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The Tsathoggua Cycle (2005)

av Clark Ashton Smith (Bidragsgivare), Robert M. (ed.) Price (Redaktör)

Andra författare: James Ambuehl (Bidragsgivare), James Arthur Anderson (Bidragsgivare), Terry Dale (Bidragsgivare), John S. Glasby (Bidragsgivare), Loay Hall (Bidragsgivare)5 till, Rod Heather (Bidragsgivare), Ron Hilger (Bidragsgivare), Gary Myers (Bidragsgivare), Stan Sargent (Bidragsgivare), Henry J. Vester III (Bidragsgivare)

Andra författare: Se under Andra författare.

Serier: Call of Cthulhu Fiction (6029)

MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygOmnämnanden
973277,725 (3.31)5
Can a god be a pet? Even a devil-god who relishes human sacrifice? It is hard to deny that for his creator and godfather, Clark Ashton Smith and H. P. Lovecraft, Tsathoggua was exactly that. They found the Saturnian-Hyperborean-N'klaian toad-bat-sloth-deity as cute and adorable as horrific, and this strange ambivalence echoes throughout their various tales over which Great Tsathoggua casts his batrachian shadow! Some are droll fables of human foibles; others are terrifying adventures of human delvers who perish in the fire of a religious fanaticism fully as awful as its super-sub-human object of worship. Tsathoggua has inspired many types of stories in many moods. And not just by Smith and Lovecraft! In this arcane volume you will read Tsathogguan tales old and new by various writers, chronicling the horrors of the amorphous amphibian's descent into new decades and deeper waters. The mere fact that such a thing is possible attests mightily the power of the modern myth of Tsathoggua, and the men who created him!This book is part of an expanding collection of Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction and related topics. Call of Cthulhu fiction focuses on single entities, concepts, or authors significant to readers and fans of H.P. Lovecraft.Contents and authors in order --From the Parchment of Pnom (Clark Ashton Smith)The Seven Geases (Clark Ashton Smith)The Testament of Athammaus (Clark Ashton Smith)The Tale of Satampra Zeiros (Clark Ashton Smith)The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles (Clark Ashton Smith)Shadow of the Sleeping God (James Ambuehl)The Curse of the Toad (Loay Hall and Terry Dale)Dark Swamp (James Anderson)The Old One (John Glasby)The Oracle of Sadoqua (Ron Hilger)The Horror Show (GaryMyers)The Tale of Toad Loop (Stanley C. Sargent)The Crawling Kingdom (Rod Heather)The Resurrection of Kzadool-Ra (Henry J. Vester III)… (mer)
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An excellent selection of stories stretching across the years, with not a single dud. Only let down by terrible, pretentious introductions between each which bear little relation to each tale and serve no purpose at all. ( )
  KevDS | Sep 29, 2021 |
Apparently there's something in the worship of Tsathoggua that makes things . . . fun.

Tsathoggua is Clark Ashton Smith's toad god, the only deity in Cthulhu stories to tell a human to bugger off because he's eaten already. H.P. Lovecraft loved Tsathoggua, so he and Smith would spitball all kind of crazy background details about how Tsathoggua fit into the Mythos, including how the toad god's gay uncle was Cthulhu's cousin.

That's canon. Honest.

You can check out that craziness right here in Smith's own reprinted essay. Just remember what people back then meant by "confirmed bachelor." That sets a precedent for the level of fun in this anthology.

The M.C. is the always entertaining Robert M. Price, and his jovial tone comes through even at his most erudite digression.

And the stories? There's some greats in here.

-The Seven Geases, The Testament of Athammaus, and two others of Smith appear. They are fun sardonic fantasies, and well worth a read or reread.

-Most of the others in this collection have a sense of amusement lurking somewhere underneath, as if the author is winking at a fellow creator to say, "Hey, look what I did with this." Shadow of the Sleeping God, The Curse of the Toad, and The Oracle of Sadoqua amused me especially.

-Two or three are average tales in familiar molds. The Crawling Kingdom particularly feels a little rushed.

