Have you been looking for the well-regarded book of Dreamlands tales The House of the Worm (1975)? S.T. Joshi has referred to it as (I paraphrase from memory) ‘an exercise in how closely one can write like Lovecraft’. Which, to me, is a kind of recommendation. Thus I was pleased to discover that the book is now a Kindle ebook titled The Country of the Worm: Excursions Beyond the Wall of Sleep (2013). In early 2020 this ebook edition is currently on a heavy discount, at a somewhat affordable £7.60.
The Country of the Worm is Myers’s long-awaited follow-up to The House of the Worm. It contains that first book in a corrected edition, together with all the stories in the same fantastic vein that Myers has written in the forty-three years since.
“Corrected” because the Arkham edition of 1975, though said to be nicely printed and collectable, was also reportedly riddled with typos.
Note also that recent issues of Crypt of Cthulhu (#111 and #122) appear to have had short Dreamlands fiction by Myers, which I’m guessing from their titles may be new or newly-published post-2013 tales? These issues are also available in ebook format.
In 2012 the Miskatonic Debating Club & Literary Society blog usefully reviewed the original Arkham The House of the Worm, adding some detail on how… “Chaosium has milked it dry for inspiration for their own compilations”, re: commercial RPG game books for the Dreamlands setting.
In Norwegian, there’s also the blog review “Gennem den dybe slummers porte”, which shows some of the interior illustrations from the 1975 edition.
Myers keeps updating the book, apparently (I had to get a new copy last year for that reason), so there are stories published in other venues in 2014 and 2018 included (this includes the story from CoC #111) — but I don’t know if this applies to the ebook.
I really must apologize. I started adding new stories to this collection soon after I published it, oblivious to the fact that I was effectively hiding them from the very people who were most likely to want to read them! I have tried to attone for this by placing these stories in other venues, such as Bob Price’s resurrected Crypt of Cthulhu. Five of these stories have been published already. Three remain to be. But as long as your new copy contains a story called “The Moon Rider,” you have everything you need.
No worries! The updates were indeed a well-kept secret to me, but I learned about them from Nick Diak of the Esoteric Order of Dagon Amateur Press Association and promptly got a new copy. The old one worked very well as a gift to a friend (a potential future fan). And I actually have both DARK WISDOM and THE HOUSE OF THE WORM from way back.
I know Nick. He and his partner, Michele Brittany, are pop culture scholars and human book factories when their day jobs allow it. Until my retirement three years ago, we worked for the same company, practically in the same building. We still get together some two or three times a year. I must remember to thank him, next time I see him, for helping to get the word out. Meanwhile thank you, Magister, for setting my mind at ease.
The original “House of the Worm” is one of the best of all Lovecraftian stories, and vastly underrated.
Thanks. When you say “original”, do you mean to imply that there are quite significant differences between the story in the 1975 edition and the story as it appears revised in the 2013 ebook?
There are three distinct versions of “The House of the Worm” out there: the 1970 version, which appeared in The Arkham Collector; the 1975 version, which gave its name to my Arkham House collection; and the 2013 version, which led off The Country of the Worm. And yes, there are significant differences between all three versions. I suppose I should apologize for that as well!
Hi Gary, no need to apologise about making creative changes, as it’s your prerogative to change your work as you see fit. I’m honoured to have you commenting here, and many thanks for the additional information. For those who may be now headed over to eBay to grab a copy of The Arkham Collector, I can add that your “The Feast in the House of the Worm” appeared in The Arkham Collector for Summer 1970. Then that first appearance was reprinted as “The House of the Worm” in Lin Carter’s paperback anthology New Worlds for Old, Ballantine, in 1971.
Believe me, David, the honor is mine. In the interest of accuracy, though, I should point out that the title was “The House of the Worm” in The Arkham Collector and “The Feast in the House of the Worm” in New Worlds for Old. It was Lin Carter who made the change. At the time I saw no point to it, but nowadays I am inclined to believe it was to differentiate my story from the earlier one by Merle Prout. I myself had not yet heard of Prout. I took my title from Lovecraft’s Selected Letters, wherein it appeared as one Lovecraft was planning to use but somehow never got round to it. But Carter’s instinct has been proven sound. If I had accepted his change, no one reading Mr. Bernstein’s comment above would be in any doubt about whose story he meant.
Many thanks. I see. Yes, that shows how the record can become garbled, since I thought I had taken the information from good sources. On the origin of the title, I suspect that Prout must have either had the title in correspondence with fellow Lovecraftians, or (more likely) he had picked it up from Frank Belknap Long. As Long had alluded to Lovecraft’s now-lost tale in print his “The Space Eaters” (1928), and named it: “My friend wrote short stories. […] One of his tales, “The House of the Worm,” had induced a young student at a Midwestern university to seek refuge…”
The lineage from Lovecraft to Prout by way of Long seems likely to me as well. And from Long we can likely trace it to Robert Bloch, who used it in his screenplay for the 1967 Amicus anthology Torture Garden, in the segment adapting his story of “The Man Who Collected Poe,” as the title of one of the resurrected author’s posthumous compositions. (Bloch did not this title in his original.) Delving deeper into the speculative weeds, I have always thought that Lovecraft’s “The House of the Worm” was not so much a lost or unwritten story as it was a retitled one, and that it survives today as “The Shunned House.” I think the length of the composition and the proximaty of time might support this, but I have no real evidence beyond that. My scholarship in these matters is the opposite of rigorous.
Thanks Gary, I wasn’t aware that Bloch had picked up the same title in the 1960s. As to what might have become of the original “Worm” I mused on this recently in my April 2019 post ““Alonzo Typer” – does it contain traces of the lost “House of the Worm”?” Aided by the relatively recent discovery of a new Lovecraft letter from 1924. https://tentaclii.wordpress.com/2019/04/03/alonzo-typer-in-a-new-reading/ and https://tentaclii.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/5000-word-londeon-letter-found-in-theatrical-archive/
Yes, that is very interesting stuff. And no, it does not appear to leave much resemblance between the outline (if I may so call it) of “The House of the Worm” and the finished story of “The Shunned House.” But Lovecraft himself has left us a roadmap for getting from such an outline to such a story—or indeed from any outline to any story! The roadmap is called “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” and the pertinent part goes like this: “Change incidents and plot whenever the developing process seems to suggest such change, never being bound by any previous design. If the development suddenly reveals new opportunities for dramatic effect or vivid storytelling, add whatever is thought advantageous—going back and reconciling the early parts to the new plan. Insert and delete whole sections if necessary or desirable, trying different beginnings and endings until the best arrangement is found. But be sure that all references throughout the story are thoroughly reconciled with the final design.” So I think I will hold to my theory awhile yet.
Regarding “Alonzo Typer”: Lumley’s manuscript is hard on the eyes, but a scan of it is available online at https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:418333/