"The Burrowers Beneath"

by Brian Lumley

Originally published by DAW books, 1974

Before we go any further, look at that cover!!
This is the first edition, a skinny little DAW paperback I got out of my local library back in 1980-ish.  A thing of beauty, ain't it?  I know I'm often a wiseass here, but I truly do love that cover.

The book inside?  Well, it's better than I remember it, but...  we'll get to that.

The book kicks off with letters.  A series of them, in fact, between Lumley's supernatural sleuth and stuffed shirt extraordinaire, Titus Crow, and, respectively, a newspaper cutting-service, the publisher of horror author Paul Wendy-Smith, a reporter for a Leicester newspaper, and one Raymond Bentham, a mine inspector working in Cumberland.  It seems there have been a series of earthquakes in the Leicester area, and Mr. Bentham has recently attracted some attention, after an inspection of an old mine revealed a complex series of tunnels clearly not made by human hands, some ancient wall carvings depicting wormy squid-things, and a sound that Bentham regards as "chanting." Oh, and he found some odd objects - like giant pearls.  Crow insists that Bentham send these to him forthwtih. Crow then writes to his friend and doormat Henri Laurent De Marigny, to come at once!

DeMarigny is Crow's friend since childhood (It's a little hard to see why, as Crow is prone to continually reminding his friend how greatly superior he (Crow) is.  But anyway...).  He (at once, one assumes) and finds the superhuman Crow looking tired, his study covered in maps, charts and open atlases.  Crow begins to explain (in a particularly long-winded and wandering fashion) that some unbelievable evil may be threatening the earth(!!!), related to the "Cthulhu Myth Cycle" - this kicks off a whole five paragraphs of Cthulhu-book and Cthulhu-beastie name-dropping, plus the whole "Elder Gods-have-imprisoned-them" routine.  Crow knows this is happening because he's having nasty-ass dreams about things under the earth, and cities of the Deep Ones.

To prove his point, Crow makes DeMarigny read the Lumley story "Cement Surroundings" (which I've reviewed previously).  Then Crow and DeMarigny sit around babbling in a lot of pulp-speak - as in "Good lord, Crow, you can't mean -----!"  "Yes, DeMarigny, it's true - we're facing a menace beyond any menace ever faced anywhere!" (no that's not a quote, but it captures the tone well enough).

Crow then asserts several things - (a) the squid-things came from G'harne and have dug their way from Africa to England and elsewhere (b) these critters are tied in to the Great Old Ones (insert more Cthulhu-Beastie-Name-Dropping), (c) the Great Old Ones are NOT supernatural, but basically just really f'd-up alien nasties (d) the reason chants and spells and star-shaped stones work against them is because they were brainwashed into believing so by the Elder Gods.

(The Lum has taken a lot of flak for this latter, especially (c).  Actually, it's not completely unreasonable given that even HPL was certainly moving more and more in that direction himself.  But it does take the, ahem, "cosmic" element away.  I personally prefer the more ambiguous mix of science and sorcery that powers HPL et al, but given where Lumley was going with this story, it actually makes a fair amount of sense.)

(Now as to (d), I think it's totally stupid.)

But Crow soon has DeMarigny convinced that yeah, the whole Cthulhu business is legit, so they'd better get on the stick.  And sends him to the British Museum with a reading list (cue Cthulhu Reading List again - which makes for the third time we've had one in 63 pages!!!!).  DeMarigny finds himself very depressed and just wants to go back to bed.  But Crow shows up in his hot rockin' Mercedes, insisting they make fast for DeMarigny's houseboat - these thingies don't like water, it seems.

More troubles.  It seems the creatures (which Crow is now calling The Cthonians) have the ability to telepathically affect the minds of men, causing a depression profound enough to keep them from leaving a place.  Crow uses magic (the Vach-Viraj Incantation and the Tikkoun Elixir) to keep them at bay, but the Cthonians have been picking his brain.  Crows has also picked things up from them - the names Wingate Peaslee, Bernard Jordan, and David Winters.  They hold up on the houseboat, casting spells, studying Cthulhu books, and talking with exclamation points.  During one of their nightly pub-visits ("I don't want to give the impression that we two were alcoholics" DeMarigny notes), the bartender gives them a note - signed Sir Amery Wendy-Smith(!!!)

