Lovecraft Illustrated Volume 5 - The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Hm. As I sit down to write a bit about The Shadow Over Innsmouth I recall a headline I read not twenty minutes ago on Google News—“Study shows humans evolved from cartilaginous fishes”. Well of course it does! Took them long enough to figure that out! Old Zadok Allen could have told them that. Hell anybody with a bit of Innsmouth “larnin’” could have. Another epic tale in Lovecraft’s oeuvre, this one is also packed with “mythos” history and a narrator who finds himself on an inexorable path toward ultimate horror. What else is new? The bus to Innsmouth only goes one way, even if you escape alive. The future is murky and dire, but what do you expect for a race evolved from cartilaginous fishes?

—Pete Von Sholly

S. T.'s brief Introduction discusses Lovecraft's difficulty in writing the story and those works that may have influenced HPL's plot. The story is so good, and yet, as stated in ye Introduction, "Lovecraft was so doubtful of the tale's quality he refused to submit it anywhere, so August Derleth took it upon himself to to send the typescript to Farnworth (sic) Wright (that shou'd be Farnsworth Wright, editor of WEIRD TALES), who rejected it for the same reasons he had turned down AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS: the story was very long and not easily divisible into parts." Brian Yuzna (who brought H. P. LOVECRAFT'S RE-ANIMATOR to ye screen) discusses his film adaptation of the story, DAGON, a film that perfectly captures the grotesque, monstrous, alien quality of the Deep Ones that Lovecraft so brilliantly portray'd in his story.

(...) The stories that follow Lovecraft's tale are those stories which may have influenced Lovecraft and inspired his writing of "The Shadow over Innsmouth"; and Bob Price's excellent essay is one of his finest and most fascinating, a brilliant study.

—W. H. Pugmire