I firmly believe that art has the unlimited potential to transform and redeem, and that applies to previous works of art as much as anything else. Here are books and authors who took on the project of transformation and reclamation of cosmic horror, of doing Lovecraft without Lovecraft.

The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Kiernan has long been a Lovecraftian and cosmic horror writer, and really any of her books will show you space-, time-, and mind-breaking phenomena. The Drowning Girl is one of her best, featuring a queer woman who may be experiencing symptoms of her mental illness or may be haunted by a woman (or entity) with vast and terrible secrets. Lovecraft, as a consequence of his time, had an imperfect understanding of mental illness and “madness.” Kiernan gives us a far more nuanced exploration of the inconsistencies and possibilities of the mind.

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

This is a direct and explicit critique of Lovecraft’s racism and the gatekeeping of SFF/Horror as well. Tom is a musician drawn into a conspiracy of white men, and what he discovers is both unsettlingly alien but also exhaustingly familiar. The ending is dark and bleak and amazing in a way that even Lovecraft never managed, and I still think about it years later.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

Matt Ruff always finds incisive ways to take current political narratives and turn them on their head. He challenged 9/11 narratives with Mirage, and challenges racism and the horrors of the Jim Crow South with this novel about badass veteran Atticus Turner. This will be a series on HBO produced by Jordan Peele very soon, so get reading!

A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs

These two novellas are both pointed ripostes to Lovecraft’s racism and xenophobia. One features a Latina woman who must return home fight foreign threats–and here “foreign” means both interdimensional horrors and US black ops in a scathingly apt reminder of how the CIA interfered in Latin America. The other features a journey into the American South, and one very dark folk tradition. Both are genuinely scary, and I was sublimely creeped out the whole way through reading both of them. John Hornor Jacobs is way underappreciated in general, but ignoring this particular book verges on criminal.

Catfish Lullaby by A. C. Wise

A. C. Wise’s debut novel features a queer black protagonist trying to unravel the terrible mysteries of a local family and what they get up to in their isolated house in the woods. His compassion and bravery is the counterbalance to horrors both cosmic and depressingly human.

She Walks in Shadows by ed. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles

This collection of Lovecraftian fiction by and featuring women is edited by and filled with all-stars all writing about strange beings whom Lovecraft rarely ventured to describe: women. Yeah, not many women in Lovecraft’s works, but these authors go a long way toward fixing that.

Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror by ed. Joyce Carol Oates

This book offers additional female and feminist takes on Lovecraft’s worlds and ideas. There’s an early work from Tamsyn Muir now of Gideon the Ninth fame, as well as from mainstays of cosmic horror like Caitlin R. Kiernan, Gemma Files, Sonya Taaffe, and more.

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

Think Pleasantville meets Lovecraft in this tale about the dread perils of suburbia and nostalgia. What if cosmic horrors found us as fascinating and strange as we found them? What if they wanted to stay and enact our human foibles, and force humans to join in? Sounds funny, and part of it are, but it’s also smart and scary.

Uzumaki by Junji Ito

This is, in my opinion, Japanese horror master Junji Ito’s most magnificently unsettling work. Inexplicable compulsions and transformations begin to take hold of a small Japanese town, gradually making the residents obsessed with replicating spiral patterns. Vignettes about the townspeople are tied together by Shuichi and Kirie, who observe the phenomena and are eventually dragged into the collective hysteria. You’ll never look at snails the same way again.

Innsmouth by Megan James

Have you ever wished that you could have a wee little shoggoth for a pet, keeping it in a cat carrier and letting it out to make its cute little “gibber, gibber” noises? No? Well, you will. This adorably irreverent take on Lovecraft’s whole mythos is just starting, but promises to be an ongoing delight.

Death Sentences by Kawamata Chiaki

Six interconnected stories tell a single overarching narrative of one man’s disturbing success in using art to break time and space. It’s fitting, then, that the novel spans from the early twentieth century to the distant future, and from Japan to France to colonies on Mars. Mysterious surrealist Who May is behind it all, but was his work an accident or an act of genius—or malice? People have compared this to The Ring, which is fair in terms of some of its themes, but it’s also definitely pure cosmic horror. 

The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson

What’s it like to live in a universe where the physics are fickle and the gods even more so? Vellitt Boe knows, and she doesn’t have time for bombastic Kadath or any other such Daring Adventure. She has a world to save and a girl to find, a young woman who was formerly her student, but has since disappeared and disturbed a god by her absence.

This list is by no means complete, so let me know your favourite works of cosmic horror in the comments!

The post Lovecraft Without Lovecraft: Diverse Cosmic Horror appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Read on to discover our picks and tell us in the comments below if you will be checking any of these out!

Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri
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A nobleman’s daughter with magic in her blood. An empire built on the dreams of enslaved gods. Empire of Sand is Tasha Suri’s captivating, Mughal India-inspired debut fantasy perfect for readers of City of Brass and The Wrath & the Dawn.

