| Title | : | Space Eldritch |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 250 |
| Publication | : | First published October 27, 2012 |
Space Eldritch Reviews
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I'll be honest. H.P. Lovecraft is not one of my favorite authors. Oh, the mythos that has become his legacy is great, but the style of language is a slog to read. About the only way I can really bring myself to sit through a Lovecraft tale is to listen to them in audio format, especially if the narrator has a lot of panache. Still, the shall-we-say old-fashioned views on race ring through, no matter what. A man of his time, perhaps, but it's a speed bump half the time with classic genre fiction. Thankfully, this anthology manages to capture and monstrous splendor of Lovecraft's imagination, while avoiding the terribly dated writing style and the even more terribly dated bigotry.
The anthology offers up seven pieces of long fiction from seven different authors, each with their own unique blending of science-fiction and Lovecraftian horror. Right out the gate, there is D.J. Butler's "Arise Thou Niarlat from Thy Rest." Any story that starts with, "Is this enough blood?", is off to a good start in bringing some horror. The clash of ancient with the futuristic rings through loud and clear, with human sacrifice, time travel, and a whole lot of madness in between.
Moving on was Michael R. Collings and "Space Opera." Aptly titled story, yeah? This one wound up being my favorite of the bunch, not in capturing the Lovecraft vibe so much as just offering a great, great scifi/horror hybrid. I mean, when you read the story and think of a space-age equivalent to "my god can beat up your god," there's a touch of humor to it, which is odd given the outright gruesome featured in the tale.
From the whole anthology, I walked away with three stories as standouts for me. Collings' one, of course, but also the works of Nathan Shumate and Howard Tayler. Shumate's "The Menace Under Mars" had a nostalgic vibe to it that I thought worked really well. Set in a re-imagined mid-twentieth century and an expedition into the bowels of the Red Planet? Yeah, creepy as heck. "Flight of the Runewright" by Howard Tayler may have done the best job at showing that old Lovecraftian favorite of showing the folly of man and science run amok. My first time reading Tayler's work too, after a couple years of listening to Writing Excuses Podcast.
If you're in the mood for some Lovecraftian horror with a space opera or sci-fi twist, you ought to give this book a look-see. -
This is a long article. If you’re not interested in long articles, the short version is that I like Space Eldritch very much, and I recommend you buy it immediately so that you too can like it very much. The long version follows.
One of the great allures of H.P. Lovecraft’s writing was that it didn’t so much cross genres as it did appropriate from them to make something uniquely his own. There was a strong element of fantasy in his work: dark fantasy, certainly, but his world was filled with history, ancient civilizations, magic, monsters, prophecies, secret societies, and mysteries that defied the rational mind. There was an equally strong element of science fiction: the Elder Gods were wholly alien to us, they possessed intimate knowledge of the way the universe worked, and many of their servitors were actually aliens from other planets, and used unknown technologies to pursue their goals. Even the magic in his stories was a hybrid of science, with mathematical calculations included in profane incantations.
But behind it all, Lovecraft’s mythos was horror: in his stories, the world we know is a veneer at best, and often simply a feeble lie told in the face of unimaginable horrors. Mankind, secure in its belief that it knew everything important about the universe, was unaware that most of what it knew was wrong and the rest was simply inadequate. There was a book that would tell you the truth about everything, but reading it would drive you insane. And there were things out there that could very easily destroy humanity—wipe us off the face of the earth, without a trace that we were ever here—and the only reason they hadn’t was they hadn’t noticed us yet.
It is a grim, bleak world, but the immensity and monstrosity of that bleakness brings with it a sense of wonder. It’s that wonder that ultimately dooms the characters in his stories, and will ultimately doom humanity, because humanity is enthusiastic about “piercing the veil,” but wholly incapable of handling what it finds on the other side.
It is in this kind of world that the stories in Space Eldritch exist. Space Eldritch is described as “a volume of seven original novelettes and novellas of Lovecraftian pulp space opera.” It attempts to place the Lovecraft mythos in the context of science fiction, and it succeeds quite well.
