescribable, leaks into Glasby's writing like a Rorschach test of purple prose. The story is alright, but rather predictable for anyone even vaguely familiar with the Mythos. I suppose that makes it a safe read for fans, but it would be jarring for newcomers.
During my years as an editor, I had an unbreakable rule that I would never publish my own work in an anthology I was editing. Price, in his . . . uh, work(?) "A Thousand Young" provides a shining example of why every editor should take this ethical stance. I hated this story. It was a twelve-year old's darkest sexual fantasy. Oh, and trigger warning: R**E. Yeah, no. No stars, not even one. Just . . .don't.
Odd that a story so poor as Price's should be followed by a sandal and sorcery story so nearly perfect as Richard L. Tierney's "The Seed of the Star God". Price can't write them, but he can pick them! Now I'm wondering if there is a full collection of Simon of Gitta's tales. I would read that! Sword, sorcery, and sacrifice in the decadence of the Roman Empire. SPQR!
It's not the story that sang to me. Glen Singer's "Harold's Blues" is an old tale, a very tried and true tale, about selling one's soul for music. You already know the story, from start to finish. But the register in which this was sung . . .well, that's where the magic lies. That old, dark magic that brings songs and storms and screams in the night. Familiar, but unsettling.
Lin Carter may have been a better writer of Lovecraftian tales than Lovecraft himself. "Dreams in the House of Weir," a story steeped in the mythos, but with just a modicum more of restraint than HPL lacked, teases the horror out instead of bashing readers over the head with it. There's a slow pull on the thread of cosmic horror here that unwinds one's sanity. If your dreams become wondrous, you should start to fear.
. . . and Carter further demonstrates his skilled pen by way of the poem "Visions from Yaddith," which is quoted in the previous story. I'm rather curious which came first? The story? Or the poem? Each path carries some interesting implications about the writing process that I need to ponder on a while. I could see each having its benefits, and I've done both, but without much intentionality. I must think on this. It's been a while since I've tried my hand at poetry.
I wavered on M.L. Carter's "Prey of the Goat". It swung from interesting to hackneyed, back to good, then to trite, wallowing in mediocrity. In the end, I'm in the "meh" camp, with a slight twinge of "interesting," but not interesting enough to take me beyond a bland assessment. Could-have-beens and all that rot.
"Sabbath of the Black Goat" carried a not-so-surprising ending. Add to this the hyper-compressed, yet somehow thin info dump by Stephen M. Rainey and you have a rushed, middling story. I suspect there was some word count restriction on the story, but whether the story should have been longer or shorter is difficult to say. It's clear, though, that the pulp suit just doesn’t quite fit right.
Another Price story, but this one co-authored with Peter H. Cannon, "The Curate of Temphill" reads somewhere between M.R. James and Umberto Eco; meaning I quite liked it. I have to attribute this to the co-authorship(?), something I've done myself with good results (with author Brendan Connell, whose work I continue to greatly admire). This tale of Templars and heretical prophecies is an unexpected and welcome find in such an anthology. No Old Ones here, but they are not needed.
David Kaufman's "Grossie" might be the most effective story of this anthology (and also has the worst title, though it fits). It's as subtle as Lovecraft is unsubtle. There is a menace of place here and the faint aroma of ancestral evil, just enough to pique the imagination, just enough for the reader to really feel the underlying horror without facing it directly, an underlying genius loci with inimical intent. Don't be fooled by the puerile title. Another tale where the Old Ones don't make a direct appearance, and they don't have to. In fact, having an "unspeakable" horror show its face would have destroyed this beautiful (but dark) story.
"To Clear the Earth" is a story lost and found to me. I remember, in the mid-90s, reading a mythos story that made a deep impression on me. It was cosmic horror writ-large, on an Earth-ending scale, but in more of a science fiction paradigm than horror. The setting was Antarctica (which makes me wonder why it wasn't in the Antarktos Cycle). And here it is, by Will Murray (also the author of the Doc Savage and Destroyer series). It doesn't resonate as much now. I was surprised by the ending (which I had forgotten), so that wasn't the problem. I think it might be the pulp-adventure tone of the second half of the story, or maybe it was the info-dumping that took place throughout. I guess it was needed back in the day, but nowadays the Mythos lore is so common as to be trite. Or maybe I've just played so much Call of Cthulhu that I recoil at explanatory passages, especially ones about the Necronomicon. In any case, the story, while good, didn't have the same magic (nefarious or otherwise), as it did last century.
So, alas, the me of twenty years ago enjoyed this anthology far more than the me of now does. Age happens. Experience happens. Nostalgia happens. And sometimes, nostalgia is deceptive. Live and learn.
February 12, 2016
A collection of stories based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. These are, to me, only slightly better than the original Lovecraft stories. Just not a fan of his writings. Not recommended
March 14, 2011
While the eponymous Shub-Niggurath is what binds these stories together, they nevertheless are rather disparate. No homogenous concept of the entity emerges and while this might be due to the fact that Shub-Niggurath is not elaborated in Lovecraft's original mythos tales (as editor Robert M. Price notes), there is also the problem that Shub-Niggurath is not very present in some of these stories except by name.
