I’m going to be 100% honest with you, the only reason I bought Cthulhu FhCon (don’t ask me how to pronounce it) is because the publishers, Impulsive Walrus, had a table next to my friends at Outsider Publishing at JordanCon this year and it felt a little awkward to keep asking if they knew when Tiffany would be back without buying anything. I don’t read a lot comedy or sci-fi, which is what most of their book covers looked like, so I bought what appeared to be the closest thing they had to a horror novel, figuring it would be a fun read and I’d have another book to review.
Is Cthulhu FhCon scary?
It would be a mistake to expect an anthology about convention hotels being overrun by Old Gods to be horrifying. But at the end of the day, horror novels rarely are. It takes a lot to keep an adult up at night based on something they read, especially when it’s fiction.
It’s also worth noting that I may not be the target audience for this book, but I’m not too far off. I’ve gone to DragonCon pretty consistently since moving to Atlanta. I’ve also recently gotten into writing fiction myself and started attending some of the smaller science fiction and horror conventions in the area. They’re fun, but I’m never going to be a ‘con person’ who gets all dressed up and parties at the hotel all weekend like some of my friends, and the characters in these stories.
Lovecraft’s legacy
All that aside; the question of whether a horror story is good or not isn’t a matter of is it scary, or even unnerving. The question is, does it do what it set out to do? In this case, Frog Jones and the rest of the team at Impulsive Walrus seemingly set out to create a collection of entertaining stories that all fit a very specific brief, and pay homage to the works of HP Lovecraft. Which, yeah, they fully hit the mark.
Continuing my trend of honesty, I’m not even a big fan of Lovecraft. Personally, he was awful (we have a whole article about that) and I think his prose was a bit much, although I will admit that his influence on the genre can scarcely be overstated. And I do tend to like stuff based on his work, particularly Hellboy and weird 80s and 90s horror movies. In the Mouth of Madness is a particular favorite.
This book isn’t amateur hour, either. There’s no first-time authors here, and nearly all of them have some award or another to their name.
When all is said and done
The editors have curated a body of work that is in various degrees fun or funny, but none of them takes itself too seriously. Some particular favorites are:
- RetCon by M. J. Stoumbos – a classic time loop story, well executed given the fact that it’s only a few thousand words.
- The Rats of Understory B by Frances Pauli – this one is largely told from the perspective of the hotel’s rat population, who have been somewhat underestimated.
- Sturgeon Man and a Mermaid by Irene Radford – this is the least horror-y one of the bunch, but it’s extremely fun and an interesting take on the concept of Old Gods.
- Give a Dog a Bone by Olivia Baxter Hudson – It might just be me, but I’m a sucker for stories about immortals living among us and how they go unnoticed.
- Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore by Paul A. DeStefano- Has some of the best horror scenes as well as some of the best jokes.
At the end of the day, if you like horror conventions and funny stories, buy this book.
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