It might seem, at first pass, that a marriage of Lovecraftian horror and science fiction would be doomed to failure. One of the core premises of most science fiction is that the universe exists according to rules that we can learn and use to our benefit. The universe may be impersonal and hostile, but it is manageable, to a certain extent—the future is a harsh and unforgiving frontier, but in the grand tradition of frontiers it can be tamed. This basic worldview is antithetical to Lovecraft’s universe—there are rules to the universe, but they are beyond our comprehension. The universe is not only impersonal and hostile, but our attempts to understand it and tame it are annihilated as soon as we get even the slightest exposure to the malevolence and predation that lurks in wait. In Lovecraft’s mythos, science turns out to be as full of hubris as religion, and neither are capable of protecting us from anything—at best, and its most heroic, men of faith and science are able to stave off our annihilation for a time, to give humanity a little more breathing room before our doom, but usually they survive just long enough to realize exactly how wrong they were, then die horribly.
This is why a science fiction setting works so well. In a science fiction setting, we move beyond the advances of the early 20th century into something more than what we have now: by all appearances, science has stayed true to its promise, the universe has revealed more of its secrets, and we are slowly strengthening our claim on the cosmos. In short, our hubris has grown, and so the stage is set for our fall to be that much greater.
Which leads us to the stories themselves.
Something that I really like about these stories is that they have a very distinct feel from one another—they’re all science fiction, they all tap into Lovecraftian themes in a direct way, but they also represent different flavors of science fiction. It’s as if someone said “yes, Lovecraft can work within any sub-genre of science fiction you can think of, and we’re going to choose sub-genre’s out of a hat at random to prove it!” Each piece is stylistically different, and each piece works well.
“Arise Thou Niarlat from Thy Rest” by D.J. Butler, the first story in the series, is also one of the most firmly-rooted in the Lovecraft mythos. It mentions Miskatonic University and references the Necronomicon. It’s the perfect opener, because it has a little bit of everything: black magic, time travel, fancy technology, evil cults, imprisoned horrors, incomprehensible things, murder, mayhem, and terrible, desperate choices.
“Space Opera,” by Michael R. Collings, is another story that directly ties in to Lovecraft’s mythos, but it subverts it rather cleverly by telling the story from the perspective of what might be described as a “mid-list” horror… and we learn that even monsters have hubris. Stylistically, it is aptly named—the aliens aren’t explained, they just are. No attempt is made to justify them, or explain their biology, or explore the evolution of their society, and none of that is at all necessary. In many ways, Space Opera is perfectly suited to Lovecraft, because thematically it already lends itself to huge, sweeping stories and scales so vast there’s no point in explaining them.
The other five stories are not as explicitly part of Lovecraft’s mythology (or, if they are, I didn’t recognize where they fit) but they are completely compatible with it.
“The Menace Under Mars,” by Nathan Shumate, is a first contact story gone horribly wrong. This may well be my favorite story of the lot, though the setting is a little cumbersome to adjust to at first (it takes place in an alternate history where the first manned mission to Mars occurred in the 1950s, and I could never figure out why.) Stylistically it has the feel of a quality 1950s or 1960s science fiction story, as if Asimov (or a temporarily politically subdued Heinlein) decided to write a Lovecraft story. This is a good thing—the 50s and 60s produced some really good writing, and produced stories that are still influential in the genre sixty years later.
“Gods in Darkness,” by David J. West, has the most “pulpy” feel of all the stories. One of the protagonists is very square-jawed (though not exactly virtuous), and the villain comes very close to twirling his mustache. Interestingly enough, it’s also the most detailed when it comes to describing the intricacies of fighting in space. It is set in a “secret history,” during the Cold War but featuring Technology That Doesn’t Officially Exist. Its ending is a pretty satisfying subversion of the Lovecraftian norm.
“The Shadows of Titan,” by Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen, is another first contact story gone horribly wrong, but stylistically is very different from Shumate’s. As I read it I felt it had a very Niven/Pournelle vibe. There are parts of it that would fit very well in Niven’s “Known Space” universe.
“The Fury in the Void,” by Robert J. Defendi, is set in a post-cataclysmic future where technology has been integrated into religion, where science is taught through litanies and catechisms, and where a schism in the Greek Orthodox Church has created a long-running religious interstellar war between the Greeks and the Russians. It’s an intriguing “what if” formulation that works well in the story.
