Review: Michel Houellebecq’s “H.P. Lovecraft – Against The World, Against Life”

HOUELLEBECQ, Michel, H.P. Lovecraft – Against The World, Against Life, Weidenfeld & Nicolson / Orion Publishing Group, London, 2006.

Octavo; paperback; 247pp. Minor wear; some pages dog-eared; mild creasing to spine. Very good.

Stephen King’s Introduction to this essay is somewhat patronising. He refers to Houllebecq’s analysis of the life and work of Lovecraft as a “mash note” and in doing so, kickstarts the project with a sense of the trivial. It’s as if he, all unwittingly, attempts to drag the subject of the essay down to populist levels, and implies that Lovecraft, and anyone determined to waste their time with him, must, in essence, be regarded as ‘popular culture’. It’s a somewhat dubious start for this effort, especially given that King – unashamedly populist as he is – declares himself to be indebted to Lovecraft as a source of inspiration.

I can almost see where he’s coming from though. I know that it’s more than somewhat of a generalisation, but Americans tend to be absolutists – this is this; that is that – and whenever lines begin to blur they get a little nervous. To a European sensibility, the fact that a bestselling French writer of literary fiction publishes an essay on an American writer of genre fiction presents no paradox. To the US, it’s as bizarre as letting Adam Sandler present the Nobel Prizes. In reality, such terms as “literary fiction” and “genre fiction” have little relevance in Europe and it’s only the marketing principles of bookshops in English-speaking countries which make such arbitrary distinctions. Mr King is just assuming that, if he’s being asked to write an introduction to a book about Lovecraft, then it must be aimed at the geeks, and therefore he pitches his tone accordingly. This is to undermine the seriousness with which Houellebecq approaches his subject; the reader should not make the same assumption.

The essay itself was written – in the original French – in 1991. This re-publishing is as much a marketing exercise as it is a heartfelt attempt to get Houellebecq’s thoughts out to an English-speaking fan base. Not only have Weidenfeld & Nicolson contracted King to write the Intro., but they’ve enclosed re-printings of “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Whisperer in Darkness” along with a host of biographical information, about both Lovecraft and Houellebecq, and a bibliography of French translations of Lovecraft’s work. The idea being, I presume, that, if you disagree with Houellebecq’s thesis, you’ll feel that you still haven’t wasted your money. For me though, I think the real meat of the package is Houellebecq’s analysis, despite the presence of some flaws. Let me explain.

The essay breaks down into four parts – a Preface and three sections, each separated thematically into various components. I will address these, one by one, in order.

In the Preface, Houellebecq muses upon the reception which his essay has had since he had first penned it, how there were things which he had overlooked or which he feels he should have lingered longer over. He describes his discovery of Lovecraft’s works at the age of sixteen and his exploration – increasingly half-hearted – of those authors who had inspired, or who had been inspired by, Lovecraft’s material, but with the uneasy realisation that he knew next to nothing about Lovecraft himself. Conversely nowadays – he says – people approach him to autograph his book on HPL but few of them actually read any of HPL’s works, content to know about him through biographical notes and about them by association, through pop cultural references.

He says that writing the essay was like writing a novel with only one character – HPL – and felt just as freeform and unrestricted, with the exception that it “was constrained in that all the facts it conveyed and all the texts it cited had to be exact”. For the most part, he holds true to this notion; however it’s in those citations that the strength of his arguments starts to fail, and his thesis to come adrift.

Finally, he praises the poetry of Lovecraft’s use of language (something that he does discuss in the body of his argument) and quotes extensively and quite aptly from “The Whisperer in Darkness”, a text which he claims to have omitted in the first draft, with some regret. Later, he presents a list of what he terms Lovecraft’s “Great Texts” and “Whisperer” is listed amongst them: I wonder if, in earlier printings, it failed to appear? He doesn’t explicitly say.

Part One: Another Universe

In this initial foray, Houellebecq sets the groundwork and examines the scope of Lovecraft, both the individual and his product. Let it not be said that Houellebecq shies away from shocking statements or confrontational notions – this is a writer who likes to get a reaction. He begins by telling us that life is “painful and disappointing” and that people who like life do not like to read, because life has very little to do with literature. The real world is so far removed from the narrative constructs of literature that only those who reject the world and all it contains could find solace in the pages of a book. Punchy stuff, and I find no argument with it.

This part of the essay falls into two parts: in the first he addresses the writer and tries, using his correspondence and other writings, to assign him a literary locale. He reveals that Lovecraft had a natural affinity with the Modernist writers of the English literary tradition – along with Virginia Woolf for example – in that he stood for an utter rejection of the realist writing of the Nineteenth century, as exemplified by such authors as Gustave Flaubert and Thomas Hardy. As well, Houellebecq identifies HPL as an ardent existentialist, discovering himself trapped in a meaningless existence in an irrelevant world. He thus paints Lovecraft as the doppelganger of Antoine Roquentin from Sartre’s novel, Nausea. Unlike the protagonist of that book however, HPL’s strategy to deal with this angst was of a different nature.

