I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumoured and evilly shadowed seaport of death and blasphemous abnormality. There mere telling helps me to restore confidence in my own faculties; to reassure myself that I was not simply the first to succumb to a contagious nightmare hallucination.

- H. P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Over Innsmouth

The decadent, smugly rotting, secret-filled town of Innsmouth is a supreme creation of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. It so finely mixes the carnal and the metaphysical that writers continue to take inspiration from it. New readers squirm in encountering Lovecraft's horrifying vision, then return to revel in the tale's grim wit and careful invention. Energized by powerful sexual and racial themes, Innsmouth and the heritage of the deep ones remains HPL's most influential concept.

Twelve more stories round out this collection. Three are precursors, including Dunsany and Chambers but also the comparatively little-known Fishhead from Irvin S. Cobb. Nine successor tales (as well as three poems) bring the themes into the present, including the specter of nuclear weapons, a Freedom of Information Act search probing the government cover-up of Innsmouth, and much more. Vigorous and contemplative in turn, in all of these stories we sense the oaths of Dagon, glimpse the tell-tale signs of the Innsmouth taint, and hear in their cadences that faint sea-born music from cyclopean Y'ha-nthiel, the many-columned city beneath the waves.

Includes works by:

H. P. Lovecraft, Virginia Anderson, R. Flavie Carson, Robert W. Chambers, Irvin S. Cobb, Lord Dunsany, John Glasby, Roger Johnson, Stephen Mark Rainey, Stanley C. Sargent, Ann K. Schwader, Franklyn Searight, Lewis Theobald III, Henry J. Vester III, and James Wade

Condition: Pre-loved book. First edition. Minor spotting of pages. Otherwise in good condition.

Format: Paperback
Year published: 1998
Pages: 233
Sub-genre: Horror, short stories.
Imprint: Chaosium