The Watchers Out of Time (1974) represents a body of work that tends to evoke strong feelings. A lot of Lovecraft fans bristle at August Derleth’s Cthulhu Mythos stories, claiming he didn’t understand cosmic horror, codified too much the unknown and generally reduced things to a good/evil binary. Folks who feel that way tend to also really hate the existence of these posthumous collaborations between Derleth and Lovecraft’s notes and incomplete fragments. I will say that calling them collaborations is probably false advertising.

Now, Derleth sure has his faults but he’s a more than capable writer. Even if the bulk of these stories fall flat or never reach the heights of Lovecraft’s cosmicism, they’re never not entertaining. Derleth freely admits he’s no Lovecaft, and calls the stories inferior based on how little Lovecraft is in them. Hardly a man nefariously usurping another’s literary legacy. And while Derleth might not be as terrifying as Lovecraft, he’s effortlessly a good deal more fun. These stories are definitely fun.

Watchers Out of Time was compiled from stories published in other Arkham House books. Others appear here for the first time. The title story is a fragment, left incomplete at the time of Derleth’s death in 1971.

Included here (but not in paperback reprints from other houses) is also the short novel The Lurker at the Threshold (which is usually reprinted as a standalone paperback). It was published as a standalone hard cover in 1945 by Arkham House and I included it here as well, because why not? It sports a spooky cover by Ronald Clyne. That pales in comparison to the fantastically pulp Herb Arnold art that fronts Watchers, though.