A Cthulhu Mythos anthology is a type of short story collection that contains stories written in or related to the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror fiction launched by H. P. Lovecraft. Such anthologies have helped to define and popularize the genre.
| Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | H. P. Lovecraft and Others |
| Cover artist | Lee Brown Coye |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Arkham House |
| Publication date | 1969 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | vii, 407 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by August Derleth and published by Arkham House in 1969, is considered the first Cthulhu Mythos anthology. It contained two stories by Lovecraft, a number of reprints of pieces written by members of Lovecraft's circle of correspondents, and several new tales written for the collection by a new generation of Cthulhu Mythos writers. It was published in an edition of 4,024 copies.
Derleth prefaced the collection with "The Cthulhu Mythos", an outline of his (sometimes controversial) views on the development and content of the Mythos. In this introduction, Derleth prematurely declared the genre to be dead--"for certainly the Mythos as an inspiration for new fiction is hardly likely to afford readers with enough that is new and sufficiently different in execution to create a continuing and growing demand".[1]
Lin Carter later wrote that Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos "marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the Mythos for many reasons, and one of the most important was that it introduced a number of new writers in the Mythos."[2]
The contents of the original 1969 edition are:
*First appeared in the collection
For full details of the revised ed see Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos: Golden Anniversary Anthology below.
| The Disciples of Cthulhu | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by Edward P. Berglund |
| Cover artist | Karel Thole |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | DAW Books |
| Publication date | 1976 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 288 pp |
| ISBN | NA |
The Disciples of Cthulhu was edited by Edward P. Berglund and published by DAW Books in 1976. Berglund later described it as "the first professional, all-original, Cthulhu Mythos anthology".[3]
Perhaps responding to the introduction to Derleth's collection, Berglund wrote in his preface: "Whether or not there is a market for the Cthulhu Mythos stories, established and amateur writers will continue to write them for their own and their friends' amusement and enjoyment. It is inevitable that one or more readers of this volume will be influenced into trying his hand at writing within the Cthulhu Mythos genre."
The contents are:
When the collection was reprinted by Chaosium in 1996, the Carter and Brennan stories were replaced by "Dope War of the Black Tong", a new Robert M. Price pastiche of Carter and Robert E. Howard, and "Glimpses" by A. A. Attanasio, which was supposed to be published in the original Disciples but ended up in the Arkham House anthology Nameless Places instead.
| New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by Ramsey Campbell |
| Cover artist | Jason Van Hollander |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Arkham House |
| Publication date | 1980 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | xi, 257 pp |
| ISBN | 0-87054-085-8 |
New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos was edited by Ramsey Campbell and published by Arkham House in 1980 in an edition of 3,647 copies. In his introduction, Campbell noted that "[i]n recent years the Mythos at times has seemed in danger of becoming conventionalized," despite the fact that "Lovecraft's intention and achievement was precisely to avoid the predictability and resultant lack of terror which beset the conventional macabre fiction of his day." Therefore, Campbell wrote, "in this anthology I have tended to favor less familiar treatments or uses of the Mythos.... They contain few erudite occultists, decaying towns, or stylistic pastiches.... Indeed, one of our tales hints at the ultimate event of the Mythos without ever referring to the traditional names."[4]
One story in the book is an expansion, by Martin S. Warnes, of Lovecraft's fragment "The Book".
The contents are:
| Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | H. P. Lovecraft & Divers Hands |
| Illustrator | Jeffrey K. Potter |
| Cover artist | Jeffrey K. Potter |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Arkham House |
| Publication date | 1990 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | xiv, 529 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-87054-159-5 |
Arkham House released a new edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos in 1990, edited by James Turner with a substantially different selection of stories, reflecting the editor's disdain for "Mythos pastiches in which eccentric New England recluses utter the right incantations in the wrong books and are promptly eaten by a giant frog named Cthulhu." It was released in an edition of 7,015 copies.
