Mythos and Horror Stories
Frank Belknap Long
(version 3.0)
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Contents
Ron Breznay’s The Old Masters Of Horror: Frank Belknap Long
The Hounds of Tindalos (1929)
The Space-Eaters (1928)
The Horror from the Hills (1931)
"When Chaugnar Wakes" (1932)
John Dee’s Necronomicon: A Fragment (1984)
Dark Awakening (1980)
The Ocean Leech (1925)
The Man with a Thousand Legs (1927)
The Were-Snake (1925)
It Will Come to You (1942)
Ron Breznay’s The Old Masters Of Horror: Frank Belknap Long
[The following is a reprint of a column which originally appeared in the February 24, 2005, issue of Hellnotes.]
Frank Belknap Long, Jr., had a long and prolific writing career, penning hundreds of stories and a number of novels in the genres of horror, science fiction, and fantasy (or scientifantasy, as Long himself put it). He was a frequent contributor to Weird Tales and other pulp magazine. He received the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award in 1978 and the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award in 1988.
Long was born on April 27, 1903 (some sources incorrectly say 1901), in New York City to well-to-do parents. His father was a prominent dentist, and the family lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Long’s interest in fantastic fiction started in his youth when he read the Oz books and works by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and his idol, Edgar Allan Poe.
Long studied journalism at New York University for less than two years. His studies were cut short by a long hospitalization for appendicitis, after which he decided to pursue a career as a writer. He was able to do this for a while without the bother of having to earn a living as he stayed under his parents’ roof.
When he was 16, Long won an essay-writing contest in The Boy’s World, which led to his invitation to join the United Amateur Press Association. His first published work was “Dr. Whitlock’s Price,” which appeared in the UAPA journal United Amateur in March 1920. His next story, “The Eye Above the Mantel,” was published in the same magazine in March 1921. This tale, which involved ancient horror, other dimensions, and forbidden knowledge, caught the eye of H.P. Lovecraft, who wrote Long a letter praising the work. Long’s prose-poem “At the Home of Poe” appeared in the May 1922 issue of United Amateur. His first book was A Man from Genoa and Other Poems (1926).
In 1922, the young Long met Lovecraft when the latter visited New York. This started a close personal and professional friendship that would last until Lovecraft’s death. Lovecraft’s admiration of Long was evidenced by his laudatory critical essay “The Work of Frank Belknap Long, Jr.” (United Amateur, March 1924). Long was often the first-reader of Lovecraft’s stories, and he was one of six writers authorized by Lovecraft to use his Cthulhu mythos and idea-book. He was the first person after Lovecraft to write a story in the mythos, “The Hounds of Tindalos” (1929). Long wrote a biography of Lovecraft, Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Night Side (1975), which won a World Fantasy Special Award in 1976.
Long’s professional career started when “The Desert Lich” appeared in the November 1924 issue of Weird Tales, to which he would become a frequent contributor. He also sold many stories to the science fiction pulp magazines, starting in 1930 with “The Thought Materializer” in Science Wonder Stories Quarterly, followed by appearances in Astounding Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and others. His SF stories departed from the stereotypical SF of the era, which centered around gadgetry and gargantuan insects, as his themes were the environment, mankind’s treatment of the planet, and the human condition.
The golden age of science fiction began in 1939 when John W. Campbell, Jr., took over Astounding Stories, which became Astounding Science Fiction, and started a fantasy magazine called Unknown. Around this time, Weird Tales began to flounder and Long devoted himself almost entirely to science fiction. However, it took Long over two years to satisfy Campbell’s rigorous editorial policies and sell him a story. Long’s submission of “Dark Vision” to Astounding was instead published in the first issue of the fantasy pulp Unknown (March 1939). He finally got into Astounding with “Brown” (July 1941). In all, Long sold 12 stories to Astounding and ten to Unknown during the period of 1939 to 1950. He shared the pages with such masters of science fiction as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and A.E. van Vogt.
