The Three Impostors and Other Stories: Vol. 1 of the Best Weird Tales of Arthur Machen (Call of Cthulhu Fiction)

After having bathed in the glorious waters of M. R. James and Algernon Blackwood, I was keen to experience more supernatural horror with a distinctly British flavour. Thus I was eagerly anticipating the consumption of James and Blackwood’s rough contemporary and fellow in the genre, the Welsh and perpetually impoverished Arthur Machen. Many of Machen’s novels are out of print, or at least out of print from reliable publishing houses, which is much the same thing. Imagine my joy, then, when I discovered a three-volume selection of Machen’s tales edited by the venerable S. T. Joshi! However, I must admit that judging from this volume alone, Machen is my least favourite of the three; his waters, to continue the metaphor, are not uniformly luminous.“The Great God Pan,” a novella that runs about fifty pages in this edition, has received considerable praise from Those Who Know. Perhaps its extreme tendency toward euphemism, extreme even for the period, diminished its chilling power for me; I think my cool reception of the tale was in part caused by impossibly high expectations. I was not as horrified as might be hoped by the transformation of Helen Vaughan, and was further impeded from the intensity of the mood by Machen’s pronounced predilection for rambling. I award this story three stars, although without any foreknowledge of the story it probably rates four.“The Inmost Light” and “The Shining Pyramid” are essentially supernatural detective stories. One concerns the extraction of a soul and the dread consequences of such an act, whereas the other deals with the real existence of a subhuman race of Little People underneath the remoter areas of the countryside. The investigative protagonist, a jesting literary type by the name of Dyson, is over-jaunty and talks at length (sometimes for entire pages without interruption), but the tales are well-paced and appropriately eerie. Four stars apiece.The Three Impostors makes up the bulk of the paper in this collection, and is an episodic novel composed of a series of embedded tales linked together by a light narrative thread. The eponymous three impostors are two women and a man who relate their tales to either Dyson, encountered in the previous two short stories, or his compatriot Phillips, a hard-headed ‘man of science’ who eventually succumbs to the intriguing atmosphere generated by the three accomplices, who are pursuing a mysterious “young man with spectacles,” as he is described. The reliability of the tales is eventually called into question by Dyson and Phillips, who happen to be waging a war of ideas on the nature of reality versus fiction. While the strangeness of some of the impostors’ stories and the absurd coincidences of the outer narrative hold one’s interest, the most compelling sections of The Three Impostors are to be found at the very beginning and the very end. Four stars overall.This three-volume series is published by Chaosium Books, a special interest press that publishes material relevant to lovers of Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos. I am increasingly finding that special interest presses produce the highest quality experience for the reader! The introduction by S. T. Joshi is as excellent as one might expect from the great man, although it sometimes references works not included either in the particular volume in question or in any of the three volumes in particular, and often reads Machen through the lens of Lovecraft. The cover, although having no relation whatsoever to the interior contents, is highly suitable and atmospheric, and the typesetting and rear cover design is apt. I heartily recommend the house of Chaosium for any and all titles it may carry, although of course the range available will be highly specialized.Although I did not fall instantly in love with Machen as I was expecting to, I certainly found much to appreciate in his writing. I recommend this book to devotees of supernatural and weird fiction; appreciators of fin-de-siècle literature and fine prose would also enjoy ‘Machen about’ with this collection.

