Most important Cthulhu stories

[Finarvyn]

I remember reading somewhere where a poster had listed off the most important HPL Cthulhu stories. The premise was "if you can only read a couple, start here...."

Problem is I can't find it anywhere. Does this sound at all familiar to anyone, or maybe there are 50 people all making their own "must read" lists.

I think the list was something like this:
* Call of Cthulhu (of course)
* At the Mountains of Madness
* Dunwich Horror
* The Shadow Out of Time
* The Shadow Over Innsmouth

(The list I posted above is from a discussion on boardgamegeek and might or might not be what I remembered.)

[amityvillemike]

I don't know if this helps, but the 4th edition of CoC (so therefore, it likely appears in earlier editions which I don't own) contains the following:

Anyone desiring to moderate a game of Call of Cthulhu must familiarize himself or herself with the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Read anything written by him, but the following works are the heart of the mythos, and will make a good start:

The Lurking Fear
The Horror at Red Hook
The Colour Out of Space
The Dunwich Horror
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Dreams in the Witch-House
The Haunter of the Dark
The Shunned House
The Call of Cthulhu
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Whisperer in the Darkness
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Out of Time
The Fungi From Yuggoth [poetry]

If the keeper reads at least half of the above works, which are mostly novelettes, he or she will be reasonably fit to run this game.

Perhaps you read someone's summary of the above or a transcript of it? I hope this helps in some manner.

[Falconer]

I would add “The Whisperer in Darkness” and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath to that. But I would really urge anyone not to start with the “greatest hits” of HPL. The defining factor that really makes his work unique is the fact that the stories gradually and subtly build up a mythology, so the later works receive their full impact only if they are read last. I would recommend picking up either the three standard Arkham House hardcover collections or the three standard Del Rey paperback collections and reading through them in the order HPL wrote them. Overall, you are still talking less word-count than, for example, The Hobbit + The Lord of the Rings, so it’s not exactly a massive œvre that needs to be distilled down, anyway.

The Beast in the Cave	D	T
The Alchemist	D	T
The Tomb	D	T
Dagon	D	T
Polaris	D	DC
Beyond the Wall of Sleep	D	DC
Memory	FPP	T
The Transition of Juan Romero	D	T
The White Ship	D	T
The Doom That Came to Sarnath	D	DC
The Statement of Randolph Carter	MM	DC
The Terrible Old Man	DH	T
The Tree	D	T
The Cats of Ulthar	D	DC
The Temple	D	T
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family	D	T
The Street	D	T
Poetry and the Gods	D	T
Celephaïs	D	DC
From Beyond	D	DC
Nyarlathotep	FPP	DC
The Picture in the House	DH	B
Ex Oblivione	FPP	DC
The Nameless City	D	DC
The Quest of Iranon	D	DC
The Moon-Bog	D	T
The Outsider	DH	B
The Other Gods	D	DC
The Music of Erich Zann	DH	B
Herbert West—Reanimator	D	T
Hypnos	D	DC
What the Moon Brings	FPP	DC
Azathoth	D	DC
The Hound	D	DC
The Lurking Fear	D	T
The Rats in the Walls	DH	B
The Unnamable	D	T
The Festival	D	T
Under the Pyramids	D	T
The Shunned House	MM	T
The Horror at Red Hook	D	T
He	D	T
In the Vault	DH	B
The Descendant	D	DC
Cool Air	DH	T
The Call of Cthulhu	DH	B
Pickman’s Model	DH	B
The Silver Key	MM	B
The Strange High House in the Mist	D	DC
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath	MM	DC
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward	MM	DC
The Colour Out of Space	DH	B
The Dunwich Horror	DH	B
The Whisperer in Darkness	DH	B
At the Mountains of Madness	MM	T
The Shadow Over Innsmouth	DH	B
The Dreams in the Witch House	MM	B
Through the Gates of the Silver Key	MM	DC
The Thing on the Doorstep	DH	B
The Evil Clergyman	D	T
The Book	D	T
The Shadow Out of Time	DH	B
The Haunter of the Dark	DH	B
In the Walls of Eryx	D	T

Arkham House
The Dunwich Horror and Others (DH)
At the Mountains of Madness (MM)
Dagon and Other Macabre Tales (D)

Necronomicon Press
Four Prose Poems (FPP)

Del Rey
The Best of H.P. Lovecraft (B)
The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft (DC)
The Transition of H.P. Lovecraft (T)

[Deleted]

This recently came up in two other fora, one thread which I started.

dgsforum.freeforums.org/reading-list-for-coc-and-which-to-start-with-t60.html

www.gamershavenpodcast.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=115

[Finarvyn]

Nice links, greywolf. I guess my OP wasn't very clear but this is more like what I'm thinking about -- just a few essential Cthulhu mythos stories to start a newcomer on. (I have several HPL anthologies already and "complete" lists aren't what I was thinking of....)

