THE BLACK STONE. Stories for Lovecraftian Summonings Curated by Raffaele Pezzella

Stories by: Ramsey Campbell, Brian M Sammons, Glynn Owen Barrass, Lucy A. Snyder, E.A. Black, Chris Kelso, Andrew Coulthard, Stephen Mark Rainey, Kevin Lewis, Richard Alan Scott, Russell Smeaton, J. Edwin Buja, Made in DNA, David Agranoff, Pete Rawlik, Brian C. Short, Michael Housel, John Chadwick, David Voyles, Konstantine Paradias, Love Kölle, Edward Morris, Parry Milton, Phil Breach, Garrett Cook, Andrew Freudenberg, Sarah Walker.The twenty-seven writers whose works appear here mine the rich seams that Lovecraft's original vision created. However, lest one imagine that this implies that they merely slavishly follow in his footsteps, hewing to well-worn paths with rigid and blinkered preconceptions, think again. It has been nearly 85 years since the Providence, Rhode Island scholar's death and, just as in the real world we have seen social and technological evolution in those intervening years, the matter of the Lovecraftian tale has itself evolved and expanded. A main thesis originally propounded by HPL, that of the existence of uncaring entities beyond our understanding who neither care about nor acknowledge our being part of the physical universe, still weaves its threads through many of the stories published here, and most of those remain unnamed and out of focus, elusive to both mind and physical senses. This approach is a logical progression - as alluded to above the universe is far vaster and more hostile than was ever imagined in the early decades of the 20th century. Just how do we even begin to delineate the possible monstrosities that might inhabit the corners of the infinity we call space? The tales of Lovecraft touched on primal fears of the dark unknown, with great effect, and now, nearly a century on, the spirit of the Lovecraftian tale is still with us, courtesy of a group of literary explorers willing to forge through the dark matter of our hostile home and write of their experiences and travails in the lightless places. These 27 epistles of horror and weirdness are presented as a testament to the fact that, as much as we've discovered since Howard Philips Lovecraft's time, there are still many more unknowns waiting to be uncovered.