The Cthulhu Dynasty - "The Nameless City" and "The Hound" by HP Lovecraft

[Abe Sargent]

Synopsis of “Shaft Number 247”


This short story is long, but it has a bunch of dialogue in the middle, where one character is telling another stuff, and I think I can do the synopsis shortly.

The main character, Driscoll, works for Control, as the manager of the night watch shift for a large mining complex with hundreds of shafts. There are nearby cities and more. There is a person on the shift with him, Wainwright, who is struggled and hearing things in the shafts after his best friend was pronounced dead a few months back .

It’s been getting worse, and a few other folks look oddly suspicious of his friend, Deems, and what is happening. So Driscoll tries to research Deems, and it’s been deleted, so he heads to Wainwright’s apartment to find out what has been happening. It turns out that shaft number 247, the first shaft dug and used to explore the area, has been badly rusted, corroded, and water and such is getting in. There are signs that the doors are opening from the outside, which implies that something is out there, turning them. Deems went to there and headed out, up, to live Out There.

After hearing this, a few days later, Driscoll hears an alarm, knows its coming from 247 instinctively, and rushes to head there. He finds water cascading in, some foul smelling stuff, and begins to invoke some dark primal urging of living outside and such in him. He sees some small humanoid creature reaching for him, but it’s flushed away. Wainwright has left.

He;’s placed on administrative leave for a week pending an official hearing. He decides to head out, and he break cameras, lights, and more, on his way out, and then again gets the visions as he closes with 247, and then opens the door to head Out There.

[Abe Sargent]

Review of “Shaft Number 247”

I’m not precisely sure on the setting. When I first read this story in college around 20 years ago or so, I thought it was set in a mining colony in the future. But reading it a second time, I think instead it has more of a dystopian, Logan’s Run feel to it. It doesn’t matter, it’s just a short story after all, and basil is more interested in the characters.

It’s certainly a science fiction story.

Control is never told –could be the government, could be a company, we don’t know. We never find out what happens. Sort of like Abraham Merrit’s “The Moon Pool” from the zero generation we read earlier. Once they go through the pool, the story ends. This story almost reads like the first chapter of a book we’ll never read

When I was in college, I wrote a short story that was intentionally set in the Cthulhu Mythos. But I didn’t include any obvious signs. No creatures, no books, no langue, no names, nothing. But I was trying to evoke the sense of total screw-ment with something happening beyond human ken. It was set in a coal mine back during the Company Town/Company Store era. Anyways, the story was set in the Mythos by intent of the author, and not because of the details that I saw. Does it count?

Basil does that here. You keep expecting for some Mythos element to drop – Cthulhu, the Necronomicon, the Lliogor, the Mi-Go , the Hounds of Tindalos, a place like Innsmouth or the Plateau of Leng. Not Ithaqua. But nope. Nothing. And that desire to keep the story clean of the obvious adoration for those elements makes this a very interesting story.

This is an opaque, dense, place. It’s oppressive, and the story is very, very subtle. And I think that’s really good. Campbell in the prelude says, “one of our tales hints at the ultimate event of the Mythos without ever referring to the traditional names”. Campbell later writes that this was the best story of the written for the novel, which makes it better than Crouch End, Then Curse the Darkness, or Dark Awakening.

I’m giving it four stars.

[Abe Sargent]

So let’s move to an interesting option next. T.E.D. Klein. He’s very interesting. Klein is a horror aficionado, with a post-grad degree in English Lit from Brown University, doing his thesis on Lovecraft, changing his name ot add “Eibon” to it so his initials would spell TED, his nickname (Eibon is from the Clark Ashton Smith story that we read earlier), he’s done non-fiction, written critiques, and edited scripts.

He’s written a bit here and there. Two novels. Some collections of stories. And yet, when he does write, he’s a dense, meticulous writer, much like an Ambrose Bierce.

Anyways, he’s written some horror stuff in the Mythos. We’ll be reading “Black Man with a Horn” from the 1980 New Tales…. That I’ve been reading. It’s also published later as well, in one of his own collections.

[Abe Sargent]

Synopsis of Black Man with a Horn

Our writer is discussing the power of the past narrative. He is a writer of horror fiction, and one of the younger sort of acolytes of Lovecraft. Although he wrote more and longer, he has always been seen in Lovecraft’s shadow. His name is not given, but it appears that he is likely Frank Belknap Long.

