Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth

Shadows Over Innsmouth was finally published in 1994 in a beautifully illustrated hardcover edition. It was launched with a fish-themed signing party at the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans and became the first book from Fedogan & Bremer to sell out and be reprinted. There was an attractive trade paperback edition from Gollancz in Britain, a cute two-volume set published in Japan, and (after rejecting it all those years earlier) Del Rey eventually added it to their handsome series of Lovecraftian paperbacks in America. More recently there has been a stylish Greek edition, and we’ve also sold rights to Russia and Germany. Now that first book (along with this follow-up volume) has been reissued by Titan Books as part of the publisher’s prestigious series of Lovecraft paperbacks. The reviews have been mostly positive, and the original edition was even nominated for a World Fantasy Award.

Not bad for an anthology I couldn’t even sell initially.

The thing was, though, it wasn’t a Lovecraft anthology. Well, not in inspiration, at least. With Shadows Over Innsmouth, I was trying to emulate one of the most talented, hard-working and perceptive editors in the weird fiction field—August W. Derleth (1909-1971).

As much as I admired Lovecraft’s cosmic themes and eldritch horrors, it was actually the pulp thrills of Derleth’s pastiche collection The Mask of Cthulhu, his novel The Trail of Cthulhu and, especially, the anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos that I was attempting to recapture. Lovecraft himself had occasionally encouraged other writers to develop themes from his stories in their own work, and I attempted the same with a fictional history of Innsmouth.

And so the years passed, and I began wondering... if Shadows Over Innsmouth had used Lovecraft’s 1920s-set story for its inspiration, what would happen if we moved on a step further? The answer can now be found in Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth, where several of the contributors to the original volume, along with a number of additional authors from both sides of the Atlantic, put their own spin on the dark history of Innsmouth and its batrachian followers of Dagon.

Using an early, discarded draft of Lovecraft’s story as a point of departure, once again as the decades pass, the fishy Deep Ones spread out from the east coast of the United States to cast their scaled shadows across the rest of the world in unusual and often unexpected ways.

And in case you were wondering, yes, this book had it’s own set of problems, although nothing like those that assailed the earlier title. But if you are a Mythos fan who has enjoyed both of these volumes, then rest assured that I am already thinking about those Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth...

Iä-R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn! Iä! Iä!

Stephen Jones

London, England

DISCARDED DRAFT OF ‘THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH’

by

H. P. LOVECRAFT

[PP. 1-6:]

IT WAS IN the summer of 1927 that I suddenly cut short my sightseeing tour of New England and returned to Cleveland under a nervous strain. I have seldom mentioned the particulars of this trip, and hardly know why I do so now except that a recent newspaper cutting has somehow relieved the tension which formerly existed. A sweeping fire, it appears, has wiped out most of the empty ancient houses along the deserted Innsmouth waterfront as well as a certain number of buildings farther inland; while a singularly simultaneous explosion, heard for many miles around, has destroyed to a vast depth the great black reef a mile and a half out from shore where the sea-bottom abruptly falls to form an incalculable abyss. For certain reasons I take great satisfaction in these occurrences, even the first of which seems to me a blessing rather than a disaster. Especially am I glad that the old brick jewellery factory and the pillared Order of Dagon Hall have gone along with the rest. There is talk of incendiarism, and I suppose old Father Iwanicki could tell much if he chose; but what I know gives a very unusual angle to my opinion.

I never heard of Innsmouth till the day before I saw it for the first and last time. It does not seem to be mentioned on any modern map, and I was planning to go directly from Newburyport to Arkham, and thence to Gloucester, if I could find transportation. I had no car, but was travelling by motor coach, train, and trolley, always seeking the cheapest possible route. In Newburyport they told me that the steam train was the thing to take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket office, when I demurred at the high fare, that I heard about Innsmouth. The agent, whose speech shewed him to be no local man, seemed sympathetic toward my efforts at economy, and made a suggestion that none of my other informants had offered,