"The Posthumous Recruitment of Timothy Horne" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story by American author Pete Rawlik. It was published in the thematic anthology Tomorrow's Cthulhu by Broken Eye Books in January 2016.[1]
Synopsis[]
After Timothy Horne dies on the battlefield while fighting a large-scale incursion of the Migou, he is offered a second chance to serve his species when he is inducted into a special detachment tasked with taking the war to the enemy on a different plane of existence.
Horne is guided to the Dreamlands by his commanding officer Major Carter - who reveals himself to be a cat - and upon his arrival is transformed into a bandersnatch, a form better suited to battling the Migou on their own terms. Around the moons of Phobos and Deimos, he bears witness as the people of the Dreamlands and their allies assemble a vast fleet with which to conduct the second phase of the war, and boards his ship to begin preparations.
Behind the Mythos[]
The entrance to the Dreamlands utilised by Horne's battalion was described as a seemingly never-ending staircase, which would appear to echo Randolph Carter's entry in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, particularly considering Major Carter's transformation into a cat. Other entrances mentioned are one which requires walking a yellow brick road, and another in which the traveller must navigate a wardrobe containing a forest of overcoats, references to L. Frank Baum's Oz series[2] and C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia,[3] respectively.
The Dreamlands is described by the Carter-cat as a manufactured dimension, created by the Q'hrell: a name occasionally used for the Elder Things, and stated by author Pete Rawlik to be their name in the old language.
The Cats from Saturn are shown to be allies of the Dreamlands concord, and are described as entities which can be integrated into certain technologies to act as powerful star drives.
The name of the ship to which Horne is assigned is the Tars Tarkas. This is a nod to the noble Martian war leader of the same name who appears in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series, and becomes one of the protagonist's main allies.[4]
References[]
- ↑ Title: "Church of the Renewed Covenant" at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- ↑ The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at Wikipedia
- ↑ The Chronicles of Narnia at Wikipedia
- ↑ Tars Tarkas at Wikipedia