Put up "The Outsider" (1926) and "Medusa's Coil" (1939) on Fantastic Worlds
Recently I posted a review of Marc Laidlaw's excellent "The Boy Who Followed Lovecraft" (2011) on Fantastic Worlds (review available here, story available here), and I mentioned that it was in many respects inspired by two particular Lovecraft stories: "The Outsider" for some elements of structure, and "Medusa's Coil" in terms of the final revelation. I was not particularly surprised that few people have heard of "Medusa's Coil" (Lovecraft collaborated on this with Zealia Bishop, it wasn't published until after his death, and so it is not always included in his corpus, even though it's rather obviously a Cthulhu Mythos tale and Lovecraft's own style is apparent throughout), but I was surprised that some people had never read "The Outsider," which is one of the most famous short stories (as opposed to novellas) Lovecraft wrote. So I put both up on Fantastic Worlds, for the perusal of one and all.
Here is "The Outsider" (1926), and here is "Medusa's Coil" (1939). If you read them both, you'll probably be horrified (in the sense Lovecraft meant you to be horrified) by the first, and horrified in a very different way by the second. I urge you to read both of them, though: in a very real sense they illustrate the dichotomy in Lovecraft's character that Laidlaw so brilliantly brought out in his own short story.
Thank you.
Here is "The Outsider" (1926), and here is "Medusa's Coil" (1939). If you read them both, you'll probably be horrified (in the sense Lovecraft meant you to be horrified) by the first, and horrified in a very different way by the second. I urge you to read both of them, though: in a very real sense they illustrate the dichotomy in Lovecraft's character that Laidlaw so brilliantly brought out in his own short story.
Thank you.