There is no text by Lovecraft included and most of the stories are written rather by the latter-day epigones of the writer, such as Lin Carter, Richard L. Tierney and Robert M. Price. While there is no exceptionally good story to be found, neither is an extremely bad one. There are one or two weak stories but most of them are entertaining reads even if they lack the horror or lingering dread that makes a good mythos tale.
There is no text by Lovecraft included and most of the stories are written rather by the latter-day epigones of the writer, such as Lin Carter, Richard L. Tierney and Robert M. Price. While there is no exceptionally good story to be found, neither is an extremely bad one. There are one or two weak stories but most of them are entertaining reads even if they lack the horror or lingering dread that makes a good mythos tale.
January 21, 2014
Overall a fairly solid collection of "Mythos" fiction.
There are a few weak selections (Lin Carter, I'm looking at you) and a few early entries that quite literally have nothing mythos-tinged about them (an evil goat has no inherently Lovecraftian elements).
The quality of stories is better than average for writers working in Lovecraft's shadow, and some of them step out onto their own with great success, "Harold's Blues" by Glen Singer was exceptionally good, and Robert Price's "A Thousand Young" excellently illustrates the energy of a Shub-Niggurath cultist.
Certainly worth picking up.
There are a few weak selections (Lin Carter, I'm looking at you) and a few early entries that quite literally have nothing mythos-tinged about them (an evil goat has no inherently Lovecraftian elements).
The quality of stories is better than average for writers working in Lovecraft's shadow, and some of them step out onto their own with great success, "Harold's Blues" by Glen Singer was exceptionally good, and Robert Price's "A Thousand Young" excellently illustrates the energy of a Shub-Niggurath cultist.
Certainly worth picking up.
January 25, 2011
La maggior parte dei racconti è decisamente per appassionati, e si fa apprezzare soprattutto per il sapore un po' ruspante che li caratterizza. Il livello tende comunque ad alzarsi nella seconda metà del libro. Non mancano alcune gemme: "Harold's Blues", "The Moon Lens" e soprattutto "Grossie" nobilitano in qualche modo un'antologia che altrimenti sarebbe solo discreta.
September 22, 2012
Price has collected some very good tales about one of the more obscure of Lovecraft's pantheon. Very entertaining, and very interesting to see the innovations in Lovecraftian fiction some writers began trying to produce at the end of the last century.
June 21, 2017
A really good anthology devoted to the oft mentioned, but rarely featured Great Old One. If you're into Lovecraft and his ever expanding circle of disciples, this is definitely one to track down. If you just enjoy some odd tales, there are plenty contained within. Good stuff.
April 27, 2020
This is the seventh book in Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu series that I’ve read (though the fourth one published), and I note a couple of differences between this outing and the first six I’ve made it through. To start, none of the stories included herein were actually written by H.P. Lovecraft. That’s natural enough, given that he never wrote a story specifically about the Goat with a Thousand Young. Unfortunately, it’s also remarkable for featuring a relatively large percentage of off-topic stories. A couple of the early entries are about generic-brand demonic goats, connected to Shub Niggurath only by some fur and cloven hooves. Then later in the set editor Robert M. Price chooses to include a couple of stories that aren’t directly connected to the title figure in any way, though one of these entries, David Kaufman’s “Grossie,” is one of the better tales in the set. Price also stuffs in a couple of tales in which “Shub Niggurath” appears as little more than a stand-in for a more traditional Devil, almost as if someone used a find-and-replace function in a word processor to produce a tale that conformed to the book’s theme in order to facilitate a sale. I also thought it was disingenuous of Price to omit any discussion of the inherent racism of the name. A story tackling this thorny issue head-on would also have been a welcome addition. But even with such drawbacks in mind, this is still an entertaining read.
May 26, 2025
The Horn of Vapula: 2.5/5
The Demoniac Goat: 2/5
The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara: 4/5
The Moon-Lens: 5/5
The Ring of the Hyades: 3.5/5
A Thousand Young: 1.5/5
The Seed of the Star-God: 3.5/5
Harold’s Blues: 4/5
Dreams in the House of Weir: 3/5
Visions from Yaddith: 2/5
Prey of the Goat: 4.5/5
Sabbath of the Black Goat: 4/5
The Curate of Temphill: 2.5/5
Grossie: 3.5/5
To Clear The Earth: 4/5
Average: 3.3/5
Final: 3/5
A third of the stories have no connection to Shub-Niggurath at all, one of which doesn’t even have the goat theme to justify its inclusion (despite being one of the better stories)
The Demoniac Goat: 2/5
The Ghostly Goat of Glaramara: 4/5
The Moon-Lens: 5/5
The Ring of the Hyades: 3.5/5
A Thousand Young: 1.5/5
The Seed of the Star-God: 3.5/5
Harold’s Blues: 4/5
Dreams in the House of Weir: 3/5
Visions from Yaddith: 2/5
Prey of the Goat: 4.5/5
Sabbath of the Black Goat: 4/5
The Curate of Temphill: 2.5/5
Grossie: 3.5/5
To Clear The Earth: 4/5
Average: 3.3/5
Final: 3/5
A third of the stories have no connection to Shub-Niggurath at all, one of which doesn’t even have the goat theme to justify its inclusion (despite being one of the better stories)
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews