Dagon

Written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Narrated by Cathy Dobson

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937), who wrote as H. P. Lovecraft, was an American author who achieved posthumous acclaim for his outstanding and influential works of horror fiction.

Dagon is the story of a shipwrecked sailor who comes face to face with an ancient and terrible sea god, Dagon. So horrifying is his ordeal that he spends the rest of his life trying to escape the awful clutches of Dagon. In the end there is only one way out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Door Consulting
• Release date: Jun 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781467698856

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.

Reviews for Dagon

[Ali Khan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My first Lovecraft story. While i enjoyed the heck out of the atmospheric storytelling it was somewhat confusing in places.

[wordsampersand · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Even though it contains many of Lovecraft's "lesser" stories (as admitted in T.E.D. Klein's introduction), there still so many good pieces here. And the stories that aren't so good have moments and lines worth mentioning.

[wilum-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The other reviewer is mistaken to call these texts unedited, for they are the editorial work of S. T. Joshi. Joshi has labored to restore these texts, as close as possible, to Lovecraft's original versions; but in some cases those originals are not extant, and thus Joshi, using his intimate familiarity with Lovecraft's narrative styles, gives us the texts to what he feels is as close as possible to the originals. This edition is called a "Corrected Edition," and it repairs some of the poor editorial choices made by August Derleth when the initial Arkham House editions were published. A valuable Note on the Texts is included which succinctly describes what is what, what the sources for these texts are, &c. As a collection, this brings us Lovecraft in all of his creative variety. Although much of the contents is considered Lovecraft's "minor" tales, he was so original and possessed such a strange imagination that much of these stories are as fascinating and original as when they first appeared, almost one century ago. (It is weird to think how long ago these tales were written, because in my mind I still think of Lovecraft as a modern writer.) Lovecraft's originality comes, in part, from his working in all three genres of fantasy, science fiction and horror at times combining the genres so as to produce that which is now considered "Lovecraftian." The book begins with an excellent and lengthy Introduction by one of the greatest horror writers of all time, T. E. D. Klein (if you've not read his paperback collection, DARK GODS, seek it out and be amazed!), and concludes with Lovecraft's own remarkable survey of weird fiction, "Supernatural Horror in Literature." If you are new to Lovecraft I wouldn't begin with this book, but would rather choose THE DUNWICH HORROR AND OTHERS from Arkham House, or THE CALL OF CTHULHU AND OTHER WEIRD STORIES from Penguin Modern Classics.

[isabelx_21 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The ancient house has always been there, and people say One dwells therein who talks with the morning mists that come up from the deep, and perhaps sees singular things oceanward at those times when the cliff’s rim becomes the rim of all earth, and solemn buoys toll free in the white aether of faery. This they tell from hearsay, for that forbidding crag is always unvisited, and natives dislike to train telescopes on it. Summer boarders have indeed scanned it with jaunty binoculars, but have never seen more than the grey primeval roof, peaked and shingled, whose eaves come nearly to the grey foundations, and the dim yellow light of the little windows peeping out from under those eaves in the dusk. These summer people do not believe that the same One has lived in the ancient house for hundreds of years, but cannot prove their heresy to any real Kingsporter. This volume includes a lot of Lovecraft's shorter stories, plus some of his earliest stories and unfinished fragments. My favourite stories include "The Strange High House in the Mist", which is extremely spooky and atmospheric without being frightening, and The Moon-bog which warns anyone who makes a lot of money not under any circumstances to buy their ancestral home and decided to renovate it. that never ends well. At the other end of the spectrum is "The Horror at Red Hook" which is rather unpleasant. The last ninety pages are taken up by Lovecraft's essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature", which covers the history of supernatural literature from its roots in myths and legend, through the Gothic novels of the late 18th century, and ending with Arthur Machen and M. R. James. Lovecraft manages to be insulting about practically every author he mentions, even those whose work he rates highly, such as Edgar Allen Poe whose "pretence to profound and obscure scholarship, his blundering ventures in stilted and laboured pseudo-humor, and his often vitriolic outbursts of critical prejudice must all be recognized and forgiven", and mocks Lord Lytton's "amusingly serious occult studies".Lovecraft doesn't seem worried about spoiling the end of the stories he mentions, but having read the essay I now have plenty more books and stories to add to my wish list.