Free Fiction Recommendation: Of Melei, of Ulthar
I'm still slowly working my way through the Locus Recommended Reading List - at least those parts of it that are available online. This week, I made it to Gord Sellar's "Of Melei, of Ulthar" published in the October 2009 Clarkesworld.
I was really taken with the narrative, although that perhaps reflects on how I often move through my own life half-dreaming. For all its dream-like, inverted complexities, the story is relatively straightforward: whispers of mystery, brutality, and warmth intertwined. The prose wanders from verbose and overwrought to more concrete as the decision sharpens within the protagonist, and the slow realization of the dream-world's location - which could come off as overly trite or precious so very easily - is effective when wrapped in Melei's breathtaken wonder at fierce survival in the face of overwhelming bleakness and apparent lack of the divine (or supernatural).
For all that I haven't myself read any Lovecraft, I recognized within the first couple of paragraphs that this story played with ideas of his creations. The invocation of the name "Kadath" further confirmed it for me, and what a world where I can be so familiar with a constructed mythos and yet never have read any of the source material! I am also familiar with Lovecraft's prose style, having read snatches of it, and could see the why's and wherefore's of Sellar's prose choices.
Indeed, I think Sellar has finally inspired me to read some of Lovecraft's pieces, starting with "The Cats of Ulthar" and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
I apologize for the brevity of this discussion, but I must run for a ten-hour workday! Please, do, tell me what you think of "Of Melei, of Ulthar" and what I should next read in Lovecraft's playground.
I was really taken with the narrative, although that perhaps reflects on how I often move through my own life half-dreaming. For all its dream-like, inverted complexities, the story is relatively straightforward: whispers of mystery, brutality, and warmth intertwined. The prose wanders from verbose and overwrought to more concrete as the decision sharpens within the protagonist, and the slow realization of the dream-world's location - which could come off as overly trite or precious so very easily - is effective when wrapped in Melei's breathtaken wonder at fierce survival in the face of overwhelming bleakness and apparent lack of the divine (or supernatural).
For all that I haven't myself read any Lovecraft, I recognized within the first couple of paragraphs that this story played with ideas of his creations. The invocation of the name "Kadath" further confirmed it for me, and what a world where I can be so familiar with a constructed mythos and yet never have read any of the source material! I am also familiar with Lovecraft's prose style, having read snatches of it, and could see the why's and wherefore's of Sellar's prose choices.
Indeed, I think Sellar has finally inspired me to read some of Lovecraft's pieces, starting with "The Cats of Ulthar" and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
I apologize for the brevity of this discussion, but I must run for a ten-hour workday! Please, do, tell me what you think of "Of Melei, of Ulthar" and what I should next read in Lovecraft's playground.