In 1946, Arkham House published The Hounds of Tindalos, a collection of 21 stories which first appeared in the pulps. This collection was critically acclaimed in such literary venues as the New York Times. In 1949, Long’s first science fiction novel appeared, John Carstairs, Space Detective. This tale of Carstairs, who used alien plants as a means of foiling mysteries, combined a humorous tone and a hard-boiled detective style. The novel was actually a blending of six previously published Carstairs short stories.
In the late 1940s, the pulp magazine field began to shrink, and paperback science fiction novels and anthologies gained in popularity. The first such original SF paperback anthology, The Girl with the Hungry Eyes and Other Stories (1949), included Long’s “Maturity Night,” and his stories appeared in many of these anthologies. His first paperback SF novel was Space Station No. 1 (1957), published by Ace, which sold 100,000 copies in the first six months, probably his greatest exposure to date. This was followed in 1962 by Mars Is My Destination. In 1963 and 1964, Long saw the publication of several books. Belmont reprinted Tindalos in a two-volume paperback edition; published It Was the Day of the Robot, a revised, expanded version of the earlier “Made to Order”; and put out an anthology that included a reprint of “The Horror from the Hills.” And Arkham reprinted The Horror from the Hills in book form.
Long married fairly late in life when he wed Lyda Arco in 1961. They had no children (“my children were all Martians” was the way Long described his progeny).
Long continued to write SF into the 1970s. His last SF novel, The Night of the Wolf, came out in 1972. From then until his death, he published a gothic novel, The Lemonyne Heritage (1975), the biography of Lovecraft, a memoir, and several stories in magazines and anthologies. His final published work was “Sauce for the Gander,” which appeared in the January 1988 issue of Astro-Adventures. At the time of his death, he was working on a novel-length version of his short story “Cottage Tenant” (Fantastic, April 1975).
Long made his final public appearance at the Lovecraft Centennial Conference in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1990. He passed away in New York City on January 2, 1994.
Long’s novels and collections seem to be out of print but are readily available on the secondary market. Several in-print anthologies contain some of his stories, including Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos and New Horizons (Arkham House).
The Hounds of Tindalos
I
"I'm glad you came," said Chalmers. He was sitting by the window and his face was very pale. Two tall candles guttered at his elbow and cast a sickly amber light over his long nose and slightly receding chin.
Chalmers would have nothing modern about his apartment. He had the soul of a mediaeval ascetic, and he preferred illuminated manuscripts to automobiles, and leering stone gargoyles to radios and adding-machines.
As I crossed the room to the settee he had cleared for me, I glanced at his desk and was surprised to discover that he had been studying the mathematical formulae of a celebrated contemporary physicist, and that he had covered many sheets of thin yellow paper with curious geometric designs.
"Einstein and John Dee are strange bedfellows," I said as my gaze wandered from his mathematical charts to the sixty or se
venty quaint books that comprised his strange little library. Plotinus and Emanuel Moscopulus, St. Thomas Aquinas and Frenicle de Bessy stood elbow to elbow in the somber ebony bookcase, and chairs, table, and desk were littered with pamphlets about mediaeval sorcery and witchcraft and black magic, and all of the valiant glamorous things that the modern world has repudiated.
Chalmers smiled engagingly, and passed me a Russian cigarette on a curiously carved tray. "We are just discovering now," he said, "that the old alchemists and sorcerers were two-thirds right, and that your modern biologist and materialist is nine-tenths wrong."
"You have always scoffed at modern science," I said, a little impatiently.
"Only at scientific dogmatism," he replied. "I have always been a rebel, a champion of originality and lost causes; that is why I have chosen to repudiate the conclusions of contemporary biologists."
"And Einstein?" I asked.
"A priest of transcendental mathematics!" he murmured reverently. "A profound mystic and explorer of the great suspected."
"Then you do not entirely despise science."
"Of course not," he affirmed. "I merely distrust the scientific positivism of the past fifty years, the positivism of Haeckel and Darwin and of Mr. Bertrand Russell. I believe that biology has failed pitifully to explain the mystery of man's origin and destiny."