“Flight of the Runewright,” by Howard Tayler, is probably the darkest of the stories, and the closest to pure horror. It’s a future where the technology of spaceflight has been abandoned in favor of a very dangerous shortcut. This story was of particular interest to me—I confess it’s the reason I bought the book. I’m a long-time fan of Schlock Mercenary, so I knew he knew how to tell a science fiction story, but I’d never had a chance to read his prose. The story is beautifully written. It’s the only story told in first person, present tense—a very difficult POV to stick to, not to mention to make work, and Tayler makes it work in spades. First-person-present means you learn everything at the same time the protagonist does, which eliminates the distance between you and the story and gives everything a haunted, claustrophobic feel. The protagonist’s (wholly justified) preoccupation with patterns, and the details Tayler provides of his surroundings, made me pay obsessive attention to every detail in the story, wondering if this was the thing that would finally do it, finally make it all go straight to hell, possibly in a very literal sense. As an added bonus, Tayler presents the perfect rationale for why humanity would choose to do something so very, very colossally stupid (one of my favorite lines in the story).
If this review seems to dwell more on generalities and themes instead of speaking directly to the stories themselves, that’s because it’s difficult to talk specifically about the individual stories in Space Eldritch without giving anything away. That’s one of the reasons I keep comparing these stories to other stories, other subgenres, and other authors. When I compare these stories to the works of other authors, I don’t actually believe that they are specifically pastiches or homages. Each story in Space Eldritch is uniquely its own, and when I say “this reminds me of Niven/Pournelle” what I mean is “here’s an example of something Niven/Pournelle did very well, that this story also does very well, but with tentacles.”
It’s the best way I can think of to discuss the stories without actually talking about the parts I want to talk about.
The parts I want to talk about are spoilers—the moments of revelation when the reader finally understands what’s going on, even when the protagonists don’t, the moments when the protagonists do, and have to make terrible choices and put everything on the line in order to defend humanity, the moments when the true face of the enemy appears and the gibbering begins, the moments where everything is set, nothing can be changed, but there is still a terrible, gnawing, doubt. Those are the reasons you want to read the stories in the first place—talking about them would do the stories, and you, a disservice.
If you want to know more about the parts I want to talk about (but won’t) then you absolutely need to buy this book. -
To summarize: An excellent collection of stories that I almost didn’t read because the first story is so bad. The rest of the stories deliver the expectations of the cover, and the last story, by Howard Taylor, is most excellent. Read this book (just skip the first story...or save it ‘til last.)
And now, for a story by story analysis:
“Arise Thou Niarlat From Thy Rest” by D.J. Butler
Total crap. I confess I only read half the story and then moved on. This story was such a mess that I almost put the entire book down. I understand that Butler was trying to weave together three different timelines in a way that was “Lovecraftian mysterious,” but the execution was jumbled, garbled, miserable, and WAY more trouble than it was worth. I’d be more specific, but then I’d have needed to understood what I was reading - I didn’t. I did understand that he was trying to imitate Lovecraft's occasional opacity, but Lovecraft was never opaque for the sake of being opaque. He used big words, and he dealt with conspiracies, but each moment was still understandable, and you always new how one paragraph led to the next to the next and so on. “Arise…” just wanted to make itself complicated, and there was no fun in unraveling these complications. I’m really surprised this is the story that was chosen to lead the pack because it was awful. Both the SciFi/Lovecraft nerd and the English teacher in me hated this story.
1 out of 5 stars
“Space Opera” by Michael R. Collings
This story also started in an opaque manner, but the author had enough sense to add context so that some of the complications could be quickly worked out allowing the reader to move forward. This one is a story of an invading alien species that butts heads with some Earthlings. You kinda think you know where the tale is going, and then it doesn’t go there - but where it does go makes me wish that this story was an opening chapter in a novel because I’d love to read more about both the aliens and the Earthling that Collings created. “Space Opera” was still a bit opaque for my tastes, but not so much that I couldn’t understand and enjoy it. At least this story started Space Eldritch back on the road to redemption. Also Collings’ dark humor throughout the story is quite entertaining in an evil sorta way - those poor little numbers.