Toxic by Lydia Kang
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Cyclo, the first and largest biological ship of its kind, is dying. A small crew of mercenaries have handed over the rights to their life to document the death of the ship, but the abandoned ship is anything but abandoned—one girl has been left behind. Hana has known nothing but the isolation of a single room and the secret that has kept her there for seventeen years. When she meets Fennec, the boy assigned to watch her, she realizes that there is a world she has yet to experience but she is doomed to never meet.

Breach by W.L. Goodwater
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When Soviet magicians conjured an arcane Wall to blockade occupied Berlin, the world was outraged but let it stand for the sake of peace. Now after 10 years of fighting with spies instead of spells, the CIA has discovered the wall is failing. Operatives from East and West converge on the most dangerous city in the world to stop or take advantage of the crisis. Karen, a young magician with the American Office of Magical Research and Deployment, is sent to investigate the breach in the Wall and see if it can be reversed. Instead she will discover that the truth is elusive in this divided city, and that even magic itself has its own agenda.

How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen
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Fantasy legend Jane Yolen presents a wide-ranging offering of fractured fairy tales. Yolen fractures the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets, holding them to the light and presenting them entirely transformed; where a spinner of straw into gold becomes a money-changer and the big bad wolf retires to a nursing home. Rediscover the tales you once knew, rewritten and refined for the world we now live in―or a much better version of it.

The Blue Salt Road by Joanne Harris
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So begins a stunning tale of love, loss and revenge, against a powerful backdrop of adventure on the high seas, and drama on the land. The Blue Salt Road balances passion and loss, love and violence and draws on nature and folklore to weave a stunning modern mythology around a nameless, wild young man.

Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates
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An ingenious, dystopian novel of one young woman’s resistance against the constraints of an oppressive society. Arresting and visionary, Hazards of Time Travel  is both a novel of harrowing discovery and an exquisitely wrought love story that may be Joyce Carol Oates’s most unexpected novel so far.

Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix by Julie C. Dao
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This fairy tale retelling lives in a mystical world inspired by the Far East, where the Dragon Lord and the Serpent God battle for control of the earthly realm; it is here that the flawed heroine of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns finally meets her match. An epic fantasy finale to the Rise of the Empress novels.

The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman
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The fifth title in Genevieve Cogman’s witty and wonderful Invisible Library series, The Mortal Word is a rollicking literary adventure. Peace talks are always tricky, especially when a key diplomat gets stabbed. This rudely interrupts a top-secret summit between the warring dragons and Fae. As a neutral party, Librarian-spy Irene is summoned to investigate. She must head to a version of 1890s Paris, with her assistant Kai and her detective friend Vale, where these talks are fracturing. Here, she must get to the bottom of the attack – before either the peace negotiations or the city go up in flames.

City of Broken Magic by Mirah Bolender
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Five hundred years ago, magi created a weapon they couldn’t control. An infestation that ate magic—and anything else it came into contact with. Enemies and allies were equally filling. Only an elite team of non-magical humans, known as sweepers, can defuse and dispose of infestations before they spread. Most die before they finish training. Laura, a new team member, has stayed alive longer than most. Now, she’s the last—and only—sweeper standing between the city and a massive infestation.

Lies Sleeping by Ben Aaronovitch
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Join Peter Grant, detective and apprentice wizard, for a brand new case . . . Martin Chorley, aka the Faceless Man, wanted for multiple counts of murder, fraud, and crimes against humanity, has been unmasked and is on the run. Peter Grant, Detective Constable and apprentice wizard, now plays a key role in an unprecedented joint operation to bring Chorley to justice. But even as the unwieldy might of the Metropolitan Police bears down on its foe, Peter uncovers clues that Chorley, far from being finished, is executing the final stages of a long term plan. A plan that has its roots in London’s two thousand bloody years of history, and could literally bring the city to its knees.

Navigating The Stars by Maria V. Snyder
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Terra Cotta Warriors have been discovered on other planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. And Lyra Daniels’ parents are the archaeological Experts (yes with a capital E) on the Warriors and have dragged her to the various planets to study them despite the time dilation causing havoc with her social life. When one of the many Warrior planets goes silent, and looters attack her research base, Lyra becomes involved in discovering why the Warriors were placed on these planets. And, more importantly, by who.

Outrun The Wind by Elizabeth Tammi
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The Huntresses of Artemis must obey two rules: never disobey the goddess, and never fall in love. After being rescued from a harrowing life as an Oracle of Delphi, Kahina is glad to be a part of the Hunt; living among a group of female warriors gives her a chance to reclaim her strength, even while her prophetic powers linger. But when a routine mission goes awry, Kahina breaks the first rule in order to save the legendary huntress Atalanta.

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