Nameless Cults: The Cthulhu Mythos Fiction of Robert E. Howard

The tragic particulars of Robert E. Howard’s brief but creative life are depicted in the film The Whole Wide World. Otherwise, if Howard is remembered at all, it is for creating barbarian adventurer Conan the Cimmerian, who trod across prehistoric kingdoms conjured within the pulpy pages of the 1930s fantasy magazine Weird Tales. However, Howard also created many memorable horror stories, and editor Robert M. Price has collected here some of Howard’s most spine-chilling tales, ones borrowing mostly from the mythos of terrifying “elder gods” developed by H.P. Lovecraft and his circle of correspondents (which included Howard).

“Worms of the Earth” is a chilling Roman-occupied-Britain tale of Pictish King Bran Mak Morn and the particularly ghastly vengeance Morn summons on the invaders; “The Black Stone” introduces Howard’s recurring peripheral characters Justin Geoffrey, the “mad poet,” and Friedrich Wilhelm von Juntz, author of that universally condemned book, Unaussprechlichen Kulten. This stuff was created with great love and for the joy of scaring the bejeezus out of you for a few minutes. Now, if only someone would collect all of Howard’s Conan stories in one volume … minus the weak posthumous "collaborations," of course.