According to Houellebecq, Lovecraft dealt with his existential despair by refusing to play the game: rather than finding meaning in the universe and creating a purpose for himself within it, he revelled in his isolation and found a space in which to dwell alongside and apart from the structures surrounding him: engagement and struggle became as inconsequential as the meaningless objects around him. Even his ‘career’ as a writer he refused to acknowledge as anything other than an idle pastime, considering the prospect of making a living off his work faintly disgusting. That these sentiments percolate into his work, I think no die-hard fan would deny.

The second section of this first part is entitled “Ritual Literature”. By this term, Houellebecq means the body of work by an author who has attained ‘mythic status’ in a literary sense. In this way he compares HPL to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes canon. Fans of Sherlock Holmes, Houellebecq declares, would not allow their favourite character to die; they re-visit the canon stories, each time with a sense of pleasure and delight; they are faintly amused, but not convinced by, pastiche and homage texts, spring-boarding off the main body of work; and they wistfully hope that one day a hidden cache of new material will someday be discovered. On top of this is the sheer amazement the reader feels for the accomplishment – ‘how do they do it?’ – a hidden complexity that invites deeper investigation. All of this can be said of Lovecraft and of his readers.

Houellebecq then goes on to define HPL’s oeuvre as a series of increasingly-crucial concentric circles. Outermost, he places Lovecraft’s correspondence and poetry; next he assigns collaborative efforts, things he co-wrote or ghost wrote, including the works of August Derleth, derived from HPL’s notes and drafts; third, he places all of the short stories juvenilia and novellas that Lovecraft wrote – the canon. Lastly he creates a list of tales which represent the ‘holy of holies’, the definitive works, those which – if Lovecraft was a religion – would be termed the “great texts”. Houellebecq claims to have taken pleasure in compiling and setting out this list, and I feel much the same way about reproducing it:

“The Call of Cthulhu” (1926)

“The Colour Out of Space” (1927)

“The Dunwich Horror” (1928)

“The Whisperer in Darkness” (1930)

“At the Mountains of Madness” (1931)

“The Dreams in the Witch House” (1932)

“The Shadow Over Innsmouth” (1932)

“The Shadow Out of Time” (1934)

Finally, Houellebecq asserts that it is the numinous presence of Lovecraft himself, pervading this material, which lends an almost mystical quality to the writing. Lovecraft, he declares, fundamentally denies examination, even by his most diligent biographers, and has attained an almost cult status in his own right, distinct from his work.

Part Two: Technical Assault

With a title like this, it’s obvious that some examination of the minutiae of Lovecraft’s style is about to be undertaken; however, since this is Houellebecq, we need not fear that it will descend into some dry and stultifying discussion of adverbs and adjectives (although that does come up at one point). He begins by referencing the essay which Lovecraft wrote – “Supernatural Horror in Literature” – and observes how dull a catalogue it is, since obviously it contains nothing comparable to HPL’s own work. He notes that this piece appeared shortly before Lovecraft began to pen the “great texts” and declares that it was by cataloguing this list of styles and references that HPL was able to dispense with his mentors and finally forge ahead on his own. Simultaneously, Houellebecq states that clues to Lovecraft’s technique are almost non-existent in his correspondence, since his advice is inevitably focussed upon the problems faced by the individual to whom he is addressing his comments – thus, nothing of general application can be discerned. He notes that HPL was ever willing to provide the essential building blocks of a good story but was candid about how to stack them together.

(Amusingly, and in a nod to Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller, each section of this part of the essay has an apropos title which forms a clause in a long sentence. Why? Who knows, but it’s quite cute.)

Attack the Story like a Radiant Suicide...

Here, Houellebecq examines HPL’s hooks, the openings to his stories. He compares Lovecraft’s introductions to those of Graham Masterton (The Incredible Shrinking Man) and comes to the conclusion that Lovecraft uses his opening salvos to divide his audience. While typically verbose, they do nothing to soften the impact for the reader: the introductory paragraphs hardly ever hint or allude to the impending narrative; rather they drop the reader straight into something bewildering and confronting. As an all-or-nothing approach, Houellebecq finds it completely admirable, the moreso because Lovecraft is able to build upon it, escalating the pitch of terror. Conversely, he finds that this kind of narrative set-up makes HPL’s characters seem somewhat obtuse, since they never seem to see it coming.

...Utter the Great "No" to Life Without Weakness...

Next Houellebecq tackles the content of Lovecraft’s stories, and in doing so compares him to an architect: before beginning to build, he says, an architect first must decide which materials to use.

