Reviews for The Challenge from beyond

The average rating for The Challenge from beyond based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-05-02 00:00:00 John Kinstler The Challenge from Beyond By C.L. Moore, A. Merritt, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E.Howard, and Frank Belknap Long This is the first time I've come across a world called Yekub and its inhabitants, worm-like creatures. The five-part weird story is collaboration between five authors. It was written for the third anniversary issue of Fantasy Magazine in 1935. The plan was to work with whatever the previous one had left. Lovecraft's part works best. C.L. Moore opens the story with George Campbell, a man who is on vacation, camping in the Canadian woods. He hears sounds and grabs the first thing that was lying near his tent. It turns out to be a cube, origins or nature unknown. A. Merritt continues* the story with him not being able to sleep. The cube is too impressive to be left alone so he looks closely at it and gets drawn in. Lovecraft has the best and the longest part of this story. We see what happens to Campbell after he gets sucked into the cube. Lovecraft already had a story with this particular theme (mind switching) and The Shadow Out of Time is much better. Robert E. Howard makes the story a bit more violent (of course he does). Frank Belknap Long ends it with a not-so-flattering look at human beings, although I can't say I am on the side of Yekubians either. With the exception of a few, Lovecraft's stories kind of defy any attempt at meaningful rating, so I'll just leave this somewhere in the middle. On the one hand, I know it's not that good. On the other, though, it is Lovecraft (enough said, as far as I am concerned). *There's an interesting titbit about all this. Long was supposed to be the second one and wrote that part, but Merritt couldn't build upon it and asked for Long's part to be removed. You can read it here.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-04-09 00:00:00 Joan N. Boothe [What do you do with two switched bodies from radically different worlds? I mean, where does one go in terms of plot from there? (hide spoiler)]