Julio Toro San Martin

Lucian of Samosata (AD 125 – AD 180) was an Assyrian wit and rhetorician, who wrote in Greek. He is one of the earliest identified novelists in Western civilisation and there are some 70 surviving works attributed to him. His novel "A True Story" is a parody of Homer's "The Odyssey" and features all kinds of fantastical flights of fancy which some believe qualifies it as an early, if not the earliest, work of science fiction. "The Lost Letter of Lucian of Samosata" by Julio Toro San Martin is a Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos tale. The short story, published in e-book format, is told in an affected style that purports to be a translation by Dr Kavanagh of the Oxford Institute of Archaeology of a lost fragment written by Lucian of Samosata and unearthed early in the twentieth century at a remote archaeological site. The fragment tells of the "Star Ones", the terrible god Tulu and his vampiric acolyte Violentilla. Given the disappearance of T. T. MacAulay, who prepared the fragment for publication, it may be surmised that the lovely and grotesque Violentilla survives to this day. Although a short tale, it is beautifully written and has a real feel for H. P. Lovecraft's style and for his Cthulhu Mythos. The story has a classical feel, flows well and is horrific in its bland understatement. Violentilla is a fantastically conjured creation, whose story and backstory is put together with creepy efficiency – this is a character with much potential to become a recurring character. “The Lost Letter of Lucian of Samosata” is a short but hugely enjoyable Mythos tale.… (mais)