Sawfish's descriptions of Hawaiian culture and his family life there inspired a question in me. What examples of weird fiction do we know that take place among the Pacific Islands? CAS wrote the excellent "Uncharted Isle" and the so-so "An Offering to the Moon", and if I remember correctly Merritt's "Moon Pool" takes place somewhere in the Pacific, and HPL's "Out of the Aeons" contains a CAS-like story-within-a-story about a wizard of Mu confronting the Yuggothian monster Ghatanothoa, but aside from these I don't know anything else with this setting!

I wouldn't be surprised if there were plenty more in the genre, since I understand the mysteries of Easter Island were an exciting subject at the time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 28 Aug 20 | 03:07PM by Hespire.

I don't know if Call of Cthulu was in the Pacific, or what...

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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Sawfish Wrote:
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> I don't know if Call of Cthulu was in the Pacific,
> or what...


You're right! All this time I remembered it being in the Atlantic, but I must have mixed up R'lyeh with Atlantis!

A. Merritt's "The Moon-Pool" was set at Ponape in the Pacific; Donald Wandrei's The Web of Easter Island is set there. Aside from "The Call of Cthulhu," Lovecraft's revision for Hazel Heald "The Horror in the Museum" involves ancient Mu in the Pacific, and inspired by that August Derleth and Lin Carter wrote a chunk of fiction playing with Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith's concepts in the Trail of Cthulhu and Xothic Cycle stories, respectively. Robert E. Howard started but didn't complete several drafts of a story titled "The Isle of the Eons" which was stitched together after his death.

This is really a lot of fun, this forum... :^)

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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The Voice In The Night by William Hope Hodgson.

Hespire, is it your intention to include, among the items in the bibliography of weird fiction + Pacific islands, the islands of Japan? If so, there must be a wealth of candidates for the list, such as the Japanese tales of Lafcadio Hearn (Kwaidan, etc.). But perhaps Japan isn't part of what you have in mind.

Swift's flying island of Laputa (Voyage 3) is pretty weird, and hovers over the Pacific Ocean.

Thanks for the answers. I forgot all about The Web of Easter Island, likely because I never read it. Would this be considered a good quality weird story? And I also forgot that "The Voice in the Night" took place in the Pacific! Poe's "MS. Found in a Bottle" took place in the South Pacific, I think, before moving on to Antarctica, but maybe I mixed up some seas.

[b][/b]Dale Nelson Wrote:
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> Hespire, is it your intention to include, among
> the items in the bibliography of weird fiction +
> Pacific islands, the islands of Japan? If so,
> there must be a wealth of candidates for the list,
> such as the Japanese tales of Lafcadio Hearn
> (Kwaidan, etc.). But perhaps Japan isn't part of
> what you have in mind.


I wondered about that myself when posting this thread. Technically Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, etc. are all islands in the Pacific, so I'm open to those suggestions too, though I was most interested in Polynesia. But I have read several books by Lafcadio Hearn and marveled at his studies. His enthusiasm for my mother's homeland is greater than my own, but he sure made me more interested!

Which reminds me that Japan is utterly filled with weird traditions that would knock the socks off of most weird writers! But I'll reserve this for a separate thread, perhaps, devoted to weird folklore.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 28 Aug 20 | 09:24PM by Hespire.

Hespire —. Ah, folklore! Do start that thread.