Book Review: Space Eldritch

An anthology of Lovecraftican pulp space opera or as the publisher puts it: "Startling Stories meets Weird Tales."

Being an anthology, I feel it is only fair to review each story individually.

“Arise Thou Niarlat from Thy Rest” by D.J. Butler. I didn't enjoy this one. Butler runs three storylines in different time periods that are somehow all connected because...I don't know. Everything that has ever happened, is happening, or will happen is happening simultaneously. Time is irrelevant? It was very disjointed. 2 stars.

“Space Opera” by Michael R. Collings. Got off to a rough start, but gradually improved and ultimately finished strong. Dark humor effectively employed. Haughty hive aliens of stupendous power colonize worlds with the offspring of their god, pre-existing life forms on said worlds irrelevant. That is, until they get to an Earth (at least, I think it was Earth) in the distant future. 3 stars.

“The Menace Under Mars” by Nathan Shumate. This is where the anthology really find its footing. Set in an alternate history where amazing ideas about physics came to fruition, humanity has started the process of terraforming Mars. Before its irrevocably lost beneath a sea, a pair of scientists set off to investigate a possible archeological site that could prove the existence of a long dead Martian race. Shumate utilizes elements of Lovecraft's style when confronting things that the mind struggles to comprehend but does so without being imitative. At one point it was so intense that my daughter unwittingly startled me when she walked silently up to me. 4.5 stars.

“Gods in Darkness” by David J. West is a pulpy, Cold War era tale complete with a chiseled chin protagonist, commies, and an elitist scientist. Although the characters were two-dimensional, the story was entertaining. Eldritch aspect was slight. 3 stars.

“The Shadows of Titan” by Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen was a creepy tale about the first human expedition to Titan and what they discovered. While you know that the proverbial shit is going to hit the fan, the authors write it well and offer an ending that I didn't see coming. 4 stars.

“The Fury in the Void” by Robert J. Defendi takes place in some distant future where civilization is circling the drain. Technical knowledge is preserved by religious orders that have merged faith and science in a disappointing fashion. A Russian ship is chasing a Greek ship as the latter has committed murderous atrocities against their people. As spaceships are sacred due to their scarcity, combat is carried out through boarding actions. Think of it as the eldritch version of "Day of the Dove" episode of Star Trek. 3 stars.

One of the themes in Lovecraft's work was that there existed forbidden knowledge which was too much for human comprehension and often led to an individual's descent into madness. Another is that our scientific skills far outpace our wisdom to properly utilize their discoveries. Howard Tayler masterfully blends these themes together in “Flight of the Runewright.” In the story, a man seeks to start a new life in a colony on a new world, but to get there, he must board a strange starship engraved with mystic runes. Tayler leads the reader down a path where bad things are going to happen, but until his big reveal, the reader doesn't know just how bad they're going to go. 5 stars.

Average of the stories: 3.5 stars. Like trick-or-treating, it's a mixed bag of mostly average loot with a couple scores that make it worth the effort. Of course, YMMV.

Unfortunately, I have to add that most of the stories needed another round of proofreading. I wasn't looking to take a critical eye to this, but the typos and grammatical errors leapt out of the page at me and proved distracting.

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DED