3 out of 5 stars
“The Menace Under Mars” by Nathan Shumate
Finally, this little collection of novellas hits it’s stride. “Menace” is about a survey crew on Mars looking to do a little terraforming when they hit an unexpected bump - though if you look at the cover of the book, perhaps it’s not so unexpected. Shumate’s story is written to be a story’s story that’s meant to be read, understood, and enjoyed, and not “decoded” like the previous two stories. I love decoding mysteries, but not writing styles (I get enough of that when I grade whatever abomination my freshmen classes have turned in that week). A very enjoyable story of astronauts being hunted by...well..by things that if you could see them without going mad...but you can’t.
4 out of 5 stars
“Gods in Darkness” by David J. West
West’s story is going to wrankle some readers. He goes out of his way to make this story feel like it was written in 1965 complete with rockets, specious science, bloody hand-to-hand space combat, evil Soviets, a wimply side kick, an evil villain who is just short a twirling mustache, an easily bedded vixen, an evil in the dark, and (of course) a ‘Murican! Hero! who does not actually fit any modern definition of a hero. This is pulp fiction at its most pulpyness. I’m hard to offend, so I got a big kick out of this story. I’m sure some with more modern sensibilities might be put off by it, but I liked it.
4 out of 5 stars
“The Shadows of Titan” by Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen
This story is actually quite similar in style and plot structure to “The Menace Under Mars.” This is not a bad thing, just a statement of fact. However, this story takes place on Titan rather than Mars. Yup. Also a very enjoyable story.
4 out of 5 stars
“The Fury in the Void” by Robert J. Defendi
How to explain “The Fury in the Void”...well, some quasi-religious, muscle-bound space marines become ENRAGED, fight, kill, and mayhem other quasi-religious, muscle-bound space marines. Hate abounds and fuels. Considering how hokey my summary sounds, it’s actually written quite well.
4 out of 5 stars
“Flight of the Runewright” by Howard Taylor
This was the story and the author that I bought this collection for, and it was the best story of the lot. Not simply satisfied with tentacles, murder, space, mayhem and evil books filled with evil writings, Taylor takes his tentacles, murder, space and mayhem and drops them all into a spaceship powered by and covered in evil writings. The moral of the story, Don’t look at the spaceship. Just let its magic happen. Don’t ask questions because you don’t want to know the answers. Taylor’s story was the most original, most thought out, and most Why-didn’t-he-turn-it-into-a-novel?!!? By far the best.
5 out of 5 stars.
P.S. I know this books is published by a small-time publisher, and I love small-time publishers for publishing books like this, but dudes, you gotta get a better editor. There were mistakes in abundance, and even one in the third paragraph of the Forward. ‘M just sayin’. -
An anthology of Lovecraftican pulp space opera or as the publisher puts it: "Startling Stories meets Weird Tales."
Being an anthology, I feel it is only fair to review each story individually.
“Arise Thou Niarlat from Thy Rest” by D.J. Butler. I didn't enjoy this one. Butler runs three storylines in different time periods that are somehow all connected because...I don't know. Everything that has ever happened, is happening, or will happen is happening simultaneously. Time is irrelevant? It was very disjointed. 2 stars.
“Space Opera” by Michael R. Collings. Got off to a rough start, but gradually improved and ultimately finished strong. Dark humor effectively employed. Haughty hive aliens of stupendous power colonize worlds with the offspring of their god, pre-existing life forms on said worlds irrelevant. That is, until they get to an Earth (at least, I think it was Earth) in the distant future. 3 stars.
“The Menace Under Mars” by Nathan Shumate. This is where the anthology really find its footing. Set in an alternate history where amazing ideas about physics came to fruition, humanity has started the process of terraforming Mars. Before its irrevocably lost beneath a sea, a pair of scientists set off to investigate a possible archeological site that could prove the existence of a long dead Martian race. Shumate utilizes elements of Lovecraft's style when confronting things that the mind struggles to comprehend but does so without being imitative. At one point it was so intense that my daughter unwittingly startled me when she walked silently up to me. 4.5 stars.
“Gods in Darkness” by David J. West is a pulpy, Cold War era tale complete with a chiseled chin protagonist, commies, and an elitist scientist. Although the characters were two-dimensional, the story was entertaining. Eldritch aspect was slight. 3 stars.
“The Shadows of Titan” by Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen was a creepy tale about the first human expedition to Titan and what they discovered. While you know that the proverbial shit is going to hit the fan, the authors write it well and offer an ending that I didn't see coming. 4 stars.
