Free Horror: The 100 Best Books by Kim Newman, Stephen Jones Page B

strange dream of a nocturnal hearse, is shocked by the voice with which the watchman accosts him. The fellow emits a muttering sound that fills the head "like thick oily smoke from a fat-rendering vat or an odour of noisome decay." What he mumbles is merely this: "Have you found the Yellow Sign?" A weirdly hieroglyphed onyx talisman, picked up on the street by the sharer of his dream, is shortly given the artist, and after stumbling queerly upon the hellish and forbidden book of horrors the two learn, among other hideous things which no sane mortal should know, that this talisman is indeed the nameless Yellow Sign handed down from the accursed cult of Hastur -- from primordial Carcosa, whereof the volume treats, and some nightmare memory of which seeks to lurk latent and ominous at the back of all men's minds. Soon they hear the rumbling of the black-plumed hearse driven by the flabby and corpse-faced watchman. He enters the night-shrouded house in quest of the Yellow Sign, all bolts and bars rotting at his touch. And when the people rush in, drawn by a scream that no human throat could utter, they find three forms on the floor -- two dead and one dying. One of the dead shapes is far gone in decay. It is the churchyard watchman, and the doctor exclaims, "That man must have been dead for months." It is worth observing that the author derives most of the names and allusions connected with his eldritch land of primal memory from the tales of Ambrose Bierce. Other early works of Mr. Chambers displaying the outre and macabre element are The Maker of Moons and In Search of the Unknown . One cannot help regretting that he did not further develop a vein in which he could so easily have become a recognized master. -- H. P. LOVECRAFT
    20: [1896] H. G. WELLS - The Island of Dr. Moreau

    Edward Prendick, a shipwreck victim, is picked up in the South Seas by a boat carrying a cargo of animals to a nameless island. He strikes an acquaintance with Montgomery, who is overseeing the animals, and is put ashore with him. The island is home to Dr. Moreau, a scientist intent on proving his evolutionary theories by raising animals through surgery to the status of human beings. Prendick gradually finds out what is going on and realizes that the strange-looking "natives" are all former animals, very shakily kept in line by an absurd set of jungle laws. Moreau's experiments have been failing because, although he can turn beasts into approximate humans he cannot prevent them reverting to their former state. The Beast Men revolt and destroy Moreau and Montgomery, leaving Prendick alone on the island with creatures who gradually revert to their animal selves. A mix of Swiftian satire, Grand Guignol horror, Darwinian theory and high adventure, The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of the young Wells' most spirited books. It has been much imitated in pulp fiction and cinema, and been officially filmed twice, most notably as The Island of Lost Souls (1932) with Charles Laughton as the mad doctor. Gene Wolfe has written three loosely connected novellas remotely inspired by the book, The Island of Dr. Death , The Doctor of Death Island and The Death of Dr. Island .
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    H. G. Wells was still my father's idol, and for just that reason nothing short of a miracle could have impelled me to read him; but the miracle occurred. I should explain that in those faraway and lost days there nourished a truly wondrous breed of magazines called pulps. (We are still living on the capital they left us; but that is another story.) All were at least as magical as a white rabbit pulled from a hat; but a few, such as Weird Tales , Planet Stories , and Astounding Science Fiction , were easily as magical as any enchanted castle upon a mountain of glass. Yet there was one that surpassed them all, that was, in any average issue, fully as magical as Aladdin's lamp. Its name was Famous Fantastic Mysteries . I don't think anybody ever told me that it reprinted the best, the least tamed and