The Horror from the Hills, by Frank Belknap Long

  In The Horror from the Hills - which is quite a silly name, because not much happens on the hills to begin with - an archeologist brings back to America the statue of an ancient malevolent god. Well, it doesn't bode well, I can tell you that. It's published in 1963, but it feels written decades earlier. I thought maybe it was an artistic choice, but no, it was actually published prior in 1931 in a serialized form. In Weird Tales! Remember those?

  A Lovecraftian story, it features the usual high class gentlemen whose passion is knowledge and science, talking very convincingly in archaic pompous terms and being very sensitive to how things ought to be and are not. They kind of bring a sleeping god in the U.S. and, feeling bad about it, strive to save the world. It made me feel nostalgic for the eras where science and rational thought would solve problems in stories. Well, they do solve it with a death ray, basically a sci-fi bazooka, but Frank Belknap Long is an American author, so it tracks.

  Did I like the book? It was strange, like Lovecraftian mythos books usually are, but also weirdly progressive. There is an entire scene where a policeman explains how he is going to solve the crime by finding a Chinaman, spewing all kinds of ridiculously false preconceptions that the main character is disgusted with. And while people are often repulsed, offended or otherwise unwilling to put horrible things into words, the book just feels old, not laughable.

  Funny enough, apparently this is an H.P.Lovecraft story, or rather a dream that he recounted to Long, which then published it with Lovecraft's permission almost word for word. Poor Frank wrote all kinds of stuff for decades, but what he is most known for are short stories in the Lovecraft universe. I do not mind that, to be honest.

  Bottom line: a fine short story to bring you back to an age where things were very different and remind you that whatever nonsense bothers you today, it shall pass like all things do.