In 2015, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles co-edited Cthulhu’s Daughters: Stories of Lovecraftian Horror, in an effort to put paid to the rumor that “women don’t write Lovecraftian Horror / Weird Fiction.” No matter how many anthologies like this come out, there will be some people who still make that claim (heck, there are some who would claim women don’t write horror at all, or that women writing horror is a relatively recent development. Clueless, those people are.)
Here are my thoughts on a few of the 25 stories Moreno-Garcia and Stiles brought together.
Lockbox by E. Catherine Tobler
My opinion is that it takes a certain type of talent to write good serious “footnoted fiction.” (The type of story where as much is revealed in footnotes from the narrator as in the main text itself, that is. I thought about being cutesy and making this parenthetical aside a footnote, but I’m not sure I can get the formatting to work on my blog, and would it really be worth it?) I’ve read a fair number of such stories over the years, and in most of them I find the footnotes an affectation, often a distraction, rather than an enhancement. Not so here. Tobler’s story of two modern college students’ discovery of a long-buried but legendary Priory drips with atmosphere and foreboding from the very first sentence (“If nothing else, remember this: Edgar always knew.1”) and the footnotes enhance those feelings (“ 1 We may debate exactly when Edgar knew at length, but I am not convinced there was ever a single, discernable point one can reference; as the notions herein are circular,20 I feel so to was Edgar’s knowledge.” Yes, there’s a footnote to the footnote, which plays out very effectively later in the story). The narrator reveals the bloody history of the Priory and the history of his relationship with Edgar in just enough detail for the reader to understand how much isn’t be said … either because the narrator isn’t ready or is physically unable to share such details. It’s a fantastic counterpoint to Lovecraft, whose narrators often fell into what we call “purple prose” and shared too much detail; Tobler is as effective, or more so, in ramping up the creeping horror and dread with much less flowery language. And in the female protagonist, Tobler has created a character I find as horrifying as any of Lovecraft’s cosmic horrors.
Queen of a New America by Wendy N. Wagner
What is it about Nitocris, possible last queen of Egypt’s Sixth Dynasty, which draws so many writers of Lovecraftian horror to use her? Maybe it’s simply that Lovecraft himself mentions her in passing in two of his stories, making her a usable hook to expand on Lovecraft’s universe. Maybe it’s that so little is known about the historical Nitocris (including some debate over whether she actually existed at all), which makes her rife for use in all manner of genres from historical fiction to horror. Whatever it is, my experience is that usually in Lovecraftian horror, Nitocris is the Big Bad of the story/novel. Wendy N. Wagner turns that tradition upside down by showing a Nitocris who is far from the height of her power, her influence shrunk to being able to occasionally take control of a young girl’s body. Wagner explores the psychological effect of a drop from such lofty heights as well as revealing how it happened and draws comparisons between an Egypt where magic was commonplace and an America where logic and science have pushed magic to the background. Just when I thought I knew where the story was going, Wagner reveals a detail I hadn’t even noticed was missing and spins the story into a commentary about society we currently live in and where and how structures of power might be found in a world so different from the one Nitrocris knew. I enjoyed the claustrophobic feel of the story and the twist.
I love short fiction in all its forms: from novellas to novelettes, short stories, flash fiction, and drabbles. Sunday Shorts is the feature where I get to blog about it.