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Review of Dead of Night
In his introduction to this piece, Bob Price had pointed out that Carter had told him and ST Joshi of his idea for this story while they were in his house one day, and how it would end. They both pointed out that this was identical to the Haunter of the Dark from Lovecraft, but Carter submitted the piece as is to a magazine, Crypt of Cthulhu, and it was published there.
This is who Carter is. His super power is he is Derivative Man. He writes derivative stores.
The entire setting has an off-putting “Oriental Flare” from the earlier era, and feels wrong. It’s not as bad as the David Drake story, but it’s not good. Let’s put it that way. Again, this story is very derivative of others. But it’s not one that sticks with me. The ending is precisely something you’d expect, as is everything else about this story.
Captain Mythos strikes again.
I give it a 2.5 star rating.
The next story is “Out of the Ages,” from 1975, which introduces Zoth-Ommog and other minor characters to the mythos. As Robert Price pointed out, Lin Carter was more interested in finding out areas of the Mythos that were missing, and then putting them out there, rather than doing something new and interesting.
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