The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia Kindle Edition

Giving the authors due credit for doing that amount of research, however this encyclopedia wound up unsatifying. For 1 thing, there are no illustrations, which is important considering the complex appearances of Lovecraft’s creatures & gods.For another, the individual entries are rather skimpy on details: Randolph Carter’s life history is highly abbreviated, Herbert West was a celebrated doctor with a thing for reurrection, & Walter Gilman was a college student who died from a rat bite. Anybody who read the stories knows a great deal was left out. I’m forced to wonder how much is being withheld about the entries I don’t know.It’s possible the authors’ intention is for us to seek out the original works and read those. Laudable enough, but this poses a problem as many of those books are long out of print & virtually unobtainable. My area has almost no 2ndhand bookstores left.I can Google the information you suggest? True, but if I have to read everything on the Internet, then what do I need this book for?

I purchased this as a resource for one of my own projects. My expectation was that I'd look up a few things, probably using it to check some names or clarify some ideas from the Lovecraft Mythos. But as I thumbed through the book, more and more entries caught my eye. I began cross referencing creatures and checking the relationships between various deities, sects, etc. And I ended up spending most of an afternoon browsing. Ideas are percolating! Very glad I purchased this one!I detected a few typos, and would have liked to see more graphics (not monster pics, but graphics that clarify relationships among the various listings). Some "meta structure" might be nice too, where (for example) keywords might be used to distinguish between major and minor aspects of the Mythos. Lovecraft and those he influenced/inspired have written a lot of stuff, some of it fascinating. Anything that can help an interested person tease out relationships would be helpful.All-in-all, however, this promises to be a useful reference book.

This is a necessary resource for anyone serious about the Cthulhu Mythos. Whether you are a writer, gamer or an enthusiast of HP Lovecraft and other horrors, this book is highly recommended. The information in this book is great for creating plot hooks, or what stories to search for to learn more about a specific topic for further exploration.Need to find out more about Ubbo-Sathla to write a time travel story about wizards?Look up Ubbo-Sathla, find out that Clark Ashton Smith wrote Ubbo-Sathla, and that god is mentioned in the Book of Eibon. You'll find an appendices about the Necronomicon.More importantly Dan Harms included a guide on how to handle and use others intellectual property from a non-legalistic standpoint, but more from a standpoint of being ethically creative while respecting to the continuity.Somewhere in storage I have the second edition of this book, but I have a digital copy on my iPhone, laptop and desktop computer. For my podcast I find this to be a great resource.Unfortunately I have occasionally ran across instances where Mr. Harms references a story that is no longer in print and hard to find(even after contacting the author or the story). That would be my only gripe. Otherwise this is wonderful, also I am happy that it is a book that covers literature as well as RPG source material due to the fact that the two have become intertwined in the last 30+ years. I am also thankful that the book doesn't rely on any goofy lovecraftian tricks, spooky typefaces or faux-aged paper. It's nice to have some people take this space monster business seriously.

Arrived quickly, so that's not a problem. The book seems to be very detailed, but many of the entries are far too brief, and some of the lesser entries are far too complex. If you're familiar with Lovecraft or other writers in the Mythos, it makes sense. If you're looking for an introduction to the Mythos- this isn't quite it.

It's a reference book on Cthulu Mythos. The Questions on the Amazon rating screen are for a novel or biography and completely irrelevant to a reference work. It's funny. They ask the same questions on a Roll Players Guide book. If you play CoC or just want to understand the world of H.P. Lovecraft and his collegues, this will help. It even has some explanations of how successive authors have changed or added to the mythos.

I purchased this as reference material for some Mythos stories I'm writing / will be writing. It is chock full of data. If you are writing Cthulhu Mythos stories, this is a good work to draw upon.

Having recently gotten reacquainted with the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, I found this encyclopedia to be very informative. I had read some of Lovecraft's stories back in college, but now thirty years later, I am enjoying the stories again, along with tales by other authors who want to keep the Lovecraft or Cthulhu mythology alive in their own way. This encyclopedia covers many well known topics, characters and locations within the mythology from the dangerous book known as the Necronomicon to the professors of Miskatonic University. Sometimes, I will read a Lovecraft story and then see if any of the events or characters are featured in another story (maybe by another author) by checking the Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia. Unfortunately, the encyclopedia does not have any pictures or artwork inside, which would be helpful, but that is my only complaint with this book. I hope that if you do pick up this book, you will find it to be as much of a fun and helpful resource to Lovecraft's world as I have. Thank you for reading.

A great reference book for all those in need of exhaustive research into Lovecraft's Cthulhuvian universe, including scholars, RPGers, occultists and lit-fans. Harms has done an excellent job distilling information from myriad sources, many of them obscure and hard to find, some probably even arcane and forbidden.

great little book real hard core but not 1 sketch or picture to break the monotony, you cant just sit and read it look at the pictures to see what they look like because theres none you need to make an image in your mind, mine is cartman sat on Cthulhu's head, i will never get that image out of my mind, that and the christmas critters christmas, if you aint seen it type it in you tube, anyway yes its a freeking awesome book and ties in new and old, i dont know if Doctor Who has been added but it should count with the great intelligence being a main character with a few Doctor's incarnations most recently at trenzalor (dont know how its spelt) Yog Soth great intelligence it credited in the Doctor Who Wikipedia and a few books so maybe the doc gets a mention, but this really needs pictures under each creature like Glens eyeball (walking dead joke) but it would make this the top seller for Mythos fans

I really enjoyed the in depth analysis of Lovecrafts Universe, the monster's and abominations, and the dimensions, spaces between and inside spaces. Although I really enjoyed the supernatural artefacts, and the travelling between interstellar spacetime, to spend time on another world or dimension beyond space time, whilst his crossover being resides on earth for all the time his human counterpart is in the body of an alien being studying the vast library of collected works from over the aeons, until the time comes to change back over arrives and the main character can't remember the last 7 years of his life, when he was travelling to the most remote places conceivable, and can now understand languages he had never before seen let alone be able to read.One of my most favourite tales is Through the Gates of Silver Key, it was as though Lovecraft was trying to break the shackles of our rudimentary beliefs, faiths and imaginations, and the twist at the end is absolutely unexpected, The Colour from Outer space is another favourite, so unique in its origins and conception, it just seemed so feasible that something like could have happened anytime over the last 4 billion years, and had a hand in creating the Colour spectrum we are familiar with, and still remains undetectable to our instruments of spectroscopy, brilliant read, and marvellous encyclopedia.Yet it does seem very sad and highly unfortunate that this iconic author died before his great world of horror sci-fi, and weird fiction was recognized to be vastly superior to any author of his day, trying to write in the same genre, ( perhaps decades ahead of its time), and he died in poverty, yet his legacy will live on just like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Lovecraft will still be seeked out and revered in 2 hundred years time.

Almost painfully thorough, this reference tome covers just about everything in the Cthulhu mythos, both Lovecraft's stories and those contributed by other writers. More for looking up puzzling references than for browsing, but if it's in Cthulhu, it's probably covered by this book.

I kind of thought this would be like the cthulhu mythos in the role-playing game but it wasn't

My son loves it