-We end with the wonderful tale of Tsathoggua in the far future land of Xothique, The Resurrection of Kzadool-Ra. Henry J. Vester III knocks it out of the park, using a clear version of Smith's style to make an original tale that would have made Lovecraft chuckle.

Also important is the sheer variety of stories. Some themed Cthulhu anthologies, like [book:The Ithaqua Cycle|36506], get samey after awhile due to each story having the same entity and basic conflict. Tsathoggua has so many facets that redundancy never sets in.

Go visit Tsathoggua for a while. Just hope he's eaten first. ( )
1 rösta K.t.Katzmann | May 29, 2016 |
Man oh man it's finally here. The saga of The Tsathoggua Cycle is very familiar to those of us who haunt the Lovecraft usenet groups regularly. This book was compiled in the late 1990s for a 1998 release when certain unfortunate financial realities kicked in for Chaosium. At last things turned around for the small press icon and after a lengthy delay we have the finished product. And it was actually finished back in 1997-1998; this is not an anthology of stories new in the last five years.

List price is $14.95 but Amazon's price is $10.17, and eligible for free shipping if you buy $25 worth of stuff. It is a standard trade paperback with 220 pages. This does not include a 6 page introduction by Robert Price but it does include an introduction to each story. Production qualities are reasonable. The cover art however, continues the dreadful, shameful tradition of the Chaosium cycle books, which have notably poor artwork. The picture looks like pitiful claymation of a dinosaur. After stunning artwork in modern mythos books like Hive, Horrors Beyond and Night Voices, Night Journeys this effort by Mark Achilles White leads me to wonder how much he got paid and that maybe I could become an artist too.

The introduction by Robert Price (the workhorse of the Chaosium cycle series) was actually very useful. It laid out the entire history of the creation of Tsathoggua by Clark Ashton Smith and also discussed various pronunciations. Best of all, there was a photo of a sculpture of Tsathoggua by CAS! This would have been a great cover! In fact more CAS artwork throughout the book would have been most welcome. I also think the individual story introductions, also by Price, were mostly good, although not as good as the book introduction. My advice, however, is to read them after each story as the do contain minor to major spoilers. I also get fatigued by Price's constant comparisons and allusions of mythos stories to Biblical authorship. Give it a rest for at least one book!

Here are the contents:

From the Parchment of Pnom (Clark Ashton Smith)
The Seven Geases (Clark Ashton Smith)
The Testament of Athammaus (Clark Ashton Smith)
The Tale of Satampra Zeiros (Clark Ashton Smith)
The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles (Clark Ashton Smith)
Shadow of the Sleeping God (James Ambuehl)
The Curse of the Toad (Loay Hall and Terry Dale)
Dark Swamp (James Anderson)
The Old One (John Glasby)
The Oracle of Sadoqua (Ron Hilger)
The Horror Show (Gary Myers)
The Tale of Toad Loop (Stanley C. Sargent)
The Crawling Kingdom (Rod Heather)
The Resurrection of Kzadool-Ra (Henry J. Vester III)

My comments follow, with possible minor spoilers, so don't read any more if that bothers you.

I will say from the outset that I think CAS was a unique American prose master. I acquired his Hyperborea and Zothique from Ballantine many years ago, edited by Lin Carter. My favorite compilation is A Rendezvous in Averoigne from Arkham House. I urge everyone to get a copy of this title. I am eagerly awaiting the complete stories from Nightshade Books (yes I couldn't help preordering it). Rereading the Smith tales enclosed herein was like encountering old friends after a long separation. CAS had a gift for language, scene painting and shading horror with humor. But I must also voice a complaint. Any HPL collector likely already has A Rendezvous in Averoigne. I can understand the desire to get all the Tsathoggua stories in one volume but this was really needless duplication. On the other hand, except for Sargent's contribution the rest of the stories here were new to me. As for commentary on The Tale of Satampra Zeiros and The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles, I simply must direct you to Dan Clore's brilliant discussion of timeline inconsistencies: search on Google Groups for alt.horror.cthulhu and then search that group for posts by Dan Clore. I will note that The Seven Geases made an indelible impression on me when I was a teen, first discovering CAS and HPL, with the fate of the protagonist giving me quite a shock, after all the happy ending fantasy I had been reading. I sometimes wonder if why I like CAS and HPL so much is I was swept off my feet by them in my formative teen reading years. I've been enamored ever since. Finally, I must also contradict myself. For me From the Parchment of Pnom was just about unreadable. I don't think CAS ever intended it for print. I really can't stand mythos genealogies. They don't ring true for me; at least I don't enjoy them at all.