Turner eliminates some authors from the earlier edition (totalling four stories, those by Wade, Shea and two by Lumley) --while still suggesting that "a few of the earliest pieces in this volume...now seem like pop-cultural kitsch." The added seven stories, he writes, are from "the relative handful of successful works that have been influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos...exemplifying the darkly enduring power of H. P. Lovecraft over a disparate group of writers who have made their own inimitable contributions to the Mythos."[5]
The contents are:
| Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by Robert M. Price |
| Cover artist | Gahan Wilson |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Fedogan & Bremer |
| Publication date | 1992 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 327 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 187825202X |
Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos was edited by Robert M. Price and published by Fedogan & Bremer in 1992. In an introduction, Price provides a "sketch of the Lovecraft Mythos and its evolution into the Cthulhu Mythos"--raising a defense of August Derleth's interpretation of the Mythos along the way. Price writes that his intent in making selections was to assemble "an alternate version" of Derleth's Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, though limited in scope to the writers of the pulp era. He included several pieces long out of print or reprinted only in obscure fanzines, and tried to focus on "stories in which certain important Mythos names or items are either first mentioned or most fully explained by the author who created them".[6]
The contents are:
| Cthulhu's Heirs | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by Thomas M. K. Stratman |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Chaosium |
| Publication date | 1994 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 1568820135 |
Cthulhu's Heirs was edited by Thomas M. K. Stratman and published by Chaosium in 1994. With the exception of contributions by Ramsey Campbell and Hugh B. Cave, the stories included are original to the collection. Stratman describes the tales as "more than 20 writers' visions into the landscape of Lovecraft Country."[7]
The contents are:
| The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by D. M. Mitchell |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Creation Books |
| Publication date | 1994 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 191 |
| ISBN | ISBN 1871592321 |
The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft was edited by D. M. Mitchell and published by Creation Books in 1994. Declaring that "Lovecraft has suffered much at the hands of unmindful critics and even more from uninspired and talentless imitators," Mitchell declares that the collection's goal is "to dig deeper, to bypass the superficial and access the subterranean channels of archetype and inspiration with which Lovecraft was connected.... [Lovecraft] crafted morbid and disturbing allegories of social and biological upheaval--cryptically prophetic and spiritually exploratory--this latent content of his work now needs excavating."[8]
Some of the stories in the collection--notably those by Burroughs and Ballard--were not inspired by Lovecraft, but were seen by Mitchell as sharing his "visions of cosmic alienation". In those stories that make direct references to the Cthulhu Mythos, they are "used only in passing--in the same informal way in which Lovecraft himself intended."[9]
The contents are:
| Cthulhu 2000 | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by Jim Turner |
| Illustrator | Bob Eggleton |
| Cover artist | Bob Eggleton |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Arkham House |
| Publication date | 1995 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | xvi, 413 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-87054-169-2 |
Cthulhu 2000: A Lovecraftian Anthology was edited by Jim Turner and published by Arkham House in 1995 in an edition of 4,927 copies. As in his earlier collection, Turner criticizes the "latter-day Mythos pastiche" as simply "a banal modern horror story, preceded by the inevitable Necronomicon epigraph and indiscriminately interspersed with sesquipedalian deities, ichor-oozing tentacles, sundry eldritch abominations, and then the whole sorry mess rounded off with a cachinnating chorus of "Iä! Iä!"-chanting frogs." He declares that "the works collected in the present volume are not great Lovecraft stories; they rather are great stories in some way inspired by Lovecraft."[10]
The contents are:
| The New Lovecraft Circle | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by Robert M. Price |
| Cover artist | Gahan Wilson |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Fedogan & Bremer |
| Publication date | 1996 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 371 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 187825216X |
The New Lovecraft Circle was edited by Robert M. Price and published by Fedogan & Bremer in 1996 in an edition of 2,000 copies. Presenting the book as a sequel to Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos, which focused on the circle of writers around Lovecraft that were collected in the first half of Derleth's Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Price declares that "the present collection means to ape the second half, to commemorate that dawn of a new era of Mythos fiction." He describes the contents as "little known and seldom seen stories by most of the seven members of the New Lovecraft Circle numbered by Lin Carter and by other, more recent adepts as well, for the tradition grows. The cult will not be stamped out."[11]
The contents are:
| Song of Cthulhu | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by Stephen Mark Rainey |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Chaosium |
| Publication date | July 2001 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 200 |
| ISBN | 978-1568821177 |
Song of Cthulhu was published by Chaosium in July 2009, edited by Stephen Mark Rainey. This themed anthology featured stories about using music to interact with various of the entities from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, as typified in Lovecraft's story, "The Music of Erich Zann," which is included in the anthology. Cover art by Harry Fassl.
The contents are:
| The Children of Cthulhu | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books |
| Publication date | 2002 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0345449266 |
The Children of Cthulhu, published by Ballantine Books in 2002, was edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams. In the introduction, the editors wrote:
All the stories are original to the volume with the exception of Poppy Z. Brite's "Are You Loathsome Tonight?" which originally appeared in her 1998 collection of the same name.
The contents are:
| Cthulhu Unbound | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by John Sunseri and Thom Brannan |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Permuted Press |
| Publication date | 2009 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| ISBN | 9781934861134 |
| Followed by | Cthulhu Unbound 2 |
Cthulhu Unbound was published by Permuted Press on March 30 2009. It was edited by John Sunseri and Thom Brannan. The volume is a “cross-genre” anthology, telling Lovecraft-inspired comedies, space opera, hardboiled noir, etc. Cover art by Cyril Van Der Haegen.
| Cthulhu Unbound 2 | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by John Sunseri and Thom Brannan |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Permuted Press |
| Publication date | July 31, 2009 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 276 |
| ISBN | 978-1934861141 |
| Preceded by | Cthulhu Unbound |
Cthulhu Unbound 2 was published by Permuted Press on July 31, 2009. It was edited by John Sunseri and Thom Brannan. The volume is a “cross-genre” anthology, telling Lovecraft-inspired stories that are comedies, space operas, hardboiled noir, etc. Cover art by Michael Dashow.
The contents are:
| Cthulhu's Reign | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | edited by Darrell Schweitzer |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, Horror short stories |
| Publisher | Permuted Press |
| Publication date | April, 2010 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 309 |
| ISBN | 978-0-7564-0616-5 |
Cthulhu's Reign was published by DAW in April, 2010. It was edited by Darrell Schweitzer. The volume's twist is that the dreaded revival of the fearsome "Great Old Ones" who once ruled the Earth is not a future possibility but an event that has actually come to pass.
The contents are: