Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

Lumley then continued Lovecraft’s themes in such novels and collections as The Burrowers Beneath, The Transition of Titus Crow, The Clock of Dreams, Spawn of the Winds, In the Moons of Borea, The Compleat Crow, Hero of Dreams, Ship of Dreams, Mad Moon of Dreams, Iced on Iran and Other Dreamquests, The House of Cthulhu and Other Tales of the Primal Land, Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi (which includes the British Fantasy Award-winning title story), Return of the Deep Ones and Other Mythos Tales and Dagon’s Bell and Other Discords. The author’s most recent book is a new collection of non-Lovecraftian horror stories, No Sharks in the Med and Other Stories, from Subterranean Press, and he has also completed a new “Necroscope”® novella for the same publisher.

The Brian Lumley Companion was published in 2002 by Tor Books, and he is the winner of a Fear Magazine Award, a Lovecraft Film Festival Association “Howie”, the World Horror Convention’s Grand Master Award and, most recently, a recipient of the Horror Writers’ Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and another Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention

“‘The Taint’ was written between December 2002 to January 2003, specifically for this book,” explains Lumley. “It would be impossible to deny HPL’s influence on the story, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Because H. P. Lovecraft’s Deep Ones, those ‘batrachian dwellers of fathomless ocean’, which he employed so effectively in his story ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and hinted at in others of his stories, have always fascinated me. And not only me, but an entire generation of authors most of whom weren’t even born until long after Lovecraft’s tragically early death.

“Indeed, this present volume—and my story in it—probably wouldn’t have come to pass but for the success of editor Steve Jones’ initial foray into Deep Ones territory, Shadows Over Innsmouth. That first book—one might say the progenitor of the current volume, containing stories by Neil Gaiman, Kim Newman, Ramsey Campbell, Basil Copper and a host of others, including my own ‘Dagon’s Bell’— was surely more than adequate proof of the popularity of Lovecraftian themes among today’s writers.

“Indeed, the urge to create something in this (but what to call it? This sub-genre?) was so powerful in me that back in 1978 I had written a 60,000-word novel, The Return of the Deep Ones, mainly to satisfy my own craving for something that was no longer available. Oh, yes, I used to write for myself in those days. So when I was approached about a tale for this companion volume... well, what could I do but write one?

“As for the novella: much like ‘Dagon’s Bell’ and The Return of the Deep Ones, it’s the result of my wondering—what if certain members of the Esoteric Order of Dagon somehow escaped and emigrated from degenerate old Innsmouth—that darkly mysterious seaport ‘town of ill repute’ inhabited by the changeling Deep Ones, those less than human, amphibious worshippers of Lord Cthulhu in his house in R’lyeh—to resurface elsewhere? For instance, in England.

“One of only a very few recent Mythos tales by my hand, apart from its unavoidable, indeed obligatory back-drop, this story escapes almost entirely from Lovecraft’s literary influence to become wholly original, and I consider it on a par with ‘Born of the Winds’, written all of thirty years earlier.

“‘The Taint’ was originally published in a limited edition of Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth in time to launch the book at the World Fantasy Convention, Madison WI, in November 2005.”

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RICHARD A. LUPOFF was born in Brooklyn, New York, and for many years has lived in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Patricia. He spent a few years in the US Army in the late 1950s, never firing a shot in anger and never had one shot at him, neither of which he regrets. He has worked as both a print and broadcast journalist from his student days onward, and for fifty years has done a books-and-authors show on local radio station KPFA.