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Dubious Shards. When I heard first about this product, I briefly wonder about why this particular title was chosen. Now that I’ve read it, I have to say I can’t think of a better fit: Ken Hite’s Dubious Shards is a collection of assorted writings, articles and essays, all of them revolving around Lovecraft and its creation, the Cthulhu Mythos. The tone and content of some of the pieces is a tad more serious and wordy than usual for gaming supplements, and probably more in line with what one would find in a Lovecraft magazine. Nevertheless, it does include a gaming scenario, and gamers are likely to be its target audience, so I’ll treat it as such for the purposes of this review.
(But before, a word of advice: English is not my native tongue, so I’ll apologize in advance for any typos, misuses and bastardizations of the English language which may follow. And with that, onto the review.)
While the “shards” are largely unconnected between them, they are sorted along thematic similarities in three sections: Lore, The Winslow Project, and Criticism.
Lore
The pieces in this section reflect on Mythos tales, places and characters, and their relationship with the sources they were drawn from. Readers of Hite’s Suppressed Transmission column on Pyramid Magazine will be familiar with the style, which involves lots of cross-references, making highly improbable connections, and liberal use of conspiratorial thinking to come with really crazy plot hooks and ideas suitable for gaming purposes. Thus much of the material here is probably more suited for gamemasters looking to flavor their non-CoC campaigns with elements of Lovecraftiana.
The Know of Hastur: Despite what could be inferred from the title, this article doesn’t have much to do with Hastur (unless one wants to draw similarities between the madness induced by the Yellow Sign and the pattern building approach suggested in the article). Instead, Hite comments on the creative process that entails building a mythological body like the Cthulhu Mythos, which is in some ways akin to the way conspiracy theory works (take any observed fact or element of fiction and distort it until it fits with the desired worldview). Most of the content is on the theory side, but even jaded CoC players may find something on the text to think about, and perhaps refresh their perception of the Mythos.
The Trail of Dagon: In this article, Hite delves into the mythological roots of Dagon - the corn god mistakenly identified in the past as a marine deity – and uses those same roots to hint at suitably Lovecraftian possibilities. Pretty good treatment of a Mythos character, certainly better than “uh, it’s a really big Deep One”.
Irem, the City of Pillars: A revision of a previous Suppressed Transmission article on Irem, with some references expurged and replaced with others more relevant to the Mythos. Perhaps for that reason, I can’t help but feel this article comes across as somewhat disjointed, not as well-rounded as the others - though I have to admit the original isn’t one of my favorite Supressed Transmissions, either. Ah, well.
Vampirish Vapours in the Shunned House: This one deals with vampire folklore in New England and related customs (such as the custom of digging graves to burn corpses suspected to be infested by vampiric spirits), which Lovecraft used as inspiration for The Shunned House. Of course, Hite goes beyond that, and brings Poe and Lovecraft and Jack the Ripper into vampiric conspiracies. Very good and eminently gameable, and one that Tim Powers fans will want to check out.
Down to Dunwich: Dedicated to the historical Dunwich, a thriving medieval port in Old England now ruined by centuries of coastal erosion, and its role as a source of inspiration for writers and poets - or possibly gamemasters running medieval or Elizabethan CoC campaigns. Echoes of sunken lost cities and shadow realms are to be found here.
The Shadow out of Lovecraft: Another original Supressed Transmission article, which tackles on The Man himself – Lovecraft’s odd life and deeds and comes under the bisociative lens of conspiratorial thinking. It’s all fairly wild stuff, very useful for anyone looking to insert Lovecraft in a roleplaying campaign as a potential contact, ally – or a villain.
The Winslow Project
The second section is entirely devoted to a Call of Cthulhu / Delta Green scenario originally written for Pagan Publishing’s (still unpublished) Cult of Trascendence sourcebook. Basically, the scenario involves a pattern of suspicious deaths which sends Delta Green agents to a nice, ordinary American town. Of course, things are happening there that aren’t nice or ordinary – and no matter where you go in town, somebody is always watching you.
The scenario itself is solidly written, but as Hite himself points out, it’s the piece with the lowest amount of Mythos content in the book. Other than some very tenuous links to the Cult of Trascendence and a guest appearance of a certain Mythos entity near the end of the scenario, it’s a classic criminal investigation with not much in the way of Yog-Sothothery. In fact, it would be trivially easy to run as a straight government / corporate conspiracy scenario, as the basic themes of the scenario (fear, paranoia and loss of privacy in the wake of constant electronic surveillance) are staples of the conspiracy genre.
Criticism
In the last section of the book, two critical essays can be found:
The Shadow from the Right: A commentary on the role of politics on horror writing, apropos of Michel’s Houllebecq’s theory (exposed in his book H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life) that Lovecraft’s racialism and severe xenophobia was the catalyst to make his writings coalescence and achieve literary merit. Not having read Houllebecq’s book I cannot comment much here, other than I like Hite’s counter-arguments better.
The Man Who Shot Joseph Curwen: An analysis of the moral dimension implicit in Call of Cthulhu characters, where Hite draws a clever parallel between CoC investigators and the archetypal Western gunfighter. It’s perhaps my favourite piece in the entire book, and a must read read for anyone playing Call of Cthulhu.
Conclusion
Dubious Shards makes a very interesting read for Lovecraft aficionados. It’s not for the uninitiated, though, as some familiarity with the Mythos is assumed, and much of the value of the pieces will depend on what the reader is willing to get out of them. Still, I definitively recommend taking a look at it.
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