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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN num: 9780345485724
ISBN number: 0345485726
Label: Del Rey
Manufacturer: Del Rey
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 480
Printing Date: September 25, 2007
Publishing house: Del Rey
Release Date: September 25, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 46552
Studio: Del Rey
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“H. P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”
–Stephen King
“Lovecraft’s fiction is one of the cornerstones of modern horror.”
–Clive Barker
Some tales in this collection were inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, others he revised, two he co-authored–but all bear the mark of the master of primordial terror.
The Horror in the Museum–Locked up for the night, a man will discover the difference between waxen grotesqueries and the real thing.
The Electric Executioner–Aboard a train, a traveler must match wits with a murderous madman.
The Trap–This mirror wants a great deal more than your reflection.
The Ghost-Eater–In an ancient woodland, the past comes to life with a bone-crunching vengeance.
AND TWENTY MORE STORIES OF UNSPEAKABLE EVIL
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Rated by buyers 
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Having read and enjoyed most of Lovecraft's other works, I picked up this book for a diversion - curious to see how the collaborations worked out. I was unprepared for the fantastic quality of some of the stories, which in my opinion rank with his best work. My two personal favorites include "The Last Test" and "The Mound." Those two stories are worth the price alone. Not all of the stories, of course, are equally successful, and Lovecraft's level of involvement varied. One thing that remained clear, however, was that Lovecraft was ahead of his time, and no modern horror/weird fantasy writer has yet to catch up.
Rated by buyers -
HP Lovecraft was a terrific writer of horror and was editor of Weird Tales 1920-30s and his stories are still popular today. Along with Robert E. Howard (My favorite), and Clark Ashton Smith, these three writers comprised the bulk of innovative talent of Weird Tales. This book has stories that HP Lovecraft had a hand in writing,editing and some his own. The creepiest story is Winged Death by Hazel Heald. It's about a man who is pestered by a weird looking fly with blue colour wings. This story is scary as Robert E. Howard's Pigeons From Hell! Another creepy story in this book is The Man of Stone also by Hazel Heald. This lady had a terrific weird, creepy, and horrific imagination. I'm going to do some research on her and get some of her books. Highly recommend Robert E. Howard stories such as: Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, Lord of Samarcand (Oriental), Bran Mak Morn, Best of REH I & II, Blood & Thunder, The Life & Art of REH by Mark Finn, The Last of the Trunk by Paul Herman, One Who Walked Alone by Novalyne Price who was REH's girlfriend, The Dark Barbarian & The Barbaric Triumph by Don Herron, Two-Gun Bob, and all of the Weird Tales by Paul Herman, etc. If you've never read one of these stories you're in for a real treat - My favorites are The Black River, Red Nails, and Rogues in the House of REH. If you haven't read any of REH's stories you're in for a treat! My favorites: Beyond The Black River, Red Nails, and Rogues in the House.
Rated by buyers 
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Though this book does not go into any specific detail as to what revisions were made where, it remains an important collection for fans of Lovecraft. Here we see not only his influence, but his very hand in the stories presented. It's fascinating to read these mostly quasi-Lovecraftian tales, knowing that the master himself picked them apart at some point. On top of that, they're pretty entertaining too. Just don't go in expecting full-on Lovecraft.
Rated by buyers -
I thought that I had a complete collection of Lovecraft's stories. However, references to "K'n-yan", "red-litten Yoth", and "Yig, Father of Snakes" would crop up and I didn't know to what it referred. By using my handy-dandy Encyclopedia Cthulhiana (whose primary function is to look in what story a particular nameless entity crops up) I discovered that I should be reading "The Horror in the Museum" and "The Mound." Wonderful, but where should I look for these tales? Enter THE HORROR IN THE MUSEUM AND OTHER REVISIONS.
This book contains 10 stories to which Lovecraft added his stamp (some of which he practically ghost-wrote). As in "The Challenge From Beyond", it is often not difficult to see the transition to Lovecraft's ... particular ... style of narration.
For the purposes of completeness of Lovecraft's corpus, I would recommend reading "The Horror in the Museum" and "The Mound". As far as I know, these stories are unavailable elsewhere. "Winged Death" and "The Curse of Yig" are in addition effective at evincing chills. The rest are so-so, and may strike your fancy, and for others will fall quite flat.
