Black Wings IV

Read Black Wings IV Storyline:

This fourth instalment of S. T. Joshi’s acclaimed Black Wings
series features seventeen stories that continue to elaborate upon the
conceptions, motifs, and imagery of H. P. Lovecraft, the most
influential writer of weird fiction of the past hundred years. One of
Lovecraft’s favourite themes was the tale of archaeological horror,
where venturesome explorers unearth hideous secrets of the ancient past
that cast a baleful light on the fragility of our own existence. In this
volume, a major new novella by the award-winning novelist and poet Fred
Chappell, “Artifact,” treats this theme with his customary panache and
subtlety, while other writers such as Richard Gavin, Lois H. Gresh, Ann
K. Schwader, and Donald Tyson broach the same theme in their own
distinctive and diverse ways.
 

The cosmicism that was at the core of
Lovecraft’s vision finds vivid realisation in stories by Caitlín R.
Kiernan, Cody Goodfellow, and Melanie Tem. John Pelan and Stephen Mark
Rainey have co-written a vivid novelette fusing horror and science
fiction, while Will Murray’s tale of governmental espionage leads to a
conclusion that bodes ill for the fate of the human race.
 

Lovecraft was skilled at evoking the
terrors inherent in the history and topography of his native New
England, and several writers in this volume—notably W. H. Pugmire and
Jonathan Thomas—do the same. Jason V Brock finds Lovecraftian terror in
Prague, just as Gary Fry locates it in the British countryside.
 

Lovecraft’s patented motif of the
“forbidden book” that reveals secrets too horrible to contemplate is the
focus of Darrell Schweitzer’s story of what can be found in an
out-of-the-way bookstore, while stories by Simon Strantzas and Stephen
Woodworth elaborate on the Lovecraftian themes of immortal “gods” and of
dreams that reveal unwelcome truths about ourselves. The book’s final
contribution, by Charles Lovecraft, is nothing less than a recasting of
Lovecraft’s early tale “The Lurking Fear” in a cycle of twelve sonnets.
 Black Wings IV shows that H. P. Lovecraft continues to inspire some of today’s leading writers of weird fiction.