Having identified HPL as an existentialist who utterly rejects the world as a meaningless construct, and that attempting to capture it in print would be equally meaningless, he states that Lovecraft makes a conscious decision to create his own realities in his writing. The fantastic and the horrid are the foundation stones of this reality and he makes these vistas as real as he can, with the conscious exclusion of two subjects which other writers would consider essential: sex and money.

Here, Houellebecq tackles head-on the accusations that have been levelled against HPL, that his misanthropic, asexual universes are the result of psychological misfires and neurotic blocks. Quite the opposite, as Houellebecq demonstrates with several apposite quotes from HPL’s correspondence, Lovecraft simply made an aesthetic choice to exclude these topics from his work. He also shows that Lovecraft was well-read in the works of Freud, particularly in the areas of symbolism, sexual and otherwise, and on the nature of a transactional universe, and rejected them outright as obvious rubbish.

In essence therefore, what some would consider a psychological blindspot, or Freudian slip, in HPL’s writing is actually a conscious and deliberate decision as part of the writing process. Lovecraft simply says “no” to the depiction of real life, in order to pursue his stated aims.

...Then You will See a Magnificent Cathedral...

Lovecraft’s eye, says Houellebecq, is an architect’s eye; his sensibilities respond to architectural models. In this way, HPL is able to capture the sensation of moving through architectural space and in fact creates such spaces in his writing in order to underscore and heighten the dramatic pace of the tale. Colours form a lesser component of his descriptions and take a back seat to plastic shapes and tangible forms. No argument from me, but I do think Houellebecq pushes the notion a little far when he declares that HPL is a creator of “sacred space”.

...And Your Senses, Vectors of Unutterable Derangement...

In terms of physical sensations Houellebecq notes the overloaded descriptions which HPL provides. Along with this, he identifies a disturbing quality of anonymity in all of Lovecraft’s protagonists. In his early works, it seemed that HPL took deliberate pains to make his heroes seem particular, or individual; by the time of the “great texts” however, he has forsaken this approach in favour of bland characters whose only purpose is to transmit sensations. In these turgid descriptions of repugnance, Houellebecq again finds evidence for Lovecraft’s existentialist worldview.

...Will Map Out an Integral Delirium...

Here, Houellebecq examines the kind of horror that Lovecraft tries to generate. He is not interested in the vampire or the werewolf – constructs that have discrete mythic connotations and psychological rationales – he wants to build an “objective horror” which transcends the human condition. To this end he draws from all areas of scientific knowledge, bombarding his narratives with objective facts and with references to myriad fields of learning, in order to add verisimilitude to the fantastic worlds he is building. Houellebecq compares HPL with Immanuel Kant who said he wanted to create an ethical code “not just for man but for all rational beings”; Lovecraft wanted to build a mythology that “would mean something to those intelligent beings that consist only of nebulous spiralling gases”.

...That will be Lost in the Unnameable Architecture of Time.

In this final section, Houellebecq dwells on the surgical manner in which Lovecraft outlines his visions. Precision is ever-present: map references in “At the Mountains of Madness”; intersecting times and events in “The Call of Cthulhu”; mathematical dogma in “The Dreams in the Witch House”. The human world depicted in these tales is concrete, tangible and delineated, right up to the point where the entities of the Mythos take over, at which moment sanity and this precise notation part company.

Part Three: Holocaust

Of course, since this is Houellebecq, we can expect him to toss in a loaded word like “holocaust” with very little provocation. Here it is: the title of the third part of the essay. In this section, Houellebecq examines Lovecraft’s life and looks at the impact that it has upon his writing. Essentially, he looks at HPL’s marriage and his racist tendencies.

Like the other parts of this essay, there are several sections with intriguing titles, but I’d prefer to look at this piece as a whole. We are given a timeline in HPL’s life that consists basically of ‘pre-nuptial’ and ‘post-nuptial’. Before meeting and marrying Sonia Greene, Lovecraft was a particular type of person, probably quite typical of his time and place; after the marriage and the time he spent in New York, this character shifted dramatically and created the individual who would go on to pen the “great texts”.

From an existentialist perspective, the marriage was a moment when HPL chose to engage with his environment and embark upon an act of self-creation. Nevertheless, he chose to take this step in a very passive fashion: Sonia was the driving force in the relationship and Lovecraft simply went along for the ride. Houellebecq argues all the same that HPL was definitely in love with Sonia, but years of non-engagement had dulled his reactions. The move to New York however, was an even more serious instance of coming to terms with reality.