Rated by buyers -
One of the means by which Lovecraft supported himself was in revising stories written by younger, would-be writers. These revisions are problematic because it is virtually impossible to say how much of Lovecraft himself is to be found in them. I believe that, with a few exceptions, the master of the macabre did not lend much of his influence in the retelling of these inferior tales, but a certain few of them do possess sufficient traces of Lovecraft to make them of interest to those followers in his footsteps. Oddly enough, the two stories that actually list Lovecraft as co-author, The Crawling Chaos and The Green Meadow, are the worst of the bunch. Both of these Elizabeth Berkeley stories are flights of fancy which forego any real plot in favor of lofty, dream-enshrouded flights of fancy which cannot even begin to compare to the Dunsanian, dream-cycle myths that Lovecraft perfected on his own. William Lumley's The Diary of Alonzo Typer is a rather formulaic tale of ancient evil and the discovery of a stranger's ancestral lineage upon his return to the home of a dead forebear. It gives lip service to such Lovecraftian gods as Shub-Niggurath but falls short of dramatically gripping the reader. Wilfred Blanch Talman's Two Black Bottles is another unoriginal endeavor to horrify the reader by invoking a soul-reclaiming restless spirit from the confines of a dark, defiled church's cemetery; this story succeeds rather well but possesses no real pizzazz. Adolphe de Castro contributes The Electric Executioner, a rather enjoyable story that cannot but ultimately disappoint in regards to its highly improbably ending.
The revised work of two authors, Hazel Heald and Zealia Bishop, do merit a closer look. Not only are their tales enjoyable and reasonably well-crafted, they do bear certain imprints of the master revisionist's singular hand. Heald's Winged Death has nothing at all to do with the Cthulhu Mythos, instead offering the chronicles of a scientist's mad, wretched, and ultimately self-destructive plot to ingeniously kill a colleague whom he accuses of discrediting his work. Heald's other tale, The Horror in the Museum, does attain a nice level of creepiness and a touch of cosmic horror. The museum in question is a wax museum, and the strange owner suggests that his distinctly horrible wax figures are more than mere wax. The protagonist, whose friendly interest in the singular artist turns to concern and fear at his increasingly mad utterings, agrees to spend a night alone in the dark museum, surrounded by horrible waxen figures and only two doors away from a creature the artist makes incredible claims about, eventually stating that it is a beast he has called down from Yuggoth itself, a beast through which the return of the Old Ones to Earth can be secured. There is plenty of Cthulhian chanting and references to be found in this story, although it does not follow the letter of the original Mythos. Zealia Bishop's tales also convey Mythos elements, yet her stories take the reader to Mexico and underneath the plains of Oklahoma, transplanting the abodes of ancient otherworldly creatures beneath the ground and reinterpreting the Mythos references in a Mexican-Spanish tradition. The Curse of Yig invokes a snake-devil of Indian legendry who exacts a most bitter revenge on those who would harm his children among the snake population, one much more malign and vengeful than death itself. The Oklahoma setting of The Curse of Yig is greatly expounded upon in the most significant tale of this collection, Bishop's The Mound. An ancient mound is guarded by Indian spirits, and all white settlers who have dared explore the area have either returned no more or returned as raving madmen. A scientist of the twentieth century cannot be expected to put stock in such tales, though, so our protagonist vows to explore the mound and finally uncover its secrets. In a major discovery, he comes across a centuries-old account of a sixteenth century Spanish explorer who claims to have journeyed into an alien world underneath the mound, one where some well-known Lovecraftian otherworldy gods are spoken of, remembered, and worshipped. It is rather fascinating to see a sort of conflated Mythos cosmology transplanted deep beneath the earth and to read of references to ancient gods such as Tulu that correlate with the Great Cthulhu. Among the revisions in this collection, The Mound most clearly bears the influence of Lovecraft himself, and while one should by no means place it in the canon of his horrific literature, it does hold a power sure to hypnotize the seekers of Lovecraftian knowledge with its implications and parallel take on the Mythos itself.
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