Haggopian and Other Stories

When they talk about the Mythos, most people automatically associate it with HPL. And rightly so, to a degree, insofar as Cthulhu was his creation…but the Mythos itself was not. It came into being when HPL’s friends—fellow authors with whom he regularly corresponded, certain revision clients, and others that he himself invited to build upon his literary foundations—when they began to contribute their own stories fashioned in the same vein. But it was not until August Derleth established Arkham House to immortalize Lovecraft, and set about publishing his own Lovecraftian pastiches and so-called “collaborations,” along with the Lovecraft-inspired works of other authors, that the more solid foundations of the Mythos were laid. Indeed, it was with Derleth’s remarkable landmark anthology, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos—the Arkham House volume that finally tied the ungainly thing together—that the first real cornerstone was set in place. For Derleth had collected together such an appropriate list of titles—some of which, because of their vague yet tantalizing similarities, themes and allusions, had puzzled and obsessed me when first I had read them as individual tales in this, that or the other magazine or anthology—that now in their entirety they loaned a semblance of order to the Mythos, making a generally acceptable sort of sense of everything.

The book was full of the stories of former correspondents and friends of HPL—such people as Derleth himself, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Belknap Long, Robert Bloch, J. Vernon Shea and one or two others—along with more recent or relative newcomers to the Mythos, such as Ramsey Campbell, Colin Wilson, and myself. I found Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos an excellent read and Derleth’s choice of material first class…but then I would say that, wouldn’t I? For after all, this was the very first hardcover book in which a story of mine—two of them, in fact—had seen print.

Anyway, from an entirely personal point of view I believe that second only to Necroscope, my breakthrough book, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, was (probably) more important to me than any other volume; my reading copy has long since been thumbed close to death!

But where Derleth and Arkham House were concerned I wasn’t the first (or last) writer who would have his initial forays in fiction preserved in shining Holliston Black Novelex; no, not a bit of it! For Derleth had published Robert Bloch’s first collection, The Opener of the Way; and A. E. van Vogt’s first hardcover, Slan; even Ray Bradbury’s first book, Dark Carnival. And there were many others, and several still to come even after I, a relative late-comer, had made it onto the list.

So then, surely we should thank August Derleth for all of this, especially for the preservation of Lovecraft’s works, including five vast volumes of his letters, but in particular for turning Arkham’s spotlight on the Cthulhu Mythos. We should…but has he in fact received such thanks?

No, not really. Instead Derleth has been much criticized in certain quarters with regard to his treatment of the Mythos: which is to say that mainly, in a somewhat cursory “definition” of the Mythos, he grafted onto it elements of a religious background that parallel the Christian mythology and appear not to sit well with HPL’s original intentions. This and certain other minor “crimes” perpetrated in his editorial capacity, during a short lifetime of publishing among others a long list of otherwise neglected authors, have seen Derleth castigated for being (of all things) “a heretic”; this, paradoxically, by the self-same people who insist upon Lovecraft’s (religiously) destitute Mythos-ideology! Indeed, it has sometimes seemed to me that the most fanatical of HPL’s readers have made a god—or at least fashioned an idol—out of Lovecraft himself!

Such has been the outcry against “the heretic” that even the title of Derleth’s anthology, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, and of the Mythos itself, have been criticised; mainly because another member of the Great Old Ones, one Yog-Sothoth, is seen as being rather more central to the pantheon. But, as I pointed out elsewhere, could we really expect Derleth to have published a book called Tales of the Yog-Sothoth Cycle of Myth? Too long, complicated, and even—dare I say it?—too risible. Whereas Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos fits the bill precisely, not only in its length but in that it “sounds” so very right.

Myself: I believe that where H. P. Lovecraft is concerned, August Derleth’s efforts were heroic. Because of him the Mythos lives on. And also because of him—again on a personal level—I am what I have since become: the moderately successful author of this, the book you now hold in your hands, and of many other books.