Horror Story Review: "Dagon" by H. P. Lovecraft

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The unnamed narrator of this story tells the reader that life has become unbearable. He is penniless and has run out of morphine, the drug that alone has made his life endurable. His intention is to commit suicide by the end of the day. He recounts his time as a supercargo in the merchant marine some years back when he and the vessel he served aboard “fell victim to the German sea-raider.” It was only the beginning of the Great War and things were lax. The narrator was able to escape his captors in a well-provisioned small boat. Lacking navigation skills, he was soon completely lost. He believed a piece of land appeared as result of an underground volcano. He got out and explored. And what he saw there— Based in part on a dream of author Lovecraft’s, this story is an early glimpse of his Cthulhu mythos, with a nod to a “fish god,” and his semi-human worshippers whose “last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born.” Anyone who has read the two will certainly see the resemblance between this and the seminal 1926 work “The Call of Cthulhu.” “Dagon” was written in 1917 (published in 1919), long before the Piltdown man was revealed to be a hoax. Like much of Lovecraft’s writing, this is heavy and filled with dread. It starts out depressing and ends without hope. His style is florid, but rich in nightmare-horror. It’s not for everyone. This is short, something that argues in its favor, and is nicely told, creating a dream-like atmosphere. This short story is available at the link below and as an audiobook from Librivox. _____ Title: “Dagon” Author: H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) First published: Written in 1917. First published in The Vagrant November 1919 Source: ISFDB _____ *An earlier version of this review appeared on another site. It has been expanded and updated for its inclusion in myLot.*