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Title: Atomic Age Cthulhu
Series: Cthulhu Anthology #10
Editor: Glynn Barrass & Brian Sammons
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Pages: 287
Words: 106K
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Bad Reception by Jeffrey Thomas
Unamerican by Cody Goodfellow
Fallout by Sam Stone
Eldritch Lunch by Adam Bolivar
Little Curly by Neil Baker
The Day the Music Died by Charles Christian
The Terror That Came to Dounreay by William Meikle
The Romero Transference by Josh Reynolds
It Came to Modesto by Ed Erdelac
Within the Image of the Divine by Bear Weiter
Yellow is the Color of the Future by Jason Andrew
Fears Realized by Tom Lynch
Professor Patriot and the Doom that Came to Niceville by Christine Morgan
Rose-Colored Glasses by Michael Szymanski
The Preserved Ones by Christopher M. Geeson
Putnam’s Monster by Scott T. Goudsward
Operation Switch by Pete Rawlik
Names on the Black List by Robert M. Price
The End of the Golden Age by Brian M. Sammons & Glynn Owen Barrass
This was a great collection of Cthulhu mythos stories set during the 1950’s and ranged from the commies being Eldrich Horrors to the Eldrich Horrors taking over America so THEY could fight the commies. In most of the stories any commies got what was coming to them.
This was on track for being a 4.5star rating, but I ran into 2 stories that made that impossible.
The first one, Eldrich Lunch, almost made me quit the book. It was vile, and brought to mind my reaction to Lapvona last month. It really made me question if I was being hypocritical or not. I don’t think so for two reasons. First, the story was meant to be vile. Cosmic Horror is meant to have that edge. Second, it was just that one story and not the entire book. Quantity does matter. But it made me want to be much more careful about how I judge others for the books they read in the future. I’m still going to judge the heck out of the books and possibly the authors, but the people reading and praising them, I can at least keep my mouth shut.
The second story, Yellow is the Color of the Future, was obviously a King in Yellow story. My hopes skyrocketed. Sadly, they were dashed even before my real reasons for disliking the story came into play. Some sad sack of a movie producer finds the play The King in Yellow and a friend reads it and they decide to film it. The character playing the King gets possessed and is preparing to use the movie to enter our world and rule it. The sad sack producer figures out how to stop him and destroys the film. Happily Ever After. No. There are NO happily ever after’s in a good KiY story. Because even when you win against the King, you still end up losing. That’s what I appreciated so much about The Yellow Sign, that author understood that conundrum and wrote it well. And a movie producer? Come on, those guys don’t have a working brain cell, much less a whole brain, to be able to fight against the Horror of the King. That would be like Petunia Pig taking down a Gundam, bare handed. Inconceivable!
Fallout, on the other hand, was an excellent story. It follows a teen boy who’s about to turn 16 who is living in an American Dream. His family, no, the whole town is well off and doing well beyond imagination. Sure, his dad built a bunker in the backyard that gives the teen the heeby jeebies, but you gotta be prepared right? Turns out, the town has made a pact to offer their first borns on their 16th birthday for wealth and prosperity. It ends well too, with the boy being sacrificed and one of the people who threw him into the fallout shelter saying something like “next month is my Suzie’s 16th”. Cosmic Horror for the win!
To polish things off, I’d just like to take a second and talk about the editors, Glynn Barrass and Brian Sammons. So far, I have had very good luck for books edited by Barrass. Unlike Joshi, he doesn’t seem to have his head stuck up his fundament and instead focuses on telling stories that fans want to read. I like that attitude and I am beginning to recognize his name. If I see his name on a cover, chances are good I’m going to eventually pick up that book. More importantly, I’m probably going to enjoy it. Sammons, I don’t know. I’ll see if he shows up in other books that I end up enjoying.
★★★★☆
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