Our writer is flying back from a Lovecraft Convention where he is realizing that despite his long work, he has become just his relationship with Lovecraft. On the way back he meets Rev. Mortimer on the plane from Heathrow to NYC where our writer lives. Our good Rev. is a recently returned missionary from Malaysia and is coming back. He feels that he was chased home and tells our narrator that he was sent to set up another missionary base deep in the inner jungle of the Malay peninsula. He was sent to these nasty Chuacha people where they were one of the nastiest people he had ever met, despite the friendliness of other natives he worked with.

Our narrator gives him his sister’s address in Miami and they meet up there. Meanwhile, our writer does a little investigation on his own as he visits a local natural museum in NYC where he finds a nasty discovery. That the Tcho-Tcho people actually exist, and are likely the same ones that Rev. Mortimer ran into. The Tcho-Thco are a race of evil people that was believed to be created by Lovecraft as one of the Mythos Elements, but apparently not.

An article runs in the Miami Herald about Rev. Mortimer going missing. He writes the local police but they tell him they already know about the threats on his life and that they treating it as a murder. Another Miami Herald story follows, this time one for a Malay citizen wanted for questioning of the disappearance of Rev. Mortimer. It was the same face as someone on the plane and he recognizes it.

He does some more investigating and finds out that the Tcho-Tcho are believed dead and that a great black man playing a horn is considered the Herald of Death, although the miniature made by the people in the museum is more akin to death itself and was attached to the horn. One story calls this character the Shoo Goron, a sort of local boogeyman. He flies down to Miami after the detective tells him they found some lung tissue in Rev. Mortimer’s room.

A local young person working at a local restaurant has also gone missing, his sister has fallen ill, and then she passes. He is living at the same hotel that the previous folks disappeared from. His neighbors disappeared after reporting that a large black man wearing a scuba mask came near their bungalow the previous night. He remains where he is to meet his death.

[Abe Sargent]

Review of Black Man with a Horn

All reviews are spoiler free, save for the first opening page.

Black Man with a Horn has one of the best openings of any horror short story I’ve ever read:

“There is something inherently comforting about the first-person past tense. It conjures up visions of some deskbound narrator puffing contemplatively up a pipe amid the safety of his study, lost in the tranquil recollection, seasoned but essentially unscathed by whatever experience he’s about to relate. It's a tense that says, “I am here to tell the tale. I living through it.””

He'll finish the into paragraphs with,

“A comforting premise, perhaps. Only, in this case, it doesn’t happen to be true.”

I love that move.

Klein’s “Black Man with a Horn” is a very popular tale, one told multiple times in various collections. It’s evocative.

Klein is a very good writer, despite his two books and small number of shorts, he is considered high quality, not unlike Ambrose Bierce.

As one example, take this review from Tor.com

Please Tell Me John Coltrane Never Read This: T. E. D. Klein’s “Black Man With a Horn” | Tor.com

“Let’s start with full disclosure: I love love love T. E. D. Klein. I wish I could say a spell to relieve him of his long writer’s block in the same way I wish I could use Joseph Curwen’s method to resurrect Jane Austen. I want more stories, more novels, epic series that would make Brandon Sanderson blanch! But alas, to paraphrase Gaiman, Mr. Klein is not my bitch, and I’ve yet to perfect the Curwen method. Soon, soon….”

There is a strong reason why this story has resonated and been included in multiple collections since it’s original printing in 1980 It works. It’s well written, and well-conceived.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

[Abe Sargent]

Lin Carter is a very important figure in the history of fantasy, science fiction, and horror! But not as a writer. Instead as an editor.

As a writer, his many works in the mid and late 60s through 70s are incredibly derivative. He has characters such as Thongor the Barbarian, and books that are intending to evoke Edgar Rice Burroughs or Lord Dunsany or RE Howard or HP Lovecraft.

His works are not really inspired. They aren’t really his own. They are very, very derivative.

However…

He was a big, big big editor.

The small Mom and Pop publishing house of Ballantyne Books wanted to move into fantasy, science fiction, and horror publishing. Tolkien’s works were selling like mad cakes and they were looking at picking up that genre. After expressing his interest, they made the best choice conceivable. They hired Lin Carter as their editor.

