Apart from that, we also get a look at a sort of seance where Nyarlathotep gathers followers and exposes them to technology from the deep future. The few pages dedicated to this God mostly describe the plane of existence it inhabits, painting breathtaking and incomprehensible tableaux of impossible vistas. More specifically, this story feels like a few pages taken from a very interesting and unconventional history book, detailing inexplicable phenomenon beyond human comprehension, giving a glimpse into the mind and intentions of a being that transcends us and the world itself. Lovecraft, Dagon “Nyarlathotep” (1920) – The Sprawling ChaosĪn even shorter story, Nyarlathotep is a welcome addition to the Cthulhu Mythos, describing the eponymous Mad Howling God’s arrival on Earth in Ancient Egypt and his time spent as the Black Pharaoh.
Lovecraft is at various facets of horror storytelling.ĭo not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. It’s short (should take less than an hour), moves along quickly, and demonstrates how good H. Lovecraft and want to get a quick look at the kind of stories he wrote, then I believe Dagon is as good a place as any to start. As we reach the black slimy mire the author’s prose grows in power and we are treated to extremely vivid, accurate and practically photographic descriptions of a very unsettling landscape that almost becomes a character in and of itself.Īs he trudges deeper and deeper into the vast unknown the tension slowly rises higher and higher, culminating in a satisfying and heart-pounding way. The unnamed narrator’s story instantly draws us in as we are compelled to find out what could have broken this marine to such an extent, what otherworldly spectacle he must have witnessed. One of Lovecraft‘s earlier stories, Dagon is an excellent demonstration of his amazingly-fluent writing as well as his ability to create a true sense of dread and horror without having to resort to cheap tricks that we categorize today as cliches. It starts off about as normally as you would expect, with the narrator’s ship being captured by Germans and the man himself managing to flee away on a lifeboat.Īfter drifting aimlessly for a little while, the narrator begins to realize that the landscape around him has slowly changed, and that he is now stranded on a black and slimy mire that extends as far as the eye can see, littered with carcasses of fish and unrecognizable bits of flesh.Īfter three days the ground dries up enough for him to walk on, and so he does, searching for a way out, for answers that persistently elude him, and making discoveries completely unfathomable. Only a few pages long, the story is about a former merchant marine, now a broken opioid addict, who recounts the experience that shaped him during the First World War.
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