In Hydra, Kuttner achieved cosmic horror

It’s been about a year since I last wrote about the late Henry Kuttner, author of wonderfully pulpy works in the thirties through fifties. While I had read some of his stuff as soon as I was old enough to find it in library anthologies, I hadn’t realized he was part of the Lovecraft Circle. (To be fair, the internet really wasn’t around when I was doing most of my Kuttner reading)

And, when I did read some of his Mythos work, I felt it fell short of both cosmic horror standards and the  standards of some of the other stuff that Kuttner wrote. However, when I came across a reference to a Mythos being called Hydra that was different than Mother Hydra of the Deep Ones, I went down the rabbit hole to read his short story ‘Hydra’

And in doing so, I found what is the most Lovecraftian thing I’ve read so far by Henry Kuttner.

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Foolish person learns why messing with unearthly abominations is a bad idea

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The plot isn’t really a surprise

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Two foolish students stumble upon an occult ritual that ends horribly for everyone involved. The basic plot is pretty standard. The good stuff is in rhe details and the complete and utter despair.

The title entity is an ocean of gray goo that has a multitude of heads floating on  it. The heads aren’t Hydra’s own heads but those of its victims, who it drains of intelligence while keeping them alive in eternal agony.

Yeah, that’s some solid nightmare fuel.

The ritual that lets it take its victims is fascinatingly convoluted. Its followers published a pamphlet on astral projection. However, Hydra can open a portal whereever your projection goes and take innocent heads.

Soooo… other than getting in touch with a cosmic horror, the person who performs the ritual gets off Scott free? Not going to lie, other than the inevitable insanity, that’s a pretty sweet deal by Mythos standards.

The story also doesn’t explain why the cultists published the pamphlet for innocent people to accidentally use _rather than perform the ritual themselves_

The actual conflict of the story ends up the protagonists being haunted and harried by the severed head of their mentor who they accidentally sacrificed to Hydra. Don’t worry. It ends up working out badly for everyone involved.

Hydra is the most successful Mythos work I’ve read so far by Kuttner due to the visceral horror and existential concept of an eternity as a severed head being tortured in a vast, god-like sea of gray slime. That’s some cosmic horror world building.

Where I’m mean to Henry Kuttner

I have been going through a phase of reading a bunch of Henry Kuttner’s short stories after I read his Hogben stories. And, in the process, I learned he was a part of the Lovecraft Circle. That’s the bunch of folks who not only wrote Mythos stories but corresponded with Lovecraft himself.

And the circle included some pretty big names. Robert E Howard. Clark Ashton Smith. Robert Bloch. August Derleth (who is admittedly more famous for keeping Lovecraft in print than anything he wrote) And there are others (Like Frank Bellknap Long, who seems to only be remembered for writing The Hounds of Tindalos. Which is worth remembering) Lovecraft was a letter writing fiend.

But I wasn’t familiar with Kuttner being part of the circle and I’ve been reading Mythos stuff for most of my life. And it’s not like I’d never heard of Kuttner. I first read his Gallagher stories in high school.

So I went and read some of the stories that were part of Kuttner’s Mythos work. And, for the most part, it fell short of having a Mythos feel. I’m not asking for cosmic horror and despair but I do want some level of greater scope and the inexplicable.

The best of what I read was the Graveyard Rats, which has nothing remotely Mythos related. It probably just gets lumped in because it’s a really strong, cracking good story. Well, that got me to read it so I’m not complaining.

The Spawn of Dagon was one that particularly struck me because it used the deep ones as essentially a competing race with humanity, not something outside of nature and rational thought. It was pulpy sword and sorcery with a Myrhos post it on it.

Not that there is anything wrong with pulpy sword and sorcery. And it can be combined very well with Mythos. Robert E. Howard’s Worms of the Earth is a magnificent example of blending those two genres.

Kuttner could write. Just not Mythos.

There are many authors who took the seeds that Lovecraft planted (in a graveyard on a moonless night, possibly using a human femur for the shovel… I let the metaphor get away from me, didn’t I?) and wrote memorable works. For me at least, Kuttner didn’t pull it off.

Henry Kuttner’s Hogbens stories leave me conflicted

I first heard about Henry Kuttner’s Hogbens stories in comparison to Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John/John the Balladeer stories. I have finally read the Hogben stories and, man, is that comparison superficial.

Manly Wade Wellman was an active folklorist and his work was steeped in authentic culture and lore. The Hogben stories are over-the-top stereotypes even before mad science gets thrown in. One reviewer described the Hogbens as The Adams Family crossed with the Beverly Hillbillies and I don’t think I can do better than that.

I was also surprised by how few stories there were. Kuttner only wrote five stories and one of them doesn’t remotely count. (The first story, The Old Army Game, uses the same names but no fantastic elements, utterly contradicting the later stories. In fact, I think it has been left off some collections. Since I actually have read it, I can safely say you can skip it)

Oh, just to make it clear if it wasn’t obvious, the Hogben stories are comedies. 

The Hogben are mutant survivors from Atlantis who have settled in the Appalachian hollers and gone seriously native. Well, Grandpa may be the only one who was around when Atlantis was above water but Pa was doing stuff in Ancient Greece.

The Hogbens have crazy psychic powers, access to building serious mad science tech and centuries of living experience but there wouldn’t be any stories if they actually had any good judgement. Maybe the moonshine they are constantly guzzling explains them making an atomic pile in a wood shed or giving reality altering tech to mere mortals. Since the Hogbens are the only fantastic element in the stories, they have to be the ones who create the problems they need to solve.

I don’t know what to think of the Hogben stories. Stereotypes are a way of dehumanizing people and the Hogbens are pushed to the point of literally not human.  But they do have fun, twisty plots. There’s some good writing. I can see an argument that the stories are actually a satire of stereotypes but I think that is in danger of being an apologist argument. 

Henry Kuttner died young but left a surprisingly large and varied body of work. (His wife C. L. Moore had a big hand in that. Scholars argue to this day who wrote what) I do wonder what his legacy would be like if he’d lived longer.