Cthulhu Mythos Fiction Contest: Vote for your favourite

[carnage_lee]

Here they are the five entries that made the final for the Cthulhu Mythos Fiction Contest.

Please read the stories and then decide on your personal favourite. You may only choose one entry but you can change your mind (up until the close of the poll at the end of the month).

We had a wonderful collection of entries to the competition, at first it looked like we would only have two but a whole raft of entries late in December saw the numbers grow. We were very impressed by the stories and choosing five to go through wasn't easy by any means.

Thanks again to all those that took part, it's really appreciated.

Good luck!

[Ash]

I liked them all. I thought A Death of Ages was excellent with Lovecraftian dreamlike qualities but in the end it was Misatonic Moon that made me smile hoilding good atmosphere and pace for a short story. The other three were also great, I think it's too tempting to try and cram everything in to a short piece. I'd like to read more of all of your work.

[Victimizer]

I'm going to go ahead and explain my choices in voting here as well (under cover of a spoilers-thingie), as wella s some other related criticism:

(The reason I'm doing it with spoiler tags is that I don't want to...well, spoil the enjoyment of any of these tales)
(warning, somewhat lengthy)

Spoiler:

Personally, I thought "Death of Ages" was the very best of the lot, with a good flow of tension, great visual imagery and a beautiful choice in language, with just the right amount of non-colloquial words used. Sadly however, it falls short on a pretty fatal point: It is not a Cthulhu Mythos story; there is nothing in it to connect it to the mythos, and given that this contest was about doing just that (i.e. this being a cthulhu mythos fiction contest as opposed to a 'dark fiction' contest or something like that), I chose not to vote for it - again, this saddened me somewhat.

My second choice would've been the delightfully written "The Remnant from the Deeps". I thought that this play on Moby Dick and allusions to Lovecraftian imagery was quite expertly done. However, they are merely allusions, so the things which filtered down from the stars could really be anything. I was also uncertain if it was meant to be a parody - it didn't appear to me that way, but my feelings on parodies (see below when I speak of "Miskatonic Moon") are unfortunately not exactly of the sort which can be seen as pleasurable, at least when it comes to cthulhoid fiction. Again, I don't think this tales was of that sort at all.

So this left me with only three stories, the first of which being "Miskatonic Moon". Not only is this a parody, but I found the sudden change of the protagonist's perspective towards the antagonist and the protagonist's sudden need to act a bit jumpy - it didn't feel very natural (my tale also suffered from something similar near the end, imo. It didn'T make it into the top 5 and will likely be put up sometime in the future in the fiction-forum). Style-wise I thought the story was fine, but the parodic, if clever, elements ruined it for me personally. I felt this shift in mood in the "moon" scene was rather sudden as well.

Next up, the clever and enjoyable "The End of it all". I loved this one! Though not as atmospheric, it reminded me fondly of the single player adventure which was included in Pegasus Press' german Call of Cthulhu...Player's Rulebook, I think it was. I did manage to immediatley find the "bad guy" and get myself spectacularly killed, which mirrors pretty much most of my Cthulhoid outings into games based on the genre.
Which brings me to a bit of a point I was unsure on how to handle: This was more of a game than a story...or was it? I guess interactive fiction still counts as fiction, but that might open a whole can of worms, definition-wise, if it were allowed. I decided not to let this go into my evaluation of the story though. Instead, the only thing which I had to say about it negatively, which is more a flaw of the chosen format, was the lack of a cohesively flowing plot and build up of tension, which depends largely on which paths one chooses to read along. Still, it can be critiqued imo.

...bringing me to the tale I voted for: "One thousand Dead names". This tale has, in my not-so-humble opinion, quite a few flaws, beginning with an overly abundant flowery language, which can be a bit jarring in places (and seems to oddly lessen as the story continues, and not just due to the introduction of the side-characters and conversation). One of the paragraphs also omits a few words/has a few mistakes in it which, while forgiveable, did break my flow of reading. It also features one of my least favourite types of protagonists: The "Paranormal detective", i.e. the kind that either has super-powers, access to spells or a pretty darn good knowledge of what he is dealing with.
Nevertheless, it had somewhat original concepts, had a good flow in both plot and tension and showed off the lingual mastery of the author (if somewhat abundantly, as previously stated). I had a hard time choosing between it and "The End of it all", but given the genre, tension is an important part of a cthulhoid tale, and "One Thousand Dead Names" accomplishes this in a much better vein than a "choose your own adventure" could.



As for a critique of the contest itself: It was unfortunate that "Death of Ages", and to some extent, "Remnant of the Deeps" were constructed in the way that they were, which was likely done due to fear of copyright issues. Nevertheless, at least one of these stories was not a Cthulhu Mythos tale at all (the other being up for grabs, as I stated above - really, it just captures the mood of such a tale).
Due to the discussion about the copyright issue, I can understand why the judges allowed these tales to be put into the top five despite having broken the rules of the contest (Clear in "Death of Ages", not so clear in "Remnants of the Deeps".) I'm aware that the definition of what constitutes a Cthulhu Mythos tale varies from person to person, but I think most camps of thought on that subject would agree that "Death of Ages" does not belong to the mythos, and I'd even go so far as to say that it doesn't necessarily count as being a tale of "cosmic horror" or that it can be called "lovecraftian". I'd like to again remind the reader that I thought this was the very best of the 5 tales that were set up to vote. The quality just shouldn't, in my mind, detract from its obvious lack of ties to the Mythos, similar to how in a writing contest about horses should not allow submissions which utterly lack said equine actors.
Still, I can see the reasons behind the choice of the judges (or naughtily presume that I do ). It should however, be worth considering either allowing dark fiction of all denominations to be allowed into the contest next time around, or to definitely make it clear that such tales will not be allowed in future contests (though I thought it was fairly clear myself), and that this was merely an exception to deal with the unforeseen variables which cropped up during the contest's first run.

