Lovecraft Always Rings Twice
A few months ago, Ken Hite recommended on his LiveJournal a book called The Perseids and Other Stories, by Robert Charles Wilson. (And by "recommended," I mean "raved and went on about.") Accordingly, I picked it up from the library and have been reading it slowly for the past few weeks, the more to savor its marvelousness.
Rather than hurt myself attempting to convey its excellence to you, I yoink the very verbiage of His Kennethness:
TPaOS is a ... version of the far less common sort of worthwhile Mythos story, in which the author groks Lovecraftian cosmic horror so completely that any actual involvement of the Mythos comes merely as a grace note, like the grassy hint of flavor in expensive top-shelf vodka. ... [I] further point out that absolutely no literal "Mythos element" appears — by name, anyhow — in TPaOS. But that said, TPaOS feels — is — very Lovecraftian.The story "The Inner Inner City" particularly struck me; it's the only short story in five years that has gripped me with a frantic conviction that it ought to be a feature film.
The other thing I've been doing recently is playing the newish Xbox game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. It, too, is entirely marvelous, though obviously in an entirely different way. (Because on the one hand, a collection of short stories. On the other, a console game.) You take the role of a private investigator with a bit of memory loss, investigating what appears to be a fairly standard Call of Cthulhu–style mystery. (At least, that's how it looks from the point I'm at in the game.)
The truly excellent thing about the game is the way its gameplay is a convergence of a variety of immersive strategies that combine to make it feel seriously different than any other first-person game I've played. The fact that I've played two or three levels and haven't had or found found a gun (perhaps more tellingly, that I haven't missed having a gun) is the obvious difference from your garden variety FPS. But a host of other, smaller, converging touches also distinguish the game: There's no HUD on the main screen; it's just you and the environment. Sanity loss — seeing bodies, getting shot, experiencing disturbing realizations about your own past — are reflected concretely in gameplay as the screen blurs and your heartbeat rises both on the soundtrack and in force feedback. I've read that vertigo and the shakes will manifest later in the game, and that they make your controller unreliable. Very cool.
I experienced my character's first flashback (or vision?) in my last session of play. It was an honestly and deliciously scary experience. And perversely, the flashback made the game seem more immersive, rather than less, even though it's such a clear and disruptive cinematic narrative technique. But rather than taking me out of a first-person feel, it made me feel like I was stuck inside an unreliable mind. Very, very cool.
The game, in short, is terrific.
Read The Perseids and Other Stories. Play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
Comments
I'd read a review of the CoC console game. As soon as I get my hands on an Xbox 360, I plan on picking it up.
Have you seen the all-new silent movie "The Call of Cthulhu"? They did an excellent job of adapting the classic on a shoestring budget. Silent, in black and white, and with period-style stop-motion effects, it nonetheless gets the building horror of Lovecraft's story across.
Check it out at http://www.cthulhulives.org/toc.html
The "making of" short is almost more fun than the movie -imagine a giant model of R'leyh in your front yard or doing the floppy croppie cultist dance buck naked in front of a green screen!
Joel pointed me at the CoC silent film website a couple of weeks ago. We also wound up selling it at the Adventure Retail Omnibus Booth at GenCon SoCal, as part of Jerry's Giant Selection of Cthulhiana. Many people came by and told us that it was great, but I still have not gotten a copy for my very own, or seen it. It is becoming a higher and higher priority.