Lin Carter loved context. He had gone back and found many great writers that had been forgotten. He used this heavily printed series that could be found in many a book shop to put many big name writers on the map. He reprinted Clark Ashton Smith and Lord Dunsany. Many of the best fantasy and early influences were published. He also publishes Lovecraft initially his Dunsany inspired Dream World stuff like the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. But then he’ll move into publishing Cthulhu Mythos stuff as well starting in 71.

The first book is Spawn of Cthulhu - The Spawn of Cthulhu - Wikipedia

Here he has 12 tales, including one by Lovecraft, as well as Robert Howard, CAS, Ramsey Campbell, Derleth, Lord Dunsany, Robert Chambers, and many more. This style of book began in the early 60s with Arkham House a smaller publisher, but Carter brought it to the masses. This is the first Mythos collection in the series, although he did 5 other collections in the series before this one, including:

The Young Magicians - Wikipedia

Dragons, Elves, and Heroes - Wikipedia

Golden Cities, Far - Wikipedia

New Worlds for Old - Wikipedia

He also used his editorship to find a number of big name writers and to give them their break, such as Katherine Kurtz’s Deryini series. He pushed many women writers to the top shelf of fantasy in his series and is known as normalizing women writers in a big way. In fact, most fantasy writers today, are women.

Carter was a very important editor for these reasons. By the end of the Adult Fantasy line’s run, every major fantasy story and author was republished. everything from 1891’s Khaled by F. Marion Crawford to the Worm Ouroborus from the 20s was republished by Ballentyne.


Lin Carter was a big editor.

But, as you’ll soon see, he wasn’t as skilled as a writer.

The series wasn’t a big money maker for Ballentyne, but they wanted to bring forgotten works of old to a new generation. They remained committed to the series and label until they sold their publishing company in the mid70s to Random House, who shut it down as it wasn’t making money, and they moved all of their new stuff to the newly made Del Rey imprint. They only published new stuff from here on out.

[Abe Sargent]

Let's begin with Lin Carter's "The Fishers from Outside", which is probably one of his better Mythos pieces. It's been anthologized in a few places. I own a copy with my edition of "The New Lovecraft Circle" from 1996. This is written in 1988 and came in late in Carter’s career.

It’s set in the same place as Winged Death and The Outpost that we looked at earlier in those ruins of Zimbabwe that are mentioned briefly in Winged Death and then referred to in The Outpost.

As a reminder, this is The Outpost:

When evening cools the yellow stream,
And shadows stalk the jungle’s ways,
Zimbabwe’s palace flares ablaze
For a great King who fears to dream.

For he alone of all mankind
Waded the swamp that serpents shun;
And struggling toward the setting sun,
Came on the veldt that lies behind.

No other eyes had vented there
Since eyes were lent for human sight—
But there, as sunset turned to night,
He found the Elder Secret’s lair.

Strange turrets rose beyond the plain,
And walls and bastions spread around
The distant domes that fouled the ground
Like leprous fungi after rain.

A grudging moon writhed up to shine
Past leagues where life can have no home;
And paling far-off tower and dome,
Shewed each unwindowed and malign.

Then he who in his boyhood ran
Through vine-hung ruins free of fear,
Trembled at what he saw—for here
Was no dead, ruined seat of man.

Inhuman shapes, half-seen, half-guessed,
Half solid and half ether-spawned,
Seethed down from starless voids that yawned
In heav’n, to these blank walls of pest.

And voidward from that pest-mad zone
Amorphous hordes seethed darkly back,
Their dim claws laden with the wrack
Of things that men have dreamed and known.

The ancient Fishers from Outside—
Were there not tales the high-priest told,
Of how they found the worlds of old,
And took what pelf their fancy spied?

Their hidden, dread-ringed outposts brood
Upon a million worlds of space;
Abhorred by every living race,
Yet scatheless in their solitude.

Sweating with fright, the watcher crept
Back to the swamp that serpents shun,
So that he lay, by rise of sun,
Safe in the palace where he slept.

None saw him leave, or come at dawn,
Nor does his flesh bear any mark
Of what he met in that curst dark—
Yet from his sleep all peace has gone.

When evening cools the yellow stream,
And shadows stalk the jungle’s ways,
Zimbabwe’s palace flares ablaze,
For a great King who fears to dream.


What are these Fishers from Outside? Let's find out!

