When H. P. Lovecraft first introduced his macabre universe in the pages of Weird Tales magazine, the response was electrifying. Gifted writers--among them his closest peers--added sinister new elements to the fear-drenched landscape. Here are some of the most famous original stories from the pulp era that played a pivotal role in reflecting the master’s dark vision. FANE OF THE BLACK PHARAOH by Robert Bloch: A man obsessed with unearthing dark secrets succumbs to the lure of the forbidden. BELLS OF HORROR by Henry Kuttner: Infernal chimes ring the promise of dementia and mutilation. THE FIRE OF ASSHURBANIPAL by Robert E. Howard: In the burning Afghan desert, a young American unleashes an ancient curse. THE ABYSS by Robert A. W. Lowndes: A hypnotized man finds himself in an alternate universe, trapped on a high wire between life and death. AND SIXTEEN MORE TALES OF ICY TERROR . . . THE THING ON THE ROOF by Robert E. Howard THE SEVEN GEASES by Clark Ashton Smith THE INVADERS by Henry Kuttner THE THING THAT WALKED ON THE WIND by August Derleth ITHAQUA by August Derleth THE LAIR OF THE STAR-SPAWN by August Derleth & Mark Schorer THE LORD OF ILLUSION by E. Hoffmann Price THE WARDER OF KNOWLEDGE by Richard F. Searight THE SCOURGE OF B’MOTH by Bertram Russell THE HOUSE OF THE WORM by Mearle Prout SPAWN OF THE GREEN ABYSS by C. Hall Thompson THE GUARDIAN OF THE BOOK by Henry Hasse MUSIC OF THE STARS by Duane W. Rimel THE AQUARIUM by Carl Jacobi THE HORROR OUT OF LOVECRAFT by Donald A. Wollheim TO ARKHAM AND THE STARS by Fritz Leiber

Auteur

Edited by Robert M. Price

Résumé
When H. P. Lovecraft first introduced his macabre universe in the pages of Weird Tales magazine, the response was electrifying. Gifted writers—among them his closest peers—added sinister new elements to the fear-drenched landscape. Here are some of the most famous original stories from the pulp era that played a pivotal role in reflecting the master’s dark vision.
 
FANE OF THE BLACK PHARAOH by Robert Bloch: A man obsessed with unearthing dark secrets succumbs to the lure of the forbidden.
BELLS OF HORROR by Henry Kuttner: Infernal chimes ring the promise of dementia and mutilation.
THE FIRE OF ASSHURBANIPAL by Robert E. Howard: In the burning Afghan desert, a young American unleashes an ancient curse.
THE ABYSS by Robert A. W. Lowndes: A hypnotized man finds himself in an alternate universe, trapped on a high wire between life and death.
 
AND SIXTEEN MORE TALES OF ICY TERROR . . .
 
THE THING ON THE ROOF by Robert E. Howard
THE SEVEN GEASES by Clark Ashton Smith
THE INVADERS by Henry Kuttner
THE THING THAT WALKED ON THE WIND by August Derleth
ITHAQUA by August Derleth
THE LAIR OF THE STAR-SPAWN by August Derleth & Mark Schorer
THE LORD OF ILLUSION by E. Hoffmann Price
THE WARDER OF KNOWLEDGE by Richard F. Searight
THE SCOURGE OF B’MOTH by Bertram Russell
THE HOUSE OF THE WORM by Mearle Prout
SPAWN OF THE GREEN ABYSS by C. Hall Thompson
THE GUARDIAN OF THE BOOK by Henry Hasse
MUSIC OF THE STARS by Duane W. Rimel
THE AQUARIUM by Carl Jacobi
THE HORROR OUT OF LOVECRAFT by Donald A. Wollheim
TO ARKHAM AND THE STARS by Fritz Leiber

Échantillon de lecture
The Thing on the Roof
 
Robert E. Howard
 
They lumber through the night
With their elephantine tread;
I shudder in affright
As I cower in my bed.
They lift colossal wings
On the high gable roofs
Which tremble to the trample
Of their mastodonic hoofs.
 
—JUSTIN GEOFFREY: Out of the Old Land.
 
Let me begin by saying that I was surprised when Tussmann called on me. We had never been close friends; the man’s mercenary instincts repelled me; and since our bitter controversy of three years before, when he attempted to discredit my Evidences of Nahua Culturein Yucatan, which was the result of years of careful research, our relations had been anything but cordial. However, I received him and found his manner hasty and abrupt, but rather abstracted, as if his dislike for me had been thrust aside in some driving passion that had hold of him.
 
His errand was quickly stated. He wished my aid in obtaining a volume in the first edition of Von Junzt’s Nameless Cults—the edition known as the Black Book, not from its color, but because of its dark contents. He might almost as well have asked me for the original Greek translation of the Necronomicon. Though since my return from Yucatan I had devoted practically all my time to my avocation of book collecting, I had not stumbled onto any hint that the book in the Düsseldorf edition was still in existence.
 
A word as to this rare work. Its extreme ambiguity in spots, coupled with its incredible subject matter, has caused it long to be regarded as the ravings of a maniac and the author was damned with the brand of insanity. But the fact remains that much of his assertions are unanswerable, and that he spent the full forty-five years of his life prying into strange places and discovering secret and abysmal things. Not a great many volumes were printed in the first edition and many of these were burned by their frightened owners when Von Junzt was found strangled in a mysterious manner, in his barred and bolted chamber one night in 1840, six months after he had returned from a mysterious journey to Mongolia.
 
Five years later a London printer, one Bridewall, pirated the work, and issued a cheap translation for sensational effect, full of grotesque wood-cuts, and riddled with misspellings, faulty translations and the usual errors of a cheap and unscholarly printing. This still further discredited the original work, and publishers and public forgot about the book until 1909 when the Golden Goblin Press of New York brought out an edition.
 
Their production was so carefully expurgated that fully a fourth of the original matter was cut out; the book was handsomely bound and decorated with the exquisite and weirdly imaginative illustrations of Diego Vasquez. The edition was intended for popular consumption but the artistic instinct of the publishers defeated that end, since the cost of before the Spaniards came.
 
“I would have liked to have broken into the sealed-up chamber, but I had neither the time nor the tools for the task. I was hurrying to the coast, having been wounded by an accidental gunshot in the foot, and I stumbled on to the place purely by chance.
 
“I have been planning to have another look at it, but circumstances have prevented—now I intend to let nothing stand in my way! By chance I came upon a passage in the Golden Goblin edition of this book, describing the temple. But that was all; the mummy was only briefly mentioned. Interested, I obtained one of Bridewall’s translations but ran up against a blank wall of baffling blunders. By some irritating mischance the translator had even mistaken the location of the Temple of the Toad, as Von Junzt calls it, and has it in Guatemala instead of Honduras. The general description is faulty, the jewel is mentioned and the fact that it is a ‘key.’ But a key to what, Bridewall’s book does not state. I now felt that I was on the track of a real discovery, unless Von Junzt was, as many maintain, a madman. But that the man was actually in Honduras at one time is well attested, and no one could so vividly describe the temple—as he does in the Black Book—unless he had seen it himself. How he learned of the jewel is more than I can say. The Indians who told me of the mummy said nothing of any jewel. I can only believe that Von Junzt found his way into the sealed crypt somehow—the man had uncanny ways of learning hi…