Arriving in the metropolis, HPL felt sure of his ability to find work; but his assurances were couched in provincial WASP-ish terms. As a white male of reasonable education, he felt entitled to be chosen for whatever position he applied for. How shocking then to find that race and breeding amounted to almost nothing in the Big Apple! Lovecraft’s benign racist tendencies went from mild to red-hot, causing him to champion Hitler and make sweeping declarations of a genocidal nature in his correspondence. As his bigotry became incandescent in the face of his failure to find work, Houellebecq argues that Lovecraft’s ability to even define the ‘otherness’ which offended him fell by the wayside. However upon his return to Providence, he re-adjusted his perspective, altered his opinion of Hitler and the Final Solution and retired into a bruised geniality. It could be argued that he had discovered a type of acceptance, or at least have come to realise that – as part of the meaningless universe around him – there was nothing to be done about it. Still, the later “great texts” are notably less racist (less racist, not inclusive) than his earlier works.

Added to this, Houellebecq finds a markedly masochistic streak in HPL’s writing, especially after this time. If Lovecraft’s protagonists are essentially himself, rendered down to passive spectators of awfulness, then the horrible things that they encounter are things that Lovecraft does to himself. A cry of existential angst? Quite possibly.

*****

In the final analysis, Houellebecq argues that every great passion will leave its artistic impression upon the world and that this complex and undefinable individual has done just that with the works he left behind. However just what that passion was, or from where it stemmed, is frustratingly – though compellingly - hard to pin down. All that is left is the Mythos and the myth of Lovecraft.

If there is a case against Houellebecq’s analysis – and, for the most part, it’s the most compelling analysis I’ve ever encountered – it’s that, for all his assertions that he was forced by the constraints of the essay format to check his facts and cite his sources, he actually doesn’t. Most of what he says is supported by citations but some of it isn’t. Reading his Notes in the back of the book, the translator Dorna Khazeni lists many instances where throwaway references within the text attributed to HPL or others cannot be located, even after cross-checking with S.T. Joshi, who seems to have all of Lovecraft at his fingertips. Some of this stems from the fact that Houellebecq was working from French translations of Lovecraft and the exact wording is occasionally difficult to pin down; still, there are instances where Khazeni couldn’t source quotes from Houellebecq himself, and this is troubling.

On the other hand, there is a genuine passion for the work in evidence here. Not the OMG! type of enthusiasm that most fan-boy venues tend to generate, but a fully-considered and realised, intellectual response. If for nothing else, this refreshing stance earns this book a place on my shelf of Lovecraftiana.

As a final note, my overview presented here is couched in various ‘-isms’, specifically the existentialism of HPL and his position as a modernist author. Houellebecq makes his analysis without resorting to such language, referencing neither Sartre nor existential despair (not to mention Virginia Woolf!). These constructions are purely my own, reading and extrapolating between his lines, and are there due to the nature of the circumstances which led to my writing this extended review. If my philosophy and literary theory are somewhat creaky, mea culpa, and my apologies!

Four-and-a-half Tentacled Horrors.

Review: “The Hobbit – Battle, with Chthonians”

JACKSON, Peter (Dir.), “The Hobbit – The Battle of the Five Armies” New Line Cinema/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Wingnut Films, 2014.

Don’t. Just don’t.

Zero tentacled horrors.

Quirkiness...

Some years ago now, a small company rose up out of America’s east coast with the striking title Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This was a fairly low-key release over here and information about the book passed largely by word of mouth. Soon there were other books in the range – Sense and Sensibility and Sea-monsters, Mr. D’Arcy: Vampire, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer. When I first saw the zombie book, I smirked: I figured, since it looked an awful lot like one of those black, Penguin Classics releases, that it would be cute to place it on my bookshelf along with my standard Austens – other browsers would experience the double-take of seeing the anomaly, giggle over the cover and move on. How disappointed was I to discover that there was an actual novel contained within those joke wrappers?

It’s probably just me, but I would have expected that the book would turn out to be just a notebook of some kind – blank and ready for the owner’s musings to be housed within. Or maybe that there would be an acknowledgement by the people at Quirk Books that the book didn’t really exist, but here’s the actual Pride and Prejudice to read, in covers that would make the average male Austen fan not too uncomfortable to break it out on the train during the morning commute. Instead, it contains a boring, woefully ghastly piece of drivel that takes the dead donkey of the one-note joke and flogs it to Kingdom Come.

And then came the sequels: flog, flog, flog...

In genre fiction there is a place for pastiche; it works on the level of homage, to demonstrate the writer’s knowledge and attunement to the original work or author. These books aren’t even pastiche; they’re just bad. However, the publishers have tapped into a phenomenon that is having long-reaching and questionable impact on the world of literature.

Literary immortality used to be a lofty and idealistic concept. The works of an author – their canon – lived on after their death and became the scripted and peopled worlds which they bequeathed to humanity. Nowadays, due to the fast-food consumption of television programming and movie franchising, publishers are seeking to emulate the filmed media models and cash in on the money flow. ‘Jane Austen’ is now viewed as a franchise, available to be re-booted every other year or so, or re-imagined for newer audiences or target markets. All it takes is for someone to be roped in to writing the new material: in Austen’s case it’s P.D. James with her Regency whodunit Death Comes to Pemberley, or the whole slew of Young Adult re-imaginings of Austen’s books (with the same titles, no less) to ‘update’ Austen for the younger, iPhone-toting set. Ian Fleming’s ‘new’ Bond novels are being churned out by Sebastian Faulkes and others; Eric van Lustbader is pumping out ‘new’ Jason Bourne books for the Robert Ludlum Estate.

