"Discovery of the Ghooric Zone"

 by Richard Lupoff  

originally published Chrysalis, August 1977

It's March 15 2337 and the starship Khons with its crew of nymphomaniac cyborgs is bouncing around Pluto when they discover Yuggoth and its satellite/neighbors Thog and Thok, Lovecraft's "Ghooric Zone".  The date is significant, being the day of HPL's death.  One crewmen is versed in Lovecraftian and wonders how HPL could have known of these planets in his time.  They make a landing on Thog.  There they find terrifying cyclopean ruins straight out of "At the Mountains of Madness".  To their dismay, they also find shoggoths...

This is a pretty friggin' weird story, written in a cinematic style that abruptly cuts from scenes of the main tale to scenes from the history of earth in future centuries to the moment of Lovecraft's demise and its place in history.  The endless descriptions of the cyborg crew get tiresome and silly, end even moreso their sexual antics, which seem like 70's era attempts at shock now.  That being said the exploration of Thog, which accounts for the final couple pages, are pretty damn evocative but I wish the two dozen that preceded it had been as interesting.