apatheticCthulhu 2000 edited by Jim Turner, part 1
This 1995 anthology is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.
Cthulhu 2000
This intro is full of purple prose and is inconsequential.
The Barrens
By F. Paul Wilson. 2 incautious people venture into the Pine Barrens and end up disconsolate, their ordered lives upended by the adverse effect of the unfathomable bleak moment they have out there. There are regrettable consequences to their encounter with the utterly inscrutable ferocious power. This was okay.
Best Line:
“One-of-a-kind volumes from times most scholars think of as prehistory.”
Pickman's Modem
This 1992 tale is hideously dated as it tells of eldritch online doings. What is quoting softwarte? Netmail? Line noise? This was very bad and the author goes on about the nets.
Best Line:
“Modems aren't supposed to buzz.”
Shaft Number 247
This post-cataclysmic tale is dire, what the author mistakes for an attractive sense of mystery is no such thing. This wildly incompetent tale leaves you discontented.
His Mouth Will Taste Of Wormwood
By Poppy Z. Brite. This okay tale has fetor as 2 young men with stifling ennui, look for kicks. One feels a creeping sense of concern as these 2 idiots engage in a bonfire of the sanities. One views the terminal consequences of their utterly damning acts with moralising disgust. If character is what you are in the dark than these wretched men who shatter natural law have none.
Best Lines:
“Things no man had ever been meant to possess.”
“Certain half-articulate mutterings.”
The Adder
2 idiots acquire a copy of a forbidden tome and the book has a will of its own and does worrisome things and its concerning behaviour grows. This was okay.
Best Lines:
“Certain unsavory groups of cultists.”
“Since every powerful government and respected religious organization has tried to destory the work in all its forms. And they have largely succeeded in doing so.”
“Ominious reality.”
“Dark reputation.”
Fat Face
I've read this before. An idiot hooker stumbles across grevious wrongdoing on the streets. This leads to cruel pain in this awesomely bad story that is not a vanguard of innovation.
The Big Fish
By Kim Newman. I've read this before. This Cthulhu mythos tale is told in Noir style. It's okay.
Best Line:
“Father, son, and Holy Squid.”
~
The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell
A land suffers violent backlash from nature for its use of magic in this barely competent puerile fantasy dreck.
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Walkers by Graham Masterton
There is sexism, a Donald Trump reference and man who hurls venomous insults at his wife while having an emotional affair with his secretary in this 1991 horror novel which was reprinted in 2002. This was ridiclious with no soul or sincerity.
~
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
This is another entry in The Witcher saga in which a warrior bears insults badly and kills monsters for non-appreciative jerks. This was unabashedly uninteresting.
Best Lines:
“Showed us what he was capbale of, and he was capable of a great deal.”
“Knowing Ones.”
“All decent predictions rhyme.”
~
Yet Another Bad Buffy The Vampire Novel
Ghoul Trouble.