Literary immortality is no longer a theoretical concept; it’s a thriving business. However, more is not ‘more’; in terms of quality, ‘more’ is something far, far less.

It’s not that this concept is particularly new. “Clueless” was an extremely clever film adaptation of Austen’s Emma; Akira Kurosawa gave us “Throne of Blood” as an homage to “Macbeth”, and then he and Sergio Leone riffed off each other for the great samurai flick/spaghetti western to-ing and fro-ing of “Yojimbo”/”A Fistful of Dollars” and “Sanjuro”/”For a few Dollars More”. Great English literature and the undead have met before when Val Lewton turned Jane Eyre into “I Walked with a Zombie” and Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” was transformed into “Forbidden Planet”. However, these reincarnations all contained a sense of affection for the source material. Nowadays it’s less about savouring the work of an author; it’s about growing obese on the bloated, low-grade pap that ghost-writers are spewing out in order to shift units.

We live in an age where most of us have access to a computer and can write down our thoughts and imaginings as we see fit. Self- and online-publishing are only a few clicks and a cash transaction away; publishing houses are divorcing themselves of the need to proof-read and edit material and they get their cues from the “likes” and “+1s” that social media flag in order to kill some trees and bankroll an actual physical book. Part of the process is the creation of new iterations of classic reads – these are safe options since they have been tested over time – and the works of standard, prize-winning, ‘safe’ authors, like Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco.

Quality has given way to quantity: people want to be immersed in a weighty tome, to be taken out of their humdrum lives by means of some brick of a book whose best feature is that it can hold open a door. And when that’s finished they want another one - as the fantasy genre of publishing has proven over time. Escapism is something that people have always craved and bad times are a spur to it – Hollywood has never suffered due to an economic downturn. All forms of media and entertainment are now being conflated, governed by the same marketing approaches and, sad to say, the priceless gems of literature – and our ability to appreciate them – are being eroded by the process.

We live in a world where Fifty Shades of Grey is a benchmark by which to measure good writing. God help us all!

*****

Which brings me back to Quirk Books of Philadelphia and around to Lovecraft. In my constant quest for Lovecraftiana, I have recently acquired the first two books in a series of YA fiction penned by one “Charles Gilman” (aka. Jason Rekulak), entitled Tales from Lovecraft Middle School. These books follow the high school misadventures of Robert Arthur and his friends as he settles in to the new local educational institution. From there on in, it’s strictly “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” territory. In the first instalment, the titular Professor Gargoyle turns out to be a demon working at the behest of a secretive Master, while in the second book the socially-adept Slither Sisters are medusae, seeking election on the student council in order to sacrifice the entire Seventh Grade to the ominous Master. And that’s it. The rest is geeks, slackers, cool kids, quarterbacks, cheerleaders and oblivious teachers. You do the maths.

The production quality of the books is excellent, but having had their previous efforts optioned as movies and even turned into a B-grade flick have ensured that quality of presentation is not an issue for Quirk. Both novels have high-quality lenticular covers – otherwise known as “winkies” – that shift as the book moves, turning high school girls into snake-haired monsters and scary-looking schoolmasters into even scarier demons. (The fact that I was wondering what would happen if I tried to scan these covers had very little to do with my presenting them here. Very little. Almost nothing. Almost.)

There’s nothing very Lovecraftian about these books: they throw about a lot of canon names – Tillinghast, Dunwich, Gilman – but the monsters are mainly of the Western mythic tradition, with harpies, medusa, demons and giant snakes. Not a Mi Go in sight. It’s as if the folks at Quirk are worried about some perceived litigious ramifications and are unaware of the ‘open source’ nature of the Mythos. The occasional tentacle intrudes; there’s a two-headed rat and a ghost, but not a lot of Lovecraft besides the name. And Mr Rekulak’s unspeakable writing hasn’t improved upon Seth Grahame-Smith's work on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but at least it’s aimed at a more appropriate audience.

For completists only.

Abusing the Cutlery: Edged Weapons from Victorian Times: Part 2

“Weapons, however highly ornamented, are instruments of destruction. The wise man will have nothing to do with them.”