[Falconer]

Start the newcomer on “The Beast in the Cave”. ;-P

[Thorulfr]

As Falconer suggested, I'd add "Whisperer in Darkness" to the list. To that, I'd suggest "Dreams in the Witch-House." It plays around nicely with the themes of higher mathematics and other dimensions intersecting with superstition and ancient evil.
"Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" is a good one, and an important tale, but is of an entirely different 'cycle' of myth.


Amityvillemike: Yes, that list was in the first edition. Likely unchanged, too.



If you wanted a short teaser to get someone interested, just a little taste to get them hooked, I'd suggest either "The Outsider", "The Statement of Randolph Carter", or "The Hound." Possibly "Under the Pyramids".


Once, many moons (heck, decades) ago, my friends and I were out one Friday evening to catch the opening of a movie. The 8:00-ish showing was sold out, so we decided to buy tickets to the next showing and wait in line. Back then, I always kept a book handy. (my friends were mostly computer science majors, and conversations invariably degenerated into board-level discussions of hardware, leaving me completely out in the cold - I had a book for self-defense.) At some point, I pulled out the book - a collection of Lovecraft shorts - and started reading "The Hound" out loud. By the end of the story, we had gathered quite a bit of a crowd, eagerly listening, and all were happily blown away by the hammer-blow ending.

[Falconer]

Okay, I did some research on what is in-print out there.

H.P. Lovecraft: The Fiction ($11.65) is clearly the best bang for your buck, in that it is basically all the fiction in a single book for a very cheap price. But I can see how one might not want to drop this monstrosity on the lap of an unsuspecting friend who isn’t already sold on Lovecraft.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Dark Tales ($9.32) is my current favorite that I recommend to newbies. Unlike many collections, it has an attractive cover. It includes many of my favorite stories:

• Dagon
  
• The Terrible Old Man
  
• Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
  
• Nyarlathotep
  
• The Picture in the House
  
• Herbert West – Reanimator
  
• The Rats in the Walls
  
• The Call of Cthulhu
  
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
  
• The Colour Out of Space
  
• The Dunwich Horror
  
• The Whisperer in Darkness
  
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth
  
• The Dreams in the Witch House
  
• The Haunter of the Dark

All you are really missing then is At the Mountains of Madness ($6.29), which can be purchased inexpensively between its own covers like a proper novel (which it is), with a few extras thrown in.

[coffee]

May 21, 2010 9:27:27 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

I remember reading somewhere where a poster had listed off the most important HPL Cthulhu stories. The premise was "if you can only read a couple, start here...."

Problem is I can't find it anywhere. Does this sound at all familiar to anyone, or maybe there are 50 people all making their own "must read" lists.

I think the list was something like this:
* Call of Cthulhu (of course)
* At the Mountains of Madness
* Dunwich Horror
* The Shadow Out of Time
* The Shadow Over Innsmouth

(The list I posted above is from a discussion on boardgamegeek and might or might not be what I remembered.)

I recently got a compilation at Half Price Books called "The Best of H.P. Lovecraft". It contains the above stories, plus:

* Herbert West -- Reanimator
* The Rats in the Walls
* The Whisperer in the Darkness
* The Haunter of the Dark
* The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

It's a lovely quasi-hard cover with a silk (or silk-like) bookmark. It was published by Prion of London.

All that for just 9.98.



(I figured that with James Raggi IV's game coming out soon, I needed to bone up on my Lovecraft.)

[Falconer]

I was thinking today about what my favorite stories would be. Currently they are:

Dagon
The Cats of Ulthar
The Temple
Celephaïs
Nyarlathotep
The Nameless City
The Other Gods
The Music of Erich Zann
The Hound
The Rats in the Walls
The Call of Cthulhu
Pickman’s Model
The Silver Key
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Colour Out of Space
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Over Innsmouth

[geoffrey]

I recently read many letters that H. P. Lovecraft wrote in the final few years of his life. The only two stories that he wrote that he said nice things about were "The Colour out of Space" and "The Music of Erich Zann" (and he qualified his esteem for the latter by saying that the story was merely not as bad as the rest of his stories).

Those stories that most of us typically like the most (such as "The Call of Cthulhu"), Lovecraft regarded as middling.

[Falconer]

It’s funny you should mention those two stories, because I didn’t have them on my list when I originally posted it, then I went back and edited them onto it. There’s something magical about a story that can describe music or colors which don’t exist.