Necronomicon

De: H. P. Lovecraft

Narrado por: Richard Powers, Bronson Pinchot, Stephen R. Thorne, Keith Szarabajka, Adam Verner, Tom Weiner, Patrick Cullen

The only audio edition of Necronomicon authorized by the H. P. Lovecraft Estate

Originally written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s, H. P. Lovecraft’s astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction, and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when first published. This tome brings together all of Lovecraft’s harrowing stories, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were when first released. It will introduce a whole new generation of readers to Lovecraft’s fiction, as well as attract those fans who want all his work in a single, definitive volume.

Stories include:

“Dagon”
“Herbert West – Reanimator”
“The Lurking Fear”
“The Rats in the Walls”
“The Whisperer in the Darkness”
“Cool Air”
“In the Vault”
“The Call of Cthulu”
“The Color Out of Space”
“The Horror at Red Hook”
“The Music of Erich Zann”
“The Shadow Out of Time”
“The Dunwich Horror”
“The Haunter of the Dark”
“The Outsider”
“The Shunned House”
“The Unnameable”
“The Thing on the Doorstep”
“Under the Pyramids”

©2014 H. P. Lovecraft (P)2014 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Unspeakable Fun in H. P.'s SF-Horror Playground

Necronomicon is an audiobook collection of 19 choice stories by H. P. Lovecraft that complement the dream cycle works found in the Dreams of Death and Terror audiobook. The Necronomicon stories have much in common with each other, featuring sensitive, educated, Lovecraft alter-ego narrators forced to deal with his pet terrors (e.g., size, time, aliens, madness) and referencing his Cthulhu mythos (e.g., Cthulhu, Old Ones, Azathoth, and the Necronomicon). Their most common thrust is that "scientific study and reflection had taught us that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance and energy," and hence that "There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range." The horrors come mostly from outside rather than from within. (Really I think that humans perpetrate plenty of horror without needing any outside help.) Lovecraft usually gives his horror a science fictional underpinning, most of his monsters being star spawn from other worlds, universes, or dimensions. The stories depict the hope that the lurking inimical alien powers are only dreams while crushing such comfort via exact dates, specific locations, "real" documents, and the like.

Despite their similarity, the stories make an entertaining and varied set, from outrageous Frankenstein parody and rustic undertaker farce to mental time travel and cross-species baby rearing. Here is an annotated list.

1. Dagon (1917)
The narrator has run out of the morphine he'd been taking to forget "a vast reach of black slime" full of rotting fish things, aquatic hieroglyphics, and Dagon.

2. Herbert West, Reanimator (1922)
"Damnit, it wasn't quite fresh enough!" Despite the redundant summaries that open each chapter, this is an absorbing novella as the narrator recounts his years assisting the boyish, blond, blue-eyed Herbert West, a "Baudelaire of physical experiment" questing to "overcome the thing we call death."

3. The Lurking Fear (1922)
The "connoisseur of horror" narrator heads for a demon haunted Catskill mansion, and, desperate to get to the innermost secret of fear, soon enough witnesses diabolic caricatures of the monkey tribe capering around.

4. The Rats in the Walls (1923)
When the narrator tries to renovate his cursed ancestral priory, he and his nine cats are "Poised on the brink of frightful revelations" involving a "scampering army of obscene vermin" whose appetites resemble what we do to each other.

5. The Whisperer in the Darkness (1930)
Receiving "invitations to strange surgery and stranger voyagings," an instructor of lit at Miskatonic U learns that "Close contact with the utterly bizarre is often more terrifying than inspiring."

6. Cool Air (1926)
When the fastidious narrator rents a room in a boarding house with "a hint of obscure cookery" run by a bearded Spanish landlady, he befriends Munoz, an abnormal doctor, "paying him overcoated calls" in his refrigerated room.

7. In the Vault (1925)
A careless, callous village undertaker cuts corners for the last time: "And so the prisoner toiled in the twilight, heaving the unresponsive remnants of mortality with little ceremony as his miniature Tower of Babel rose course by course."

8. The Call of Cthulhu (1926) (Pinchot)
Blasphemous cults, obscene gulfs of time, inimical lurking aliens, provocative correlations between disparate cultures, slimy Cyclopean cities of a wrong geometry, sensitive men going mad, and a narrator who researches horrifying secrets. N-not to mention anthropologists, theosophists, and philologists; police investigators, decadent sculptors, and "negro fetishists"; degenerate diabolist "eskimaux," voodoo swamp priests--and Cthulhu.

9. The Colour Out of Space (1927)
Revealing why the narrator would prefer not to drink Arkham water: a local legend about a meteor that fell on a farm, releasing a demoniac iridescence from beyond which mutated, maddened, and consumed the flora, fauna, and family.

10. The Horror at Red Hook (1925)
In the Red Hook slum, a sensitive 42-year-old NYC policeman experiences a hellish revelation involving illegal mongoloid aliens, child sacrifice, pre-human devil dances, Lilith, hell's organ, Satan's court (under the streets of NYC!).