“The Fury in the Void” by Robert J. Defendi takes place in some distant future where civilization is circling the drain. Technical knowledge is preserved by religious orders that have merged faith and science in a disappointing fashion. A Russian ship is chasing a Greek ship as the latter has committed murderous atrocities against their people. As spaceships are sacred due to their scarcity, combat is carried out through boarding actions. Think of it as the eldritch version of "
Day of the Dove" episode of Star Trek. 3 stars.
One of the themes in Lovecraft's work was that there existed forbidden knowledge which was too much for human comprehension and often led to an individual's descent into madness. Another is that our scientific skills far outpace our wisdom to properly utilize their discoveries. Howard Tayler masterfully blends these themes together in “Flight of the Runewright.” In the story, a man seeks to start a new life in a colony on a new world, but to get there, he must board a strange starship engraved with mystic runes. Tayler leads the reader down a path where bad things are going to happen, but until his big reveal, the reader doesn't know just how bad they're going to go. 5 stars.
Average of the stories: 3.5 stars. Like trick-or-treating, it's a mixed bag of mostly average loot with a couple scores that make it worth the effort. Of course, YMMV.
Unfortunately, I have to deduct that half star as most of the stories needed another round of proofreading. I wasn't looking to take an editorial eye to this, but the typos and grammatical errors leapt out of the page at me and proved distracting. -
SPACE ELDRITCH is a Cthulhu Mythos themed series of novels which also involve space travel or far future science fiction for the human race. It's basically got a little bit of Alien, some Event Horizon, a little bit of Hellraiser: Bloodlines, and just a wee bit of Jason X to go around. The stories are excellent throughout and I can't honestly think of any which one which I didn't like. Whether it's the cross-temporal shenanigans of "Arise Thou Niarlat from they Rest", the crazy zealots of "Space Opera" by Michael R. Collings, or the pulpy "The Menace under Mars."
Without a doubt, though, the best of the stories was "The Gods of Darkness" by David J. West who I have enjoyed the works of in other Lovecraftian anthologies. That is the story of the Cold War in an alternate history, a mad wizard, sex, and weaponized magic which has a delightfully bombastic ending. I felt this was an homage to classic Science Fiction of the 1950s and 1960s with the sultry Russian femme fatale just being icing on the cake.
This isn't really classic Lovecraftian horror where everything is just off to the side but a half-way homage to B-movie horror with all the gore and screams expected as well as more lofty ideals of Lovecraft's bizarrities. In HPL's world, the sci-fi horror intrudes on a 1930s world while here, it's the fantasy and supernatural intruding on a sci-fi world. Either way, it manages to work surprisingly well.
I can't complain about any of the stories as "The Shadows of Titan", "The Fury in the Vodi", and "Flight of the Runewright" all have their appeals. I will say, however, that I'm picking up the next volume of the book immediately.
9/10 -
"In space, no one can hear you gibber in maddness." (Theme for Space Eldritch I)
Three stories stood out to me in particular: "Space Opera" by Michael R. Collings, "The Shadows of Titan" by Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgerson, and "Flight of the Runewright" by Howard Taylor. I liked the trajectory of these three stories the best, was sucked in by the tension and the premises they presented, I liked the characters, and the story endings remained most distinct in my mind.
"Space Opera" follows the crew of unempathetic, insect-like aliens on a journey to colonize new worlds. Michael Collings has a wonderful way with description that makes the weirdness of the primary creatures in this story intriguing. His prose is just beautiful, though the world and characters he's created are terrifying.
Brad Torgerson is a master storyteller. I enjoyed his descriptions and his ability to manipulate tension within the story "The Shadows of Titan," about a crew of astronauts bound to explore an alien pyramid trapped in the frozen surface of the planet Titan. This author's voice and style are very distinct, and his first-person narrative makes it so easy to step into the skin of the characters.
"Flight of the Runewright" was both somewhat comical and duly terrifying. The mystery and tension surrounding the protagonist's escape aboard a ship with runes inscribed on the outside that could drive one mad if viewed with both eyes (or both brain hemispheres engaged) was an intriguing concept and fantastically executed.
Dave Butler's "Arise, Thou Niarlat From Thy Rest" presented a fascinating threat that wove the lives of characters from three different times and places together in one struggle to either raise a cosmic evil or keep it at bay a little longer. Dave's ability to shift not only viewpoints but settings from vastly different time periods and universes in an authentic way truly shows off his strengths in versatility as a storyteller.