Figuring this is impossible, since WS disappeared in the 30's and would be 100 by now anyway, they ignore his request for a meeting.  But he visits them one night soon after - a dark, shadowed figure (he insists they douse the lights who speaks in "glugs".  Wendy-Smith explains that this is only his brain and mind, encased in a body manufactured "of the same stuff Cthulhu is made of".  He burbles out a warning and then dissolves into a blob of protoplasm, leaving his brain behind (DeMarigny thanks the stars that he never carpeted the houseboat).

Wingate Peaslee arrives just in time.  He explains that he works for The Wilmarth Foundation, HQ'd in Miskatonic U and dedicated to wiping out the Cthulhu beasties.  Peaslee is full of information (and himself).  He's got home-made star-stones, all kinds of information about the Cthonians (they've even bred some at the Foundation!), theories that totally piss off Lovecraft fans (Azathoth is a metaphor for the Big Bang, not an actual entity), and the locations of various Cthulhooies which he intends to destroy with Crow and DeMarigny's help.  For good measure, he makes them read another Lumley story ("The Night Sea-Maid Went Down") in order to save him talking and Lumley typing.

The house boat is attacked by a "sea shoggoth" from the sunken city of G'lohee, in the North Sea.  Peaslee drives it off with magic ("we were perfectly safe, I assure you, but such things are always unnerving" Yeesh!).  They bail off the houseboat while Peaslee pointlessly digresses into a 3-page rant about Innsmouth.  DeMarigny keeps bubbling about how great they feel now that Peaslee's around.

The action picks up.  Crow, Peaslee, DeMarigny, Bernard Jordan, and psychic Gordon Finch trek out to the site of the Sea-Maid.  They drill right into the body of the Cthonian under the sea bed and kill it with a depth charge (while Finch insists on maintaining telepathic contact with it - thus driving himself nuts).  (This too is a fun, pulpy scene). In its death throes, the Cthonian causes a quake, and its tentacles explode out of the ground.

More cthonians are killed, offscreen (DeMarigny hilariously describes one being "hosed" to death.)

DeMarigny and Crow are attacked while driving, led telepathically into a valley where the Cthonians attempt to kill them with a rockslide, then attacking them more directly.  Crow scares the Cthonian off with a star-stone.

Then things get strange.  The remainder of the novel (approximately the last 15% of its length), is in the form of a series of mostly brief entries in DeMarigny's notebook.  To summarize:

• The Cthonians begin bailing out of the British Isles.  With the help of the British navy (covertly), the last remaining are killed.
• An intruder breaks into Peaslee's London hotel room.  When threatened with a gun, he throws himself over a balcony to his death.  Other suspicious types are arrested or detained or committed.
• The French wing of the Wilmarth Foundation starts killing Cthonians in the Algerian desert with underground atomic explosions.  DeMarigy celebrates.
• Crow goes to Oklahoma on American Cthonian-hunting missions.
• Cthulhu lets the Wilmarth Foundation psychic squad have it, sending freak storms and madness-inducing nightmares.
• Sunspots and volcanic activity on the rise.
• The Foundation begins Cthonian-hunting in Turkey.
• Ithaqua takes out a plane in Turkey.
• Crow decides that Nyarlathotep is a metaphor for the telepathic powers of Ctulhu-ey creatures, and not an extant entity.
• It is determined that there is other life on the moon - which may or may not be friendly.
• The Loch Ness Monster is found to be a plesiosaur.
• G'harne is destroyed.
• Shudde M'ell, king/queen/kahuna of all Cthonians is found.  An attempt is made to destroy it.  Shudde M'ell fights back, killing all but one of the expedition and leaving him a babbling invalid (of course, the story is pried out of him).
• Crow discovers whole underground worlds in Oklahoma.
• Crow returns to London. He knows something about his odd antique clock.
• Burglars break into both DeMarigny and Crow's homes and steal their star-stones, replacing them with non-working fakes.
• A psychic warns Crow of impending doom for both of them.
• The Cthonians begin to affect their minds again, attempting to lure them to their doom.
• Windwalkers - minions of Ithaqua, attack Crow's house and destroy it.  Crow leaves a letter for Peaslee.  No trace of Crow, DeMarigny, or the clock are found...