"Give them time," I retorted.
Chalmers's eyes glowed. "My friend," he murmured, "your pun is sublime. Give them time. That is precisely what I would do. But your modern biologist scoffs at time. He has the key but he refuses to use it. What do we know of time, really? Einstein believes that it is relative, that it can be interpreted in terms of space, of curved space. But must we stop there? When mathematics fails us can we not advance by -insight?"
"You are treading on dangerous ground," I replied. "That is a pitfall that your true investigator avoids.
That is why modern science has advanced so slowly. It accepts nothing that it cannot demonstrate. But you-"
"I would take hashish, opium, all manner of drugs. I would emulate the sages of the East. And then perhaps I would apprehend -"
"What?"
"The fourth dimension."
"Theosophical rubbish!"
"Perhaps. But I believe that drugs expand human consciousness. William James agreed with me. And I have discovered a new one."
"A new drug?"
"It was used centuries ago by Chinese alchemists, but it is virtually unknown in the West. Its occult properties are amazing. With its aid and the aid of my mathematical knowledge I believe that I can go back through time."
"I do not understand."
"Time is merely our imperfect perception of a new dimension of space. Time and motion are both illusions. Everything that has existed from the beginning of the world exists now. Events that occurred centuries ago on this planet continue to exist in another dimension of space. Events that will occur centuries from now exist already. We cannot perceive their existence because we cannot enter the dimension of space that contains them. Human beings as we know them are merely fractions, infinitesimally small fractions of one enormous whole. Every human being is linked with all the life that has preceded him on this planet. All of his ancestors are parts of him. Only time separates him from his forebears, and time is an illusion and does not exist."
"I think I understand," I murmured.
"It will be sufficient for my purpose if you can form a vague idea of what I wish to achieve. I wish to strip from my eyes the veils of illusion that time has thrown over them, and see the beginning and the end."
"And you think this new drug will help you?"
"I am sure that it will. And I want you to help me. I intend to take the drug immediately. I cannot wait. I must see." His eyes glittered strangely. "I am going back, back through time."
He rose and strode to the mantel. When he faced me again he was holding a small square box in the palm of his hand. "I have here five pellets of the drug Liao. It was used by the Chinese philospher Lao Tze, and while under its influence he visioned Tao. Tao is the most mysterious force in the world; it surrounds and pervades all things; it contains the visible universe and everything we call reality. He who apprehends the mysteries of Tao sees clearly all that was and will be."
"Rubbish!" I retorted.
"Tao resembles a great animal, recumbent, motionless, containing in its enormous body all the worlds of our universe, the past, the present, and the future. We see portions of this great monster through a slit, which we call time. With the aid of this drug I shall enlarge the slit. I shall behold the great figure of life, the great recumbent beast in its entirety."
"And what do you wish me to do?"
"Watch, my friend. Watch and take notes. And if I go back too far, you must recall me to reality. You can recall me by shaking my violently. If I appear to be suffering acute physical pain you must recall me at once."
"Chalmers," I said, "I wish you wouldn't make this experiment. You are taking dreadful risks. I don't believe that there is any fourth dimension and I emphatically do not believe in Tao. And I don't approve of your experimenting with unknown drugs."
"I know the properties of this drug," he replied. "I know precisely how it affects the human animal and I know its dangers. The risk does not reside in the drug itself. My only fear is that I may become lost in time. You see, I shall assist the drug. Before I swallow this pellet I shall give my undivided attention to the geometric and algebraic symbols that I have traced on this paper." He raised the mathematical chart that rested on his knee. "I shall prepare my mind for an excursion into time. I shall approach the fourth dimension with my conscious mind before I take the drug with will enable me to exercise occult powers of perception. Before I enter the dream world of the Eastern mystic I shall acquire all of the mathematical help that modern science can offer. This mathematical knowledge, this conscious approach to an actual apprehension of the fourth dimension of time, will supplement the work of the drug. The drug will open up stupendous new vistas-- the mathematical perparation will enable me to grasp them intellectually. I have often grasped the fourth dimension in dreams, emotionally, intuitively, but I have never been able to recall, in waking life, the occupt splendors that were momentarily revealed to me.
