“My story is inspired by some local Cork traditions about the O’Driscoll clan who dwelt on the now mainly deserted islands off the mainland Irish port of Baltimore (Baile an Tigh Moir—the town of the big house), whose name was also taken to the New World by Irish migrants.”
JACK YEOVIL is an amnesiac who took his name from the West Country town in which he was found in 1989. He has no recollection of his previous life. He has written for Empire and Good Times magazines, contributed stories to the GW Books anthologies Ignorant Armies, Wolf Riders, Red Thirst and Route 666, all edited by David Pringle, and has written the novels Drachenfels, Demon Download, Krokodil Tears, Comeback Tour, Beasts in Velvet and Genevieve Undead.
His greatest literary influences are Robert Faulcon, Harry Adam Knight, Carl Dreadstone and Jack Martin, and he describes his story in this book as “...a tribute to two great authors, awkward outsiders, who used a despised genre to make a genuine contribution to English and American letters. If you write in their genre, you must be influenced by them, and if you’re a reader who seeks a way into the genre, you could do no better than start with them: Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Raymond Chandler.
“It occurred to me that Chandler and Lovecraft had a lot in common. Born in 1888 and 1890 respectively, they lived unhappily in America but dreamed of a lost and imaginary England. Awkward outsiders, they were often beset with financial troubles and began their writing careers in pulp magazines. Their visionary, challenging work was first presented alongside lurid dross, though they later came to be recognised as central to separate movements within their chosen genres, hard-boiled crime and weird horror.
“Married strangely to older wives, they distrusted and feared women, often presenting cruel, almost inhuman female characters. Some of their greatest work is set in seaside towns whose physical corruption has an almost philosophical dimension. Since their deaths, they have become the most imitated and influential writers in their fields and are capable of inspiring entire collections devoted to their characters and themes, not to mention many of the bestselling novelists in their categories.
“Personally, I found the love of Chandler’s prose which I developed in my late teens helped cure habits I’d picked up through an earlier interest in Lovecraft. With ‘The Big Fish’, I wanted to bring a touch of Lovecraft’s Innsmouth to Chandler’s Bay City, fusing elements from ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ and Farewell, My Lovely. If its narrator isn’t quite Philip Marlowe, he certainly would like to be. I see him as more like Dick Powell than Humphrey Bogart. The stylistic tangle the story can’t resolve has something to do with the disparity between a Lovecraft protagonist, who is always overwhelmed by his hostile world, and a Chandler hero, who somehow shrugs it off.
“The other set of cross-generic twins of the period are Robert E. Howard and Cornell Woolrich, a pair of mother-dominated paranoid miseries whose vision of a hostile universe makes Lovecraft’s cosmic horror seem quite sunny; but I can’t envision a story in which Conan Wears Black, though a chance meeting in a diner with Bob and Cornell comparing photographs of their mothers has some horrific possibility.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to Dorothy Lumley, Steve Saffel, Cath Trechman, Natalie Laverick, Jo Fletcher, Bob Garcia and the late James Turner of Arkham House for their help, all the contributors, and, especially, to Philip J. Rahman and Dwayne H. Olson, whose enthusiasm and support made this book possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STEPHEN JONES is one of Britain’s most acclaimed anthologists of horror and dark fantasy. He has more than 125 books to his credit, including Shadows Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft’s Book of Horror (with Dave Carson), H.P. Lovecraft’s Book of the Supernatural, Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft and Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany of the Macabre. He has won numerous awards for his work, including three World Fantasy Awards and four Bram Stoker Awards. You can visit his web site at www.stephenjoneseditor.com
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
WEIRD SHADOWS OVER INNSMOUTH
Edited by Stephen Jones
Including the unpublished early draft of ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’ by H.P. Lovecraft, this extraordinary volume features twelve stories by some of the world's most prominent Lovecraftian authors, including Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith, John Glasby, Paul McAuley, Steve Rasnic Tem, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Brian Lumley, Basil Copper, Hugh B. Cave, and Richard Lupoff.
“Not just H.P. Lovecraft fans will revel in this fine follow-up to Jones's Shadows Over Innsmouth.” Publishers Weekly
TITANBOOKS.COM
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
BLACK WINGS OF CTHULHU
VOLUME ONE
Edited by S.T. Joshi
S.T. Joshi—the twenty-first century's preeminent expert on all things Lovecraftian—gathers twenty-one of the master's greatest modern acolytes, including Caitlín R. Kiernan, Ramsey Campbell, Michael Shea, Brian Stableford, Nicholas Royle, Darrell Schweitzer, and W.H. Pugmire, each of whom serves up a new masterpiece of cosmic terror that delves deep into the human psyche to horrify and disturb.
“[An] exceptional set of original horror tales... a breathtaking range of colorful new ideas and literary styles.” Booklist
COMING SOON
Black Wings of Cthulhu Volume One (February 2014]
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COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS
ACOLYTES OF CTHULHU
Edited by Robert M. Price
Twenty-eight works in the vein of the master, H. P. Lovecraft, by some of his greatest disciples. This massive volume features treasures from modern masters such as Neil Gaiman and S.T. Joshi to famed storytellers including Jorge Luis Borges, Edmond Hamilton, and Pulitzer Prize nominee Manley Wade Wellman.
“Searchers after Lovecraftian horror need look no further than Acolytes of Cthulhu.” Publishers Weekly
AVAILABLE JUNE 2014
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Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for Shadows over Innsmouth
Other macabre collections of Lovecraftian horror available from Titan Books
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Table Of Contents
Introduction
The Shadow over Innsmouth
I
II
III
IV
V
Beyond the Reef
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
The Big Fish
Return to Innsmouth
The Crossing
Down to the Boots