The first thing to know is, Burrowers is pulpy as hell.  As pulpy as a Sax Rohmer Fu Manchu novel.  Complete with cliffhangers and lots of exclamation points.  And all of that is good and bad.  If you're looking for an exciting read with a lot of Lovecraft in it, this is not a bad place to be.  

On the other tentacle, seekers of coooosmiiiiiiic hoooorrrrooooooor need to look elsewhere.  Lumley isn't interested in pessimism, uncaring universes, or insurmountable nightmares.  His Cthulhu baddies (or, as Peaslee and Crow irritatingly keep referring to them, the CCD) are alien nasties, but in no way gods.  What's more - they're organized!  Thus Cthulhu can deputize Ithaqua to send his minions after Crow and DeMarigny as revenge for pissing him off.

There are several good moments here, because Lumley is, in fact, an effective horror writer.  Bentham's letter describing his finding of the heiroglyphics in the mine, and the strange chanting sound, sets up a nice, eerie mood that recalls (but doesn't ape) HPL.  A later description of Crow's dream of the cthonians tearing up a victim is both gruesome (without being actually graphic) and potent.  The visit by the remnant of Sir Amery Wendy-Smith gets silly as he sits saying "glub glub" in their living room, but the scene leading up to is actually very effective spookery in an M.R. James-ian way.  The attack by the "sea shoggoth" is great fun.  The slaying of the cthonian under the Sea-Maid is terrific pulp-horror action of the sort Lumley will later excel in the "Necroscope" books.  The later attack in the valley by a cthonian is a blast as well.

And the Cthonians are the best-realized Lovecraftian monster that didn't come from the pen of the Providence man hisself.  Giant squid-worms with telepathic, mind-manipulating powers, earthquake-causing abilities, and they burrow around the earth chanting and stinking up the place.  Unfortunately, Lumley also undercuts a lot of their menace (and that of the other monsters he turns up); all you have to do is flash them a star-stone and they scream and run away.

Crow is a pompous bore, Peaslee even more so, and DeMarigny as doormat who's always having to have his useless ass saved by one of the aforementioned pompous bores - so scratch characterization.

But the biggest prob is that last 15% of the book.  Look at the list above - all of that is action is crammed into brief notes of sometimes a paragraph or two, in the space of 25 or so pages (in a novel that only runs a little over 150).  I don't know what Lumley was thinking (strapped for time?  page limits?) but there's at least another 150+ pages worth of stuff there.  Instead, Burrowers ends up reading like 75% of a finished novel and the last 25% being an expanded outline for the rest of it.  

Burrowers is probably the point where Lumley's bad rep among Cthulhu fans begins.  Between his sacred-cow-slaying and reduction of the "mythos" to a bunch of unpleasant alien invaders, and the general pulpy tone of the whole proceedings, he earned himself the disdain of many who take their Cthulhu crapola too seriously.  I don't care for Lumley's interpretation either, but I don't consider it heresy.

When I first read Burrowers, 35(!) years ago, borrowed from my local library (no kiddin'), I was excited by the early bits, bored by the middle and baffled by the sketchy last portion.  I eventually came to disdain the book.  About 15 years ago I read it again and, having a hard-on against pulpy fiction at the time, looked down on it even more.  This time out (you know, I've now read The Burrowers Beneath far more times than I have any number of books that I respect a lot more.  What is wrong with me?) I actually found it a page-turner and a lot of fun.  These days, I don't have a problem with pulpy fiction, nor with varied interpretations of Lovecraft's "mythos" that don't match my own.

So, make no mistake: The Burrowers Beneath is nothing more than a 70's version of the pulp sci-fi/horror stuff Frank Belknap Long and Donald Wandrei knocked out.  But it is a fun read.  If only he'd finished it.