-Mencius

Weapon	Base Chance	Damage	Range	Attacks per Round	HPs	Malfunction
Katana*	25%	1D10+db	touch	1	30	00%
Katar*	20%	1D4+3+db	touch	1	11	00%
Khanda: 1-handed	15%	1D10+1+db	touch	1	28	00%
Khanda: 2-handed	25%	2D6+db	touch	1	28	00%
Khadga	20%	2d6+3+db	touch	1	19	00%
Kilij	20%	1D6+4+db	touch	1	28	00%
Kirpan	25%	1D4+2+db	touch	1	12	00%
Kora	20%	1D6+2+db	touch	1	12	00%
Kris	20%	1D6+3+db	touch	1	12	00%
Kukri	20%	1D4+3+db	touch	1	11	00%
Pata*	15%	1D8+1+1D6**	touch	1/2	13	00%
Pattani Jamdadu*	20%	1D6+2+db	touch	1	12	00%
Peshkabz*	20%	1D4+2+db	touch	1	20	00%
Phur-bu*	20%	1D3+1+db	touch	1	7	00%
Ram Dao	20%	2D6+1+db	touch	1	17	00%
Scimitar	20%	1D6+2+db	touch	1	12	00%
Shamshir	20%	1D6+2+db	touch	1	13	00%
Talwar	20%	1D6+2+db	touch	1	12	00%
Zaghnal*	20%	1D6+1+db	touch	1	18	00%

*This weapon can Impale

**The extra die of damage accrues only if the Pata is used with a horseback charge

So much for common-or-garden cutlery. Exposure to foreign cultures meant that British and American military types encountered the bizarre motley of other bladed weapons out there in the world. The English in particular, given their interests in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Persia and the Far East, souvenired a lot of the local swords. Sometimes, they were so taken with the stylings of these weapons that they replaced the hand grips and protectors of their own British swords with those of foreign make, leading to the concept of faringi, or ferenghi, blades (and you were wondering where “Star Trek” got that word from!), ethnically-styled weapons of non-Middle-eastern make, on the Middle Eastern market.

These indigenous weapons have their own idiosyncrasies and these are detailed below.

Katana

The quintessence of cool in the geek’s armoury, these weapons are manufactured from layers of folded steel over a soft metal core, giving them incredible flexibility and toughness. The single edge focuses the energy of a blow into a wide area while the flat rear edge of the blade lends strength. The curve means that any downward strike slices as well as bludgeoning, creating better efficiency in the blow. Finally the chisel tip gives the option of a forward thrusting strike in areas of limited space. All up, this is a weapon which causes maximum damage for little effort and, with its no-nonsense fittings and sleek lines, allows great manoeuvrability. An additional rule allows the weapon to be used either one-handed or with two; a one-handed strike only confers half the db.

Tradition has it that every katana also contains a ‘spirit’, built within it through the forging process. Exceptional swords, made by master smiths, assume legendary status and are guarded jealously. In traditional times, swords were ‘tested’ on prisoners to see if they met their makers’ expectations and they were graded according to performance at these trials. The results of three strikes against a human body were sometimes recorded on the sword’s tang along with the smith’s name and any dedicatory or mystical message. During World War Two, demand for katanas meant that Japanese soldiers were issued with swords stamped out of plate steel (where they had no ancestral blade of their own to carry into battle) and these of course were inferior weapons. In the American occupation of Japan after the War, most of these swords – cheap or exceptional - were seized and melted down. A small percentage were saved by diligent guardians or by US art experts who interfered (often too late) in the process.

Katar

The ‘punch dagger’ is a tidy little weapon that saw action throughout India, especially in the Sikh communities. The weapon has a long triangular blade which projects forward from the knuckles of the wielder; two metal bars run down from the corners of the blade either side of the user’s hand and these are connected by a cross-bar which the wielder grips. By punching forward, the user can make deadly strikes against an opponent, or they can slash downwards using the edge to slice with ruthless efficiency. The value of the katar is that it is easily concealed (using a Conceal Roll) and, when coupled with the advantage of surprise, is extremely potent.

Khadga

Buddhism ranges from very mild observances through to some quite startling extravagance and these outbreaks are mostly endemic to the Himalayas. The variation occurs through the degree of ‘exoteric’ interpretation of the doctrines; the relatively benign, predominant Mahayana Buddhism observes esoteric – largely theoretical, or symbolic – attitudes of faith, while the sects of Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia take a more literal, and often more frightening, approach.

Depictions of Buddhist ‘deities’ (for want of a better English equivalent) of these regions often feature a mighty sword surrounded at its tip by roiling flames. This is the khadga, which is a symbol of tactical nous and military might, or philosophical insight and penetration. In religious rites of the Himalayas, these swords have been incarnated and form part of the ritual proceedings. They are often extremely long and heavy, and have the impediment of bearing moulded metal flames around their pointy ends. On the whole, this makes them less than effective in battle and, arguably, they were never meant to be so used; however, invasions by the British, the Russians and the Chinese meant that every now and then, someone would break one out the box and bring it to the party...

Khanda

The khanda is a standard sword widely encountered in the Sub-continent, but mainly in the western parts of the country. The khanda may be one- or two-handed and, while most often having only a single edge, is sometimes encountered with two. It is generally a straight sword, without a curve to its blade, and frequently it sports a bar-like projection from the quillons to lend greater, downwards, chopping force.

