It's All Real, Isn't It?
A Review of Robert Bloch's "Strange Eons"
CLASSICS FROM THE GRAVE returns with an adoring love letter to H.P. Lovecraft and the universe he created.
Robert Bloch (1917-1994) knew H.P. Lovecraft personally. Their relationship began when Bloch, a teenage Weird Tales enthusiast living in Milwaukee, wrote a fan letter to his favorite author (Lovecraft). Thereafter, the two became pen pals and regularly exchanged letters until Lovecraft’s untimely demise in March 1937. Lovecraft encouraged Bloch’s literary ambitions and invited him to join the so-called “Lovecraft Circle” of writers who all wrote tales within the same shared universe. For this kindness, Bloch repaid his benefactor by killing off his literary double in the short story, “The Shambler from the Stars” (Weird Tales, Vol. 26, no. 3). Lovecraft returned the favor by “killing” Bloch in “The Haunter of the Dark” (Weird Tales, Dec. 1936) [1]. Man, with friends like these…
Bloch became a fixture in Weird Tales and, in many ways, filled the role left behind by Lovecraft as the “Unique Magazine’s” weird horror specialist. Bloch penned for the pulps until their demise in the late 1950s/ early 1960s. By that point, the kid from Milwaukee was a huge, in-demand star in Hollywood thanks to the success of his novel, Psycho. Bloch was at the peak of his powers in the 1960s and 1970s, and TV viewers and moviegoers had a hard time avoiding his handiwork. Bloch was, in a word, a much bigger deal than Lovecraft.
And yet, despite carving out a niche for himself as a master of suspense, Bloch returned to his roots with the publication of Strange Eons (1978). A slim novel told in three separate but interrelated chapters, Strange Eons dares to discuss the possibility that Lovecraft wrote non-fiction. What if Cthulhu and his brood are real? The novel asks.
If Bloch’s critically panned novel is any indication, we’re royally screwed.
Bloch’s biography has been covered twice before, so suffice it to say that Bloch graduated from Weird Tales to penning screenplays for films such as The Skull (1965) and The House That Dripped Blood (1971). Another film, 1967’s Torture Garden, presented an anthology of horrors all originally written by Bloch for the pulps. On the small screen, Bloch penned episodes for Thriller with Boris Karloff, as well as made-for-TV movies like Journey to Midnight (1971) and The Dead Don’t Die (1975). The man kept going strong into the 1980s, and before his death from cancer in 1994, Bloch also wrote for the comics.
Strange Eons, which can now be purchased with a gorgeous cover from the fine people at Valancourt Books, does not have a great reputation. Horror author and splatterpunk icon David J. Schow has remarked that the book has been used and abused by horror stylists for years due to its somewhat juvenile quality. The critical consensus suggests that Strange Eons reads like fan fiction, with frequent, almost uncritical references to Lovecraft, his stories, and his creations. For fans of the Cthulhu Mythos, this is no issue; for detractors or more tepid souls, it’s a major hurdle.
The novel concerns the fate of three characters: Los Angeles art collector Albert Keith, his ex-wife Kay Keith, and L.A. journalist Mark Dixon. The narrative begins with Albert’s story in the first chapter, which sets the thoroughgoing plot in motion. Albert purchases a macabre painting one afternoon from an antiques dealer on South Alvardo Street. The painting attracts the morbid-minded Albert, who finds himself naturally drawn to the portrait of the red-eyed canine amongst the catacombs. Albert presents the painting to his friend Simon Waverly. Waverly gasps and immediately rushes to the nearest library. When he returns, he carries in his arms a copy of Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others. He flips the pages to “Pickman’s Model.”
“The painting is the work of Richard Upton Pickman,” Waverly exclaims.
A bit of excavation on the canvas proves that this supposition is correct. Albert’s recent purchase is a Pickman original. When the two return to the antiques shop to further investigate matters, they discover the proprietor, Felipe Santiago, as a bloodied corpse.
It’s murder!
The Keith-Waverly investigation first takes the duo to Boston, where Waverly confirms that the painting was purchased at an estate sale in Providence, Rhode Island. Waverly discovers a set of letters regarding the portrait written in Lovecraft’s familiar scrawl. This is just more evidence of Waverly’s pet theory—Lovecraft was a dreamer, yes, but he did not write fiction. Instead, Lovecraft was an oracle and a scribe for the Great Old Ones who controlled Earth before the coming of man.