[Abe Sargent]

Synopsis of The Fishers from Outside

We begin in Zimbabwe as Prof. Mayhew and his assistant, the narrator, are undergoing digging to uncover the secrets of the ancient people that once lived in here in inner Zimbabwe. Prof. Mayhew had studied the people rumored to be here in various occultic texts, such as the Book of Eibon, the Necromonicon, and the Ponape Scriptures.

They eventually find the object of his quest – an ancient black crystal that is said to summon Gorgorgoth, whom the Fishers apparently worshipped, according to ancient legends. Each of the sides of this black crystal object have these undecipherable hieroglyphics on them that are hard to figure out.

They head back to New England to look up some more information at local universities. After some studying, they realize that the fishers from outside from the local myth have a strong physical resemblance to people mentioned in the ancient text of Ponape in the Pacific on the other side of the world. Why would that be the case?

After investigating more, Prof. Mayhew can interpret the crystal and they are the summoning rites. One night he sends the narrator away, and then incites the ritual to see what happens. He summons these half avian and half apterous shapes, all slimy and scales where feathers should be arrive, and they eat his body and then disappear.

[Abe Sargent]

Review of The Fishers from Outside

All reviews are spoiler free.


This is an odd tale. Carter can, at times, have some goods lines in him. Take this description of Zimbabwe’s jungle:

“The jungle, I somehow knew, had not surrendered, but had merely retreated before superior force, and was biding its time, waiting for the puny, ephemeral children of men to leave that it might inexorably regain its antique dominion over the mighty walls and towers.”

That’s a strong image. It’s well crafted. Carter can have a few lines like this here and there that give point to the fact that’s he not a mere hack. But at the same time, Carter is not something relevant. His work is fully derivative. While setting a Mythos story in Zimbabwe is nice compared to others, it’s still in an identical location as two Lovecraft stories. The work is fully derivative and there’s not a clever or unknown plot line or twist here at all.

Nothing that happens is unpredictable. Carter is setting out to tell a Mythos story, not a story that happens to be in the Mythos. He hits many elements hard, and does not that has not been done before or sense. Carter doesn’t care. He was criticized for enjoying genres that never grew up, and then challenged the point that they had to. Reading them was fun! Writing them was fun!

This is Carter at that. His story intends to be fun, he doesn’t care that it’s hitting the exact same notes. Was is fun for you to read it? Great! He’s happy.

As this is coming near the end of his career as his writing style has honed, I am giving it a 3.0 rating out of 5 stars.


Next let’s say in 1988 and do Carter’s “Dead of Night”


I have a copy in my collection called “The Book of Iod” as edited by Robert Price and published in 1995. This story is set in the same place as Robert E Howard’s River Street District that was inhabited by his Steven Harrison detective series of stories.

[Abe Sargent]

Synopsis of Dead of Night


This story opens in the River District as Dona Teresa di Rivera seeks out famed occultist Anton Zarnak, and meets him in his house. She tells him of her uncle, who is now fearing the dark. They owned a ranch in California and found some ancient native burial grounds. Her uncle opened them, and brought some items out. He was chastised by a local Indian cleric after doing so, with this obsidian tablet being the object of scorn. Soon thereafter the man began to fear the dark. Fearing persecution, he fled halfway around the globe and is now obsessed with researching the occult.


Anton Zarnak researches the local native tribe and finds they worshipped a demon named Zulchequon. He finds and researches it in the Book of Iod. Zulchequon is known as the dark and silent one. Many of the details were expurgated from the translations he was able to find.

He visits the uncle and is shown his collection. He has showed the obsidian object and cannot decipher it’s language, although it does strike him as odd. He takes rubbings back to examine for later. After trying and failing a number of languages, they are the same language as the Aklo characters from ancient Germany. The interpretation says to keep this from the light, or else Zulchequan will take you.

As soon as darkness engulfs the amulet, the uncle will be taken, but thus far, it’s always been light, lanterns, and other lights that have been around it. He heads back with a case.

Just then a power outage is caused at night by an odd electrical storm…

A giant breath breathes out the candles in the room of the uncle as Anton reaches it. He pulls a star-stone wand out and incants something from Cthugha (The fire big bad). Light is pushed back, and the demon of darkness retreats, but the uncle has passed.

[Abe Sargent]

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.

