★★★☆☆ The Life and Times of Cthulhu

I, Cthulhu, or, What’s a Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing in a Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47° 9′ S, Longitude 126° 43′ W)?

Neil Gaiman

I, Cthulhu is a tongue-in-cheek series of musings by Elder God Cthulhu about its life and times, told to someone called Whateley (I'm sorry, as I will explain, I don't know who that is) in somewhat the tone of your old crazy uncle. You can find it free here or here. I recommend the version on Gaiman's web site for the sake of the postscript about a correspondence between Lovecraft and P. G. Wodehouse.

Now, I need to make a confession. I have never read a single word by H.P. Lovecraft, as far as I know. I am slightly familiar with the Cthulhu mythos because, if you read Fantasy and Science Fiction, you can't help it. Cthulhu is referenced EVERYWHERE, over and over. I owe my familiarity with it mostly to Charles Stross and, more recently, N.K. Jemisin's Great Cities books. It is very odd that all these writers who reference Lovecraft agree that he was not a good writer, and that the stories aren't very good. And yet somehow he created a mythos whose attraction is so powerful that even these Lovecraft-abhorring authors can't seem to to escape it. I feel that Cthulhu itself would be very pleased by this involuntary worship.

So, here we have yet another truly excellent writer, Neil Gaiman doing that very same thing. It is a mystery. It is a mystery I could probably solve by reading Lovecraft -- surely I have read worse books -- but I am reluctant to dive into books that everyone agrees are lousy.

So, I, Cthulhu is amusing. The conflation of a world-menacing Elder God with the crazy uncle persona is pretty funny. And it's short. Read it: what have you got to lose?

Goodreads review

I, Cthulhu on neilgaiman.com

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