Welcome to the third entry in this series!
Recently, I asked Lovecraftian authors, editors, and reviewers to send me a list of five of their favorite Lovecraftian short stories. The results have been very interesting!
Note this is not a “Top Five” list, just a list of five favorites.
This week, author Rick Lai gives us his list:
- Sticks, by Karl Edward Wagner. (In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.) Why does an artist depict weird stick figures in his illustrations?
- The Valley of the Lost, (a. k. a The Secret of Lost Valley), by Robert E. Howard. (In The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard.) A Texas gunslinger discovers an ancient subterranean race.
- The Shadow from the Steeple, by Robert Bloch. (In Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 2.) What really happened in Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark?
- The Worm of Urakhu, by Richard L. Tierney. (In Scroll of Thoth: Tales of Simon Magus & the Great Old Ones.) How could the spice worms of Dune be part of the Cthulhu Mythos?
- Cold Print, by Ramsey Campbell. (In Cold Print.) In which we learn the true dangers of collecting pornography.
Previous lists: Laird Barron — Mike Davis
Next week: John Langan’s list!
(BONUS: A wonderful reading of The Valley of the Lost, by Robert E. Howard.)
The Lovecraft eZine 
Very cool list. I haven’t read the Tierney, time to remedy that!!!!!!
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I agree these are some of the best. I first read K.E. Wagner’s Sticks in the early 1980’s and it’s haunted me ever since. Excellent story. One of my favorites, for sure.
Howard’s The Valley of the Lost, I read even earlier. Always a fan of his work.
Bloch’s story, I read in the 90’s and found it chilling. Ramsey Campbell, it was as a library book, and anyone familiar with his work will find this a gem…the only one I haven’t read in the list is The Worm of Urakhu; but I read all three of the original Dune stories back in the ’70s and ’80s.
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