As we will see with the kirpan (below) one of the five symbols of the observance of Sikhism is the carrying of a sword at all times; the khanda proliferates in the Sikh homelands for this reason. In fact, the holy symbol of Sikhism is called the khanda and bearing this symbol is a means of sophistry whereby a Sikh can be bearing a ‘sword’ in places where an actual weapon would be frowned upon.

Kilij

The kilij is the standard military sidearm for Ottoman, Persian and Turkish troops; in essence, it can be seen as a kind of ‘heavy scimitar’. Like the scimitar and the shamshir, the kilij has an elegant curving blade and, like the scimitar, the furthest end of the blade is double-edged, while the end closest to the hilt has only a single edge. The kilij tends to be of heavier construction however, making it a weapon best suited for cleaving and chopping: not a lot of point-work goes on with these swords.

Kirpan

In the Sikh faith there are five outward signs of devotion (or panj kakaar) adopted by baptised male members of the faith (khalsa): one, observing the rule to never cut one’s hair (kesh); two, bearing a wooden comb (kanga); three, the wearing of kaccha, specially-designed breeches; four, wearing an iron bracelet, or kara; and finally, the bearing of a kirpan. The kirpan is a small – sometimes only decorative – dagger, notable for the fact that the sheath has a sharply backwards-pointing tip.

Wearing the kirpan is a reminder that those of the Sikh faith were once cruelly persecuted and that such persecution is to be fought against. Sikhs aspire to adopt the role of ‘soldier-saint’ in the defence of their faith and society and the injunction to be armed at all times carries the implicit message that one should be always prepared to defend one’s community. Some Sikhs feel that carrying the representation of a sword – a pendant, pocket-knife, or the khanda, Sikhism’s holy sign – is sufficient to meet this obligation; others are more stringent. Many places in India - especially the Punjab region - in Pakistan and Afghanistan, will restrict access to those wearing edged weapons, with the sole exception of the kirpan.

Kora

This is the big brother of the kukri (see below). The blade of this short sword curves forward and the inner edge of that curve is sharpened. Moving out from the hilt, the blade widens, ending in a wide irregular plane at the furthest extremity: it’s immediately obvious that these swords are meant as huge choppers and they are intended for use in executions as decapitators, when not at service on the battlefield. Given their width and the large surface area they display, these swords are often extensively patterned. They are found mainly in the Himalayas and Northern India.

Kris

This wicked-looking weapon is synonymous with Indonesia, although various pulp writers enjoy relocating it to other locales to do service as an instrument of mayhem. The technology for making these knives arrived in the archipelago during Hindu rule, but the mysticism and legendry surrounding them is purely indigenous.

A kris is easily identified by its wavy blade; this is always an odd number of turns, although some kris’s are, in fact, straight. The blade is damascened; that is, it is made up of folded layers of metal, endlessly re-heated and beaten flat: the metal shows a distinct rippled effect, reminiscent of water as a result.

Each kris is believed to have its own soul, installed within it during the creation process. This is no benign animus, however. The spirit of the kris is supposed to thirst for blood, and requires that blood quenches its blade each time it is drawn, before being returned to the scabbard. Some kris’s are said to be cooled in the blood of the living at the end of their forging, making them very powerful and dangerous indeed. A traditional pattern dyed onto Indonesian fabric came about as a means of shielding the wearer from the inherent evil of these blades: the parang rusak, or “broken knife”, pattern is said to help turn aside the spirit of the kris.

The Indonesian village shamans are said by some to be able to animate the spirit of the kris, separating it from its metal form and sending it out in the night to enact vengeance or terror. Sometimes, this spirit is said to be able to possess the shaman upon return, transforming them into a homicidal agent bent on slaking the kris’s bloodlust. Only the most powerful shamans therefore, are able to so command these weapons.

There is a martial art style associated with the kris which combines sinuous, low circling movements with strikes and parries using one or two blades, or the blade in combination with its scabbard. Like other forms of Martial Art in Call of Cthulhu, attacks using these skills add extra damage to successful strikes.

Kukri

This is the traditional fighting knife of the Gurkhas of Nepal and many are the legends surrounding them and their use. The oft-repeated tale is the one of the sentry who was crept up upon and heard a sudden gust of wind. Looking around as his Gurkha assailant stepped into view from behind him, the sentry’s head rolled off his neck and thumped to the ground. Or so the story goes.

Getting back to basic physics, the thing that defines these knives’ effectiveness is the powerful blow that they are designed to deal out. The short length of the weapon lessens inertia; the forward curve of the blade brings greater force to bear on the razor thin edge; the curling profile of the edge ensures that, as the sword strikes it also slices forwards into whatever it pounds upon. Given that high-quality examples of these blades are super-sharp, maybe that story about the sentry isn’t so far-fetched after all...

