Book 12 of 26 books for 2024! Let’s see if I can get to 50% read by the end of the weekend…

I have long been a fan of the work of Henry Kuttner, who was perhaps the most versatile of the later pulp fiction authors that followed in the wake of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. I’ve written about his works many times before on this blog: he wrote science fiction, pulp adventure, sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and more. This includes, with wife and regular collaborator C.L. Moore, what I consider to be one of the best science fiction stories of all time, Private Eye. Kuttner was one of those rare talents who could write about anything for anyone, a true mercenary of a writer

On a trip to China this past week for work, I recently reread a collection of Henry Kuttner’s cosmic horror short stories, The Book of Iod.

I emphasize “reread” because I apparently read these stories a long time ago on my kindle while on a trip somewhere else! I’ve come to realize that there are many books that I read on kindle while traveling and then completely forget to blog about when I come back! Rereading The Book of Iod, I didn’t recognize any of the stories on the second pass, but I nevertheless enjoyed them greatly.

The Book of Iod compiles ten stories of cosmic horror written by Kuttner, and again we can see the mercenary in Kuttner come to the forefront. Kuttner published his first short story in 1936, and H.P. Lovecraft passed away unexpectedly in 1937, leaving a big demand for his style of cosmic horror that Henry was more than capable to fill. The kindle-only edition of the collection doesn’t fill in the details of when the individual stories were written, but they are a fun snapshot of Kuttner’s creativity.

A summary of a few of the highlights are given below:

• The Salem Horror. When a struggling writer finds a hidden room in the old house he has rented to finish his work, he treats it as a stroke of good fortune: a place to write uninterrupted and undistracted by the outside world. However, the house used to be the domicile of an infamous and powerful witch, and the writer’s stay may be providing the key to open the door to unfathomable horrors.
• Spawn of Dagon. One of Kuttner’s Conan the barbarian-esque stories featuring Elak of Atlantis. After Elak and his companion Lycon kill a man in a drunken fight, they struggle to evade the local authorities. They receive timely help from members of the mysterious cult of Dagon, who in return ask them to break into the tower of a deadly wizard to break his power. In this game of deceit, murder and betrayal, however, nobody is innocent, as Elak will soon learn…
• The Frog. Artist Norman Hartley moves to the remote village of Monk’s Hollow to focus on finishing some of his work without distraction (sound familiar?). He moves into an old cottage and is not put off by the fact that it used to be the home of a dangerous witch (sound familiar?). But there is a stone slab in the back yard that he finds particularly off-putting, and against the wishes of the locals he has it removed. This sets into motion a deadly chain of events that could claim many more lives than Hartley’s. Despite the similarity to The Salem Horror, this story goes in a very different direction and is one of my favorites of the collection.
• Hydra. When two men experiment with astral projection using an old pamphlet with instructions on the topic, they learn that they have been lured into a trap that can claim far more than a person’s life. They struggle to undo their own mistakes, attempting to rescue a friend who lies somewhere between life and death. This story is fantastically strange, with some very unexpected twists to it.
• The Eater of Souls. In a story of mythological impact in the style of Lord Dunsany, the city of Bel Yarnak on an alien world is haunted by a monstrous being known as the Eater of Souls that comes regularly to claim new victims. The ruler of Bel Yarnak, the Sindara, vows to travel to the Gray Gulf of Yarnak to end the horror, despite his own god telling him that his effort is doomed.

These stories are certainly not the best of Kuttner’s oeuvre, but they nevertheless show a level of storytelling creativity that is often lacking in Lovecraft’s work. The story The Hunt, for example, begins with a man traveling to a distant relative’s isolated cottage to murder him, a delightfully unusual setup!

I would not imagine that this collection of Kuttner’s work will appeal to everyone, but anyone who has a thirst for classic cosmic horror will find much to enjoy.