"The Menace Under Mars" by Nathan Shumate has a similar premise to "Shadows of Titan," but the pyramid hidden in a Martian crater is a completely unexpected discovery by the crew who stumbles across it, and the dark cosmic forces driving the chaos take on a completely different form. I enjoyed the exploration sequences in the crater away from base the most--the alien architecture was interesting and the tension was great.
David J. West's "Gods in the Darkness" featured his mastery of descriptive action sequences where a space crew battles a leviathan creature headed for Earth as their ship descends into chaos.
"The Fury in the Void" by by Robert J. Defendi follows a Russian military space crew trying to stop genocide and torture left in the wake of battling ships when they encounter a dark presence in the universe that is far more horrifying than anything else they've known. This story had some creepy human-to-alien transformation sequences that I thought were interesting, and an ending that leaves you wondering just what doom awaits the universe.
Overall, a good sampling of stories bound by an interesting theme: Lovecraftian horror in space. -
Very enjoyable blend of space opera and Lovecraftian mythos. This is an anthology featuring some highly original stories. Recommended for those who want to read some mythos stories outside of the usual.
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Very solid anthology. Only one or two of the stories collected are clinkers, the rest are excellent. If you have a passing interest in either Space Opera or Cthulhu Mythos definitely pick this one up.
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6 Stars!
Easily one of the sweetest collections of dark sci-fi/horror tales I've ever read. Nate Shumate's The Menace Under Mars was for me the tastiest story of all, though there wasn't a single filler in the midst. Truly a 6 out of 5! -
Too scary, I didn't get through it.
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I actually picked a copy of
and in searching for it, came across this little gem. I admit, the cover for 'Space Eldritch' is far more eye catching, which is why I ended up grabbing it as well. What I found inside was quite a mix of stories, which I will try to touch on the ones that had the best or worst impact on me while reading.
“Gods in Darkness” – David J. West was the story I enjoyed the least out of this collection. Not only were the characters one dimentional in my opinion, but the combat on the outside of the station, though handled fairly well, felt like it was still relying on gravity despite there not being any on the outside of the station. And then there was the sudden sex scene out of no where that made absolutely NO sense and felt shoehorned into the story.
“The Shadows of Titan” – Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen was an interesting story, containing a definite horror element that was handled with deft hands. The foreshadowing was a bit heavy, so it was easy to figure out what was going to happen, and the ending had a feel of being a bit deus ex machina. But overall, the story was a pleasure to read and I appreciated the horror element being intact.
“The Fury in the Void” – Robert J Defendi gave me mixed feelings. While reading it, I kept seeing huge links to Games Workshop's Warhammer 40k universe. From the cyborgs tech people, to the loss of technology falling to religious rote, to even calling the whirling sawbladed axe a 'power axe'. There were so many of these elements that I found myself being pulled out of the story time and time again, despite the fact that this is actually a good story. I think the religious elements were handled well, I think the way they came to this point was creative as well. I thought so many elements were creative, but had they been handled in a way that perhaps used different terminologies, or had been tweeked a little bit, the story would have read far more as a unique piece rather than feeling tied to something else.
(I am not accusing this of being ripped off of Games Workshop's world, rather, that it had many of the same elements which through my own association, wrecked the story for me. This is no fault of the author, and rather my own. Others, especially those with no exposure to 40k, will most likely enjoy this story for the interesting take on religion that it is)
"The Fury in the Void" did concentrate a bit too much on the rage elements of the storyline, to the point where I felt like I was getting smote in the head over and over again. Yes, the main character is angry, I get it, I don't need to be continually reminded through his rage, how others see his rage, how he acts around people, and people telling him he's the angriest man they know. It quickly became annoying. Still, Defendi created an interesting story that contained a good mix of Lovecraftian elements, and it was interesting to read.
“Flight of the Runewright” – Howard Tayler was easily the top story in this entire collection. Though I found the last part of the story to be a tiny bit muddled, the entire story itself was really well written, had believeable characters, and a twist that worked out really, really well. I think the Lovecraftian elements were beautifully handled, mixing well with the science fiction element to create something unique among the stories in this collection. Easily my favorite story in this collection.
