A Rebel Yell Echoes in R'lyeh

When we think of the Lovecraft Mythos, we usually think of brooding New England towns whose inbred inhabitants dabble in dire arts and breed with inhuman monstrosities from the deeps. But even Lovecraft himself occasionally mentioned other regions of the country. For instance, in "The Call of Cthulhu" he mentioned a cult of Cthulhu-worshipers somewhere in the bayous of Louisiana. But they were few and far between, and the chilly New England character remained the primary color of his writing.

However, as the Lovecraft Mythos has slip-slid into the public domain and become a common set of cultural references, we've seen a lot of stories set in a wide variety of places. Lovecraft tended to concentrate on New England settings because he was himself from Rhode Island, but other authors often choose settings with which they are more familiar.

In "Southern Fried Cthulhu," Steve Poling gives us a vision of what might happen if one of Lovecraft's Old Ones decided to try its tricks on a contemporary community somewhere in northern Alabama. Good ol' boys aren't as easy to take down as those standoffish Yankees.