The Xothic Legend Cycle

THIS brief story, which first appeared in Crypt of Cthulhu #56 (Roodmas 1988), is a crossover between two Lin Carter series, both involving the Cthulhu Mythos. The hero—not just a protagonist this time, but a hero—is Dr. Anton Zarnak, Lin’s version of Scabury Quinn’s occult detective Jules de Grandin, who is even mentioned by name in this story (just as Lin’s Prince Zarkon, his Doc Savage analog, hobnobbed with most of the old pulp heroes at one time or another). Zarnak made his initial appearance in Lin’s first attempt at a novella, Curse of the Black Pbaraoh (which will appear in the forthcoming Chaosium collection The Nyarlathotep Cycle), where, for all his occult powers and accomplishments, he somehow manages to come across as a colorless figure. Decades later Career returned to Dr. Zarnak, sprucing him up considerably for a pair of brief tales, the one you are about to read here and “Dead of Night” (which appeared in The Book of Iod). I have, by the way, undertaken co continue Zarnak’s adventures, one of which appears in the new Chaosium edition of Edward Paul Berglund’s The Disciples of Cthulhu. Another appears in this collection.

The other Carter series hybridized here is, of course, the Xothic cycle. Various familiar names and associations reappear here. In fact, “Perchance to Dream” resembles an epitome of the whole Xothic series thus far: Zarnak’s client is named Winfield, yet he seems to have no connection with the Winfields in “The Winfield Heritance.” His inherited collection of South Pacific artifacts comes not from the Copeland bequest, nor even from Captain Hoag, but from his own sea-faring Hoag analog, Grandfather Winfield. He is plagued by a series of maddening dreams quite similar to those of Henry Stephenson Blaine (and Bryant Hoskins—see below). And the method Zarnak uses to solve Winfield’s problem is the same Gordian strategy used by the unfortunate Hodgkins in "The Horror in the Gallery.” In this story Lin has used his own previous Mythos stories as a motif pool in precisely the same way he elsewhere uses the work of Lovecraft and Derleth.

Finally, some readers may need to be informed that Zarnak’s location on seedy River Street derives directly from the adventures of Robert E. Howard's detective Steve Harrison. The reference to Clithanus is a tip of the turban to August Derleth, who invented this mad monk and his revelations for a set of early Mythos tales (which are planned for inclusion in the forthcoming collection of Derleth’s Cthulhu Mythos tales, In Lovcraft's Shadow, edited by Joe Wrzos and distributed by Arkhum House).