[Abe Sargent]

Synopsis and Review of Out of the Ages


In my book this is more than 20 pages long, but due to very little happening, I can give you a quick one paragraph synopsis.


Dr. Blaine, Curator of Manuscripts at the Sanborne Institute in CA, is reviewing the manuscripts and research of one Prof. Copeland, who was famous as one of the key force of Pre-History Asia but who went increasingly off the rails and has been in an asylum for 8 years, having written books such as 1906 Polynesian Mythology with a Note on the Cthulhu Legend Cycle. After reviewing and investing the 12 objects found and kept by Copeland, and reviewing his works and researching his evidence, Dr. Blaine comes to accept that this has been happening as he is taken over at night by dreams sent from beneath the Pacific. He is then, himself, sent to the sanitarium.


That’s it.

This story is classic Carter. He wants to introduce things like the children of Cthulhu, and he writes something like this that takes a deep, deep, deep dive into the Mythos, where almost every paragraph is steeped in it. The first 80% of the story is just telling what someone else had done, not seeing it. The last are the 7 or so dreams, but each is a paragraph long and quickly you wrap up the story, and then move on. This is heavily derivative.

It’s not even good with the details. You’ve read Call of Cthulhu. Do you ever the character being known a that the time as part of the myth cycle of Pacific only to find out that it was all true? Nope! This was lost history, so they had to track it down in Greenland and New Orleans and elsewhere. No one knew who Cthulhu was. So how the “Cthulhu Legend Cycle” mentioned is the title of a book in 1906? The details of Carter don’t even line up with the stories he is trying to emulate.

2 stars.

[Abe Sargent]

Let’s do one more Carter story, and then call it.

Why don’t we do “Zoth-Ommog”, as it was originally published, in 1976. It’s been published later as “The Horror in the Gallery,” which is itself derivative of the Lovecraft story, “The Horror in the Museum.”

The reason I want to do this story I because it’s a direct sequel to “Out of the Ages.” The character who takes over from the previous one, Dr. Blaine, on the final page is the main character here, and Dr. Blaine is a secondary character now.

So I think reading this will have some interesting places, and as we have invested in this story, place, and context already, it makes sense to continue.

[Abe Sargent]

Review and Synopsis of “The Horror in the Gallery”

Again, despite the length here, Carter tells more than shows.


In this story, narrator Arthur Hodgkins, the new Curator for the Museum, takes up the Prof. Copeland bequest and is chasing the Blaine and Copeland notes. He delves deeply into the Ponape Figurine that the other two considered, and after meeting with Blaine at the Sanitarium, begins to try to find a way to destroy it. This quest takes him to Miskatonic University in Arkham where he meets with Dr. Henry Armitage who shows him the Necronomicon and they discus ways to destroy the statue. They give him a star rock with the Elder Sign. He heads back to CA after hearing that the statue is about to be displayed, where he stops a Deep One discussed as a fisherman from stealing it and uses the Star rock to destroy the statue. He is suspected for the murder of the guardsman who was killed by the Deep One, but is deemed mentally in component and sent to the sanitarium


This story is about twice as long as the first one, but again, it’s so classic Carter that’s not even funny. For example, he has our main character take Prof. Copeland’s copy of the Nameless Cults and reads it on they way to east coast, and for page after page you get the entire Mythos from the rebellion of the Great Old Ones to whom everyone is, and it’s just putting it all out there for you. Carter wants to answer this stuff for you. What did Nameless Cults include? Now you know! He also has his main character meet with the hero of the Dunwich Horror. He’ll spend pages giving you quotes from the Necronomicon rather than just summing it up, or the key points. And the Necronomicon has never been seen as a tool to fight the Great Old Ones, yet it is here. Again Carter wants to tell you everything. If you think that Derleth erred in pulling back the curtain then you will just flip out reading Carter.


Carter is just too enmeshed in the mythos when he’s writing it. As a result, I’m not a big fan. I give the work 2.0 stars as well. I’ll be leaving Carter behind. If he is to your taste, then great!

[Abe Sargent]

Let’s read two stories from Lovecraft, “The Nameless City” from 1921 “The Hound” the next year. In many ways these are the beginning of the story as he includes various elements that are Mythos-ized later. Such as the Necronomicon as well as the plateau of Leng. After seeing what Carter did, let’s pull back and review the Master at work, shall we?