Having read and loved many of H.P. Lovecraft's stories, I wanted to peruse the works of some of his influences, of which Arthur Machen is one. As an introduction to the works of Machen, _The Three Impostors and other stories_ did not disappoint. This anthology was collected by S.T. Joshi who has worked on several Lovecraftian-influenced story anthologies for Chaosium. He also penned the introduction which contains an excellent summary of Machen's life and an in-depth analysis of the following stories. This book contains the complete text of "The Three Impostors", a series of stories within stories with an over-reaching theme. These embedded stories, or "novels" as named by Machen, within the sections of "The Three Impostors" are self-contained and complete; I've read one of them collected by itself within another horror story anthology."The Three Impostors" follow the stories "The Great God Pan", "The Inmost Light" and "The Shining Pyramid". Machen evokes the atmosphere of Victorian London remarkably well along with a chilling, gas-lit feeling of powerful eldritch forces just beyond our ken creeping through into our dimension through the well-meaning but ill-advisable efforts of scientists exploring the limits of knowledge and perception. Reflective of Victorian sensibilities of his time, Machen uses subtle allusions rather than overtly describing the horrifying habits of the evilly inclined characters with much greater effect than if he went into coarse detail (not that he avoided outraged criticism from his Victorian readership this way!). Fans of Victorian literature and of H.P. Lovecraft will treasure this anthology of Machen's work, and will likely enjoy the following volumes published by Chaosium under the editorship of S.T. Joshi. Those with more modern inclinations might find Machen's styles somewhat dry and verbose, but if you keep an open mind, you'll find there's a lot to get out of the unsettlingly disturbing stories of Arthur Machen.

I just finished writing a review for "The White People," in which I recommended that people buy this book instead. So now I need to write a review of this book--and here it is.Another review isn't really necessary, though, because there are already several here that eloquently describe the pleasures of this volume. From the weird horrors of "The Great God Pan" to the prehistoric flints of "The Shining Pyramid" to the puzzling imposters of the title, this is the kind of book you can re-read many, many times and discover something new each time.And if you've already read "The Novel of the Black Seal" before in anthologies, you will love to able to read it here in context, although I warn you, you'll never feel the same about "Miss Lally" again!As another reviewer put it, I'm only sorry I can't give this book more than 5 stars.

Weird IS the best description! Hard to follow and stay interested in the stories. You really never get a feel for the characters.

good

I am now a Machen fan.

Episodic novel of the Victorian era. Some of the 'Impostors' self contained sections, such as 'Novel of the Iron Maid' and 'Novel of the Black Seal', have been published seperately but in this edition the whole thing is in one place.It is a 'weird' work rather than a traditional crime story. The famously eerie opening line 'And Mr. Joseph Walters is going to stay the night?' is set in a perplexing prologue which becomes wonderfully clear on finishing the book.The thread of the story is the search for a 'Gold Tiberius' coin and the journey takes us from the Wild West to the wild west hills around Monmouth (Machen's roots). In between the streets of London are grim as are 'the sickly fumes of the brickfields of Acton'. It is spooky, gruesome and graphic (a nod to Mr Poe) in an episodic, jaunty, sardonic, florid style ( a nod to Mr Stevenson).The two main characters are Mr Dyson and Mr Phillips. They represent mystery, occult, spiritual versus the secular and rational. This all sounds a bit heavy and intimidating but it is told with such juicy relish by Mr Machen that it is oddly addictive.Ninety word sentences with ten commas take a fair bit of reading and concentration. Really well plotted and comes together satisfyingly at the end.

This is the first of a three-volumes collection of Machen's weird tales by H.P. Lovecraft's main editor S.T. Joshi. Perhaps the commentary in the introduction is too Lovecraft-centred, but the comprehensiveness and general care of this edition is worthy of mention. The tales are presented in chronological order, which helps following the author's career, and cover approximately the first half of the 1890s.As a writer, Machen distinguished himself for a visionary approach, his works being the result of the transfiguration of reality through his own fantasies, or as Lovecraft put it, through his "sensitive aesthetic mind". Regarding style, allusion is a key device often used by Machen to create a horrific atmosphere, at times with tremendous effect. As with the content, more often than not, the "horror" quality of Machen's tales emanates from a natural (or cosmic) force, intimately associated with untamed nature and sexuality, identified by some with the life principle of nature. A modern reader would probably see nothing wrong with nature and sex, but from the author's standpoint, however, profoundly influenced by religion and victorian ethics, this force is seen as the antithesis of civilized society and thus a potentially dehumanizing factor. It is often met by the characters who come across it with awe and repulsion, and is so strong that can lead to mind annihilation or death. The hard evidence of this force is to be found in the survival of ancient, semi-human races, of pagan practises related to fertility and sexuality, and of ancient magic symbols.The Great God Pan is arguably the best of the tales contained in this first volume. It shocked the victorian society when it came out in 1894 for its sexual connotations, although a modern reader cannot help feeling that the author is indeed too reticent in describing the events. The subject of the tale is about the existence of a wild and essentially evil entity, personified by the Greek God Pan, and the horrible consequences caused when the doors that normally keep it on a sphere separate from human existence are burst open.The Inmost Light and The Shining Pyramid are two pleasurable tales, the former being almost a variation on the theme set out in The Great God Pan, the latter introducing the reader to the "little people" surviving beneath the hills of modern Wales.Finally, The Three Impostors (1895) is an ambitiously structured work containing a series of short novels, framed by a story opening and closing the whole. The novels are narrated by the characters of the main story and are individual works, clearly independent from one another for setting and themes. Indeed, more than one of them was published separately both before and after the publication of The Three Impostors. Here we find many of the favorite subjects of Machen, the little people, ancient pagan rituals, and witchcraft, together with some of his trademark theories, for example the supremacy of exctasy, magic and coincidence over rationalism, science and logic. This work features some highlights, such as Novel of the Black Seal and Novel of the White Powder, but overall the good bits get somewhat diluted in the labirintine structure.