Overall, this collection was pretty good. As others have stated, it's a good mix of fairly good stories, with some gems mixed in. Shumate did a good job bringing together a mix of sci-fi Lovecraftian themes and managed to put together a fairly unique anthology. If you are into sci-fi, or Lovecraft, pick this collection up. I enjoyed most of it, and I am sure you will too. -
"In space, no one can hear you gibber in maddness." (Theme for Space Eldritch I)
Three stories stood out to me in particular: "Space Opera" by Michael R. Collings, "The Shadows of Titan" by Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgerson, and "Flight of the Runewright" by Howard Taylor. I liked the trajectory of these three stories the best, was sucked in by the tension and the premises they presented, I liked the characters, and the story endings remained most distinct in my mind.
"Space Opera" follows the crew of unempathetic, insect-like aliens on a journey to colonize new worlds. Michael Collings has a wonderful way with description that makes the weirdness of the primary creatures in this story intriguing. His prose is just beautiful, though the world and characters he's created are terrifying.
Brad Torgerson is a master storyteller. I enjoyed his descriptions and his ability to manipulate tension within the story "The Shadows of Titan," about a crew of astronauts bound to explore an alien pyramid trapped in the frozen surface of Saturn's moon, Titan. This author's voice and style are very distinct, and his first-person narrative makes it so easy to step into the skin of the characters.
"Flight of the Runewright" was both somewhat comical and duly terrifying. The mystery and tension surrounding the protagonist's escape aboard a ship with runes inscribed on the outside that could drive one mad if viewed with both eyes (or both brain hemispheres engaged) was an intriguing concept and fantastically executed.
Dave Butler's "Arise, Thou Niarlat From Thy Rest" presented a fascinating threat that wove the lives of characters from three different times and places together in one struggle to either raise a cosmic evil or keep it at bay a little longer. Dave's ability to shift not only viewpoints but settings from vastly different time periods and universes in an authentic way truly shows off his strengths in versatility as a storyteller.
"The Menace Under Mars" by Nathan Shumate has a similar premise to "Shadows of Titan," but the pyramid hidden in a Martian crater is a completely unexpected discovery by the crew who stumbles across it, and the dark cosmic forces driving the chaos take on a completely different form. I enjoyed the exploration sequences in the crater away from base the most--the alien architecture was interesting and the tension was great.
David J. West's "Gods in the Darkness" featured his mastery of descriptive action sequences where a space crew battles a leviathan creature headed for Earth as their ship descends into chaos.
"The Fury in the Void" by by Robert J. Defendi follows a Russian military space crew trying to stop genocide and torture left in the wake of battling ships when they encounter a dark presence in the universe that is far more horrifying than anything else they've known. This story had some creepy human-to-alien transformation sequences that I thought were interesting, and an ending that leaves you wondering just what doom awaits the universe.
Overall, a good sampling of stories bound by an interesting theme: Lovecraftian horror in space. -
A combination of science fiction and horror that works in some cases but fails in others. Space Eldritch has two good stories but the rest are pretty weak and predictable. In full disclosure, I am not a fan of horror but figured combining it with sci-fi would make for some great stuff. Think Alien or Event Horizon. Unfortunately, most of the stories in Space Eldritch are so similar that there isn't much to get out of it.
The Menace Under Mars by Nathan Shumate is an exciting alien contagion story taking place on Mars (weird huh?). It is very similar to Event Horizon, except it takes place during a manned mission to the red planet. Aliens from a now lost world are trapped on Mars and use psychic invasion to seize control of the human crew in an effort to make their way back to Earth and inhabit it.
Flight of the Runewright by Howard Tayler is easily the most original. Space travel is driven by mysterious magical powers in runes, that are cut all over the ship. No one knows for sure how or why it works until runewright Wendell Simonson discovers the truth behind the technology.
The others stories are based on the premise of "what if idiots were in charge of the space program..." The characters are all deeply flawed morons, yet somehow find themselves at the head of the space program leading important missions in remote places. The stories are extremely predictable, following the formula Alien and psychic invasion. There's disgusting and horrific beasts in the universe and we are bound to run into the very worst of them. It plays on the fears of the unknown out in space, places we've only seen via telescope or high-res pictures from rovers and satellites. Hiding behind those seemingly harmless pictures are monsters. Alien has been around for thirty years and has spawned dozens of movies with the same themes. Before that it was Puppet Masters.