11. The Music of Eric Zahn (1921)
The student of metaphysics narrator rents a room in a house wherein he hears unearthly music apparently coming from the room of the reclusive German viol player above him. Why won't Zahn let him look through his shuttered window?

12. The Shadow Out of Time (1934)
In mid-lecture an economics prof at Miskatonic U suffers an attack of "amnesia" like a case of possession by a "secondary mind." Five years later he suddenly returns to himself, fearing that his vivid dreams are memories of being a "captive mind" 150 million years ago.

13. The Dunwich Horror (1928)
After the birth of a goat-faced, fast-growing boy to a twisted albino woman in degenerate Dunwich (where the whippoorwills are demoniac psychopomps), Dr. Armitage, an erudite, 73-year old librarian at Miskatonic U, steps in.

14. The Haunter of the Dark (1935)
A writer/painter of Lovecraftian horror (like "The Feaster from the Stars") enters a shunned Providence church: "Probably they were mere legends evoked by the evil look of the place, but even so, they were like a strange coming to life of one of his own stories."

15. The Outsider (1921) (Pinchot)
This is a strangely affecting story about how it feels to be the consummate "carrion horror" outsider craving light and companionship.

16. The Shunned House (1924)
The narrator and his old uncle have been investigating an eldritch house whose inhabitants have tended to madden and die, when they decide to stand vigil in the foulest and fungiest room in the house, the cellar.

17. The Unnameable (1923) (Pinchot)
Randolph Carter, an author of Lovecraftian horror, and his friend Joel Manton, a teacher confident that science can classify everything, are knocked out by the "the ultimate abomination… the unnameable."

18. The Thing on the Doorstep (1933) (Pinchot)
"It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to shew by this statement that I am not his murderer." It's all down to a good-looking woman with the protuberant eyes of her dead wizard father: she-devil, he, or it?

19. Under the Pyramids (1924)
"Hippopotami should not have human hands and carry torches," opines Lovecraft-Houdini while recounting his escape from "the black soul of necropolitan Egypt," composite mummies in cyclopean subterranean temples.

There are two disappointing features of the audiobook. First, the stories are arranged neither chronologically nor thematically. Second, there is no list of which readers read which stories. Apart from the inspired Bronson Pinchot, who caresses his four tales with macabre import, relishing lines like "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," I have no idea who reads what. And I would like to know that, if only to avoid one reader among the many good ones who botches Lovecraft's rhythm and pacing with unwanted pauses and says "horror" with one syllable: e.g., "in quest of greater whores."

Fans of Lovecraft and aficionados of horror should give this collection a listen, not only because Lovecraft is such an influential figure in 20th-century horror and sf, but also because his stories, despite their pulp origins and unpleasant racism, classism, and sexism evoke half-chortle half-shiver fascination and offer great writing:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

"Bodies were always nuisances."

"We were now burrowing bodily through the midst of the picture, and I seemed to find in its necromancy a thing I had innately known or inherited, and for which I had always been vainly searching."

"Smash that record!"

Track Listing

I was annoyed at the lack of a real table of contents, so hopefully this is helpful:

Ch 1.  Dagon
Ch 2.  Herbert  West  –  Reanimator
Ch 8.  The  Lurking  Fear
Ch 9.  The  Rats  in  the  Walls
Ch 10.  The  Whisperer  in  the  Darkness
Ch 18.  Cool  Air
Ch 19.  In  the  Vault
Ch 20.  The  Call  of  Cthulu
Ch 23.  The  Color  Out  of  Space
Ch 24.  The  Horror  at  Red  Hook
Ch 31.  The  Music  of  Erich  Zann
Ch 32.  The  Shadow  Out of  Time
Ch 40.  The  Dunwich  Horror
Ch 50.  The  Haunter  of  the  Dark
Ch 51.  The  Outsider
Ch 52.  The  Shunned  House
Ch 57.  The  Unnameable
Ch 58.  The  Thing  on  the  Doorstep
Ch 63.  Under  the  Pyramids

Strange, but still interesting.

I found it hard to get into this book. Interesting, but perhaps a little too weird for my taste.

Vivid writer

It's a shame Lovecraft was a racist, xenophobic classist, but if you can stomach his descriptions of minorities and "rustics", the rest of his writing is unparalleled. Never have I heard dialogue so thick with description. No word is wasted. He uses only the most pungent, concentrated, meaning-packed words, but not like some amateur using a thesaurus to sound smart. I never heard an author paint so vivid a picture in so short a time.

As far as the narrators go, they are all mostly great. Save for one. You'll know him when you hear him, lol. He sounds too upbeat and matter-of-fact about the Eldritch horrors he's describing. He only read two of the stories though, to my knowledge, so it's fine.

Stunning

Captivating from the first word until the last. This was my introduction to Lovecraft and I can’t wait to dig in deeper