Decoded Mirrors

Steve Rasnic Tem

Steve Rasnic Tem is one of those guys who's never quite gotten the recognition he deserves. That may be because some of his best material ends up being released at places like Necronomicon Press, a small Massachusetts company devoted to releasing Lovecraft-themed stuff on a shoestring budget. Decoded Mirrors has all the hallmarks of shoestring publishing save one; this is professional-quality writing. That won't surprise anyone who's familiar with Tem's work.

This exceptionally small collection gives us three short Lovecraft-themed stories, but rather than doing the usual “if I'm going to write stories about the Old Gods, I'm going to try and write in Lovecraftian style” that permeates the writings of most post-Lovecraft homage-payers, Tem sticks to the same modern-horror storytelling style one is apt to find in writers like Koja, Lucius Shepard, or (post-paying-homage-to-Lovecraft, of course) Ramsey Campbell. Tem gives us the horror-of-absence motif by personalizing Cthulhu and friends; the blind idiot gods are us, and there are no two ways about it. Not to say odd supernatural things don't happen here, but for the most part, it's all in our heads. We look for Azathoth and we find mirrors. It's all the more chilling when you're the eighty-foot monster everyone fears.

Much of Tem's work, including this collection, is pretty hard to find these days; it's worth the search.