Following on from yesterday’s post, the next few entries will detail what I consider to be some of the best modern Cthulhu mythos tales (with regard to which, today’s post is, in a roundabout way, a revisiting of one of 2016’s Lovecraftian Things a Day). Whilst Stross’ ‘A Colder War’ is in my top 5 of such tales, currently sitting at the number 1 spot is today’s offering: first published in 1977, I first encountered Richard Lupoff’s ‘Discovery of the Ghooric Zone’ in 1990’s revised, scond edition of Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, and is far removed from your typical Lovecraftian fare - starting, as it does, in media res as we encounter three non-binary posthuman cyborgs having sex on a spaceship heading towards a tenth planet beyond Pluto. The date is March 15th 2337 - precisely 400 hundred years after Lovecraft’s death.
To attempt to describe what follows would not do justice to the ambitious scope of Lupoff’s novella (fortunately you can read it for yourself here) - other than to say we are presented with a phastamagoric, time-shifting narrative which manages to evoke a sense of Lovecraftian cosmic awe, wonder and horror in a way I have rarely encountered outside of the work of the Old Gent himself; all this tinged with a poignant melancholy reminiscent of parts of the Fungi from Yuggoth sonnet cycle (to which ‘Discovery of the Ghooric Zone’ is, in a strange sort of way, the sequel).
Whilst so much Lovecraftian fiction in the 1960s and 1970s tended to gravitate towards respectful pastiche, Lupoff’s tale was one of those works which revitalised the Cthulhu mythos by contemporising it - and, in doing so enabled Lovecaft’s fictive mythology to speak to later generations of fans in new ways. Go and read ‘Discovery of the Ghooric Zone’ now.
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