...I hope my criticism hasn't rubbed anyone the wrong way - no hurting of feelings or other insults were intended.

[Tabs]

I enjoyed reading the stories, two are stand outs for me, one because it is so well written the other because it is amusing; the spoiler reveals my personal favourite:

Spoiler:

1 One Thousand Names 2 Miskatonic Moon 3 A Death Of Ages 4 Remnant From The Deeps 5 The End Of It All

[Mi-Go Agent]

The thing that gets me about "A Death of Ages", is that, from a Lovecraftian point of view, the "horrible" afterlife is more like a heaven, a paradise of chaos and destruction.

[welsh]

I have to say that I like Death of Ages quite a bit. I appreciated End of it all for being experimental in form and it reminded me of the Cthulhu solo adventures. I liked Remnant of the Deep's retelling of Moby Dick as a Cthulhu story- a nice twist on a classic! The hard toss up for me is Miskatonic Moon- which as a grad student I thought was great and a thousand dead names- which made me think- yes, a real defender from the forces of darkness would probably be kind of like this. Overall, A thousand Dead Names is, to me, the most polished story and I really enjoyed the many arcane references. Tough choices.

[Mi-Go Agent]

Do I deduce that Miskatonic Moon is your own submission, Welsh?

In general, I'm wondering if it would be a good idea or not for the authors to come forwards, and maybe talk about what they wrote?

[carnage_lee]

Do I deduce that Miskatonic Moon is your own submission, Welsh?

In general, I'm wondering if it would be a good idea or not for the authors to come forwards, and maybe talk about what they wrote?

Please do not do this. I deliberately removed references to names, etc. After the vote, then yes by all means, this would be good thing to do. At this stage I think it is fairer to all to have the stories stand for themselves.

I hope you understand....

[welsh]

Do I deduce that Miskatonic Moon is your own submission, Welsh?

In general, I'm wondering if it would be a good idea or not for the authors to come forwards, and maybe talk about what they wrote?

Hey bud-

No, I didn't submit. I had an idea for a story, but was too busy. Instead, I got to judge- which was a lot of fun. The other stories that were submitted were pretty good as well, but I think these five were probably the best.

[mikc]

What a pity that only 13 people voted on this.
I hope and assume that a lot more read the entries, which were all worthy of a wider audience.
I tend to broadly agree with Victimizer's assessments; s/he has obviously put a lot of thought into hir analyses and taken the time to share hir opinions - admirable when compared to my own laziness.
The whole issue of what constitutes a Cthulhu Mythos story was also a factor in my decision to vote for "A Thousand Dead Names" rather than "Death of Ages".
Where our opinions differ is that, on the basis of content rather than style, I still enjoyed "Names" the most.
I wonder if the writer is a fan of the DC "Hellblazer" comic series, as I was fondly reminded of the sort of atmosphere evoked in the better story-arcs from its pages.
A big thank-you to all the writers and of course to carnage_lee for organising the whole thing.

[Victimizer]

Well thanks, but to be fair I probably just wrote that much since I was one of the participants (not one that got into the top five though ).
I also admit that "Names" gave off a distinctive John Constantine/Trenchcoat Brigade vibe. Oddly enough, I like all of those characters (despite not having read all that much about them), i.e. the DC/Vertigo practitioners of Magic and such, but for one reason or another I don't like them mixing with my Cthulhu Mythos - peas to the one side, mashed potatoes to the other and all that.
Perhaps I still suffer from the overdose of that mixture that is Titus Crow. Though I look forward to reading the two newish Lumley collections I've acquired - The Taint and Haggopian - I'm still pretty hesitant to pick up Lumley's other longer works like Khai of ancient Khem or his Dreamlands novels. Though I guess Sorcery in Shad wasn't too terrible.

And now I'll shut up before veering waay too much off topic

*edit*
Oh, forgot to clear that up: I'm a "he"; (despite my avatar's fanbase being composed of a large section of the other gender - or so I've been told) "Victimizer" does tend to be a bit unclear, I really just keep the name around since I've had it for over a decade - Identity changes are such a pain. Sorry for the confusion.

[carnage_lee]

Well, the votes are all in and counted - and the winner is <b>One Thousand Names</b>, congratulations to <b>Sara Hughes</b> and commiserations to our other finalists: Mi-Go Agent; The Remnant from the Deeps, S. Hemming: A Death Of Ages, David Howell; Miskatonic Moon and Mr. Handy; The End of It All. Special thanks also to the three authors whose entries weren't short-listed to the final vote: Victimizer; The Woodland, Ash; Hotaru and C. Watson; The Vacation of a Lifetime; you made the choice of finalists especially difficult.

In the words of (young) Mr. Grace.... "You've all done very well."

We will be opening up a forum to 'show-case' all the entries and I'm sure the authors would like to receive your comments in that new forum.

Should we run this again.....?