Shadow of the Sleeping God by James Ambuehl - You may know of James Ambuehl's other story in the Satampra Zeiros canon, In the Court of the Crystal Flame found in Lost Worlds of Space and Time volume one. That story was very enjoyable. Alas I just didn't find this (written earlier?) 1998 effort to be nearly as good. This story is a direct sequel to The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles. I don't like it when the story bludgeons you over the head with the fact that it is mythos, and that there is a mythos, instead of the mythos entities/trappings being props for the story. Also there is no way the avatar of Tsathoggua would not have consumed all the protagonists. In the intervening years Mr. Ambuehl's prose has become much more polished. Check out The Pisces Club, for example.

The Curse of the Toad (Loay Hall and Terry Dale) - The premise of this story was pretty good, with a disdainful great white hunter cursed by a shaman of Gua (Tsathoggua for short...). Unfortunately the execution was not so hot. Writing a sentence in upper case does not give it more weight any more then the old trope of the italicized ending. The prose here was fair at best but I'll admit to enjoying the denouement, nicely concealed by indirection.

Dark Swamp (James Anderson) - In this tale, HPL makes an appearance as himself, at least one of his experiences does; the setting is a place where HPL actually spent an afternoon looking, unsuccessfully perhaps, for Dark Swamp. Price's introduction was particularly useful spelling all this out for those of us unfamiliar with all the details of HPL's life. Years later the protagonist wants to walk in HPL's footsteps and to his chagrin manages to find the swamp. He then wonders if HPL had actually seen the denizens of the swamp and if this inspired his fiction. I really find the appearance of HPL and his fiction inside mythos stories to be a tiresome plot device, particularly when the implication is that his fiction wasn't really fiction. The prose was OK, the denouement was OK, none of it jazzed me. And I'll have to reread beacuse I missed just where Tsathoggua makes an appearance and how the story fits in this anthology...

The Old One (John Glasby) - Oh well, another typical HPL pastiche type introduction about a scientist/archeologist warning us all about the veil of reality and how he wished he never peeked behind it, yadayadayada. In this case the ancient city Yuth is discovered on the ocean floor near Bimini, and so is a temple of Tsathoggua. Some intrepid (or mostly trepid...) scientists investigate, including one who knows the awful truth... You know, this was a perfectly agreeable story with perfectly agreeable writing. I mostly enjoyed it. It just wasn't very original.

The Oracle of Sadoqua (Ron Hilger) - I really like Roman times mythos stories. Others I can think of offhand include the novel The Gardens of Lucullus (used copies available on the internet) and The Golden Keeper by Ian R. MacLeod (available in the collection Eternal Lovecraft from Golden Gryphon). The friend of a Roman lieutenant stationed in Gaul disappears. Suspicions run high against the druids who are the guardians of the Oracle of Sadoqua (I actually enjoyed the use of different names/spellings for Tsathoggua in this book; it nicely dovetails with the uncertainty, blurred distinctions, contradictions, human inability to completely perceive these Lovecraftian type entities. I liked the construction of the story, the setting and the prose. Keep up the good work, Mr. Hilger.

The Horror Show (Gary Myers) - I am unfamiliar with Gary Myers but I have to fix that. The Horror Show was a gem, clearly my favorite in the anthology (of course, not including the CAS stories). Great prose well developed tension, great plot. A chance encounter in a pretentious and contrived Goth club causes a young lady to accept the persuasions of a young man to see a real horror show...

