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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Horror
eBook Description: Weird multi-dimensional maths, physics and Lovecraftiana in 1930s Miskatonic University.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Science Fiction Age, 1998
Fictionwise Release Date: September 2002

56 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [83 KB], eReader (PDB) [35 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [22 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [20 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [70 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [94 KB], hiebook (KML) [73 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [45 KB], iSilo (PDB) [18 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [23 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [50 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [32 KB]
Words: 5726
Reading time: 16-22 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"...a gruesome cautionary tale.... In classic Lovecraftian tradition, this horror story of the Cthulhu Mythos features the drowned city of R'lyeh, the infamous Necronomicon, and a thoughtful exploration of how nuclear weapons came about. Set in the 1920's and 1930's, it makes excellent use of local color to set the stage firmly in the reader's mind, and it also holds true to the venerable traditions of the Mythos. The plot concerns a physics professor at Miskatonic University who gets his ideas from a unique and dangerous source. Remember that sailor who didn't quite hightail it out of R'lyeh in time? He plays a prominent role in this slimy little story, along with the great gatekeeper Yog Sothoth. Anyone interested in particle physics, mathematics, or four-dimensional studies will simply love this story; I'm not a Mythos fan but I found this one thoroughly gripping. The illustration kind of gives away the ending, but that doesn't detract from the story's power--getting there is half the fun. This story reminds me of several filk songs, some silly and some serious, which link the Elder Gods with modern weapons of mass destruction. Seems like a logical link to me!"--Elizabeth Barrette, Tangent Online (Learn more about Tangent Online, the Internet's leading SF&F short fiction review website)

"A physicist at Miskatonic University, his tale of Cthulhu dreams only partially told by H. P. Lovecraft, tells the rest. His efforts to visualize the fourth dimension lead to contact with a character out of Lovecraft and an enhanced reputation as an iconoclastic physicist. Langford cleverly and disturbingly shows how well Lovecraft's mythos corresponds to the real horrors of the 20th century."--Mark R. Kelly, Locusmag.com

He had said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours ... Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse.
--H.P. Lovecraft, 'The Call of Cthulhu', 1928.

Not long ago I thought I saw my path clear to the highest honours of science; a stinking path, it's true, awash with foulness from the gutters underneath the world, but I maintain that pure knowledge has no stink. Sciens non olet. It might have been my motto. Once I was a scientist. Now, though, all the glittering equations have turned to viscid horror...

My name is Dr Jonathan Lake and my doctorate is in physics, of which I am a full professor with (grimly laughable though it now seems) life tenure; an achievement of note for a man thirty-four years old. Miskatonic University in the old Massachusetts town of Arkham may not, perhaps, seem the academy of choice for a student of the 'new physics'. The musty grandeur of its architecture conveys age and eccentric dignity rather than intellectual thrust--which other seat of learning boasts a small, reconstructed Egyptian pyramid in its lesser quadrangle? Indeed Miskatonic has a whispered reputation for esoteric studies verging on the disreputable. What nonsense, well into the second quarter of the twentieth century, to maintain a locked library of grimoires and works of cabbalism!

Yet gargoyle-infested Miskatonic University was my own choice: I preferred that my particular lines of research should be undisturbed by the distracting chatter of rival theorists. Here I am pre-eminent--or as my mother chose to write, 'You always did like to be a big frog in a small pond, Jonny.' (We have never been intellectually close.) There is, additionally, an odd charm in conducting modern experiments concerning the disintegration of matter against a background of hand-crafted brass instruments from the nineteenth century. Here, even the laboratories are period pieces.

Naturally I have caused new apparatus to be installed and constructed, appropriate for explorations at the outermost frontiers of physics. My strength, though, is for theoretical work: I will be remembered--or should have been remembered--for my correspondence with Otto Stern on the magnetic properties of molecular beams, with the Joliot-Curies on artificial radio-activity, with Messrs Cockcroft and Walton regarding the theory of the particle accelerator which vulgar newspapers have termed an 'atom-smasher', and a dozen other fruitful collaborations. Some far-off colleagues have expressed wonder at the variety of significant papers carrying the grateful citation: 'J. Lake, Miskatonic University, private communication, 1932'--or whatever the year might be. How did I contrive to become such a Jack-of-all-trades in so many outlying areas of my chosen field? There have been half-joking suggestions of selling one's soul for the secrets of matter ... and indeed less savoury hints, not intended for my ears, concerning my notoriously taciturn laboratory assistant. I will speak of him shortly.