HP Lovecraft,s the Hound – written in 1922 and published two years later. You can find them both online here:

"The Nameless City" by H. P. Lovecraft


"The Hound" by H. P. Lovecraft

Nameless has 5000 words but Hound rocks fewer than 3000 words in it, so it shouldn’t be too much to read.

[Abe Sargent]

Synopsis of The Nameless City:


Deep in the Arabian desert lie ruins ancient beyond all cities of men. The Arabs shun them, though Abdul Alhazred dreamed of them and wrote his famous couplet: “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.” Nevertheless, our narrator seeks the city, accompanied only by his camel; he’s always sought the strange and terrible.

He finds the ruins at night but waits to enter until dawn, when the sun rises through an oddly local sandstorm and a metallic clash seems to reverberate from deep underground to greet the day. The crumbled foundations offer little illumination into the history of the city, for time and blasting sand have long obliterated any carvings. Night comes with a chill wind that raises another local sandstorm amidst the gray stones.

The next day the narrator discovers a cliff riddled with low-ceilinged temples. He explores on hands and knees, more and more disturbed by the disproportionate lowness of the temple fixtures—disproportionate, that is, for human use. Night finds him still in the city. While attending to his suddenly edgy camel, he notices that the sand-stirring evening wind issues from a particular point in the cliff. Though troubled by a spectral presence, he goes to the spot and finds a larger temple with traces of painted murals, altars with curvilinear carvings, and an interior door opening onto a flight of curiously small and steep steps.


Equipped only with a torch, the narrator crawls feet-first down innumerable steps and through low tunnels. His torch dies. He keeps crawling, cheering himself with snippets from the daemonic lore he’s read. At last he comes to a level corridor lined with wood and glass boxes like coffins. Here he can kneel upright as he scrambles onward. Subterranean phosphorescence begins to light the scene, and he sees the boxes are indeed coffins containing not the human makers of the place but the preserved bodies of vaguely anthropomorphic reptiles, richly arrayed.

These must be totem animals of supreme importance to the ancient people, since they also take the place of people in the fantastic murals that cover the walls and ceiling of the passage. The narrator can’t read the script, but the pictures tell him the whole history of the race from its nomadic youth to its heyday to the coming of the desert that drove it deep underground, to a world foretold by its prophets. Death is shown only as the result of violence or plague, yet the allegorical reptiles seem gradually to be wasting away and growing more fierce in their hatred of the outer world—the final scene depicts them tearing apart a primitive-looking human. Some foreign tribesman, no doubt.

The narrator reaches the source of the phosphorescence—beyond a great brass door lies a descent into a vast space of misty light, the entrance into that promised inner world. He rests on the threshold in uneasy speculation, then starts at the sound of moaning coming from the coffin-lined passage. But it can only be the wind, returning home with the dawn.

He braces to withstand its force. The wind seems animated by a vindictive rage that claws and drags him toward the misty-bright underworld. Somehow he withstands it. As it passes over him, the wind curses and snarls in an unknown language, and he thinks that against the lit portal, he sees a rushing crowd of semi-transparent reptilian devils—the true inhabitants, after all, of the nameless city.

The wind dies with the last of the creatures to descend, and the great brass door clangs shut, leaving the narrator in utter darkness.
(Courtesy of Tor.com)

[Abe Sargent]

Review of The Nameless City


All reviews are spoiler free unless otherwise noted.


Written early in his life and published in 1921 when he was just early in his writing career, this introduces the Arabian city in the title, as well as it’s antediluvian inhabitants and the mad Arab Abdul Alhazrad as well as the couplet that returns in the next story The Hound as well as Call, which begins here.

By the by, in his book, Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos by Lin Carter, he assigns 12 stories and one poem of Lovecraft’s to the Mythos, and this is the first one. Of course, Carter only believes those stories that add something to the Mythos are a part of the Mythos, so he doesn’t include stories like The Colour out of Space or The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, both of which are in the Mythos proper but not mentioned by Carter.

This story is written well and it lacks some of the embellishment of language that Lovecraft will use later, such as the adjective “cyclopean” or “non-Euclidian.” It suits this story a little better and I think does it well as it breathes on it’s own.


Because it introduces Abdul, it also sort of introduces the Mythos writ large in the Lovecraftian story.

I give it 3 stars out of 5. It’s short but good.

Next, let’s do The Hound.