"But with your aid, I believe that I can recall them. You will take down everything that I say while I am under the influence of the drug. No matter how strange or incoherent my speech may become you will omit nothing. When I awake I may be able to supply the key to whatever is mysterious or incredible. I am not sure that I shall succeed, but if I do succeed"--his eyes were strangely luminous-- "time will exist for me no longer!"
He sat down abruptly. "I shall make the experiment at once. Please stand over there by the window and watch. Have you a fountain pen?"
I nodded gloomily and removed a pale green Waterman from my upper vest pocket.
"And a pad, Frank?"
I groaned and produced a memorandum book. "I emphatically disapprove of this experiment," I muttered. "You're taking a frightful risk."
"Don't be an asinine old woman!" he admonished. "Nothing that you can say will induce me to stop now.
I entreat you to remain silent while I study these charts."
He raised the charts and studied them intently. I watched the clock on the mantel as it ticked out the seconds, and a curious dread clutched at my heart so that I choked.
Suddenly the clock stopped ticking, and exactly at that moment Chalmers swallowed the drug.
I rose quickly and moved toward him, but his eyes implored me not to interfere. "The clock has stopped," he murmured. "The forces that control it approve of my experiment. Time stopped, and I swallowed the drug. I pray God that I shall not lose my way."
He closed his eyes and leaned back on the sofa. All of the blood had left his face and he was breathing heavily. It was clear that the drug was acting with extraordinary rapidity.
"It is beginning to get dark," he murmured. "Write that. It is
beginning to get dark and the familiar objects in the room are fading out. I can discern them vaguely through my eyelids, but they are fading swiftly."
I shook my pen to make the ink come and wrote rapidly in shorthand as he continued to dictate.
"I am leaving the room. The walls are vanishing and I can no longer see any of the familiar objects. Your face, though, is still visible to me. I hope that you are writing. I think that I am about to make a great leap--a leap through space. Or perhaps it is through time that I shall make the leap. I cannot tell.
Everything is dark, indistinct."
"He sat for a while silent, with his head sunk upon his breast. Then suddenly he stiffened and his eyelids fluttered open. "God in heaven!" he cried. "I see!"
He was straining forward in his chair, staring at the opposite wall. But I knew that he was looking beyond the wall and that the objects in the room no longer existed for him. "Chalmers," I cried, "Chalmers, shall I wake you?"
"Do not!" he shrieked. "I see everything. All of the billions of lives that preceded me on this planet are before me at this moment. I see men of all ages, all races, all colors. They are fighting, killing, building, dancing, singing. They are sitting about rude fires on lonely gray deserts, and flying through the air in monoplanes. They are riding the seas in bark canoes and enormous steamships; they are painting bison and mammoths on the walls of dismal caves and covering huge canvases with queer futuristic designs. I watch the migrations from Atlantis. I watch the migrations from Lemuria. I see the elder races--a strange horde of black dwarfs overwhelming Asia, and the Neanderthalers with lowered heads and bent knees ranging obscenely across Europe. I watch the Achaeans streaming into the Greek islands, and the crude beginnings of Hellenic culture. I am in Athens and Pericles is young. I am standing on the soil of Italy. I assist in the rape of the Sabines; I march with the Imperial Legions. I tremble with awe and wonder as the enormous standards go by and the ground shakes with the tread of the victorious hastati. A thousand naked slaves grovel before me as I pass in a litter of gold and ivory drawn by night-black oxen from Thebes, and the flower-girls scream 'Ave Caesar' as I nod and smile. I am myself a slave on a Moorish galley. I watch the erection of a great cathedral. Stone by stone it rises, and through months and years I stand and watch each stone as it falls into place. I am burned on a cross head downward in the thyme-scented gardens of Nero, and I watch with amusement and scorn the torturers at work in the chambers of the Inquisition.
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