"Madness on the Black Planet" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by American author Darrell Schweitzer. It was first published in the thematic anthology Tomorrow's Cthulhu by Broken Eye Books in January 2016.[1]
Synopsis[]
In a future in which humankind is on the brink of an unspecified destruction, three astronauts embark on a mission to a newly-discovered planet in the Kuiper Belt. Their journey culminates in a meeting with the oligarch who dispatched them in the first place, now in the guise of a yellow-masked being whose only motivation seems to be witnessing the end of the human species.
Mythos Connections[]
The rich individual who finances the expedition and later turns out to be an otherworldly entity is likely intended to be Hastur, or possibly its avatar, the King in Yellow; the description of his yellow mask combined with the cycle of madness experienced by the astronauts would appear to support this.
One of the astronauts, in the depths of insanity, mentions "Kadath in the Cold Waste, the Gardens of Ynath, and "more distant Shaggai.""
Publication History [1][]
- Tomorrow's Cthulhu (2016)
- The Children of Chorazin and Other Strange Denizens (2023)
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Title: "Madness on the Black Planet" at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database