Return of the Old Ones: Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Horror
Edited by Brian M. Sammons
Dark Regions Press
August 23, 2016
Reviewed by David Goudsward
If you have any interest in cosmic and/or Lovecraftian horror, you have probably heard of this new anthology, due out this fall from Dark Regions. Nineteen stories from proven masters of the genre, none of whom need an introduction.
Editor Sammons opens his introduction with the famous quote from Lovecraft in The Dunwich Horror: “The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be.” And so to the book is divided into three sections – before, during, and the apocalyptic aftermath of the return.
Here’s a spoiler for you: If your introduction to the Lovecraft mythos is via the dreadful August Derleth pastiches he peddled as posthumous collaborations, you are in for a shock. Laban Shrewsbury and his magical sigil stones are not going to sweep in and save mankind at the last moment. This is Lovecraftian horror in the purest sense of the words. Lovecraft’s vision of mankind’s utter insignificance brought to that fateful day when the stars are right and nihilism is the best possible future.
There are no weak stories in the collection. Ones that leaped at me include: “Scratching from the Outer Darkness” by Tim Curran, which features a blind woman whose heightened hearing tells her something bad is coming long before anyone but she can’t tell who or what it is. Pete Rawlik’s “Time Flies” features Pandora Peaslee, who knows something is up when the temporal tourists, the Yith, all begin to gather. “The Call of the Deep” by William Meikle finds mankind battling against an amphibian onslaught, and the last hope of mankind may also doom it. And “Strangers Die Every Day” by Cody Goodfellow, a post-apocalyptic crime noir piece. It shouldn’t work, but it does. This is not to say it’s a perfect anthology – several feel like they may have been trunk stories hastily dusted off and revised to fit the book’s criteria.
Return of the Old Ones is a collection of grim and dark tales of bleakness and despair that not only don’t have happy endings, there are no ends per se since whatever the endgame is, humanity is uninvolved (other than as hors d’oeuvres). In other words, exactly what Lovecraft envisioned as the fate of mankind.
