To Arkham and the Stars
"To Arkham and the Stars" is a short story by American writer Fritz Leiber, belonging to the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror fiction. It was written for the 1966 Arkham House anthology The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces. Set in H. P. Lovecraft's Arkham and Miskatonic University, it includes characters from and allusions to several Lovecraft stories.
Robert M. Price, who included the story in his 1992 anthology Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos, said it "has proven to be a seminal Mythos tale, as in it we first see the depiction of Miskatonic University as having, as it were, a Mythos Studies Department." Price traces the influence of Leiber's story on such works as Philip José Farmer's "The Freshman", Lin Carter's "Zoth-Ommog" and Brian Lumley's The Burrowers Beneath and The Transition of Titus Crow.[1]
Synopsis
The story's unnamed narrator arrives at Arkham to visit the Miskatonic University, noting changes that had occurred there since the 1920s and 1930s. (The story is apparently set in the mid-1960s; references to Fidel Castro and the International Geophysical Year—1957-58—place it no earlier than the late 1950s.) He is met by Albert Wilmarth, the narrator of Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness", now the chair of Miskatonic's Literature Department.
References
- ^ Robert M. Price, "Introduction", Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos, pp. xxi-xxii.
External links
- To Arkham and the Stars title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- v
- t
- e
- Conjure Wife (1943)
- Destiny Times Three (1945)
- The Big Time (1961)
- The Wanderer (1964)
- Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966)
- A Specter Is Haunting Texas (1969)
- Our Lady of Darkness (1977)
Gray Mouser
- Two Sought Adventure (1957)
- Swords and Deviltry (1970)
- Swords Against Death (1970)
- Swords in the Mist (1968)
- Swords Against Wizardry (1968)
- The Swords of Lankhmar (1968)
- Swords and Ice Magic (1977)
- Bazaar of the Bizarre (1978)
- The Knight and Knave of Swords (1988)
- Swords Against the Shadowland (Robin Wayne Bailey) (1998)
collections
- Night's Black Agents (1947)
- The Best of Fritz Leiber (1974)
- The Book of Fritz Leiber (1974)
- The Second Book of Fritz Leiber (1975)
- Heroes and Horrors (1978)
- "Coming Attraction" (1950)
- "A Pail of Air" (1951)
- "The Moon is Green" (1952)
- "The Unholy Grail" (1962)
- "Bazaar of the Bizarre" (1963)
- "To Arkham and the Stars" (1966)
- "Gonna Roll the Bones" (1967)
- "Ill Met in Lankhmar" (1970)
- "The Snow Women" (1970)
- "Midnight by the Morphy Watch" (1974)
- "Belsen Express" (1975)
- "Catch That Zeppelin!" (1975)
- "The Terror from the Depths" (1976)
- Weird Woman (1944)
- Night of the Eagle (1962)
- Witches' Brew (1980)
- The Girl with the Hungry Eyes (1995)
- Bibliography
- Fritz Leiber, Sr. (father)