The Tale of Toad Loop (Stanley C. Sargent) - Ancient Exhumations was originally published by Mythos Books in 1999; the new edition, Ancient Exhumations +2 (with a real cool cover!) was published by Elder Signs Press in 2004. This is where The Tale of Toad Loop made its first anthology appearance. The basic plot is very familiar mythos territory. A sorcerer or dabbler in sorcery opens a gate to allow an outré being to impregnate his wife (as usual for very obscure reasons), Toadaggwa in this case. Sargent spins a fine yarn with this common premise, with deft plotting, nifty prose and an unexpected ending.

The Crawling Kingdom (Rod Heather) - Another well written story cleverly plotted. A professor studying toads in the woods inadvertently observes a rite of worship of Tsathoggua. A nosy college reporter uncovers what the consequences were to the professor, and maybe to himself from that unhappy chance.

The Resurrection of Kzadool-Ra (Henry J. Vester III) - More CAS like than HPL like, this story was set in Zothique, where an acolyte inadvertently discovers an alter dedicated to Zathogwa. He decides to resurrect worship to the dread god... A very agreeable read.

So what is the mythos fan to do? As usual in the Chaosium cycle books this was a mixed bag. Some reprints everyone probably has, some stories that were not so hot (although no really complete dogs) some minor gems and one that knocked my socks off. It is inexpensive, compiles almost all the Tsathoggua stories in one place and will keep your cycle book collection complete. Go for it! ( )
  carpentermt | Sep 27, 2010 |
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Författarens namnRollTyp av författareVerk?Status
Smith, Clark AshtonBidragsgivareprimär författarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Price, Robert M. (ed.)Redaktörhuvudförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Ambuehl, JamesBidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Anderson, James ArthurBidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Dale, TerryBidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Glasby, John S.Bidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Hall, LoayBidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Heather, RodBidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Hilger, RonBidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Myers, GaryBidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Sargent, StanBidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Vester III, Henry J.Bidragsgivaremedförfattarealla utgåvorbekräftat
Fassl, HarryOmslagmedförfattarevissa utgåvorbekräftat
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This book of batrachian beastliness is for The Pulverizer, my dear friend and colleague.
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Many of us can vividly recall (if someone there in our old folks' home nudges us from our semi-permanent drowsing and inquires) what an impression Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, initially probably Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth, made upon us.
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Can a god be a pet? Even a devil-god who relishes human sacrifice? It is hard to deny that for his creator and godfather, Clark Ashton Smith and H. P. Lovecraft, Tsathoggua was exactly that. They found the Saturnian-Hyperborean-N'klaian toad-bat-sloth-deity as cute and adorable as horrific, and this strange ambivalence echoes throughout their various tales over which Great Tsathoggua casts his batrachian shadow! Some are droll fables of human foibles; others are terrifying adventures of human delvers who perish in the fire of a religious fanaticism fully as awful as its super-sub-human object of worship. Tsathoggua has inspired many types of stories in many moods. And not just by Smith and Lovecraft! In this arcane volume you will read Tsathogguan tales old and new by various writers, chronicling the horrors of the amorphous amphibian's descent into new decades and deeper waters. The mere fact that such a thing is possible attests mightily the power of the modern myth of Tsathoggua, and the men who created him!This book is part of an expanding collection of Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction and related topics. Call of Cthulhu fiction focuses on single entities, concepts, or authors significant to readers and fans of H.P. Lovecraft.Contents and authors in order --From the Parchment of Pnom (Clark Ashton Smith)The Seven Geases (Clark Ashton Smith)The Testament of Athammaus (Clark Ashton Smith)The Tale of Satampra Zeiros (Clark Ashton Smith)The Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles (Clark Ashton Smith)Shadow of the Sleeping God (James Ambuehl)The Curse of the Toad (Loay Hall and Terry Dale)Dark Swamp (James Anderson)The Old One (John Glasby)The Oracle of Sadoqua (Ron Hilger)The Horror Show (GaryMyers)The Tale of Toad Loop (Stanley C. Sargent)The Crawling Kingdom (Rod Heather)The Resurrection of Kzadool-Ra (Henry J. Vester III)

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