Vorliegende Sammlung umfaßt Machens beste Horror-Stories, beginnend mit "The Great God Pan" und endend mit der kaleidoskopischen Erzählung "The Three Impostors", eigentlich eine Sammlung von Erzählungen, zusammengehalten von einer unbedeutenden Mystery-Handlung.Der echte rote Faden beginnt jedoch in "The Great God Pan", setzt sich in "The Shining Pyramid" fort und endet in den beiden Kurzgeschichten "Novel of the Black Seal" und "Novel of the White Powder". In diesen Geschichten kommt Arthur Machens Defintion des Okkulten und Bösartigen am prägnantesten zum Ausdruck. Die Märchenwelt der guten Feen und Elfen wird durch eine abgrundtief bösartige ersetzt, getragen von einer prähumanen, zwergenhaften Rasse, welche die Künste der schwarzen Magie und der todbrigenden Substanzen bis zur Perfektion beherrscht. Durch die Einflüsse ihrer okkulten Künste werden Menschen in abartige Wesen verwandelt, die auf den niedrigsten Stufen der Evolution stehengeblieben sind. Ihre widerwärtige, amorphe Erscheinung erinnert an H.P. Lovecrafts Shoggothen, Dienerwesen der transkosmischen Dämonen. Das Motiv des schwarzmagisch aufgeladenen Steines aus "Novel of the Black Seal" nimmt Robert E. Howards "The Black Stone" hinweg, wie auch "The Shining Pyramid" eine andere Meistererzählung Howards voraussagt, nämlich "The Valley of the Lost"-fast könnte man meinen, daß Robert E. Howard hier eine Fortsetzung von Machens Geschichte im Auge hatte..Von Machens "kleinem Volk" und dessen Opfer bis zu Lovecrafts desolaten Ortschaften Innsmouth und Dunwich ist es nur noch ein kleiner Schritt. Machen ist somit das Bindeglied zwischen der traditionellen Horrostory und dem kosmischen Grauen seiner amerikanischen Nachfolger H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard und Clark Ashton Smith-und als solcher für alle Horror-und Fantasy-Anhänger unverzichtbar.

Reading Stephen King's latest collection of short stories, the story "N" alluded to the "The Great God Pan"; though a Fan of weird fiction old and new I haven't read any works of Machen before - a real gap in education as it turned out.All stories in this volume demonstrate more or less subtle and well written that reality is nothing but a very frail construction.Stylewise the short novel "The three Impostors;Or, The Transmutations" is the most original piece in this volume - a kaleidoscopic puzzle with improbable encounters and a chain of seemingly unrelated weird stories it dwells on the differnt ways how life, science and the world could be seen.To me this book turned out to be a startling discovery and it is highly recommendable.The only flaw in this volume is S.T. Joshi's introduction - since it reveals a lot about the stories to come and spoils the reading experience & pleasure - especially in the case of "The Great God Pan". As an afterword it would have been OK.