An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

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“Other Gods, The.”

Short story (2,020 words); written on August 14, 1921. First published in the Fantasy Fan(November 1933); rpt. WT(October 1938); first collected in BWS;corrected text in D.

The “gods of earth” have forsaken their beloved mountain Ngranek and have betaken themselves to “unknown Kadath in the cold waste where no man treads”; they have done this ever since a human being from Ulthar, Barzai the Wise, attempted to scale Mt. Ngranek and catch a glimpse of them. Barzai was much learned in the “seven cryptical books of Hsan” and the “Pnakotic Manuscripts of distant and frozen Lomar,” and knew so much of the gods that he wished to see them dancing on Mt. Ngranek. He undertakes this bold journey with his friend, Atal the priest. For days they climb the rugged mountain, and as they approach the cloud-hung summit Barzai thinks he hears the gods; he redoubles his efforts, leaving Atal far behind. But his eagerness turns to horror. He thinks he actually sees the gods of earth, but instead they are “The othergods! The othergods! The gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods of earth!’” Barzai is swept up (“‘Merciful gods of earth, I am falling into the sky!’”) and is never seen again.

The story is a textbook example of hubris, similar to many written by Dunsany (see, e.g., “The Revolt of the Home Gods,” in TheGodsofPegāna,1906). The seven cryptical books of Hsan are mentioned again in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath;in the first appearance of this story, “Hsan” was erroneously rendered as “Earth.”

See Robert M.Price, “‘The Other Gods’ and the Four Who Erected Paradise,” CryptNo. 15 (Lammas 1983): 19–20.

Oukranikov, Vasili.

In “The Ghost-Eater,” a Russian who had built a house in the woods between Mayfair and Glendale who is discovered to be a “werewolf and eater of men.” After a Russian count is found with his body mangled, the townspeople kill the wolf; but his ghost returns every May Eve to reenact the murder. “Out of the Æons.”

Short story (10,310 words); ghostwritten for Hazel Heald, probably in August 1933. First published in WT(April 1935); first collected in BWS;corrected text in HM

An ancient mummy is housed in the Cabot Museum of Archaeology in Boston, with an accompanying scroll in indecipherable characters. The mummy and scroll remind the narrator—the curator of the museum—of a wild tale found in the Black Bookor Nameless Cultsof von Junzt, which tells of the god Ghatanothoa, “whom no living thing could behold…without suffering a change more horrible than death itself. Sight of the god, or its image…meant paralysis and petrification of a singularly shocking sort, in which the victim was turned to stone and leather on the outside, while the brain within remained perpetually alive.” Von Junzt goes on to speak of an individual named T’yog who, 175,000 years ago, attempted to scale Mount Yaddith-Gho on the lost continent of Mu, where Ghatanothoa resided, and to “deliver mankind from its brooding menace”; he was protected from Ghatanothoa’s glance by a magic formula, but at the last minute the priests of Ghatanothoa stole the parchment on which the for

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mula was written and substituted another one for it. The antediluvian mummy in the museum, therefore, is T’yog, petrified for millennia by Ghatanothoa.

HPL was working on the story in early August 1933 (see SL4.222). Heald’s contribution is indicated in a letter: “‘Out of the Æons’ may be regarded as a story of my own. The only thing supplied by the alleged authoress is the idea of an ancient mummy found to have a living brain” (HPL to R.H.Barlow, April 20, 1935; ms., JHL). Elsewhere he says: “Regarding the scheduled ‘Out of the Æons’—I should say I didhave a hand in it… I wrotethe damn thing!” ( SL5.130). The story—probably the best of those ghostwritten for Heald—unites the atmosphere of HPL’s early “Dunsanian” tales with that of his later “Mythos” tales: T’yog’s ascent of Yaddith-Gho bears thematic and stylistic similarities with Barzai the Wise’s scaling of Ngranek in “The Other Gods,” and the entire subnarrative about Mu is narrated in a style analogous to that of Dunsany’s tales and plays of gods and men.

See William Fulwiler, “Mu in ‘Bothon’ and ‘Out of the Eons,’” CryptNo. 11 (Candlemas 1983): 20–24. “Outpost, The.”

Poem (52 lines in quatrains); written on November 26, 1929. First published in Bacon’s Essays (Spring 1930); rpt Fantasy Magazine(May 1934).