Waverly pursues this line of inquiry, driven by his need to uncover the mystery, until it kills him. Keith, motivated by loyalty to his friend and a desire for truth, is summoned to a Los Angeles hospital by his friend’s criminal imposter, and the art collector is nearly murdered by him and a strange, black doctor. Despite this danger, Keith’s determination keeps him following leads until he finds himself shoulder-to-shoulder with a British Army veteran on a lonely island in Tahiti. There, the two men board a Japanese fishing vessel and hunt for the location of Cthulhu’s sleeping quarters in R’lyeh, compelled by their shared purpose. The men find the eldritch city, but the captain and crew, actually Cthulhu cultists, betray this trust and throw both Keith and his companion into the gaping maw of the horrific city.
The second chapter follows Kay Keith after she learns about her husband’s disappearance and death. Kay smells something fishy right away, for Albert was not a drinking man, and yet French authorities cataloged his death as an accidental drowning due to drunkenness. Kay’s intuition is further triggered by the appearance of Ben Powers, a suspiciously well-informed banker who tells Kay that she is the sole recipient of Albert’s estate. Kay makes some phone calls and learns that her Ben Powers is not the real article; the real Ben Powers died of a heart attack before Kay ever learned of Albert Keith’s death.
The high strangeness only increases when Kay nets a modelling gig for the Starry Wisdom Temple. The occult fraternity is run by Reverend Nye, an obisidian-colored man who attempts to convert Kate to his religion of elder gods and cosmic invasions. During her one and only ceremony, Kay watches in disbelief as the mostly young, black, and Hispanic congregation oohs and ahs over the Shining Trapezohedron. The mystical mumbo-jumbo espoused by Reverend Nye is a bit of a cover; the man is, in actuality, Nyarlathotep, and, despite having tried to kill her husband earlier, he wants to protect Kay as a future mother of hell spawn.
Kay briefly escapes the horrors of the Starry Wisdom Temple and is saved by a secret organization of G-men dedicated to combating Cthulhu cultists. These G-men are all part of Project Arkham—a U.S. governmental program to track and disband all Cthulhu cultists and their minions across the world. Grateful but wary, Kay’s instinct for self-preservation endures, even as the G-men protect her. This proves wise when she is betrayed by her minder, who turns out to be a cultist himself. Selected by the cult against her will, Kay’s final moments she her thrown into the dormant volcano known as Rano Raraku on Easter Island.
Finally, in the third chapter, we get the story of Mark Dixon and the Black Brotherhood. The latter is a pro-chaos and pro-Cthulhu terrorist network responsible for a myriad of murders, assassinations, bombings, and other antisocial acts done in order to disguise their real intentions. Well, poor Mark learns what these real intentions are after surviving a horrific earthquake in Los Angeles. The tremors dig up the dead, and after barely surviving an attack of ghouls, Mark learns that Cthulhu has reformed and even multiplied thanks to the machinations of the Black Brotherhood.
And Great Cthulhu went forth into the world and began his eternal reign.
Thus, Strange Eons ends with a bang for the Cthulhu cultists, and a whimper for humanity. Eldritch evil wins, and Earth is doomed. Such cold-hearted pessimism surely would have made Lovecraft smile.
Strange Eons is nowhere near Bloch’s best work. In fact, one has to have a strong fondness for cheese to merely enjoy this paean to Lovecraft’s universe. Pretty much every twist in the narrative is followed by digressions on the greatness of Lovecraft’s oeuvre. That’s all well and good, but I can understand the criticisms of Strange Eons, especially in regard to its adolescent-esque prose. Bloch almost seems to be writing for a teenage audience here. Also of note, Bloch’s best horror and crime novels are all full of sardonic, gallows humor. Said humor is entirely missing in this book, and that is a shame.
Ultimately, Strange Eons is best enjoyed as a kind of love letter to an old friend. Bloch has nothing but sweet things to say about Lovecraft and the gods that he made. Diehard Lovecraft fans will also find this novel sugary because of the sheer number of Easter eggs buried throughout. Hell, Bloch even mentions the psychedelic rock band from the ‘60s that named themselves after the Old Gentleman of Providence. That’s pretty hip.
For me personally, I got a kick out of Strange Eons because it reminded me of my own lost friend Damien, aka Arkham Reporter. Before he quit the Lovecraft biz, Arkham Reporter was THE BEST Lovecraft content creator on YouTube. In that role, he posed the question: What would pulp Lovecraftian fiction look like? Well, it would look like Strange Aeons, which has loads of action, whipsnap dialogue, and a bevy of Cthulhu cultists just waiting to be shot down. Also, Strange Eons has a scene where the men of Project Arkham propose shooting R’yleh with a nuke, and Arkham Reporter covered that the very same quandary in Issue #6 of The Bizarchives. Great minds and all that…
3.0 stars out of 5.
[1] All of this fun came to a conclusion well after Lovecraft’s death. In the 1950s, “The Shadow from the Steeple” wrapped up the whole mess, with more deaths and at least one temporary resurrection.
A great book. Especially for Lovecraft fans.