Pata

A holdover from the days of the Mughal rulers of India, this weapon is designed to be used most effectively from horseback. It has an enclosing handgrip that keeps the fist and forearm free from any attack by foot-soldiers, or the attack of another mounted pata user. The long blade is double-edged and terminates in a fine point, allowing the pata to be used like a lance in the hands of the knights of old. In fact, jousting is what this weapon is uniquely designed to do.

Contrarily, on a not-so-chivalrous note, it is also very good at despatching pesky unmounted troops, allowing the wielder to stab and slash at them from the lofty heights of their saddle. It does an extra 1D6 points of damage to a target if the user charges on horseback, a distance of at least 5 metres. Using the pata while unmounted is largely an exercise in futility as it is far too long and slow to be used effectively.

Pattani Jamdadu

This is a transitional phase between the katar and the pata: essentially it is just a sword weapon with the handgrip of the katar dagger. It is much less clumsy to use than the pata, but nowhere near as efficient as the katar. Various forms of this blade exist and the extreme number of iterations is testament to the fact that it is a transitional form of the blade.

Peshkabz

Another holdover from the Mughal overlords of India, the peshkabz is an elegant straight-edged dagger – sometimes with a slight curve – noteworthy for the reinforcement along the back of the blade. It is, quintessentially, a stabbing weapon, and was designed to punch through the chainmail armour of the Mughal warriors. As such, it completely ignores chainmail or similar armour in combat. These weapons were highly decorated and are much sought-after by collectors in the modern era.

Phur-bu

The phur-bu is a weapon distinctly Himalayan, and designed for the exoteric practises of the mountain Buddhists. Highly decorated, they consist of a grotesque bronze-cast head, or series of heads, as a pommel, a handle shaped as a ritual ‘lightning bolt’ talisman (vajra), and a three-edged, arrow-shaped radial blade. As with the khadga (above), its use in battle is limited, and, fundamentally, it was not meant for anything but ritual purposes. However, occasionally needs must, and the phur-bu is put to a less-than-holy use.

As seen in the movie “The Shadow” (1994), the phur-bu can be all kinds of fun in the hands of an innovative Keeper. If you haven’t seen that film (and if you haven’t, why haven’t you?), check it out to see what I mean.

Ram Dao

The Ram Dao really has only one purpose – it is used for decapitating condemned prisoners. There are two distinct versions of this weapon, an Indian and a Nepalese variety, and they vary only in terms of their blade complexity.

Both weapons are two-handed - that is, they require two hands to use properly. They are very heavy and often quite ornamented. The Nepalese version, while also used to despatch those sentenced to death, also has funerary uses which have created strange deformations of the blade. The Nepalese butcher their dead after the funeral rites and leave the flesh out in the open to be eaten by birds and wild animals. This butchering is done by specialist priests and the Ram Dao has mutated in their hands, sprouting curls, serrations, handles and reinforcing, to allow the dismembering process to take place as efficiently as possible.

They also look bloody scary!

Scimitar / Shamshir

The scimitar is the non-pareil djinni sword, seen in every “Thief of Baghdad” or Ray Harryhausen film. It is an elegant blade that was much-admired by British troops stationed in India and it influenced the style of the cavalry sabres which the British army leaders affected during the time of the Raj. Both the scimitar and the shamshir are very similar weapons and thus have identical statistics; the only real difference between them is that the scimitar’s pointed tip is double-edged, while the shamshir is a completely singled-edged sword.

Talwar

The talwar is the province of the hill tribes of Afghanistan and Pakistan and was adopted by many Russian units including Cossacks and Mongols. It is a long, heavy, single-edged sword, with a grooved cross-section that allows blood to flow freely from the wounds it inflicts. It is not a speedy blade, but it is devastating in its impact leaving horrible damage. It is noteworthy for its disc-like pommel and handguard.

Zaghnal

Another Mughal weapon, this is a narrow-bladed pickaxe designed, like the peshkabz, to pierce through the chainmail armour of the opposition. Like those daggers, these weapons completely ignore chainmail armour – or similar – which they impact against. Unlike the more prosaic digging implements which they represent, these mauls are made all of steel rather than having a wooden haft; this makes them very heavy and capable of landing wicked blows. Typically, they are highly ornamented often with representations of animals included in their imagery.

*****

Obviously there are many more types and styles of bladed weapons out there and this list is not exhaustive. It does however, identify many forms of swords and daggers that are prevalent in the literature and cinema of Britain and the US throughout the Twentieth Century, and which, by extension, are familiar tropes within the roleplaying games that focus on this period.

Given the threat posed by the Mythos in all of its forms in Call of Cthulhu, wise Investigators will know not to place too much trust in any weapon, taking a leaf out of Mencius’s book in this regard. Still, it never hurts to be prepared!