I recommend the two stories mentioned above. The Shadows of Titan by Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen is okay. The rest you can skip. -
So far I've finished two of the stories. If you like horror, you'll like this. These stories are not fluff nor light fast reading. They are dark and require chewing over. VERY rich worlds, I'll have nightmares for a while, but it's worth it.
Sci-fi meets Lovecraft.
Finished all of the short stories, finally. There are some type-o's and things found throughout, but I was willing to overlook them.
Images from each story are burned into my imagination: D.J. Butler's priest spilling blood in the desert, Nathan Shumate's eerie dark cavern's under the surface of Mars, David West's gun-shooting cosmonauts, the pregnant human girl and curling insectoids of Michael Collings, the black pyramid on Titan from the minds of Carter Reid & Brad Torgerson, and the runes of Howard Taylor.
Each story has a different feel, but each marks an unknown, each paints vivid pictures. I enjoyed it because of the dark imagery. -
The quality of these Lovecraftian sci-fi stories varies quite a bit. I thought that all of them were at least good (a couple very good) as science fiction stories. However, in some of them the eldritch elements felt forced, as if they included a character with tentacles and/or nihilistic, evil hyper-intelligence for no other reason than qualifying for this anthology. Even in the ones that flowed nicely I didn't feel like most of them achieved the atmospheric creepiness or nihilism of the best Lovecraftian fiction. Overall: a fairly middle-of-the-pack Lovecraftian anthology with a fun sci-fi hook (with Howard Tayler's Flight of the Runewright far and away the best story in the book in terms of melding the two genres and creating the proper atmosphere).
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I do love Lovecraftian, but I wouldn't count most of these short stories as such. They had all the imagery: tentacles, eldritch gods, insanity, and a pleasantly old-timey vibe. They tended more towards action-adventure than horror, however, and nearly all of them featured a lantern-jawed 1950s-esqe he-man who solves the impending doom of the earth with a shit-ton of bullets and a simmering rage.
Classification: high-testosterone popcorn fiction.
Worth reading? Probably. If you like that sort of thing. -
I like the hook: horror stories with Sci Fi settings. And if you can overlook the scientific errors in several, and the typos throughout, it's pretty enjoyable.
For me, though, both kept breaking my immersion, and prevented me from enjoying it as much as I think I otherwise would have. -
More like 3.5 stars. There are some real gems in here!
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It was ok.
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It's a compilation of short horror stories set in space. Some where only ok, some really rocked. Over all, I'd give it a 4 out of 5 stars.
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If you love Lovecraft and you love sci-fi, you need to check out this collection.
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All of the stories were entertaining. The high points were 'Space Opera' by Michael Collings and 'Flight of the Runewright' by Howard Tayler.
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Not Lovecraftian, but still, dark things that think differently about our existence...mostly in terms of food. One story had me feeling that it was a tale of the Imperium before the Horus Heresy.
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My favorite story of the collection was Howard Tayler's "Flight of the Runewright"
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Starts weak and ends strong. Skip to the last story.
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Good collection of short stories.
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This is a collection of seven short stories based on the theme Cthulu in Space. Each of these science fiction stories shows a space encounter of some kind of tentacled, demonic entity. Some of them don't end happily. There are some occasional but blatant editing errors.
Arise Thou Niarlat From Thy Rest — 2.5
This was kind of confusing, especially at first, as three different times are presented but experiencing the same event. I think if it was fleshed out a little more, it'd be really good. Ultimately creepy.
Space Opera — 2.5
This had some very good descriptions and writing. Aliens invade earth, and it's from the aliens’ POV, which was very well done. But I wasn't super gripped, and I was a little confused at the end.
Menace Under Mars — 3.5
This had good writing and story development.
Gods in Darkness — 3.0
This had good suspense and some good creepy elements.
The Shadows of Titan — 3.5
Straightforward storytelling with a bit of a surprise at the end.
The Fury in the Void — 3.0
This was nice and creepy but rather gory and full of strong language, which the previous stories did not have, so it felt out of place.
Flight of the Runewright — 4.0
I really liked this one. There was a sense of immediacy that instantly drew me in. It managed to pull off several plot twists in its few pages.
Average -- 3.1
